Bryn Mawr Alumnae Bulletin Winter 2018 by Bryn Mawr College

1968

A Test of Loyalty

p. 28

p. 34

50 years later, a class looks back

Winter 2018

Alumnae Bulletin

Bryn Mawr President Katharine McBride takes a stand

A Special Issue

On refusal, resistance, and how Mawrters are making a difference

View from the Hill

Winter at Bryn Mawr. Taylor towers over a snowy campus.

View from the Hill

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Table of Contents

On the Cover A look back at 1968. Photo illustration by Jodee Winger.

A SPECIAL ISSUE

With a nod to this year’s Flexner Lecture theme— the politics of refusal—the Bulletin highlights stories of resistance and how Mawrters are making a difference in the world.

FEATURES

The Bulletin turns to members of the Class of 1968 for their memories of a time of resistance.

In 1958, President Katharine McBride politely defied the federal government.

1968

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A Test of Loyalty

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By Kaaren Sorensen ’85

Table of Contents

DEPARTMENTS

ALUMNAE BULLETIN WINTER 2018

Chief Communications Officer Jesse Gale jgale@brynmawr.edu Editor Nancy Brokaw nbrokaw01@brynmawr.edu Associate Editor Nancy Schmucker ’98 nschmucker@brynmawr.edu

4 Letters 6 President’s Message For Admissions, Science Meets Art

7 Archways

U-Curve: Mawrters in Midlife By Elizabeth Mosier ’84

Art Director Jodee Winger

Bryn Mawr Woman: “Who Are Muslims’ Allies?” By Fazana Saleem-Ismail ’94

Class Notes Liaison Robin Parks rparks@brynmawr.edu

For Starters: Meet the SGA leaders, digital instruction Bryn Mawr–style, and more

In the Know: Just Say No By Carol Hager

Lore: A Woman of Peace

Dispatch: Being on the Ballot By Joanna Corman ’95

GSSWSR: Real Change By Nancy Brokaw GSAS: Hidden Treasure By Andrew Tharler, M.A. ’13 Student Profile: Access Is Key As told to Makenna Lenover ’19

15 Discourse

Photographer Aaron Windhorst

Contributing Writers Matt Gray Maureen McGonigle ’98 Editorial Advisory Board Alison Kosakowski ’01, chair Julia Kagan Baumann ’70 Ariel Hart ’91 Elizabeth Mosier ’84 Magda Pecsenye ’94 Saskia Subramanian ’88, M.A. ’89, Alumnae Association President (Ex Officio) Sana Venjara ’12

Research: More American than Apple Pie by Kit Bakke ’68

The Bryn Mawr Alumnae Bulletin (USPS 068-360) is published quarterly in February, except April (May), except July (August), and November. © Bryn Mawr College Alumnae Association, Vol. 99, No. 3, Winter 2018. Periodicals postage paid at Bryn Mawr and other offices. Postmaster: send form 3579 to Bryn Mawr Alumnae Bulletin, 101 North Merion Avenue, Wyndham, Bryn Mawr, PA 19010-2899. Please send address changes to the address above, or email to bmcalum@brynmawr.

Books: Of Sight and Scent

41 Our Bryn Mawr Association News: The Candidates

Class in Session: No!

Anassa Kata: Gift Books

Faculty Profile: Geology Professor Arlo Weil Crowd Source: What Causes Do You Support?

Class Notes

94 Generations

Standing Together As told to Nancy Brokaw

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Letters

Bryn Mawr Pops!

Our ever-alert readers found even more references to Bryn Mawr in literature and popular culture: SUNG EUN SUSIE KIM ’11

Corinthians from Toni Morrison’s Song of Solomon went there too! As did the girl character from Catcher in the Rye!

PHYLLIS KIM MYUNG ’99

Yay! I hope Hollywood highlights the diversity of womyn that is Bryn Mawr in the future.

JAIME LEON LIN-YU ’97

Don’t forget Murphy Brown!

JUDITH KURTZ ’00

Also a character in the new Amazon series Good Girls Revolt about the Newsweek lawsuit from the late 1960s.

BJ WARD

But Betty Draper said she belonged to a sorority at BMC. ... dopey writers.

NATASHA CHRISTELYN ERNST ’98

And Marilyn Monroe lied about going there!

CHARLOTTE HAND GREESON ’93

In [Marilyn Monroe’s] role as Sugar Kane in Some Like It Hot. Not in real life!

We’d like to hear from you!

Corrections

The Bulletin welcomes letters expressing a range of opinions on issues addressed in the magazine and of interest to the extended community. Letters must be signed in order to be considered for publication and may be edited for length, clarity, accuracy, and civility. Comment online at brynmawr.edu/bulletin, or send letters to alumnaebulletin@brynmawr.edu or to Bryn Mawr Alumnae Bulletin, 101 North Merion Avenue, Bryn Mawr, PA 19010-2899.

Comment online: brynmawr.edu/bulletin Send letters to: alumnaebulletin@brynmawr.edu

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The last sentence of the profile on Minna Duchovnay ’98 on the inside back cover of the Fall 2017 issue should have read: “I am also engaged in a long-term project of translating the love poems of a 16th-century Dutch poet who wrote in Latin. In 2014, I moved to The Quadrangle and serve as the treasurer for The Quadrangle Board, which supports resident assistance.” In the Debate feature, “How Should We Remember M. Carey Thomas?,” which appeared in the Fall 2017 Alumnae Bulletin, Barbara Paul Robinson was mistakenly identified as a member of the Class of 1960. Robinson graduated in 1962.

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Letters

YOUR LEGACY. Plus an update: In The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, (Season 1, Episode 5), Herb Smith (played by Wallace Shawn) proclaims upon meeting the title character that Bryn Mawr is “definitely the funniest of the Seven Sisters.”

BRYN MAWR’S FUTURE.

Sandra Berwind, M.A. ’61, Ph.D. ’68, Professor Emeritus of English, established The Dean Karen Tidmarsh ’71 Scholarship Fund to honor Karen’s legacy and to support students from Philadelphia public schools. Scholarship recipient Lindsey Jones ’20 is pursuing her passion to write children’s books. To learn more about their stories visit giftplanning.brynmawr.edu

OFFICE OF GIFT PLANNING OFFICE610-526-6597 OF GIFT PLANNING 610-526-6597 giftplanning@brynmawr.edu

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President’s Message

For Admissions, Science Meets Art Dear Friends: At selective colleges, February is a time of assessing thousands of applications and of beginning to shape the class of students that will arrive on campus in the late summer. While the goals of Bryn Mawr’s recruitment and admissions process remain constant—to enroll talented students of diverse interests and backgrounds who share a passion for learning—the college admissions process has changed substantially over the past decade. Bryn Mawr’s new chief enrollment officer, Cheryl Horsey, Ph.D. ’99, describes contemporary admissions work as “an art and a science.” The “art” of building personal connections with prospective students will be familiar to Bryn Mawr alumnae of all generations. Many of you remember a tour guide, an alumna interviewer, or an admissions staff member who made Bryn Mawr come alive for you. The “science” of enrollment, however, has emerged over

recent decades as colleges and educational organizations have learned to analyze the reams of data they collect to be more effective in communicating with prospective students and in planning recruitment strategies For example, Bryn Mawr now uses a software platform that integrates the work of student outreach, admissions staff travel, prospective student visits, recruiting events, and application review. While this digital strategy seems far away from traditional relationship-building between a student and a college, technology in fact enhances our admissions staff’s ability to respond to prospective students in real time and to personalize information they receive. It also saves significant staff time so that admissions officers can focus on students, families, schools, and careful assessment of applications. Science is enabling art. Providing easier ways for students to engage with Bryn Mawr also generates greater interest in the College.

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In the current year, for example, we have seen significant growth in campus visits by prospective students, a 25 percent increase in early decision applications for the class of 2022, and the largest undergraduate applicant pool in the College’s history. Continuing a five-year trend, the standardized test scores and GPAs of this record-setting group continue to rise (even when accounting for changes in SAT scoring). Technology and analytics will never replace the personal connections that attract students to a college like Bryn Mawr. Digital tools are critical, however, in meeting expectations of current prospective students and in managing a 21st century college. As we have done in other areas of the College, we are using technology to advance and support the mission of a residential college experience. In enrollment this means using technology to be more strategic in our approach to recruitment and to help us build relationships with our prospective students, tell the story of our excellence, promote the success of our graduates and connect future Mawrters with the generations of talented alumnae/i who have gone before them. With best wishes,

Kim Cassidy President

In this Section

Archways

Lore p. 11 GSSWSR p. 12 Student Profile p. 14

In the Market

For her study of the contemporary art market, Mellon Mays Fellow Olivia Porte ’18 is drawing on post-colonial theory and museology. She’s interested in how people of color and others become marginalized. “Through museum studies,” she says, “I have had an archivist position at the African American History Trust, a curatorial assistant position at the Institute for Contemporary Art, and a contemporary art internship at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.”

bit.ly/2xT3Akn

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For Starters

1. Meet the Leaders This year’s SGA leaders rock. Left to right: Delia Landers ’19 (secretary) uses her position “to make every student’s voice heard.” Anna Huang ’19 (treasurer) supports on-campus organizations and events. Alisha Clark ’18 (president) has improved Plenary and the voting system, spearheaded a collaborative drive with Migrant Rights Coalition, and more. Nanda Bhushan ’19 (vice president) chairs the committee that appoints campus leaders. Swati Shastry ’18 (head of the Honor Board) facilitates and conducts hearings on the Honor Code's academic and social aspects.

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Find out more bit.ly/2zHgDr6

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For Starters

Digital Service “ Digital instruction is most effective when it’s in the service of students’ individual interests and goals,” write President Kim Cassidy and Chief Information Officer Gina Siesing in a recent Inside Higher Ed piece. Arguing for a broad-based education that encompasses all aspects of digital fluency, their article describes Bryn Mawr’s digital competencies initiative, which infuses digital skills into all aspects of education, including a wide array of co-curricular experiences. “ While colleges should include courses in programming, data visualization and statistics,” they write, “more students develop digital fluency more quickly and easily when digital tools are integrated throughout the curriculum—from classical and Near Eastern archaeology to behavioral economics.”

Read more bit.ly/2hXAFqj

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Think kids are growing up too fast? According to a new study co-authored by Psychology Professor Heejung Park, you should think again. Based on data from surveys conducted between 1976 and 2016, the study depicts a cohort of teenagers less likely to engage in adult activities than those of earlier generations. The study shows a drop in alcohol use, sexual activity, dating, after-school employment, and even driving. Today’s high school students date less than their Boomer and GenX counterparts (56 percent vs. about 85 percent), have sex less (41 vs. 54 percent), and work after-school jobs less (55 vs. 77 percent). And what might be unimaginable to anyone who recalls begging for the car keys, more than 25 percent of today’s high school students still don’t have a driver’s license by the time they graduate. The study was co-authored with Jean Twenge, professor of psychology at San Diego State University. Park’s research looks at how individuals and families around the world develop and negotiate values in the midst of social change and globalization.

Lore

A Woman of Peace Describing herself as “only the plainest of New England spinsters and ex-teachers,” she was nonetheless a force to be reckoned with. A member of Bryn Mawr’s first graduating class of 1889, Emily Greene Balch devoted her early career to what she called “the real business of our times—the realization of a more satisfactory economic order.” In practice, that found her working at a settlement house in Boston and later as professor of economics at Wellesley. Then came the war. On sabbatical, Balch traveled to The Hague for the 1915 meeting of the International Congress of Women (later the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom). There, she helped draw up a set of peace proposals and joined a delegation to Scandinavia. On her return home, she worked against U.S. entry into the war. Pacifism came at a price, though. At war’s end, Wellesley declined to renew the contract of their anti-war activist. At 52, Balch found herself out of work. But the war had given her a new sense of purpose, and after a short stint at The Nation, she devoted herself to the peace movement. She served as the Women’s International League’s

secretary; opened its Geneva, Switzerland, headquarters; and reveled in “the comradeship with women working for peace all over the world.” It took another shattering world war for Balch to receive recognition for her peace work. In 1946, she shared the Nobel Peace Prize with John R. Mott, then head of the YMCA. Balch donated her share of the prize to the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom.

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Making a Stand “It is a hard thing to stand against the surge of war-feeling, against the endlessly reiterated suggestion of every printed word, of the carefully edited news, of posters, parades, songs, speeches, sermons.... Consciousness was uneasy, as well it might be. Where is the line dividing inner integrity from fanatical self-will?” —Emily Greene Balch in the May 1933 Alumnae Bulletin

GSSWSR

Real Change

By promoting diversity in research and academia, a GSSWSR alumna aims to influence policy. BY NANCY BROKAW

“I went into social work because I believe in the values of social work,” says Tia Burroughs ’05, M.S.S. ’08, M.S.L.P. ’08. “I believe in social equity, I believe in social change, and I believe in empowering people and giving them the tools to improve their lives. “But that's not enough: I believe we have to affect systems if we want to see real change in the world.” Starting out at the Graduate School of Social Work and Social Research (GSSWSR), Burroughs had “a little bit of an advantage,” she explains. “I was an undergraduate at Bryn Mawr and had the opportunity to study with some Social Work professors. So I got to know the professors in advance, and the entire feeling of the School seemed very supportive. The School really opened up opportunities to learn.” Among those opportunities were two field placements that traced very different paths open to social workers: Prevention Point Philadelphia was all about direct service to clients, and People’s Emergency Center, where she found herself advocating on Capitol Hill, focused on policy. When she first contemplated entering the field, she expected to follow that first path and become a clinician. But as she took more courses, she realized that she was more interested in bringing about systemic, macro-level

OPTIONS “The flexibility the degree offers is great. I've been able to do macro-level work, to work in evaluation, to evaluate government-funded programming. Even now, if I wanted to, I could go back and take a few courses and get a licensed social work degree and become a licensed clinical social worker. ” —Tia Burroughs

change. And her work as a senior consultant and program manager at Equal Measure gives her the chance to do just that. Equal Measure partners with foundations, government entities, and other nonprofits to advance social change by offering program design, strategy evaluation, capacity building, technical assistance, communications support, and narrative change. Burroughs’ work pairs her with one of those partners—the Robert

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Wood Johnson Foundation. Her focus is the Foundation’s New Connections program, which aims to increase the diversity of its programming through research funding and career development for professionals from historically underrepresented groups. Day to day, Burroughs’ work varies but centers on grantmaking and professional development. “We offer research grants to people from underrepresented populations in academia,” she explains, “and I manage the grantees. I make sure they’re working towards their outcomes and that they’re at our professional development events. And when they have issues, I help them troubleshoot with our program officer at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.” Over the long haul, her work is about promoting diversity and equity in research and academia. As the country’s demographics change, Burroughs explains, the research agenda should change with it. “We want to make sure that different minority populations are included in health and health research.” “People who come from underrepresented populations understand the nuances and the things that affect their population and their families. So when they go into research, it can affect the type of research that gets funded,” she says. “And having those different voices can affect policy. It can literally help people live healthier lives.”

GSAS

Hidden Treasure A Bryn Mawr archaeologist sets out to unravel the mystery of the terracotta altars of Morgantina. BY ANDREW THARLER, M.A. ’13, PH.D. CANDIDATE

By 212 B.C.E., the prosperous Greek city of Syracuse on the east coast of Sicily had already withstood a three-year siege by the Roman army. The city was starving, however, and calls for a peaceful surrender grew louder. Instead, the standoff ended on more violent terms. A local captain agreed to open the city gates for the Romans in exchange for his own survival after the war. The Romans plundered Syracuse and killed many of its citizens, including the mathematician Archimedes. But a few might have escaped and fled inland. This is one possible explanation for how a group of 14 silver objects, including a miniature altar, made their way to the remote town of Morgantina in central Sicily, where they were concealed beneath the beaten-earth surface of a home far from the city center. Whoever buried these objects never returned for them, as Morgantina, too, was sacked by the Romans the following year. The silver treasure remained hidden for over 2,000 years before it was looted in the 20th century. The little silver altar from this hoard—the only known example of its kind—stands less than five inches tall but resembles a monumental Greek temple. Its cylindrical body is crowned by a frieze of triglyphs, metopes, and dentil moldings, while bucrania (decorative ox skulls) and garlands

adorn the surface below, symbols appropriate for a Greek sacrifice. The altar is unique, but hundreds of similar clay altars have been found at sites around Sicily. I first encountered them as an undergraduate on my first excavation in Italy when I visited the Paolo Orsi Archaeological Museum in Syracuse, not far from where the Romans first breached the city walls. This was before I came to Bryn Mawr for graduate school in archaeology, before I even knew that I would pursue my interest in the classical world. But even then I was struck by their peculiar form and miniature architectural designs. How could these diminutive objects function as altars? Were they used for animal sacrifices, or perhaps smaller gifts of vegetables or incense? And which gods received these offerings? Were they kept privately by individuals, shared by families in the household, or maintained by priests in a sanctuary? Did the Romans continue to use them in the Greek cities they captured? Are they even really altars? Such questions guide my dissertation research on the terracotta altars of Morgantina. The altars, most of which survive only as fragments, contain some answers. But the key to understanding their role in Greek and Roman religious rituals might lie in the notebooks, drawings, and photographs

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ON SITE Thanks to Bryn Mawr’s Bryne Rubel Travel Fellowship, Andrew Tharler, M.A. ’13, went to the source to study altars at different sites and museums in Sicily and to broaden his understanding of the significance of these enigmatic artifacts to the ancient cultures that used them. Pictured: Household altar, 3rd c. B.C.E., Morgantina, Archaeological Museum of Aidone

that document their discovery. From archival records kept in the Sicilian town of Aidone, I learned that these altars were not confined to houses and sanctuaries but were widely distributed in shops, in administrative buildings in the agora, and in a bath complex on the outskirts of town. Excavation notebooks, some over 70 years old, record that some were found in household courtyards while others were clustered around larger stone altars in sanctuaries. These objects might have been more versatile than typically assumed, used in households for small sacrifices and libations but also as dedications in sanctuaries in commemoration of, or even as a substitute, for real animal sacrifice.

Student Profile

Access Is Key Claudia Ruiz ’18 (sociology) A Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellow, Ruiz has been working with Sociology Professor Veronica Montes on research about financial literacy in the Latino community and the impact of college access programs that aim to increase college readiness and enrollment. To conduct her research, Claudia Ruiz ’18 returned to her own high school. There, she interviewed students to find out how their college access program was preparing them for the social, academic, and financial components of college. Combining STEM with social sciences: The thing I love the most about sociology is the ability to ask questions and question the world around you. I incorporate a lot of math into my research, and I think about numbers when talking about financial literacy. In the future, another project I would like to work on is how numbers and bilingualism work together. Opportunities with the Mellon Mays program: The true opportunity is being able to study something you are passionate about. One of my favorite memories was going to a sociology conference in New Mexico with my advisor. You get to hear what people are producing at the conference while really getting to know your professor at a personal and meaningful level. Working with a mentor: As a person of color and a first-generation college student, being able to have a professor

mentor me in how to navigate this institution is very helpful. Specifically relating to Mellon, with my hopes of becoming a sociologist and obtaining my Ph.D., there is no way I could obtain all of this information without my mentor. My mentor helps me with everything from life to my thesis, so having a mentor is incredibly beneficial while working through college.

THE MELLON MAYS UNDERGRADUATE FELLOWSHIPS

Run by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the program aims to increase the diversity of faculty in higher education. Students apply as sophomores, and each year, five students are selected to participate. Fellows conduct research, meet regularly with their cohort to exchange ideas and share research progress, and participate in professional development workshops and cultural outings.

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On Bryn Mawr and women’s colleges: I chose to come to Bryn Mawr because I was offered a choice to attend with a group of individuals from my hometown through the Posse Foundation. Now that I am a senior, one thing I have been able to reflect on is the opportunity Bryn Mawr has given me to identify more with my Latinidad and deconstruct and reconstruct what that identity means to me. The intimacy and support that exists at a women’s college eliminates worries that may be present on a coed campus. Plans for the future: I’ve applied for a research and teaching fellowship abroad, so I am hoping for that. I also will probably take a year off to refresh, then apply to graduate school immediately after so I can jump back into this world of academia.

In this Section

Discourse

Class in Session p. 16 Just Say No p. 23 Being on the Ballot p. 24

March On

This fall, Brown University Professor Bonnie Honig was on campus as the 2017 Mary Flexner Lecturer. A leading scholar of democratic, feminist, The series got us thinking about what it’s like to live during turbulent times. and legal theory, So in this issue of the Bulletin, we’re Honig gave powerful highlighting stories about resistance, presentations on the civic engagement, and how Mawrters politics of refusal. are making a difference in the world. PICTURED: Bryn Mawr students at the 1989 March for Women’s Lives in Washington, D.C. (Courtesy of Bryn Mawr College Special Collections.)

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Class in Session

No!

Inspired by the topic of this year’s Flexner Lectures, six Bryn Mawr faculty offered classes on the topic of refusal. Try to Remember How does a country commemorate its past? This question seemed a reasonable structuring gambit for a class inspired by the work of Bonnie Honig, particularly for a scholar whose work focuses on the ethics and aesthetics of cultural memory. Attuned to historical events that at once demand and defy the conventional forms of representation, Lisa Saltzman (History of Art) was struck, in Honig’s book Antigone, Interrupted, by the deft interventions into a logic and language of mourning and, in turn, into the politics and

practices of commemoration. In the aftermath of the events in Charlottesville, Virginia, the question of commemoration seemed especially significant. Saltzman’s Flexner class, Strategies of Remembrance: Publics, Politics, and the Art of Memory, began with the question of Confederate monuments in this country—even as students considered a range of historical contexts and commemorative projects from around the globe. As inevitably happens, concerns of the present inflected engagement with the past and the received history of modernera memorials, monuments, and commemorative practices.

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Whose America? “It was the whiteness of the whale that above all things appalled me,” Ishmael muses as he tries to understand the monomaniacal hunt that drives Captain Ahab and his crew of every race and creed to their watery doom. An allegory of a nation charging toward Civil War, a nation founded on ideals of freedom and equality but built on capitalist expansion, white supremacy, slavery, and genocide, Herman Melville’s 1851 Moby Dick is hailed by many as the Great American Novel. But which America, whose America? By turns comic, tragic, epic, mundane, thuddingly

Class in Session

literal, and gorgeously spiritual and metaphysical, the novel rewards close reading and intense historical and critical analysis. In her class on the novel, Bethany Schneider (English) and her students took up questions of race, gender and sexuality, colonialism, the animal and the human, the oceanic, freedom, individuality, totalitarianism, capitalism, nation, and belonging. Despised, Rejected, Outcast The florid wealth of Victorian Britain was fed by income from the slave trade, industrial exploitation, and imperial expansion. It was also an era that was horrified by its own growth; abolitionism, the women’s suffrage movement, the arts-and-crafts movement, and the inception of the welfare state were all 19th-century protests against the waste of human life and spirit. The noun “refuse” finds its etymological root in the concept of the despised, rejected, and outcast. In Refuse and Refusal in Victorian Literature, Kate Thomas (English) and students touched on key events, debates, and literatures that brought the figures of the outcast and the resister into sharp relief. Jù (To Refuse in China) In Yu Hua’s novel To Live, a man gambles away the family fortune, struggles through the upheavals of the Cultural Revolution and the Great Leap Forward, and settles into the life of a peasant. In Lillian Lee’s Farewell My Concubine, two stars of the Beijing opera, denounced for their decadent art, are sent down to the countryside for reeducation.

Refusal: Chinese Civil Resistance in Literature and Films, taught by Yonglin Chiang (East Asian Languages and Cultures), looked at questions of civil resistance in China by exploring these two novels (and their film adaptations), both set during the decades that Mao dominated life and politics. Chiang led students in understanding civil resistance and refusal in general and then delved into the Chinese context—the particular forces that shape class, gender, and ethnic injustice there and the ways that the Chinese people resist in everyday life and organized movements. Filming the Classics Prometheus, Antigone, Electra, Medea, and Lysistrata—the classical world bequeathed to the modern world some of its iconic figures of resistance. In their Group Seminar class, Annette Baertschi (Greek, Latin, and Classics) and Homay King (History of Art) took a look at films and other works of art that reappropriate those ancient characters and recontextualize them to shed light on contemporary historical, political, and social issues. The films considered in Figures of Resistance (their Flexner class), included Tony Harrison’s Prometheus, Liliana Cavani’s The Year of the Cannibals, Amy Greenfield’s Antigone/Rites of Passion, Ingmar Bergman’s Persona, Miklós Jancsó’s Electra, My Love, Arthur Ripstein’s, Asi Es La Vida, and Spike Lee’s Chi-Raq.

The Reading List Catherine Conybeare (Greek, Latin, and Classics) shared her syllabus for Feminism in the Classics with the Bulletin. Herewith, some highlights: “We shall start by considering the relation of feminism to classics; we shall then look at the responses of feminist philosophers and theorists to a range of classical texts that may be read as resisting or refusing the master narratives of a patriarchal culture. These texts will comprise the poetry of Sappho, Sophocles’ play Antigone, Plato’s philosophical dialogue Symposium, Euripides’ play Bacchae, and selections from Ovid’s Metamorphoses. We shall close with a reading of a fundamental text of refusal, the prison diary of Perpetua written in Carthage in 203 C.E. while she awaited her martyrdom in the arena.” The Writing Assignments 1. P retend you are writing a dictionary entry for upperlevel high school students. Write a 300-word essay on “classics” and a 300-word essay on “feminism.” 2. With reference to at least one of Bonnie Honig’s lectures: how is Honig using (one or more) classical text(s) to think with? 3. Choose one episode from Ovid’s Metamorphoses and produce your own interpretation of it, informed by feminist theory, queer theory, or a more general interpretation of gender theory. For the complete reading list, visit brynmawr.edu/bulletin.

Opposite page: The empty pedestal after the 2017 removal of Baltimore’s statue of Roger B. Taney, former Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court and majority author of the Dred Scott decision. (Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images)

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Faculty Profile

THE BIG QUESTIONS

COMPARE AND CONTRAST

“What did supercontinents look like? Where was North America 500 million years ago? What did the world look like, in map form, through time?”

“We’re looking to see analogs between how the Rockies formed and how the Andes are forming.”

PUBLISH OR PERISH

The Geology Society of America called his recent paper, “the go-to reference on the evolution of the Sevier and Laramide belts.”

DESK JOB?

For an avid rock climber and a mountain biker, geology provided the perfect outlet for Weil’s love of science and the outdoors.

UP NORTH TO ALASKA

“I was flying in on bush planes, landing on point bars in the middle of rivers in the middle of nowhere. I was driving the Hall Road that runs parallel to the pipeline.”

Arlo Weil A man of many talents, geology professor Arlo Weil trained as a graphic designer and tried his hand as a ski bum and professional chef before settling into his current gig. A fellow of the Geological Society of America, he focuses his research on paleomagnetism and rock magnetism and their applications to mountain building processes.

Read more here

bulletin.brynmawr.edu

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Crowd Source

What Causes Do You Support?

We knew Mawrters were an engaged group, but we’ve been truly impressed by the range of causes our alums are supporting. (Plus we were happy to see how often Bryn Mawr came up!) @nicolemhuynh

Is it too cliché to say Bryn Mawr College? It’s critical that we continue to cultivate and educate #strongwomen. @ sylvanstagram

Beth Posner ’89

Bryn Mawr, ACLU, Southern Poverty Law Center, NAACP, various immigrant rights and domestic violence agencies, our synagogue, my children’s schools, and others as the world gets darker and the needs arise.

@queenb_of_lv

I’m a proud board member of Dress for Success of Southern Nevada, and our mission is promoting job readiness and economic independence for women and their families. I also support Emily’s List, Planned Parenthood, and Safe Nest for victims of domestic violence here in Las Vegas.

@sbherlihy

@herberta2006 I volunteer for Bryn Mawr and also Girl Scouts because female-only spaces are so important to fostering women-driven leadership and accountability.

Bryn Mawr, friends’ art endeavors (poetry books, musical theater performances), LGBT community centers in rural areas (particularly those that offer housing/ shelter for LGBT youth who have been kicked out of their homes), Trans Lifeline.

My community. I live in a small but diverse neighborhood in Boston’s urban core. The more we interact and form relationships, the more we understand and support each other. So I spend a lot of my volunteer time creating opportunities for members of my community to interact. Knowing your neighbors in a diverse community broadens your worldview.

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U-Curve

Mawrters in MidLife

Three alumnae share their stories of reclaiming their time—and making the most of their gifts. BY ELIZABETH MOSIER ’84

Kay Yoon ’00 felt like a “bad Mawrter” for choosing to stay home with her first child. As a Korean-American, she experienced guilt aggravated by internal conflict: individualism versus an obligation to meet community expectations through achievements that could be abstracted to a title on a business card.

“Koreans are obsessed with titles!” she says, citing cultural networking etiquette. “A business card is a symbol of your stature. If you give your card to someone, or receive a card from them, you need to use both hands [as you would with a gift]. Korean parents say, ‘Remember, two hands!’ the way you remind children to say please and thank you.”

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Now 39 with two young daughters, Yoon feels the pressure of “the nines” to complete the decade’s bucket list. She’s currently working part-time in the nonprofit development field, while honoring her personal responsibilities, including coordinating special-education services to accommodate her eldest’s learning differences.

U-Curve

In a time when “terrible headlines about natural and man-made disasters have made me question everything,” Yoon is also pausing to ask, “How do I want to spend my time? With whom do I want to spend it? What is most important to me?” She’s grateful for the Bryn Mawr women who, in her early days of motherhood, sympathized but set her straight, saying, “Look at us—we’re ordinary Mawrters, too.” With a little help from these “third-culture” friends, she’s reclaiming her authority. With a background in ballet begun at Bryn Mawr, Berit Haahr ’92 had strong legs but felt like “a 98-pound weakling.” Weightlifting with a trainer only resulted in “big forearms, like a blacksmith!” she says. Two days before the presidential inauguration, she joined a boxing gym in Ardmore, Pennsylvania—suiting up in gloves, headgear, and hook-and-jab pads to practice the sport-as-coping-strategy. “I thought my head was going to explode from rage,” she recalls. “When I’m boxing, I can’t think about anything else. If I’m not paying attention, I’ll get hit in the head.” Partnered with taller or heavier boxers—other women, men, and teenagers—Haahr is punching above her weight class and learning a different way to move. Both ballet and boxing focus on footwork, she says, but “ballet is about up, and boxing is about down. Ballet is poses, and boxing is movement with minute control. You keep your face hidden. You don’t ever stand

still but move to avoid the punch. ‘Roll with the punches’ is an actual boxing term.” Now, she measures progress in speed, repetitions, required rest time, and how she feels after a workout. While she works latent muscles to reclaim her power, Haahr (a reading specialist) is becoming a better teacher. As she tells her students, “For a long time, I was the worst boxer at the gym—sometimes I still am! But I love it, and so I keep showing up to try to get better.”

her whimsical vision to a straightforward story intended to teach library manners, that convinced her she could create both visual and literary narratives. Taking a two-year hiatus from the publishing business to practice writing is “both daunting and wonderful,” she says, “like stepping off a cliff into this open space.” At Hamline, she’s exploring “scary, off-kilter, meta-fictive picture books” and earning praise for her command

“How do I want to spend my time? With whom do I want to spend it? What is most important to me?” “Writing isn’t necessarily about luck or talent—it’s about putting in the effort,” says Rebecca McKillip Thornburgh ’80, who, after illustrating 135 books for children, is pursuing an MFA in writing for children at Hamline University in St. Paul, Minnesota. Having mastered the page turn and 32-page picture book layout, she says she “always intended to write my own work. Now I’m reclaiming what I set out to do.” Illustration is always collaborative, says Thornburgh, who conceives of a story in pictures inseparable from the author’s text. But it was her work on The Shelf Elf series by Jackie Mims Hopkins, which brought

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of fairy-tale language and her snarky sense of humor. Revisiting a Scottish folktale she first illustrated as a project for her fine art major at Bryn Mawr, she’s retelling the Tamlane tale in a modern voice that comments directly on the story’s use of folktale tropes. In the process, she’s relying on the delete key to help her revive her sense of play. After all, she says, “Writing is revising—it’s just sketching and sketching and sketching.” The same might be said of these Mawrters-in-progress, taking a midlife opportunity to reclaim their time and make the most of their gifts.

Bryn Mawr Woman

“Who Are Muslims’ Allies?” “You are!” says a Mawrter leading the fight against Islamophobia. BY FAZANA SALEEM-ISMAIL ’94

When my daughter was seven years old, she wrote a 10-page book, by hand, about Ramadan for a school project, complete with photos and pronunciations of Arabic words. Three years later, she revealed to me that after she had finished reading it to her classmates, one approached her privately and asked: “Are your parents bad? Do they do bad things?” My heart broke for my innocent little girl, exposed to stereotyping at an age in which she had no idea how to process it. So, in an effort to educate others, I started sharing information via social media about Islam and what it means to me as a practicing Muslim. One year after my daughter’s revelation, the U.S. presidential campaign was in full swing. In December 2015, after hearing candidate after candidate malign my religion for weeks, I knew I had to do more to defend Islam and its adherents. I was terrified: If our leaders were openly perpetuating stereotypes, the average person would have license to do so as well. I decided to write a public Facebook post. In it, I offered myself as a resource to speak about Islam and Muslims with the goal of breaking down barriers and building bridges between people. The post was shared 55 times, the closest I’d ever come to “going viral.” Thirty-six hours later, a local TV news reporter called; she had heard about the post from a mutual friend and wanted to

interview me about my efforts to “demystify Islam.” To say I was caught off-guard is an understatement. However, I knew that the story would enable me to reach a wider audience, so I agreed. For the past two years, I have had the pleasure of speaking to a variety of audiences in different forums: churches and libraries; meetings of insurance agents and union representatives; elementary schools, middle schools, high schools, and colleges at the invitation of administrators, teachers, professors, and leaders of student groups. I have been interviewed for a podcast, a public-access TV show, and various newspaper articles; spoken at rallies; answered questions at “Meet a Muslim” tables at community events; and participated in interfaith prayer services. I left every one of these events with new friends, now armed with facts about Islam and willing to be more vocal about defending Muslims. At one talk, a 10-year-old girl asked, “Who

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are Muslims’ allies?” I said, “You are.” According to her mother, she took my words to heart and made a conscious decision to stand up for others if she witnessed someone being mistreated. When I embarked on this journey as a community educator, I merely wanted to open minds and hearts. I came to realize that I had more to learn about my religion, and the more I learned, the more my love for my faith grew. Until recently, I only wore the hijab at mosques and during speaking engagements. However, I decided that I wanted everyone to identify me as Muslim at first glance, so I now proudly wear it full-time. People ask how I have time for this work in addition to my job, my family, and a volunteer project that I created. The truth is that I often wish there were more than 24 hours in a day. However, I rarely pass up invitations to speak, not only because I believe that community education efforts are critically important in this fractured world but also because I genuinely love making personal connections with other human beings and sharing all we have in common. A research scientist at the Research Foundation of the State University of New York and founder of Jazzy Sun Birthdays (a volunteer project that hosts personalized birthday parties for homeless children), Fazana SaleemIsmail ’94 is exploring ways to make her efforts to build bridges among communities her life’s work. Stay tuned.

In the Know

Just Say No Despite its bad rap, NIMBY can be good for everyone. BY CAROL HAGER, PROFESSOR OF POLITICAL SCIENCE ON THE CLOWES PROFESSORSHIP IN SCIENCE AND PUBLIC POLICY

Not In My Backyard (NIMBY) protests against large development projects are commonly dismissed as backward-looking, uninformed, and selfish. Contrary to its negative stereotype, NIMBY can be beneficial to participatory politics. NIMBY protests can initiate a process of community learning that enhances citizen selfunderstanding, fosters democratic politics, advances technical expertise, and helps frame larger issues. And, at its best, that process can yield innovative solutions that might serve as models for others. Consider the evolution of the Black Forest region from rural idyll to Germany’s solar region, a center of innovation in renewable-energy technology and in local-level environmental activism. This story is tied inextricably to a NIMBY protest. In the early 1970s, the German, French, and Swiss governments announced plans to transform the region into a massive industrial zone, with no fewer than 14 nuclear power plants, plus chemical, metal, and petroleum processing facilities. In this deeply conservative, largely rural region, small farmers, vintners, clerics, and university students from nearby Freiburg overcame barriers of class, occupation, and tradition to mobilize against the industrial build-out. They organized petition campaigns, filed legal actions,

mobilized mass demonstrations, and occupied the disputed sites in order to stop construction. Dismissed by the state and national governments as backward-looking NIMBY protesters, activists pushed back, characterizing the development plans as unnecessary, technologically unsound, and environmentally and socially destructive. Mass mobilization against a nuclear plant near the West German village of Wyhl started a national conversation about economic growth and energy policy. Residents raised concerns about the risks that a nuclear power facility posed for neighboring communities, they objected to a planning process that had excluded local voices, and they questioned the assertion that perpetually expanding energy use was vital to economic growth. Protesters staged an eightmonth-long site occupation that drew participants from West Germany, France, and Switzerland. They hosted discussions about the pros and cons of various energy sources. The protesters, including university students, scientists, and local tradesmen, began experimenting with solar collectors at the site. Scientifically and technologically forward-looking, the Wyhl protest defied the NIMBY stereotype. Moreover, it worked. The state

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government withdrew the proposal, and Wyhl became the touchstone for ongoing nuclear protest nationwide and arguably the site at which Germany’s famed Energiewende (transition to renewable energy) was born. Support for renewable energy has become a hallmark of German politics; in 2011, the German federal government announced the phase-out of both nuclear and coal-fired power plants. Wyhl gave rise to a selfreinforcing network of innovation. Locals opened hundreds of renewable-energy businesses. Veterans of the occupation founded a scientific research institution, the Eco-Institute in Freiburg, and brought renewable-energy education to the local trade school and university. Freiburg became the home of the largest solar R&D institution in Europe. Now known as Germany’s solar region, the area draws visitors from all over the world to learn about locally generated, environmentally sustainable energy solutions. As one long-term activist puts it, “Every pioneering activity here leads back to Wyhl.”

bit.ly/2CYdwAx

Dispatch

Being on the Ballot In the U.S., women and minorities are underrepresented in the halls of government. A Mawrter-founded initiative aims to change that. BY JOANNA CORMAN ’95

Arielle McInnis-Simoncelli ’11 had not been politically involved outside of student government and voting, but the vitriol and divisive rhetoric of the 2016 presidential election changed that. At a professional conference about racial justice that took place two days after the election, she attended a seminar about the importance of reflective democracy. Her work in Washington, D.C., at a global nonprofit is about reducing health inequities by helping policymakers understand the often-overlooked connections between policies in sectors outside of health and the health outcomes of communities. The seminar got her thinking about how policymakers’ identities impact the policies they develop. “In thinking about who represents us, I was inspired to do something,” says Simoncelli, an anthropology major who received a master’s in public health from the University of Michigan School of Public Health. “Everyone was ready to march (in January) and to do whatever they could to get more voices at the table. This is what I was able to come up with.” By highlighting the stories of women, people of color, underrepresented religious groups, those in the LGBTQI community, and other nontraditional candidates, Simoncelli hopes to help build a

more reflective democracy—one in which elected officials look like their constituents and reflect their lived experiences. In June, she launched Be on the Ballot, an initiative to demystify the process of running for office and empower underrepresented people to run. “It shows them that others who look like them or have similar life circumstances have overcome challenges, such as poverty and discrimination, to campaign for office,” she says. The nonpartisan Be on the Ballot focuses on down-ballot races, including school boards, city councils, and state legislatures. Simoncelli interviews people after their campaigns have ended, win or lose, when they have perspective about their successes and failures. To demystify the process of running, she asks simple questions, such as: What were the biggest challenges you faced? How did you fundraise? How did you manage the endorsement process? After transcribing the interviews, she posts the transcripts online.

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Among those she has featured are Lan Diep, the first Vietnamese-American elected to the San José, California, City Council; State Rep. Abdullah Hammoud, (D-Dearborn, MI), the first Arab-American Muslim to hold his seat in the Michigan House of Representatives; and Stacey Abrams, the former Georgia House Minority Leader, who might become the first Black female governor in the country. During the racial equity conference, Simoncelli says she was confronted with the demographics of this country’s elected officials. According to the website, WhoLeads.us, women make up 51 percent of the U.S. population and men, 49 percent. Sixty-two percent are white, and 38 percent are people of color. Yet, in 2017, women held only 20 percent of congressional seats, and women of color comprised 7 percent of all 535 members of Congress, according to the Center for American Women and Politics, Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers University. “I think Be on the Ballot challenges that status quo in highlighting stories that haven’t been told,” Simoncelli says. “There is plenty of room to inform the decisions that are happening in your community.”

For more, visit Beontheballot.com

Research

More American than Apple Pie Revisiting a long-ago trial, Kit Bakke ’68 sheds light on the American way of dissent. A product of 1960s counterculture, the Seattle 7 were young and idealistic. In the wake of a protest turned violent, they were indicted for conspiracy to incite riot. The ensuing trial mirrored that era’s politicized climate. Telling their story through interviews with the defendants, attorneys, FBI agents, and others, Kit Bakke ’68 reveals what happened when the Seattle 7 had their day in court and what it says about dissent in America. Excerpted from her 2018 book, Protest on Trial, published by Washington State University Press: Effective American dissent is a multi-step process of observation, thought, and action. It may not always be a conscious process, but dissenters first recognize a problem, weigh how much they care about it, and consider its significance, both personally and to the wider community. Depending on their conclusions, they might move on to action. Dissent is practiced in many ways: individual acts of civil disobedience, street marches, protests and demonstrations, boycotts and petitions, street theatre, strikes, physical occupations, civil suits and electoral activity. Individuals enter and leave the fray as their energy, understanding, resources and competing commitments wax and wane. Individuals coalesce into groups and organizations which sometimes collapse under factional infighting and sometimes grow into large united fronts. Most dissenters, though, are more like the Seattle 7. They are not movie heroes or villains. They are always a minority of the

population. They are individuals with their own energy levels and their own sense of patriotism. Their timing might be ill-advised, they may misjudge the strength and rootedness of the problem they wish to fix, and they may have only a partial grasp on the consequences of their actions. Still, they choose to step beyond a life of family, home, and career in order to engage with others in some of our world’s greatest challenges. Dissent is risky, because as one activist put it, “when you expose a problem you pose a problem.” The underlying belief common to the Seattle 7 and most dissenters is that human society should trend over time toward greater freedom for its members and greater safety for its communities. Dissenters have a profound discomfort with not trying to live according to their principles or seeing their country failing to do the same. They feel a need to personally respond, no matter how small the act may be, to express those principles and ameliorate those failures....

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The Seattle 7 believed that a good society holds itself together by recognizing people’s common need for food, shelter, safety, personal affection, and meaningful activity, now and for future generations. That is, of course, the American dream. We live today neither in the worst of times or places, nor in the best of times or places. Much is left to be done; our relatively greater freedom to dissent comes with greater responsibilities to exercise that right. The problems out there to be solved today are surely as great as they were in 1970. The tools available today are more numerous, and the opportunities for creative engagement are broader as well. Dynamic, thoughtfully focused dissent is even more American than apple pie, and is both the foundation and the scaffolding of a more just and free future.

Books

Of Scent and Sight Perfume and painting inspire a new volume of poetry from Moira Egan ’84. Moira Egan ’84 describes her new volume, Synæsthesium, as an exploration of ekphrasis—poetry that takes a real or imagined work of art as its muse. In this case, the arts Egan has drawn on are those of scent and sight: perfumes and paintings. The book, which won the 2017 New Criterion Poetry Prize, opens with a section titled “Olfactorium.” Inspired by fragrances and the olfactory flashbacks (real or imagined) they induce, the poems are peppered with the language of perfumery, from Old Spice to Casbah. In the second part, titled “Love and Work,” Egan draws on the works of Suzanne Valadon, a lesser-known contemporary of Toulouse-Lautrec, Degas, and Renoir. Valadon started out as an artist’s model (and the lover of several of the above) but then picked up a brush to become a painter in her own right. “Valadon’s work,” Egan writes in The New Criterion, “embodies her bold and unconventional personality: strong lines, intense colors. Her female nudes are earthy and solid. Her portraits—dancing girls, domestic workers, the members of her family—always aim for the truth of that subject’s ‘soul.’ She said, ‘You have to have the courage to look a model in the face if you want to have contact with the soul. Don’t ever bring me a woman to paint who is looking for kindness or beauty—I will find her out right away.’” For her part, Egan employs poetic forms—sonnets, syllabics, a villanelle, a rondeau—that reflect the content of Valadon’s paintings and drawings. Egan’s previous books are Botanica Arcana/ Strange Botany (2014), Hot Flash Sonnets (2013), Spin, La Seta della Cravatta/The Silk of the Tie (2009), Bar Napkin Sonnets (2009), and Cleave (2004). With Damiano Abeni, she has translated several poets into Italian, including John Ashbery, Charles Simic, Mark Strand, and Charles Wright.

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Femme à la contrebasse

(after the painting by Suzanne Valadon, 1914–15) How much more angled could this parlor be? With olive walls stolid, and frame upon frame of a window, glass leaded, just over a mantel of onyx and ivory, which bevels from yellow to flame. She, on the other hand, curve against curve, is a woman who plays double bass. Is she out of proportion to show the importance of elegant fingers and wrists that are strong? The bass bends its waist to her, posing and poised, her own face a study in wide-eyed and wonder. And what will you do with this, viewer, with this new confusion of music, of muse and of mistress, when she to be played upon’s suddenly player, and she to be painted, her skin for the offering, walks round the easel with ease, becoming the painter?

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Books

GREEN VALLEY: A CLIMATE CHANGE NOVEL

by Anne Ipsen ’56, a cli-fi novel, takes place in a rural Massachusetts beset by weather disasters that inspire the New England Carbon Rebellion. (Goldman Group, 2017)

PLAYING HOUSE IN PROVENCE: HOW TWO AMERICANS BECAME A LITTLE BIT FRENCH

Bookmarks Ashcan Art, Whiteness, and the Unspectacular Man by Alexis Boylan ’94. At the dawn of the 20th century, six painters—Robert Henri, John Sloan, Everett Shinn, William Glackens, George Luks, and George Bellows—arrived in New York. Known as the Ashcan School, they countered the prevailing image of urban masculinity and reimagined the possibility and privilege of the unremarkable white, male body. (Bloomsbury Academic, 2017) Cree Wins the Day! By Tiaisha Dandy, M.S.S., M.L.S.P. ’14, and Lora Bynum. A shy, fun-loving girl, Cree has been shunned by her peers because of her occasional outbursts. With the help of her school counselor, Cree begins to find comfort within herself and learns to succeed in social settings and embrace her differences. (The Bynum/Dandy Project, 2017) The Cognitive Six: A Guide to Teaching Thinking by Louise E. Loomis ’50, Ed.D., with Tom Smith. This manual for educators and classroom teachers, which refers to the thinking skills our brains naturally possess, includes formats for creating lessons and teaching the skills in support of the Common Core Standards and 21st-century education goals. (ThinkWell Center, 2017)

Becoming the News: How Ordinary People Respond to the Media Spotlight by Ruth Palmer ’01. Based on dozens of interviews, this book asks how ordinary people make sense of their experience as media subjects. Palmer argues that understanding those experiences—whether voluntary or otherwise—sheds light on the practice of journalism. (Columbia University Press, 2017) Condition Critical: Life and Death in Israel/Palestine by Alice Rothchild ’70. The essays in this book explore everyday life in Israel, East Jerusalem, the West Bank, and Gaza up close. These eyewitness reports and intimate stories depict the critical condition of a region suffering from decades-old wounds of colonization and occupation. (Just World Books, 2017) Crossing Borders: Stories and Essays about Translation edited by Lynne Sharon Schwartz, M.A. ’61. Gathering together 13 stories and five essays, this book explores the compromises, misunderstandings, traumas, and reconciliations acted out and embodied through the art of translation. Schwartz brings together voices as disparate as Primo Levi, Lydia Davis, Joyce Carol Oates, Michael Scammell, Harry Mathews, and Chana Bloch. (Seven Stories Press, 2018)

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by Mary-Lou Weisman ’59 chronicles the sometimes wonderful, sometimes humiliating, always playful story of the Weismans' expatriate adventure in Provence. (iUniverse, 2017) KHARTOUM AT NIGHT: FASHION AND BODY POLITICS IN IMPERIAL SUDAN by Marie Brown

’04 relates the history of Sudanese women who used a careful choreography of movement and fashion to shape a new standard of womanhood. (Stanford University Press, 2017) PLAYTHINGS IN EARLY MODERNITY: PARTY GAMES, WORD GAMES, MIND GAMES edited by

Allison Levy, M.A. ’97, Ph.D. ’00, presents essays at the nexus of material culture, performance studies, and game theory and considers the rules of the game(s) and the breaking of those rules. (Western Michigan University Press, 2017) THE MIRACULOUS IMAGE OF OUR LADY OF GUADALUPE by Mary Joan

Tascher Wallace, M.S.S. ’55, explores the image of the Virgin of Guadalupe, which appeared on the cloak of a Mexican Indian in 1531. (Amazon Digital, 2017)

1968

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BY MEMBERS OF THE CLASS OF ’68

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It was the year of the Tet Offensive, My Lai, and the birth of the Khmer Rouge. The country reeled: LBJ announced that he would not seek reelection, MLK was gunned down in Memphis, RFK was killed in Los Angeles. And all year, the protests raged— against the war, against racial injustice, against gender inequality. There were hunger strikes, sit-ins, walk-outs, violent protests after MLK’s murder, the Miss America protest, street demonstrations, and a police riot at the Democratic National Convention. A half-century later, 1968 still resonates. For this issue of the Bulletin, we turned to members of the Class of 1968 for their memories of that remarkable time.

The Children’s Crusade SUSAN KOTTLER ’68

March 31, 1968. A bunch of us were sitting on couches and on the floor in a TV room in Erdman watching President Lyndon Johnson’s speech. It was an ordinary speech for its time, outlining plans for the war in Vietnam—a possible decrease in bombing, an increase in troops. It was the same old rhetoric, by the same old Washington guard, and we were all dispirited until toward the end, when Johnson said, “I shall not seek, and I will not accept, the nomination of my party for another term as your president.” There was silence in the room. We stared at the screen. As if planned choreography, two or three people stood up and moved closer to the TV, still staring, to make sense of what we had just heard. Some of us had been working for our anti-war candidate, Eugene McCarthy, and our immediate thought was that the way was clear for him to win the Democratic nomination for

president and stop the misguided and hated war in Vietnam. We took some credit for shaking up Washington and President Johnson with our organizing and protesting. We had been in Milwaukee for spring break, Lessie Klein, Cathy Sims, maybe Jean Farny, and me, from Bryn Mawr, and Joe Dickinson and Peter Scott from Haverford. We had dressed non-hippie conservatively (it was called Clean for Gene) and rung doorbells in South Milwaukee for McCarthy, with mixed results.

The country was divided over the war. The Class of ’68 was at the start of the huge post-World War II baby boom, so we had power in our numbers. We challenged norms related to dress, mores, and politics and did it with fun and flair. Our era became the first in which older people wished to be younger, rather than younger people yearning for the privileges of adulthood. We were motivated by a dubious and heartless war, by the destruction in Vietnam, and by the dishonesty of our

uestion

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NINA PARRIS ’68

WHAT IS MY MOST VIVID MEMORY?

It was the liberating feeling of being immersed in meaningful study. That provided a respite from our daily dinner conversations with a son who was trying to decide whether he should become a conscientious objector in solidarity with campus-wide demonstrations by students and faculty.

Some people dismissed us, some discussed the issues, and one red-faced man shouted at me, “I fought a f*****g war. Get out!” In a Milwaukee hotel lobby, I had struck up a conversation with a tired reporter for the Washington Star, Haynes Johnson. At 37, he seemed kind of old but sympathetic to our youthful enthusiasm. He introduced us to some Life magazine reporters and photographers who followed us for hours and filed a story on the Children’s Crusade, as college students working for McCarthy were called.

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government in undertaking and maintaining the war. We saw high school classmates drafted, some of whom didn’t return. A man’s fate hinged on his birth date, which determined where he stood in line to be drafted. We saw friends move to Canada, go underground, dangerously feign illness, or live with unsettling uncertainty and anxiety about their future. I went home to Maine for vacation with mini-skirts and a button from the Philadelphia Anti-Draft Union that said, “Girls Say Yes to Guys Who Say No.” My mother was no end embarrassed.

uestion

Then on April 4, Martin Luther King, Jr., was shot, and the cities exploded. Right after graduation that spring, we headed to California to canvass East San José. From there, we visited Joe’s parents’ friends in Santa Cruz. As we pulled into the driveway, the family ran out to tell us we had a phone call. It was Haynes Johnson, still in touch with us, calling from the hotel where Bobby Kennedy had just been shot. I thought then and still think that Haynes reached out to us at that moment to feel in touch with our generation and with the strength and honesty we were bringing to our struggling country. Later that summer we stopped our cross-country trek home to work in Kentucky. We each had a county to organize, in support of the local McCarthy infrastructure. Bobby Kennedy had visited there earlier in the spring, and there was still considerable loyalty to him. As the year wore on, the traditional political hierarchy asserted itself, and McCarthy was left out of the process. The war dragged on for four more years. Still, we felt we had provided a disruptive presence in many social, political, and economic areas and that our presence ushered in movements for positive change in civil rights, women's rights, and politics. The last time I visited Bryn Mawr for a class reunion, the common rooms where we used to congregate had been turned into bedrooms. I wondered where the undergrads would find kindred spirits to work with on the never-ending task of improving our political system. ........................................................................................ ........................................................................................ ........................................................................................

Teach-Ins

DR. MARCIA Y. CANTARELLA ’68 I had grown up in the midst of the Civil Rights movement, and so social change and advocacy and action were not new to me. However, because I am the daughter of Civil Rights leader Whitney Young (graduation speaker for our class), I also knew I had to be careful about what I did or said. I had no desire to embarrass or endanger my father. Interestingly, the war became the issue that intrigued me and that ended up being useful to my father, who had to walk a fine line on that issue. He was a WWII veteran and wanted to be careful not to demoralize the many Black men serving in Vietnam. Nor did he want to damage the ties to President Johnson that were bearing fruit in the War on Poverty, which was built in large part on what my father had framed as a Domestic Marshall Plan for American cities. So my views on the war became daddy’s proxy. (CONTINUED)

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AMY DICKINSON ’68

WHAT IS MY MOST VIVID MEMORY?

How powerless I felt to make any difference in what was going on and how alienated because I was not an activist. I believed that the violence and rhetoric of violence would only aggravate the situation, but I did not know how to speak out or what would bring people together. Some of my best and longtime friends are from my class/dorm. I think we are like veterans who survived a war together. There is a close bond that keeps bringing me back to Reunion. WHAT DID I FEEL WERE THE MOST EFFECTIVE EFFORTS FOR CHANGE OF THE DAY?

I only knew violence was not the answer. I sensed that the peaceful marches of Dr. King were the right direction. The idea of conquering hate with love appealed to me. HOW DO I THINK THOSE DAYS SHAPED WHO I AM TODAY?

My search for who I am and what is my role on this earth at this time was kickstarted by my experiences at BMC. Our class reunions where intelligent women shared honestly what was happening in their lives and their experiences of the culture helped direct my search. Now I have found my calling as a member of the Baha'i Faith. We are working toward world peace and the oneness of humanity. The Baha’i teachings promote the agreement of science and religion, the equality of the sexes and the elimination of all prejudice and racism. I am at peace, and there is still much to accomplish.

What the College did that was important then, and I think should be part of the agenda today, is create “Teach-Ins” on the war. These were happening on campuses everywhere, and we also had very activist faculty both at Bryn Mawr and Haverford. After dinner we would, either in classrooms or “smokers,” convene to learn from our faculty about the history and impacts of the war. And I learned. And so when my father was asked about the war, as he was once by Under Secretary of State McGeorge Bundy, he spoke of what I thought and had learned at the College. He even let me “share” my views directly with the undersecretary who, some 20 years later, agreed that what I had learned had been right. I learned the power of being informed, of not shooting from the hip, of having evidence. I think our student-activists today need to do the same. It is hard to try to be balanced—that is a daily struggle for me right now. But if you put real proof or really credible sources in front of me, I will have to pay attention.

mixed with disbelief as we heard that LBJ had taken himself out of the presidential race. We were stunned. Suddenly we had hope that the country might right its course on Vietnam and that we could be part of that change; I remember marching against the war with a Bi-College group and being spat upon and heckled by the crowds in Philadelphia. Then two very public and tragic assassinations occurred, in rapid succession. I never identified as politically active, but it was impossible to ignore the

blows. When Robert Kennedy was shot, I was at home with my parents for a few days after graduation before heading to New England for my first job. I remember waking up that morning and my father telling me that Bobby Kennedy was dead. I couldn’t believe it, not another assassination, not so soon after Dr. King. What kind of world were we heading into? Those of us born in 1946 mark the leading edge of the Baby-Boom generation. Today people disparage Baby Boomers

shaken state of society. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s, assassination on April 4, 1968, followed only two months later by Robert Kennedy’s on June 6, shocked everyone and led to more unrest during the months leading up to the political conventions, which in their turn brought more disturbing events. The country was in turmoil, and as seniors, and then graduates, we were loosed into a volatile world, reeling from these successive

for our apparent privilege and blind optimism. Yet the political climate of our college years formed us as challengers, leading us to question authority, which had presented such clear evidence of malfeasance and tragedy. It also encouraged us to care about and become involved in matters of politics, society, and culture. I believe we have made a difference, and we still have work to do.

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More Work To Do HELENA E. WRIGHT ’68

The request from the Bulletin to reflect on our experiences as the Class of 1968 (that’s Great ’68, BTW) began to stir my memory, but the real catalyst was a New Yorker piece by Louis Menand, “Lessons from the Presidential Election of 1968,” (Jan. 8, 2018). Reading his reminiscences of the events of March 1968 brought that time back to life for me: “He’s not running!” The joy

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uestion

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KIT BAKKE ’68 WHAT IS MY MOST VIVID MEMORY?

I spent the five years after graduation working full-time to end the war—so many demonstrations, protests, marches, strategy discussions, horrifying news broadcasts, friends jailed and killed, hard decisions. A trip to Cuba in July 1969 to meet with representatives of the Vietnamese NLF (Viet Cong) stands out as particularly vivid in my memory. WHAT DID YOU FEEL WERE THE MOST EFFECTIVE EFFORTS FOR CHANGE OF THE DAY?

Tough question, likely never to be resolved to everyone’s satisfaction. My take is that a spectrum of dissent is required to get our government to change policies. We don’t have direct referendums on particular issues, so a vote on “should we be fighting in Vietnam?” never happens. People choose their dissenting effort based on their personal moral beliefs, their sense of urgency, how they evaluate the risks they think they might face, how they value what they think they might lose, and other factors. Their decisions range from simply talking to friends about what they believe, to signing petitions, boycotting, marching, civil disobedience, and more. My sense at this point in my life is that all are necessary and, sadly, that decorous dissent is never quite enough. HOW DO YOU THINK THOSE DAYS SHAPED WHO YOU ARE TODAY?

A lot, but on the other hand, I was shaped by my parents and experiences long before my late 1960s experiences. Today, I have a sense of déjà vu as I look at our lawless leadership—we’ve been there before, which is discouraging, but also means it’s solvable—with a lot of effort. Turn to page 25 for an excerpt from Kit Bakke’s new book, Protest on Trial.

Want to hear more?

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At Reunion 2018, the Class of 1968 is sponsoring a panel discussion, “ Activism in the 1960s and Today,” with Kit Bakke ’68, Barbara Carey ’68, Marcia Young Cantarella ’68, Jacqueline Hubbard ’68, and Liz Schneider ’68. The panel will be moderated by Maratea Cantarella ’89.

A TEST OF LOYALTY

Bryn Mawr and the National Defense Education Act of 1958 Drawing on a proud Bryn Mawr legacy, President Katharine McBride brought the moral weight of refusal to bear on a national debate about academic freedom, individual rights, and the proper limits of government with respect to education.

BY KAAREN SORENSEN â&#x20AC;&#x2122;85

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n February 1959, the future president of the United States wrote a thank-you note to the president of Bryn Mawr. Senator John F. Kennedy was rallying legislative support to rescind what he called the “loyalty oath provisions” of the National Defense Education Act (NDEA) of 1958. Among the colleges that had taken “clear and firm action” to oppose these provisions, reads his typed letter to Katharine McBride, “Bryn Mawr deserves special thanks because it was among the very first to expose the implications of this provision to American education.” President Eisenhower had signed the NDEA into law the previous September. A response to post-Sputnik fears that America was losing the space race with the Soviet Union through a dearth of rigorously educated scientists, the legislation sought to bolster the training of future defense professionals through infusing funds into science, math, and modern language programming. Setting important new precedents for federal support of higher education, the law also sought to make college more accessible through a generous student loan program.

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But the final version, reflecting McCarthy-era anxiety about communism, attached a political fee to the loans: In order to receive the funds through their college or university, students had to sign an affidavit disclaiming support of “any organization that believes in or teaches the overthrow of the United States Government by force or violence or by any illegal or unconstitutional methods.” They also had to swear or affirm allegiance to the United States of America.

Early Action The “clear and firm action” to which Kennedy refers was President McBride’s refusal to enroll the undergraduate college in the NDEA loan program, a stance she

adopted with the approval of the Board of Trustees in December 1958. (She did apply for some loan funding at the graduate level, believing the impact of the requirements to be more limited in those programs.) Both Haverford and Swarthmore, Bryn Mawr’s close neighbors and Quaker peer institutions, also refused the funding rather than subject students to the loyalty contingencies. The following April, McBride testified before Congress in support of Senator Kennedy’s efforts to change the law. Her fellow witnesses in the Senate Subcommittee on Education hearings included Presidents Hugh Borton of Haverford, Courtney Smith of

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Swarthmore, and Gaylord Harnwell of the University of Pennsylvania, as well as the leaders of the Association of American Colleges and the American Association of University Professors. Kennedy’s bill passed the Senate in 1959 but eventually stalled in the House of Representatives, and the loyalty requirements would remain binding for another three and a half years. Although many institutions objected to the loyalty requirements, only a small handful at this stage took the further step of protesting them by boycotting the NDEA loan program and thereby setting an important early example of dissent as a national debate around

the law unfolded. Through McBride’s words and actions together, Bryn Mawr helped set the terms of that debate—a vital conversation about academic freedom, individual rights, and the proper limits of government with respect to education that still has resonance today.

The Rationale of Refusal In her testimony before the Senate Subcommittee on Education, McBride’s central objection to what she calls the “loyalty oath” is that it represents a danger to free thought and inquiry. Everyone, she stresses, not just the university community, must be on guard against not only “direct attack but also the more subtle erosion” of these freedoms, which she calls “a bulwark of American life.” In support of her central assertion, McBride articulates two further objections. The first is that through the loyalty provisions, the act undermines its own goal of extending educational opportunity and so renders itself ineffective. Because of the loyalty test, she argues, conscientious individuals who could benefit from the loan programs would refuse to participate—not from lack of loyalty but on principle. Disloyal individuals, on the other hand, “would not hesitate” to take a loyalty oath. McBride’s second objection, more far-reaching than the first, was that the loyalty

requirements conveyed to Americans a damaging and unfair distrust in the nation’s intellectual community. It would be an “unfortunate handicap,” she says, for Congress to suggest to “those people in the country that do not know schools and colleges at first hand” that students and professors “are not just as loyal as themselves” and so required “a special test.”

To McBride, remaining loyal to her own students through preserving their trust was paramount, outweighing the negative financial impact of losing the funding. “We believe that the handicap to the whole student group,” she says, “through invading our justified trust would be a greater loss.” As an institution, Bryn Mawr essentially passed its own loyalty test by refusing to subject its students to the one set by the federal government.

To McBride, remaining loyal to her own students ... was paramount. As an institution, Bryn Mawr essentially passed its own loyalty test by refusing to subject its students to the one set by the federal government.

Turning to the context of her own institution, McBride takes ownership of the trust issue in a way that is striking. Characterizing the oath and affidavit as invasions of the trust between the institution and its students, she refuses to foist the accountability for that mistrust back onto the federal government. Because the loan fund resides in the institution and is administered by it, she insists, “The institution itself is responsible.”

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McPherson on McBride Having served under McBride as freshman dean and dean of the College, President Emeritus Mary Patterson McPherson (1978–97) finds McBride’s willingness to lead by example at the national level unsurprising. “Miss McBride was always somebody who placed Bryn Mawr in a wider context,” she says. “So thinking about the leadership that one

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institution should be giving to the whole of higher education was very typical of the way she thought.” She was, McPherson goes on to say, “a woman of great courage, able to stand up for the stuff that mattered.” McBride’s response to the NDEA legislation reflects, to McPherson, both the sui generis qualities she associates with the College’s fourth president and a legacy of leadership consistent with Bryn Mawr’s institutional history and values.

values “have been very real and have been based very much on how Quakers have thought about things.” In McBride’s “courage to stand up against inappropriate government intrusion,” in her strong sense of support for the individual, and in her willingness to “stand outside the mainstream” and “speak truth to power,” McPherson sees a reflection of the high value placed on individual conscience and principled action in the Quaker tradition.

Bryn Mawr’s legacy of speaking truth to power, of fiercely protecting its students’ rights, and of preserving a relationship of trust with its student body, positions it well for navigating what McPherson calls “a very worrying time.”

Perhaps foremost in McBride’s response to the law, McPherson sees an expression of Bryn Mawr’s formative Quaker values. Unlike Haverford and Swarthmore, Bryn Mawr does not identify institutionally as Quaker. But the Quaker roots the College shares with its neighboring institutions run deep, and in fact, says McPherson, Bryn Mawr’s

McPherson points out that McBride would have been steeped in these institutional values under President Marion Park (1922–42), who led Bryn Mawr during McBride’s undergraduate and graduate years there. As a student “raised in the College under Miss Park,” says McPherson, “Miss McBride would have had many of the same ideals.” In Park’s

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extraordinary efforts to help refugee scholars, particularly Jewish scholars persecuted in Germany and elsewhere during World War II, resettle and work in the U.S., McBride would have experienced firsthand an example of “courageous leadership when in fact the country wasn’t being very courageous.” During the Vietnam War a generation later, McBride’s successor Harris Wofford (1970–78) similarly showed morally courageous leadership in the face of social and government pressures that were antithetical to the values of the College. Retaining a stance taken by McBride during the last year of her tenure, Wofford refused compliance with a 1970 Pennsylvania law that made financial aid funding contingent upon institutions reporting student protesters of the war. Bryn Mawr, along with Haverford and other noncompliant schools, lost state aid money for a year before a federal court declared the law unconstitutional in a suit in which Haverford was a plaintiff. Wofford supported the lawsuit against the Pennsylvania Higher Education Assistance Agency as a friend of the court, filing an amicus brief on behalf of 28 Pennsylvania colleges and universities. Beyond the president’s office, McPherson notes, the College’s trustees and alumnae/i have also played a critical role over the years by supporting the president and upholding consistency

between the College’s actions and its values. “We’ve always been blessed with a board willing to stand up for what’s right,” she says, as well as with an alumnae/i community that can always be counted on.

An Army of Davids The required affidavit disclaiming subversive associations attached to NDEA loan funding was finally repealed under President Kennedy in October 1962. (The oath or affirmation of allegiance, largely accepted as less insidious than the affidavit and perhaps seen as a necessary compromise, remained in place.) Practically the last back in as it had been among the first out, Bryn Mawr finally rejoined the loan program the following year. In the four years between the bill’s initial passage and its revision, refusing the loan funding as a means of protest against the loyalty requirements gained traction among educational institutions, and ultimately more than 150 colleges and universities followed the example of dissent initially set by Bryn Mawr and a few of its peers. Harvard, under President Nathan Pusey, initially rejected what an editorial in the Crimson called the “extreme stand” adopted by Bryn Mawr, Haverford, and Swarthmore, opting instead for the “middle path” of accepting the funding while pressing for the repeal of the loyalty requirements.

But Pusey changed course in response to pressure from Harvard’s faculty and withdrew the university from the NDEA loan program in November 1959. In a parallel action, President A. Whitney Griswold withdrew Yale from the program at the same time. A Crimson article covering the 1962 repeal of the affidavit requirement accurately positions Harvard as a leader in the national call to abolish the loyalty requirements, although not without rewriting the narrative a bit: it offers up a long list of schools, including, erroneously, Haverford, Swarthmore, Princeton, and others as “following suit” upon Harvard’s withdrawal from the loan program. (The statement was later corrected in a letter to the editor by a member of the Harvard community.) Bryn Mawr seems less visible in this final chapter of the story. The Crimson piece on the repeal doesn’t mention the College, and if institutional heavyweights such as Harvard and Yale came later to the protest game, they were undoubtedly more influential as the movement to boycott the loan money gathered steam. But Bryn Mawr’s role, as Kennedy had pointed out years earlier, is deserving of recognition. Under McBride’s leadership, the College helped set in motion both a critical national dialogue and the army of Davids that brought the moral weight of refusal to the discussion.

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To Be Continued Bryn Mawr’s legacy of speaking truth to power, of fiercely protecting its students’ rights, and of preserving a relationship of trust with its student body positions, it well for navigating what McPherson calls “a very worrying time.” Today, the community faces grave threats to its professed and lived values, including efforts to bar travel to the U.S. by individuals from seven Muslim-majority countries and to terminate the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. In response, President Kim Cassidy has issued unequivocal statements affirming the College’s ongoing commitment to a diverse student body and to supporting students of all nationalities regardless of citizenship status. McPherson says she would be “deeply concerned” if the College’s administration, board, and alumnae/i community were to fail to stand up against these daunting new pressures on the institution and the students at its heart. But she has “every confidence,” given the promise of the College’s history, that they will stand up to them. After all, she says, “It’s a pretty good history.”

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3 1. FLAVORS OF NORTHERN ITALY* MAY 12‒20, 2018

With Sharon Ullman, Professor of History

2. PROVENCE & FRENCH RIVIERA WALKING TOUR* JUNE 16‒25, 2018 3. JEWELS OF ALPINE EUROPE* AUGUST 6‒18, 2018

EXPLORE THE WORLD WITH

BRYN MAWR LANDSCAPES OF PORTUGAL* MAY 11‒20, 2018

With Inés Arribas, Senior Lecturer in Spanish and Language Program Coordinator

INSIDERS JAPAN* OCTOBER 13‒25 2018

NAMIBIA: ENDLESS HORIZONS JULY 20‒AUGUST 3, 2018

EXPLORING ICELAND* AUGUST 7‒17, 2018

Co-sponsored with Vassar College

With Don Barber, Associate Professor of Geology and Environmental Studies

HIMALAYAN KINGDOMS: NEPAL & BHUTAN* NOVEMBER 27‒ DECEMBER 11, 2018

EAST INDIA: TEMPLE MYTHOLOGY AND MOUNTAIN PEAKS* JANUARY 1‒16, 2019

With Marc Schulz, Professor of Psychology, Rachel C. Hale Professor in Science

With Michelle Francl, Chair and Professor of Chemistry

AMONG WOMEN: RUSSIA BEYOND REVOLUTION SEPTEMBER 15‒26, 2018

Co-sponsored with Smith College

ISLAND LIFE IN ANCIENT GREECE: AN AEGEAN ODYSSEY SEPTEMBER 5‒13 2019

With Pamela Webb, M.A. ’83, Ph.D. ’89

*EXCLUSIVE BRYN MAWR DEPARTURE

FOR MORE INFORMATION ABOUT THESE TRIPS, PLEASE SEE OUR WEBSITE AT BRYNMAWR.EDU/ALUMNAE/TRIPS OR CONTACT CAROLYN GODFREY AT 610-526-5225 OR CGODFREY@BRYNMAWR.EDU

In this Section

Our

Bryn Mawr

Anassa Kata p. 43 Class Notes p. 44 In Memoriam p. 93

On the Road Hundreds of Flat Athenas are circulating around the globe as part of Project Mawrter. Keep tabs on her travels on the @BMCFlatAthena Instagram account.

Find out more

Visit brynmawr.edu/alumnae.

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News from the Association

The Candidates

The following alumnae are up for election to the Alumnae Association Executive Board. Voting will take place at the Annual Meeting on June 3, 2018 during Reunion weekend. Terms are for three years, unless otherwise noted. CHRISTY A. ALLEN ’90, ALUMNAE ASSOCIATION NOMINATED TRUSTEE (FIVE-YEAR TERM), received her J.D. from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and currently serves as the assistant treasurer for the State of Tennessee, Department of Treasury. She has an extensive volunteer history with Bryn Mawr, having served on the AAEB and its Leadership Development Committee, as a BMF Class Chair and reunion gift committee member, a district coordinator and task force member for the Admissions office, a member of the President’s Advisory Committee, and on the Trustee Development Committee. SUSAN K. FLINN ’86, REPRESENTATIVE FOR CLUBS AND AFFINITY GROUPS, is a Washington, D.C.-based consultant with public health and social change organizations. Her many roles for the D.C. Club have included co-president, membership chair, newsletter editor, and treasurer. She chairs the board of the Lantern, an all-volunteer used bookstore that raises funds for the College. She has a master’s in women’s studies from George Washington University. Whenever possible, she is on the ice skating rink.

COURTNEY GRAY ’92, REPRESENTATIVE FOR ALUMNAE COMMUNICATIONS, majored in political science and is currently a director at Uptake, a predictive analytics company in Chicago. She has an extensive background in communications, specializing in media technology. Her volunteer history at Bryn Mawr includes several terms as 1992’s class president and as a reunion manager; co-president of the Bryn Mawr Clubs of Baltimore and Chicago; and member of the 360 ° of Innovation Chicago host committee, the Hepburn Medal host committee, and the President’s Advisory Committee.

KAAREN SORENSEN ’85, SECRETARY, earned her Ph.D. in religion before beginning a career in educational publishing. As an editorial director at Scholastic, she oversaw the development of print and digital resources for the K–12 market. She has served on her class gift committee, which she currently co-chairs, for many years and has written several articles for the Bulletin. She moved from New York City to Swarthmore in 2013 and joined the Communications office at Haverford College in January.

ALLISON LEVY M.A. ’97, PH.D. ’00, REPRESENTATIVE FOR GRADUATE SCHOOL OF ARTS AND SCIENCES, is the digital scholarship editor at Brown University. An art historian of early modern Italy, she has published four scholarly books and serves as general editor of the book series Visual and Material Culture, 1300-1700, published by Amsterdam University Press. She has held teaching appointments at University College London, Wheaton College, and Tulane University. Her research has been funded by the American Association of University Women, the Whiting Foundation, the NEH, and others.

NATALIE WATSON ’99, VICE PRESIDENT, is a partner at the law firm of McCarter & English. She earned her J.D. from Rutgers University School of Law-Newark, where she was editor-in-chief of the Women's Rights Law Reporter. She has remained active with the College, serving on the AAEB’s Committee on Leadership Development, in an advisory capacity on admissions, and as Class Fund Chair. In addition, she frequently speaks to students on career counseling matters.

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Anassa Kata

Gift Books A collection of books from Wen and Connie Fong ’55 raises the bar for Bryn Mawr. “To benefit from this gift fills my heart with gratitude beyond expression,” says assistant professor of history of art Jie Shi of a collection of books donated to the College this fall by Constance Tang Fong ’55 and Wen Fong. The Wen Fong & Constance Tang Fong ’55 Collection of books—all related to the history of Chinese and East Asian art— formed the core of Wen Fong’s personal library. The collection now positions the College to become a major center for the study of Chinese art. Shi calls the Fong Collection “a remarkable treasure.” Wen Fong, professor emeritus of Chinese art history at Princeton University, built this scholarly collection during the course of his highly influential career. A leader in shaping the modern field of East Asian art history, he established the first Ph.D. program in the United States in Chinese and Japanese art and archaeology and served as a curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. “Almost all the Chinese and Japanese books are highly valuable,” Shi continues, “and many of them are rare to find today in some of the best libraries in this country. This collection will not only facilitate my teaching and research but also attract more students and scholars in and near Philadelphia to come to use it.”

A volume from The Complete Works of the Sung Paintings.

Active supporters of the College, the Fongs have been honored previously with the naming of the serene and light-filled Constance Tang Fong 1955 Reading Room in Carpenter Library. An emeritus trustee, Connie Fong now serves on the Board of the Friends of the Library. “It is such a great pleasure that Mrs. Fong is willing to donate this fantastic collection to her alma mater and to support our teaching and research,” says Shi. Chief Information Officer and Director of Libraries Gina Siesing echoes Shi’s sentiments: “We are honored in the Libraries to be welcoming this important

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collection to Bryn Mawr, where we know it will open up tremendous new opportunities for scholarship for our students and faculty and the broader research community.” The College is planning a celebration of the Fongs’ generosity in the spring.

Mirabile Dictu: repository.brynmawr.edu/ mirabile/22/

Generations

Standing Together

Across generations, two Mawrters forge careers at the American Civil Liberties Union. AS TOLD TO NANCY BROKAW

Julie Zaebst ’03, M.S.S./M.L.S.P ’08, ACLU- PA

Karen Anderson ’79, ACLU-NC

I grew up in a small town in Ohio. My mom was a nurse who went back to community college to earn her associate’s degree after years of working as a nanny and a receptionist. Most of the women I knew growing up were secretaries, hairdressers, and teachers. I didn’t know anyone who saw their career as a way to live their values and their politics. I learned all of that at Bryn Mawr. Before coming to the ACLU of Pennsylvania, I mainly worked at nonprofit organizations focused on a relatively narrow issue, such as hunger. I was excited to join an organization that was tackling multiple, overlapping issues simultaneously and working at the intersections of complex problems in civil rights and civil liberties. I work on LGBT rights, and I started at the ACLU of Pennsylvania a month after its successful lawsuit, Whitewood v. Wolf, brought marriage equality to the state. Our opponents quickly pivoted and set their sights on rights and dignity of transgender people, and the attacks have been relentless. For the past three months, we’ve been fighting an effort in Harrisburg to prohibit insurance coverage of critical transition-related health care for people insured through Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program. But I’ve been so heartened by the courage and resilience of the folks who would be impacted—transgender people, parents of trans kids, health care providers—and who have spoken out at every turn. I’ve been blown away by their grace and strength in the face of adversity.

Bryn Mawr validated for me the vital importance of addressing the big philosophical questions. You can, and you should—would be the two lessons from Bryn Mawr. My philosophy degree was useful preparation for law school—addressing big questions like justice and human rights in a smaller arena, if you will. I discovered Chicago Legal Assistance Foundation in my first term and ended up working for legal services every academic term afterwards straight through to graduation. That was my parallel legal education. After law school, I moved to a corporate practice, but I was still looking for the chance to apply the big-picture principles of social justice, equality, equity, inclusion, fulfillment of the nation’s highest ideals. I logged a lot of pro bono hours at those law firms. I started with the ACLU as a board member 10 years or so before I became executive director of the NC affiliate. It was a chance to work for an organization for which I have great affinity and respect—in a state on the frontlines of defending constitutional rights for all. North Carolina is a proving ground. The success we have here can be precedent-setting for the nation—whether on criminal justice reform, LGBTQ rights, voting rights, or reproductive justice. Interestingly, the work perfectly illustrates that early BMC lesson: we all can make a difference in advancing those ideals, and we must.

GLASSWARE $5,0178 SCIENCE BUILDING UTILITIES $459,000 RUBBER GLOVES $1,950

SUMMER SCIENCE RESEARCH $160,000 These figures represent approximate total annual expenditures.

Every Bryn Mawr Fund gift, every day, every year, helps every student to defy expectation.

THE BRYN MAWR FUND | WWW.BRYNMAWR.EDU/THEBRYNMAWRFUND

101 NORTH MERION AVENUE BRYN MAWR, PA 19010-2899

Bryn Mawr Proud! S AV E T H E D AT E

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. TRANSFORMATION AT WORK. WWW.BRYNMAWR.EDU/THEBRYNMAWRFUND During the 2015-16 fiscal year, 6,573 alumnae/i, parents, faculty, staff and friends collectively gave over $5.37 million in support of the students who attend Bryn Mawr today.

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