Barnard Magazine Winter 2019

WINTER 2020

Torchbearers Aarya Shah ’23 follows her grandmother’s trailblazing lead almost 70 years after Bhinda Malla Shah ’56 made history

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COVER STORY

DEPARTMENTS

20 Legacy of Love

2 Letters 3 President’s Page 4 Editor’s Letter 5 Through the Gates

by Aarya Shah ’23 Sixty-seven years after making history as the first woman from Nepal to attend college in the U.S. (and later becoming an ambassador), Bhinda Malla Shah ’56 shares her story Cover image of Aarya Shah ’23 and composite

by Jonathan King; 1956 photograph of Bhinda Malla Shah courtesy of Barnard Archives

Congratulations & Welcome Convocation Opens Academic Year LEADERSHIP Forward Momentum ARTS The Campus Welcomes a Queen FIRST-YEARS EVENTS

7 Accolades 10 Salon BOOKS Winter

FEATURES 26 The Barnard Effect

by Kira Goldenberg ’07 As trailblazers and mentors, the College’s scholars and alumnae have especially influenced the disciplines of anthropology, psychology, and creative writing

Reads Leaning Out WOMEN IN SCIENCE Driven to Discover ALUMNA PROFILE A Warrior for Healing BREAK THIS DOWN The Truth About “T” FIRST-PERSON

38 Sources

Barnard Gave Back on Giving Day 39 Alumnae Association

30 Collegial Colleagues

by Marjorie Ingall Peek in on five workplaces graced with multiple generations of Barnard grads, all sharing history, resources, and, of course, a fridge

PRESIDENT'S REPORT ELECTION 2020 Your

Service in Action AABC Board Nominees

41 Class Notes ALUMNAE PROFILES Sharde Simpson ’08, Audrey Heimler ’53, Shristi Mittal ’09

74 Last Image

by Geraldine Pontius ’68 76 Last Word

by Eve-Lynn Siegel Gardner ’94

BARNARD MAGAZINE WINTER 2020 1

LETTERS

with the club, I urge you to do so. We’d love to have you be part of our desert community.

—Paula Lieber Schlusberg ’70

EDITORIAL Liz Galst ART DIRECTOR David Hopson COPY EDITOR Molly Frances PRODUCTION DIRECTOR Lisa Buonaiuto WRITER Veronica Suchodolski ’19 STUDENT INTERNS Solby Lim ’22, Sarah Patafio ’20, Isabella Pechaty ’23, Danielle Slepyan ’22, Angela Tran ’22 EDITOR

Join Us in Tucson I must admit, I was completely taken in at first by “Life of an Alumna” in the Summer 2019 issue. Glancing at the descriptions of the various alumnae, my eye was caught by Marian, who’d retired to Tucson, where she “began hosting impromptu brunches with her alumnae neighbors and joined the Barnard Club of Tucson.” As a longtime member of that club, and as club treasurer, I wondered why I didn’t know Marian — or have her on my membership list. And I really wondered who was getting invited to those brunches, which sounded like a lot of fun.

I even checked with our club president.

Luckily, before I sent an inquiry out to our general membership (and made a bit of a fool of myself), I looked back at the article and finally saw the note that said the characters were fictional and “meant to inspire engagement with Barnard.”

So, no Marian and no brunches. But I can at least say that the Barnard Club of Tucson is real and quite active, with periodic museum trips, theater visits, “field trips” to spots around southern Arizona, and a long-standing book club that always reminds me of how stimulating it is to get together with other Barnard women to share thoughtful discussions of the books and then solve the problems of the world. So, if you’re in the Tucson/southern Arizona area and have not yet connected 2

Think Before Acting I read the “Barnard Memory” from Rena Bonne ’68 in the Fall 2019 issue and was stunned. As I read it, she praised her friend for slapping a guy ... who was rude to her at a restaurant. She praised her for having taken “all the insult she’d felt in that moment and given it right back.”

We often see that sort of response from small children. Even with our small children, we do not accept it: We instruct them to use words instead of violence. As children grow, we teach them how to react to insults by learning how to develop and offer a reasoned response while keeping their eyes on the “big picture” goal, so as to avoid being caught up in the heat of the moment. In my adult workplace, we similarly do not accept childish outbursts.

But as this article illustrates, behaving like an adult is becoming the exception rather than the rule and, even in the eyes of the Barnard Magazine editors, less praiseworthy. Worse than this, it is a double standard: If a man had hauled off and slapped a woman who he felt offended him, he would be rightly arrested for assault.

For my part, I will continue to try to raise my children for a better world and work with people who want to work together. And we will ignore the world that praises instant (and misplaced) violence against people who we feel insult us. Respecting other people is especially important when those people disagree with us, even when we feel offended or disrespected.

Moving into the 2020 election cycle, I wish there were more people who would consider a way to think before responding.

I am building a world in which we are not mere animals, governed by mere stimulusresponse, but instead are enjoined to be civil, respectful, and thoughtful in all of our dealings. I wish Barnard was interested in building a similar world. Imagine what a better world that could be.

—Nechama Cohen Cox ’93

ALUMNAE ASSOCIATION OF BARNARD COLLEGE PRESIDENT & ALUMNAE TRUSTEE Jyoti

Menon ’01

ALUMNAE RELATIONS Karen A. Sendler

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR

COMMUNICATIONS Gabrielle Simpson ASSOCIATE VICE PRESIDENT Jennifer Goddard VICE PRESIDENT

DEVELOPMENT VICE PRESIDENT, DEVELOPMENT AND ALUMNAE RELATIONS

Lisa Yeh PRESIDENT, BARNARD COLLEGE Sian Leah Beilock Winter 2020, Vol. CVIII, No. 4 Barnard Magazine (USPS 875-280, ISSN 1071-6513) is published quarterly by the Communications Department of Barnard College.

Periodicals postage paid at New York, NY, and additional mailing offices.

Postmaster: Send change of address form to: Alumnae Records, Barnard College, Box AS, 3009 Broadway, New York, NY 10027-6598 EDITORIAL OFFICE Vagelos Alumnae Center, Barnard College, 3009 Broadway, New York, NY 10027-6598 Phone: 212.854.0085 E-mail: magazine@barnard.edu Opinions expressed are those of contributors or the editor and do not represent official positions of Barnard College or the Alumnae Association of Barnard College. Letters to the editor (150 words maximum), submissions for Last Word (550 words maximum), and unsolicited articles and/or photographs will be published at the discretion of the editor and will be edited for length and clarity.

The contact information listed in Class Notes is for the exclusive purpose of providing information for the Magazine and may not be used for any other purpose.

For alumnae-related inquiries, call Alumnae Relations at 212.854.2005 or e-mail alumnaerelations@barnard.edu.

To change your address, write to: Alumnae Records, Barnard College, Box AS, 3009 Broadway, New York, NY 10027-6598 Phone: 646.745.8344 E-mail: alumrecords@barnard.edu

PRESIDENT’S PAGE

Portrait by Dorothy Hong

SIAN LEAH BEILOCK

Pioneering Spirit How daring to ask “Why not?” powers generations of Barnard alumnae As a parent and educator, I am always thinking about lessons that help shape a child’s future most, and what moments will leave the biggest (and hopefully best) impression. Third grade is one of mine, when I first learned that rules can be questioned and rewritten with good reason.

An athlete who grew up loving soccer’s many challenges, I was steadily advancing in skill as quickly as my young legs could carry me. As a goalkeeper, I loved the reward of correctly anticipating how to protect the net when facing down a fastapproaching striker. What I didn’t love was being told by the boys’ soccer coach that I couldn’t play on their team.

Fortunately, I had a strong advocate in my mom. Standing beside her at the registration table in the gym, I listened in awe of her raised voice, surprising and indelible, “What do you mean she can’t

play with the boys? Who do I need to talk to to fix this? Just because that’s how it has been doesn’t mean that is how it should be!”

They relented, rewrote the rules, and allowed me to play on what became a coed team. It crystallized for me what it means to be brave when faced with the unattainable, resistance, or even hostility. Ultimately, playing for that team was a small thing, but it opened big doors in my mind about the idea that you could challenge something you inherently knew wasn’t right, even if everyone around you said it was. And that’s why being president of Barnard is so important to me: The College’s legacy of welcoming and inspiring trailblazers is firmly established and continues to flourish today.

This issue’s cover, for example, features a historic photo of Bhinda Shah ’56 superimposed on a shot of her granddaughter Aarya Shah ’23. When Bhinda arrived on campus, she became the first woman from Nepal to ever attend college in the United States. After winning an essay contest that brought her stateside, she met a Barnard alumna from the contest’s committee who encouraged her to apply and helped arrange the financial means for her to attend.

Barnard began a journey for Bhinda, who later became Nepal’s first woman ambassador, with postings in India and the United States. “All I had was my familiar silk sari cocooning me and my belief that I could do this.... All I wanted to do was learn — from my classes, from my friends, and from America,” she said. “I realize just how fortunate I was to get that learning experience, because that was the foundation on which I built my life.”

Similarly, Barnard galvanized physicist Myriam Sarachik ’54 on her pioneering path toward a degree and career in one of the most male-dominated scientific professions — even today, fewer than 20% of new Ph.D. physicists are women.

Myriam studied physics at a time when Barnard offered few courses in the field.

“There were maybe three or perhaps four women physics majors on campus, in all four years combined,” she says. “More

often than not, I sat in the class [mostly at Columbia] and I was the only woman there.” A friend at Barnard decided to get her Ph.D. in physics, which in turn inspired Myriam. “I looked at her, and I was like, ‘Well, she’s not talking about not being able to, or not being allowed to, or it being inappropriate. She’s just doing it. So, if she can do it, why can’t I?’ ” These are just two inspiring stories from this issue, which take their place among a galaxy of others that alumnae going back to the College’s founding can recount and share. Stories of women who observed the rules and dared to rewrite them, thus opening the door for others, including Bhinda’s granddaughter Aarya and Laura Newburgh ’03, Myriam’s colleague some 50 years later (see story on page 14).

I’m happy to report that in our Class of 2019, 34% were math and science majors (well ahead of the 21% national average), and that one-third of underrepresented minorities were STEM majors (compared to 23% nationally). It’s how progress is made, steadily and courageously, by those willing to test their mettle and continue to ask “Why not?” like my mom did in the gym that day but on a much bigger scale.

It’s what Barnard does as an institution, pushing boundaries at a critical time when it’s needed most.

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President Beilock as a young soccer player

BARNARD MAGAZINE WINTER 2020 3

EDITOR’S LETTER

A Sense of the Sacred

LEGACY OF LOVE PG. 20 Pioneering alumna shares her story

THE BARNARD EFFECT PG. 26 Small college, big impact

COLLEGIAL COLLEAGUES PG. 30 Alumnae who work together 4

In these days so often filled with public expressions of outrage and angst, I count myself lucky to work at Barnard Magazine, where my encounters with members of the College community often evoke a feeling I hope we will all be able to experience more regularly: awe.

That sense of the sacred is what I felt earlier this fall as I sat in the Upper West Side kitchen of Myriam Sarachik ’54 and listened to her converse, over Skype, with Laura Newburgh ’03. (You can read an edited version of their interview beginning on p. 14.)

Both women are physicists, working in a field that even today produces the smallest number of women Ph.D.s. (Yes, I know, one science has to be the one that produces the smallest number of women Ph.D.s. But, Physics, what’s happening in your world that you always take the hit?)

My feeling of awe was partly attributable to the fact that both women have made major discoveries in a discipline I can’t claim to comprehend. (In 11th grade, I transferred out of physics, rather than flunk the easier of the two classes my high school offered in the subject.) Or that Sarachik, who in January is slated to receive one of American physics’ highest awards, had done so while often being the only woman in the room.

Mostly, I was in awe of the scope of her life, the great, historical sweep of it, as well as her tenacity and ability to experience joy after a lifetime that has included almost unspeakable tragedy and loss: During her European childhood, she and her family fled a Nazi internment camp; later, here in the U.S., she lost her youngest daughter to a murderer.

Yet, on the morning we spent together, she sat at her kitchen table talking with a woman almost 50 years her junior over an interface that few of us could have anticipated even 20 years before. The conversation brought her delight. And it was a privilege to be part of it.

So, too, in this issue, awe is called up by the story of Bhinda Malla Shah ’56, brought to us by her granddaughter, first-year Aarya Shah ’23, and midwifed

by Aarya’s father and Bhinda’s son, Anil Shah. (You can check out “Legacy of Love” on p. 20.) Bhinda Shah was the first Nepalese woman ever to come to college in the United States. And she took on that experience and its challenges with an amazing openheartedness. Her embrace of the new, of the people, places, and subjects she encountered here, opened to her opportunities that were previously closed to women, including becoming Nepal’s first woman ambassador, in 1988. It is an honor for us to tell her story.

Awe is an emotion another of our stories in this issue, “The Barnard Effect,” calls up as well. No doubt you’re aware that anthropologists Margaret Mead ’23 and Zora Neale Hurston ’28 got much of their training here, with foundational thinker Franz Boas. But did you know their work revolutionized the way many Westerners think about people from other cultures? Likewise, in other disciplines — psychology and creative writing, in particular — the contributions of Barnard alumnae and faculty have transformed their fields and in so doing have changed our culture at large.

I hope the stories we’ve included in this issue bring you a sense of wonder and reverence, an experience most of us don’t have often enough and can gain from cultivating. Enjoy the Magazine! And stay in touch. As is the case always, we want to learn more about the ways Barnard has brought awe into your world. ­­— Liz Galst

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Correction Photographs of the AABC award winners in our Fall 2019 issue were taken by Asiya Khaki ’09, not Samuel Stuart Hollenshead. We regret the error.

THROUGH THE GATES

Illustration by Marco Miccichè

FIRST-YEARS

Congratulations & Welcome to the 632 outstanding members of the Barnard Class of 2023. Some interesting facts about the new students:

1.099 APPLICANTS ADMITTED

Barnard remains one of the most selective colleges in the United States.

13%

ARE FIRST-GENERATION COLLEGE STUDENTS

88

9.320 STUDENTS APPLIED FOR ADMISSION

HAVE A FAMILY CONNECTION TO BARNARD

• 3 students have great-grandmothers who attended • 7 have grandmothers who attended

• 33 have mothers who attended • 15 have a sister, another 15 have a cousin, and 15 have an aunt who is a Barnard alum

STUDENTS HAIL FROM 44 STATES AND 42 COUNTRIES, including, for the first time, students from

Ivory Coast, Malta, and Rwanda.

The Class of 2023 includes students who have: • competed in the European Juniors Fencing Championships • interned at Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh • worked on a family farm • founded a women’s storytelling project in Guangzhou, China • performed as an aerial artist

48%

OF U.S. STUDENTS IDENTIFY AS WOMEN OF COLOR

THROUGH THE GATES EVENTS

Photos by Samuel Stuart Hollenshead and Asiya Khaki ’09

Convocation Opens Academic Year The Barnard community marked the start of the academic year with its annual Convocation, on September 10, 2019, filling the pews of the historic Riverside Church.

Among the hundreds of students, faculty, and staff present were 80 alumnae dressed in academic robes and carrying class flags, who processed into the sanctuary to the cheers of those assembled.

The audience heard from a variety of speakers, including Board of Trustees Chair Cheryl Milstein ’82, P’14, and Denise M. Augustin P’07, P’15, who gave the staff welcome. President Sian Leah Beilock discussed the College’s new wellness initiative, “Feel Well, Do Well @ Barnard,” which is built around the idea that all members of the campus community are responsible for the health and wellness of our students.

Keynote speaker Sheila Nevins ’60, the current head of MTV Studios’ documentary films division and the former president of HBO Documentary Films and Family Programming, told participants how a discriminatory experience during college, at a nearby Chock full o’Nuts coffee shop, propelled her “to champion stories about the less fortunate. Stories of real people,” she said. “Mostly I chose to tell stories of the struggle to triumph in an uncertain and often cruel world.”

Provost and Dean of the Faculty Linda Bell reminded students of Barnard’s mission: “To instill in you an inner strength and a natural generosity so that when you step beyond our gates, you can both pursue what inspires you and share it to good measure with the world.”

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First-year students (below) assembled in Riverside Church, where President Beilock (left) welcomed them to Barnard and the 2019 academic year.

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ACCOLADES

Success Stories Good news from around the Barnard community Have you coached your basketball team to the county championships? Led a successful fundraising drive at your house of worship? Discovered a new kind of bacteria? Whatever your news, submit your accomplishments for consideration to accolades@barnard.edu. (A related, high-resolution photo is helpful, too.) Or to Barnard Magazine, Barnard College, 3009 Broadway, NewYork, NY 10027.

Omolola Ogunyemi ’93, an associate professor at Charles R. Drew University in Los Angeles, was elected as a fellow of the American College of Medical Informatics, for her “significant and sustained contributions to the field.”

Ogunyemi is developing machinelearning tools that can help doctors identify people with diabetes who are at risk of losing their eyesight. Ogunyemi focuses, she says, “on solutions that are useful for medically underserved and under-resourced areas.”

Top: Details from Naima Green's Pur•suit card deck; bottom right, Marie Turbow Lampard's Mortarboard photo; bottom left, Lampard and husband Eric E. Lampard at her 100th birthday party. (Photo courtesy of Sophie Dennis.) The event was attended by family and friends, including Hera CohnHaft ’69, whose mother, Athena Capraro Warren ’41, was Lampard’s close friend.

Marie Turbow Lampard ’41 celebrated her 100th birthday on October 3. An independent scholar of Russian art history who was active in public radio, Turbow has been married to Eric E. Lampard for 68 years. The celebration was attended by Hera Cohn-Haft ’69, daughter of Athena Capraro Warren ’41, Marie’s longtime friend until her passing at age 90.

Marian Chertow ’78, who directs the Industrial Environmental Management Program at the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, was inducted into the Connecticut Women’s Hall of Fame on November 4. Chertow is a pioneer in the field of industrial symbiosis, which brings together co-located businesses to use each others’ byproducts to meet their own production needs. The result? Lower levels of pollution and greater efficiency.

Pur•suit, Naima Green ’11’s 54card deck of playing cards featuring photographs of “queer womxn, trans, non-binary, and gender-nonconforming people,” was included in the “From the Margins” show at Washington, D.C.’s Gallery 102.

The Washington Post featured new research by the Economics Department’s Daniel Hamermesh that demonstrates, in the Post’s words, that “good looking kids do better in school than their less striking peers.” (Hamermesh’s more technical observation: “Being better-

looking raised subsequent changes in measurements of objective learning outcomes.”)

My American Surrogate, a 25-minute documentary about a Chinese-American surrogacy broker, co-produced by Leila Lin ’14, began airing on The NewYork Times’ website in September.

Lesley A. Sharp, chair of Barnard’s Anthropology Department and the Barbara Chamberlain & Helen Chamberlain Josefsberg ’30 Professor of Anthropology, won the Medical Anthropology Student Association’s 2019 Mentorship Award this fall. The award recognizes “senior or mid-career scholars who have demonstrated an ongoing commitment to teaching.”

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BARNARD MAGAZINE WINTER 2020 7

THROUGH THE GATES

Photos by Asiya Khaki ’09 and Skyler Reid

COMMENCEMENT LEADERSHIP

Vice President for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Ariana González Stokas (left) and Dean of the College Leslie Grinage. Photo by Jonathan King.

Forward Momentum New dean, first-ever equity VP bring fresh ideas Two new leaders on campus — Vice President for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Ariana González Stokas and Dean of the College Leslie Grinage — share a commitment to creating an even better Barnard.

Closely connected to the experiences of first-generation college students — Grinage was one herself, as were both of González Stokas’ parents — the pair aim to fine-tune services across campus so that they better meet the needs of Barnard’s diverse student body. Here’s more about each of these new principals.

A MORE INCLUSIVE COLLEGE “Society is so segregated. But college campuses are one of the few places where people are brought together,” says Ariana González Stokas, Barnard’s inaugural vice president for diversity, equity, and inclusion, whose overarching goal is to create a campus environment where all feel 8

respected and accepted. “It’s very much about building relationships so people feel they’re heard,” González Stokas says. “It’s about how students feel they’re cared for and welcome in the classroom.”

González Stokas earned her Ph.D. in philosophy and education from Columbia’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and Teacher’s College. She came to Barnard most recently from Bard College, where she served as the inaugural dean for inclusive excellence.

Higher education, González Stokas believes, is a sector that can help right some of the country’s injustices and aid in the healing of its divisions. “Deepening intercultural understanding” through academic coursework and programs in residential life and student life can create a more inclusive academic community, González Stokas explains.

To help reach that goal, she’s begun taking aim at services for first-generation students and disabled students, with the goal of making those services “much more holistic, much more streamlined, and to attend to the gaps,” she says. Already under consideration are a food pantry and a clothing swap, which can help meet the food security and clothing needs of lowincome students.

Ultimately, says González Stokas, her work on campus is “about building a community of support.”

NEW DEAN, NEW ENERGY A native New Yorker who was raised in Brooklyn’s Flatbush-Ditmas Park neighborhood, Leslie Grinage is thrilled to be home again after serving as associate dean of students at Davidson College in North Carolina. The new Dean of the College was attracted to Barnard’s distinct identity as “a world-class liberal arts college adjacent to a research university. I have never worked at a single-sex institution before and believe an educated woman is an empowered woman.”

She also appreciates Barnard’s culture: “We all have a responsibility to take care of each other. This community cares about students and supporting students outside the classroom to thrive inside the classroom.

That’s an important part of our work.”

There’s hardly an area of the Barnard student experience that Dean Grinage's work doesn’t touch. She and her team have broad responsibilities in the fields of academics, careers, health and wellness, and residential and student life.

Advising is one example. “It’s such an important part of the undergraduate experience,” says Grinage, whose doctoral dissertation from Vanderbilt University focused on academic advising. “I’d like to look at how to sharpen the experience,” she says, training her eye on envisioning Barnard's next chapter.

—Merri Rosenberg ’78

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THROUGH THE GATES ARTS

The Campus Welcomes a Queen Sculpture inspired by a labor uprising installed in Barnard Hall I Am Queen Mary, a monument memorializing resistance to Danish colonialism in the Caribbean, was installed in the lobby of Barnard Hall on October 15, 2019. The sculpture is intended to spark important dialogues about public art, representations of black women, and the impacts of colonialism and slavery. It is part of a collaboration between artists La Vaughn Belle ’95CC,

Artist-in-Residence at the Barnard Center for Research on Women, and Copenhagen-based Jeannette Ehlers.

“As an institution dedicated to relationships between social movements and feminist praxis, Barnard is perfectly positioned to engage with this project in really exciting ways,” says Belle.

The sculpture features an allegorical representation of Mary Thomas, one of four women who, on October 1, 1878, led the largest labor revolt in Danish colonial history, which came to be known as Fireburn. The revolt was a protest against the contractual servitude that bound workers to the plantation system and enabled the continuation of abusive and violent working conditions 30 years after slavery had been abolished in the Danish West Indies. Thomas and the three other resistance leaders are revered locally as the Queens of the Fireburn.

The installation at Barnard is a scaleddown iteration of the 23-foot original,

which debuted in March 2018 in front of the West Indian Warehouse in Copenhagen to mark the 100th anniversary of the sale and transfer of the Danish West Indies, now known as the U.S. Virgin Islands, from Denmark to the United States. The artists hope that the statue will continue the conversation about colonialism beyond the centennial year.

On long-term loan to the College, the statue comes to Barnard courtesy of the artists and the Ford Foundation, which commissioned the piece as part of last summer’s “Radical Love” exhibition at the Ford Foundation Gallery.

Barnard president Sian Leah Beilock says about the sculpture: “Its journey here — via an alumna [Lisa Kim ’96] at the Ford Foundation who commissioned this piece from one of our Artists-in-Residence for an exhibition exploring social justice — highlights the significant cultural contributions made by the Barnard community.”

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The sculpture’s base is composed of coral stones similar to those harvested by enslaved Africans for use in the foundations of most of St. Croix’s colonial-era buildings.

BARNARD MAGAZINE WINTER 2020 9

SALON

Photo by Jonathan King

BOOKS

Winter Reads Turn this season of our discontent into glorious summer with books by Barnard authors NONFICTION Making Kin Not Population edited by Adele E. Clarke ’66 and Donna Haraway Addressing questions of population growth and environmental degradation, leading anti-racist, ecologically concerned, feminist scholars explore a host of topics: intimacy and kinship, reproductive justice and environmental justice, and new practices for forming families and kin.

After Combat: True War Stories from Iraq and Afghanistan

by Marian Eide ’87 and Michael Gibler Since the early 2000s, approximately 2.5 million Americans have been deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan. In this collection of interviews with veterans, Eide and Gibler seek to present what veteran and writer Tim O’Brien calls a “true war story” — one without obvious purpose or moral imputation and independent of civilian logic, propaganda goals, and even peacetime convention.

Restoring the Global Judiciary: Why the Supreme Court Should Rule in U.S. Foreign Affairs

by Martin S. Flaherty, adjunct professor While some argue that the federal judiciary should leave foreign affairs to the U.S. Congress and the president, Flaherty uses constitutional history, international relations theory, and legal doctrine to argue for a robust judicial role in the conduct of U.S. foreign policy.

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The Involuntary American: A Scottish Prisoner’s Journey to the New World

by Carol Gardner ’77 By detailing the life of Thomas Doughty, a Scottish prisoner of war who arrived in the Massachusetts Bay Colony in the winter of 1650-51, The Involuntary American expands our understanding of immigration to the North American colonies, colonial servitude, and the early colonial period.

Judith S. Kaye, In Her Own Words: Reflections on Life and the Law, with Selected Judicial Opinions and Articles edited by Henry M. Greenberg, Luisa M. Kaye, Marilyn Marcus, and Albert M. Rosenblatt Judith Kaye ’58 was the first woman to serve on New York state’s highest court, the Court of Appeals, and the first woman to serve as the court’s chief judge. This volume brings together Kaye’s own autobiography (finished before her death in 2016), as well as selected judicial opinions, articles, and speeches.

Divorcing Mom: A Memoir of Psychoanalysis

by Melissa Knox ’79 Psychoanalysis was Knox’s family religion.

Her memoir tells the story of a family pulled into and torn apart by it.

In Another Place: With and Without My Father Norman Mailer

by Susan Mailer ’71 Five stepmothers. Eight siblings. A childhood shuttling back and forth between Mexico and New York. The complex and intense relationship Susan Mailer had with her father, the oft-married writer Norman Mailer, is detailed in this memoir of life in two cultures and two families.

Uncommon Anthropologist: Gladys Reichard and Western Native American Culture

by Nancy Mattina The groundbreaking anthropologist and linguist Gladys Reichard joined Barnard’s Anthropology Department in 1923 and remained until her death in 1955. Her work on Native American languages, controversial at the time, offered what are now recognized as important insights into the worldviews of several nations.

Bhakti & Power: Debating India’s Religion of the Heart edited by John Stratton Hawley, Claire Tow Professor of Religion; Christian Lee Novetzke; and Swapna Sharma Bhakti — Hindu devotional worship of a personal god or spiritual idea — has meanings that shift dramatically according to sentiment and context. This book provides an accessible entry into key debates about bhakti, presenting voices and vignettes from the sixth century to the present.

Paternity: The Elusive Quest for the Father

by Nara B. Milanich, professor of history For most of human history, proving paternity has been an elusive quest. New advances in science now expose the essentially social, cultural, and political nature of paternity, and the question “Who’s your father?” remains as complicated as ever.

Our Dogs, Ourselves: The Story of a Singular Bond

by Alexandra Horowitz, Senior Research Fellow and adjunct associate professor of psychology The director of Barnard’s Dog Cognition Lab explores the dog-human bond. “We could call it the human-dog bond, but then we’d have our priorities wrong,” Horowitz notes with a wink in the introduction.

Deprescribing in Psychiatry

by Swapnil Gupta, MBBS, M.D., Rebecca Miller ’97, Ph.D., and John Cahill, BMBS, Ph.D. This book presents considerations for prescribers on how to decrease or discontinue psychiatric medications in a systematic, holistic way. It includes many case examples and worksheets to help in the process of deprescribing.

Metacognition: The Thinking Parent Makes the Thinking Child

by Lisa Son, associate professor of psychology Written in Korean while Son was on a fellowship in South Korea, her book explores the impact of metacognition — how we think about our own thoughts and emotions — on learning. Son also examines metacognition’s larger purposes: It serves to develop not only long-term retention of information but also, perhaps, courage.

The Penguin Book of Italian Short Stories edited by Jhumpa Lahiri ’89 Pulitzer Prize-winner Lahiri brings together 40 pieces of Italian short fiction by authors including Italo Calvino, Natalia Ginzburg, and Primo Levi. Lahiri has translated six of the stories in this collection, and many of the stories appear in English here for the first time. continued on page 73

My Soul Is Filled with Joy: A Holocaust Story

by Karen I. Treiger ’83 Esther and Sam Goldberg, Treiger’s in-laws, survived the Holocaust with the help of a Polish family and ultimately settled in the United States. In this book, Treiger’s family visits Poland, retraces the Goldbergs’ steps, and meets the survivors of the family who helped the Goldbergs hide from the Nazis.

Anthony Caro: Stainless Steel

by Karen Wilkin ’62 The life and work of pathbreaking English sculptor Anthony Caro are the subjects of this large-format book. “In the imposing, ample works he made,” Wilkin writes, “he did nothing to disguise or modify the properties of his robust medium, but instead emphasized the physical presence, the size, the density, the opulent surfaces and the subtly infected edges….”

FICTION The History Teacher

by Susan Bacon ’74 This debut political thriller propels the reader through the rarified enclaves of Delaware’s old guard, 1970s Manhattan, the back offices of the CIA in the postWatergate era, and then back through time to the world of WASP privilege and anticommunist rhetoric of postwar America in the late 1940s.

BARNARD MAGAZINE WINTER 2020 11

SALON

by Merri Rosenberg ’78

Illustration by Elvis Swift

celebrate my friends who are in their 60s, 70s, and even 80s who continue to find work fulfilling and engaging and enthusiastically seek second and third chapters in their professional lives.

But the thought of meetings that run late into the night, once so exciting, now fills me with dread. Reading on the couch, with my dog curled up next to me, is more tempting than the prospect of taking on a new assignment. I’d honestly rather weed my garden.

I fully recognize the privileged place I’m in, that I can financially afford to turn away freelance assignments that I don’t want to pursue and, for now at least, am healthy enough to have it be my choice.

In the current frenzy to brand ourselves by our professional accomplishments, opting to assert that I’m more than my LinkedIn profile feels transgressive — and not always in a good way. Still, I’d like to think I’m more, not less, than my business card. What echoes in my mind is the message the cantor who presided at my late mother’s funeral offered to us all: We are “human beings, not human doings.”

More than four decades after graduation, pretending that I have an endless horizon unspooling in front of me would be ridiculous. How I choose to spend my days matters.

Yet knowing how, and when, to move aside gracefully is a challenge that I feel singularly unequipped to manage on my own. What I look for from my alma mater now is not a relentless emphasis on leading but more guidance on off-ramping, on how to transition to a nonworking role without feeling obsolete or superfluous.

And I think I’ve been able to find it through my work mentoring new leaders and watching them take over where I have decided to leave off.

A few years ago, when I was in my last year of chairing Leadership Assembly (the leadership development event the College runs for its volunteers each October), I was prepping to deliver a presentation to class officers. It was probably the sixth year I’d prepared to do it. So I decided to offer one of my committee members, Dueaa Elzin ’11 — at the time, a very recent Barnard

grad — the opportunity to lead the session instead.

Dueaa was amazing: energetic, poised, polished. She engaged the group in a way I envied. As she jotted participants’ comments on a flip chart, or deftly fielded questions and provided smart, thoughtful answers, I couldn’t have been happier seeing her shine.

As I watched Dueaa soar, I thought of Anna Quindlen ’74’s comments in her very last Newsweek magazine column.

Acknowledging the talents of the next generation, she said, “But between the lines I read another message, delivered without rancor or contempt, the same one I once heard from my own son: It’s our turn. Step aside. And now I will.”

So will I, though not entirely, I’m happy to say.

I’m grateful that Barnard offers me so many opportunities to contribute my talents without having to be a leader. Interviewing prospective students for the College feels incredibly fulfilling and allows me to tap into decades of reporting skills. Sharing experiences and ideas on committees, with alumnae of all ages, helps me feel that I still have valuable contributions to make. I love identifying and developing a pipeline of younger alumnae volunteers who will continue to care and work for the College long after I can.

Instead of fretting and feeling guilty that I’m letting Barnard down by moving away from a visible leadership role, I’ve realized the College continues to teach me invaluable lessons. Leadership is very much about making room for those who follow; stepping off the path can be just as bold, and inspiring, as charging ahead.

I may not know exactly “what’s next” for me. I do know that shining the spotlight on the next generation, and metaphorically moving, if not into the shadows, then into the cheering section, feels right, right now.

FIRST-PERSON

Leaning Out A ’78 alumna ponders how to step aside gracefully Since our 40th Reunion, in 2018, every conversation I’ve had with my Barnard classmates and friends includes a subtext.

“What’s next?” we’re subtly asking each other, without uttering the words directly.

“What are we doing with the rest of our lives?” One friend has been struggling with her decision to retire. Another recently stepped down — quite happily — from a high-level position to return to a less-demanding job she prefers. A third discusses her newish career as a theater producer, after previous acts as a lawyer and a law-school administrator.

I’ve been uncharacteristically quiet during these heart-to-hearts, probably because I wonder when it will finally be okay to stop trying to figure out “What’s next?” professionally, when it’s fine to say, “Thanks for the run. I’ve had enough.”

Where’s the instruction book to help me learn how, and when, to step away gracefully? And why do I feel guilty about not leaning in?

I suspect some of my discomfort comes from feeling that I’m not being the “bold, unafraid” woman Barnard celebrates, enthusiastically pursuing the kinds of highlevel, super-achieving leadership positions that our alumnae occupy in impressive numbers.

Or perhaps it’s because we’re living through a cultural moment when the message is all about forging ahead and taking or making a seat at the table. Pushing in one’s chair and moving away seems wrong or, at the very least, ungrateful.

My 30-something daughter and her friends unhesitantly lean into their work lives, embracing challenging assignments, networking at conferences, doing whatever they can to enhance their personal career brand. I admire them. But I feel like that moment has definitely passed for me.

Don’t get me wrong. I respect and 12

•

Merri Rosenberg ’78, vice president of the AABC, is learning how to embrace semiretirement as a freelance writer and editor.

Want to share your story? Submit essays to magazine@barnard.edu.

BARNARD MAGAZINE WINTER 2020 13

SALON

by Liz Galst

Photo by Getty Images

Maybe the words “joy” and “physics” don’t seem like an obvious pair. But to a pair of Barnard alums, they go together like “gravity” and “pull.” Myriam Sarachik ’54 and Laura Newburgh ’03 are two physicists who’ve found deep gratification in a field where even today fewer than 20% of Ph.D.s are awarded to women. (Sarachik, a distinguished professor at City College in New York City, is a pioneer in condensed matter physics; Newburgh is a cosmologist at Yale.)

This January, Sarachik is slated to receive the American Physical Society’s Exceptional Achievement in Research Award, which recognizes “contributions of the highest level that advance our knowledge and understanding of the physical universe in all its facets.” So now seemed like a good time to bring her together with another Barnard physicist to explore life in science as women.

On a fall morning, with Newburgh joining us on Skype, we gathered in Sarachik’s cookbook-filled kitchen, where there was much delight: delight in all Sarachik has accomplished as a physicist, including foundational work on how electrons move in metals (something that eventually became known as the Kondo effect); delight in her ability to make her discipline relevant to the uninitiated; and delight in her perspective as someone who can look back on the sweep of history and know she played a part in changing it.

The ensuing conversation was equal parts physics and joy.

WOMEN IN SCIENCE

Driven to Discover Two Barnardians who graduated almost 50 years apart discuss their lives as women physicists

14

Liz Galst: Can you explain what physics is and what attracted you to the field?

Myriam Sarachik: Physics is difficult to define. It’s a discipline that looks at questions about how nature works at all levels. How do electrons move inside solids?

How does matter change phases from gas to liquid to solid? Or from being magnetic to not being magnetic? There are very large questions that physicists are trying to answer, which go to the fundamental ways in which the universe works.

Laura Newburgh: My elevator pitch is: We’re interested in the most fundamental questions of how matter is and how it moves.

Sarachik: About how I came to physics at Barnard: My father was really pushing me towards physics. But way back in the 1950s, the College had very few physics courses. So I took most of my physics courses at Columbia.

At the time, there were maybe three or perhaps four women physics majors on campus, in all four years combined. More often than not, I sat in the class and I was the only woman there. I didn’t dare ask questions. I was afraid I was going to show everybody how stupid I am. “How can you ask such a question?” So I couldn’t and didn’t. For many years I didn’t.

In terms of what attracted me: I think what’s driven me is the need to know. I derive much joy from suddenly understanding something. It’s the exercise of discovery.

Newburgh: That’s what gets you through a failure. In physics, we fail like 99% of the time. But you have to fail all those times to get to the answer at the end of the day.

Myriam, when you were on campus, what were the expectations for Barnard physics graduates after their bachelor’s degree?

Sarachik: Well, it was a very different time. And there was a lot of discussion — on campus, off campus, in magazines — about whether women should stay home and raise the children, or whether women had a right to go out and do their thing.

Back then, women within and outside academia didn’t expect to be able to go out and establish their own ambitions without enormous sacrifices. In terms of the Ph.D., I could not have done otherwise. I just didn’t fit into the construct as it existed back then.

Another thing that influenced me was I had a friend, Noémie Benczer ’53 [now Benczer-Koller], who was an undergraduate physics major at Barnard who decided to get her Ph.D. in physics. She just did it. She just did it! I looked at her, and I was like, “Well, she’s not talking about not being able to, or not being allowed to, or it being inappropriate. She’s just doing it. So, if she can do it, why can’t I?” Galst: That’s part of the Barnard influence, right? Even if you yourself are not so confident, you’re surrounded by people who give you the courage you need.

Sarachik: A third thing is that my husband, Phil, whom I met as an undergrad at Columbia, was very bright — he’s still very bright. And the faculty approached him and asked him to continue for his Ph.D., which is something he never aspired to. I did, but he didn’t. But they wanted to pay him, and they wanted him to do it. And he looked at me, and said, “Should I do it?”

I said, “Of course!” And then, if he’s doing it, well, shouldn’t I? Newburgh: Almost 50 years later, I had something similar. There were three physics majors in my year at Barnard. And my high school physics teacher told me that I would not make it in physics. Physics has the fewest women of any of the sciences, and even a decade ago, there were people

telling me, “It’s not a possible career choice for you.”

I’ll mention a couple of things I benefited from in my generation of being a Barnard student that helped see me through. There was grant funding for me to be able to do research as an undergraduate.

So I went to California and did research in astrophysics. That was the first time I did research. Once I started doing research, I realized this was what I wanted to do with my life. It was a really transformative thing to be able to do. Barnard enabled that.

And also, because I could do research at Columbia even as an undergraduate, that opened up a broad bunch of things I could

“I think what’s driven me is the need to know. I derive much joy from suddenly understanding something.”

—Myriam Sarachik

try out. I did research in condensed matter, and particle experiments, astrophysics, and analysis. I got to try a lot of different things before I moved into graduate school and settled on cosmology. I appreciated that a lot as a Barnard major. I’m sure it was very different half a century before.

Sarachik: A lot of things have changed. Recently, at a Conference for Undergraduate Women in Physics, which is a regional conference organized through APS [American Physical Society], I was asked to say a few words at the banquet.

I looked around at a hundred women physics majors. It was mind-boggling, just unbelievable to me, that things had turned around to that degree.

Things within the field changed while I was in it. At Bell Labs [the physics mecca where Sarachik worked after graduate school], I was one of only two women

members of the technical staff; the only other woman was Betty Wood ’33, a crystallographer who was the first woman scientist Bell Labs hired. I chose fairly straightforward experiments, and I was lucky that a number of them addressed unresolved issues and brought results that turned out be important. In a field that was almost entirely male, a woman’s contribution was generally not taken as seriously as that of a man. But the truth is that there are a lot of very good people out there. If you extend your hand, they will take it, and they will try and smooth the way for you.

Newburgh: There are benefits to being a woman physicist, too. People do remember you. You’re more memorable than the three guys who spoke before you on the panel.

And I think coming into physics without thinking that I belonged there might have made me able to take more risks — risks that put me above the crowd — than I might have taken otherwise, because, well, worst-case scenario, it doesn’t work out, which is probably what’s going to happen anyway. I don’t know if men think the same way. But at least in my own becoming a physicist, that probably shaped things a bit.

Galst: Do you have any advice for Barnard students studying physics now?

Sarachik: Look, the only advice I can give is choose a partner in life who really gets in there and helps you when the going gets rough. Because there’s nobody who doesn’t have rough patches. And whatever you choose to do — and it need not be physics — work hard. Put yourself into it. Try to make a difference, and believe in yourself. You know, we all have our insecurities. I showed you some of mine, about being stupid. Despite that, I must have some fundamental belief in myself to have been able to push on and push on. I think that that matters. You have to respect yourself, and believe in yourself.

Newburgh: I think Myriam covered almost all of it. But make sure you do what you love. For some people, that’s going to be their job, but it doesn’t have to be. It could be other things, too. You have one life.

In physics or not, use it well.

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BARNARD MAGAZINE WINTER 2020 15

16

SALON

by Alejandra Rosa

Illustration by Lisbeth Checo

Gregory’s first love. But it was her second or third career, depending on how you count things. At Barnard, “I wanted to study psychology, but what happened?” she ponders. Classes in the department at the time focused not on counseling psychology but on a more behavioral approach. “I said, ‘This is not psychology.’ ” Instead, she studied American history and education and, after graduation, taught English and Spanish to first graders in the New York City public school system while pursuing a master’s in teaching from Teachers College and, eventually, a Ph.D. in administration and supervision from Fordham’s Graduate School of Education.

In 1981, the University of Puerto Rico hired her as a professor of business administration. A couple of years later, she became the director of the administration and supervision department in the School of Education at the Interamerican University of Puerto Rico.

Despite her professional successes, “The question always [of why I wasn’t practicing psychology] would come in. So, in 1985, when I’m directing the department of administration and supervision, I decide to go back [and start] from zero in psychology,” she says. In 1989, she earned her master’s degree in counseling psychology and, after clinical training, became a licensed psychologist in 1992. (She also holds a certificate in gerontology and a master’s in public health and is a licensed marriage and family therapist and certified mediator.)

Since committing to psychology, she has not looked back. “No regrets,” she says.

Her work counseling members of the military connects her to deep parts of her identity: her childhood as a military

brat and her years at Barnard, when her father, a career soldier, fought in Vietnam.

“It was a challenging time,” Villafañe Gregory recalls about her life on campus.

“I was living in the dorms, and there was an antiwar movement” — a strong antiwar movement; Villafañe Gregory wasn’t part of it. “It was very lonely for me. I was like a salmon swimming against the tide,” she remembers. “I found solace in the library.”

Though Villafañe Gregory says she came to Barnard to get an education, not a social life, books were not her only supports. Education professor Katherine Wilcox “was like a second mother to me,” she notes. “And Dr. Grace King, who taught chemistry, took me under her wing.” Then there were the workers in the cafeteria. “They were Puerto Rican, and they knew all the Puerto Rican students.

There were very few of us,” she says, choking up at the memory. “They were awed by us being there. They looked out for us. It was an act of kindness.”

Despite the challenges of her four years on campus, Villafañe Gregory loves Barnard and promotes it every chance she gets, often encouraging the talented high school students she meets to apply. “I feel like every year I come back [for Reunion] is like coming back home. I look forward to what’s new on campus. I look forward to talking to the young continued on page 73

ALUMNA PROFILE

A Warrior for Healing Trained as a teacher, Vanessa Villafañe Gregory ’73 helps others learn skills to survive trauma Five days after Hurricane Maria decimated Puerto Rico, in September 2017, while millions of the island’s residents were home with their families, psychologist Vanessa Villafañe Gregory ’73 was at the U.S. Army Garrison Fort Buchanan, near San Juan, providing counseling services to dozens of soldiers, engineers, and civilian employees who were helping with the recovery.

With much of the island in disarray, she conducted her sessions “all over the place — in the office, in the cafeteria, I would go out with people. We did outreach to where the soldiers were.” Helping first-responders and others was “was tough,” Villafañe Gregory admits. The Commonwealth’s electric grid had been almost entirely knocked out by the storm, she notes. “I would come back [home] to darkness.”

Still, becoming a psychologist who focuses on strengthening people so they can recover from trauma, and so they can help others do so, too, is “the best choice I’ve ever made in my life,” says Villafañe Gregory, who frequently attends the College’s annual Reunion. “I love it,” she says of her career. “I’ll never retire.”

At Fort Buchanan and in the U.S. Virgin Islands, she serves as a fulltime therapist. “I work with military members and their families. I give them techniques so they can have a more healthy reintegration” into civilian life, she explains. She also volunteers with the American Red Cross, to support people coping with disasters. “I want to help people tap into their resilience,” she says.

Psychology has always been Villafañe

BARNARD MAGAZINE WINTER 2020 17

SALON

by Veronica Suchodolski ’19

Photo courtesy of Harvard University Press

way beyond sports. There’s just so much folklore about T, and so many strong feelings about it that are connected to people’s ideas and experiences of gender and sexuality, that it makes it almost impossible to dispassionately consider the evidence.

How did this misinterpretation of how T functions come to be so pervasive, even in scientific circles?

The idea that T is the “essence of masculinity” shaped what was asked about T from the start, how evidence was collected and analyzed, and, importantly, how findings are disseminated. All the negative findings get lost and forgotten; meanwhile, there is a tendency to notice, repeat, and ultimately overemphasize “positive” findings that seem to support the idea of T being linked to everything that we culturally code as masculine. But there are other reasons, too.

One is our habit of simplistically confusing quantity for importance, and our preference for simple over complex models. Because men have more T than women do, on average, there’s an assumption that T is more important to men. But consider the case of muscles.

Every human needs skeletal muscles for our survival — for our basic mobility! This is not sex specific. So those factors that support muscle development aren’t sex specific. And that emphasis on quantity is directly related to the preference for simple models.

If we were more consistently attentive to the fact that hormones are part of a complex feedback system, then we would recognize that knowing levels alone doesn’t tell you very much. It turns out that most women are more sensitive to T than men are, and that very low levels of T can have effects in women, while that same amount wouldn’t make much or any difference to most men.

BREAK THIS DOWN

The Truth About “ T” Testosterone gets a mythbusting biography Testosterone has a reputation as “the male sex hormone.” But professor of women’s, gender, and sexuality studies Rebecca Jordan-Young wants to change all that. In her new book, Testosterone: An Unauthorized Biography, co-authored with anthropologist Katrina Karkazis, Jordan-Young lets readers in on a little-known fact: The science used to prop up testosterone’s reputation is frequently misinterpreted and often poorly conducted.

Indeed, the hormone sometimes known as “T” serves a variety of functions, with receptors for it found on almost every cell in the human body. Here’s maybe the biggest irony: New research suggests that in women’s bodies, the hormone previously described as “male” sets the stage for one of the most female of human processes — ovulation.

What led you to write a book about testosterone?

Around the end of 2011, a graduate school friend, Katrina Karkazis, contacted me about new regulations that banned women with naturally high testosterone levels from competing against other women in elite sports. That became a major new project for both of us, involving several collaborative grants and publications as well as advocacy for women athletes affected by the rule.

Our research exposed us to fascinating, complex research about testosterone. It soon became obvious to us both that many people — laypeople, science journalists, and even some scientists — have a hard time believing or even really hearing some of the evidence on what T does and doesn’t do. The misunderstandings went 18

What are some of the common misconceptions about testosterone?

Probably the biggest myth is that T is “the male sex hormone.” This gets T wrong in so many ways, but it’s a myth that goes all the way back to the earliest days of endocrinology. Those early scientists were looking for a way to explain the development and maintenance of sex differences, and they had an idea that there were chemical “essences” of masculinity and femininity. They expected that there would be separate chemicals for males and for females, that each would control only male or female traits, and that the most important (or even only) effects of these substances would be related to creating differences between females and males. Those and other early ideas turned out to be very wrong.

For example, everyone has the same hormones, just in different amounts and proportions; it will surprise most people to learn that T is the most abundant steroid hormone in adult women and that women actually have much higher levels of T than of the supposed “female” hormone, estrogen.

Another big myth is that T drives aggression and sexual violence. In the book, we go through some of the classic studies that supposedly proved this link, and we show that they are very badly flawed. We focus especially on some studies that supposedly link T to violent crime; these are old studies but still very influential, and they’ve never before been scrutinized. There are studies that link T to small-scale aggression or hostility in lab conditions, but only for subgroups of people, in the context of other hormonal conditions, etc. The specific conditions under which T is linked to aggression shift around from study to study, so we’re skeptical of that.

What are some of the social effects of these myths about testosterone?

Myths about testosterone causing aggression, “bold” personality, and other leadership qualities support gender hierarchies by saying that if men dominate in these areas, it’s because of testosterone, not the consequence of historical situations and social dynamics.

So that means that the status quo can’t be challenged — that trying to do so is a fool’s errand. Many people have gotten in the habit of using testosterone as a

shorthand for toxic masculinity, and even though they might not literally believe that T is behind sexual harassment, rape, or even mansplaining, repeating this idea has the subtle effect of solidifying the myth that these things are inevitable. One of the biggest surprises to us in writing the book, and one of our most important findings, is that myths about T also prop up hierarchies of class and race.

There’s an important thread of studies and claims that T plays a significant role in where people end up in life in terms of education and occupation: Supposedly, T makes some people too impulsive and aggressive to move up the social ladder.

But meanwhile, somehow, relatively high T among white-collar men leads them to

be “ideal leaders” instead of antisocial.

The theories aren’t logically consistent, of course, but they are powerful.

In terms of race, there’s an influential group of scientific articles that lays out the idea that young black men are more likely to have higher T and are therefore more likely to be more violent than their white counterparts. These articles are riddled with assumptions, gaps, and inconsistencies, which we point out in the book.

What are the actual functions of testosterone in the body, in both men and women?

T does so much! There are receptors for T in almost every tissue of the body.

It affects bones, brain, heart, blood vessels, skin, hair, and more. It affects the reproductive system, and not just in men; emerging research suggests that an optimal level of T is necessary for the early phases of follicular development, which sets the stage for ovulation. It’s possible that someone who just reads a description of the book, instead of reading the book, might think we’re saying that T doesn’t in fact do very much. But the truth is just the opposite: T’s “authorized biography” is wrong because it profoundly narrows what T really does.

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BARNARD MAGAZINE WINTER 2020 19

LEGACY of

Almost 70 years after making history as the first Nepalese woman to attend college in the U.S., Bhinda Malla Shah ’56, Nepal’s first woman ambassador, shares her story with granddaughter Aarya Barnard College, known for launching extraordinary women, has a special connection to Nepal: the first Nepalese woman ever to pursue and graduate from college in the United States — Bhinda Malla Shah ’56 — chose Barnard. Shah’s education here was just the beginning of her trailblazing journey. She was posted to the United States as a member of the Nepal Foreign Ministry and later established the first Nepali embassy in Bangladesh after that nation’s independence. She became Nepal’s first woman ambassador with her appointment as ambassador to India.

This deep bond now continues across generations with Bhinda’s granddaughter, Aarya Shah ’23, also born and raised in Nepal, who began her first semester of college at Barnard in fall 2019. We asked Aarya to interview her grandmother about her Barnard experience and the beginnings of this multigenerational legacy.

What follows is their conversation — a celebration of Bhinda’s time at Barnard and of the possibilities that await Aarya.

by Aarya Shah ’23 Photo by Hemanta Shrestha

I will always cherish the memory of that early morning on December 1, 2018, when my parents came into my room, shook me awake, and told me that the Barnard early-decision results had been announced.

I quickly opened my laptop and clicked on the email. As we read it, we all started to laugh, cry, and shout. I was in!

I closed my eyes and saw my grandmother Bhinda’s face. I smiled, thinking of all the times over the years she had told me that I must try to go to Barnard. I remember her saying, “I had two sons. So there was no chance of them going to my college. But the moment you were born, I knew there was hope for my legacy to continue.” I could hardly wait to tell her that I had been able to make her dream come true.

My earliest memory of my grandmother is when I went to show her a new doll set my parents had got for me. She pulled me up on her lap, smiled at me, and while admiring my doll lovingly, looked at my parents and said, sternly, “Don’t just give my granddaughter dolls and cooking sets.

Give her doctor and science sets as well.

She must understand that a woman’s life is not limited to the home and kitchen.”

At that time, I didn’t fully understand the importance of this idea until I began to understand the consequences of being a woman in a patriarchal society. But today I do, and I realize just what a big responsibility I now carry, having gotten the opportunity to pursue my higher education at Barnard. Like my grandmother before me, I am apprehensive as well as excited as I begin the next chapter of my life. I remember my grandmother telling me, “When you return from Barnard, I don’t want you to follow in my footsteps. I expect you to start from where my footsteps end and take the torch forward in your unique way, like only you can.” I will take her words with me through my journey.

So let’s start at the beginning:What led you to Barnard?

My journey to Barnard actually started when I entered an essay competition called “The World of Tomorrow.” The prize was 22

a monthlong trip to the United States. I won, and when I got on the flight I had no idea that my one-month tour would lead me to the most formative years of my life.

As I was finishing my United States tour, I met a lady in Voice of America [the federal government’s broadcasting network] who was from Barnard and part of the committee that had arranged the tour. She asked if I was interested to do my college in the United States. Of course, I was! But I didn’t have the financial means. I don’t recall very clearly, but she arranged for me to apply to Barnard and for a substantial scholarship that enabled me to start what turned out to be some of the very best years of my life.

What was it like to be the first woman from Nepal to graduate from a U.S. college?

In the 1950s, for a girl from Nepal to go to school was a rarity. So, it was absolutely unheard-of for a girl to go study abroad, forget going halfway across the world to America.

Truthfully, at the time I didn’t realize that I was the first woman from Nepal to get an opportunity to pursue higher education in the United States. Initially it felt like a dream. Winning the essay competition and coming to America itself was a surreal experience.

But then getting the opportunity to go to such a prestigious institution as Barnard was unbelievable. I knew I would have to face many challenges. But more so, I knew I would make the most of every day and each course that I took. From my first day all I wanted to do was learn — from my classes, from my friends, and from America. Today, when I look back, I realize just how fortunate I was to get that learning experience, because that was the foundation on which I built my life.

How did this change your life when you returned to Nepal?

After finishing my bachelor’s at Barnard and master’s [in international politics] in Johns Hopkins, I returned to Nepal only to realize that the years I had spent in the United States had made me very capable

Throughout my life, I have believed that it was my duty to be the voice for the tens of thousands of Nepali women who didn’t have the opportunity to get the education I received. And, in addition to being Nepal’s first woman ambassador, I hope this will be as big a part of the legacy I leave behind.”

to face the challenges in America but left me a stranger in my own country. My English was perfect, but my spoken Nepali was good at best, and I could barely write Nepali at all. At that time, everything in Nepal was in Nepali. However, having faced the total unknown when I started college at Barnard, I was confident that I could and I would make the most of my life back in Nepal. The U.S. government was helping establish the first library in Nepal, the American Library. And as I was one of the few people who had ever actually used a library, I was given the job to help set it up. When all the work was done, it was inaugurated by the then king of Nepal, His Majesty Mahendra B.B. Shah, and by the first democratically elected prime minister, B.P. Koirala. After the ribbon cutting, I gave them a guided tour of the library — in English, of course.

After the tour, the prime minister asked me if I was Nepali, and when I said I was and gave him my background, he insisted that I join the government bureaucracy.

With that bit of encouragement, I took the Public Services Commission examination and was selected for the Foreign Ministry.

Soon I realized that the education and exposure that I had received made me unique in many ways, and along with my career I would always speak up for gender equality at work and in society. Throughout my life, I have believed that it was my duty to be the voice for the tens of thousands of Nepali women who didn’t have the opportunity to get the education I received.

And, in addition to being Nepal’s first woman ambassador, I hope this will be as big a part of the legacy I leave behind.

Top: At a tea for foreign students, Bhinda Malla Shah (left) joined Hjordis Thor ’58, from Iceland, and Joan Kim ’57, from Korea, in talking with Barnard president Millicent McIntosh. Bottom: Aarya Shah on campus.

What was it like on your first day at Barnard?

I still remember quite clearly, most probably because I was extremely scared.

I actually had no idea what to expect. I remember feeling alone, far from home, my family, and every sense of normality that I had known till then. All I had was my familiar silk sari cocooning me and my belief that I could do this. I remember sitting on the bed in my room in Brooks Hall feeling like I was all alone in a small boat floating in the middle of a vast ocean. My thoughts were interrupted by a knock on the door, and in walked my very

BARNARD MAGAZINE WINTER 2020 23

I don’t want you to follow in my footsteps. I expect you to start from where my footsteps end and take the torch forward in your unique way, like only you can.”

President McIntosh awards Bhinda Malla Shah her diploma at Barnard’s 1956 Commencement.

first friend at Barnard, Dorothy Grant [Hennings ’56]. Little did I realize the bond I would have with this girl from the room next door would grow into a friendship that would last a lifetime. I remember that evening we walked together to dinner in the cafeteria, and this soon became our routine for nearly all our meals at Barnard: breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Soon after, we got the door between our rooms unlocked, and it remained so over the next four years!

That first night I went to bed with a smile, as this new place didn’t seem so lonely and scary anymore, as now I had a new friend, Dorothy — or Grant, as I began calling her.

Who were your closest friends?

The friends I made in Barnard have been my friends for life. I don’t have any friends that I am in touch with from school, or from Johns Hopkins, where I did my master’s. But my closest friends from Barnard have remained with me till today.

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That’s what makes Barnard so special.

Shortly after meeting Dorothy Grant, I found Marcia McNaughton, or probably it was the other way around, and the dining friendship group expanded to the three of us. In the evenings, after we had studied for several hours, we would gather to snack and talk in Grant’s room. That was our typical evening routine: eat, study, gather to chat about the day and everything happening everywhere. Somewhere along the line, Helga Hagedorn-Frese [Bendix ’57] and Alice Pape [Kundel ’57] joined our dinner gang. And gradually that became the norm for us all: Marcia, Grant, Alice, Helga, and I — our unique group of five.

Unlike many of the other girls, our group did not smoke or drink alcohol, or party even on the weekends. Our gang’s idea of a great Saturday evening was to walk down Broadway, go to the movies, and then come back to snack in one of our rooms and talk, talk, talk. We joined the Lutheran Club, not

for any religious reason; it was a nice place to meet different types of people, and the Friday night dinners there were delicious.

Obviously, I didn’t have any family in New York or the United States. But right from the first Thanksgiving and Christmas, I would go to Grant’s house in New Jersey.

Her parents were so kind and welcoming.

I always felt like I was with my family during the holidays. Also, it was Helga who came to Nepal when I was getting married to your grandfather. And the photos you have seen of our wedding were, in fact, taken by her. No matter how many miles have been between us, or how many years have passed us by, the members of our gang of five were, are, and will always be my best friends.

What challenges did you face?

Initially, I found the academics at Barnard rigorous, because the manner in which I had been taught in school was very

At Bhinda Malla Shah’s home in Kathmandu, Nepal

different. However, since I had a strong group of friends and accessible professors whom I could always approach, I was able to cope. The most difficult challenge I remember facing was during my sophomore year. Although I was on a substantial scholarship, I still needed to make some payments, and in those days, money was very slow in coming from Nepal. I still remember how scared I was when the dean called me in and said I may have to leave the dorm and work as a nanny for a family they knew nearby in the area if I was unable to make the needed payment. All my friends and I cried and cried when they heard the news. But Grant quickly got on the phone and asked her mother and father if they could loan me the money I needed to stay in the dorm until my money came from Nepal.

Thankfully, they were able and willing, and a major crisis was averted. Soon my brother came to the United States with the money, and I was able to pay back Grant’s family.

It was only a few hundred dollars, but that was a lot of money back then.

What helped you succeed as a student?

First and foremost, I think it was my confidence and belief in myself that really helped me succeed at Barnard. I found myself in one of the best women’s colleges and initially felt as if I had been thrown into a gushing river and told to learn to swim.

But swim I did, because I was determined to make the most of this incredible opportunity that I had been given.

For me, my biggest support system as a student was my group of friends, who helped me understand the American education system, studied with me, and worked through assignments with each other. Along with this, what truly helped me was the large amount of personalized attention that the professors were able to give students due to the small class sizes.

Although I found the academics rigorous, I loved and thrived in math, history, and English. Through all my courses and assignments, what I remember is the strong sense of community. There was competition. But it was healthy competition, where we wanted to do better for ourselves, not to be better than anyone else. It was this environment which really helped me learn and make the most out of my years in Barnard.

What were your impressions of New York City?

I had never been to, let alone lived in, a big city before arriving in New York. So, yes, I was excited and a little frightened to be so far from home. As I got to know New York, I slowly started to fall in love with the lights, the crowd, and the life of the city. But even though we were in the hustle and bustle of New York, our small group of friends were continued on page 73 BARNARD MAGAZINE WINTER 2020 25

BARNARD EFFECT

THE 26

As trailblazers and mentors, the College’s scholars have especially influenced the disciplines of anthropology, psychology, and creative writing

by Kira Goldenberg ’07

Illustrations by Lincoln Agnew

There’s something about Barnard College

“All my best students are women,” Boas confided to a friend in 1920. Two of those students, Margaret Mead ’23 and Zora Neale Hurston ’28, became pivotal figures in the creation of an entire field of study — and, by some accounts, an entire perspective that continues to constitute a progressive worldview to this day.

Mead, most famously in Samoa, and Hurston, in the American South and the Caribbean, conducted imperfect but seminal fieldwork that both depicted a distinct moment in time as universally representative of a culture’s inner workings — even as their presence affected change in those cultures — and established the notion that our own ways of being aren’t automatically the best ones.

This radical reimagining of what counts as an acceptable way to view the world could only have been thought up by a band of precocious misfits at a place like Barnard, says Charles King, chair of Georgetown University’s government department and author of a recent book about the founding of cultural anthropology, Gods of the Upper Air. “If you were told that women were inherently suited for some tasks in society but not others and [that] there was an inherent female disposition or female weakness that was clearly biological, but here you were surrounded by people who were accomplished and talented and bold and took up space in the world,” King says, it “seemed to confound the existing social theory you’d been told.”

They weren’t just smart academic women in a world not built to house them; they were outliers in others ways as well: Mead, along with graduate student (and, later, professor) Ruth Benedict, the third member of Boas’ cohort, had romantic relationships with both men and women, and Hurston was the first black student at Barnard — and the only one during her time on campus. Their outsider status meant they cast a critical eye on their own culture, King notes, and self-reflection became one of the great gifts of the field they co-created.

“One of Boas’ great lessons that he was teaching all these folks in a seminar

that makes its influence far exceed its relatively diminutive footprint. Maybe it’s something in the air, in the water — or, perhaps, in the unique atmosphere in which generations of ambitious women have recognized each other’s greatness and mentored those who followed them.

Regardless, the College’s faculty and alumnae consistently have an outsized impact on their chosen fields.

Call it “the Barnard effect.” It’s not inevitable: Though the endowment at our beloved little College on a hilltop has grown more than 60% since 2008, it has always existed separately from Columbia’s billions and remains less than half the size of those at peer institutions. And yet the Barnard effect proliferates across fields and throughout history — and is particularly notable in three disciplines.

In anthropology, Barnard women helped found the entire discipline and continue to do paradigm-shifting scholarship.

In psychology, Barnard students and faculty have changed the way we view children’s development and potential.

And even without a full-fledged creative writing program, Barnard has launched so many extraordinary authors that their collective works could constitute a thorough survey of modern American literature, minus the men, of course.

What’s the secret? Stanford psychology professor Carol Dweck ’67, worldrenowned for her research on human potential, says, “I know ‘intellectual curiosity’ is kind of a cliché.” But she, like so many others, “learned so much of it at Barnard.”

UPENDING TRADITIONAL VIEWS It’s not a stretch to say that the entire discipline of cultural anthropology was born at the College. Columbia professor Franz Boas, who taught regularly at Barnard, was the first scholar to posit that Western European culture wasn’t the apex of civilization but rather one of many global cultures, none superior to another. His most prominent intellectual descendants were a trio who attended his classes or taught with him at Barnard.

room at Barnard was ‘Follow the data,’ ” King says. “If you have a theory of human society that seems to be confounded by the observations that you as an open-eyed social scientist bring to the world, then you have to throw away your theories.”

The Barnard anthropology legacy continues to this day, wherever our alumnae land and on campus as well. At Princeton, Professor Rena Lederman ’73 has shifted how scholars think about informed consent in research involving human subjects in a variety of disciplines.

Her work highlights the fact that research practices like sociology or anthropology and those such as lab sciences are very different forms of inquiry and should be treated accordingly. Another alumna, UC Berkeley professor Aihwa Ong ’74, created the notion of “flexible citizenship,” which describes the ways that “flexibility, migration, and relocations, instead of being coerced or resisted,” she says, “have become practices to strive for among affluent people who seek to relocate their families and capital in advanced, liberal economies.”

Back in Morningside Heights, faculty members Paige West and Nadia Abu El-Haj have explored how Westerners’ preconceptions and misconceptions influence how they understand and interpret other cultures, generally with harmful results. Though at first blush they appear to be doing work that eschews Barnard and Columbia’s anthropology lineage, their critiques carry on Boas’ tradition of upending the power imbalances that forged the day’s conventional wisdom.

UNLOCKING THE DOORS OF CHILD DEVELOPMENT For generations, Barnard alumnae have gone on to do groundbreaking work advancing our understanding of children’s development and their ability to realize their full potential.

Take psychologist Anne Anastasi, who, like Hurston, graduated in the Class of 1928. She went on to receive the National Medal of Science for her work on the structures of aptitude and personality BARNARD MAGAZINE WINTER 2020 27

Anne Anastasi ’28

tests. (Anastasi credited her interest in the field to her Barnard mentor, Harry Hollingworth.) Early in her career, she concluded that we all marinate in an inescapable stew of upbringing, genetics, and environment — that nature and nurture can’t be disentangled. That realization led her to believe that it’s impossible to test innate knowledge or talent. She popularized the idea that there’s no way to create a test that lacks cultural bias, an idea that remains vital to considering whom standardized testing helps — and whom it doesn’t — for things like admittance to a selective high school, or whether a personality or diagnostic test accurately assesses what it purports to make clear.

Carol Dweck, currently the Lewis & Virginia Eaton Professor of Psychology at Stanford, is another example of the Barnard effect. Dweck developed the idea of “growth” versus “fixed” mind-sets. A person with a fixed mind-set believes that they have a finite amount of intelligence, and being faced with something that challenges their skills makes them shy away from obstacles. Someone with a growth mind-set believes that everyone can, with learning, develop their abilities.

Faced with a challenge, this person will work to meet it. Dweck’s research has found that praising children’s effort rather than their intelligence can motivate them to seek challenges and show more 28

persistence. That research is being applied in classrooms and homes around the world.

As a Barnard student, Dweck first experienced what it felt like to be in an environment where everyone recognized one another’s potential. “You’re never a low person on the totem pole,” she says. “You have the faculty committed to teaching you, inspiring you, interacting with you.”

Another Barnardian who has advanced the field of child development is Adriana Galván ’01, director of the UCLA Developmental Neuroscience Laboratory.

She uses neuroimaging to learn about how and why teens’ emotional systems develop before their rational decisionmaking does. This year, that work earned her the National Science Foundation’s Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers.

FINDING THEIR VOICES Though Barnard has never had a full creative writing major — there’s currently a concentration within the English Department — that hasn’t stopped the College from churning out paradigmshifting authors for generations. From Zora Neale Hurston, who used her

anthropology fieldwork as source material for her seminal novel Their Eyes Were Watching God, to Erica Jong and Ottessa Moshfegh, Barnard is a place where fledgling writers find their voice.

Indiana University English professor emeritus Susan Gubar, who has authored foundational scholarship on women’s literature, underscores that point: “Those women are immersed or can immerse themselves in one of the most vibrant literary scenes in America.” She notes, by way of example, that not only did Hurston have the intellectual life on campus at her disposal; she was also able to become deeply involved in the Harlem Renaissance, in full bloom a short trek from the Barnard gates. “The small college on the one hand was a huge influence,” she says, “and the larger literary culture of New York was a larger energizing force.”

According to Professor Mary Gordon ’71, a longtime steward of the department’s creative writing flame, the reason is pretty straightforward: Barnard pays attention to women, even though, “in the literary world, it is the male voice that is the default setting,”

“

If we are to achieve a richer culture, rich in contrasting values, we must recognize the whole gamut of human potentialities, and so weave a less arbitrary social fabric, one in which each diverse human gift will find a fitting place.”

—Margaret Mead ’23

“

Art gives us the opportunity to have clarity as well as hope that we might be able to survive a situation, or hope that we can find a way out of it without too much more injury to ourselves.” ­—Ntozake Shange ’70

she told The New York Times back in 2007.

The article in which she’s quoted called Barnard “something of a literary hatchery, like London’s Bloomsbury Circle or the 1920s Paris of Hemingway, Fitzgerald and Joyce, where a certain confluence of talent, ambition and what moderns would call networking generates an astonishing literary crop.” But the common denominator is that Barnard writers inspire one another both by example and by maintaining a connection to the College and a devotion to mentoring those who come after them.

Gordon, herself an accomplished novelist, teaches creative writing seminars that are highly prized by aspiring novelists. (Ottessa Moshfegh ’02, whose 2015 novel, Eileen, was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, took the seminar in 1999. Mary Beth Keane ’99 took it in 1997; she went on to win a Guggenheim Fellowship for her fiction, currently teaches at Barnard, and in August, her novel Ask Again,Yes won the Tonight Show’s Summer Reads vote.)

Ntozake Shange ’70, a feminist playwright, poet, and novelist, was an

influential scribe of black women’s rage at structural inequality, which she conveyed in genre-bending works of engrossing power. Later in her life, she regularly visited campus, and she donated her papers to Barnard’s archives because she credited the College with her emotional and intellectual development.

Erica Jong ’63 forever expanded what was considered possible for women’s writing when, in 1973, she published Fear of Flying, an explicit and entertaining romp about a woman’s sexual liberation.

She traced her incisive pen to her years at Barnard: “I felt that Barnard had given me so much — had given me confidence in my writing, which I desperately needed.”

Jong endowed the Barnard Writing Center in 1996.

Edwidge Danticat ’90 was the youngest author ever nominated for a National Book Award. She has written more than 15 books and has emerged as a strong moral voice on the plight of Haiti postHurricane Matthew. “The fact that writers like Zora Neale Hurston, Thulani Davis [’70], June Jordan [’57], Ntozake Shange, Erica Jong, Cristina Garcia [’79], among others, had been Barnard students made writing seem much more attainable as a career for me,” Danticat said this year.

“

There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.” ­—Zora Neale Hurston ’28

Jhumpa Lahiri ’89 won a Pulitzer Prize for her very first published story collection, Interpreter of Maladies, which, in pristinely lyrical prose, articulated the intergenerational tensions that arose when Bengali immigrants raised American children. She, too, has paid it forward by teaching writing at Barnard.

It’s no surprise that Barnard elicits loyalty from its alumnae; it makes sense to love the place that taught one how to take flight. But the fact that these involved, generous women are also trailblazers across fields creates a positive feedback loop of excellence that has endured for generations. It shows no signs of slowing.

The Barnard effect is here to stay.

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Kira Goldenberg is a journalist and communications professional in NewYork City.

Zora Neale Hurston ’28

BARNARD MAGAZINE WINTER 2020 29

by Marjorie Ingall

Peek in on five workplaces graced with multiple generations of Barnard grads, all sharing history, resources, and, of course, a fridge

What’s it like to go to work every day, secure in the knowledge that your Barnard-educated colleagues have your back? We talked to five sets of Barnard women who work together — some of whom knew of their alumnae connection before starting their jobs, others who got a delightful surprise (“Whoa! Shared history!”) after months of being colleagues. We asked: Does their shared past have an impact on their collaborations? How do their Barnard ties manifest in their work? Are there Barnard-specific characteristics that help them in their jobs? Does their working together affect their connection to the College?

Here are their stories.

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From left: Emily Frieda Shaw, Kirstin Jones, and M. Alison Eisendrath. Photo by Bob Stefko.

THE BUILDERS OF THE BARACK OBAMA PRESIDENTIAL CENTER “We’re making something from scratch,” says Emily Frieda Shaw ’06. “A cultural institution like this doesn’t come into existence anew very often, and literally being on the ground floor — we are literally on the ground floor of this building in Chicago right now!

— is really exciting.” Shaw is a librarian and archivist whose primary responsibility is working with the National Archives to digitize presidential records. M. Alison Eisendrath ’88 is director of collections for the foundation’s museum team. “Alison and I work on different aspects of collection management, so our work intersects,” she explains. Kirstin Jones ’15, a finance analyst, doesn’t work directly with the pair. But that hasn’t stopped the trio from connecting. “On my first day, in a new staff introduction email, I said I was a Barnard alum, and they reached out to me,” Jones recalls.

All three believe that Barnard provided great prep for the creation of a brand-new center. Eisendrath says, “Seeing women in positions of power all the way to the top — there was this sense of limitlessness.” Also, Shaw posits (and Eisendrath and Jones agree), “The values of integrity and scholarship — that’s Barnard. And that’s infusing what we’re attempting to build here.”

Their common Barnard experience is a help. “There’s an immediate trust among us, a baseline,” Shaw says. “We have different life experiences and Barnard experiences, but there’s a thread of commonality and affinity to build from.” Jones notes, “The writer Anna Quindlen says, ‘When you go to Barnard, you major in unafraid.’ I do think when I was at Barnard, I learned that.” And Eisendrath elaborates, “As an English major at Barnard, I was encouraged to dig into complex narratives. And that’s what history is: contested narratives and multiple voices coming together to tell broader stories. Storytelling is a common thread here; it ties back to President Obama’s community-organizing strategy of sharing stories. And flexing those analytical muscles is critical. Barnard taught us that.”

BARNARD MAGAZINE WINTER 2020 31

From left: Fran Mayo and Ginger Mayo. Photo by Lyly Norasingh.

THE RESTAURANT AND HOTEL DEVELOPERS Fran Mayo ’15 and her sister Ginger ’19 work at Rebees, a Dallas company that builds huge, mixed-use spaces around the country. “I absolutely love working with Fran,” Ginger says.

The Mayos grew up overseas; both knew they wanted to go to college in a big American city. “NYC, with all its diversity, felt like a good fit,” Fran says. Though the city was the initial draw, Fran found that attending a women’s college was an unexpected blessing.

“We work in real estate in Texas, where it’s a heavily male-dominated field,” she notes. “But at our company, three of the five partners are women, and the founders have made it a point to nurture the talents of young women just starting out.”

The communication skills they learned, both sisters agree, have proved invaluable in startup culture. “I came out of the gate prepared to do high-quality work,” Ginger says. Fran concurs: “The Barnard Writing and Barnard Speaking Fellows programs, which taught me to write clearly and speak with intentionality, has helped me punch above my weight in everything I do.” Both sisters majored in urban studies, something that dovetails nicely with their work. (A third sister, Evelyn ’17, also moved to Texas; she now works for Legal Aid.) Rebees — where Fran is director of operations and Ginger manages marketing — builds storefronts and restaurants that strive to incorporate public space into their designs. “We have to be really flexible, able to talk to people who might not be on the same wavelength, good at convincing people to our way of thinking,” Fran says. “Barnard taught us that.”

She recently recruited another Barnard grad to join Rebees’ parent company and jokes, “I think all the Barnard graduates in Texas except Evelyn work here.”

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From left: Maria Daou, Wendy Greenbaum, and Tania Isacoff Friedland. Photo by Jonathan King.

THE HIGH-POWERED REAL ESTATE AGENTS When Wendy Greenbaum ’75 learns Barnard Magazine is eager to chat with her and her Warburg Realty co-workers Maria Daou ’93 and Tania Isacoff Friedland ’10 about their Barnard history, she exclaims, “Oh, we have a 1952 graduate working here, too!” She quickly begins pitching a story about her colleague Evie Muller — currently taking some time off for health reasons — rather than promoting herself, something that seems very Barnard indeed.

Muller welcomed Greenbaum to Warburg; Greenbaum went on to embrace Daou; Daou nurtured Isacoff Friedland. Each of them notes that the high-end NYC real estate business can be cutthroat, but they’re a supportive bunch. Case in point: “I recently sold a beautiful Park Avenue coop,” Daou says, “and Wendy had a listing in the building, and we discussed everything from the pricing to the clients. Warburg’s brokers are supportive in general, but the Barnard thing is an unspoken instant trust thing, an underlying thing, a sisterhood thing. I’d known Wendy for years before finding out she went to Barnard, but when I found out, it added a level of trust and camaraderie.” Isacoff Friedland, an art history major who came to Warburg after gigs at the Museum of Modern Art and Sotheby’s, sees her Barnard education as great prep for her current job. “I’m selling a luxury item,” she says, “which is exactly what I would have done as an art advisor.” But more essentially, she notes, “Barnard prepares women to think independently and have strong opinions.” And working with fellow grads, she says, is a gift. “Anywhere in life where you have common ground with someone, there’s an opportunity to bond a little bit. It’s nice to have that added layer of connection.”

“Every time I see Tania and Wendy,” Daou says, smiling, “it’s like ‘Oh! Barnard!’ ”

BARNARD MAGAZINE WINTER 2020 33

From left: Donna Zakowska and Jamie Babbit. Photo by Jonathan King.

‘THE MARVELOUS MRS. MAISEL’ MAKERS “Barnard opened my eyes to different ways to analyze the world and movement and human nature, which is a very big part of what I do now,” says Donna Zakowska ’78, whose costume designs for Amazon’s The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel won her an Emmy award this past September. “My education gave me a sense of global identity and how things connect,” she says. Working on The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, she met director Jamie Babbit ’93. (In the endless daisy chain of Barnard connections, Babbit had worked with actress Lauren Graham ’88, on Gilmore Girls.) “Jamie and I totally hit it off,” Zakowska says. “We didn’t at first realize we’d both gone to Barnard, but we were immediately very friendly. Then one day Jamie said to me, ‘Where did you go to school?’ and I said, ‘Barnard,’ and she said, ‘So did I!’ “It’s always a great feeling when you’re working with an alumna,” she continues, “because you know you’ve walked in the same buildings and shared the same experiences. We both had a respect for the feminist philosophy you’re exposed to in that school.”

Says Babbit, “I was so happy the first day Donna and I were shooting, because I like to look at the extras and pick who looks the best and put them in the foreground.” To Babbit’s delight, Zakowska was on set, unlike most costume designers. Zakowska looked through the extras with Babbit, pointing out some of the most striking and effective outfits. “Costume is huge — it’s color and mood,” Babbit says.

“Sometimes I want extras in the frame for the way they offset Midge,” the show’s main character. Babbit pauses. “I think my specificity — knowing that the devil’s in the details — comes from all the nitpicking I did intellectually at Barnard.” She and Zakowska both laugh.

And both note the sense of social justice they developed at Barnard: “We were thinking about how we could pull background [extras] who were African American and Latino and Asian into the scenes,” Babbit says, “because it’s not always important to be 100% historically accurate.” In fact, the 1950s New York in which Mrs. Maisel is set was not nearly as racially integrated then as it is now. Zakowska picks up that thread: “Maybe you’re cheating the truth a little at that moment. But it’s 2019, and you have the responsibility of it being 2019.

You try to do the best you can of enlarging the diversity picture.” Zakowska concludes, “Barnard is about being awoken, from a feminist academic and artistic point of view. That’s something we share. We both had that experience.”

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From left: Yasmin Khakoo and Elsie Ennin. Photo by Jonathan King.

THE CANCER CLINICIAN AND THE MED STUDENT Yasmin Khakoo ’86, a pediatric neurologist and neuro-oncologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City, loves to nurture Barnard students. “It keeps me current and fresh — learning about new buildings, new programs, new president, new deans.

Mentoring is a much better connection to Barnard than just signing a check.”

Medical student Elsie Ennin ’15 raves about Khakoo. “She’s one of the top researchers in her field — she’s everywhere at MSK, with a million projects. But she’ll still have time for you, her patients, her family,” she says. “Watching her reminded me of the excitement of my Barnard days, of just going for stuff and not letting barriers stop you. She works with such grace.”

Pediatric oncology, obviously, is an emotionally tough field. “It was hard when I started,” Ennin acknowledges. “I had to go home knowing I might not see a certain patient again. Dr. Khakoo taught me that as long as you’ve done your absolute best, that should give you some solace, and channeling your frustration and sorrow into research is so helpful.” Khakoo also taught her to take charge of a room. “There were so many little moments in which she taught me how not to think, ‘This person is more talented than me.’ She always does this power pose before an important meeting. Your hands are on your waist, and your legs a little bit apart, and you take deep breaths. I still do that.” Ennin is eager to grab the Barnard mentoring baton. “Applying for medical school was a daunting, stressful time,” she says. “So I’m passing on my MCAT books and taking on a couple of students to give advice to. I received that mentorship when I was on my journey, and I absolutely want to pass it along.”

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Marjorie Ingall is the author of Mamaleh Knows Best and a columnist for Tablet.

BARNARD MAGAZINE WINTER 2020 35

SOURCES

Illustration by Bård Edlund

DONORS

Barnard Gave Back on Giving Day On October 23, the Barnard community was brimming with excitement for Giving Day 2019, the online event that brings our global family together for 24 hours of paying it forward to the next generation of bold, brilliant, Barnard women. Banners waved from Barnard Hall, social media was bursting with favorite Barnard memories, students played College trivia in the Diana Center, and faculty and staff gathered to celebrate our singular community.

Starting the day with the ambitious goal of raising $1 million, Barnard set its sights high — and was met with success!

Thanks to the fervor and generosity of alumnae, parents, students, faculty, staff, and friends of the College, Barnard raised $1,109,187 for the Annual Fund from 2,529 gifts — both of which are Giving Day records for the College.

Contributions to the Barnard Annual Fund on Giving Day, and every day, have a direct, positive impact on today’s students by bridging the gap between the cost of tuition and the true cost of a Barnard education.

“Giving Day is an opportunity for all of us to support Barnard,” says Jyoti Menon ’01, president of the Alumnae Association of Barnard College. “I support Barnard because of the fabulous women we educate and send into the world. I give because of what Barnard gave me.”

Giving Day is the embodiment of the entire community, near and far, coming together to support Barnard, our students, and the education of women. The banners may be down now, but the love for Barnard is still reverberating. Thank you to all who participated in this amazing day.

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*plus D.C., Puerto Rico, and International Army Base BARNARD MAGAZINE WINTER 2020 37

Illustration by Katie Vernon

ALUMNAE ASSOCIATION PRESIDENT'S LETTER

Service in Action A key facet of the vision of the Alumnae Association of Barnard College (AABC) is that each alumna will feel a connection to the College and a significant number of alumnae will want to serve it. For the past two and a half years, I have had the great honor of supporting this amazing community by serving as AABC president. As Barnard alumnae, we all have the privilege of serving our community by voting in the annual AABC election for our representatives. These AABC elections mark the end of my term, and I hope you will join me in making a difference in the Barnard community by voting. —Jyoti Menon ’01, President, Alumnae Association of Barnard College

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Amy Veltman ’89

Chinita Allen ’94

Alexandra V. Loizzo-Desai ’09

Doralynn Pines ’69

Jamie Rubin ’01

Michele Lynn ’82

Jennifer Fearon ’13

Shilpa Bahri ’99

Jessica Muss ’98

Marci LevyMaguire ’93

Nicole Lowen Vianna ’81

Cinneah El-Amin ’16

Rochelle Cooper Schneider ’84

ALUMNAE ASSOCIATION ELECTION 2020

Your AABC Board Nominees On behalf of the Nominating Committee of the AABC, I am pleased to present

candidates for the 2020 AABC Elections (above). In my final year as chair, the committee continued its commitment to increase the transparency of the nomination process, hold competitive elections, and build a more inclusive AABC Board. To learn more about our stellar candidates and to vote for the alumnae who will represent you, please visit our.barnard.edu/election2020. Thank you for joining me in voting.

—Tracy Rodrigues ’11, Chair, Nominating Committee

BARNARD MAGAZINE WINTER 2020 39

Illustration by Fisayo Olaogun 40

WINTER READS continued from page 11 POETRY Spilled and Gone

by Jessica Greenbaum ’79 In Greenbaum’s third collection of poetry, metaphor and close observation of the world breathe life and joy into the everyday.

Witness in the Convex Mirror

by Eileen R. Tabios ’82 Using the poetry of John Ashbery as a jumping-off point, Tabios’ collection of verse explores cultural appropriation, genocide, militarism, art history, and many other interests she shared, or didn’t share, with the older poet.

CHILDREN’S AND YOUNG ADULT BOOKS

he was a girl. Now about to become a big brother, Aidan wants to get everything right for his new sibling. What if he messes up?

We Are Makers: Real Women and Girls Shaping Our World

by Amy Richards ’92 The companion book to the PBS Makers series, We Are Makers explores the stories of pioneering women who’ve opened doors for those who followed.

Among those featured are Supreme Court Justices Sandra Day O’Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, along with astronaut Mae Jemison and marathoner Kathrine Switzer.

Near Stars: New and Selected Poems

by Pam Burr Smith ’72 A collection of heartfelt poems with an emphasis on lasting connections — with friends, family, animals, and nature.

When Aidan Became a Brother

by Kyle Lukoff ’06; illustrations by Kaylani Juanita When Aidan was born, everyone thought

A WARRIOR FOR HEALING continued from page 17 students and learning what their dreams are.” She also looks forward to time with her fellow alumnae. “They tend to be very outspoken, nontraditional. It’s nice to see women as quirky as me!” Plus, there’s her pilgrimage to the Hungarian Pastry Shop on Amsterdam Avenue for some cherry strudel. “Reunion is a nice break from the intense work I do in Puerto Rico,” she says.

Much of what Villafañe Gregory learned as an undergraduate continues to serve her, both in her profession and in her pursuit of

a master’s degree in comparative literature, an effort she’s wrapping up this winter. Her master’s thesis focuses on the representation of trauma in literature from the post-World War II era, specifically the work of French writer Marguerite Duras and that of the anonymous author of A Woman in Berlin (later revealed to be journalist Marta Hillers), who describes her own rape, and that of many other women, at the hands of Soviet soldiers at the end of World War II. The question of how one tells the story of horrific events “very much informs the work I do,” Villafañe Gregory says. “How

do people understand their story of trauma?

Can they make sense of it in a way that helps them heal?”

Those are questions that continue to animate her all these years after she first sought to pursue a psychology degree at Barnard. “There’s a lot of walking wounded around,” Villafañe Gregory says, “and if there’s any way I that can relieve their suffering, I think that is my calling.”

fortunate and blessed. One thing is certain, I learned as much about life from New York as I did about how to live the very best life I could from Barnard.

expectations. As I went to school in a convent, I don’t remember celebrating my birthday before going to Barnard. But ever since then, birthday celebrations have been a big part of my life. I remember a time when, on my birthday, we all boarded the subway to Queens to go to a special ice cream parlor where anyone celebrating a birthday got free ice cream. Small things like this filled us with happiness. The memories I cherish the most of my years in Barnard were moments spent with my friends. I hope that you are fortunate to meet girls who may start off as strangers from different parts of the world but will become friends not only for four years but for your entire journey through life — just like me and our gang!

LEGACY OF LOVE continued from page 25 like a cocoon just floating through it all.

I never missed an opportunity to take advantage of the fact that I was in New York. In my first summer, I got a job at a social services center at Hartley House downtown, off Seventh Avenue. I worked with children in need who were being sent out of the city to summer camps. I did this in addition to working during the year at the Voice of America radio station, broadcasting in Nepali for the listeners in Nepal. This job enabled me to meet a substantial part of my expenses to stay in New York. Now when I think back, I find it hard to believe the amazing number of miracles and events that happened which enabled me to go to Barnard. I feel truly

What is your fondest memory of your time at Barnard?

The first time I saw snow! It had snowed all night, and I ran out the next morning and without any hesitation, I rolled around on the snow-covered lawn. For the first 10 seconds, it was pure happiness, and then the cold started to seep in, and I ran back to my dorm. Our gang also had a tradition of celebrating each other’s birthdays with great fanfare. We would dream up different ways to celebrate and surprise the birthday girl with a party beyond her

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Alejandra Rosa is a writer based in Puerto Rico, working on post-Hurricane Maria representations.

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BARNARD MAGAZINE WINTER 2020 73

LAST IMAGE

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“City of the Lagoon” by Geraldine Pontius ’68

“City of the Canals”

BARNARD MAGAZINE WINTER 2020 75

LAST WORD

by Eve-Lynn Siegel Gardner ’94

Illustration by Fabien Gilbert

Reclaiming ‘Opinionated Woman’

Both women shot me disapproving looks.

I was startled by the first woman’s comment; I hadn’t interrupted or spoken disparagingly to anyone. Why was she singling me out? Wasn’t expressing an opinion the purpose of sitting on the board anyway? And what about the men in the room who were voicing their thoughts? She wasn’t criticizing them.

I felt myself blush (what?), and for the remainder of the meeting, I kept my lips pressed together and stared down at the table. When the meeting adjourned, I realized I could not recall what had been discussed. I had used up all my mental energy trying to not participate, trying to not appear so “opinionated.” I left the room feeling tired and dejected. “Maybe this board thing isn’t for me,” I thought.

“What do you care what one idiot said?” my mother asked when we spoke that evening. “I’m embarrassed,” I replied.

“Forget it,” she advised. “And don’t you dare resign from that board. Remember, you’re a Barnard grad! You have a voice — now, use it!”

Hanging up the phone, I picked up the latest edition of Barnard Magazine.

Flipping through, my eyes fell upon a photo of several students sitting around a table. It was obvious they were discussing something that mattered to them. Not one of them was staring down at the table

or the floor. Memories of the vigorous debates I’d participated in during my four years on campus flooded back to me. No professor or student had ever tried to shut me down. My mother was right. I knew in that moment that I was going back to the AFAP board and that I would never again stop myself from participating out of fear of being stigmatized as — gasp! — “an opinionated woman.” And I would take every opportunity to encourage other women to voice their ideas, too.

The following month, I pulled on my favorite Barnard sweatshirt, walked into the AFAP board meeting, found a place to sit well away from my disapproving critics, and took the first step in earning my reputation as an outspoken, opinionated, and determined participant. (Friends teasingly say they enjoy watching my “New York side” make an appearance every so often.)

The following year, when the garrison commander publicly thanked me and two other spouses for helping to bring the needs of the soldiers and families to the forefront of every discussion, once again, I felt myself blush.

This time, it was because of the applause.

Eve-Lynn Siegel Gardner ’94 shares the story of her voice, both lost and found Walking into the large stone building that housed our garrison headquarters on the U.S. Army base where my family and I lived a few years ago, I excitedly ran up two flights of narrow stairs to the second floor and took a seat in a crowded conference room. I had signed up to participate in the garrison commander’s AFAP board/ steering committee.

AFAP stands for Army Family Action Plan, and it gives all military personnel and families a voice to express how the Army’s policies and practices affect their daily lives.

I was very excited to be a part of this board and was full of ideas I shared. Halfway through the meeting, one of the two older women sitting to my left remarked contemptuously to her neighbor, “She certainly has her opinions, doesn’t she?”

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Eve-Lynn Siegel Gardner is a freelance writer and author of the children’s book More Precious Than Gold.

Bring It Back to Barnard Show your spirit!

BARNARD REUNION June 4–7, 2020

Save the date for lectures, storytelling, receptions, and more as you reconnect with your classmates and Barnard alumnae across generations!

For more information, please visit reunion.barnard.edu.

2020

Save the Date

Wednesday, April 22, 2020 | 6 PM | The Plaza Hotel, New York City All proceeds from this event help to underwrite student financial aid and provide scholarships to new generations of visionaries and trailblazers at Barnard College.

For more information: 646.745.8332 | gala@barnard.edu | barnard.edu/gala Gala 2020 art designed by Joy Lee ’21