alumni

Shasha Seminar: Exploring Histories of Race

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Each year Wesleyan hosts the Shasha Seminar for Human Concerns, bringing together scholars, students, faculty and alumni in an intensive series of lectures and discussions. Past programs have focused on popular culture, on environmentalism, on ethics and on international problems of violence. I remember the series of talks on food, which really made me think more carefully about the intersection of politics and economics on my kitchen table. And Joss Whedon’s 2009 discussion of how film and TV projects get made was funny and insightful. This year’s Shasha program, which runs from April 8-10, will explore ideas of race and how they have evolved over time.

Ideas concerning race have a long history, and it’s a history that continues to have powerful reverberations on politics and culture today. The organizer of the program, Andrew Curran of Romance Languages at Wes, has written on the history of the idea of race in relation to concepts of human origins, with a particular emphasis on the age of Enlightenment. The keynote speaker, Nell Painter, Honorary ’96, who for many years was a distinguished member of the history department at Princeton, has written the influential The History of White People, which will be the basis for her remarks on Saturday night. A leading historian of the United States, Prof. Painter is also an accomplished artist. Other discussions will explore race and science, the vicissitudes of race-thinking in Latin America and in China, and the ways that the idea of race still affects our conception of the human.

The Shasha Seminar offers a distinctive way of diving deep into a timely subject area in the company of curious, thoughtful and engaged participants. Alumni and parents join with students and outside experts to create an exceptionally lively series of conversations. If you are interested in learning more about the program, or in signing up for it, you can find information here.

Thinking of our friends in Japan

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The news from Japan has been wrenching, and the human toll of the earthquake and tsunami is heartbreaking. Wesleyan has scores of alumni, faculty and friends in Japan right now, and our hearts go out to them in this terrible time of need.

If alma mater can be helpful in any way, please let us know.

If readers of this blog would like to support organizations responding to this emergency, you can find a list here.

Our Joshua Boger ’73: Philosopher, Chemist, Entrepreneur

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Yesterday I received an email from a friend who has a relative who suffers from cystic fibrosis, “an inherited disease that causes thick, sticky mucus to build up in the lungs and digestive tract. It is one of the most common chronic lung diseases in children and young adults, and may result in early death.” She was writing because she had just heard about the amazing results that Vertex Pharmaceuticals had achieved with a drug it had created to eliminate almost all symptoms of a form of this dreaded disease. The jury is still out, but the results so far are inspiring. My friend had read that Vertex was founded by Joshua Boger. “Is that our Joshua Boger?” she asked.

It is our Joshua Boger ’73, P’06,’09, Chair of Wesleyan’s Board of Trustees. He reported the following to me:

We basically transformed most of these patients into biochemical normals; using biochemistry you could not tell they had a major metabolic defect, because we fixed it with one tiny pill twice a day.  Average lung function went, in 30 days or so, from barely being able to climb stairs to being in normal activity indistinguishable from the usual American coach potato.  We added on average a pint to every one of their breaths.  Some patents ran across a room for the first time in ten years.  Hospitalizable lung issues dropped 50%.  Patients, who have a hard time keeping up normal weight because the defect affects food absorption, gained an average of 7 pounds over six months.  All the effects are sustained through the entire study.  Side effects leading to stopping participation in the trial were something like 5x higher in the placebo group than the drug group.  It is without qualification the most spectacular clinical result I have ever seen.   Transformative.  First oral drug for any genetic disease that addresses the genetically defective protein directly.  A major paradigm shift in drug discovery.

And only took 13 years from start till here!  We should have this on the market by the first of next year.  Good stuff.

Joshua was a philosophy and chemistry major at Wesleyan, and he founded his biotech company to “transform the way serious diseases are treated” (the company’s other major drug in production is for Hepatitis C). He’s told me more than once that he has a “high tolerance for ambiguity,” and I can see how he thinks of the long run. These drugs take a decade or more to develop. They also have the potential to make a lasting difference in the lives of thousands of people.

I was so proud to respond to my friend that yes, that’s Wesleyan’s Joshua Boger. He is on campus today for our Board of Trustee meetings (he also chairs the board of the Harvard Medical School). If you see him wandering around campus this weekend, please say “congratulations and thank you!”

Writers Among Us!

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There are so many extraordinary writers coming through campus these days that I find it hard to keep up. James Kaplan ’73 came back to campus last week to talk about his new Frank Sinatra biography The Voice. Kaplan was an art major at Wes and has gone on to a distinguished writing career. Alas, I was out of town visiting with alumni, but I hear it was a wonderful reading. Sarah Ruhl, a MacArthur genius award winner whose Vibrator Play shook up Broadway last year, talked to a large crowd in the Chapel. She also met with students who are currently rehearsing her Melancholy Play, directed by Michael Rau ’05. Performances are scheduled for February 24, 25, 26th. How exciting it must have been for the performers to talk with the writer about their interpretation of her work!

The feast continued this week with Liz Lerman reading from her new Wesleyan Press Book, Hiking the Horizontal: Field Notes from a Choreographer. Liz has been working with Wesleyan students and faculty for years, and it was great to hear from her “notes.” Liz’s artistic practice is predicated on breaking down the boundaries between media and between disciplines. At Wesleyan, she has worked closely with scientists on embodied learning, and this work has resulted in some remarkable dance pieces. Be on the lookout for the performances from her group later this semester.

Tonight, February 16 at 8 in the Chapel, Michael Cunningham will be on campus as the Annie Sonnenblick Lecturer. Cunningham, the author of several novels, including The Hours and the recent By Nightfall, will read from his work and then be on campus for a couple of days to offer master classes for Wesleyan students. It will be thrilling for our young writers to talk with Cunningham about his fiction and his work for film.

These events are just a sample of the creative writing energy that is percolating on campus. The English Department and the Writing Certificate Program, the Koeppel Visiting Professor in Journalism and the Kim-Frank University Writer in Residence are all catalysts for new student writing. On top of it all, Amy Bloom offers regular opportunities in the Shapiro Creative Writing Center to meet together to discuss how to get that sentence just right. Now there’s something I should be attending!

Liberal Learning and the University of the Future

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I’m just back from the annual meeting of the American Association of Colleges and Universities. The AAC&U is dedicated to “making the aims of liberal learning a vigorous and constant influence on institutional purpose and educational practice in higher education.” — That’s the mission statement, and today the organization works with a wide variety of schools to develop learning outcomes, democratic and inclusive practices, and coherent curricula consistent with the evolution of the liberal arts.

My first task there was to respond to a talk by Mark C. Taylor, whose book Crisis on Campus I’d reviewed in the Los Angeles Times. Mark is a Wesleyan graduate, who taught at Williams for decades and is now Chair of the Religion Department at Columbia University. Mark calls for the creation of a postmodern university, which for him means moving from silos to networks, abolishing departments and tenure, and organizing problems-oriented teaching teams. If we don’t act now, he foresees a deepening crisis in higher education akin to the housing bubble of recent years.

I emphasized some of the key areas about which Mark and I agree. He is right on the money in attacking the powerful, long-term trends toward specialization in university culture, trends which have a decidedly negative impact on undergraduate education. At many schools this has led to a fragmentation of intellectual life, with powerful departments defending their own interests without regard to the welfare of the institution as a whole. Who is going to articulate a holistic vision for undergraduate education when only specialized success is awarded professional prestige?

I have written elsewhere on the importance of giving our students the capacity for translation, or intellectual cross-training, that will allow them to tap into multiple networks of inquiry. Unlike Mark Taylor, I do not think that abolishing tenure will help in this regard. Most schools in America have most of their classes taught by untenured faculty (often graduate students), and the result is not more freedom and breadth. Instead, the poor job conditions for these instructors seem to encourage the replication of the status quo — little innovation, much conformity to disciplinary convention. In our current political context, one in which state, federal and foundation officials are often seized with the desire to regulate public culture, the protection of academic freedom that tenure affords is crucial.

I came away from these meetings realizing how fortunate we are here at Wesleyan to have a faculty that consistently works to improve the education we offer students even as our scholar-teachers continue to help shape the professional fields in which they work. Wes has its challenges, too, including overcoming the intellectual fragmentation that often attends specialization. But we have many professors committed to this task, and that is the most important factor for building the university of the future — a university in which faculty members make student learning the priority in ways that enhance our capacity for research.

Houghton “Buck” Freeman ’43

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It is with deep sadness that I write to inform you that a great member of the Wesleyan family, Houghton “Buck” Freeman ’43, died this week in Stowe, Vermont, at the age of 89.

Buck was the son of Mary Houghton and Mansfield Freeman ’16, a distinguished scholar of Chinese philosophy and a co-founder of the international insurance firm that became known as American International Group. Buck grew up in China and acquired fluency in Mandarin. He interrupted his studies at Wesleyan to serve in the Navy during World War II and provided intelligence reports from southern China behind Japanese lines. After the war, he became the first Wesleyan student to earn a degree in Japanese. He captained the 1946 Wesleyan soccer team in a season that had only one loss (against Yale), which nearly equaled the record of Wesleyan’s undefeated team on which he had starred in 1940. In 1947 he joined AIG, where he spent the rest of his career, rising to the top levels of company leadership.

Buck, his wife Doreen Hon’03, and their son Graeme Freeman ’77 established the Freeman Foundation in 1993 after the death of Mansfield Freeman, who had contributed generously to Wesleyan’s East Asian Studies Program. The family and the Foundation continued to support the university generously. Buck and Doreen’s $5 million gift at the end of the Campaign for Liberal Learning in the 1980s was the largest single gift to that campaign, and it jump-started construction of Bacon Field House and the new pool in the Freeman Athletic Center—a project that reflected Buck’s enthusiasm for competitive athletics and fitness.

The Freeman Foundation’s landmark contribution to Wesleyan is the Freeman Asian Scholars Program. Begun in 1995, this program has provided full scholarships at Wesleyan for more than 300 talented students from Asia. The Freemans’ objective is to promote cross-cultural understanding between the United States and the countries of East Asia. Buck especially valued the affirmative culture of Wesleyan that provided a supportive context for Asian students far from home. By any measure, the Freeman Scholars Program has had a profound effect on Wesleyan, and on the many Freeman scholars who care deeply about the future of their own countries.

Buck served as a Wesleyan Trustee from 1982 to 1991, and Wesleyan awarded him an honorary doctor of laws degree in 1993. Through personal gifts and the Freeman Foundation, Buck is the largest donor in Wesleyan’s history. He showed his affection in small ways, too. When his offices were in New York City, he would sneak up to Middletown for key soccer games. On Commencement Weekend, one of his great pleasures was to attend the Phi Beta Kappa initiation of “his” Scholars. Until the last two years, he and Doreen regularly joined a fall dinner to welcome new Scholars, encourage advanced students and reconnect with alumni. On his many travels Buck enjoyed meeting with Freeman alumni and interviewing potential new students.

In recent days I have heard from former Wesleyan presidents and trustees, who have spoken of Buck’s modesty, his devotion to alma mater, and his deeply moral character. They also remembered his wry sense of humor, the twinkle in his eye when he heard about the latest news concerning the students he and Doreen considered family.

The Freemans will be gathering presently for a private ceremony. Some months from now they will plan a more public memorial, and we will share information about that when we have it. Next week we will post to the Web more information about Buck, and announce a time when we can gather on campus to acknowledge his extraordinary life.

Our hearts go out to his entire family, to his daughter Linda, and to his wife Doreen and his son Graeme, both of whom I have had the privilege of getting to know over the last few years. We have lost a devoted friend and mentor, but Buck Freeman has left an enduring legacy at Wesleyan and around the world. We will cherish his memory.

Taking a Breath and Giving Thanks

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As students begin to pack up for visits to family and friends, the campus itself seems to take a deep breath. On Thanksgiving morning the bleachers will be filled for the annual Xavier vs. Middletown High School football game, and then there will be a few days of unusual quiet (he writes, hopefully). I met with my class yesterday, and when they return there will only be a couple of weeks left in the semester. The term flies by so quickly! This brief pause in the semester’s frenetic activities gives us the opportunity to remember the things for which we are grateful. I’ll just mention a few here:

Students: When I met with a group of sons and daughters of Wesleyan alumni this weekend, I told them that the key aspect in finding the right school is to get a feel for the student culture that has developed on campus over the years. Wesleyan continues to attract marvelously creative, hard-working, fun-loving and civic-minded young people who make the most of their time in Middletown. I am grateful to be able to teach them, learn from them, and cheer as they strive to perform at the highest level.

Faculty: During the Thanksgiving “break” professors here will be grading exams, commenting on papers, or writing their own articles and books. The scholar-teachers at Wesleyan are remarkable for their dedication, their caring and rigorous approach to students, and their consistent ability to shape the scholarly fields in which they work.  I am proud to be their colleague, and grateful to work side by side with them.

Staff: Often the unsung heroes of the campus are the hundreds of employees who make the place run. From planning events for prospective students to making sure graduation and reunion go smoothly, our staff have impressively high standards for the work they do. And they consistently meet those standards even in difficult times. Wesleyan benefits so much from the support and creative problem solving abilities of its staff, and my family and I are lucky to live and work in a place where dedication and hard work are built into the fabric of the campus.

Alumni and Parents: Meeting alumni and parents from around the world who are active in a wide array of endeavors has been one of the most enjoyable aspects of being president here. They are proud of alma mater and eager to be helpful to current students beginning to make their way in the world. I am so thankful for the generosity and thoughtfulness of the extended Wesleyan community.

Above all, I am grateful for the patience, support and affection of my family. They make everything else possible, and I’m looking forward to having a little extra time with them during this break.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Wes-Tech celebrates Dana Royer

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Not long ago I wrote about Wade Hsu, a recent grad who was honored as having done the best undergraduate physics work in the country. This past weekend Dana Royer, an assistant professor in the Earth and Environmental Science department received the Donath Medal from the American Geological Society. The award recognizes young scientists (aged 35 or younger) for outstanding original research marking a major advance in the earth sciences. I’m delighted to cite the press release announcing the award.

“Dana is a true innovator who successfully tackles extremely important questions in paleoclimatology and paleoecology, in part using paleobotanical proxies calibrated with a remarkable series of careful modern analog studies,” said Peter D. Wilf of Pennsylvania State University in nominating Royer for the honor. “He often connects the deep-time climate and CO2 record to the present day in highly societally-relevant ways that are widely cited in the ‘modern’ climate change literature.” Wilf also said, “Without Dana’s contributions we would know much less about Earth’s climate history and its great importance to today’s world.”

“In the rapidly developing field of plant paleoecology and ecophysiology, Dana Royer stands out in terms of innovation and sheer breadth and depth of knowledge. He is truly an emerging leader in the geological sciences,” said Leo Hickey, professor of geology and Curator of Paleobotany at Yale University.

Dana is also part of our new College of the Environment. He describes his research as exploring “how plants can be used to reconstruct ancient environments and the (paleo-) physiological underpinnings behind these plant-environment relationships.” This basic research about our deep past is very relevant to understanding our contemporary ecological context. Isn’t that what our scholar-teacher model is all about? A dedicated teacher doing advanced research that opens onto pressing issues relevant to all of us.

And Dana received his award in Colorado, where a former Wesleyan geology student is the mayor of Denver and (today!) collecting votes in hopes of becoming the state’s next governor. How cool is that!

Coming Home to Wesleyan

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I returned to Middletown late Tuesday night after my annual fall break trip out West. This year I spent a couple of days in Denver visiting with alumni before heading to my old stomping grounds in the Bay Area. In Colorado I saw some happy Wes parents and our two candidates for state-wide office, Michael Bennet ’87 and John Hickenlooper ’74. They both have serious races on their hands, and I was impressed with the fervor and the organization of their teams. I met some recent graduates who are committed to public service as well as alumni from decades ago who have combined very successful careers with deep civic engagement. Colorado is Wesleyan country.

In San Francisco Jack Mitchell ’61 hosted a Wes gathering in his store, Wilkes Bashford, in the Union Square district. About 100 local Cardinals came out to hear what’s happening on campus. They are eager to learn more about what faculty and students are up to — eager to understand how what made Wesleyan such a special place in their day is continuing now in new and exciting ways. As I returned to campus, I was busy re-reading Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse, which I had assigned my students for The Modern and the Post-Modern. Going to class Wednesday morning to talk about knowledge and intimacy, consciousness and gender, dynamic change and aesthetic contemplation, I was so grateful to be back on a campus where literature, ideas and history could be expected to prompt intelligent, sustained engagement from a large group of students.  At a time when one reads a lot about the crisis in the humanities, I am always encouraged by my encounters with Wes students.

In just a day or so there will be a few thousand folks coming home to campus for Homecoming/Family Weekend. Here are just a few of the events we have planned: the opening celebration for our new College of Environment that includes a Friday reception and two seminars on Saturday; an evening with Bill Cosby to support the Green Street Arts Center (Sold Out); The Dwight L. Green Symposium “Media Innovation and Democracy” featuring Alberto Ibarguen ’66;  Athletics Hall of Fame induction/dinner on Saturday night (Sold Out); and 17 Wes Seminars on Friday and Saturday on subjects ranging from music to war, from food to archaeology in Middletown. Broadway star Lin Manuel Miranda brings his  Freestyle Love Supreme on Saturday for a sold out hip-hop, improv, rap, concert. The complete schedule is online.

On Friday I have the pleasure of welcoming Trustees Emeriti back to campus for a reunion and a series of discussions. In addition to getting their advice on a number of the important issues facing Wesleyan, I’m sure we will catch some of the action as our Wes athletes take part in a great weekend of competition. Things get underway in the Silloway Gymnasium Friday night as the volleyball squad takes the court against Trinity. Runners, field hockey, soccer and football players will all be fighting for the Red&Black, while the crew teams are busy this weekend at the Head of the Charles Regatta.

If you can’t make it back to campus this weekend, look for clips of the various events online in the coming weeks. We’ll use the Wesleyan YouTube channel and iTunes University to share the excitement!

 

Wesleyaning into the Future!

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Last weekend the Wesleyan Board of Trustees was in town for its annual retreat. The trustees, almost all alumni along with several parents of Wes students, gathered this year to focus on two major topics: building the long-term economic health of the university, and imagining how Wes will look 30 or 50 years from now. We were joined by faculty, staff and students, and the discussions were animated and productive.

On Saturday we looked at the general profile of the endowment — past, present and future. There are three key ingredients to building an endowment strong enough to provide annual revenue for the operations of the school: gifts, spending, and investment performance. Over the last three years we have shifted our fundraising priorities so that we now invest more of the gifts we receive rather than spending them, and we have reduced the percentage that we draw from the endowment. Finally, we have hired Anne Martin, formerly a Director in the Yale Investment Office, to provide wise stewardship of our investment portfolio. Anne led the retreat participants in some exercises that explored how we choose the asset classes in which we invest, and how we choose managers within those classes. Everyone left with a greater understanding of how our investment operation works.

We also discussed endowment fund raising at some length, since all trustees are active friendraisers and fundraisers for the university. Chair Joshua Boger led us in some creative exercises in which we thought about our highest aspirations for Wes and how we might envision taking steps to act on them. One trustee suggested that we find a way over the next decades to do so much good for our students and the world that Wesleyan becomes a verb!

This week we had our inaugural faculty meeting of the year. Department chairs introduced more than a dozen new professors who are joining our ranks across all divisions. These are extraordinary scholar-teachers who have already begun making their mark. Listening to the descriptions of their research and the classes they are teaching filled me with confidence in the ongoing rejuvenation of our curriculum and of our ability to shape scholarly fields through original contributions.

I was Wesleyaned!

[tags]Board of Trustees, endowment, Anne Martin, Joshua Boger, fund raising[/tags]