Rochester Review

May–June 2013, Volume 75, No. 5

Editor

Scott Hauser

Associate Editors

Karen McCally ’02 (PhD)

Kathleen McGarvey

Contributors

Valerie Alhart, Adam Fenster, Melissa Greco Lopes, Susan Hagen, Peter Iglinski, Bob Marcotte, Mark Michaud, Melissa Mead, Sara Miller, Leslie Orr, Chris Roth, Leonor Sierra, and Brandon Vick

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Published six times a year for alumni, students, their parents, and other friends of the University, Rochester Review is produced by University Communications.

Opinions expressed are those of the authors, the editors, or their subjects and do not necessarily represent official positions of the University of Rochester.

ISSN: 0035-7421

Copyright © 2013 University of Rochester

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Alumni photographs, courtesy of the subjects. Unless otherwise credited, all others are Rochester Review photos.﻿

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The Costs of Sequestration

By Joel Seligman

America’s research universities play an essential role in our nation’s economy. The academic labs, classrooms, and clinics at our University and other research universities are a wellspring of new ideas and talent that form the basis for the next generation of innovative technologies and companies.

Fueled by the federal government’s investment in research, education, and health care, this model has generated tremendous national economic benefit. It has been estimated that half of United States economic growth since World War II has been the result of technological innovation, much of which has grown out of federally funded research. It has been estimated that 30 percent of the NASDAQ stock market’s current value is rooted in university-based, federally funded R&D.

The University of Rochester has been one of the most productive research institutions in the nation. Over the last five years, the University has received almost $2 billion in total research funding. Some 80 percent of these funds has come from federally sponsored research agencies, including the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, and the Departments of Energy and Defense. When normalized for the size of our faculty, the University currently ranks 15th in the nation in annual research funding. We similarly rank 13th in the nation in the amount of royalty revenue we receive from licensed technologies.

The University and the Greater Rochester area have a proud history of leveraging federal funds to develop technologies with a global impact. In the early part of the 20th century, a great partnership developed among governmental agencies, corporate and private support, and institutions of higher learning that drove basic research, resulting in our country’s global competitiveness, economic growth, improved health, and strengthened national security. The commitment of the federal government, along with that of Eastman Kodak and Bausch & Lomb, to support optics research at Rochester during and immediately after World War II helped cement our University’s—and our region’s—leadership role in optics and imaging. Our Laboratory for Laser Energetics, founded in 1970 with the support of the Department of Energy, has been a critical component in our nation’s pursuit of an independent energy future. Today, our pioneering work in fields such as vaccine development, optics, cardiac arrhythmias, and medical imaging has touched millions of lives and generated substantial economic growth in our community.

At a time when countries like China, India, South Korea, and Japan are accelerating their investments in research and development, the United States sadly is now reducing this federal commitment. Over the last decade, the budget for NIH alone has fallen by nearly 20 percent after inflation.

As Washington struggles to develop a balanced long-term approach to controlling the federal budget deficit, the imposition of spending caps and across-the-board cuts in federal spending will further weaken our nation’s competitiveness by further reducing the academic research and education programs necessary to improve health, provide for our energy needs, generate new technologies that spark economic growth, improve national security, and help us better understand the world around us.

The consequences to our University of the steep and arbitrary cuts mandated by sequestration already are significant. The University is projected to lose more than $23 million in federal support for research, health care, student aid, and the humanities in 2013 as a result of sequestration. Nationally, it’s estimated that budget sequestration would cut at least $50 billion in federal R&D support over the next five years.

While I recognize the importance of reducing the budget deficit and shrinking our nation’s debt, this should be accomplished in a responsible and balanced manner that does not undermine the nation’s economic recovery and impede future growth by slowing down the innovation upon which our nation’s high-tech economy is built. Indiscriminate, across-the-board cuts imposed by sequestration will hurt the very programs that drive the nation’s economy and ensure our global leadership in technological and scientific innovation.

As deliberations continue in Washington, I urge our leaders to recognize that federal investments in science, education, and academic medicine are not the fundamental cause of our rising debt and that the draconian cuts prescribed by sequestration will ultimately compromise our nation’s future.

Letters

lettersTHAT PLAY THING: Larry Fishkin ’75 writes that he (right) and Willy Bradford ’75 (left) were the previously anonymous actors in the opening photo of Class Notes (March-April). (Photo: University Libraries/Department of Rare Books, Special Collections, and Preservation)

‘Towne’ & College

The articles on the new College Town development (“Launching College Town” and “Welcome to College Town,” March-April) brought me back 55 years. The old Towne House hotel that is being demolished to make way for this new village center was my first “home” in Rochester, temporary though it was. I had not visited Rochester prior to beginning graduate study in psychology in 1958 (my admission interview with the late Emory Cowen of the Department of Psychology had taken place at a conference in New York City), so prior to moving to Rochester from Baltimore, I booked a room at the Towne House (then a privately run motor inn) to serve as my base of operation while searching for more permanent digs. Within a week of arriving at the Towne House, I found a room in a private home on Elmwood Avenue, and within a few more weeks, after becoming acquainted with some of my fellow graduate students, I moved to a second-floor apartment in a house on Merriman Street along with two other beginning graduate students in psychology, Dave Pomeranz ’63 (PhD) and Karl Corley Jr. ’55M (Flw), ’64 (PhD). The Merriman Street apartment remained our home for most of our graduate careers.

This year, marking as it does the 50th anniversary of receiving my doctorate in clinical psychology, I hope to attend Meliora Weekend in the fall. While there, I will make a point of visiting the site of my first “home” in Rochester, the Towne House hotel, before it is transformed into College Town.

Larry Kerpelman ’63 (PhD)

Acton, Mass.

Composers & Commissions

The January-February issue of Review was full of good information, and I enjoyed it tremendously. I wanted to add something to an item in class notes about Kevin Puts ’99E (DMA), who won the Pulitzer Prize in 2012 for his first opera, Silent Night, and whose new work, To Touch the Sky: Nine Songs for Unaccompanied Chorus on Texts by Women, was premiered in Austin, Texas, last September by the Grammy-nominated choir Conspirare.

A fund, which was established in my name (the Thelma Hunter Fund) and is administered by the American Composer Forum, commissioned the piece To Touch the Sky and chose Conspirare to premiere it. This was a couple of years in the planning, so it was pre-Pulitzer. I went to Austin to hear three performances by Conspirare and was thrilled with Kevin’s work, as was the audience.

It’s because I am an Eastman grad that I’m writing you: MA in 1947, artist diploma, student of Cecile Genhardt; from 1947 to the present, a resident of Minnesota. In addition to the commission from my own fund, I’m a member of the Minnesota Commissioning Club, a group of six like-minded friends who now have a 20-year history of commissioning, an interesting history but the group does not include any other Eastman people. There are many Eastman grads in Minnesota, however, and we’re always pleased when a representative from the U of R brings us together.

Thelma Hunter ’47E (MA)

Saint Paul, Minn.

Legislators & Legislation

In the January–February issue, it was great to read about one of our young alums, Mark Ferrandino ’99, ’00 (MS), stepping up to the plate to lead the Colorado state legislature as its new House speaker. Considering today’s failure of federal legislators to get the job done, on first blush I was proud to see that one of our own would do in Colorado what’s not getting done in Washington, D.C. Yet I found Karen McCally’s story to be mostly unremarkable. The major emphasis of her two-page report was Speaker Ferrandino’s sexual orientation. To be elevated from representative to house speaker, surely a U of R alumnus must have contributed more to Colorado than gay rights advocacy.

David Skonieczki ’71

Hampton, N.H.

Theater & History

Regarding the historical photo on page 52 (March-April), the fellow on the left is Willy Bradford ’75. The fellow on the right is me, Larry Fishkin ’75. I still have the cap. I think the play was called Operetta. If it was, it offered two distinctions from other plays at the U of R at the time. The actors and the audience moved from location to location several times during the course of the performance (Todd Union and the Drama House among them) and toward the end of the evening one of the actresses appeared naked.

I hope this is helpful. I’d be interested if you learn any additional information about the photo.

Larry Fishkin ’75

San Francisco

Art & Art History

Your article about the Memorial Art Gallery (“ ‘A Great Gift to the City’ ”) in the September-October 2012 issue brought to mind the following: As a student at the University’s Prince Street Campus in the 50s, I was fortunate to take an art history course with Dr. Carl K. Hersey, professor of fine arts. His class, held at the gallery, was a comprehensive survey of the history of art through the ages. I still consider his lectures one of the highlights of my college days at U of R. In fact, it was only recently that I finally gave away my art history notes, having held on to them for over 50 years.

Arlene Eichen Stolnitz ’56

Venice, Fla.

Strong & Making a Recovery

In mid-July my daughter, Catherine, was mountain biking near Canandaigua, N.Y., when her bike hit a rock. Unable to release her foot from the pedal, she was thrown into the handlebar and sustained serious damage. She was rushed to the Kessler Burn and Trauma Center at Strong where Dr. [Ayodele] Sangosanya and his team performed a four-hour surgery to remove her appendix, spleen, and one-third of her pancreas. Being a Rochester alumnus, I knew she would receive excellent care. The shock trauma doctors, nurses, and hospital personnel helped us get through this difficult time. Because the pancreas was involved, Catherine wasn’t released until the beginning of August. She is gradually recovering, thanks to the dedicated care she received.

I was amazed at how much the Strong Memorial complex has grown in the past 50 years. Keep up the good work!

Robert Kirk ’59

Severna Park, Md. Farewell to

Flounder

Flounder, a California sea lion featured in a photograph with the story on the work of Rochester zookeeper Jeff Wyatt ’95M (MPH) (“One Medicine”), died shortly after the March-April issue was published. The Seneca Park Zoo announced the 21-year-old sea lion died in his sleep in late February.

One of three sea lions at the zoo, Flounder was being treated for age-related joint pain. The life expectancy of a California sea lion is 19 years.

—Scott Hauser

Review welcomes letters and will print them as space permits. Letters may be edited for brevity and clarity. Unsigned letters cannot be used. Send letters to Rochester Review, 22 Wallis Hall, P.O. Box 270044, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY 14627-0044; rochrev@rochester.edu.﻿

ONLINE EDUCATION

Cataloging a Course

coursera (Photo: Adam Fenster)

Screen shots: Musicologist John Covach (left) records a lecture for his course on the history of rock ’n’ roll in Lower Strong. The course will be one of the first online, noncredit courses offered by the University through Coursera, one of the leading sites for massive open online courses, or MOOCs. The University joined Coursera this spring. In getting his lectures ready, Covach, the Mercer Brugler Distinguished Teaching Professor and chair of the Department of Music in the College as well as a professor of music theory at the Eastman School, was joined by communications associate Will Graver (camera) and Eric Fredericksen, the University’s associate vice president for online learning.

WOMEN IN MUSIC

String Scene

wim (Photo: Adam Fenster)

Harp Harmony: An ensemble of harpists performs Anthill, a work by composer Catherine Kontz, in a noontime concert in the Main Hall at the Eastman School. Part of Eastman’s annual Women in Music festival in late March, the performance was one of several featuring concerts, rehearsals, coaching sessions, lectures, and presentations. This spring’s guest composer was Melinda Wagner, who won the 1999 Pulitzer Prize for her Concerto for Flute, Strings, and Percussion.

MEDICAL SCHOOL

And the Residencies Go to . . .

medical (Photo: Adam Fenster)

Match Day: Gener Augustin ’13M (MD) is embraced by Ashley Slaughter, a third-year medical student, after Augustin learns she will undertake a residency in vascular surgery at Case Western Reserve University. The moment came during this spring’s Match Day celebration at the School of Medicine and Dentistry, an event when nearly 100 members of the school’s Class of 2013 discovered where they will complete the next step of their medical education. The blind process is conducted by the National Resident Matching Program and is designed to try to place doctors into programs according to their interests and their preferences for placement.

HUMANITIES

Schismatics, New and Old

The Ferrari Humanities Symposia looks at the Reformation.

By Kathleen McGarvey

ferrariREFORMATIONS: A series of academic programs this spring explored the technological and social changes inspired by the ideas of Martin Luther—above, depicted burning an announcement of his excommunication—and others of his era. (Photo: Corbis)

A 16th-century schism in Christianity might seem an unlikely source for a historical movement the reverberations of which continue to be felt today. But the Reformation, which left turbulent warfare and profound changes in religious and secular thought in its wake, had just such effects. When the Ninety-Five Theses of German cleric Martin Luther were posted on the door of the Castle Church of Wittenberg in 1517, in protestation of the sale of indulgences—to pay for the rebuilding of St. Peter’s Cathedral—by the Roman Catholic Church, that action put in motion a splintering of the faith and the creation of Protestant churches.

This spring, the Ferrari Humanities Symposia took the Reformation as their focus, examining not just the rise of Protestantism and the corresponding Catholic Counter-Reformation, but also the technological, political, social, and economic changes that the Reformation ushered in, touching on science, medicine, law, art, education, and moral and ethical thought.

The symposium included a two-credit course, Reformations in Western Thought, and featured lectures from leading scholars of the Reformation: Susan Schreiner, professor of the history of Christianity and theology in the Divinity School at the University of Chicago; James Simpson, the Donald P. and Katherine B. Loker Professor of English at Harvard; and Diarmaid MacCulloch, professor of the history of the church at Oxford.

What has the Reformation wrought? A few of the participating faculty members offer their perspectives on the changes brought about by the Reformation, and how we feel them still.

Dorinda Outram

Franklin W. Clark and Gladys I. Clark Professor of History

The Reformation divided a hitherto nominally united Latin Christendom. And with the emergence of Protestant churches emphasizing individual reading of scriptural texts, literacy becomes important. This helps people to internalize the word of Christ and the religious messages of the reformers. Still unclear, however, is the actual tipping point of religious change; it is too easy, given the long prior history of discontent with the Catholic Church, to ascribe everything to Luther’s theses in 1517.

Thomas Hahn

Professor of English

In insisting on the need for widespread change in their own lives and in the culture at large, many of the voices of the Reformation (and the Catholic response, in the Counter-Reformation) articulated a sense of “religious values” that resonates strongly with contemporary events and movements. Recent evangelical movements in Africa and elsewhere in World Christianity clearly reflect that original impulse.

Beyond the boundaries of Christian practice, the Reformation raises questions about how we understand the origins and impact of religious sentiment, whether as grassroots spontaneity or top-down policy control: the Arab Spring and the civil war in Syria or the spreading capitalist reform of China versus the failed Cultural Revolution model some of the difficulties we face in handling the historical dimensions of reformed cultural change.

Finally, there is the central issue of the nature of change itself: from a Confucian, Hindu, or even a Muslim perspective, the major divisions within Christianity, let alone the fine distinctions among Protestant sects, may seem hard to parse, yet on any view the Reformation was clearly a central component of internal historical changes that dramatically redefined Western identities.

Curt Cadorette

John Henry Newman Associate Professor in Roman Catholic Studies

Symposia Founders

Trustee Bernard Ferrari ’70, ’74M (MD) and Linda Gaddis Ferrari established the annual Ferrari Humanities Symposia to broaden the liberal education of Rochester undergraduates, enhance the experience of graduate students, and expand the connections of University faculty with other scholars from around the world. The symposia include lectures by visiting senior scholars of humanistic thought with an emphasis on the Renaissance period, intensive short courses taught by faculty members from across the University, and focused study in reading groups and similar endeavors.

Martin Luther was a medieval person in many respects, who saw the social order as divinely constructed. And the Peasants’ War—an uprising in Germany in 1524–25 inspired by Reformation thought—made his conservative social values really kick in.

The idea that the Reformation says you can believe what you want is a misperception. And the only true egalitarians of the period were the Anabaptists, who believed in radical equality. Fear of anarchy brought Luther’s intolerance to the fore. Theoretically, the Reformation is a statement of Christian equality, but practically, how do you implement that? The question leads to religious violence in the 17th century.

John Calvin and Luther say you can and should—Calvin would go so far as to say you must—read religious materials. But these are very complicated documents. Luther and Calvin say to pick up a text, read it, and your interpretation—arrived at in light of your neighbor’s well-being—is legitimate. That leads to one of the wonderful aspects of the Reformation: pluralism. It was a frontal challenge to the hegemony of the Catholic system.

A good example of where the effects of the Reformation are still being felt is in the Supreme Court case involving the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act.

Some people see the Defense of Marriage Act as defending a traditional understanding of marriage with a religious dimension, drawing on the Hebrew Bible, or Old Testament, to conclude that God says marriage should be between a man and a woman.

Others, arguing from the perspective of John Locke, say religion shouldn’t define this union—and if people are willing to fulfill the obligations of such a union, why shouldn’t they enter into it?

Locke says in his “Letter Concerning Toleration” that we must agree to disagree and there is no right to impose religious premises on other people. In some ways we’re still living out 17th-century religious issues.

EXCERPT

An ‘Extraordinary, Civilized Declaration’

ferrarisideKEYNOTE TALK: Historian Diarmaid MacCulloch discussed toleration and the Reformation. (Photo: Adam Fenster)

Oxford historian Diarmaid MacCulloch delivered the keynote address of this year’s symposium, “Toleration in Reformation Europe: Laughter Versus Tidy-Mindedness.” In his lecture, he called attention to a little-noted model of religious tolerance in 16th-century Europe:

The Diet, or parliament, of Transylvania met in the town of Turda in 1568, in the parish church, which you can still go and visit, now Roman Catholic again, but at that stage was the meeting place of a Diet that decided to give total choice to the people of Transylvania, parish by parish. It recognized the legal status not just of Catholics, Lutherans, and Reformed, but by implication, by omission, by silence, also anti-Trinitarians, and it made this splendidly trenchant declaration: ministers everywhere should preach the gospel according to their understanding of it, and if their community is willing to accept this, good. If not, however, no one should be compelled by force if their spirit is not at peace. No one is permitted to threaten, put in prison, or banish anyone because of their teachings, because faith is a gift from God. Transylvania, 1568. What a shame we remember Transylvania by someone who was never there, Count Dracula, instead of that extraordinary, civilized declaration.

For a video of the talk, visit the symposia’s website: www.rochester.edu/college/ferrari-symposia/.

The Cold Shoulder Freezes All

discover (Photo: Corbis)

A new study by Rochester researchers shows that ostracism cuts both ways: those who deliberately shun someone feel as distressed by the experience as the victim.

Researchers found that complying with instructions to exclude another person leads most people to feel shame and guilt, along with a diminished sense of autonomy. Doctoral candidate Nicole Legate led the study, which was published in the journal Psychological Science.

To capture the dual dynamics of social rejection, the researchers turned to Cyberball, an online game developed by ostracism researcher Kipling Williams of Purdue. The researchers randomly assigned 152 undergraduates to one of four game scenarios. In the “ostracizer” group, one of the “virtual” players—actually part of the experiment and preprogrammed to play fair or play mean—excluded the other virtual player and the study participant was instructed to exclude the same player. In the second scenario, the tables were turned to freeze out the study participant. Before and following the game, participants completed a survey to assess their mood and sense of autonomy, competence, and relatedness.

Consistent with earlier research on ostracism, the study found that being shunned—even by faceless strangers in a computer game—was upsetting and lowered the participant’s mood. “Although there are no visible scars, ostracism has been shown to activate the same neural pathways as physical pain,” says coauthor Richard Ryan, professor of clinical and social psychology.

But complying with instructions to exclude others was equally disheartening, the data showed. The study suggests that the psychological costs of rejecting others are linked primarily to the thwarting of autonomy and relatedness.

—Susan Hagen

The Doctor Is ‘Virtually’ In

A new study in the journal JAMA Neurology shows that telemedicine check-ups for people with Parkinson’s disease can provide effective care and generate a significant benefit. “Virtual” visits with physicians—in which patients participate from the comfort of home—demonstrate that quality specialized care can be delivered effectively to people in remote locations.

The complex combination of behavioral, cognitive, and physical symptoms of Parkinson’s often demands that patients receive care from a specialist in neurological disorders. But such specialists tend to be found at larger medical centers.

A seven-month study of patients receiving either in-person or video-technology care showed that patients who received virtual house calls did as well as those who received in-person care, and appointments consumed less of their time: an average of 53 minutes versus 255 for in-person care patients when travel was included.

Led by Kevin Biglan, associate professor of neurology, the study suggests the potential of providing remote care. But there are barriers to widespread adoption of the model, including licensing and reimbursement when providing care across state lines.

—Mark Michaud

Exploiting Subtleties in the Uncertainty Principle

Physicists at Rochester and the University of Ottawa have applied a recently developed technique to measure directly the polarization states of light for the first time. The paper was published in Nature Photonics. Robert Boyd, who has appointments at both Rochester and Ottawa, led the researchers as they measured the polarization states of light—the directions in which the electric and magnetic fields of the light oscillate. The group’s key result, like that of the Canadian team that pioneered direct measurement in 2011, is that it’s possible to measure directly key related variables, known as conjugate variables, of a quantum particle or state.

Such direct measurement of the wavefunction—a way to determine the state of a quantum system—had long seemed impossible because of a key tenet of the uncertainty principle: that certain properties of a quantum system could be known only poorly if certain other related properties were known with precision. The ability to make such measurements challenges the idea that full understanding of a quantum system could never come from direct observation. The results may have implications for future work in quantum information science.

—Leonor Sierra

Brain Injuries Actually Autoimmune Responses?

Brain degeneration exhibited by people who’ve received repeated, subconcussive head blows may be the result of an out-of-control autoimmune response, researchers say. If that hypothesis is accurate, it may open the door to investigating a vaccine or drug therapy to prevent head trauma.

Jeffrey Bazarian, associate professor of emergency medicine, worked closely with lead investigator Damir Janigro, professor of molecular medicine at the Cleveland Clinic, and 67 college football players from Rochester and northeast Ohio who agreed to participate in the research. The study was published in the journal PLOS ONE.

The team looked at the blood-brain barrier, a tightly woven system of capillaries that filters the flow of biological substances between the brain and the rest of the circulatory system. The researchers found that with repeated blows to the head the barrier opens slightly and allows some proteins to escape from the brain into the bloodstream. A

well-accepted protein biomarker for traumatic brain injury, S100B, was present in varying degrees in the blood samples of the 67 football players after every game—even though none had suffered a concussion. The finding indicates that even the most routine hits may have some impact on the blood-brain barrier and possibly the brain itself.

The group also discovered that the body views the biomarker as an enemy and begins to form antibodies against it as if it were a virus, noting that some antibodies sneaked back through the barrier to the brain and began to harm the healthy brain cells that produced the protein in the first place. Finding that S100B accumulates in dendric cells, which regulate autoimmune responses, the researchers reason that if the blood-brain barrier repeatedly opens during the football season, the stage may be set for a continuous autoimmune-type attack on the brain.

Bazarian hopes the work will ultimately help lead to a tool to screen for concussions.

—Leslie Orr

Superbugs May Have a Soft Spot

The overuse of antibiotics has created strains of bacteria that are resistant to medication, making the diseases they cause difficult to treat—and even allows some infections to become deadly. But a research team has identified a weakness in at least one superbug that scientists may be able to exploit medically.

Gloria Culver, professor and chair of the biology department, and Keith Connolly, now at Harvard, thought one key to stopping the bacteria may lie with proteins, so they studied the mechanism behind the development of bacterial ribosomes, the cell’s protein-manufacturing machine, in E. coli.

They discovered that two proteins already present in E. coli cells—RbfA and KsgA—need to be in balance in order for ribosomes to function. If they’re present in the wrong concentrations, the ribosomes won’t mature properly and will be unable to produce proteins, causing cell death. The findings are published in the journal Molecular Microbiology.

The researchers’ next goal is to find a way to disrupt the balance between the proteins.

—Peter Iglinski

Glial Cells Make Mice Smarter

A family of cells found in the human central nervous system that were, until recently, considered mere “housekeepers” now appear to be essential to the unique complexity of the human brain. Medical Center scientists have demonstrated that human glial cells, when transplanted into mice, could influence communication within the brain, allowing the animals to learn more rapidly.

Published in the journal Cell Stem Cell, the study suggests that the evolution of a subset of glia called astrocytes—which are larger and more complex in humans than in other species—may have been one of the key events that led to the higher cognitive functions that distinguish humans from other species.

Medical Center researchers have been pioneers in unlocking the secrets of astrocytes and demonstrating that they not only support the neurons in the brain, but also communicate with neurons and with each other. Steven Goldman, the Edward A. and Alma Vollertsen Rykenboer Chair in Neurophysiology, and Maiken Nedergaard, the Frank P. Smith Professor of Neurosurgery, are co-senior authors of the study.

When researchers transplanted human brain cells into the brains of newborn mice, the human glia cells outperformed those of the mice while leaving the existing neural network intact. The cells performed as they would in a human brain—with the end result of smarter mice that learned more rapidly, acquired new associations, and performed tasks faster than mice without the human boost.

Goldman calls the findings the first proof that human glia have a “species-specific role in intellectual capability and cognitive processing.”

—Mark Michaud

ENGLISH

Paying Attention—Slowly

How does poetry shape our understanding of language, creativity, and excellence, asks poet James Longenbach.

Interview by Kathleen McGarvey

longenbachPOETIC POWER: Longenbach considers the powers of poetic language. (Photo: Adam Fenster)

“The best poems ever written constitute our future,” writes James Longenbach, the Joseph Henry Gilmore Professor of English, in opening his new book, The Virtues of Poetry (Graywolf Press, 2013). “They refine our notions of excellence by continuing to elude them.” In interlaced chapters, Longenbach considers the almost magical powers, or virtues, that poems can enact through the most ordinary means: among them, compression, dilation, intimacy, and otherness. He leads readers, with attention to the smallest inflections of language, through works by such poets as Shakespeare, Yeats, Dickinson, Marvell, Whitman, Blake, and Ashbery, and finds within them examples of the endlessly diverse powers of language.

What prompted you to write the book?

A contradiction. I found that when I was thinking about one particular poem, I would be talking about what made it interesting, worthy of attention, and so on; but then I’d be thinking about a different poem, and I’d realize that I would be talking about qualities that were inimical to the qualities that made the other poem interesting. This conflict seemed important and true to me: that you can’t legislate quality, or more perniciously, greatness—that the very quality that makes one poem fascinating and gripping and lasting might be the very thing that ruins another poem. The conflict became the book’s framing notion. It was hard to figure out a structure for the book that would be true to the conflict, for how do you turn this notion of not being able to have a generalizable recipe for excellence into an argument that doesn’t itself seem like a recipe?

You’re both a literary critic and a poet. How did those roles influence the book?

All poets of any worth are superb critics. They may not necessarily write their criticism down formally, but you have to have read a thousand poems carefully in order to write just one, and you have to have investigated them and felt yourself being fascinated by how their language works. So I don’t feel different from any other poet. Some poets write a lot of criticism and some don’t, but I don’t think their minds work differently. I also think—and this is something I press upon my students—the writing of good prose sentences is a rigor that any poet benefits from, not because of what you’re writing about, but because you’re making shapely sentences into shapely paragraphs. This is something that fuels the writing of poetry.

You write about “excellence” as something that takes many forms in poetry. What do you mean by excellence?

It’s not a word I’m really happy with, and it occurs mostly in the preface, when I was forced by the occasion of making a coherent book to write a very pithy account of what the book does. I’m much happier with the more elusive and mysterious word “virtue,” which carries the connotation of something magical—though I don’t mean to speak about magic. I mean to talk about qualities of language in poems that we can discuss in rational ways. The impetus behind a poem might be very mysterious and strange, but the act of writing a poem is a very knowable, rational process: shaping the raw material of a language into a set of patterns. I hope it’s clear I was at pains to say you can’t ever really know what excellence is going to be, and that every example of excellence you may have accumulated will not ensure that any of those modes of excellence will succeed in the next poem. Neither will they prevent the next poem from exhibiting a kind of charisma that is unprecedented in your experience of poetry.

In these essays, you give significant attention to the process of reading poems.

Because I’m at pains to get my students to read the language of a poem very closely, I say to them—and I mean this as a challenge; it’s not absolutely true, but it’s almost true—that if we talked about a poem long enough, it would be impossible for us to disagree about it: we would have described the language so carefully, so specifically, that we wouldn’t have anything to argue about. That’s not utterly true, but it’s amazing how true it is. You teach Hamlet year after year after year, and what’s remarkable is not that people think different things about it—what’s far more remarkable is that by and large everybody thinks the same things about it. The pressure the object exerts on you is far more mysterious than the fact that we have varying responses to the object. And it’s harder to describe.

Who’s the reader you’re addressing in this book? Are you writing for people who’d like to be poets?

In a sense, you could say that the book is written for people who want to write poems; however, that’s a subset of people who want to read poems. The act of writing and the act of reading are almost impossible to separate from each other, and you simply cannot be a writer without being a voraciously scrupulous reader. Throughout the book, I’m speaking to someone who wants to write only inasmuch as I mean to be speaking to someone who really, really loves—or wants to learn how it feels to love—the act of reading a poem with intensity and, therefore, pleasure. That pleasure often makes one feel creative, and maybe it will make one write a poem—or not. It almost doesn’t matter.

You mention in the book that Andrew Marvell’s poem “The Garden” is a special one for you, that “everything I love about poetry is epitomized by this poem. It is as if the poem were a house I’d lived in all my life without knowing it.” What makes a particular poem especially meaningful for a particular reader?

I may be speaking productively with a forked tongue, because I always want to insist to myself, and insist to a reader, and insist to any student that one must try to be available to every kind of poem that you could possibly avail yourself of, especially the ones that you think you don’t like. Those are the ones that you have to return to, because if you don’t like a poem, that probably means there’s something wrong with you, something limited about you. Ideally, if we were the best possible readers, we would find everything inspiring. But because we are inadequate readers, we don’t like certain things. Of course there are going to be times when we don’t like something or can’t figure out how to enter it, but as much as possible, you want to try to keep that thing on the table. The fact that you don’t like it ought to keep bugging you—especially if somebody else who’s smart and interesting does like it. So given this goal of radical openness, then inevitably there are going to be some works of art that for some reason appeal to you more deeply, more intrinsically. It’s hard to say why. Perhaps even more mysterious and more wonderful is when one feels one’s deepest inclinations changing, when a poem—or an anything—that one has not found inspiring for years suddenly rears up its head, and you say, “Oh, my God. I require this. Where has this thing been all my life?” Well, it’s been right in front of me. Where have I been all my life?

Do your students come prepared to do close reading? It doesn’t seem there’s a lot in the contemporary world to encourage that skill of careful attention.

They do come prepared to do it, and then they do it, because in my classroom they’ve got to do it. And students don’t have trouble with that. Students in my experience are attracted to difficulty. When I teach my course on James Joyce’s Ulysses, that’s generally the biggest enrollment I get, usually 60 or 70 kids, and it’s not because the course fulfills requirements or anything. I think the human brain craves difficulty. Reading poems is a very good way to improve the mind, because, especially if you’re dealing with lyric poems, you’re sitting there looking very closely at this little patterned collection of, what, 43 words? And you have a lot of time really to focus in on those words and not let yourself go somewhere else. Often—usually—in a typical hour and 15 minute class, I’ll never cover more than two or three poems. Sometimes, only one. The literary critic Richard Poirier always spoke of how he preferred the phrase “slow reading” to “close reading,” and I like that, too. I think “slow reading” seems like a better metaphor—it’s what poems demand, and it’s why people who don’t generally read them sometimes feel kind of mystified by them: poems ask for a slowness of attention that, if you’re just used to reading language as a disposable vessel for information, you’re not used to exercising. Students learn how to be unintimidated by that slowness, how to inhabit it, how to glean things from it, how to enjoy it: that’s the extremely useful, universally applicable skill that comes out of reading poems. So finally, I think it’s most important simply to learn how to like poems, how to be devoted to poems, and if I have one overriding pedagogical goal, it would be no bigger than that.

What gives a poem lasting influence?

We think of 400 or even of 50 years as being a long time. But in the history of art, that’s nothing. Most of the art that’s produced in any 100-year period is totally forgotten. And none of us will live long enough to know what art will last from the moment in which we live. We generally read, if we’re well read, maybe eight or nine poets from the 19th century, which ended only 113 years ago. And so which eight or nine are going to last from the 20th century? I can think easily of 30 that seem really, really good. That’s scary. But while only a little bit lasts, it takes a great many people to produce that little bit, and the minor figures who may be forgotten are important. They may not end up being an important part of the story, but they’re an important part of the event. It takes a lot of people being interested in the production and reception of art—or of anything—to make that little bit of lasting achievement. So in that sense we’re all really noble participants in this ongoing enterprise. It all sounds so high-minded, doesn’t it?

MEDICAL ETHICS

Building a Better Brain?

learn (Photo: Corbis)

Is it wrong to use drugs to enhance your brain’s performance? Are you really acting as yourself when you do? Richard Dees, associate professor of philosophy, examines issues of health care ethics—especially the use of medicine to make ourselves feel better than we feel normally. He investigates the ethical implications of modifying our brains to improve memory, thinking, moods, and personality.

Are there already drugs available to enhance our brains?

Absolutely. There are stimulants to improve focus, attention, and memory—and to improve motor tasks. Already 30 percent of students, according to current estimates, use such drugs. There are medications to regulate moods and emotions. Prozac and beta blockers are some of the best known examples. Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors—more commonly known as SSRIs—make people less aggressive and more cooperative. Oxytocin helps people be more trusting and so can enhance care-giving.

What kinds of ethical questions does their use raise?

There are various arguments you can make in support of their use, such as people’s right to autonomy, with the caveat that their actions can’t cause harm to others. There’s also the consequentialist argument: that people will be happier and more productive if they can use these drugs. You could also argue their use is inevitable, because of market forces and demands.

But if their use is immoral, then we should oppose it.

Is it immoral?

There are several categories of possible objections. First is safety. But that’s a concern that can be overcome. It’s a matter of caution, but not an objection of principle.

What about coercion? The worry is that people will feel compelled to take drugs just to keep up.

But we already accept many subtle coercions in employment—for example, the necessity of a college education. And our objection to coercion depends on what is being coerced. Most of us don’t view coercion to quit smoking as such a bad thing.

Another objection you could raise is authenticity—that the medicated person isn’t a “true self.” But we often seek out such changes. And sometimes we see an altered self as our true self. A person on Prozac doesn’t necessarily believe that his depressed self is his true self, for instance.

So where do you come down?

A drug can produce contentment, and perhaps the means to happiness. But it can’t produce happiness—which isn’t simply a feeling, and which requires the possibility of real failure. Enhancement drugs are morally suspect if they cut us off from the world and therefore from the possibility of failure.

For safety reasons, we should be wary of enhancements now. And we should reject drugs that prevent us from having truly human experiences.

—Kathleen McGarvey

DERMATOLOGY

Made in the Shade

About half of people who live to age 65 will have skin cancer at least once. Heading into the sunshine of spring and summer this year, what’s a prudent person to do? Mary Gail Mercurio, professor of dermatology who treats many patients with skin cancer at the Medical Center, sheds a little light on the subject.

What’s the greatest misconception about sun exposure that you encounter?

That indoor tanning is safe. Studies have confirmed that even a few indoor tanning sessions significantly increase the risk of all three of the most common forms of cancer—basal cell carcinoma, squamous cell carcinoma, and melanoma—as well as premature aging of the skin. Contrary to what’s touted by the indoor tanning industry, there’s no such thing as a “safe tan.”

How does sunblock protect skin? Is it as protective as covering up with clothing?

Sunblock is only one part of a comprehensive sun protection regimen. Studies have shown that many people apply only half, or even less, of the amount of sunscreen needed to meet the rating on the package. And it’s easy to miss body parts such as the tops of the ears and the feet. Clothing offers more effective protection—but heavier, more tightly woven fabrics aren’t practical in the heat. There are lighter fabrics now that block both ultraviolet A and B (UVA and UVB) rays. Widebrimmed hats protect the most vulnerable skin on the scalp, neck, and face. Avoiding the midday sun and seeking the shade help, too.

Is there an advantage to higher SPF numbers once you get above 30?

The higher the number, the more protection—but the SPF number only refers to one type of ultraviolet rays, UVB. The Food and Drug Administration is soon to release new labeling guidelines to incorporate a labeling scale for UVA, too. Thirty is the magic number recommended by most dermatologists. Most important is to apply sunscreen often and in sufficient quantity.

What about those who’ve had blistering burns—what should they look out for?

That would be me. My friends and I spent our youthful upstate New York summers basted with baby oil. Now my contemporaries are seeking the best cosmetic treatments to erase the damaging effects of all that sun. Efforts to reverse sun-induced premature aging is a multi-billion dollar industry. Many of my young women patients are more willing to heed my advice about protection when they hear about wrinkled, leathery skin while they deem themselves invulnerable to cancer. Warning signs include new or changing moles, sores that don’t heal, or new growths.

Is sun protection in children all about prevention, or do you sometimes find skin cancer in the very young?

In children, it’s mainly about protection, although I have seen several skin cancer patients in their 20s—mainly those who use tanning beds. Sun protection strategies really need to be established early to become routine. I liken it to buckling up with a seatbelt. Most parents are vigilant about sun protection for their infants, but it seems to drop off after that, especially in the teenage years, when not wearing sunscreen is a means of showing independence.

—Kathleen McGarvey

PSYCHOLOGY

Taking the Stress Out of Stress

Feeling stressed? Jeremy Jamieson, assistant professor in the Department of Clinical and Social Sciences in Psychology, says that’s not necessarily bad. In fact, a pounding heartbeat and butterflies in your stomach might actually be setting you up for success.

What happens when we’re stressed?

A lot of our stress responses deal with social stressors—and those responses are built on the biological architecture that was there to deal with physical stressors. And so physical threats, social threats—our bodies treat those like the same thing.

There are two broad types of stress responses that we call challenge and threat. In challenge, your body is enacting changes to help you go and address something, with increased blood flow to our arms, our legs, our brain, the major muscle groups that help to address stressors.

Threat response is the opposite. The expression “cold feet” comes from the way our vasculature constricts down, cutting the blood flowing to our hands and our feet. Your body is seeking to center blood in the core of the body, because if you’re physically threatened, you’re more likely to be injured in your limbs than your chest. With blood in your core, you’re less likely to bleed to death.

How do most people interpret stress?

We have chronically negative appraisals of arousal and stress in general. When our heart rate increases or our hands are sweaty, these are actually just signs of general physiological arousal. We think it’s a bad thing when the sympathetic nervous system is activated—but it isn’t. But once you make that negative label, that’s going to produce a threat response, because it’s implying you don’t have the ability to cope.

There’s a strong link between the brain and the body, and any change that we have in our minds has direct consequence for what happens downstream in our bodies, and vice versa, too. It grows out of the biopsychosocial model, which was developed at Rochester.

One of the main prongs of my research program is looking at how stress impacts decisions and cognitive performance. We try to get people into high-stress situations and teach them how to reinterpret the meaning of their stress response.

So what’s your advice for a student headed off to take a test, for example?

If you have completely flat affect, that might be better than being in a really strong threat state—but it’s not good. There’s a reason why our body responds like this. You’re going to have this increase in arousal. Your heart’s going to be beating faster. Your body’s trying to get blood to your brain. It wants to get oxygen to places where you’re going to need it. And that can help you do well.

—Kathleen McGarvey

Hajim School Dean to Oversee University’s Research Efforts

inbriefLEADING RESEARCH: Clark is the new senior vice president for research. (Photo: Adam Fenster)

Rob Clark, dean of the Hajim School of Engineering since 2008, has been named senior vice president for research, a new position charged with shaping the initiatives and infrastructure of the University’s growing research enterprise. Clark has also been appointed to a second, five-year term as dean of the Hajim School.

Serving in the research post on an interim appointment since last summer, Clark orchestrated a comprehensive review of information technology, supervised efforts to pilot online programs, and helped secure $5 million of support for the University’s Health Sciences Center for Computational Innovation.

As Hajim School dean, Clark is credited with growing and strengthening the faculty, introducing cross-disciplinary master’s programs, and significantly increasing undergraduate enrollment in engineering. Clark joined the University in 2008 from Duke, where he was dean of the Pratt School of Engineering.

inbrief (Photo: Keith Walters for University Communications)

University Honors Award-winning Soprano Jessye Norman

Jessye Norman, one of classical music’s most storied performers, received an honorary degree from the University during an April concert in Kodak Hall at Eastman Theatre. Widely recognized for her artistry and her humanitarianism, Norman was one of several guest artists who performed in a benefit for the Rochester nonprofit organization Action for a Better Community.

Lymphoma Specialist Named to Lead Wilmot Cancer Center

Jonathan Friedberg has been appointed director of the Wilmot Cancer Center. A hematologist and a national leader in lymphoma care and research, he joined the Medical Center in 2002 and was named chief of the Division of Hematology and Oncology in the Department of Medicine in 2009. Friedberg has served as acting director of the Wilmot Cancer Center since last July.

As director, Friedberg intends to focus the development of the center along four strategic priorities: extending services to patients throughout the region, embracing multidisciplinary care, serving the community through outreach and advocacy, and developing a new strategic plan for research that focuses on cancer vulnerabilities, solid tumors, hematologic malignancies, and cancer control and survivorship.

Medical Center CEO Bradford Berk ’81M (MD/PhD) and Mark Taubman, dean of the School of Medicine and Dentistry, also reaffirmed the 2012 appointment of Hartmut (Hucky) Land as director of research and codirector of the center. Land will work with Friedberg on the center’s strategic plan.

New Director Heads Medical Faculty Group

Trauma surgeon Michael Rotondo has been appointed chief executive officer of the University’s Medical Faculty Group.

Rotondo, a Rochester native and son of the late Richard Rotondo ’49, returns to the area from University Health Systems of East Carolina, where he was surgery chair. Leading the 1,000-physician faculty group will consume 80 percent of Rotondo’s time. He will also be appointed senior associate dean of clinical affairs, professor of surgery, and associate vice president for administration at Strong Memorial Hospital. In addition, he will serve as a member of the Division of Trauma in the Department of Surgery.

Orthopaedics Ranks First for NIH Funding

The Department of Orthopaedics and Rehabilitation has been ranked first in the nation in National Institutes of Health funding for orthopaedics research, according to data released by the Blue Ridge Institute for Medical Research.

The Center for Musculoskeletal Research received $4.86 million in peer-reviewed NIH research grants in 2012, surpassing institutions such as Johns Hopkins, Duke, and Washington University. At a time when research dollars are becoming scarcer, the center increased its funding by 30 percent over the previous year. Since 2005, it has consistently ranked among the top five NIH–funded musculoskeletal programs in the country, and ranked second in orthopaedics funding for the past four years.

Security Services Introduces Its First Peace Officers

The first group of University security officers with expanded authority as peace officers will begin working on campus later this year. An initial class of 25 members of the Department of Security Services were sworn in this spring and began a five-month peace officer academy program for training and certification.

That’s after New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed legislation last December allowing the University to give trained members of its security personnel the authority to make arrests on University property involving a felony, misdemeanor, or breach of peace. Peace officers also will be authorized to make mental health arrests—an authority that allows officers to intervene promptly in mental health emergencies. The officers will not carry firearms or tasers.

In December 2010, President Joel Seligman directed the formation of a security commission, which found that while there had not been a significant increase in the number or severity of crimes on campus, there had been an increase in the number of calls for security personnel in which there had been a potential for confrontation. It’s expected that by this fall, security will have its first mixed force of sworn peace officers and regular security officers.

HIGHLIGHTS

Softball Records First Solo No-hitter

The Yellowjackets’ spring seasons get under way.

sportsFAST PITCH: Brittany Grage ’15 threw the first solo no-hitter in Yellowjacket softball history this spring with an 8-0 win over RIT. Overall, the team was leading the Liberty League by one game early in the season. (Photo: Athletics & Recreation)

Brittany Grage ’15 threw the first solo no-hitter in Yellowjacket softball history as she and her teammates defeated RIT 8-0 in the Liberty League season opener in April. The sophomore from Pittsford, N.Y., also drove in seven runs in the doubleheader sweep of the Tigers.

The quick start to the Liberty League schedule helped put Rochester one game up on Union and RPI by the middle of April. Also leading the Yellowjackets was Nina Korn ’14, whose batting average rose above .300, and whose 15 RBIs were second only to Grage (22) (both have four home runs). Tayler Fravel ’14 was hitting .291 with Meg Hennessy ’14 at .275.

Softball was part of a full slate of sports getting under way this spring:

Baseball: Rochester won three of four from Skidmore College, two on shutouts, to improve to 6–8 in the Liberty League, 10–14 overall. Josh Ludwig ’15, Jake Meyerson ’16, and Sam Slutsky ’15 were leading the offense with Ludwig hitting .341, Meyerson .333, and Slutsky .326. Rochester had 44 stolen bases in 24 games. Ludwig led with 13, Ethan Sander ’15 had 10, and Slutsky had nine. On the mound, Jon Menke was 2–2, Corey King 3–3. Adam Sullivan pitched six innings of a shutout over Skidmore to get his second win of the year. The first came against Emory.

Golf: Nick Palladino ’14 won the UAA individual title for the third straight year and Rochester claimed the team championship. Dominic Schumacher ’16 was the UAA Rookie of the Year. He tied Palladino for medalist honors with Palladino winning a playoff for the individual award. Rochester was one of several teams receiving votes in the Division III golf poll.

Lacrosse: Rochester was 2–9 by mid-April, 1–4 in the Liberty League. The Yellowjackets defeated Elmira, 10-7, and Bard, 15-7, in a Liberty League game. Lauren Basil ’15, Cassie Mahar ’16, and Elisabeth Watson ’16 led the team in scoring (17 points for Basil and Mahar, 16 for Watson).

Men’s tennis: Rochester was 13–7 and ranked No. 17 regionally. The best individual singles record belonged to Matthew Levine ’16 (21–6) with Ian Baranowski ’16 at 14–5. The doubles teams of Boris Borovcanin ’14 and Julian Danko ’15 (18–5), Baranowski and Joel Allen ’13 (16–3), and Levine and Ben Shapiro ’16 (15–7) were off to standout seasons as well.

Women’s tennis: Led by Frances Tseng ’13, who was ranked 20th in Division III, the women’s tennis team was ranked 12th regionally in mid-spring. Tseng and Cara Genbauffe ’15 were ranked 11th as a doubles pairing. Tseng was 15–4 in singles play. Janice Zhao ’13 was 14–6.

Men’s track & field: Adam Pacheck ’14 was invited to compete at the Penn Relays in late April in the 10,000-meter run. He is one of a bevy of qualifiers for the ECAC championships, including both the 4-by-100-meter relay (Gene O’Hanlon ’14, Anthony Paschke ’14, Max Sims ’15, and Jeff Hrebenach ’16) and the 4-by-800-meter relay (Yuji Wakimoto ’14, Ethan Pacheck ’15, Minetsinot Kassu ’16, and Jeremy Hassett ’16).

sportsRELAY RACERS: Teammates Claire Crowther ’13 (front) and Cameron Edwards ’16. (Photo: Athletics & Recreation)

Women’s track & field: The 4-by-400-meter relay (Becky Galasso ’14, Brittany Porter ’15, Cameron Edwards ’16, and Claire Crowther ’13) was ranked 10th in Division III after finishing second at the UR Alumni Invitational. The women produced eight ECAC qualifying performances. Besides the relay, the qualifiers were Victoria Stepanova ’15 and Jennifer Klemenz ’15 in the 10,000, Meg Ogle ’13 in the 3,000-meter steeplechase, Galasso in the 400, and Edwards and Crowther in the 400 hurdles.

Women’s rowing: With only one senior, the young team was ranked 18th heading into the spring season. In their first race, the Yellowjackets finished behind No. 9 St. Lawrence and Division II’s seventh-ranked Mercyhurst, but ahead of RIT. The Novice 4s defeated Ithaca in week two, and in mid-April, Rochester defeated No. 15 Hamilton in the First Varsity Eight race.

In highlights from the winter seasons:

Squash: The Yellowjackets finished fifth in the nation and produced four All-Americans, the most ever in a single season— Andres Duany ’13 and Faraz Khan ’16 on the first team, Neil Cordell ’16 and Adam Perkiomaki ’13 on the second team.

Swimming & diving: The women finished fifth at UAAs and the men finished sixth. Divers Sara Spielman ’13 and Elliott Lasher ’13 competed at the NCAA regional championships at Ithaca.

Indoor track & field: Claire Crowther ’13 won the ECAC 500-meter run and broke a school record in the process. Rochester finished 13th out of 50 schools. For the men, Adam Pacheck ’14 had the highest individual finish. He was third in the 5,000. The Yellowjackets finished 10th.

Women’s basketball: Reaching the second round of the NCAA playoffs, the team finished 20–7 overall, second in the UAA (11–3). Ally Zywicki ’15 was named an All-American by the WBCA.

Men’s basketball: The team shared the UAA title (10–4) and reached the second round of the NCAAs before finishing at 22–5. John DiBartolomeo ’13 was a consensus first team All-American, as chosen by four organizations.

ALL-AMERICANS

Yellowjackets Rake in Honors

sport_honorsBASKET OF HONORS: Senior basketball guard John DiBartolomeo was named national Player of the Year by two media outlets and an All-American by four organizations. (Photo: Keith Walters for Rochester Review)

John DiBartolomeo finished his Yellowjacket basketball career as one of the program’s most decorated players. The senior from Westport, Conn., was named national Player of the Year by two media organizations that follow Division III basketball—D3hoops.com and DIIINews.

Both groups also selected him as a first team All-American, giving DiBartolomeo four first-team selections for the year. Also naming him an All-American were the National Association of Basketball Coaches (NABC) and the U.S. Basketball Writers’ Association. DiBartolomeo, who led the 22–5 Yellowjackets in scoring, rebounding, assists, and steals this season, also was named Player of the Year by the University Athletic Association and the Eastern College Athletic Conference (for Upstate New York). He was named the East Region Player of the Year by D3hoops.com and the NABC. DiBartolomeo was a first team honoree by the UAA, ECAC Upstate New York, the NABC, and D3hoops.com.

He was selected to play in the Reese’s NABC Division III All-Star Game, and he was named a finalist for the Josten’s Trophy, given by the Salem Rotary Club.

DiBartolomeo was one of two Rochester basketball players to earn All-America honors this spring. Sophomore guard Ally Zywicki, of Liverpool, N.Y., was selected as an honorable mention All-American by the Women’s Basketball Coaches Association. Zywicki, who led the 20–7 Yellowjackets in scoring, was named first team All–UAA, second team All–ECAC Upstate New York, and first team All–East Region by D3hoops.com.

The Forge of a New Nation

Why the Civil War—and the unconditional surrender of the Confederacy—still matters today.

By Steven Hahn ’73

civilwar (Illustration: John W. Tomac for Rochester Review)

Americans have always had an uneasy relationship to their Civil War, all the more in evidence as we commemorate its sesquicentennial. On the one hand, the war still rivets the public attention and imagination. Americans read countless books and magazine articles, sit through hours of feature films and documentaries, and visit many of the sites of battle, sometimes on scorching hot summer days. On the other hand, the war confounds our trust in the country’s democratic institutions; indeed it serves as a dispiriting reminder of how those institutions can fail us and exact a terrible price in bloodshed and destruction, especially sobering in our current, and highly polarized, political environment.

Small wonder that a great many Americans regard the war as a tragic episode, and believe that we would have been far better off if warfare had been avoided and the deep disputes over slavery settled through peaceable political means.

Yet, Steven Spielberg’s recent film, Lincoln, which focused on the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment ending slavery in the United States, suggests that we ought to think hard about what the war and the military defeat of the Confederate rebellion made possible. And, by extension, we ought to think about what anything less than a war fought over the future of slavery would have meant for the future of the United States. However much we may long for a politics of “compromise,” a glimpse of what the United States would have looked like if the war was avoided or ended in anything short of the Confederacy’s unconditional surrender shows how tragic that would have been.

How is this so? We usually think of the antebellum United States as being neatly divided between “slave” and “free” states, but we can easily forget how pervasive and powerful slavery and slaveholders were for all of our early history. At the time of the American Revolution, slavery was legal in each of the 13 colonies and slaveholders played a central role in establishing the country’s independence (Jefferson, a Virginia slaveholder wrote the Declaration of Independence) and constructing the framework of American governance (slaveowner James Madison was the Constitution’s architect). Owing to the “federal ratio” (Article I, Section II), which counted slaves as three-fifths of a free person for the purpose of congressional apportionment, and the “fugitive slave clause” (Article IV, Section II), which required people living in states where slavery might be illegal to return runaway slaves to their owners, the institution of slavery achieved constitutional sanction, slaveholders gained more representation than any other group of Americans, and the condition of enslavement attached to the body of the slave wherever he or she went.

It is true, of course, that the states of New England and the Middle Atlantic began passing emancipation statutes between 1770 and 1804. But those statutes generally freed only the children of slaves and only when they reached adulthood. They abolished slavery gradually, very gradually. So confusing and opaque were many of those statutes that most of the northern states had to enact them twice (New Hampshire as late as 1857), and some of the gradually liberated slaves ended up making the transition not to freedom but to indentured servitude which seemed acceptable to many courts. Recent scholarship has uncovered evidence of slaves in New Jersey as late as 1860, and to these may be added hundreds of fugitives from slavery who were no less slaves in Vermont than they were in Virginia.

Using the benefits of the federal ratio and their determination to protect slavery from outside interference, southern slaveholders were pretty much able to control the government of the United States between the ratification of the Constitution in 1788 and the election of Abraham Lincoln in 1860. Southern slaveholders commanded the presidency, the Supreme Court, and the diplomatic corps; they exerted enormous power in Congress through their dominance of the Democratic Party; and they were responsible for every territorial addition to the United States (beginning with the Louisiana Purchase), through military or diplomatic means, with the full expectation that slavery would be legal there.

In 1857, in its Dred Scott decision, the Supreme Court, with a southern majority, confirmed this perspective: the court insisted that slaveholders had the right to bring their slaves into all federal territories, that people of African descent couldn’t become citizens of the United States, and that the interests of slaveholders had to be supported by the federal government where the federal government was empowered to act. Enriching themselves on the value of the cotton crop, southern slaveholders emerged as the wealthiest landed elite in the world with what appeared to be a stranglehold over the industrializing economies of Europe and North America. This is why they thought they could win the battle over slavery’s future, and this is why the distinguished historian Don Fehrenbacher could call the antebellum United States a “slaveholding republic.”

History, of course, has an aura of inevitability, and it is hard for us to imagine alternative outcomes that appear reasonable. But in 1860, the outcome of the Civil War as we have come to know it—decisive Confederate defeat, the abolition of slavery without gradualism or compensation to slaveowners—would have seemed, to most Americans, the least likely possibility. After all, the country had been to the precipice numerous times before and managed to pull back. No one in the antislavery movement other than John Brown had a plan for how to bring emancipation about. Racism was widespread among white Americans, northern as well as southern. And Lincoln conceded that he had no constitutional authority to disturb slavery in the states where it remained legal. Army chief Winfield Scott and Secretary of State William Seward both pressured Lincoln to abandon Fort Sumter, and once hostilities commenced, Lincoln had a tough time getting his generals—McClellan chief among them—to move. The Union side suffered early defeats that were nearly catastrophic, and the war entered a prolonged period of stalemate that sapped the morale of soldiers and civilians alike. As late as the summer of 1864, Lincoln had little confidence that he would win reelection and suggested entering into negotiations with the Democratic opposition that was calling for an armistice and the rollback of emancipation policy. Which is to say that the country could very well have reached its turning point and either failed to turn or turned quite differently.

Had the Civil War been avoided by some compromise settlement or had the war ended either with a quick Confederate victory or, more likely, an armistice, the history of the United States would have been drastically different from anything we are familiar with. And it would not have been a better result. While engaging in the “might have beens” of history always carries risks and dangers, there are some things that we can say with confidence.

One is that while slavery probably would have been abolished at some point, it would not have been abolished either by presidential decree (the Emancipation Proclamation) or constitutional amendment (the Thirteenth). It would have been abolished gradually over an extended period of time (Lincoln’s original plan envisioned a 35-year emancipation), much as it was in the northern states and other parts of the hemisphere, with various forms of compensation to owners (no one ever talked about compensating slaves for two centuries of unrequited labor). There would have been African-American slaves in the United States well into the 20th century, and whatever a future Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution would have involved, it would not have been about abolishing slavery.

Nor would there have been a Fourteenth Amendment establishing birthright citizenship in the United States and providing all Americans with the “equal protection of the laws.” There would have been no civil rights bills defining what rights freed slaves or any American citizens were entitled to, and there would have been no Reconstruction Acts extending the elective franchise to black men in the south or a Fifteenth Amendment enfranchising black men in the north. Only Confederate defeat made these possible. Otherwise, Dred Scott would still have been the law of the land, and states would have continued to use the language of racial exclusion to define their electorates. The word “white” appeared in most state constitutions in regard to who was eligible to vote.

What of the distribution of power in the United States? Had there been a negotiated settlement of the slavery question or had the war ended up differently, slaveholders would have remained a powerful force in the country. They would have retained home rule and would have compelled the federal government to use its resources to back them up and strengthen their police power as slavery was being gradually abolished. They would have successfully enacted “black codes” that established an officially separate civil status for people of African descent (pass laws, corporal punishments, limits on the occupations they could practice and the property they could own, highly unequal standing before the law), and they would have simply excluded African Americans from the use of public facilities and social services, whether schools, hospitals, parks, or theaters. They also would have been able to shape national policy more fully, and would have made it very difficult for the Republican Party (only founded in the 1850s) to get a national footing. The result would likely have been a multiparty system, and perhaps the sort of national disintegration that Lincoln had feared in 1861: the breaking apart of the United States into a number of distinct republics and confederations, something in the manner of colonial Spanish America earlier in the 19th century.

On an international level, a negotiated political settlement avoiding war or a different outcome to the Civil War itself, may well have breathed new life into slavery elsewhere. By the mid-1860s, slavery had been abolished throughout the Western Hemisphere except for Cuba and Brazil, but these were still large and powerful slave societies. Cuba had become the leading sugar producer in the world and Brazil had become the leading coffee producer owing to slavery’s expansion around Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo. As it was, some defeated Confederates fled to both of these places from the United States once the war ended, but under other circumstances, southern slaveholders might have forged an alliance with their counterparts in Cuba (perhaps annexing the island) and Brazil, and could have pursued a political objective that had interested many of them before the Civil War: promoting the expansion of slavery into Mexico and Central America.

Thus, by the end of the 19th century, the United States might have looked like a rather unattractive mix of Germany, South Africa, Brazil, and other parts of Latin America. It might have encompassed a loose federal system in which effective power was shared between big landed interests in the south and west and big industrial and financial interests in the northeast and Midwest: an American version of the German marriage of “iron and rye” linking Prussia and the Ruhr. It might have had a multitiered structure of civil and political standing and rights, determined and administered chiefly by the states and localities, in which blacks and other ethnic groups were officially second-class citizens or noncitizens, and in which democratic practices built up over decades were substantially rolled back.

This, after all, was already happening in the 1850s in relation to both African Americans and Irish immigrants. And, the United States might have had a system of national social separation in which the burdens of providing basic social services rested mostly on the shoulders of various subject populations: something of an American version of apartheid.

That outcomes such as these did not come to pass owed chiefly to a militant antislavery movement committed, at the very least, to checking the power of slaveholders in the United States. When, in the winter of 1860–61, efforts were being made to effect yet another compromise, this involving the potential expansion of slavery into some of the western territories, Lincoln and his Republican allies put their foot down and ensured that a moment of truth over the question of slavery would have to be confronted.

But even more consequential were the activities of the most radical of antislavery’s wings: the slaves. Over many years, and in ways their owners (not to mention other white Americans) couldn’t understand, the slaves took the measure of American politics and the international struggle over slavery. Many had learned of the great Haitian revolution and of the abolition of slavery in the British and French West Indies. Many more were learning about a developing antislavery movement in the northern United States and the prospect that they might have powerful allies in their own battles for freedom. News of Lincoln’s election campaign swept through the slave quarters across the southern states, and word of his election and inauguration electrified the hopes and expectations of many slaves. Thus, when Lincoln sent troops south to suppress the Confederate rebellion, slaves launched a rebellion of their own: they fled their plantations and farms, headed to Union lines, and increasingly forced the federal government to deal directly with the fate of slavery where it existed and had thrived. Little by little the Lincoln administration embraced emancipation and eventually armed the slaves to bolster its military goals. This is what turned the tide; this is what vanquished the slaveholders politically and militarily and ended slavery without gradualism; this is what made a new country.

To be sure, some of most impressive gains of the Civil War era were implemented in a half-hearted fashion and soon rolled back. The federal commitment to black political rights and especially to the exercise of black political power was ambivalent at best, and the Supreme Court soon limited the reach of federal authority to enforce the civil and political rights that the new constitutional amendments appeared to ensure. Once Reconstruction ended and “home rule” in the South was restored, white supremacists moved to strip African Americans of the vote and the ability to hold office, lynched many hundreds of black men and women who stood accused of violating white norms, and installed a regime of racial subordination and separation that we have come to call “Jim Crow.” This was the new age of racism and imperialism that left its stains not only in the United States, but over much of the globe. Later generations of African Americans, it was clear, would have to fight anew for the rights and opportunities that had been made possible and then cast into jeopardy. Yet they would fight with the moral bearing, political confidence, and strategic weapons—and with the constitutional language—that their forebears had achieved in their battles to crush slaveholding rebels militarily and to abolish slavery during what we have come to call the Civil War. The difference would be enormous. They began to build their own cultural and educational institutions that would serve as foundations for subsequent struggles. They left the South in very large numbers (1916–30) at a time when the Ku Klux Klan had a massive popular following across the country and helped turn the New Deal in a progressive direction (avoiding an American fascism). They challenged the federal courts on the constitutionality of “separate but equal.” They mobilized hundreds of thousands of black Americans and white allies to tear down the edifice of Jim Crow. And their vision for a just and more equitable society remains on our political agenda. The Civil War was, of course, very costly. The great loss of life, the profound social dislocations, and the searing pains that almost all American families endured at the time left deep scars and had tragic features. Yet, in historical perspective, the real tragedy would have been a war not fought or a war not won.

Steven Hahn ’73 is the Roy F. and Jeannette P. Nichols Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania. He won the Pulitzer Prize for history in 2004 for A Nation under Our Feet: Black Political Struggles in the Rural South from Slavery to the Great Migration (Harvard University Press).

Why Enlist?

civilwardouglass (Illustration: John W. Tomac for Rochester Review)

This spring marks the 150th anniversary of several pivotal moments in the history of the Civil War. President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on Jan. 1, 1863, and in March of that year, the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, one of the first African-American units, was authorized to enlist soldiers for the war.

The proclamation and the efforts to enlist African Americans for the 54th prompted Frederick Douglass—former slave turned social activist and publisher—to formally declare why black men should join the fight against the Confederacy. He outlined his nine reasons in an April 1863 edition of Douglass’ Monthly, which he published in Rochester from 1858 to 1863.

Here’s an excerpt:

“First. You are a man, although a colored man.”

“Second. You are however, not only a man, but an American citizen, so declared by the highest legal adviser of the Government, and you have hitherto expressed in various ways, not only your willingness but your earnest desire to fulfil any and every obligation which the relation of citizenship imposes.”

“Third. A third reason why a colored man should enlist is found in the fact that every Negro-hater and slavery-lover in the land regards the arming of Negroes as a calamity and is doing his best to prevent it.”

“Fourth. You should enlist to learn the use of arms, to become familiar with the means of securing, protecting and defending your own liberty.”

“Fifth. You are a member of a long enslaved and despised race. Men have set down your submission to Slavery and insult, to a lack of manly courage. . . . You should enlist and disprove the slander, and wipe out the reproach.”

“Sixth. Whether you are or are not entitled to all the rights of citizenship in this country has long been a matter of dispute to your prejudice.”

“Seventh. Enlist for your own sake. Decried and derided as you have been and still are, you need an act of this kind by which to recover your own self-respect.”

“Eighth. You should enlist because your doing so will be one of the most certain means of preventing the country from drifting back into the whirlpool of Pro-Slavery Compromise at the end of the war, which is now our greatest danger.”

“Ninth. You should enlist because the war for the Union, whether men so call it or not, is a war for Emancipation. The salvation of the country, by the inexorable relation of cause and effect, can be secured only by the complete abolition of Slavery.”

Douglass lived in Rochester for more than two decades, including crucial years of his antislavery activism. The University’s collections hold more than 100 of his letters, dating from before the Civil War, when Douglass was editor of The North Star, an antislavery newspaper that he published in Rochester, to a few years before his death in 1895. The collection also includes photographs of Douglass and copies of his newspapers. To read the full text of his essay, “Why Should a Colored Man Enlist?”, visit the website for the libraries’ Frederick Douglass Project at www.lib.rochester.edu/index.cfm?PAGE=4396.

On Cemetery Ridge

At the Battle of Gettysburg, ‘moments seemed like ages,’ according to Rochester graduates who were there.

By Bob Marcotte

gettysburg (Illustration: John W. Tomac for Rochester Review)

As Capt. Winfield Scott looked out across the Pennsylvania farm fields that hot afternoon in July 1863, he saw a sight “grand beyond description.” In the distance, line after line of enemy soldiers stepped into view, their guns and bayonets gleaming in the sunlight. They looked like “a stream or river of silver moving toward us.”

The Class of 1859 graduate—a Syracuse minister who left the pulpit to wield a sword—was at “ground zero” for one of the most dramatic, defining moments of the American Civil War: Pickett’s Charge at the Battle of Gettysburg.

Scott’s former University classmate, Lt. Col. Francis Pierce, Class of 1859, 1862 (AM); another University graduate, Capt. John Ronald Leslie, Class of 1856, 1860 (AM); and a University undergraduate, Lt. Samuel Porter, Class of 1864, were also in the Union ranks on Cemetery Ridge that day, bracing for the onslaught of 12,000 southern soldiers whose desperate charge marked the high tide of the Confederacy.

University alumni, students, or former students enlisted in at least 12 of the Union regiments that fought at Gettysburg. Their own accounts and those of their contemporaries put them in the thick of the fighting on all three days and in nearly every key part of the battle that took place 150 years ago this summer.

“A great basin lay before us full of smoke and fire, and literally swarming with riderless horses and fighting, fleeing, and pursuing men,” former University student Lt. Porter Farley—Samuel Porter’s cousin—later wrote. “The air was saturated with the sulphurous fumes of battle and was ringing with the shouts and groans of the combatants. The wild cries of charging lines, the rattle of musketry, the booming of artillery, and the shrieks of the wounded were the orchestral accompaniments of a scene very like hell itself.”

Founded in 1850, the University was still very much a fledgling institution when the Civil War began. It boasted an enrollment of only about 165 students and a faculty of seven in 1861. That fall it moved from cramped quarters in the former United States Hotel in downtown Rochester to a new building at what became the Prince Street campus.

University President Martin Anderson “had adopted a moderate, almost a neutralist posture on the North-South controversy and abhorred extremism on either side,” University historian Arthur May writes. But Anderson quickly abandoned that stance after Fort Sumter was fired upon in April 1861.

War is a dreadful thing, Anderson said at a mass meeting in Rochester a few nights later, “and yet there was something worse—the loss of national honor.”

He supported the war effort wholeheartedly, even though it took a toll on his school in many ways.

Anderson released professor Isaac Quinby, a West Point graduate and Mexican War veteran, to command the first of Rochester’s volunteer infantry regiments to serve in the Civil War.

He supported students who put aside their books to join the army, even though it meant a “near fatal” decline in the University’s enrollment, May writes. By the end of the war, enrollment had dropped to only 108 students—in part because even prospective students such as J. Horace (Hod) McGuire were lured into the ranks before ever entering the classroom.

McGuire, who had qualified for a four-year scholarship at the University, later recalled that amid the “war excitement” of July 1862, “it became evident that every young man who could must enlist.”

Anderson “told us boys that in his opinion the war could not last six months and if we felt called upon to enlist to do so and if we came home alive the University would in some way make up our time lost.”

And so they went. At least 85 of the University’s 198 graduates or former students served in the Civil War. According to May, one out of every 12 undergraduates also enlisted.

Most served in New York regiments, but others enlisted in Wisconsin, Michigan, Kansas, Iowa, Illinois, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Ohio, and Washington, D.C. At least one is known to have served the Confederacy.

At least 34 achieved the rank of captain or better. Ten of them gave their lives.

They did not always agree on what they were fighting for. Pierce, for example, was outraged when Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation. “I will not jeopardize my life or become an invalid for life from exposure and fatigue . . . simply to restore 3,000,000 of brutes to freedom,” he wrote to a friend.

Porter wrote to his father that he had “got tired of listening to the rant and treason of Lieut. Colonel Pierce and men of his stamp.” And yet Pierce and Porter fought with equal valor; each was wounded four times, but served to the war’s end.

By the summer of 1863, Robert E. Lee and his Army of Northern Virginia had repeatedly baffled Union attempts to capture Richmond. And yet, the Confederacy was in peril. Grant’s siege of Vicksburg, the South’s principal stronghold on the Mississippi River, threatened to split the rebelling states.

Many Confederate cabinet members wanted to send reinforcements from Lee’s army to help lift the siege. Instead Lee convinced them there was more to be gained by letting his army invade northern soil.

As Lee’s 75,000 veteran soldiers disappeared behind a screen of mountains and headed north into Maryland and Pennsylvania, upward of 90,000 Union soldiers of the Army of the Potomac pursued, marching as many as 20 or more miles a day along hot, dusty roads.

Just ahead lay Gettysburg, from which 10 roads extended “to as many disparate points of the compass, as if it were probing for trouble in all directions,” Civil War historian Shelby Foote wrote.

When a column of footsore Confederate infantry moved east toward the town on July 1, 1863, ostensibly in search of shoes, a line of dismounted Union cavalry blocked their way. The fighting quickly escalated, drawing additional units from both armies.

Eventually the Confederates were able to extend their lines beyond and around the flank of the Union positions. By the time the rest of the Union army arrived, a defensive line had been established, extending from Culp’s Hill on the east, west to Cemetery Hill, and south along Cemetery Ridge toward two hills called the Round Tops.

Late on the second day, Union reinforcements, including Capt. Elwell Otis, Class of 1858, Farley, and their comrades of the 140th New York, were rushed to defend Little Round Top, a rocky hill critical to the Union position. As the Confederates continued to attack along the Union line to the right, Scott and his regiment helped repulse a Mississippi brigade in bitter fighting along Plum Run in front of Cemetery Ridge.

At the other end of the Union position, a Confederate division advanced at dusk against Culp’s Hill, where only a single Union brigade of five regiments—including the 60th New York, commanded by Col. Abel Godard, Class of 1859—remained. They, too, stood their ground, trading volleys for four hours in the darkness, even when their ammunition briefly ran out.

The next day, Lee launched an all-or-nothing attack with the last of his reserves.

For more than an hour, shot and shell rained down on the part of the line held by Pierce, Porter, and the rest of the 108th New York.

Pierce, in acting command of the regiment, took command of four additional regiments when their brigade commander was wounded.

When the barrage abruptly ceased, an eerie silence fell. The 108th and 126th New York regiments were posted almost side-by-side near Cemetery Hill. Two former University classmates, Pierce of the 108th and Scott of the 126th, locked arms and walked behind the two regiments.

“Well, Scott, we have sat beside each other in the classroom many a day,” Pierce remarked, “but this is a new experience. This isn’t much like digging out Greek roots.”

Three quarters of a mile away, three divisions of Confederate infantry, totaling about 12,000 men, stepped into the open in front of Cemetery Ridge. Pickett’s Charge was under way.

For the Union soldiers bracing for the attack, “Moments seemed ages,” Scott recalled. “The shock to the heart and nerve was awful.”

When the Confederates had advanced within 400 yards, the Union artillerists switched to rounds of canister—cylindrical tins packed with metal balls that spewed outward like oversized shotgun pellets. Lines of Union soldiers stood up and began volleying with their rifles. Despite leg and face wounds he had suffered on the first day of fighting, Leslie was back in the ranks with the 20th New York State Militia as it fired into the enemy formations.

The Confederate lines staggered.

“Like a mob they surged, and were ridden upon by officers. They swept round and round in a hopeless mass, as though they were in great conflict of thought and doubt,” Scott wrote.

As the attack collapsed and the defeated Confederates began to stream to the rear, Scott’s regiment swooped in from the side, capturing prisoners and battle flags.

Scott suffered two minor wounds at Gettysburg. Pierce was struck by a round that left his arm bruised from elbow to wrist.

They were among 23,000 Union casualties during the three days of fighting.

But the toll on Lee’s army was worse. Half of the soldiers in Pickett’s Charge were killed, wounded, or missing, bringing total Confederate casualties for the three days to as many as 28,000.

Lee would never again invade the north.

For many of the University’s former, current, and future students who answered the call to arms, the Civil War was a defining chapter in their lives.

Scott became a Baptist missionary and later purchased the land that became Scottsdale, Ariz., which is named in his honor, as is Winfield, Kan.

Leslie carried a bullet in his hip the rest of his life, but did not let it deter him from continuing his career as a schoolteacher after the war.

Pierce, who found army life quite appealing, became a career officer, serving as an administrator for Indian affairs.

Otis, who survived severe face and neck wounds leading the 140th late in the war, ascended to even greater heights as a career officer. He was appointed military governor of the Philippines after the United States gained control during the Spanish-American War, and retired as a major general. He is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

Godard led his regiment during the campaigns to relieve Chattanooga, and helped capture Atlanta. He emerged from one battle with 11 bullet holes in his uniform and boots but was unscathed. After being discharged, he returned to St. Lawrence County in New York, served as a state assemblyman and senator, and eventually founded a bank.

Farley survived brutal battles that killed or wounded scores of his comrades the following spring. He made it home, only to watch his young wife die in 1866. He eventually found his calling, became a doctor, and wrote extensively about the wartime experiences of his regiment.

Porter died at age 37 of complications from a malarial sickness that, some suspected, may have been contracted during the war. He died within 24 hours of his father.

In 1881, a letter arrived for Hod McGuire, who had enlisted instead of attending the University on a scholarship. The University’s president, Martin Anderson, had assured him, the war would probably be over in six months.

Instead, McGuire was not discharged until September 1866—more than four years after he enlisted, and nearly a year and a half after the war ended. By then he was engaged to be married. With a wife to support, he took a succession of jobs to make ends meet before studying law with a local attorney and passing the bar exam. He became a very good lawyer, which, he later wrote, excited the envy, even enmity, of others in the profession who had gone through law school.

He was “greatly surprised” when he read the letter.

“I remember distinctly the time you left Rochester to go into the Army. Since then I have watched your course with interest and satisfaction. I feel great pleasure therefore in recommending you as a Candidate for the Bachelor’s Degree. When the next General Catalogue is printed your name can be put with your old class (1866) or remain where it is as you shall choose.”

It was signed by Martin Anderson.

Bob Marcotte writes about the Hajim School of Engineering for University Communications. He is the author of Where They Fell: Stories of Rochester Area Soldiers in the Civil War (Q Publishing).

Power and Politics

With Bell Laboratories as his model, Steven Chu ’70 sought change at the Department of Energy.

Interview by Karen McCally ’02 (PhD)

chuRISK-TAKER: Scientific innovation requires bold experimentation, says Chu, who shaped the Advanced Research Projects Agency–Energy, a Department of Energy initiative modeled on a similar agency at the Department of Defense, to fund ambitious research. (Photo: Adam Fenster)

When President Barack Obama nominated Steven Chu ’70 to become secretary of the U.S. Department of Energy in January 2009, the appointment of the 1997 Nobel laureate signaled a commitment to science and a sustainable energy policy.

In his post, which he occupied until last month, Chu delivered a focused message: that the reality of climate change, and the role of carbon emissions in producing it, is well established; that rising energy demands, particularly from China and India, are likely to cause oil prices to spike in the coming decades; and that for this combination of environmental and economic reasons, the United States must invest far more resources in developing renewable energy sources.

Chu carried out what’s been called an “all of the above” strategy, stressing that fossil fuel development would remain part of the nation’s energy mix, alongside renewable power resources such as solar and wind, nuclear power, and biofuels.

But behind the scenes, there’s little question that his personal energies have been focused on energy innovation, particularly in the development of renewables. The department’s solar energy program, a program that’s existed since the department’s birth in 1977, but long on the fringes of the agency’s priorities, has been placed on a more solid financial and institutional foundation under Chu’s leadership. And in January, Chu addressed one of the last remaining barriers to developing an economy based fully on renewable energy, with the creation of a $120 million Critical Materials Institute to develop a stable and mass supply of the rare earth metals required to produce solar panels, wind turbines, and other elements of a renewable energy infrastructure.

Much of the new work in the department takes place under the auspices of the Advanced Research Projects Agency–Energy, or ARPA–E, an initiative to fund high-risk, but potentially high-reward, innovations in energy technology. Authorized in 2007, but not funded until 2009, ARPA–E, as it exists today, is largely Chu’s creation. He’s shaped it in accordance with lessons he learned as a physicist at Bell Laboratories in the 1980s. That’s where Chu conducted his Nobel Prize–winning research, on using lasers to trap and cool atoms, as well as the birthplace of the transistor, communications satellites, cellular telephones, and other landmark technological innovations of the last century.

This month, Chu returns to Rochester to address the graduates of Arts, Sciences & Engineering during the University’s 163rd commencement ceremonies, where he will also receive the University’s George Eastman Medal. Then, he will return to teaching and research, rejoining the faculty of Stanford, where he taught from 1987 to 2008. He’ll be the William R. Kenan Professor of Humanities and Sciences and will hold a joint appointment in physics and the medical school’s molecular and cellular physiology department.

In March, from his office overlooking the National Mall, Chu discussed some of his work over the past four years.

What’s the federal role, and the role of research universities, in shaping energy policy?

The federal government has always been the main funder of basic research in science in general, and the science and engineering related to energy. Much of the science and engineering related to energy actually starts in more fundamental research in science, and then one can realize later what its applications might be. The federal government also directs funding for projects—how to try to develop a better way of capturing the energy of the sun, for example. Much of what the federal government has funded is research in universities. This funding has a dual purpose in that it also trains graduate students, postdocs, and, increasingly, undergraduates who start to do research in these federally funded labs.

It’s been written that your experience at Bell Labs has inspired much of your work as energy secretary. Is this true and if so, in what ways?

It’s a model, and it’s certainly the way, consciously, I set up ARPA–E. What you had at Bell Labs is a bunch of scientists who were crammed in very close quarters. You didn’t just mind your own business and do your own research. You were always talking and learning about other people’s work.

But the most interesting part of that is, let’s say you’re representing your people, and you say something and I don’t agree. There would be an open discussion. It keeps everybody honest. Instead of each person waiting politely to take their turn, there’s an open, free discussion where everything’s fair game, but it’s not personal. Sometimes people ask in a not-so-nice way—there was one person at Bell Labs famous for getting up at seminars—this big, tall guy, and saying—‘What the hell are you doing that kind of crap for?’ This could unnerve people. What it really meant was, ‘Tell us the importance of what you’re doing. We just learned you succeeded. What’s the fundamental importance?’ You were always being challenged by your colleagues—in seminars, in discussions after seminars, at lunch tables. It was what a friend here, whom I recruited, called ‘constructive confrontation.’ It was a very flat organization. You were judged by the value of your ideas.

The culture in Washington is not noted for “constructive confrontation.” Have you found the transition difficult?

Well, it depends on what culture you’re talking about. Within ARPA–E, we created a culture of constructive confrontation. And it’s the closest thing to Bell Labs that I’ve seen outside of Bell Labs. It is more like Bell Labs than a university. At a university, when people say, ‘I have a new idea and I would like to get funding,’ you write up a proposal and you’ll be lucky if you get it in one year. Typically it’s a year and a half, two years, before you can even start. At Bell Labs and now at ARPA–E, you go to a manager and talk about it. The manager might say, ‘I don’t think I believe this.’ You’d say, ‘Let’s go work it out on the board.’ Your boss can engage with you on a fine detail. But you don’t get an answer in a year. You can get an answer that day or that week. And if you don’t like the answer, you can appeal it up to a point.

Now in terms of political confrontation, the amazing thing is, at some level, even though they have to do the theatrics in front of the camera, some of my good allies are actually across the aisle. Much of what I’ve done is about science and not politics. Perhaps 98 percent of my job has nothing to do with that political sort of confrontation. Now, what the public sees, is what it sees.

chuFUNDAMENTALS: “Much of the science and engineering related to energy actually starts in more fundamental research in science,” says Chu, who has rejoined the faculty of Stanford University after four years as energy secretary. (Photo: Adam Fenster)

How has ARPA–E helped advance solar energy?

We recruited Ramamoorthy Ramesh from the physics department at Berkeley to head ARPA–E’s solar photovoltaic program. He went off and started to revitalize the program, which Arun Majumdar, the director of ARPA–E, named the SunShot program. And it turned out that a crew of four scientists transformed the solar program. All of a sudden, people from universities were coming to me, unsolicited, and saying, ‘Your solar program is transformed. You’re funding all the good stuff. You used to fund not-so-good stuff. It’s very exciting.’ One star professor at Caltech said, ‘Because of this SunShot program—and now the students have noticed this—I have more applicants, I have the crème-de-la-crème pick of graduate students at Caltech who want to go in my group and work on solar, because the funding agent is making all the right decisions. So three to four in a division created that with constructive confrontation.

Now outside of that group, I have to do a lot of blocking and tackling. Behind the scenes I say, ‘Don’t hassle these guys.’ Congressional affairs didn’t want Arun to talk to Congress, for example. I said, ‘No. Arun can talk to Congress. He can talk directly. Don’t muzzle him.’ And he turned out to be one of our best spokespeople for the program. So that’s a culture we’ve created within the agency. But the larger issue of how deals are not made in Congress? That part is frustrating.

You’ve often said that scientific innovation requires a long timeframe and tolerance for failures along the road to breakthroughs. How has failure played a role in your career as a scientist?

If you plan a program where you don’t fail, that tells me instantly that you’re not reaching far enough. There’s a quote from Michelangelo that I like to cite. He said, “The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short; but in setting our aim too low, and achieving our mark.” This is something I learned as a graduate student. I worked on three projects before I landed on a thesis. One could say they were incompletes or failures, but certainly incompletes. But I landed on a project and said, ‘OK, this is it.’ And then focused very much on that. But if you consider the overall picture, you could say, ‘Well, you started this, you didn’t finish; you started another thing, you didn’t finish; what’s going on?’ Yet after I was a graduate student and a postdoc, the physics department at Berkeley wanted me to join their faculty. So I wasn’t a total failure.

So how did this happen, after only one success out of four? It’s because when I failed, I moved on, and I moved on quickly, number one. Number two, what I did do was of some note. And number three, when I failed, I looked at the heart of the problem and said, ‘If this doesn’t work, the path going forward is not going to work.’

I had a similar success rate at Bell Labs and at Stanford. At Bell Labs, there were times I would be working on a project for two or three years, and the people there would get a little anxious and say, ‘Look, this could ruin your career if this thing doesn’t work.’ I’d say, ‘it’s OK, I have one or two more ideas. If that doesn’t work, I’m out.’

But you have to get an inner sense of what will work and what doesn’t.

New Frontiers Against AIDS

With stakeholders in Ghana, LaRon Nelson ’02N, ’09N (PhD) leads an innovative approach to HIV/AIDS prevention.

By Karen McCally ’02 (PhD)

nelsonNURSING INNOVATOR: The Canadian government declared Nelson a “rising star” as part of an initiative to fund “big ideas with big impact” on the most difficult global public health challenges. (Photo: Scott Iskowitz/AP Images for Rochester Review)

In the last 30 years, progress in the treatment of HIV/AIDS has been remarkable by any measure. Due to the development primarily of antiretroviral treatments, which slow the reproduction of the HIV virus within the body, it’s now possible to talk about “living with AIDS.”

Technologies aimed at prevention have advanced as well. Among the most recent developments is an antiretroviral drug that, taken daily by people at high risk for exposure to HIV, can diminish their chances of becoming infected. Yet progress in prevention has been uneven, with great progress in some populations, and the continuing spread of the disease in others.

For public health professionals such as LaRon Nelson ’02N, ’09N (PhD), these disparities underscore a persistent dilemma: “There’s already a pill,” Nelson says. “The challenge is, how do you get people to go to a clinic and take it?”

He’s addressing that challenge in an area where it’s especially steep: Ghana, a West African nation with sizeable numbers of AIDS cases, high transmission rates, and a traditional culture in which homosexual activity is strongly condemned.

The project, which Nelson has been working on since 2009, is entitled KAPPA, or Kumasi & Accra Project to Prevent AIDS. It received a major boost in 2011, when Nelson, then an assistant professor of nursing at the University of Toronto, was named one of 19 “Rising Stars in Global Health” from across Canada. The honor, designed to support bold approaches to address some of the most difficult challenges in global public health, came with $100,000 of funding from the Canadian government as well as high profile publicity and endorsement of the project.

Nelson says he based the project on self-determination theory, which he was first exposed to at Rochester. A theory of human motivation developed by Rochester psychology professors Edward Deci and Richard Ryan, it posits that people change their behavior most meaningfully and sustainably when they’re responding to internal rewards they define for themselves, rather than external rewards, defined and granted by others. Nelson learned about the theory from Geoffrey Williams ’93 (PhD), a professor of psychology, psychiatry, and medicine at the Medical Center who’s applied it in designing interventions to support people who want to quit smoking, and who is a partner on the KAPPA project.

Today there are 16 Ghanaian physicians on the project working to provide preventive services to men in the cities of Accra and Kumasi who are at highest risk for contracting HIV. At highest risk are men who have sex with other men, or MSM, as clinicians refer to them. The designation makes an important point, says Nelson, noting that previous research teams encountered barriers when they attempted to identify MSM as “gay men.”

“In America, we tend to start off with these labels,” he says. “We categorize things and people. We call men who have sex with men ‘gay.’ ”

But men in Ghana were rejecting that label. Many carried on primary relationships with women. They didn’t cluster in particular neighborhoods or seek to define themselves by sexual categories. “Many researchers who came before us made those categories a prerequisite,” says Nelson. “And then they said, ‘Well, if you can’t get people to admit they’re gay, then what can you do?’ ”

Identifying MSM in Ghana is not easy. But it’s critical, because Ghanaian men are unlikely to approach health clinics on their own to receive AIDS prevention services. The clinics, says Nelson, are often seen as “hostile environments” to Ghanaian MSM. “They’re afraid,” says Nelson. “Afraid of getting a lecture and afraid of getting turned in.”

Nelson describes KAPPA as a structural intervention, a term used to describe projects that seek to improve the health of entire communities by seeking change in social environments. He’s developed ways to reach high-risk men through their own networks, and worked with their nurses and physicians to develop new protocols for the delivery of health services.

Thomas Agyarko-Poku, a Ghanaian physician with Ghana Health Services and local principal investigator on the project, says KAPPA has scored a major coup: it’s gained the support of one of Ghana's most influential leaders, King Otumfuo Osei Tutu II, the monarch of Ghana's largest ethnic group, the Ashanti.

“KAPPA is truly a breakthrough, since it's the first time a foreign study team has collaborated with the Kingdom of Ashanti to conduct a study on MSM,” Poku says. The involvement of King Tutu II made it “easier to recruit MSM, because their fear of persecution was reduced.”

After his 2011 award from the Canadian government, Nelson has continued to rack up honors for his work. In 2012, after accepting a position as assistant dean for global and community affairs at the University of South Florida College of Nursing, he was one of 12 recipients of the Impact HIV/AIDS Champion of Change award presented at the International AIDS Conference in Washington, D.C. Orlando Harris ’10N (MS), a doctoral candidate at the School of Nursing and a former classmate of Nelson’s, was also among the winners.

Dianne Morrison-Beedy ’93N (PhD), who mentored Nelson at Rochester, recruited him last year to the University of South Florida, where she’s dean of the College of Nursing. “He’s a phenomenal young scientist,” she says.

As a National Institute of Nursing Research predoctoral fellow, Nelson honed his specialty, which he describes as the health of African and African-descendant communities, the latter often at the social and economic margins of the societies in which they live. As a doctoral candidate, and as associate director of the Monroe County Department of Public Health, Nelson worked to prevent HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases in the Rochester area.

Nelson credits the philosophy of nursing care he encountered at the School of Nursing as a guide in his research. It involves delivering care in ways compatible with the values and experiences of patients and their social networks.

“Health promotion at the community level is really about understanding that individuals don’t exist in isolation,” he says. “If we can move communities in terms of a shift in attitudes, or in terms of a shift in health status, then I think we’ll have a more lasting impact than we do with individual level care alone.”

If it sounds more complicated than treating each patient as an individual, it’s because it is. As Nelson often says: “Human lives aren’t simple. So the answers to problems are not going to be either.”

Forging an Ethical Path

As its first general counsel, Stacie Pittell ’84 is helping shape a new District of Columbia ethics board.

By Karen McCally ’02 (PhD)

pittellFOLLOW THE MONEY? Misconduct “usually comes down to money,” says Pittell, adding that it can have a big impact on what’s left for vital city services. (Photo: Paul Morigi/AP Images for Rochester Review)

For years, Stacie Pittell ’84 has carved a path in secure and well-established roles in public investigations. After graduating from Rochester as a double major in philosophy and English, and earning a JD at American University, she began her legal career as a prosecutor in the King’s County District Attorney’s office in Brooklyn, N.Y. She spent 15 years at the New York City Department of Investigation, and in 2008, moved to Washington, D.C., to become the assistant inspector general for investigations.

This past fall, she dove into something new—in essence, a public sector start-up—when she accepted the position of general counsel for the brand new District of Columbia Board of Ethics and Government Accountability.

“I was both intrigued and excited by the idea of starting up a new agency,” she says of her move. “The board serves an important function—to restore the public’s confidence in the integrity of our local government—and I wanted to be part of making that happen.”

The three-member ethics board comes after a spate of highly publicized investigations and improprieties. A campaign aide to the mayor, as well as two city council members, have been tied to separate incidents in the past couple of years. Pittell, refraining from comment on any particulars, says “misconduct is the exception, rather than the rule” and that government needs to be more accountable to citizens and more transparent.

The District has long faced unique hurdles in prosecuting crimes in local government. As the nation’s capitol, it’s owned by the federal government. In 1973, Congress granted the city limited autonomy under the Home Rule Act. But the law included several restrictions on the ability of local officials to prosecute crime. The city has no elected district attorney, for example, to prosecute serious offenses. Only the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia can do that. For years, some activists have criticized the office—the only U.S. attorney’s office responsible for prosecuting local and well as federal offenses—for failing to prosecute many offenses local officials have referred there.

According to Mike DeBonis, who covers District politics for the Washington Post, the new board won’t address complaints about the U.S. attorney’s office entirely—full prosecutorial authority remains in that office and it requires a higher standard of evidence than the board—but the board will be able to extract stiff administrative penalties and fines. He adds that among the most important aspects of the board is that it has “a dedicated staff to investigate ethics complaints.”

Leading that staff of investigators is Pittell. “I’m not only new, I’m the first general counsel,” she says, underscoring just how much is yet to be determined. A few things are certain, however, and one is that Pittell will act as both an investigator and a prosecutor. She’ll oversee investigations of misconduct allegations, and in cases where the evidence warrants it, bring cases into open adversarial hearings before the board.

“When we got Stacie, it was our greatest coup,” says Darrin Sobin, the former D.C. assistant attorney general who’s now the board’s first executive director. “She brought many years of investigative experience, and it really says something about her character that she was willing to take a chance on a start-up organization, to do something she felt was important to the people of the District.”

The board also provides ethics advice and training, meaning that Pittell, as general counsel, will perform those roles as well. They’re new to her, but they’re ones she’s glad to take on. “I’ve never been in that kind of position before, where you see people at the front end,” she says. “They want to do the right thing. And they’d rather not do it than do the wrong thing.”

Pittell estimates that as of this spring, the board gets about two requests for advice on any given day. “As we get our name out there,” she says, “it’s picking up.”

The board publishes all its formal opinions on its website. Pittell believes the board’s open operations will encourage public confidence. She notes that the board’s monthly public meetings, have been well attended so far. “People come and participate,” she says. “We post a written agenda beforehand, we have issues that we put out, and people have an opportunity to come and speak. We’ve gotten good ideas from people.”

The stakes for the board’s success are high. In D.C.—a city that can’t pass its budget without the approval of Congress—political corruption always brings with it the risk of more federal intervention.

Pittell puts it starkly. “You don’t want to have problem after problem and scandal after scandal and have the federal government look at you and say, ‘You can’t run your own city.’ ”

Is There an Alumnus App for That?

It’s a book . . . It’s a recording . . . No, it’s an app! Short for “application software,” the small programs designed for smartphones, tablets, and other mobile devices are multimedia creations. A combination of text, visual elements, and often, sound, they’re the creations of a new type of author.

Our Journey in the Hospital

Fran Panzella London ’86N, ’91N (MS), a health care education specialist at Phoenix Children’s Hospital in Arizona, designed the app to help parents with children in the hospital communicate with their health care team and identify what they need to know before taking their child home. For iPad, iPhone, and Android phone.

ThoughtCloud

Novall Khan ’09, a researcher at Harvard’s Schacter Memory Lab, has developed the stress-reduction app based on the principles of cognitive behavioral therapy and mindfulness meditation. The app aids users in the observation and awareness of negative thoughts and in letting negative thoughts go. For iPhone.

In the News

Jo Anne Pedro-Carroll ’84 (PhD) Lends Helping Hand on Sesame Street

newsHOW SHE GOT TO SESAME STREET: Pedro-Carroll, an expert on children and divorce, wrote an award-winning book that captured the attention of the nonprofit Sesame Workshop. (Photo: Courtesy of Joanne Pedro-Carroll/Sesame Workshop)

Sesame Street’s Abby Cadabby got some solid advice on coping with her parents’ divorce from clinical psychologist Jo Anne Pedro-Carroll ’84 (PhD). Now she’s sharing that advice with her young fans.

An expert on children and divorce, Pedro-Carroll was hired as a consultant to Sesame Workshop, the digital educational initiative affiliated with the classic PBS children’s television show Sesame Street. Pedro-Carroll was among four experts who shaped the multimedia project “Little Children, Big Challenges: Divorce.” The project, designed for children ages two to eight, includes resources for parents, such as a guide and online toolkit, as well as for children.

In a DVD and a storybook, the muppet Abby Cadabby—who’s lived alongside Big Bird and friends on Sesame Street since 2006—shares with her young fans her feelings and experiences before, during, and after her parents’ divorce.

Pedro-Carroll is the author of the 2010 book Putting Children First: Proven Parenting Strategies for Helping Children Thrive Through Divorce (Penguin).

Norman Neureiter ’52 Honored by Austrian Government

Norman Neureiter ’52 has been awarded the Austrian Cross of Honour for Science and Art. The award, bestowed by the Austrian government, recognized Neureiter for his work with the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, founded in 1972 to bring scientists across the Cold War divide together to address global problems. The institute, which today includes member nations from five continents, is located near Vienna.

Neureiter, a chemist and the acting director of the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s Center for Science, Technology, and Security Policy, was honored by the Japanese government in 2011. He received the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold and Silver Star decoration, in recognition of his work promoting cooperation between the United States and Japan in science.

At Carnegie Hall, an Eastman Collaboration

Carnegie Hall was the stage for an Eastman artistic reunion this spring. In April, classical guitarist Peter Fletcher ’95E (MM) performed Diary of a Camino, by Jeremy Gill ’96E, as part of a concert honoring the 120th anniversary of the birth of composer Federico Mompou. Gill wrote the piece for Fletcher, who recorded Federico Mompou: Guitar Works (Centaur) in 2002. Diary of a Camino was inspired by a walk Gill took along the Camino Francés—an ancient pilgrimage route to the Galician city of Santiago de Compostela, where Mompou lectured.

A Tokyo Gathering

tokyo (Photo: Alumni Relations)

In November 2012, alumni and friends of Arts, Sciences & Engineering in Japan gathered in Tokyo for an event hosted by Joanna Olmsted, dean of the School of Arts & Sciences. Pictured are (front row, left to right) Jagdish Khemani (parent), Christopher Wells ’75, Harutaka Takahashi ’85 (PhD), Yusuke Shimizu ’02; (middle row) Karla Toledo, Masako Nakano, Sally Battan-Yanai ’77 (MA), Eri Miyauchi ’09, Motoshige Itoh ’79 (PhD), Ayuko Itoh ’77 (MA), Yutaka Kano ’63 (PhD), Yoshimasa Yamazaki ’81D (Pdc), Toshio Takahashi ’99 (PhD), Marc Olsson ’90; (back row) Richard Solomon ’78, Yutaka Homma ’83S (MBA), Olmsted, Gennosuke Takahashi ’96, Ogi Takahashi ’08, Daryl DuLong ’03, ’06S (MBA), Yohay Wakabayashi ’10, ’11 (MS), Eric Fandrich ’89, ’92S (MBA), and Kevin Weekley.

TRIBUTE

Margaret Bond ’47: ‘A Savvy Guide to All Things Editorial’

tributeSHARP-EYED AND ERUDITE: Bond oversaw Rochester Review from 1979 to 2001. (Photo: University Communications)

When Margaret Bond ’47 retired in 2001 as University editor—at that time, the editorial voice of Rochester Review—she had, remarkably, worked at the University for more than a third of its history. And in fact, her appreciation for the University had begun even earlier.

Both of her parents were University graduates, and, well before her own undergraduate days at the College for Women on Prince Street, “I remember how I used to read the alumni magazine when it arrived at the house, with never a thought that my acquaintance with the publication would ever become rather more intimate,” she later said.

Upon graduating with distinction, she started working at the College for Women in its library, alumnae office, and registrar’s office. She then took an opening as a secretary (“what else was a female French major to do in those days if she didn’t want to teach?”) in the University’s public information office, and from 1951 to 1965 worked her way up through various editorial positions. When the Memorial Art Gallery decided to establish a public relations department, she became its head and remained so until 1979.

It was then that Margaret was offered the job of University editor and associate director of University communications, with the primary responsibility of overseeing Rochester Review. From a first-floor corner office of Wallis Hall, Margaret was a savvy guide to all things editorial.

What does a good editor do when tempers flare, writers complain that an editor has messed up the copy, destroyed the idea, ruined the punch line? In moments of quiet reflection, those same writers will grudgingly acknowledge (at least to themselves) that a skillful editor has made their writing—even what started as well-crafted prose—that much better, that much more compelling. Margaret made all of her colleagues look good. Indeed, her editorial advice was sought out by many outside of the communications office. Her sharp eye and erudition made her a ready resource for administrators across the campuses.

Margaret, who died in March at the age of 87, had a wry wit that always helped to cast things in their proper light. Her continuing flexibility was remarkable, as she witnessed the somewhat daunting transitions from typewriter to computer, from hot type to cold type, from letter to email, from one century to the next.

Ultimately, she edited Rochester Review for 22 years and stayed long enough to preside over the 2000 sesquicentennial publication of the pictorial Beside the Genesee, written by Jan LaMartina Waxman ’81N. After all, who better to mastermind such an account than the sharp-eyed editor who personally witnessed so much of that history?

—Robert Kraus ’71

Kraus was director—and later, associate vice president—of public relations at Rochester, from 1984 to 2005.

Books & Recordings

Books

Edmund Burke in America: The Contested Career of the Father of Modern Conservatism

By Drew Maciag ’05 (PhD)

Cornell University Press, 2013

Historian Maciag draws on American opinions about the British political philosopher Burke to trace the patterns of liberal and conservative thinking in the United States from the onset of the American Revolution to the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

Where Madness Follows: The Search for Gold in the Amazon Jungle

By Anthony Boccaccio ’71

Self-published, 2013

Boccaccio, a photographer in Spokane, Wash., presents 238 images he shot over four decades, documenting the construction of Brazil’s Transamazonic Highway and the gold rush that ensued. The book also includes text based on Boccaccio’s encounters with road builders, missionaries, gold miners, prostitutes, and others. The book is available on www.blurb.com.

Quantifying Systemic Risk

Edited by Joseph Haubrich ’85 (PhD) and Andrew Lo

University of Chicago Press, 2013

Haubrich, a vice president and economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland, and Lo present approaches to measuring statistical financial risk from a system-wide perspective. Among topics discussed are “the challenges of tying regulations to specific quantitative measures, the effects of learning and adaptation on the evolution of the market, and the distinction between the shocks that start a crisis and the mechanisms that enable it to grow.”

Cronkite’s War: His World War II Letters Home

Edited by Maurice Isserman ’79 (PhD) and Walter Cronkite IV

National Geographic, 2013

Isserman, the Publius Virgilius Rogers Professor of American History at Hamilton College, and Cronkite, the grandson of the late CBS Evening News anchorman, present the letters, along with contextual commentary, of the venerable journalist when he was a young war correspondent.

Barnaby, Volume One

Edited by Philip Nel ’92, Eric Reynolds, and Daniel Clowes

Fantagraphics, 2013

Nel, professor of English and director of the program in children’s literature at Kansas State University, coedits the first of an eventual five-volume series of the classic comic strip by Crockett Johnson. The first volume covers the years 1942 to 1952.

Climate Change and Indigenous Peoples: The Search for Legal Remedies

Edited by Randall Abate ’86 and Elizabeth Ann Kronk

Edward Elgar Publishing, 2013

Abate, associate professor of law and director of the Center for International Law and Justice at Florida A&M University’s law school, and Kronk detail problems of indigenous communities related to climate change and explore possible legal solutions to the international problem.

Foxavier and Plinka

By Scott Evans ’84

Self-published, 2013

Evans tells the story of “a 40-year-old virgin with OCD being driven crazy by diets and junk food” and a woman with bipolar disorder who meet and “ride a roller coaster of love.”

The Chinese Finger Trap

By Josh Stillman ’12

Aventine Press, 2013

Stillman tells the story of Jake, a sophomore in a new high school, struggling with learning disabilities. When Jake finally succeeds, the principal accuses him of cheating.

How to Be a Global Nonprofit: Legal and Practical Guidance for International Activities

By Lisa Norton ’78

John Wiley & Sons, 2013

Norton, a Seattle attorney, examines the legal and practical problems nonprofits face when operating internationally, using 10 detailed case studies to provide insights into the ways successful organizations have dealt with such complexities.

Almanac of United States Coins

Edited by Dennis Tucker ’94

Whitman Publishing, 2013

Tucker offers an illustrated catalog for hobbyists as well as casual coin collectors. The catalog includes detailed color photographs, retail price charts, insider tips on valuable coins, and “stories about historic hoards, shipwrecks, and other coin treasures.”

Nonviolence in Theory and Practice (Third Edition)

Edited by Robert Holmes and Barry Gan ’70, ’84 (PhD)

Waveland Press, 2012

Holmes, professor emeritus of philosophy at Rochester, and Gan, professor of philosophy at St. Bonaventure University, present a third edition of an anthology of writings from theorists and practitioners of nonviolence. The new edition includes writings on Islam and nonviolence, as well as additional selections from Thomas Merton and Mahatma Gandhi.

New American Teenagers: The Lost Generation of Youth in 1970s Film

By Barbara Jane Brickman ’05 (PhD)

Continuum Press, 2012

Examining films such as The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Halloween, and Badlands, Brickman, associate professor of English and film studies at the University of West Georgia, demonstrates the ways in which 1970s teen films challenged and reworked the male, heterosexual ideal of their parents’ generation, personified by James Dean.

Clinical Neurology for Psychiatrists (Seventh Edition)

By David Myland Kaufman ’64

Elsevier/Saunders, 2013

Kaufman, professor of neurology and of psychiatry at Yeshiva University’s Albert Einstein College of Medicine, presents a new edition of his reference on neurologic conditions, designed for psychiatrists preparing for the psychiatry board exam.

The Challenge of Congressional Representation

By Richard Fenno ’06 (Honorary)

Harvard University Press, 2013

Based on research conducted over decades, Fenno, the William R. Kenan Professor Emeritus of Political Science at Rochester, presents portraits of one current and four former members of Congress, from across the nation and the ideological spectrum. Focusing on the relationships between these members and their constituents, Fenno demonstrates the significance of the nonquantifiable, human elements of political negotiation.

Values Clarification in Counseling and Psychotherapy: Practical Strategies for Individual and Group Settings

By Howard Kirschenbaum

Oxford University Press, 2013

Kirschenbaum, professor emeritus in the Department of Counseling and Human Development in the Warner School, explores the ways in which counselors help their patients articulate values in order to set goals, make decisions, and take action. The book includes case studies and clinical examples to help counselors pose effective clarifying questions to their patients.

The Abyss: A Test and Triumph of Everlasting Love

By James Mullen ’65

Xlibris, 2012

Mullen chronicles the struggle of his wife, Judy, who suffered multiple brain aneurysms over an eight-month period. The book tells of her effort to regain short and long-term memory, cognitive and physical abilities, and the “ultimate triumph of her journey.”

Crime Victims: An Introduction to Victimology (Eighth Edition)

By Andrew Karmen ’68 (MS)

Wadsworth/Cengage Learning, 2013

Karmen, professor of sociology at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, offers a new edition of “a textbook about the plight of crime victims, their legal rights, and their struggle for justice.”

Nimroz Provincial Handbook: A Guide to the People and the Province

By Richard Cavagnol ’64 et al

IDS International, 2010

Cavagnol, a former USAID field program officer in Nimroz Province, Afghanistan, coauthors a guide for civilian and military personnel and others, covering topics such as tribal life, language, culture, history, government, and the economy.

Recordings

Mosaic

By Arabesque Winds

Arabesque Winds, 2013

The woodwind quintet formed at Eastman in 2005—including flutist Deidre Huckabay ’09E, oboist Liz Spector- Callahan ’09E, clarinetist Isabel Kim ’09, and bassoonist Eryn Bauer ’10E—performs works by Ligeti, Bach, Nielsen, and Ravel.

The Shift

By John Serry ’75E, ’91E (MM)

Self-published, 2013

Jazz pianist and composer Serry performs original compositions, accompanied by percussionist Mark Mondesir, bassist Sam Burgess, and saxophonist David O’Higgins.

Weill–Ibert–Berg

By the Baton Rouge Symphony Chamber Players

Sono Luminus, 2012

The Baton Rouge Symphony Chamber Players, including violinist John Gilbert ’81E and cellist George Work ’79E, ’81E (MM), under the direction of Timothy Muffitt ’95E (DMA), perform concerti by Kurt Weill, Jaques Ibert, and Alban Berg.

Affinity

By Annika Vitolo ’89

Self-published, 2013

Vitolo, a singer, songwriter, and pianist, performs 15 original adult contemporary songs.

Freedom in the Air

By Barry Long ’07E (DMA)

Barry Long Music, 2013

Long, a trumpeter, flugelhornist, assistant professor of music, and director of the jazz ensemble at Bucknell University, performs improvisations, recorded live in 2012 on the Bucknell campus, and in response to iconic civil rights photography. Tenor saxophonist David Pope ’97E (MM) was also part of the performance, along with bassist Joshua Davis and percussionist Phil Haynes.

Books & Recordings is a compilation of recent work by University alumni, faculty, and staff. For inclusion in an upcoming issue, send the work’s title, publisher information, author, and author’s class year, along with a brief description, to Books & Recordings, Rochester Review, 22 Wallis Hall, P. O. Box 270044, University of Rochester, Rochester, NY 14627-0044; or by e-mail to rochrev@rochester.edu.

Lawyers on Facebook

Niki Black ’92 explores how Internet technology and social media are transforming the legal profession.

black (Illustration: David Cowles for Rochester Review)

I started off my career very traditionally.﻿ I was a public defender for four years and worked for a firm in Rochester for four years. But I knew I wasn’t on the right path and took a break to reflect on my next steps. It was right about then that I realized my field was in the midst of a drastic change. I had lunch with my cousin, an attorney in town, and I told him I was planning to hang out a shingle and do some contract work for other lawyers. He said, “By the way, I heard about this thing called blogging on NPR this morning. You might want to look into that.” This was 2005.

I started my first blog, called Sui Generis—A New York Law Blog, then. So much came from that blog in terms of where I am now.﻿ Now I have a second blog, Legal iPad, which is about digital technologies for lawyers; I have a weekly column in The Daily Record, a source for legal news in western New York; I’ve coauthored three books [most recently, Cloud Computing for Lawyers (American Bar Association)]; and I’m director of business development and community relations for MyCase, a producer of a cloud-based law practice management system.

There’s a long history in the legal field of doing things in a certain way and lawyers are very reluctant to change.﻿ Law is precedent-based. That’s where we get all of our arguments—on prior cases and the way things were. There’s also tradition, and the fact that the economy tanked. Lawyers are so busy trying to make ends meet for the most part. It’s hard to make a living and also keep track of this unbelievable change that’s occurred in technology.

Niki Black ’92

Rochester, N.Y. Director of business development and community relations for MyCase, in San Diego;

attorney, blogger, author, speaker, and tweeter at @nikiblack.

On life at Rochester before the Internet and cell phones: “I spent so much time in the Commons waiting in line for that phone.”

When it comes to social media, the biggest concerns all along have been client confidentiality and the risk of being perceived as unprofessional by interacting in these informal ways.﻿ A lot of ethical issues come up. Should you friend clients on Facebook? What could happen if you do? And it takes time to understand all of the different platforms and how to interact on them.

In the last year-and-a-half or so, lawyers have started using social media in cases.﻿ They’re researching witnesses’ social media accounts, it’s being used against their clients in cases, all of a sudden there’s an extreme interest in understanding something that they sort of pooh-poohed over the last four years. It’s actually affecting the practice of law.

More lawyers and firms are turning to cloud-based practice management. There are actually a lot of benefits in terms of disaster back up.﻿ After Hurricane Sandy, firms that couldn’t get into their buildings were out of business for a week. The ones that were in the cloud, once they had Internet access, were able to work. Lawyers are also starting to interact with clients in the cloud. There the lawyer creates permissions, but clients can access their data, they can access the calendar, and they can communicate with you in a secure environment instead of email, since email is like a postcard being written in pencil and mailed through the post office.

I speak at a lot of conferences, and social media has made those better.﻿ People connect online and they get to know each other. That means they’re more likely to show up. Once they’re there, the walls are knocked down more quickly. It’s not stuffy. People are able to network a lot more effectively. You can’t replace face-to-face interaction, but all these virtual interactions supplement it.

A Labyrinth Walk

backcover (Photo: Adam Fenster)

MEDITATIVE MAZE: The Rev. Denise Yarbrough, director of religious and spiritual life in the College (left) and Larry Broser of Brighton, N.Y., walk a labyrinth set up in the Interfaith Chapel this spring. An ancient spiritual practice common to many religious traditions, walking a labyrinth is a form of active meditation. Appointed late last year, Yarbrough introduced the activity this winter to the chapel’s programs.