American Magazine March 2015

As part of the Department of Literature’s Writer as Witness Program—
now in its 17th year—all incoming students read a common text and
meet with its author. After the colloquium in Bender Arena, most of
the books end up on dorm room shelves, collecting dust.
This year, however, hundreds of copies of Brooke Gladstone’s The
Influencing Machine—which chronicles two millennia of media history
through vivid comics by acclaimed artist Josh Neufeld—found a happy
home in alumna Jennifer Coleman’s Long Beach, Mississippi, classroom.
“I was following news of this year’s Writer as Witness text with
much interest and a tad of envy,” says Coleman, CAS/MFA ’11, who
teaches at Long Beach High in a school district still recovering from
the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. “I couldn’t help but dream
about the lessons and activities that would be possible with such a
versatile and relevant text. I knew my high school students would be
invigorated and engaged with a book like The Influencing Machine.
And that’s when I had this idea: What if AU freshmen were asked
to donate their copy of their Writer as Witness text after they were
finished using it?”
Hundreds of students answered Coleman’s call, and Professor John
Hyman (pictured) spearheaded the effort to ship the paperbacks
south to Mississippi.
“This partnership is just the latest affirmation of many positive
experiences I’ve had since joining the AU family in 2008,” Coleman
says. “The entire Long Beach community thanks you, AU.”
Twenty-five years ago, sharpshooting
point guard Derek Hyra
had sights set on the NBA. When
a coach urged him to venture out
of the suburbs to hone his skills
on New York City’s fabled asphalt
playgrounds, Hyra joined the
Rucker League on 155th Street
in Harlem, where Julius “Dr. J”
Erving and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
once played.
While Hyra didn’t go on to
play at a premier Division I
school, the experience profoundly
shaped his career. Harlem, like
many cities in the late 1980s and
early ’90s, had been devastated
by drugs, gangs, and crime. On
and off the court, Hyra learned
about race in America from
teammates who lived in Harlem
and the Bronx.
Today, as director of the
School of Public Affairs’s new
Metropolitan Policy Center, Hyra
is leading a team of researchers
interested in issues that continue
to plague urbanites: affordable
housing, racial and ethnic
diversity, social service provisions,
and economic development.
The center, which hosts an
urban speaker series showcasing
research by AU faculty and grad
students, houses academics
from across campus. Current
projects include Bradley Hardy’s
examination of the efficacy of the
DC supplemental earned income
tax credit and Daniel Kerr’s
historical research project with
residents of DC’s Community
for Creative Non-Violence
homeless shelter, located just
blocks from the Capitol.
“It’s great that we have
more inclusive, mixed-income
neighborhoods, but when
you really get into these
racially diverse, redeveloping
communities, there is
microsegregation, racial power
imbalances, and social tensions,”
Hyra says. “These challenges are
still the defining urban issues of
our time.”
MASTERS OF INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS
AU’s international relations program is the ninth-best in the country,
according to Foreign Policy’s annual rankings, released in February. The
School of International Service clocked in at No. 8 for master’s programs
and No. 22 for doctoral programs. Results were based on responses
from 1,615 IR scholars at 1,375 US colleges.
THE ART OF ILLUSTRATION
John S. Dykes’s civil rights illustrations from the November 2014
issue of American were among 400 works showcased at the Society
of Illustrators’ annual exhibition in New York City. The exhibit, which
ran through February 28, featured the year’s best illustrations
commissioned by newspapers and magazines.
6 AMERICAN MAGAZINE MARCH 2015