Barnard Magazine Winter 2021

WINTER 2021

CHANGING HEARTS AND MINDS Three alums who have devoted their careers to racial justice

WOMEN IN PODCASTING

CLIMATE CHANGE: PAST TO PRESENT

COVID VACCINE AND EQUITY

BLAMED FOR A STILLBIRTH · NEPAL

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Picking Up the Threads

by Mary Cunningham

A nonprofit turns to a time-honored art form to help heal and empower women across the world

Features

26

Cover Story: Doing the Work

by Erin Aubry Kaplan Meet three alumnae who have devoted their careers to fighting racial injustice Michelle Maldonado ’91

PHOTO BY LIONEL MADIOU COVER ILLUSTRATION BY ERIN ROBINSON

34

Tuned In

by Kira Goldenberg ’07 These Barnard alums are shaping the podcasting industry Rebecca Douglass ’10 PHOTO BY JONATHAN KING

Departments 2 Letters

3 From President Beilock 4 From the Editor 5D ispatches Headlines | Big Sub(stitutions); Mei-mei Berssenbrugge ’69; ‘Big Problems’; the Francine LeFrak Center irst Person | Symposium: F Writing by Barnard alumnae Wit & Whimsy | You’ve Got a Friend?

15 D iscourses

Arts & Letters | A Life of the Mind

Student Perspective | A Bridge of the Future Strides in STEM | The Science of Climate Change Bookshelf | Books by Barnard authors History Lesson | A Book of Our Own 45 Noteworthy Passion Project | Prints Charming Q&Author | Paola Ramos ’09 AABC Pages | From the AABC President; AABC Elections Class Notes Sources | Supporting Barnard Women in STEM; Giving Day

Alumna Profile | Christina LaGamma ’16 Virtual Roundup

Obituaries | Fay Chew Matsuda ’69; Patricia Warner ’49 In Memoriam 87 Last Word by Helene Gayle ’76 88 Crossword

Letters

THE FALL ISSUE Thank you for putting the roles and services of our fellow alumnae during these months of COVID-19 pandemic in the Fall 2020 issue of Barnard Magazine [“Barnard’s Faces of the Frontlines”]. I am encouraged and inspired by our Barnard alumnae’s involvement and hope these stories will galvanize many to action and move hearts toward compassion.

As one of the emergency medicine physicians here at Columbia University Irving Medical Center, we experienced and confronted situations that we were never trained or prepared for. The courage and fortitude of the human spirit are some of the qualities that carried us through. I am sharing with you two links to articles that

To the Editor

I co-authored this year during the height of the COVID pandemic: one in Pediatric Emergency Care (https://tinyurl.com/ ya63jo5l) and a second in AEM Education and Training (https://tinyurl.com/ydy3zytn).

Personally, COVID has hit home.

My mom, husband, and daughter are recovering from COVID infection. My son just tested positive. Thank God I have not contracted this virus so that I can care for my COVID clan. Having lived through and witnessed these differing perspectives of COVID, I have come to empathize with the breadth of impact this virus has on humanity.

—Shiu-Lin Tsai ’85, M.D. I looked through the excellent Fall 2020 issue of Barnard Magazine but couldn’t find anything about the striking art on the front cover. Is this a photograph, a painting, a combination of the two? And who is the artist? I thought it was terrific.

—Emilie Buchwald ’57 Creative director David Hopson replies: Thanks, Emilie, for your kind message. The piece you mention is a graphite and digital illustration by Daryn Ray, who illustrated the cover and the entire article on Barnard’s frontline workers. Our apologies to Daryn for inadvertently omitting the credit for her beautiful work on the cover.

WE WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU. We would love to get your feedback on the Magazine. Please share your thoughts, ideas, or questions with us at magazine@barnard.edu.

EDITORIAL EDITOR Nicole Anderson ’12JRN CREATIVE DIRECTOR David Hopson COPY EDITOR Molly Frances PRODUCTION DIRECTOR Lisa Buonaiuto WRITER Veronica Suchodolski ’19 STUDENT INTERNS Solby Lim ’22, Isabella Pechaty ’23 ALUMNAE ASSOCIATION OF BARNARD COLLEGE

PRESIDENT & ALUMNAE TRUSTEE Amy

Veltman ’89

ALUMNAE RELATIONS EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR Karen A. Sendler ENROLLMENT AND COMMUNICATIONS

VICE PRESIDENT FOR ENROLLMENT AND COMMUNICATIONS

Jennifer G. Fondiller ’88, P’19

DIRECTOR OF COMMUNICATIONS AND SPECIAL PROJECTS

Quenta P. Vettel, APR DEVELOPMENT

VICE PRESIDENT, DEVELOPMENT AND ALUMNAE RELATIONS

Lisa Yeh

PRESIDENT, BARNARD COLLEGE Sian Leah Beilock Winter 2021, Vol. CX, No. 1 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 Email: 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 (200 words maximum), submissions for Symposium (400 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 email 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 Email: alumrecords@barnard.edu

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From President Sian Leah Beilock

PHOTO BY DOROTHY HONG

Elevating Wellness A year ago, when we first launched Feel Well, Do Well @ Barnard, a new College-wide initiative focused on health and wellness, I shared with the Barnard community my own wellness ritual: a walk through Riverside Park. Even if brief, it gives me a moment to relax, organize my thoughts, and prepare for the day ahead. As a cognitive scientist, I frequently think about the relationship between the mind and body and how factors such as anxiety and stress can impact performance in ways big and small. This year has been one of historic challenges and has illuminated why it’s so vital to provide resources, tools, and techniques to support the well-being of our students, faculty, staff, and alumnae.

Feel Well, Do Well @ Barnard was born out of the understanding that the health of our students is essential to their ability to thrive in and out of the classroom. And although this endeavor started prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, it laid an important groundwork that has guided our approach to health and safety during this unprecedented time.

While the pandemic has amplified the importance of health and wellness, we have long been dedicated to building resources that bolster the well-being of our community. For the College, it is a sustained, ongoing commitment. And thanks to the generous gift from the Francine A. LeFrak Foundation, we are excited to be moving forward with the creation of the Francine A. LeFrak Foundation Center for Well-Being. In this issue [see page 8], you can read more about the new center, which provides both a centralized hub and an umbrella organization for our many Feel Well, Do Well @ Barnard wellness initiatives and supports a 360-degree perspective of personal well-being: physical, mental, and financial.

This last pillar, focusing on financial fluency and health, may be a little unexpected, but it is an integral part of well-being that is critical to a woman’s success.

Since the fall, we’ve launched a number of key programs to meet the needs of our students. We set up a skilled Pandemic Response Team that has implemented a comprehensive and data-driven approach to testing, contact tracing, and isolation/ quarantine. These experts are equipped to respond nimbly to changing circumstances, ensuring that our community remains safe, healthy, and informed.

With these protocols in place, we’ve been able to gradually and successfully open up parts of the campus this fall — including research labs and studio and study spaces — to students, staff, and faculty. With the extensive measures we’ve taken, we plan to welcome more students back to campus for the Spring 2021 semester. The College will take all necessary precautions to assure a safe start to the term, including staggered move-ins, COVID-19 health and safety training, and participation in a regular testing program.

Our faculty and staff have worked hard to design a flexible and engaging academic experience for students living on and off campus. Professors will offer courses in a variety of formats, ranging from completely virtual to a combination of virtual/in-person to mostly in-person. It is our priority that students feel comfortable and empowered to do their best work.

In these past few months, as I’ve made my way to my office in Milbank, I’ve been heartened to see some students back on campus studying in the Quad or meeting with faculty in the Diana Center in a socially distanced manner. It is proof of the strength and conviction of the Barnard community that we’ve not only upheld our academic mission but created a safe environment that continues to foster intellectual growth during these challenging times. B WINTER 2021 | BARNARD MAGAZINE 3

From the Editor

Stepping Up It is no exaggeration to say that the Winter issue was produced at a unique moment in time. Over the course of several months — from the day we first started brainstorming ideas in early fall to the day we went to press in December — there’s been significant, historic change.

This issue stands at the cusp of a new year, and because of this, you’ll find it filled with stories that speak to the critical issues and events of 2020 while looking ahead to 2021.

It can be challenging to keep up with the swift pace of the news cycle these days, but as a quarterly publication, that isn’t really our aim. At Barnard, I am fortunate to find myself in a community that values context and seeks out diverse perspectives — and that inspires us at the Magazine to dig a little deeper and cover what is not only current but also enduring. In our feature “Tuned In,” we take a look at the Barnard women, like The Daily’s Theo Balcomb ’09, who’ve launched or contributed to some of today’s most influential podcasts. In this relatively new professional field, these alums found a creative space for storytelling, and along the way, they were aided by the mentorship and collaboration of a number of Barnard women.

In these pages, we address some important but difficult topics, from our nation’s reckoning with race to the COVID-19 pandemic. In our cover story, “Doing the Work,” you’ll read about three alums — Michelle Maldonado ’91, Vernā Myers ’82, and Enola Aird ’76 — who’ve dedicated their lives and careers to building a more equitable, inclusive, and humane society. And we close out the issue with an insightful essay from Dr. Helene Gayle ’76, the president and CEO of the Chicago Community Trust, who discusses the urgent need for equity in the face of our current health crisis. As a co-chair of a National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine committee, Dr. Gayle worked with members to create a framework for the equitable allocation of the COVID-19 vaccination. It was a mighty task, but Dr. Gayle stepped up and lent her expertise to bring about meaningful change.

I also want to note an addition to the Magazine. In Noteworthy, we’re introducing a new column: “Passion Project.” It’s a place where we’ll be highlighting your many fascinating interests, hobbies, pastimes, and enterprises. A passion project might very well riff off or even morph into the professional sphere, but at the core, it is something that you do simply because you enjoy it. In our inaugural column, we speak with Leigh Wishner ’97, a coordinator at the Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising, who has spent her career researching, collecting, and writing about costume design and textiles. When the pandemic hit, she launched her Instagram account @PatternPlayUSA, devoted to her love for 20thcentury American textile design. It’s a lively mix of color, pattern, and history. I look forward to featuring your projects — whether newly discovered or lifelong interests — in the Magazine as well.

As we get ready to put this issue to bed, I find myself thinking about the opening photograph for Noteworthy. You can’t miss it. It shows several women dancing joyfully in a celebration that was organized by Black Order of Soul Sisters (BOSS) in 1972. It is one of the many images you can find in the Barnard Archives that was also republished in Robert McCaughey’s new book, A College of Her Own: The History of Barnard. This moment, this dance, is part of Barnard’s history, and I think this is just the right way to kick off 2021.

Nicole Anderson ’12JRN, Editor

4

Dispatches News. Musings. Insights.

6 Headlines 10 First Person 13 Wit & Whimsy

The Spirit of the Greek Games sculpture by artist Chester Beach — fondly known as “the torch bearer” — dusted with snow.

WINTER 2021 | BARNARD MAGAZINE 5

Headlines

A Week of Big Sub(stitutes)

Barnard’s Essential Workers on the Return to Campus

by N. Jamiyla Chisholm

My experience working on campus during the quarantine period was definitely different. I went from seeing students in the hallway and in their classroom to an empty hallway where I can hear a pin drop on the floor. I’m looking forward to our country being coronavirus-free and the chatter and the laughter of the students once again in the hallway. —Michelle Denny, custodian

Students competed for the best sandwich recipes and spoke with chef Alex Guarnaschelli ’91 For more than a decade every year, Barnard has hosted its annual Big Sub event, which brings the entire campus community together to break bread. (Last year’s handmade submarine stretched 750 feet.) The College’s culinary tradition continued this year in the form of Big Sub Week, November 9-13, inviting students to share their best “sandwich” recipes — in the categories of sweet/dessert, international, childhood favorite, and breakfast — for a chance to take home a reward.

The winning recipes, which were featured on social media, ranged from an inspired classic (Grace Tulinsky ’24’s “Bear-Shaped Ham and Cheese Sandwich”) to a creative twist on a breakfast favorite (Carla Melaco ’21’s “Saturday Morning Sunshine Sandwich”).

Do sandwiches need to meet a specific criteria? That’s up for interpretation. “To me, a sandwich is easy to assemble, easy to share, and easy to take on the go,” explains Sara Kirkham ’24, whose creation “Millie’s Beary Best Cream Puffs” was named the dessert winner.

For Amber Chong ’21, who came up with the winning “Chong Bánh mì” (in the international category), “the sandwich is in the eye of the beholder,” she says.

World-renowned chef and Food Network star Alex Guarnaschelli ’91 closed out the event on November 13 with a virtual Q&A and interview about her career and her own sandwich preferences.

“Sandwiches are very emotional,” Guarnaschelli says. “I probably have 10 or 12 pieces of clothing in my closet that comprise three-quarters of my wardrobe, and I’d say I have 10 or 12 sandwiches that comprise everything I’ve ever loved.”

If she had to pick, though, it’s a croque monsieur served with watercress and a tangy salad dressing. “There’s little that’s better to me than that experience.”

To read more about the four winning sandwiches and enlighten yourself about the ongoing sandwich debate (Are burritos, falafels, and hot dogs sandwiches?), visit barnard.edu/news.

I am looking forward to some sense of normalcy of campus life post-COVID-19: the short conversations as I pass students, faculty, and staff, and the excitement of seasonal events and summer campus life. —Ingrid Wiltshire, custodian

A Barnard Bard A Treatise on Stars, the latest book of poems by Meimei Berssenbrugge ’69, was recently nominated as a finalist for the 2020 National Book Award for Poetry.

Heralded by the judges as “a breathtaking record of biological, chemical, and spiritual entanglement,” Berssenbrugge’s collection continued the Beijing-born poet’s practice of drawing from the natural world for inspiration. Read more in an interview with the poet in the “5 Questions With” series at barnard.edu.

—Isabella Pechaty ’23 6

ROXANE GAY

The Class of 2024 Tackles 2020’s ‘Big Problems’

by Solby Lim ’22

Author, professor, and cultural critic Pretty much every problem that Black people deal with today, and people of color more broadly in the United States, can be traced to slavery. And until we have a real reckoning with that, and until material recompense is made, until reparations are not only cutting people a check — which is a start — but until we address how Black people have been discriminated against in terms of housing, healthcare, education, and safety, we’re never going to have a real reckoning. So we have to start with that.

In a year rife with historic challenges, Barnard’s faculty is engaging first-year students in a dialogue about today’s most pressing issues. A new course, Big Problems: Making Sense of 2020, provides an interdisciplinary learning experience that delves into the social, economic, and political upheaval that has unfolded during the past year as a result of the COVID-19 crisis.

LINDA VILLAROSA “This course was born from a genuine desire Journalist and New York Times to better analyze the profoundly destabilizing contributing writer time we are in — a time that is often described as I think the discussion about bias in ‘unprecedented’ or having ‘no rule book,’” explains healthcare ... has gotten so much Cecelia Lie-Spahn ’11, associate director of the Firstmore robust. … You have to question Year Writing Program, director of First-Year Writing everything. I question every single Workshop, and lecturer in English. thing. I am always asking, How do The three-part course — including a public lecture I know? How do you know? That’s series, discussion meetings, and a zine project — what I do with my students. You do invites students to critically examine the world in have to question, and I’m happy that which they are living while envisioning a better, doctors and other medical providers more just future. have started to question themselves.

“We wanted to give students access to exciting So that’s a good sign. thinkers whose work focuses on how our current moment connects to the history of systemic racism, social justice, healthcare, and equity,” says Wendy ROBERTA SCHWARTZ ’91 Schor-Haim, director Chief innovation officer and executive of the First-Year Writing vice president of Houston Methodist Program and senior lecturer in I look at [the Barnard women around me] and know that the English Department. there is a cadre of women that were produced by an The virtual lecture series organization that said, ‘Women can be everything and featured diverse perspectives anything.’ That inspires me every day and allows me to into the current global crises and mentor women that come [after] me, and know that all of is available to the entire Barnard you, who are at the beginning of that education, know that community on barnard.edu. Here you can dream big and be big. We stand on the shoulders are a few highlights from the Big of the giants before us who made our vote happen, who Problems speakers. made us the women that we are, including people like my mother who didn’t have the opportunities that I have, and have shown us that really anything is possible.

Headlines

Barnard College Announces New Francine A. LeFrak Foundation Center for Well-Being Located on the first floor of Barnard Hall, the new center will provide a 360-degree perspective on personal well-being

by Veronica Suchodolski ’19 On October 22, 2020, President Sian Leah Beilock announced the creation of the Francine A. LeFrak Foundation Center for Well-Being at Barnard College, which expands the Feel Well, Do Well @ Barnard campaign established last year.

The new center, made possible by a generous gift from the Francine A. LeFrak Foundation, will ensure that all Barnard students have access to comprehensive physical and mental health, holistic wellness, and financial literacy support services and are equipped with the knowledge and tools needed to thrive at Barnard and beyond.

“I am thrilled to formally announce this new Francine LeFrak Center, which will truly symbolize the idea that well-being — especially for women and girls — is not just about physical health but about mental health, financial health, and the ability to dictate one’s path and purpose,” said President Beilock.

As a centralized hub for the College’s many wellness initiatives — including the Feel Well, Do Well @ Barnard campaign — the Francine A. LeFrak Foundation Center for Well-Being will provide a state-of-the-art facility for financial fluency and holistic wellness programs, a fitness center, and dance spaces.

To create the center, the College will renovate the first floor of the former gymnasium in Barnard Hall. There, students will be able to learn about and access the full range of initiatives intended to support all aspects of well-being.

“This is a dream come true and a culmination of my work supporting women that I have done for so many years,” said Francine A. LeFrak. “I am delighted to be on the forefront of this innovative and more complete definition of wellness. I have seen firsthand how wellness is an intersection of financial, physical, and mental 8

Francine A. LeFrak

well-being. This center will be a point of hope for women.”

Design and planning of the Francine LeFrak Center is already underway. Construction in Barnard Hall is slated to begin in January 2022, and the new space is expected to be fully operational by September 2023.

The plans for the new center come on the heels of the 2016 renovation of the former LeFrak Gymnasium, named for the late Ethel Stone LeFrak ’41 and her late husband, Samuel J. LeFrak. Ethel served as a Barnard Trustee from 1981 to 1985. That project turned the gymnasium into a split-level space, with the second floor holding more than 50 offices and conference rooms and the first floor serving as a temporary flex space to house the library during the construction of the Milstein Center for Teaching and Learning.

The Francine A. LeFrak Foundation Center for Well-Being serves as a testament to Francine A. LeFrak’s strong personal and philanthropic commitment to women’s empowerment and the generous continuation of her family’s legacy at Barnard.

“Like my mother, Ethel, Class of ’41, the Francine A. LeFrak Foundation Center for Well-Being is a trailblazer in the wellness and empowerment of women. I am so proud and excited to be working closely with Sian on this project,” says LeFrak. “With the center on its campus, I believe that Barnard is destined to be a leader in health and wellness and a model for others to follow. As a woman and a philanthropist, I can’t think of anything that could be closer to my heart.”

As part of the new Francine LeFrak Center, Barnard will also create an advisory board comprising leading professionals with expertise in financial, physical, and mental well-being. The board, once created, will convene twice a year to discuss topics and issues around girls’ and women’s well-being and serve as advisors to the center as it develops new programming and initiatives.

“Barnard has a rich legacy of our community giving back to our current students,” said Cheryl Glicker Milstein ’82, P’14, chair of the Board of Trustees.

“Barnard is very fortunate to have the continued support of the LeFrak family, and I look forward to working with Francine on developing the Francine LeFrak Center for our community.” B WINTER 2021 | BARNARD MAGAZINE 9

First Person

Impressions, digressions, and your point of view

Book Return

by Danielle Blake ’14 Yes, I majored in English, got a master’s degree in English education, and am now an English teacher — but no, I do not want to join your book club, I would not like any book recommendations, and I probably have not read whatever book it is you’re asking about.

The truth is, I went seven years without ever reading a book for pleasure, and now I am taking every chance to make up for it.

I can’t tell you how many white lies I told over the years. A friend would ask about a New York Times bestseller, and I’d say, “Oh, it’s on my bedside table; I’m hoping to get to it next!” Another would recommend a memoir they just loved, and I’d spurt, “That sounds fabulous; I’ll add it to my list!”

And what a list I have! For those seven years, I kept a note on my phone with the names of books I’d like to read, always adding to it conservatively to avoid overwhelming my future self. Even now, two years after I’ve started reading for pleasure again, I have 50 titles waiting to be read.

Perhaps things would have been different if I were a fast reader, but I read slowly and meticulously.

As an undergrad, I was shocked by the pace at which we read for English seminars: one book per 10

week, sometimes even two. I took to reading in the library but also in every crevice of the day — while riding the subway, at night before bed, listening to audiobooks while I cleaned my room or cooked.

There wasn’t time for anything else.

When I decided to pursue teaching, these habits followed me to graduate school. Again, I found myself picking up only texts assigned on syllabi, trying to remember the joy of reading while working my way through books that other people had picked.

Eventually, just when I thought I was done, I learned the hard truth of teaching English: I have to read what I teach. On my own time, I worked my way through classics in the curriculum that I’d somehow skipped, like The Great Gatsby, Night, and Macbeth.

Since they were too far in the past for me to remember, I found myself rereading Speak, Hamlet, and The Kite Runner.

After four years at Barnard, and 18 months of graduate school overlapping with my first three years in the classroom, I finally, at long last, relished the chance to read again, on my own terms.

Over the past two years, I’ve wished that Middlesex, Homegoing, and Pachinko would never end and learned that there is a name for my favorite genre: epic historical fiction. I traveled back to an earlier era of New York in

Rules of Civility; I imagined a grim future in Parable of the Sower. I also connected with others, as I finally understood the hype behind Educated and read the words of another Barnard alumna, Sigrid Nunez ’72, in her book The Friend.

So please forgive me if I am not ready to join your book club for a few more years. Maybe seven more.

But after so many years of reading other people’s book lists, I can finally delight in reading my own.

Danielle Blake teaches ELA at the High School of Fashion Industries, where she particularly enjoys working with students on personal narrative writing. If she’s not on her couch reading, she is likely running in Prospect Park or trying out a new recipe.

Barnard at the Polls

ILLUSTRATIONS BY ROWAN WU ’18

by Rachael Stein ’13 When I applied to be a poll worker for this year’s general election, I wasn’t sure what to expect. But I needed to do something. Like many young, healthy Americans, I recognized I was at less risk to work in a potentially crowded indoor space during the pandemic, and like so many people anxious about the election, I wanted to protect democracy in some way. I had so many questions leading up to the day: Would I be working on Election Day only or also on early voting days? Was training really four hours long and in person? When would I find out where I would be staffed? Answers were not always easy to find, but as Election Day approached, I kept my poll worker manual handy and prepared myself as best as I could.

On November 3, I reported to my poll site in Boerum Hill, Brooklyn, at 5 a.m. to get ready for the doors to open at 6 a.m. With the long early voting lines I’d been seeing throughout the city, I had anticipated high turnout on Election Day, but I was surprised to find this wasn’t the case. Voters trickled in throughout the day — maybe 100 or so in total.

This could have been for a few reasons: There was only one election district at this poll site (versus the two or three it had historically), and there were far higher rates of absentee and early voting this year.

Between checking in voters and handing out ballots, I got to know some of my fellow poll workers.

Quite a few lived close by, such as a mother and daughter who had signed up to work together.

And then there were those who had traveled from elsewhere in Brooklyn and even other boroughs,

including a table inspector who had come in from Queens. She had grown up in the neighborhood, and though she hadn’t lived there for a long time, she always requested to work at this poll site where she could see old friends.

In the quiet hours of the morning, I overheard someone say “Barnard.”

There were no voters to check in just then, so I got up and walked over to her. “Did you say you went to Barnard?” I asked. “I did too!”

And that was how I met Jeany Heller ’87. It was, of course, an instant bond. We reminisced about our College experience: our favorite residence halls and what it was like living right on Broadway, how the campus has changed over the years, and how different it used to be for queer people in the Barnard community. Jeany, who had been a poll worker several times before, offered helpful advice on how to stay organized throughout the day to avoid any issues at the end of the night.

Finally, the clock struck 9 (when the polls officially closed). Jeany and the other scanner inspectors printed receipts, tallying up how many ballots each scanner machine had accepted. I joined my fellow table inspectors to count the ballots that were unused or voided, then factored in how many had been scanned and ... “Everything adds up!” I shouted. A cheer erupted at the poll site.

As Jeany and I left, she told me she’d never seen such teamwork and camaraderie in closing a poll site.

Thanks to Jeany and our fellow poll workers, Election Day was truly a memorable experience. We had all done our part to serve the voters of Brooklyn, and now we could head home to await the results.

Rachael Stein is a community coordinator at FABSCRAP, a textile recycling nonprofit. A New Yorker by choice, she gets around the city by bike and lives with her rescue dog and many plants in Downtown Brooklyn.

WINTER 2021 | BARNARD MAGAZINE 11

First Person

The Prof. & the Olivetti

by Barbara Florio Graham ’56 The year I took advanced composition — known as the journal course — was one of upheaval in Barnard’s English Department. In late September 1956, our professor and chairman of the department, John Kouwenhoven, left abruptly due to a personal matter, and our class was suddenly without an instructor.

The scholar Cabell Greet, who had retired as head of the department the year before, took over the class and informed us that he would “babysit” us until he was able to find a suitable replacement. We waited.

And within a few weeks he introduced us to a very tall, very young man who looked dazed at the sight of a dozen intensely focused young women. He had just become editor of The Paris Review, but he had never taught before. He was clearly terrified.

At first, nobody had caught his name, and so we referred to him out of class as “Mr. Applebottom.”

The dazed man was the writer George Plimpton. His teaching style was uninspired, to say the least. Whenever one of us read a journal entry, he would say, “That’s pretty good.” The words “good” or “nice” would predictably be found in the margins of the pages he returned to us. Members of the group were afraid to tell Professor Greet how disengaged Plimpton was, and we pretty much carried on the weekly seminar on our own, taking turns reading excerpts from our journal entries and trying to provide helpful comments to each other.

Cabell Greet must have caught on. He informed our class that after Christmas break, he would be bringing us none other than John Cheever, the current darling of the literary world, whose short stories in The New Yorker we all devoured.

Cheever had never taught before either, but he was 12

just what we wanted and needed. On the first day of class, he arrived with his Olivetti typewriter in one hand and the most recent New Yorker in the other.

The course was challenging from the start. It required us to write 500 words every day, seven days a week, including Christmas. Cheever listened with careful attention and respect to our journal entries, giving each of us tiny pointers on how we might improve and always encouraging our efforts. He also wrote thoughtful comments in the margins of the pages we turned in. I learned the true art of writing in that class, how to reach for the perfect word that gives the reader a visual image or a gut reaction. I learned how to let your first draft spill onto the page unrestrained until you had all the raw material there to work with.

Cheever only taught 12 would-be writers for one semester at Barnard, before moving to Vassar and eventually making it clear that he much preferred writing to teaching.

Years later, when I was in Caracas on a press tour, Cheever happened to be on the lecture circuit. When I raised my hand to ask a question, he remembered me and moved forward to give me a hug.

I asked him about the Olivetti and why he brought it to our class.

He admitted that he had been so nervous that when he left his apartment, he took it along as a sort of security blanket.

In 1981, at our 25th Reunion, several of us who were members of that class were sitting together and reminiscing about Cheever. I told them about meeting him in Caracas the previous year. Someone took a Polaroid photo of our little group, and I sent it to his publisher with a warm letter, mentioning how many of us had become professional writers.

I didn’t get a response. A year later, I learned that he had died after a battle with cancer, and I understood why he hadn’t replied. But I hope he knew how much we treasured him.

Barbara Florio Graham has won awards for fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. She has written three books and contributed to more than 40 anthologies as well as hundreds of publications. Her website is SimonTeakettle.com. B

Wit & Whimsy

You’ve Got a Friend?

by Anna Goldfarb ’00 I recently had a crummy day. Work was overwhelming, another lockdown was looming, and I was in a funk. Looking for some support, I texted a friend: “This week has been brutal. Are you around to chat?”

She took five days to write me back. In those five days, I panicked. Was she blowing me off? Our friendship, which I thought was solid, felt flimsier than the trendy underwear I impulsively ordered off Instagram.

Her silence wounded me. But to be honest, I haven’t been the most responsive friend to others lately either. Sure, I aspire to be the kind of friend who sends thoughtful text messages followed by a trio of heart emojis but, well, I’m just not.

If I had to grade my friendship skills as a woman in my 40s, I’d give myself a C+.

In coffee creamer terms, I’m soy milk: not as fulfilling as other options available but better than nothing.

One reason I haven’t been up to snuff in the friend department is that the older I get, the more things I’ve become to more people. I’m a wife, sister, daughter, aunt, and cat mom. “Friend” doesn’t even crack the top 5 of words I’d use to describe myself.

I’m also prioritizing myself more. That means I have to tell people no. It can be scary to say no at first, but like skydiving or cutting your own bangs, it gets less nerve-wracking the more you do it. (Unless you’re doing them simultaneously.)

When I attended Barnard, being a loyal friend was a top priority for me. I would’ve done anything for my friends in my 20s. Anything. Provide a ride to the airport, help a friend move to another state, show up at a heartbroken pal’s apartment at 2 a.m. with a voodoo doll of her ex I made using my own hair. These days, of course, I’m still happy to listen to a heartbroken friend, but hopefully there’s wine or at least brownies involved.

I used to think the mark of a good friend was someone who’d tell you the unvarnished truth.

Someone who’d give it to you straight.

Yes, the dress you’re wearing is unflattering.

No, I don’t think your boyfriend truly loves you.

Yes, you’re too old to pull off pigtails.

However, I’ve learned that most friends don’t want to be confronted with the

blunt truth; they just want to feel heard and understood. They want to feel like you have their back.

And what I’ve come to realize is that friendships don’t magically maintain themselves. Whether you live across the city or across the country, keeping in touch takes effort. Even if it’s just a silly text or a wacky GIF, you’ve got to put yourself out there to let the other person know you’re thinking about them.

Friendships are 100% voluntary. You can’t force a friendship to stick any more than you can force a fish to breakdance. Both people have to be invested in the relationship. And that is what makes friendships precious –– they can be so fleeting.

So the next time I jump to a conclusion and assume the worst from a friend’s delayed response, I’ll remember to cut my friend some slack. And I need to extend the same grace to myself. Even though I’m a C+ friend today, I’m hoping to be at least a B in the future — a splash of half-and-half for the right cup of coffee. B Anna Goldfarb is author of the humor memoir Clearly, I Didn’t Think This Through. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Vice, The Cut, and more. She lives in Philadelphia.

WINTER 2021 | BARNARD MAGAZINE 13

I joined the Athena Society when I was in my 40s by putting the College in my will at a level that suited my financial situation at the time. I reframed my long-term personal and financial goals to include giving to Barnard in the future.

As new, difficult, global challenges emerged in 2020, I was glad that I had a plan in place that covered my family and the causes I hold close to my heart.

—Nancy O. Rieger ’83

To learn more about how you can join Nancy in support of Barnard and its world-changing young women, please visit plannedgiving.barnard.edu or contact JiHae Munro, Director of Planned Giving 212.870.2532 | jmunro@barnard.edu

Discourses Ideas. Perspectives. A closer look.

16 Arts & Letters 18 Student Perspective 20 Strides in STEM 22 Bookshelf 24 History Lesson

“The lower roadway is converted into additional walkable and human-powered transport space that also offers opportunities for local vendors and performers,” explains Shannon Hui ’22, whose “Do Look Down” proposal was named a winner of the Reimagining Brooklyn Bridge Competition. Photo courtesy of Shannon Hui ’22.

WINTER 2021 | BARNARD MAGAZINE 15

A Life of the Mind

Professor Mary Gordon ’71 reflects on retiring during a pandemic, homeschooling her grandchildren, and the lasting rewards of the liberal arts

by Veronica Suchodolski ’19 “It’s not the way I had dreamed of ending my career,” Mary Gordon ’71 admits to me on the phone. The past year has been a tumultuous one. When Barnard closed its campus as COVID-19 tore through New York City in March, Gordon went out to Milwaukee to stay with her daughter and her grandsons. There, amid news of virus cases, worldwide protests, and an election unlike any in recent memory, she taught online courses, homeschooled the boys, and published a new novel, her ninth.

It was a particularly strange time to publish a book. Gordon should know: In addition to the novels, her roster includes several novellas, short story collections, and works of nonfiction. She’s received numerous awards for the lot, including a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1993 and the honor of State Author of New York in 2008.

Payback, which debuted in September, received good reviews but went without the usual fanfare of publicity tours. “If you weren’t either the election or the 16

pandemic, nobody really wanted to hear about it,” Gordon says. “So I don’t really know. I’m just trying not to think about it.”

But it hasn’t been all doom and gloom for Gordon, Barnard’s Millicent C. McIntosh Professor of English and Writing until she retired in May 2020. “[Teaching virtually] was a very satisfying experience because it meant a lot to the students,” Gordon says of teaching online. “What I taught — literature and writing — I had always wanted it to be a source of refreshment, and in this quarantine situation it really was.”

(That said, as one of her former students, I feel confident in stating that Gordon’s teaching had made a substantial impact long before lockdown. Another Barnard alumna and professor, Mary Beth Keane ’99, wrote a tribute to Gordon’s mentorship in The New York Times in 2019.)

Gordon has certainly found her own refuge in the liberal arts over the past several months. In addition to homeschooling her grandkids, ages 8 and 10 — she taught them “what I could,” which meant Greek mythology and Italian, and supervised the co-writing of a novel called Tom Levine: Dog Detective — Gordon set her own personal syllabus.

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Arts & Letters

“I’m reading all the George Eliot that I haven’t read, and I’m determined to learn Spanish,” Gordon says. “I’m reading Elena Ferrante in Italian. I actually finished War and Peace during the pandemic, which I hadn’t read since high school.”

In a way, retiring during a pandemic is a fitting bookend to Gordon’s time at Barnard. As a 1971 graduate, she first arrived on campus right before the historic protests of 1968, a year that has been compared with 2020 in The New York Times, The Atlantic, and The Washington Post for its civil unrest, flu pandemic, and presidential election.

“It was just at the beginning of the women’s movement, and we thought we were going to change the world in about 10 minutes,” Gordon says of her time as a student. “Barnard was really at the epicenter of it. And I went from Catholic school to trying to occupy buildings in the Columbia protests of ’68, so it was a real political awakening.”

The transition from high school to Barnard was a paradigm shift for Gordon.

Her school didn’t approve of its students attending Ivy League schools — perhaps in no small part, in Gordon’s telling, because the principal claimed to have met a Columbia professor who said that “within a week he could make a girl lose her faith, her virginity, and all her political convictions.” The administration actually refused to send her transcripts until Gordon called the Barnard admissions office and implored them to intervene.

“I was such a ferocious 17-year-old,” Gordon recalls. “It was like I was being pulled here by some force. And then when I got here, I was thrilled. I felt like I was intellectually on fire from the minute I got here.”

And so returning to Barnard as a professor in 1988 was a dream come true. “I’ve

taught other places as a guest teacher, and there’s nothing like Barnard students,” Gordon says. “We are a very special breed of cat.”

It isn’t just the singularity of attending a women’s college in New York City, either. “I feel very strongly, and I hope this doesn’t go away, that one of the reasons why we produced a disproportionate number of writers is that we ground our writers in literature,” Gordon says of teaching Barnard writers.

“For me, it’s always been very important that the students have read literature and have read older literature, and I think it gives a real depth and texture to Barnard student writing that a lot of other places don’t have.”

Still, she felt it was the right time for her to retire, joking, “I didn’t want to be like Carol Channing doing Hello, Dolly! on a walker.” And while she’ll miss the hope and sustenance she felt from her regular interactions with students, she feels secure in stepping aside for a younger generation of professors while she focuses on her own work. “In a way, teaching was always my day job, so it’s not like I’m going to have to take up ceramics or something to fill my days,” Gordon says.

“I can write.”

To that end, Gordon is working on a nonfiction book entitled What Kind of Catholic Are You?, in which she compares public figures who all claim that their ideologies are informed by Catholicism and yet hold radically different values from one another. She is, of course, still working on a fiction project, “but I’m superstitious about talking about things until they’re done.”

One thing she can say for certain, though, is that wherever 2021 takes us, a Barnard education will keep paying dividends. “[Quarantine] is when your liberal arts education pays off, because you have the consolation of a life of the mind,” Gordon says.

“What the future will be in terms of employment, I have absolutely no idea. But I think that one good thing about it is maybe it will break that mindset that college is vocational school and you train for a particular job, because nobody knows what the jobs will be. In an odd way, it’s a vindication of a liberal arts education, which is critical thinking, mental flexibility, larger imagination. [Those] are the things that are going to pay off.” B WINTER 2021 | BARNARD MAGAZINE 17

Student Perspective

Shannon Hui ’22 shares her contest-winning vision for a New York City landmark

by N. Jamiyla Chisholm Architecture and psychology major Shannon Hui ’22 didn’t wait until she joined a firm to introduce innovative architectural ideas to the world. In fact, Hui and her team (Yujin H. Kim ’19CC and Kwans Kim from NYU’s Class of 2024) have already made their mark as winners of the young adult category of the Reimagining Brooklyn Bridge Competition. The contest was presented by the Van Alen Institute, an architecture and urbanism nonprofit organization, which challenged people to rethink the bridge’s walkway.

The call to update the bridge came as the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic upended New York City, adding a new element to consider: how to social distance on the bridge’s overcrowded walkway. The public was invited to vote on entries through July 30, and winners were announced on August 17, via the organization’s website.

Tapping into three guiding principles — preservation, diversity, and future progress for change — Hui’s team designed their “Do Look Down” installation to feature a glass walkway above the bridge’s girders, with an LED projection system for the adjacent bridge spaces to display art that honors the city’s cultures, histories, identities, and more. Hui shares how the pandemic played a role in her design choices, what she’s most looking forward to this fall, and how Barnard faculty gave her the tools needed to think of new uses for a 137-year-old structure.

How did you prepare for this competition, and how did the pandemic inform your approach?

Our team decided to put something together on a whim after seeing a social media ad for the competition. Despite having very different academic interests — Yujin is 18

studying for his Ph.D. in math, while Kwans will be a first-year [undergraduate] and has a passion for the performing arts — it worked because we could each approach the problem with our own agendas, as we have all used the bridge in our own ways.

I think that there has been an urgent drive to reimagine how people can interact with one another and relate to the public realm during and postCOVID, in addition to its intersections with racial and queer justice. This health crisis has violently amplified the systemic inequities that are built into New York’s existing urban infrastructure, and for designers and planners to continue to operate within a vacuum is a position of immense privilege. More than anything, this competition became an opportunity for us to not necessarily provide all the answers to what a “better” Brooklyn Bridge represents but to start conversations about meaningful public spaces where people can feel seen and heard — not just in an idealized future, but now.

What did you learn from Barnard and faculty that helped you with this project?

In developing our proposal, our first and foremost inspirations were the local stakeholders we had the opportunity to engage with and receive feedback from. Throughout this process, we worked closely with representatives of the Van Alen Institute, New York City Council, and other civic institutions who were instrumental to the formation of our final designs.

My architecture studios and lectures at Barnard,

PHOTOS COURTESY OF SHANNON HUI ‘22

A Bridge of the Future

under the instruction of assistant professor of architecture Anooradha Iyer Siddiqi and Lindsay Harkema [founder of the design collective WIP], had instilled in me the value of embedding historical consciousness and urban theory into my work. And adjunct assistant professors of architecture Alicia Tam Wei and Jason Kim and Barnard studio instructor Todd Rouhe taught me to be intentional with representational techniques as modes of architectural analysis and speculation.

I was also fortunate to do an internship at a lighting design firm in Hong Kong this summer, supported by the Beyond Barnard internship program. This provided me with both a technical and a theoretical foundation to think about not only how the bridge looks during the day but also how intentional lighting design can completely transform the experience of New York City’s public monuments and spaces at night.

What was most exciting — or terrifying — about reimagining one of the most iconic bridges in the world?

Apart from its mobility issues and opportunities to optimize the distribution of available space, I’m not sure anyone really asked to “change” the Brooklyn Bridge. It’s an icon of the City and was a technological feat of its time. When we first started brainstorming ideas for our proposal, we struggled to think of structural interventions that wouldn’t compete heavily with the existing bridge and be upsetting to New Yorkers. This led us to scrap all of our initial ideas and form the three following guiding principles: (1) The current form and aura of the bridge must be preserved, and any enhancements should be kept unobstructive or reversible; (2) As a premier landmark, the bridge has a certain duty to equitably

represent the diversity of peoples that it bridges; and (3) The proposal should not be static in its capacities but instead possess enormous potential for future progress and change.

So, I guess both the most exciting and terrifying part about participating in this competition was the Brooklyn Bridge itself.

Do you have a favorite bridge or building?

It’s hard for me to identify a singular favorite structure, but I always like to tell people about the High Line. I participated in a High Line Feminist Field Trip, hosted by the Athena Center for Leadership Studies, during my first year and loved learning about the nonprofit’s efforts to champion civic engagement, social justice, and urban gardening through education and programming. And needless to say, the public space is visually extraordinary.

At the same time, the High Line’s role in the dynamics of its surrounding neighborhoods offers a critical lens to the practice of public art and urban renewal, which drives me to be deliberate and sensitive when considering the communities that I hope to serve as a designer. B

WINTER 2021 | BARNARD MAGAZINE 19

Strides in STEM

The Science of Climate Change

A paleoclimatologist discusses teaching in a pandemic and studying STEM at Barnard

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LEFT: PHOTOS BY GETTYIMAGES; RIGHT: PHOTO COURTESY OF BRONWEN KONECKY

by Veronica Suchodolski ’19 As a paleoclimatologist, Bronwen Konecky ’05 uncovers information from the Earth’s geologic past, stretching back to a time before measurements were taken, and applies that knowledge to present-day climate issues. One of the main goals of her research is understanding how aspects of the global water cycle — the process by which water molecules make their way from the Earth’s surface to the atmosphere and back again — behave when the planet warms or cools.

“Climate change is about much more than global warming,” Konecky says. “If you think of the Earth’s climate system like one big laboratory, then what humans are doing right now is loading the lab up with greenhouse gases and causing it to warm. But we still have lots of questions about how that warming will impact different parts of the global water cycle.”

Such questions — Will monsoons get stronger or weaker?

What will happen to the El Niño-Southern Oscillation, and why? What are the physical processes that connect changing temperature with the water cycle? — drive Konecky’s Konecky with her father in the rainforest biome at the Biosphere 2 Center in Oracle, Arizona. Columbia formerly ran a “study abroad” program at Bio2 with a semester-long research. An assistant professor of earth and planetary earth science program. sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, she was named a Packard Fellow for Science and Engineering in 2019, making her one of the nation’s top early-career scientists. (She Barnard factors into Konecky’s science career was one of only 22 scientists nationwide to receive this honor.) in more ways than just technical know-how. She “The Earth has warmed and cooled for many other reasons in the geologic majored in environmental science at Barnard, which past,” Konecky says. “My job is to piece together the Earth’s master lab notebook, she said prepared her for a life in STEM by providing to uncover those past experiments and [learn from them]. Some of those lessons her with a rigorous academic curriculum, great are very relevant to changes we see today or will see in the future.” advisors, and the opportunity to do an original For a job so far-reaching and complex, Konecky had to undergo a good deal of project for her senior thesis research. She also training, which meant intensive research and hours upon hours of lab work. After minored in English, wrote poetry and plays, and Barnard, she spent three years at Columbia’s Earth Institute before heading to worked as a Writing Fellow.

Brown University, where in 2013 she earned her Ph.D. in geological sciences. She “The thing I am most grateful for about Barnard then went on to several postdoctoral research positions, including a fellowship was the liberal arts education,” Konecky says. “My through the National Science Foundation’s Division of Atmospheric and Geospace classes at Barnard taught me how to think critically, Sciences at Oregon State University and the University of Colorado Boulder. which is the most important skill for any scientist or Of course, the suspension of in-person lab work prompted by the COVID-19 any global citizen. Barnard also taught me how to pandemic affected Konecky’s plans. During the shutdown, Konecky’s research write — the secret about being a STEM researcher team pivoted from lab-based projects to data-crunching and modeling that is that we spend much of our time writing and could be done from home. “The pandemic basically threw a wrench into a set of communicating.” carefully laid plans that were years in the making,” Konecky says. “For example, Writing, in fact, is something she says that she I can’t get to my field sites for the foreseeable future, and this will have cascading does every day, whether it’s putting together grant impacts for years to come. But the flip side is that we have all done some really proposals or crafting scientific presentations. “This is cool science that may not have happened if it hadn’t been for the pandemic.” the lifeblood of our careers.”

With her classes now conducted remotely, the way she teaches has also changed.

Konecky’s advice to women looking to pursue She’s created what she describes as a “DIY tech setup” in which she communicates science careers is to develop those communication through Zoom with her students’ faces visible on a big monitor. “I stand there in skills as much as the “hard” science skills. “If you front of the chalkboard and try to make it as interactive as possible,” she says. want to be a STEM researcher, learn how to think Even though she misses seeing her students in person, she notes a bright spot critically, allow yourself to be challenged, take in her new teaching arrangement: “One of my jobs at Barnard was [working as] classes in subjects you think are interesting but don’t an audiovisual technician for special events, and I had a brief stint as a technical expect to be very ‘good’ at, and above all, learn director for WBAR,” Konecky says. “Those skills I learned really keep on giving!” to write.” B WINTER 2021 | BARNARD MAGAZINE 21

Bookshelf

NONFICTION

Books by Barnard Authors

by Isabella Pechaty ’23

The Verso Book of Feminism: Revolutionary Words from Four Millennia of Rebellion edited by Jessie Kindig ’04 Kindig unravels the story of one of the most enduring systems of oppression and the visionaries who have fought against it.

Researched on Barnard’s campus, the book follows the common thread of irrepressible defiance connecting feminism across history and cultures. The voices of artists, activists, theorists, and politicians from around the globe are featured and united by the cause of female advocacy.

Lyrical Strains

by Elissa Zellinger ’02 Both political and poetic theory are used to demonstrate how 19th-century liberalism defined itself based on the exclusion of marginalized people.

Zellinger examines the work of these excluded communities and how women, Native, and enslaved artists used lyric poetry to defy restricted definitions of identity and individuality established by liberal authors.

Almost Over: Aging, Dying, Dead

by F.M. Kamm ’69 Kamm considers a variety of philosophical perspectives when investigating private and public attitudes towards the dying process. Difficult questions surrounding the pursuit of death, the aging process affecting the will to live, and societal practices of preserving or taking life are all examined, as well as what these moral issues reveal about our own humanity.

Proust, Photography, and the Time of Life: Ravaisson, Bergson, and Simmel

by Suzanne Guerlac ’71 Guerlac offers a new interpretation of Marcel Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past, illuminated by the philosophies of his contemporaries Félix Ravaisson, Henri Bergson, and Georg Simmel.

She argues that Proust aims to embrace life’s present moment over recollections of the past and drives this point home by placing the novel in the context of cultural touchstones, controversies, and events of his time.

They Left It All Behind: Trauma, Loss, and Memory Among Eastern European Jewish Immigrants and Their Children

by Hannah Hahn ’76 Employing her training in psychology, Hahn analyzes how oppressive historical events, including anti-Semitic discrimination and the violence of World War I, impacted the mental health of pre-1924 Jewish immigrant families. The stories

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— informed by a series of interviews with the eastern European immigrants’ children — reveal the past trauma these immigrants experienced and its effect on subsequent generations.

Writing Occupation: Jewish Émigré Voices in Wartime France

by Julia Elsky ’07 During World War II, Jewish authors who had emigrated from eastern Europe to France made a deliberate choice to write in French as a way of asserting their increasingly silenced identities as both Jewish and French creatives. Elsky looks at how these writers — including Irène Némirovsky, Jean Malaquais, and Benjamin Fondane — document and convey wartime life from their own unique perspectives, as both insiders and outsiders.

Revolution in Development: Mexico and the Governance of the Global Economy

by Christy Thornton ’02 Challenging the notion that Europe and the U.S. were at the center of 20th-century economic development, Thornton’s research reveals Mexico’s many forgotten contributions to shaping global capitalist policies. Thornton asserts that the advocacy of Mexican diplomats and economists secured economic progress for themselves, other Third World leaders, and the world.

Mutual Aid

by Dean Spade ’97 As part of a new book series addressing the social and political ramifications of COVID-19, Spade discusses a new kind of service that has arisen during the pandemic: mutual aid. Individual citizens have had to balance cooperative survival work with social justice in the wake of numerous global crises. This book defines, theorizes about, and advises on this historic brand of activism.

The Decisive Network: Magnum Photos and the Postwar Image Market

by Nadya Bair ’06 The Magnum Photos agency was responsible for much of the popularization and spread of photojournalism after World War II. Bair studies how Magnum’s influence was able to reach so many people and how everyone from editors and publishers to photographers’ spouses were integral to its process. Magnum’s collaborative and artistic work gave a global visual identity to the human rights issues of the war.

The Book of Help: A Memoir in Memories

by Megan Griswold ’90 In the wake of a major life upset, Griswold goes on a quest for peace, happiness, and emotional balance. Her search leads her on adventures

both near and far, from encounters with psychics to remote encampments of the Chilean military. She explores the vast world of alternative medicine, sharing her experiences with different wellness and holistic practices that can sometimes border on the extreme.

Readers are invited to draw inspiration for their own journeys towards fulfillment.

POETRY Corner Shrine

by Chloe Martinez ’00 In this collection of poems, which won the 2019 Backbone Press Chapbook Contest, Martinez contemplates lofty themes of culture and identity and probes transience through the sensory and tactile experiences of travel.

FICTION Side Effects: A Footloose Journey to the Apocalypse

by S. Montana Katz ’77 Katz’s new novel depicts the decline of the American dream through the personal and married life of a young autistic woman in the 1950s and beyond. This sprawling epic paints a detailed portrait of the postWWII baby boomer generation — bringing into play the music, politics, art, and science of its time — and how it gave rise to a global climate crisis.

Song of the Old City

by Anna Pellicioli ’01 The richly illustrated children’s book follows the daily life of a little girl in Istanbul. With poetic narration, Pellicioli tells a story of warmth and generosity as her protagonist receives gifts from the inhabitants of the city and shares them with others. B WINTER 2021 | BARNARD MAGAZINE 23

A Book of Our Own A new, illuminating tome chronicles the history of Barnard College

by Lois Elfman ’80 In 1928, Virginia Woolf stood before audiences of female students at Girton and Newnham — the first two colleges for women at the University of Cambridge — to make the case that a woman must have a “room of one’s own” to nurture her creative mind. Paying homage to Woolf’s famous words (and essay), emeritus professor of history Robert McCaughey titled his new book A College of Her Own: The History of Barnard. It details Barnard College’s path, from its inception to its current vibrant existence, as an institution that has provided women the space to think and create.

Since joining the Barnard faculty in 1969, McCaughey has seen the College navigate political upheaval, the feminist movement, and the pressure to merge with Columbia College, and he carefully documents how Barnard has evolved as a women’s 24

institution with an ever-expanding mission, academic reach, and physical footprint. In particular, he showcases how the College’s location makes Barnard unique when compared with the other Seven Sisters schools. McCaughey originally titled the book The Gotham Sister to reflect how the College’s character has been shaped by its urban setting. “‘Gotham’ struck me in trying to distinguish this particular women’s college from the other women’s colleges that we tend to compare it with, almost all of which are either in pretty wealthy suburbs or in small towns,” McCaughey says. “[The word] suggested a kind of heterogeneity and hyperactive circumstance that I think does characterize the city and does imbue Barnard with quite a different dayto-day aura.”

As a faculty member, McCaughey has worked with six Barnard presidents, and his time serving as dean of the faculty under President Ellen V. Futter gave him invaluable insight into the College’s operations. He is also the author of Stand, Columbia: A History of Columbia University in the City of New York, 1754-2004, which includes a comprehensive view of Barnard’s relationship to the University.

We had the opportunity to speak with McCaughey about A College of Her Own as well as his experiences over his 51 years in Morningside Heights.

In 2014, you prepared a detailed interactive timeline for Barnard’s 125th anniversary celebration. How did that propel you into this book?

Robert McCaughey: It was in the back of my mind at that point to write a history of Barnard. A couple of years later, I decided that I would see if there was interest, and indeed there was. By then, I had as good an angle on Barnard as anyone.

Academic history is a fairly small field, and writing institutional histories is not a particularly favored activity among academic historians, but there’s a tradition of it. … One of the ways a place sustains itself is having people have some ongoing

PHOTOS COURTESY OF THE BARNARD COLLEGE ARCHIVES

History Lesson

“[Barnard still] does serve that role of opening up possibilities, exposing students to situations and opportunities that might not have been there but for this connection.”

familiarity with what had gone on before them.

In the early 1980s, Barnard not only refused to merge with Columbia but also survived the University’s decision to go coed and emerged from this transition even stronger. How did that set the stage for A College of Her Own? Barnard did emerge — with lots of credit to Ellen Futter — stronger for the unilateral move on the part of Columbia College. In this book, I certainly don’t want to understate the concerns that affected Barnard

by Columbia’s move. It was slow coming, so there was some anticipation, but nonetheless it was pretty gloomy in 1981-83 around the Barnard campus as far as what the future looked like. That was a dicey moment, and Ellen — with others — just said, “It’s going to be all right” and set about doing things that helped.

What about Barnard’s location came into sharper focus for you as you wrote the book?

The origins of Barnard are late 19th century, but it was still very much a peculiarly New York undertaking, and it had to meet New York conditions.

Opposite, from left: Students march onto campus as part of Class Day 1899; Dean Virginia Gildersleeve. This page, clockwise: Barnard president Millicent C. McIntosh and President Dwight D. Eisenhower; student antiwar protesters at Commencement 1972; longtime Africana studies professor Quandra Prettyman; Barnard cofounder Annie Nathan Meyer.

PHOTOS COURTESY OF THE BARNARD COLLEGE ARCHIVES.

The organizers, from [co-founder] Annie Nathan Meyer to the early trustees to Virginia Gildersleeve [dean of Barnard, 1911-47], were all in one way or another — often in different ways — New Yorkers. This student body, despite efforts to make it more national, remained overwhelmingly a New York City ethnic community of kids who went to what turned out to be good public high schools where the college preparation was equal to some of the better private schools around the country.

What do you see as some of the most interesting and noteworthy events in Barnard’s history?

Certainly, the response to Columbia going coeducational in 1983. That was a lifeor-death situation. Connected with that was the decision the trustees made in 1985 to build Sulzberger Tower. They didn’t have the money. It was questionable whether the Dormitory Authority of the State of New York was going to come up with funds. They were laying everything on the table. That was a gutsy decision.

Earlier, the quiet setting aside of the admissions policies that had the effect of discriminating against Jewish applicants. That occurred in the [President Millicent] McIntosh era [and], belatedly for sure, quietly corrected a serious miscarriage in the way Barnard operated in an earlier period. Not that it didn’t have lots of Jewish students, but it did operate, I think, quite consciously to limit the number. That had to be done away with if Barnard was to be a better place. continued on page 86 WINTER 2021 | BARNARD MAGAZINE 25

ILLUSTRATION BY ERIN ROBINSON

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Meet three alumnae who have devoted their careers to fighting racial injustice by opening hearts and changing minds

by Erin Aubry Kaplan

ANTI-RACISM, like green energy jobs, has become the work of the American future. After the police killing of George Floyd in May 2020 touched off massive protests and exposed the entrenched nature of racism in everyday life, the national conversation turned to what to do now and how to do it. The urgency of the conversation is laudable, but the reality is that many people have been doing “the work” for decades and have much to tell us about what racism is made of and what it will take to overcome. Martin Luther King Jr. said it often, but it bears repeating: Changing laws is necessary, but changing hearts and minds is essential.

Three Barnard alumnae — Michelle Maldonado ’91, Vernā Myers ’82, and Enola Aird ’76 — have forged distinguished careers facilitating the changing of hearts and minds. All are Black and former lawyers who realized early in their careers that combating injustice and inhumanity in its everyday form was their greater purpose. They do it in different ways: Maldonado develops mindful, compassionate business and organizational leadership; Myers redefines diversity and inclusion as meaningful action rooted in self-reflection, hard truths, and empathy; Aird heals Black communities by consistently exposing the lie on which racism is built. Each endeavor is powerful on its own, but together they are a clearinghouse of anti-racist practices that each of us can adopt to some degree right now. Maldonado, Myers, and Aird have done the essential work. And they continue to do it, now more vitally than ever.

INNER WORK, OUTER BEHAVIOR For Michelle Maldonado, big change is all about inner work. She is founder and CEO of Lucenscia, a leadership development and business strategy firm that sees compassion as the basis of good leadership and of good living — compassion, after all, is the spiritual foundation of anti-racism. To build compassion, one must cultivate emotional intelligence, which Maldonado defines as the ability to effectively parse and monitor the feelings and emotions of oneself and others. Such self-awareness creates a kind of equanimity that leads to social awareness, a move from “me” to “we” that is the essential dynamic of compassion and its corollary, kindness.

Mindfulness and other meditative practices are the core of Maldonado’s experience; she has been a certified mindfulness teacher for five years. Raised Catholic — her family has roots in Cape Verde, a predominantly Roman Catholic country — she had a kind of awakening as a 7-year-old during a summer visit in Wyoming with a great-aunt. The aunt, a practicing Buddhist, introduced Maldonado to a daily meditation and affirmation routine that she intuitively embraced and continued to practice after she returned home to Falmouth, Massachusetts. The experience seeded and helped shape Maldonado’s later conviction that inner work determines outward behavior and action, on the job and in every other realm. In some ways, the realms are all the same. “Self, family, community — this is what we bring into work with us,” says Maldonado, who works with many sectors, including tech, government, and law enforcement. “It all comes in and affects how we create protocol, policy, hiring policies, determines who gets visibility. Resting on all of that are biases that have grown within us over time.”

While Maldonado views people similarly no matter what field they work in (“It’s all humans in the same spaces”), she says law enforcement poses specific challenges. Her clientele has included the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Customs and Border Protection. With these groups, Maldonado says, she seeks rather than avoids the “tender points” — things about work and people’s feelings about work, and about themselves — the topics most difficult to discuss. “I always have to figure out: How do you maintain humanity on the other side of the equation?” she asks. “The first time I asked that question, there were crickets in the room. Silence. That’s because law enforcement is hierarchical, militaristic. It’s about following orders. But at the same time, there is a desire to uphold humanity. They’re exposed to trauma every day, which manifests in incidents of brutality.” Though she is compassionate, Maldonado is not naive. “Of course there’s racism,” she says. “But there are cops who are just as sickened by the bad incidents, and they feel powerless to make accountability happen.”

The drive to make a difference was instilled in Maldonado during her years at Barnard. Dissatisfied with the selection of majors, she created her own, a hybrid of Spanish language and Latin American studies. Her thesis proposal was a bombshell: the Catholic influence on the oppression of Mayan people and the corporate exploitation of labor in Latin America. And she proposed to write it in Spanish.

“Nobody wanted to be my advisor,” she recalls, laughing. “Too controversial. But that was the beginning for me — I saw organizations showing up badly in the world.

That was something I wanted to tackle.” (The thesis earned an A+ and honors.)

In 2012, Maldonado was working in data metrics at an online company when something else dawned on her: Successful leadership is less about what you do and more about how you do it. “That’s why I was successful — my how,” she recalls. “I was able to translate that, to show people that ‘how’ impacts revenue, achievement, everything.” That realization led her to start her own business but with a new ambition that went beyond the notion of “business.” “My purpose is very broad and very short — I want to alleviate suffering in the world,” she says.

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Though she’s a big believer in doing, Maldonado believes even more in being.

That’s something that task-obsessed Americans often miss. But understanding and clarifying one’s state of being is imperative. “Think of something, and then observe your physical response to it. These responses seem small, but they affect our decisions, our biases, any of the ‘isms.’ If we’re not paying attention, we’re just at the whim of these feelings,” she says. “How does empathy and compassion play a role? How do we create psychological safety? How do people feel safe making a mistake? These are the jobs of leaders [to do the work] so that others can do that work.” Maldonado’s status as one of those leaders was recently reaffirmed when she became a member of the Brain Trust of Representative Democracy, which is dedicated to increasing and instituting diversity and inclusion in Congress, where she, along with fellow practitioners and experts, offer tools and leadership that further the organization’s mission.

Ultimately, she thinks, overcoming racism and other isms is less about tactics and more about honing a vision of the world outside the mind. “We label all the things we fight against, but what I want to do is describe the outcome we desire,” says Maldonado. “Organizations” — and she could be speaking of America itself — “still have lots of people who feel like they don’t belong. We need to fix the system, and the system is us.”

DIVERSITY, EQUITY, REALITY After the cultural reckoning following the killing of George Floyd, veteran diversity strategist Vernā Myers’ professional life substantively changed. “Now I sit in a

Michelle Maldonado ’91 PHOTO BY LIONEL MADIOU

WINTER 2021 | BARNARD MAGAZINE 29

company that’s interested in doing the work and allowing me to lead the work,” says Myers, who is vice president of inclusion strategy at Netflix and head of the Vernā Myers Company, which provides diversity, equity, and inclusion training and guidance to corporations, government agencies, and others. “I feel bolder,” she adds. Bolder, and also humbled. With the new corporate interest in justice and dismantling institutional racism came new responsibilities for Myers — and some realizations about herself.

“After the George Floyd event, I spent lots of time prepping leaders for conversation. That’s when I realized that I’d been spending all my energy on white men, not Black men,” she recalls. “Black men told me that’s how they felt, that I was not spending any time on them, and that’s kind of heartbreaking. So many people like me said the same thing: They were writing memos for people, but they were focused on the wrong people.” Myers realized that she had been engaged in “system beating” — doing what was necessary in order to succeed in a white environment, even if that white environment was asking you to advocate for Black people oppressed within its system. It’s a multifaceted irony that Myers saw as her own wake-up call in a country that appeared, at long last, to be waking up.

One of the good things about the anti-racist movement is that the traditional pressure on Black people in every line of work to assimilate is easing up amid conversations about what real equality looks like. “Now we have the concept of allyship — giving everybody a job,” says Myers. “I am seeing white people, straight people, acknowledge privilege — and they’re starting to understand how to leverage it to create the kind of world they say they want.” Most encouraging, she says, is that “they’re willing to take risks, stand up, get into it with their family, discover hatred they didn’t know existed. Now when people say, ‘What do I do?’ there’s no excuse anymore. If you are not anti-racist, you are part of the problem.

Because the status quo is racism.”

That’s long been true, of course. But Myers says Americans typically default to individualism when faced with a huge abstraction like racism; it’s how we survive. But now that cover of individualism no longer works. Which isn’t to say that individuals can’t make a difference or be part of the anti-racist solution that depends on changing hearts and minds, often one at a time. Voicing objections to racist comments made at the workplace or around a dinner table with an uncle or a grandma is a form of enlightened self-interest. “Once you realize you’re doing it as much for yourself as for anybody else, you’re good,” says Myers. “It’s not, ‘Oh I’m doing it for society.’ It’s you — you have a stake.”

Myers graduated from Barnard with a degree in political science before going to work in corporate law. Before realizing that “it wasn’t for me,” she worked at a firm where all the partners were Black, something she assumed represented great progress. It did, and it didn’t. “I wasn’t trying to prove my competence,” she says.

“But it was a gender thing. You’re working for a bunch of men, and they don’t necessarily understand.” With a new baby at home, the corporate work ethic — one year she found herself doing a deal on Christmas Eve — became less and less appealing. She took time off, eventually accepting a position as executive director of an organization of law firms interested in furthering racial diversity. By the time Myers started her consulting firm in 1998, she knew the lay of the land, and the issues, intimately.

Myers knew from the beginning that diversity wasn’t just about improving the demographics of job sites or offices. “Diversity work is usually about hiring and recruiting, exclusively,” she says. “I knew that wasn’t enough. It was much more about the environment they were inviting people into. Even with diversity, firms figure out how to exclude. These environments are shaped by white and male supremacy.” That view was not always an easy sell before this year and in some 30

ways still isn’t. “The firms that hired me, I sometimes discovered, didn’t have the commitment,” she notes, with some understatement. Her Barnard education taught her plenty about commitment. Though the environment was supportive, Myers and the other relatively few Black students struggled with other things — attrition, a lack of money. But Barnard gave her the opportunity to soar, literally: Her first plane ride was across the Atlantic when she was a sophomore, the result of applying for a program in England that she discovered by faithfully “reading the boards” on campus. That exceptional school experience, among others, “gave me a huge sense of what I could do as a woman,” she says.

Myers says that one of the things we have to commit to changing is language: For too long, diversity and inclusion have been soft-focus terms that tend to shield white people from the discomfiting truths about racism. As a diversity and

Vernā Myers ’82

PHOTO BY LAURIE BELL BISHOP, THE VERNĀ MYERS COMPANY

inclusion specialist, Myers is on the front lines of change, moving us all away from those soft-focus terms to more confrontational — and accurate — terms like “bias,” “anti-racism,” “anti-Blackness,” and “centering.” Changing language, she says, changes the way we think about inequality.

Of course, thinking about inequality and fixing it are two different things. On a recent trip back to her native Baltimore, Myers found herself asking the question: Why, after so much time, do Black people still struggle? “It’s because leaders still decide against marginalized groups, over and over,” she muses. “That’s intentional.

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It’s designed to keep the people in power in power. Rather than put resources where they’re needed, they say, ‘Let’s put all the development money in the harbor project where white people are; the benefits will trickle down to everyone.’ It never does.

How about centering the people at the bottom?”

Myers’ question is both hopeful and unnerving: Do we have any courage?

Echoing Maldonado, she declares that we must “equip everyone with confidence, courage, and compassion. That’s necessary for inclusion. If leaders do that, then everyone will come with them.”

UNRAVELING WHITE SUPREMACY For Enola Aird, racism and inequality persist because of one fact: We are living a big lie. White supremacy, for all its real power in shaping the American way of life and the fortunes of people of color for hundreds of years, is a lie that will lose its power only when we stop believing it. Aird says this is especially critical for Black people who have internalized the lie of Black inferiority — the complement of white supremacy that has wreaked havoc on Black people’s collective selfesteem. Dispelling the inferiority myth is the core work of the Community Healing Network, the nonprofit that Aird founded in 2006 in New Haven, Connecticut.

“Why are we here in 2020? Why George Floyd, Breonna Taylor? Because we have cast Black people out of the circle of humanity,” says Aird. “Our work is about reclaiming our place in the circle. This is much more than about racial justice. It’s about being recognized as humans.”

Enola Aird ’76

PHOTO BY KARISSA VAN TASSEL

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Aird applauds the fact that white supremacy and white privilege have become mainstream notions suitable for public discussion. The next and more crucial step, she says, is understanding the reasons why these paradigms continue to dominate our imaginations and our reality. “We really haven’t dealt with the lie and how to get it out of our lives and institutions,” she says. “Acknowledging the reality of white supremacy now is fine, but we’ve got to go deep. We’ve got to grab that thread and pull it out, more and more and more,” until it unravels completely.

The lie pervades not just the U.S. but any country with a history of colonialism or slavery or both. Aird is from Panama, and the story of her own birth — told and retold to her by her mother when she was growing up — made her aware early on of the dehumanization behind the lie. “When I was born, my family was very happy, because they had been trying to have a child,” she says. “In the midst of all that excitement in the hospital, the white Panamanian nurses said, ‘Look, they love their children.’ In Panama, you sit between a sense of Latin racism and American racism.”

That family story figured prominently into Aird’s earlier career as an advocate for mothers and motherhood. In the mid ’90s, she worked for a violence prevention program at the Children’s Defense Fund in Washington, D.C., and later founded and directed the Motherhood Project at the Institute of American Values. The Community Healing Network (CHN), with its framework of a global Black family, is a natural outgrowth of that work. “The question of values became important to me,” says Aird, a mother of two. “It led to the Motherhood Project, which was mothers working for a human future. All my activism is rooted in my experience as a mother.”

When she was 9, Aird moved from Panama to New York. She chose Barnard mainly because the watchful aunt with whom she lived wanted her to stay close to home. It proved a good fit, and her college experience gave her the confidence to abandon her first career as a lawyer, a profession that had seemed almost inevitable for many Barnard grads. But along the way she did “learn that lawyers can do more than lawyering. They’re problem solvers,” she says. “I was at Barnard just after a big social revolution involving women like Angela Davis and other radicals.

They were always in my mind. I admired people who did things about problems that they saw. If they weren’t satisfied, they attempted to change conditions they didn’t like.”

The Community Healing Network is such an attempt, though the breadth and depth — not to mention longevity — of the condition it seeks to change seem especially daunting. But Aird is optimistic. CHN seeks to heal racial trauma by following ubuntu, an African set of beliefs that sees the self and the community as united in a web of reciprocity — or, as Aird puts it, “a person is a person through other persons.” It is in stark contrast to Western individualism, embodied in philosophical statements like “I think, therefore I am.” No country on earth is more wedded to individualism than the United States, a fact that’s made racism here that much harder to fight, and more corrosive. “Black people have to get healthy together,” Aird says. “As we come out of this culture that has so devalued our lives, we are the key to each other. We have to be in community together to fully blossom, to come back to ourselves.”

Contrary to the view of some that the Black fight for equality is eternal, Aird believes there is — there must be — an end to 600 years of struggle. To that point, CHN has declared that the 2020s will be the decade in which Black humanity will flourish and white supremacy will recede or disappear. Impossible? Not to Aird.

“Ending the lie can happen,” she says. “We’ve just got to keep grabbing that thread and pulling and pulling until the fabric doesn’t exist anymore. Then we have to create a new one.” B WINTER 2021 | BARNARD MAGAZINE 33

TUNED IN

by Kira Goldenberg ’07

ILLUSTRATION BY SYUZANNA GUSEYNOVA

From The New York Times to Freakonomics, these Barnard alums are shaping the podcasting industry

The first thing Theo Balcomb ’09 thinks about when she wakes up in the morning — aside from her chubby-cheeked infant, Nola — is The Daily, the weekday news podcast from The New York Times. As executive producer, Balcomb directly affects how 4 million people start their day.

“My favorite part of my job is that I get to take things that are really complicated — difficult to understand, overwhelming at times — and make them clear to people,” she says, cradling Nola while on a FaceTime call from her family’s dairy farm in Maine. “We tell stories that are grounded in people’s individual experiences.

And we don’t gloss over stuff. We don’t gloss over the gray areas; we live in those areas. And I think that helps people understand where we’re coming from.”

Balcomb ended up at The Daily after a circuitous path, with pit stops in broadcast and nonprofit communications. After landing at NPR, she progressed from intern to supervising producer in charge of All Things Considered, mentored along the way by legendary journalist Susan Stamberg ’59. Then the Times came calling.

“I came in, and [host] Michael [Barbaro] and I just started piloting things,” she told The Idea, Atlantic Media’s weekly newsletter, this past May. “After a month of trying stuff out, we launched. That’s what we’ve been doing ever since.”

Balcomb is far from the only alumna who found her calling building one-onone relationships through storytelling; the school has a long tradition of nurturing narrative artists across genres, from writing (both fiction and nonfiction) to dance.

But podcasting is a medium uniquely suited for this moment.

For years, podcast downloads have been largely attributed to commuters. The coronavirus put a stop to that, along with many other mundane aspects of daily life previously taken for granted. But after a slight dip in early March, podcast consumption skyrocketed. Podcasts are a way to travel while stuck close to home, to experience intimate human connection through voice and story from a safe social 36

Theo Balcomb ’09

PHOTO BY KATYA MARTIN

distance, to build empathy and understanding in a time of bitter partisan divides.

With voices right in their earbuds, listeners can’t help but relate to the travails of others, a connection that’s avoidable when confronted with an imposing wall of text.

“When you hear somebody telling their story, that can be much more impactful than just reading a few quotes,” says Balcomb. “We hear a lot from young people who say, ‘I didn’t really pay attention to what was going on, and now I do, and I’m acting differently.’ I think there’s kind of an awakening that can happen. Which makes sense — if you’ve been hearing the same kind of news and not really getting it and then you hear someone talking to you … that can change your behavior.”

According to Rebecca Lee Douglas ’10, podcasting’s uniquely connective qualities make it a perfect fit for the sort of intellectual curiosity and openness fostered within the Barnard gates.

“It’s an intellectual field, but it’s also very creative,” says Douglas, a senior producer at the Freakonomics podcast, where she works with executive producer Alison Craiglow ’88. “I feel like it’s journalism, but there’s also artistic room, and there’s that intimacy there, too, that allows you to really connect with your audience that’s hard to get in any other medium, which seems very Barnard to me. … It makes sense to me that a lot of people would gravitate toward that medium.”

Douglas also took a winding route toward audio before falling in love with the medium, a journey that, like Balcomb’s, predisposed her to see the value in forging connections to others.

“I thought I was going to get a Ph.D. in Renaissance literature,” she says. After Barnard, “I went to England for a year, to Oxford, to study the metaphysical poets. … It sort of gave me a sense of what I might be doing as a Ph.D. student, and I was like, ‘This is not for me. If I just have to be alone with my thoughts researching all the time, I’m going to be clinically depressed for the rest of my life.’ One of

Rebecca Lee Douglas ’10 PHOTO BY JONATHAN KING

WINTER 2021 | BARNARD MAGAZINE 37

the things that was really helpful for me was I would go on really long walks in England, and I would listen to Radiolab and This American Life. … Those stories were really comforting for me.”

The warmth and companionship Douglas found in public radio inspired her to pursue journalism. She got her master’s at the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY, then took a job in Barnard’s communications department. On the side, she created a well-reviewed mental health podcast, Group — co-hosted by therapist Catherine Drury ’09 — but still longed to work in radio full-time. Inspired by the Barnard students around her, she took the chance.

“It felt very scary to take the dive and go pursue what I wanted to do, but I saw all these 22-year-old women doing it and killing it, and I’m just, like, ‘You know what?

I’m just going to go for it.’”

UP CLOSE AND PERSONAL Podcasting has been a viable career only since the early aughts; the genre was first integrated into iTunes in 2005 and became a formidable media presence with the viral success of the series Serial in 2014. Podcasting has since been through the media boom-and-bust cycle. By 2018, mainstream outlets like BuzzFeed and Slate had built podcast teams only to dismantle them.

The Times’ own 2017 foray into podcasts — The Daily launched 12 days into the Trump presidency — started with far less fanfare; when Balcomb joined the company, she was part of a four-person team. But The Daily has grown into an audio empire by adapting the company’s reporting and prose into a format palatable to broader audiences, an initiative largely driven by Balcomb’s passion for inviting everyone to the table. The paper’s “Modern Love” column, which was converted 38

Maggie Penman ’12

PHOTO BY CASSIDY DUHON

into an ongoing podcast that premiered in 2016, was another breakout success driven by multiple Barnard alumnae.

That team included Jessica Alpert ’03, who then worked for WBUR, one of Boston’s public radio stations, and now runs her own Boston-based podcast production company, Rococo Punch.

“COVID has been terrible for so many industries, but it has been an incredible boon for audio,” she says.

She, too, took the scenic route to a podcasting career. She worked at the Justice Department and then did a Fulbright year collecting oral histories of Jews in El Salvador. She returned to start a Ph.D. in history, working with the histories she’d collected the year before, but discovered that she couldn’t stomach the thought of thinking about the same thing for years on end.

“I kept pushing myself toward things that were more traditional, a path that was straight,” she says. “And it was pretty clear to me that there was no way in hell my path was going to be linear in any way. And after a while, I just embraced it instead of fighting it.”

So she decided to pivot to radio, taking a semester-long production boot camp and then getting an internship, at 27, at WBUR. “It was very humbling. It was me next to a ton of college kids,” she recalls. “I learned a lot — I just kept my head down and tried to learn as quickly as possible.”

She ended up on staff, left briefly to work at a startup, and then returned to help produce Modern Love and other projects, before starting her own podcasting company to produce in-depth storytelling.

“All of these twists and turns gave me so much more perspective as a storyteller. I just think that nothing is wasted,” she says.

Continued on page 86

Jessica Alpert ’03 PHOTO BY RICK BERN

WINTER 2021 | BARNARD MAGAZINE 39

THIS IS WHAT WE WILL NO LONGER TOLERATE · DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO

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PICKING UP THE THREADS A nonprofit turns to a time-honored art form to help heal and empower women across the world

by Mary Cunningham In 2010, Rachel Cohen ’77, a clinical psychologist, was living abroad in Geneva, Switzerland, when she received an email that would set her on a new path. A friend, Cohen learned, would be curating an exhibition on the work of the late artist Esther Nisenthal Krinitz, who had expressed her experiences of the Holocaust through embroidered fabrics. Struck by Krinitz’s powerful images, Cohen, who was taking a course with the Harvard Program in Refugee Trauma at the time, mentioned them during an online discussion with her classmates. She was swiftly inundated with similar examples from around the world, including a photo of a Hmong woman holding a textile depicting her family’s flight from Laos to Australia during the Vietnam War. “It seemed to me,” Cohen says, “that [these cloths] might be an amazing tool for trauma therapy to use in order to access the stories that people have a great deal of trouble disclosing at all — or accessing for themselves.”

For centuries, women have embroidered textiles — or “story cloths” — to document everyday life and the more tumultuous narratives of war, migration, and violence. The Hmong, for instance, have a folk tradition called paj ntaub, meaning “flowery cloth,” an art form that was later adapted to record their exodus from Laos in the mid-1970s. In Chile, during the Augusto Pinochet dictatorship (19731990), women sewed patchwork arpilleras to silently record the atrocities taking place inside the country.

Cohen started to investigate ways to integrate story cloths into different approaches to trauma therapy. The standard school of thought tends to be verbally oriented. Cohen observed, however, that these therapies leave out where trauma lives: in visual images and in physical sensations. A story cloth could provide a channel for women to log their memories and emotions in a way that defies words.

What’s more, the rhythmic effect of stitching could help the women maintain a sense of calm in a different way than the standard art therapies.

In 2012, Cohen founded the Common Threads Project (CTP), a nonprofit that fosters trauma healing for survivors of sexual and gender-based violence through the creation of story cloths. Since its inception, approximately 300 women have participated in the program in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ecuador, and Nepal. During the six-month program, women take part in “healing circles” in which clinicians — trained, mentored, and supervised by CTP — guide them through team building and help them develop coping skills to manage severe distress. Alongside other women, participants engage in art therapy exercises, undergo body work such as somatic therapy, and learn basic sewing techniques (often with the help of local craftspeople) to embroider the fabrics.

While the circle conversations are an integral part of the program, much of the work is nonverbal as women unpack their suffering and loss through stitching. “We’re finding that survivors who can’t speak about [their trauma] can draw it and sew it,” Cohen says. “Women need each other to create a new narrative about what has happened to them to replace the self-blame and guilt with a sense of solidarity and pride.”

The resulting cloths are intricately made and often infused with vibrant colors and patterns, despite the somber narratives that they tell: scenes of fleeing refugees, rape, bloodshed, and more. Some incorporate a bit of text; others rely simply on imagery. Upon completion, women can choose to keep

WINTER 2021 | BARNARD MAGAZINE 41

their story cloths private or have them displayed at their local circle and at other local events or as part of online exhibitions, like CTP’s current one, “The Fabric of Healing.”

The goal of the therapy is enduring, transformative healing — something Cohen says CTP has been able to successfully measure through a reduction of mental health symptoms such as depression, anxiety, and PTSD. These indicators, coupled with the written testimonies from the program’s participants, are evidence of this art form’s power.

In September 2019, Cohen traveled to the Democratic Republic of Congo to meet with a healing circle known as Kamba Moja. When she arrived, the women greeted her with a warm welcome and showed her some of their collectively made story cloths. One, titled This Is What We Will No Longer Tolerate, is a profusion of colors and patterns around a backdrop of brown mountains meant to illustrate the exploitative and often violent conditions of their work in gold mines. “We want you to take this with you,” the woman said, according to Cohen. “We need people back in America to know what’s going on back here. And we need to tell our story.” B To explore more story cloths, visit the online exhibition “The Fabric of Healing,” which features 22 story cloths made by women in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ecuador, and Nepal.

Commonthreadsproject.org/the-fabric-of-healing

Previous page: In This Is What We Will No Longer Tolerate (Democratic Republic of Congo, 2018), a group of women from a Kamba Moja (“the thread that unites us” in Swahili) circle depict the exploitation and violence they face at work at the hands of their bosses in the gold mines.

Right: Finding My Peace (Ecuador, 2013) conveys the comfort one circle facilitator finds on the banks of the river in the Amazon.

“I let go of the feelings, but now I can also set limits. I can enter and exit memories, and they do not hurt me,” she says of her personal recovery process.

Far right, from top to bottom: A woman sews the border of her story cloth in Ecuador. When participants make story cloths, they start by sewing the border while discussing issues related to boundaries and containment.

A participant from one of the Kamba Moja circles in the eastern DRC shares her story cloth.

Women talk in small groups at a Sajha Dhago (“common threads” in Nepali) circle in Nepal.

FINDING MY PEACE · ECUADOR

WINTER 2021 | BARNARD MAGAZINE 43

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Send your unequivocally Barnard letters, essays, poems, art, photos, travels, and ideas to magazine@barnard.edu

Noteworthy Connecting alumnae. Celebrating community.

Dance celebration organized by Black Order of Soul Sisters (BOSS), 1972. Barnard Archives.

46 Passion Project 48 Q&Author 50 AABC Pages 54 Class Notes 61 Alumna Profile: Christina LaGamma ’16 67 Sources 73 Giving Day 79 Virtual Roundup 83 Obituaries 85 In Memoriam 87 Last Word 88 Crossword

Passion Project

Prints Charming

Leigh Wishner ’97 celebrates America’s exuberant 20th-century textiles

by June D. Bell Surveying the giddy mix of novelty prints, polkadotted blouses, eclectic jewelry, and thrift-store circle skirts in Leigh Wishner’s Washington Heights apartment, a friend told her 25 years ago, “You have the happiest closet I’ve ever seen.”

Wishner still does. Her collection of effervescent prints has ballooned since her years at Barnard, partly because she’s powerless to resist vintage textiles. “I love a good dot,” she confesses. “I love a good stripe.”

So do hundreds of her fans. The Instagram account she launched in May 2020, @patternplayUSA, quickly garnered more than 1,500 followers who swoon over her near-daily photos of vibrant fabrics and outfits coupled with chatty commentary on their origins, designers, and heyday.

Pattern Play USA, Wishner says, is her “visual love letter to 20th-century American textile design” and, she hopes, the heart of a colorful academic coffeetable book she plans to write on the subject. The Los Angeles resident had been stockpiling ideas for a volume, but her job coordinating events and exhibits at the Fashion Institute of Design & Merchandising Museum left her little free time for research. When the pandemic forced the museum to temporarily shutter last spring, Wishner devoted her three-month furlough to the Instagram account and book idea.

She’s celebrated everything from a playful 1952 hand-screened linen print of California quails by little-known Los Angeles artists Tony Sharrar and Erick Erickson to the chic wardrobes of icons Esther Williams, Myrna Loy, and Lucille Ball, “the woman who single-handedly ignited my love of ’50s fashion as a child.”

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Wishner sometimes showcases cherished favorites from her extensive personal collection, including a 1940s scarf adorned with slang phrases like “By crackie!” and “Holy mackerel!” She makes an occasional Instagram appearance as well, sporting bright fuchsia lipstick, leopard-print glasses, statement earrings, vivid vintage scarves paired with richly patterned blouses — and blazing red tresses evoking her fashion idol.

A Los Angeles native, Wishner always knew she wanted to live in New York City. She studied antiquities at Barnard but scrapped plans to become an art conservator when she realized a painful truth: “Science is the basis of conservation, and I did not enjoy chemistry.” Her passion for material culture and design led her to the Bard Graduate Center, where she earned a master’s degree in decorative arts and wrote her thesis on the history of leopard fur and prints in fashion.

(She fittingly kicked off Pattern Play USA with a photograph of a model clad in a leopard print by textile designer Brooke Cadwallader, which she characterized as a “take on nature’s chic-est pattern.”) Wishner spent a decade at Cora Ginsburg LLC, an antique textiles and costume gallery in New York City, before returning to California and taking a job curating costume and textiles exhibitions for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). She joined the Fashion Institute’s museum in 2017.

Although she’s handled fragile garments that date to the Renaissance, Wishner’s passion remains post-World War II fabrics produced during an era of economic prosperity, innovation, and optimism. “American textile design really came into its own during that period,” she says.

Until the late 1930s, stylish Americans and the industry that clothed them took design cues from Europe, copying the silhouettes and color palettes originating in Paris’s haute couture ateliers. That relationship frayed during World War II, then dissolved shortly after, and a unique brand of American creativity flourished.

While French designers stubbornly clung to their silks and English designers held fast to their woolens, U.S. designers embraced newly developed synthetic fabrics, printing technologies, and whimsical novelty patterns.

The era’s fabric design has a less enchanting underside, however. Whether the result of ignorance, insensitivity, or racism, midcentury designers’ art sometimes perpetuated racist depictions of ethnic groups and appropriated other cultures’ sacred or significant motifs. Wishner’s Instagram posts address appropriation, celebrate the genius of Black designers such as Loïs Mailou Jones, and honor Navajo (Diné) and northern New Mexico’s Hispanic weavers — artisans who have often been overlooked and uncredited.

Wishner isn’t yet finished compiling virtual fabric swatches that celebrate America’s love of pattern, color, and design while illuminating the country’s history of ingenuity and creativity. Squeezing the garish, breathtaking, and gaudy between the covers of a book won’t be easy, but she’s determined to try. “It will be as fun to write as it is educational,” she promises. “I want people to love it without needing to read a word.” B

1

2

3 1 “Chop suey — ‘assorted pieces’ — is a style of Hawaiian print design that was most common in the 1940s and ’50s. These fabrics offer samplings of island scenes and motifs, frequently paired with English and ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi words.”

LEIGH WISHNER COLLECTION

2 “The dynamic duo — the obelisk-esque Trylon and the plump Perisphere — of the 1939 World’s Fair in New York lives on in textiles!”

MANUSCRIPTS AND ARCHIVES DIVISION, THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY. DESIGN DRAWING OF TRYLON AND PERISPHERE PILLBOX HAT. NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY DIGITAL COLLECTIONS; TEXTILES, FIDM MUSEUM AT THE FASHION INSTITUTE OF DESIGN & MERCHANDISING COLLECTION

3 “Though plush fabrics called ‘peluches’ have been used in fashions for centuries, it wasn’t until the 1920s that synthetic furs entered the marketplace.”

WISHNER COLLECTION

4

5

4 “‘There’ll Always Be an England’ is an uplifting song of perseverance in the face of fascism. The inspiring lyrics were the basis for this ‘British American Ambulance Corps’ fabric, made in America to support Brits in the post-blitz era.”

FIDM MUSEUM AT THE FASHION INSTITUTE OF DESIGN & MERCHANDISING COLLECTION

5 “Legendary graphic designer Paul Rand devised a playful ecosystem of avian and feline motifs composed of bits of letters and numbers.”

PAUL RAND ‘ANIMALPHABET’ FOR L. ANTON MAIX; CORA GINSBURG LLC COLLECTION

6 “I’ve got many masks, but this one is special — made from a ‘drag box’ plaid fabric designed by D.D. and Leslie Tillett.”

WISHNER COLLECTION

7 “October is #hispanicheritagemonth — which makes these Chimayó tapestry-woven textiles from the looms of northern New Mexican Hispanic weavers (like the Ortega family, pictured in a vintage postcard) the perfect subject.”

WISHNER COLLECTION

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7

WINTER 2021 | BARNARD MAGAZINE 47

Q&Author

A Word with Paola Ramos In advance of the 2020 presidential election, reporter Paola Ramos ’09 set out to show that the U.S.’s Latinx community is anything but monolithic

by Laura Raskin ’10JRN

How did your background influence your decision to become a journalist?

My parents are both journalists and immigrants [Paola’s father is Jorge Ramos, a Mexican American news anchor and journalist; her mother is Gina Montaner ’87, a Miami TV station managing editor and syndicated columnist and the daughter of exiled Cuban author Carlos Alberto Montaner]. The narrative growing up involved discussions about the Castro regime or Mexico, and why my dad decided to leave Mexico, which was because of censorship. The core of my upbringing was watching them write, watching them on screen, reading them in newspapers. I chose a string of that, which was politics. When I was at Barnard, I was a political science major. [Through my work] I’ve been able to observe and understand where the balance of power is — sometimes that’s been through politics and sometimes that’s been through journalism. I’ve had the privilege to go back and forth between both.

What was the impetus for writing this book?

It was almost exactly four years ago, when I was working in Hilary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign. My fancy title was Deputy Director of Hispanic Media. For almost two years, I was convinced that on Election Day, in the face of someone like Donald Trump, Latin Americans would show up in overwhelming numbers. Turns out that less than 50% of eligible Latino voters showed up. As a campaign and as a country, we didn’t understand who they were. I was also trying to understand who 48

PHOTO OF PAOLA RAMOS BY SAMANTHA BLOOM

In the wake of the 2016 U.S. presidential election, journalist Paola Ramos ’09 set out on a cross-country quest to try to understand what binds and defines the Latin American community — and her own place in it. Ramos, who grew up between Madrid and Miami and is now a correspondent for VICE News, MSNBC, and Telemundo, traveled to all corners of the nation to hear from overlooked Latino voices, from California’s lush Central Valley to the Walmart in El Paso, Texas, where 23 people were killed in 2019. Ramos distilled her observations in her illuminating new book, Finding Latinx: In Search of the Voices Redefining Latino Identity, which was released just two weeks before Election Day 2020. For Ramos, who is queer, the word “Latinx,” a gender-neutral term for people of Latin American heritage, got to the heart of her pursuit — “It captured the stories of all these people under one umbrella, spanning so many separate identities,” she writes. We caught up with Ramos, who had just returned to Brooklyn after many months on the road.

we were. And then when the word “Latinx” popped up — and it was increasingly among us in 2016 — it, to me, was very telling of a community that was more diverse and changing than I realized.

What was most surprising to you, as you traveled the country and reported for this book?

Going into places that I thought I knew and discovering things I didn’t know. Even in New York City, there’s a big and powerful community of Latino Muslims. Never once had I read about it or come face-to-face with it. Also, going into places like the Midwest that I thought were going to feel cold and foreign and abstract [and instead] were more beautiful than I expected. But going back [home] to Miami, which is at the center of politics — everyone is trying to figure out what happened in Florida [in the November 2020 election] — was the culmination of everything for me. I felt that a lot throughout the process.

You essentially went on a listening tour to write this book. It strikes me that when politicians talk about listening to their constituents, this is the epitome of what they should be doing.

The book is 1% of the picture, and I hope it encourages politicians, particularly Democrats, to go back to these battleground states and put away biases and dig into this community. It takes listening and wide eyes to see things we haven’t seen before. There are Black Latinos, there are women who are fighting for abortion rights — it’s an extremely complex and nuanced community.

Throughout all of these stories, there is this ache to feel like you belong in this country. I hope that [this feeling] also translates into real power, that [Latinx people] end up running for office, voting, or getting the job they want or being in leadership positions. We can talk about this in a thousand ways — so long as these are just stories, they don’t translate into power. But I do think we’re heading that way.

What role has Barnard played in your life?

Barnard gave me a lot of confidence that I didn’t have.

I moved back to the U.S. from Spain when I was going into my junior year of high school.

Barnard had a lot to do with my ability to write this book.

I became comfortable in my skin and who I was. Being gay and being Latina and having diverse friends became normal, and I became proud on campus. They’re still my best friends to this day. Being in political science seminars, writing my thesis, and getting the basics of politics is where it started for me. B WINTER 2021 | BARNARD MAGAZINE 49

In challenging times, a new way to connect students & alumnae.

Bridge geographic boundaries and stay connected as part of our exceptional, resilient, and supportive global network of students and alumnae.

Join a regional-, industry-, affinity-, or identity-based Alumnae Circle today. our.barnard.edu/circles alumnaerelations@barnard.edu 212.854.2005

From the AABC President

Staying Seen and Feeling Heard Hello, Alumnae, I hope this message finds you and those you love safe and well. As Inauguration Day in the U.S. is on my mind, I am struck anew by the critical importance of exercising our privilege to vote whenever possible. Our votes are truly our voices. We must be counted. We must be heard.

If you’re eager to keep your voting muscles limber, the Alumnae Association of Barnard College (AABC) elections are now underway. This issue of the Magazine introduces you to the slate of candidates for open positions, and I encourage you to make your voice heard by learning about these alumnae and casting your vote.

Every year when the list of candidates is announced, there are questions about how AABC elections work. As dictated by the AABC bylaws, the Nominating Committee puts out a call for nominations for open leadership roles every summer and selects candidates from those nominees, as well as from an additional volunteer vetting process based on the bylaws and their understanding of the roles.

While it is always the goal to have a robust selection of candidates for each role, occasionally you’ll see someone running unopposed. You may be surprised to learn the most common reason for uncontested positions: Additional potential candidates declined their nominations.

In an effort to ensure that our alumnae programming feels inclusive for our entire community, we hope to continue to diversify the pipeline of volunteers that feeds into the AABC elections nomination process. If you’ve never volunteered with Barnard because you imagined that you were not “the type,” please think again. There are ways you can get involved year-round to add your voice to the post-graduation phase of your Barnard experience. I can almost guarantee you’ll get value from the experience, too. There’s nothing like the fire of a cohort of Barnard alumnae to warm your intellect and spirit!

Much as (I like to think) I have evolved since I was a student (way more chill, no more perm), Barnard continues evolving, too. Learn what’s new — physically, pedagogically, and virtually — at our.barnard.edu. While you’re there, please update your contact information. No matter how many miles or years away from Barnard you may be, the College has more to offer students and alumnae than perhaps ever before, and we would love to share it with you!

PHOTO BY MELISSA HAMBURG

Be well,

Amy Veltman ’89 President, Alumnae Association of Barnard College Alumnae Trustee

WINTER 2021 | BARNARD MAGAZINE 51

On behalf of the Nominating Committee of the AABC, I’m excited to present the candidates for the 2021 AABC elections. In my first year as chair, I am proud to continue our commitment to increasing the transparency of our nomination process and building an inclusive AABC Board that reflects the diversity and dynamism of our alumnae community.

I hope you will join me in learning more about our stellar candidates and in casting your votes at our.barnard.edu/election2021.

—Margaret Robotham ’12, Chair of the AABC Nominating Committee

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ILLUSTRATION BY DAYAN MARQUINA

Your AABC Board Nominees

ALUMNAE TRUSTEE

TREASURER

Francine Glick ’77

Vivien Li ’75

Sima Saran Ahuja ’96

DIRECTOR-AT-LARGE

Lori Hoepner ’94

Sharon D. Johnson ’85

Lucia Santos ’00

Danielle Donovan ’87

Marisa Greason ’82

Jeane PollakKraines ’78

Rosemary Bates ’04

Michele Lynn ’82

Adele Tilebalieva ’05

AWARDS COMMITTEE CHAIR

Ruth Raisman ’86

Merri Rosenberg ’78

Linda Sweet ’63

Jennifer (Feierman) de Lannoy ’09

Cordelia Heaney ’00

Kirstin Jones ’15

NOMINATING COMMITTEE MEMBER

Ashley Arana ’16

Shion Ishikura ’05 REGIONAL CLUBS & NETWORKS COMMITTEE CHAIR

PROFESSIONAL & LEADERSHIP DEV. COMMITTEE CHAIR

Alice Chin ’07

Sooji Park ’90

LEADERSHIP ASSEMBLY COMMITTEE CHAIR

PROJECT CONTINUUM COMMITTEE CHAIR

Flora Davidson ’69

Shilpa Bahri ’99

Erin Rossitto ’94

WINTER 2021 | BARNARD MAGAZINE 53

Alumna Profile

Advocacy in Action

How Christina LaGamma ’16 is bringing a humanist approach to medicine and championing racial justice

by Nicole Anderson and Mary Cunningham Last year, Christina LaGamma ’16, a second-year medical student at Penn State College of Medicine, was attending one of the regular planning meetings for Central PA Medicine magazine when she decided to speak up. In front of a panel of physicians, a peer, and the magazine staff, she proposed dedicating an entire issue to the Black Lives Matter movement and how it relates to medicine. The response was mixed. “It was met with some pushback,” LaGamma recalls. But this didn’t deter the physician-in-training, who has always seen the role of a doctor as being not only a diagnostician but also a humanist and an advocate for health equity.

“It just was the right thing to do,” she says, “and as an equal professional on this committee, what would be my alternative? To say nothing? To let a problem persist [by] choosing to be reticent? This, down to my core, I was not okay with.”

LaGamma’s persistence paid off. She won the support of the editorial board, and she, along with other medical students and practicing physicians, produced Central PA Magazine’s “White Coats for Black Lives” Summer 2020 issue.

The magazine’s pages are filled with thoughtful first-person essays, Q&As, and feature stories, including a conversation between LaGamma and a retired internal medicine physician on issues around healthcare, racism, and how to enact meaningful change.

Her pluck, LaGamma notes, can be traced back to Barnard and being surrounded by so many empowered women. She often draws from that strength, reminding herself: “You have the place, right, and reason to speak up,” she says. “This mantra continues to motivate me, both in my studies and beyond the clinic walls.”

From a young age, LaGamma has been interested in how advocacy intersects with medicine, stemming from her experience as a competitive gymnast. After a 14-year career in the sport, she had to manage her own chronic orthopedic injuries. “It made me reflect on what it’s like to be a patient and advocate for my own health,” she recalls.

When LaGamma arrived at Barnard, she initially planned to major in biology.

But after taking Psychology and Philosophy of the Human Experience, she was certain she wanted to switch to neuroscience. She credits professor of psychology and neuroscience & behavior Russell Romeo’s course Systems and Behavioral Neuroscience for reaffirming her decision to study the brain.

“I genuinely still think back to that class and recall some of the lectures and subjects that reinforce the content I’m studying in medical school now,” she says. In neuroscience, she found the perfect blend of basic science and behavioral theory.

In addition to Romeo, LaGamma also formed close bonds with professor of psychology Robert Remez (her major advisor) and Samuel R. Milbank Professor Peter Balsam, for whose class Psychology of Learning she was a teacher’s assistant after graduating. For her senior thesis, LaGamma used a mouse model of depression to study the effects of ketamine on a region of the

brain called the hippocampus, which led to her first publication as a lead author. Both during her time at Barnard and after graduation, LaGamma worked in Christine Ann Denny’s translational neuroscience laboratory at the New York State Psychiatric Institute. Over this five-year period, Denny, associate professor of clinical neurobiology in psychiatry at Columbia University Irving Medical Center, became a close mentor and friend.

Since starting at Penn State College of Medicine, LaGamma hasn’t slowed down in the slightest. She currently holds leadership positions in groups such as the American Medical Association, the Association of Women Surgeons PSCOM chapter, and the Medical School Admissions Committee. Her ongoing research projects involve assessing a remotely administered, mindfulness-based stress reduction program and measuring the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on burnout, satisfaction, and work-life integration among physicians.

Whether treating patients or championing equity in medicine, LaGamma knows there’s still a lot of work to do. “As medical students, we are the future of practicing physicians, and we must work together to get there,” she says. “My goal is to continue prioritizing being a better learner, a better ally, and a better version of myself each day — I owe a lot of this confidence to Barnard for making me realize that.” B

WINTER 2021 | BARNARD MAGAZINE 61

Obituary

Preserver of the Past

Fay Chew Matsuda ’71 dedicated her life to safeguarding the rich legacy of Chinese American immigrants

by Solby Lim ’22 History is a powerful act of remembrance. Fay Chew Matsuda ’71, who spent decades preserving the memories and stories of Chinese immigrants, made history her life’s work. In the many roles she held over the years — social worker at the Hamilton-Madison House, early member of the Chinatown History Project, and executive director of the Museum of Chinese in America — she was dedicated to honoring the rich heritage of New York City’s Chinese American immigrants.

Matsuda died in July, at the age of 71, at her home in Sound Beach, N.Y. Matsuda became a leading figure in the Chinatown and Lower East Side communities. She was active in the Chinatown History Project, where she joined local activists and volunteers in an effort to collect photos, artifacts, and personal mementos that told the stories of generations of Chinese immigrants.

Her commitment to documenting this history was vital to the establishment of the Museum of Chinese in America, which she helped to transform from a grassroots operation into a fully-fledged archival institution housing 85,000 artifacts and covering 160 years of history. “[Matsuda was] a big part of why Chinatown has so many agencies that serve seniors’ needs, and why generations of their otherwise neglected stories and belongings are remembered and kept safe for future generations,” historian John Kuo Wei Tchen, cofounder of the Chinatown History Project, told The New York Times last August.

For Matsuda, who was the daughter of Chinese immigrants, the Chinatown History Project was as personal as it was groundbreaking. She grew up in the East Village and was one of a handful of Asian Americans who attended New York City’s Hunter College High School. Her mother was a garment worker, and her father ran a laundry service and later worked in restaurants. After graduating from Barnard with a degree in sociology, she went on to earn her master’s in social work at NYU. The job of a preservationist, as Matsuda knew all too well, meant responding to an abiding sense of urgency. “Sometimes it was literally dumpsterdiving,” Matsuda told Barnard Magazine in 2013. “We were trying to recover history that was quickly being lost.”

Yet she persevered. At the time, there was no museum that focused solely on the experiences of Chinese American immigrants, and Matsuda, along with devoted peers and stakeholders, helped to fill this void and create a space to celebrate the experiences of immigrants often ignored or forgotten by public memory. “It was about reclaiming our own history,” Matsuda said, “and telling the story we wanted to tell.”

In a move that would take her full circle, she returned to the Hamilton-Madison House, where she first began her career, to serve as the program director of City Hall Senior Center. There, she assisted and empowered the Chinatown and Lower East Side senior populations — the communities that meant so much to her. B WINTER 2021 | BARNARD MAGAZINE 83

From left: Patricia Warner as a young girl at the Chapin School in New York City; Warner in Spain, undercover as a flamenco dancer; Warner’s ID photo when she entered Barnard. Inset: A recent portrait.

A Woman on a Mission

Remembering Patricia Warner ’49, a WWII spy and Congressional Gold Medal recipient

by Anna Fixsen ’13JRN Patricia Warner ’49, an alumna whose World War II spy missions were worthy of the silver screen, died September 26 at home in Lincoln, Massachusetts. She was 99 years old.

During her covert operations for the Office of Strategic Services (a forerunner of the CIA), Patricia went undercover as a flamenco dancer in Spain to recruit informants and collect intelligence. As noted in the Boston Herald, one of her sons used to call her “the last leaf on the tree” of these special female agents.

84

Patricia Rosalind Cutler was born May 21, 1921, to an affluent New York family. The Wall Street Crash of 1929 took its toll on the Cutlers’ finances, but they still managed to send Patricia to private schools, and she was photographed as a debutante in Vogue. Patricia soon met Robert Ludlow Fowler III, a Harvard grad and a member of the U.S. Naval Reserve, and they were married in 1942.

But the fairy tale shattered almost as soon as it began. Robert was deployed to the South Pacific and was killed just a few months later in the Guadalcanal campaign. Patricia, 21 years old and pregnant, was devastated.

Patricia channeled her grief into action. In the spring of 1943, she joined the OSS, leaving her newborn, Robert IV, in New York with family

ALL PHOTOS COURTESY OF THE WARNER FAMILY; ID PHOTO: BARNARD ARCHIVES AND SPECIAL COLLECTIONS

Obituary

and traveling to Washington, D.C., London, and ultimately Spain. “I asked, ‘Were you out for revenge?’” remembers Joe Dwinell, an editor for the Boston Herald who is writing a book about Patricia’s life. “She said, ‘Wrong word. I was out to finish what [Robert] started.’”

Once in Madrid, Patricia went undercover in the unlikely guise of a flamenco dancer. She performed at bullfights, letting her heels stomp, her castanets clack, and her skirt swirl. “I just let myself go,” she told Dwinell. After, she flitted around bars to pick up shreds of information from loose-lipped Axis sympathizers and others and then relayed her findings to her superiors in Morse code.

Patricia completed her time with the OSS in the spring of 1945, but for much of her life, she kept her exploits a secret. In 2019, Patricia was recognized for her wartime service with the Congressional Gold Medal.

Spycraft marked just one chapter of Patricia’s extraordinary life. After her OSS tenure, she returned to New York and enrolled at Barnard to study international relations. She turned down a Fulbright scholarship and in 1951 married Charles G.K. Warner, a professor of French history and a schoolmate of her first husband. Academia took the Warners all over the country, but activism remained close to Patricia’s heart. In 1965, she participated in one of the historic marches from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama, during which she apparently spent a night in jail, her family says.

The family entered a trying period in the early 1970s when her daughter developed anorexia, a disorder that at the time wasn’t well documented or understood. Warner flung herself into existing literature and established the Anorexia Nervosa Aid Society in 1978 — then the only self-help group in New England for people suffering from eating disorders. Patricia, who was later recognized by President George H.W. Bush for her efforts, went on to write a memoir about her daughter’s battle with anorexia.

Even as the years wore on and her second husband passed away in 2006, “she never [really] retired,” says Chris Warner, the first of her five children with Charles. Well into her 90s, Patricia was known for twinkling eyes, sharp wit, and lively games of backgammon and Scrabble. “Of all her causes, family was most important,” remembers granddaughter Addie Warner. And family and friends surrounded her to the end. The last time Joe Dwinell saw Patricia, he says, she squeezed his hand and said, “Never give up.” B

In Memoriam 1940 Vera Robins Greene 10/2/2020 1942 Elaine Wolf Cotlove 9/26/2020 1944 Elizabeth Davis Sorensen 2/26/2014 Gloria Glaston Cole 9/17/2020 Mary Davis Williams 11/6/2019 Mary Aitchison Davenport 9/25/2020 1946 Jean Haroldson Ziegler 11/3/2020 1947 Katherine Harris Constant 8/19/2020 Mary Rudd Kierstead 9/7/2020 1948 Ann Amanda Ford Morris 10/16/2020 1950 Elaine Springberg Brase 11/2/2020 1951 Mary Scarlett DeMott 10/18/2020

Carol Burnham Travis 10/1/2020 1952 Constance Boardman Vanacore 10/14/2020 Delores Hoffman 7/24/2020

Charlotte Alter Spiegelman 9/25/2020 Nancy Freiman 4/15/2020 1969 Constance Buchanan 9/16/2020

Sonia Wolliak 10/27/2020 Ruth Grossman Hadlock 10/29/2020

Cynthia Jaquith 5/1/2020 1970

1953 Millicent Satterlee Mali 9/16/2020 Carol Wolfe Galligan 10/16/2020 Margaret Davis Moose 8/10/2020

Janna Jones Bellwin 4/29/2019 1972 Judith Bach 4/9/2020 1973

1954 Jacqueline Michael Errera 10/7/2018 Osa Philipson Ericsson 2020 1955 Jean Elder Noe 5/3/2020

Diana Varjabedian Ohanessian 12/29/2018 1977 Gail MacColl Jarrett 6/25/2020 1979 Laura Myers Reeb 9/12/2020

1956 Barbara Bing Kaplan 9/24/2020 1958

1963

1980 Hanna Hutchins 10/31/2019

Judith Kleinman Wachtel 9/2/2020

1983

1960

Deborah Nason-Naples 8/25/2020

Andree Abecassis 11/4/2020

Rachel Furer 10/19/2020

WINTER 2021 | BARNARD MAGAZINE 85

A BOOK OF HER OWN continued from page 25 How do you hope current students will approach your book and come to appreciate Barnard on a deeper level?

Recognize that it had a past that was different and that should continue to inform its present and future. That is, it did serve as a kind of ladder to a different, better world, a better set of opportunities, a fuller life that was dramatically different by virtue of going to Barnard. I think in some sense, [it still] does serve that role of opening up possibilities, exposing students to situations and opportunities that might not have been there but for this connection. And [that is] intertwined with a faculty that by and large feels the same way about the opportunities that Barnard and New York City provide. B

TUNED IN continued from page 39 A LASTING NETWORK All of these meandering journeys to podcasting have roots at Barnard, creating a formidable, benevolent sisterhood. “There is kind of a cool legacy of Barnard women in audio helping out other Barnard women in audio,” Balcomb says.

That can happen in smaller ways — Douglas says that she makes a point of hiring Barnard students for research and transcribing help at Freakonomics because the College teaches impeccable research skills.

It can also happen in larger ways, such as the mentoring Balcomb got from Stamberg, Douglas receives now from Craiglow, and Alpert tracked down from award-winning broadcast journalist Maria Hinojosa ’84.

“When I was in grad school, I tried to get on a phone call with Maria Hinojosa for about six months,” says Alpert. “I’d email her like once a month and say, ‘Hey, do you have 15 minutes to chat with me?’ I finally got on the phone with her, and she was like, ‘You are persistent.’ I think that was a compliment.”

When Alpert was at WBUR, she remembers getting a call from Balcomb, 86

who was then at NPR and based in Washington, D.C. “She was like, ‘I’m really starting to think about my next steps,’ ” Alpert recalls. “She said she wanted to go back to New York.

She was totally on the ground when The Daily started. ... I heard her thinking about it, and then she just made it happen. I’m sure her story is much more involved than that. But it’s a very small world.”

Balcomb overlapped at NPR with Maggie Penman ’12, now the executive producer of Post Reports, The Washington Post’s daily news and analysis podcast.

“Podcasts were really my first love; I fell in love with audio while listening to the This American Life podcast in college,” Penman says.

She started her career in public radio right after graduating from Barnard, with an internship at WNYC, then did stints at NPR’s Washington, D.C., headquarters and WGBH, one of Boston’s NPR affiliates, before returning to D.C. in 2018 to help run

Post Reports.

Penman counts her Barnard connections as core members of her professional network. “I feel like my classmates are some of my biggest fans and still some of my best friends,” Penman says. “I think it’s great to know so many people — not just in podcasting and in journalism — but also in publishing and politics. I have friends who work at the U.N. or for the Biden campaign, or for publishing companies where they will pitch me books that we should cover.

There’s an incredibly wonderful network of people who are so supportive.”

Penman, too, parlays the strength from her Barnard network into creating stories aimed at uniting all who hear them, regardless of where they are on their path or where they’re going.

“I think that audio is such an incredible medium,” she says. “When you hear someone’s voice, and you hear the emotion in their voice, you just connect to them in a way you won’t necessarily on the page.” B

CROSSWORD ANSWERS Puzzle on page 88

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Last Word

Equity: A Guiding Light

ILLUSTRATION BY PRIYA SUNDRAM

by Helene Gayle ’76 Last summer, when COVID-19 and a series of highprofile cases of violence against Black people became potent indicators of racial injustice, I found myself knee-deep in establishing a coalition of community stakeholders to explore how to best respond to these twin pandemics. As the president and CEO of a key civic and philanthropic entity in the region, the Chicago Community Trust, I saw this moment as a once-in-a-generation opportunity to double down on our commitment to confront the Chicago region’s racial and ethnic wealth gap and ensure that we don’t return to the status quo.

Around this time, I received a call asking me to co-chair a committee for the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine that focused on establishing a framework for an equitable allocation of a COVID-19 vaccine. While I initially hesitated to take on one more major commitment, I quickly realized that I could not say no.

Throughout my career, whether it be in government, philanthropy, or the nonprofit sector, my passion has always been to work towards creating a more just and equitable world. In my lifetime, we have never witnessed a public health crisis that led to as much economic and social disruption, and so highlighted our global inequities. I felt an obligation to play my part in this important effort.

For 10 weeks from July to October, our committee

pulled together a consensus study to assist domestic and global policymakers in planning for an equitable allocation of a COVID-19 vaccine, with the understanding that in the beginning demand would exceed supply. We started by developing key foundational principles that helped frame our overarching goals to reduce severe morbidity and mortality as well as the negative societal impact due to the transmission of SARS-CoV-2 (the virus responsible for COVID-19 disease). We established a four-phased allocation framework, placing those who had the highest risk of infection, disease, or negative consequences to society in the first categories and those with lower risk in the later phases.

The final report, released in October, addressed the disproportionate public health and economic impact on communities of color by designating geographic priority to communities high on the CDC’s Social Vulnerability Index, which accounts for a number of factors, including poverty, lack of access to transportation, and crowded housing.

It is important to remember that developing the vaccine is only the first step.

People have to be willing to take the vaccine, and it has to be available and accessible, especially for the people at high risk and communities that have been most affected by this pandemic. Although confidence in the vaccine has risen with the recent evidence of successful trials, polls still suggest that only 61% of Americans would definitely or probably take the vaccine. This drops to 42% for African Americans, who’ve been hard-hit by the pandemic but also have reason to distrust medical and public health systems because of the legacy of medical exploitation and bias.

This vaccine effort has the opportunity to demonstrate it is worthy of trust from all people if equity stays at the center. At this moment, there is an awakening to the power of racism, poverty, and bias that is amplifying the health and economic hardship imposed by this pandemic on Black and Latinx communities. We saw our work as one way to address these wrongs. Years from now, when the history books are written about how our generation responded, I am hopeful that the lesson learned from the current crisis on how to improve future responses is that equity must be our guide. B Helene Gayle, a physician, is the president and CEO of the Chicago Community Trust. She was named one of Forbes’ “100 Most Powerful Women” and Foreign Policy magazine’s “Top 100 Global Thinkers.”

WINTER 2021 | BARNARD MAGAZINE 87

Crossword

by Patrick Blindauer ACROSS 1. ___ page (newspaper part) 5. Wasn’t out and about 8. By the unit 14. Firecracker feature 15. Employ, as “the Force” 16. Educational achievement 17. Social entrepreneur, film producer, and namesake of new wellness center 20. “___ the day!” (Horace) 21. Some sports scores (abbr.)

22. Take the money and run, literally 23. Wall bracket shape 25. Minuscule amount 28. Professor McCaughey’s History Lesson, with “A” 36. Mandela’s land (abbr.)

37. Automotive pioneer Karl 38. Suitable apparel for a shower 39. Theatrical opening 41. Daughter of a deer 43. Miami-___ County 44. Person rolling in riches 47. The Flying Wedge Award org.

50. One of a pair of canvas sneakers 51. Latest poetry collection from Mei-mei Berssenbrugge ’69, with “A” 54. Beat poet Cassady 55. To the ___ degree 56. To the rear 58. Homer’s dad 61. Tears down 65. Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, in relation to Grand Central Station 69. When many duels were held 70. Channel since 1980 71. Suffix for Smurf or Rock 72. “Oh, definitely!”

73. Neighbor of Neb. 74. Thailand, once DOWN 1. Show-___ (braggarts) 2. Like 24-karat gold 3. La Bamba star Morales 4. He won Best Actor the same year Halle won Best Actress 5. Shannon who reimagined the Brooklyn Bridge 6. “Love ___ Easy” (Abba song) 88

7. Proof of purchase, of a sort 8. Home of the Braves (abbr.)

9. Capital of Pennsylvania?

10. Between visible and microwave 11. Monetary unit since 1999 12. Sourpuss 13. Scream of surprise 18. Prey for the paparazzi 19. “Like that’ll ever happen!”

24. T-shirt size, for short 26. Cousin of “Aha!” 27. What X may mean 28. ___ beer 29. Award won by Hunt and Peck 30. Milch : German :: ___ : Italian 31. Stopping point 32. Allotropic form of oxygen 33. Home to Tennōji Park 34. Less narrow 35. Can’t live without 40. “It’s a secret!”

42. Prefix with system 45. Put away the dishes?

46. Spanish family member 48. Raggedy ___ (doll) 49. 2017 World Series winner 52. Croatian, for one 53. Feudal lords of Scotland 56. Commedia dell’___ 57. Mob pursuers 59. See 65-Down 60. Sicilian tourist attraction 62. Baked ristorante dish 63. ¿Dónde ___ Wally? (translated children’s book) 64. Floral supporter 65. With 59-Down, Mary Gordon’s newest book 66. Milk source for Romano cheese 67. IV administrators 68. Place to retire?

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