50 minute read
Howard Fineman ’70 on Ukraine
The city of Bila Tserkva
Reminiscence I Went to Ukraine to Find My Roots. The KGB Found Me First.
By Howard Fineman ’70
he KGB men who took me into T custody in Ukraine were straight out of central casting. The Bad Cop was older, with a porcine face. He wore a leather trench coat cinched tight to his fat frame, and spoke only Russian. The Good Cop was young and lean: Bobby Kennedy to J. Edgar Hoover. His cloth overcoat was unbuttoned, Lenin style, and he had loosened his tie. He spoke fluid English and offered me an old-style Russian cigarette, which was an inch of acrid tobacco at the tip of a cardboard tube.
This was almost a lifetime ago — my lifetime.
It was September 1970, and I was fresh out of college, starting a year of foreign travel to explore my Jewish roots on a fellowship from the Thomas J. Watson Foundation. I probably was the first of what became a flood of Jewish-American Boomers to make such a pilgrimage to Ukraine.
With no permission to do so, I’d driven my VW bus an hour south of Kyiv to the historic city of Bila Tserkva, which had been predominantly Jewish in the 19th century. I wanted to get a sense of the place where my ancestors had lived for many generations before fleeing to America during an infamous series of pogroms in 1905.
So, I just drove there — and the KGB found me and picked me up. The curator of the city museum had reported me, and the two agents took me to a small office inside that building to start their interrogation.
“What are you doing here?” Bobby asked.
I didn’t want to say much. “My grandmother was born here,” I said. “She and her parents went to America.”
Bobby looked at me intently. “When was that?” he asked.
“1905,” I said.
A glimmer of comprehension crossed his face. The two conferred. “You have no business here,” Bobby said. “I will now prepare a statement. You will sign it.” He did, and I did.
I didn’t know what it said. I didn’t ask. All I wanted was my freedom.
They sent me on to Odessa.
I’m humbled and embarrassed now by my timidity all those years ago, as Ukraine has become the deadly center of world conflict, as its brave citizens fight not just for their freedom but their very lives; and as they are led and inspired by a heroic Ukrainian Jew, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who bears a vague resemblance to my own son.
History moves in circles. The ancestors of millions of us American Jews trace at least a few centuries of their wanderings after the destruction of the Second Temple to the old Pale of Settlement. Now we and the whole world have been drawn back to the Ukrainian heartland of that long-troubled region, then as now buffeted by Russia’s wars with other great powers.
My 1970 trip, and later visits in more recent years, gave me a faint sense of why my ancestors fled Ukraine. They yearned to escape capricious power and control their own destiny. But those trips also gave me a sense of why my grandmother spoke of the place in a wistful way at times. It is a beautiful landscape, full of passionate people who know and love their long history; who love the land and who, like the Jews, suffered enormous loss and terror.
I am not naive. Though my family was fairly prosperous there, they were forever at the mercy of Polish nobles, Russian bureaucrats, or sword-wielding Cossacks. Read Isaac Babel, the 20th century journalist and playwright from Odessa, and you get the resignation, cynicism, and despair that Jews often feel there.
Most of the 1 million Soviet Jews killed during the Holocaust were from Ukraine. In Bila Tserkva in 1941, the local citizens took part in an especially heinous episode: the shooting of 100 wailing Jewish children in a forest outside the city.
Still, I found something comforting and even noble about Ukraine and Ukrainians. They could be proud of their Jewish culture, which includes Sholem Aleichem, who lived in Bila Tserkva for years, and the flood of Jewish classical musicians produced in the conservatories of Odessa.
The fabled agricultural countryside is astonishing. As I drove across much of it, its coal-black soil glistened in the sun like diamonds. The thatched huts dotting the landscape were painted a pale blue that matched the sky.
And like the Jews, all Ukrainians were subjected to genocide: Stalin’s vindictive, paranoid, deliberate starvation of 4 million of them during the agricultural upheaval and famine of 1932–33, the Holodomor.
Now Ukrainians are facing another disaster at the hands of Russia. Supporting them is more than an act of nostalgia. Vladimir Putin is a bloodthirsty liar with the gall to depict as “Nazis” a democratically elected Ukrainian government led by a Jewish president. His bloodthirsty nationalism echoes the racism that led czars to create the Pale in the first place: Jews could only live among other inferior peoples in inferior places, such as Ukraine, lest they defile Mother Russia.
When I began my travels in Ukraine, one of the first people I met was a young medical student in Lviv. He had been sent by the authorities to check me out. He must have been regarded as a trustworthy member of the Communist Party, but he strayed from the official line to passionately explain that his identity as a Ukrainian was paramount and that Ukraine was and always would be its own country with its own language and heroes.
The next day, my minder brought me a slim volume of poems by Taras Shevchenko, the national poet of Ukraine. He read aloud from the most famous, which concludes:
Water your freedom with the blood of oppressors. And then remember me with gentle whispers and kind words in the great family of the newly free.
We Jews were and are part of that family, especially now.
This article first appeared in the Forward, the nation’s leading Jewish news organization. Sign up to get the Forward’s newsletters: forward.com/newsletter-signup.
My Road to a Watson
The first Watson Fellows were traveling the world in 1969, when I was a senior at Colgate. I eagerly applied to become one. It was (then and now) a wondrously novel scholarship: a year outside of North America to pursue a project of your own design. Nothing was too out of the box to be considered; indeed, the more imaginative the better. The goal was not just to study a subject, but, without professors or classmates, to discover the world — and yourself. The founders based it on a concept from German romanticism: a “disciplined Wanderjahr” (year of wandering) that would season us for leadership. We would live our own Bildungsroman.
My idea from the start was to visit the places my Jewish family had come from in the “old country” of Eastern Europe and, more generally, to immerse myself physically in as much as I could of the 3,000-year history of my people. Israel was an obvious destination. As for the other places, the idea, it could be argued, was sadly preposterous. The Jewish communities of Eastern Europe had been wiped out by the Holocaust. The same was true in Spain, where the Jews had flourished until the Inquisition, and in Germany, where Hitler obliterated all evidence of the crucial role Jews had played in sparking a branch of the Enlightenment.
The Colgate professors and administrators who vetted me for a nomination homed in on this. No one remained in these places for me to talk to, and I didn’t speak the languages, my high school German aside. What could I learn? My spur-of-the-moment answer drew on the breadth of my Colgate education. As a member of the London History Study Group, I had immersed myself in the art and social criticism of John Ruskin. His seminal work was The Stones of Venice. Although he was no master of spoken Italian, he wrote arguably the most famous book about the medieval society of that city. “The stones spoke to him,” I grandly told the committee. “They will speak to me.” They must have been impressed — if by nothing else than the chutzpah I showed in feeding them that line.
I received the Watson. I traveled to England, Germany, Poland, Lithuania, Romania, Russia, Ukraine, Israel, and the Palestinian territories. (In London, I stopped to see the late Professor Fred Busch, who was on a writing sabbatical, living with his family in a thatched-roof cottage near Stonehenge.)
On one trip, I visited the ancient mosque in Hebron that honors and protects the caves in which, tradition says, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Sarah, Leah, and Rebecca are buried. And yes, the old, sandcolored stones of the walls there spoke to me. They told me that I had done the right thing by traveling there.
Fineman is a longtime journalist who most recently was global editor of the Huffington Post; he previously was a political reporter and analyst for Newsweek and NBC News. He contributes pieces to the New York Times, the Washington Post, and other publications.
If you’d like to submit a personal essay for consideration, email magazine@colgate.edu.
2022 Colgate Fellowship News
→ Isabella Morse ’21 is the first Colgate student to receive the Gates Cambridge Scholarship — full funding to pursue a postgraduate degree at the University of Cambridge.
→ Colgate is, again, a top Fulbright producer with five student awards for 2021–22.
→ Colgate Fulbright awards for academic year 2021–22: Nora Mulroy ’21, English teaching assistantship (ETA); Sophie Karp ’21, research in Germany; Christina Weiler ’21, ETA in Spain; Charlotte Saltzgober ’20, ETA in Spain; and Cole Grumbach ’21, research in UAE.
→ Ani Arzoumanian ’22 and Lucy Langan ’23 received Davis Projects for Peace fellowships. Arzoumanian will spend the summer in Armenia, and Langan will be in upstate New York.
Share memories from your fellowship experience by emailing magazine@colgate.edu.
SCENE
Events Women of Inspiration and Influence
International human rights attorney Amal Clooney addressed a capacity crowd of students, faculty and staff members, and alumni in the chapel on March 5. Her visit served as the keynote for a weekend-long celebration of women of inspiration and influence — the culmination of Colgate’s 50th Anniversary of Coeducation festivities.
In a discussion moderated by Interim Provost and Dean of Faculty Ellen Kraly and Associate Professor of Peace and Conflict Studies Susan Thomson, Clooney shared her personal journey from corporate law to the halls of the International Court of Justice in the Hague. She discussed the viability of applying international law and precedent to United States legal processes, recounted details of past cases, and even looked ahead to the impact climate change would have on future refugee crises.
Clooney’s belief in each individual’s ability to affect change — and the need for every generation to wage justice to help bend the arc of history — served as a throughline for her comments.
“I hope you will all go on to do things you are passionate about,” Clooney said, addressing undergraduates directly. “And I hope you all feel that you can make a tremendous difference, because every one of you definitely can — and I have the distinct impression that you will.”
Celebrating Through Storytelling
The celebratory weekend’s engaging conversations began on Friday, March 4, when author Jesmyn Ward appeared in the chapel as a special guest in Colgate’s Living Writers series. The first woman and person of color to win the National Book Award for fiction twice, Ward answered questions from students and talked about the nuances of her work, her creative and writing processes, and her sources of inspiration. Ward also shared her desire to amplify the voices and stories of those who have been marginalized or had
Amal Clooney, international human rights attorney, spoke as part of the 50th Anniversary of Coeducation culminating event.
their histories erased, and the important role stories have in linking our past to our present.
“My grandmother was the first storyteller of my life,” Ward said. “Before I knew how to read, I would hear her telling stories at parties. I have her as a model in my head of how to tell a good story.”
Friday afternoon, there were several small group sessions that included a discussion with alumnae and students of color and conversations about women’s leadership and women in STEM and medical professions.
Members of the Colgate community also gathered to honor Thomas A. Bartlett Chair and Professor of English Emerita Jane Pinchin for her leadership at the University, particularly during the early years of coeducation. President Brian W. Casey and Kraly offered opening remarks before Pinchin joined four faculty members in discussing their experiences as women at Colgate and their aspirations for the University’s future.
“This celebration honors a multitude of women and a movement that changed Colgate,” says Pinchin. “Women changed — and women on the faculty changed — not only the way people taught, but what they would teach.”
Additional events that weekend included:
→ a reception, hosted by the Office of National Fellowships and Scholarships and the Office of the Dean of the Faculty, celebrating Colgate’s rise to the forefront of academic institutions earning nationally competitive fellowships since the beginning of coeducation in 1970;
→ breakout sessions focused on professional agency and social corporate responsibility;
→ the annual Charter Day
Global Day of Service, inviting alumni and student volunteers to participate in local projects benefiting Hamilton and the surrounding areas. — Ben Badua
“Now is our time,” Eddie Moore Jr. emphasized during his keynote speech for Colgate's MLK celebration.
Celebration Legacy Through Unity in Diversity
Annual programming to honor Martin Luther King Jr. brings the Colgate community together in dialogue.
More than 58 years ago, Martin Luther King Jr. ascended the white, marble steps of the Lincoln Memorial to share his dream of a better America. On Jan. 27, 2022, a different visionary, Eddie Moore Jr., climbed the Colgate Memorial Chapel steps to share a similar vision.
“I’m here in the spirit of MLK to say that now is our time,” Moore addressed the audience. “We’ve had some folks doing great stuff in the last 25 years, but you’re up, Colgate. What will you do to be the generation that really makes a difference?” he asked students.
Moore was the keynote speaker for Colgate’s Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration — six days of extensive programming, Jan. 24–Jan. 29, centering on the theme Legacy Through Unity in Diversity.
In his speech, Moore challenged students to be the first generation that forgoes personal wealth in favor of social progress and truly transforms America into the nation of which King dreamed. He urged the audience to reconsider and reevaluate their priorities: “NFTs or poverty? Mars or justice?” In closing, he said: “I’m passing the baton. Join me in a psychological commitment to end racism in our lifetime.”
To kick off the weeklong celebration, community members gathered in the chapel for an opening ceremony featuring speeches from Keilani Blas ’22 and Vice President for Equity and Diversity Renee Madison as well as lyrical performances by Grace Darko ’22 and Keiona Williams ’24. Group performances from the Mantiphondrakes a cappella group and a dance exhibition by the FUSE dance troupe were also featured.
In her speech, Madison described the intolerance and resistance that King faced during his lifetime and the importance of continuing his work today. “Dr. King challenged us to confront our history, acknowledge our present, and call on our nation’s collective and individual moral imperative to end structural and systemic oppression against our Black and brown family,” she said. “We still fight today.”
In the days following the kickoff, a variety of in-person, virtual, and hybrid events were held. During a virtual dialogue,
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Colgate community members engaged with Trustee Emerita Diane Ciccone ’74, P’10 and her daughter, Kali McMillan ’10, in a discussion titled “Preserving Unity Through Spaces.” Ciccone and McMillan discussed the impact cultural spaces such as ALANA had on their Colgate experiences and explored the continuing impact that they have on students today. “Spaces like ALANA are essential,” concluded Ciccone. “They have grown, and they should continue to grow for the sake of future students.”
Other events included a virtual Q&A, in which community members posed questions about campus diversity to a panel of student leaders, and a discussion about the new Disney film Encanto, during which students discussed the struggles of the characters and shared their connections to these challenges.
To conclude the week, students attended a daylong virtual Social Justice Summit featuring student leaders from Colgate as well as six other institutions.
Additionally, students participated in a COVEled afternoon of service, volunteering for community partners, including the Chenango SPCA, Earlville Opera House, and Johnson Park Center. — Bri Liddell ’25
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Walter Burt ’90 helps manufacture Colgate commencement torches through his Black River Company.
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Creepy, kooky, mysterious, and spooky: Masque & Triangle performed The Addams Family musical in February and March.
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Digital media ecologies, big-data baseball, and feminist computational histories were topics explored in Case Library’s spring colloquium series.
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Big splash: The swimming and diving teams’ locker rooms underwent renovations thanks to an anonymous donor.
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Career Services has launched a four-year program to engage students in self-assessment, career exploration, and skill development.
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A life-sized Hungry Hungry Hippos tournament, laser tag, and DIY mugs were part of a semester kickoff event by the Student Activities Association.
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This year’s Prep for Tech offered students workshops and mock-interview sessions with alumni from companies including Google, Coinbase, Meta, and Zillow.
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The exhibition Black Mystery Month featured pictures by American photographer and academic Bill Gaskins.
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New/Normal Diaries: A Festival Gallery showcased Colgate community members’ original performances, photography, and other artistic creations in a virtual exhibition.
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Students learned the basics of ski touring on telemark skis and how to camp in wintertime during an Outdoor Ed class.
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Sparking joy: Three sophomores created barbecue bliss by co-founding the new Colgate Grill Club.
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A vigil of solidarity with the people of Ukraine was held in the chapel in March.
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An ALANA Professional Legal Alumni Panel featured Michèle Alexandre ’96, Diane Ciccone ’74, P’10, Leslie Perry ’98, and Lwam Stefanos ’14. C IS (ALSO) FOR COOKIE
Kiera Fleming ’22 was the winner of this year’s cookie pie eating contest at the Colgate Inn. She battled seven other students in the challenge, which is organized annually by the Senior Class Giving Committee and raises money for financial aid through donations. Contestants had two minutes; whoever ate the most took home the title — and an overly full belly. “I ate maybe half of it,” Fleming estimates. at the inn with her mom, Susan (Gegan) ’89 Fleming. Other Colgaters in the family: her brother, Douglas ’24; aunt Claire (Gegan) ’91 Flynn; and uncle Thomas Flynn ’90.
Remembering that initial
bite: “I loved it…. Every time I go to the inn, I make sure to get a piece of cookie pie.”
She first had cookie pie when she visited Colgate as a high school student and ate dinner
This was not her first pie-
eating competition (but it was her first triumph). At age 5, she entered a contest on July 4 and was, by far, the youngest participant. It was banana cream pie (coincidentally, she learned later in life that she’s allergic to bananas). “My mom took a picture of me right after; I’m covered in banana cream pie, and I look miserable.”
Following this year’s
competition: “I was on the couch for a couple of hours, holding my stomach. But I felt good in the moments after!”
RECORD APPS: 21,153
PROSPECTIVE STUDENTS
20.6%
INCREASE
• Colgate received an all-time record number of applications for admission. As of the 17th of January, 21,153 prospective students applied for admission to the Colgate Class of 2026 — a 20.6% increase over the Class of 2025’s historic application numbers. Compared with two years ago, applications to Colgate have increased by 146%.
• Highlights from this year’s record applicant pool include increases in overall academic quality and diversity, with notable growth in applications from the southwest region of the United States.
Museums Art, Not Artifact
Picker Art Gallery’s new exhibition centers contemporary Indigenous artists.
Dozens of brightly colored paintings line the walls of the Picker Art Gallery — some depict people, animals, or landscapes, while others display inventive combinations of all three. No two pieces are the same; each work illustrates unique colors and forms, each tells a different yet interconnected story.
Picker Art Gallery’s current exhibition, Living Legends: The Indigenous Art of Storytelling, draws on artworks from the Longyear Museum of Anthropology and focuses on artists from the Great Lakes region. These works span a range of media, from paintings in the Woodland style to prints, sculptures, photo collages, and handwoven black ash baskets.
One painting comes from Anishinaabe artist Norval Morrisseau (also known as Copper Thunderbird), who was a pioneer of the Woodland style of painting, a style characterized by bright colors and bold outlines.
“Morrisseau drew on the legends of the Anishinaabe people and depicted them for the first time for nonIndigenous audiences,” explains Co-Director of University Museums and Curator of Picker Art Gallery Nick West, who organized the exhibition with a team of students. “This caused controversy in [Morrisseau’s] community but also opened a door for First Nations artists to start showing their work in contemporary spaces.”
With the majority of the pieces on loan from the Longyear, the exhibition at the Picker addresses the history of how Indigenous artwork has been othered. “How should pieces of Indigenous artwork such as these be treated in museum spaces?” asks West, gesturing to a display of intricate black ash “fancy” baskets. “Works such as these take an enormous amount of labor, and their artistry is undeniable. Museums have tended to pigeonhole this art into categories of craft or ethnology, but these artists are part of a global contemporary art discourse.”
The exhibition features several artworks by Haudenosaunee artists, including Ronni-Leigh Goeman (Onondaga) and Stonehorse Goeman (Seneca). The two have been working together to create their basketry for more than 25 years, with Ronni-Leigh weaving the intricate bodies of the baskets and Stonehorse sculpting the handles, stands, and carved ornamentation.
“Basketry is an important part of our lifestyle, as it is an ancestral art form,” says Ronni-Leigh. “These particular baskets tell a story. My hope is that [people] will recognize that these baskets represent both our past and present and the beauty of our culture.”
Audrey Chan ’23, one of the student curators who helped to organize the exhibition, views Living Legends as a chance for visitors to appreciate both Indigenous artwork and the artists behind it. “Not only is Living Legends an opportunity
to see works never before displayed at Picker Art Gallery, but it is also a multidimensional experience comprising anecdotes of celebration, tragedy, and resilience in the lives and art of Native American artists,” Chan says.
Also at Picker, as part of his ongoing Art-i-fact series, artist Cannupa Hanska Luger created an exhibition titled Rounds. The installation comprises 72 ceramic sculptures modeled after ammunition, which have then been painted to appear as
Black ash and sweetgrass woven baskets by Haudenosaunee artists
divergent from weaponry as possible. The deeper visitors get into the gallery, the more contradictory the ceramic rounds appear, transforming from weapons of war into delicate china-patterned pieces, vibrant crayon-esque spires, and stately sculptures of white and gold. Through viewing these reimagined rounds, Luger encourages his audience to consider what is lost and what is gained when form
triumphs over function and how this relates to how we view Indigenous art.
“Indigenous artwork has historically been commodified and viewed by white tourists as souvenirs,” West says. “But these works have rich history and meaning that get lost when their form is valued over their function.”
Living Legends: The Indigenous Art of Storytelling and Rounds will be on display through June 26. — Bri Liddell ’25
Environmentalism Plastics Are Everywhere… Now What?
From a young age, Linda Tseng has been picking up trash, the assistant professor of environmental studies and physics told Colgate community members during her February colloquium.
“However, as I have grown older, I have come to realize that cleaning up plastics is not always so simple as tossing a water bottle in the recycling. There are many pollutants that we cannot see.”
Tseng has dedicated herself to researching the issue of invisible pollutants such as microplastics and the impact they have on our bodies, ecosystems, and the world at large. While pollutants are undoubtedly a global issue, Tseng brought awareness of the crisis closer to home by elaborating on recent tests she has been conducting on water from the Hamilton area. Throughout her research, Tseng tested for a wide range of pollutants in various contexts.
Through graphs and charts documenting the number of pollutants found in water, Tseng elaborated on the variety of invisible pollutants affecting human beings today. These include the chemicals found in medications like Tylenol and the chemicals in perfumes.
Tseng has been studying the wastewater treatment systems in Hamilton and has gained a firsthand understanding of just how much of these chemicals make it past the county’s filtration system each day. Her findings reveal that, although some chemicals like those found in Tylenol are largely removed from the water supply during the filtration process, other pollutants such as fragrance enhancers and plastic additives slip through intact.
From similar testing of natural water sources in the Hamilton area such as streams, Tseng explained that she has found worrying amounts of pollutants, including consistent plastic additives and high levels of toxins like 2-Mercaptobenzothiazole deposited by runoff from septic tanks and 6PPD-Quinone from car tires.
“Plastics can be found everywhere. They’re in the London air, the Belizean seagrass, and the deepest trenches of our ocean. More close to home, they’re in our drinking water, our agricultural fields, our placentas, and even our feces.”
Center Stage
Country music artist Amythyst Kiah performed at the Earlville Opera House as part of Colgate’s Live Music Collective. The initiative — launched by students and faculty and staff members — grew out of the Brown Commons Coffeehouse Live Music Series. This expanded effort will bring a diversity of music performances and support students interested in music careers.
Through a series of case studies, Tseng highlighted just a few of the adverse effects that these invisible microplastics have on the world’s ecosystems today.
“Microplastics can make the environment more hospitable to invasive species, they can be consumed by deep-sea creatures and serve to slowly poison them, and recently, we have even been seeing microplastics negatively impacting humans by enriching antibiotic-resistant pathogens and making us all more susceptible to disease.”
Tseng then shared a few sustainable habits we can adopt to reduce or offset the amount of microplastics in the environment. Just a few of these steps toward sustainability include picking up litter, using delicate wash to clean clothes, choosing loose leaf tea over tea bags, and avoiding Tseng’s “personal plastic enemy,” glitter.
Saving the world from microplastics is not a one-person job, Tseng continued, nor is it a burden solely for consumers to bear. Rather, plastic manufacturing corporations and the companies that rely heavily on their products need to be the ones making the greatest strides toward sustainability.
Some companies are finally starting to pay attention. For example, LEGO has recently made the ambitious goal to make all of its packaging out of renewable or recyclable materials by 2025 and all of its products from sustainable materials by 2030.
“They can’t make LEGOs safe to step on,” joked Tseng, “but at least by 2030, that pain will be sustainable!” — Bri Liddell ’25
Men’s Basketball Raiders End Season With Trip to the Big Dance
It was an exciting season for the Raiders, culminating in a trip to the big dance. Colgate went toe to toe with third-seeded Wisconsin in the first round of the NCAA tournament on March 19, and though they ultimately fell to the Badgers 67–60, the team could still celebrate its outstanding season.
Sound bite “One of the most important responsibilities we have as a coaching staff here at Colgate is to recruit young people who are not just talented and fit into our basketball program, but are also people who are looking for all of the challenges that Colgate has to offer in the classroom.”
TAKE A LOOK AT SOME HIGHLIGHTS:
→ Colgate captured the program’s fifth Patriot League championship, second straight, and third in the last four years under Head Coach Matt Langel. Excluding the shortened 2020–21 season in which Colgate only played 16 games, the Raiders claimed their third-consecutive 20-win season — the only three in program history.
→ Colgate matched the Patriot League record with 16 conference wins during the regular season, setting a new program record in the process. The Raiders won the league by four games — just the second team to do that in Patriot League history. Langel became the program’s winningest coach with his 166th career victory in early February. The 11thyear head coach now has 176 victories at Colgate.
→ Entering the tournament, Colgate ranked in the top 10 nationally in four categories: second in 3-point field goal percentage, fifth in assists, seventh in 3-point field goals made, and eighth in assistturnover ratio.
→ The Raiders carried a program-record 15-game winning streak into the NCAA tournament, which at the time was the second-longest win streak in the country. Colgate’s three starting guards — Jack Ferguson ’22, Nelly Cummings ’22, and Tucker Richardson ’22 — all reached the 1,000-point milestone this season.
Kalty Kaltounkova ’24 (#98) scored the game winner five minutes into overtime in the ECAC championship.
The Raiders made their second-straight appearance in the NCAA Tournament after winning the ECAC Hockey Championship for the second year in a row. Following a magnificent season, the team’s run ended in a 2–1 loss in overtime to Yale in the NCAA Regional Finals at the Class of 1965 Arena. The Raiders concluded the season with a 30-8-1 record.
From the Source: “It was back and forth hockey, and that’s what playoff hockey should look like,” said Coach Greg Fargo. “I thought both teams had some great looks on both sides. I couldn’t be more proud of our team for playing as hard as they did and as well as they did all season long…. It’s tough when you lose, but in the bigger picture, there’s a lot to be proud of.”
By the Numbers: Before their loss to the Bulldogs, the Raiders were third in the country in goals (145), power play goals (30), and assists (248).
Notable Players: Goalie Hannah Murphy ’25 was named ECAC Hockey Rookie of the Month for February — her third conference honor.
Prior to the NCAA Tournament, Kalty Kaltounkova ’24 was second in the country in goals and tied for seventh in points. Kaltounkova also leads ECACH in goals and is tied for first in points.
Danielle Serdachny ’23 is tied with Kaltounkova in points and is second in the country in assists. Serdachny’s 427 faceoff wins are also seventh best in the NCAA.
Game Snacks: The first 300 Colgate fans in attendance received complimentary admission to the game and hot chocolate, and the first 500 Colgate fans in attendance received free Holy Smokes BBQ.
Men’s Hockey Raiders Push Past Cornell in the Quarterfinals
Colgate smashed rival Cornell in a best of three quarterfinal series, heading to the ECAC Hockey semifinals on March 18. Though the Raiders fell 3–1 to Quinnipiac, the team celebrated a hardfought season. “This year, our team has a lot of depth and a lot of skill — the most I’ve seen in my five years at Colgate, and it’s showing at this stage in the season,” Josh McKechney ’22 said. The Raiders finished the season with an 18-18-4 record.
From the Source: “I’m so proud of this team and how hard they competed,” said Head Coach Don Vaughan. “The last five to six weeks have been really fun. I thought we worked extremely hard again tonight against a team that’s going to take advantage of mistakes. We made a couple of mistakes and they certainly capitalized on them. I’m overall just really proud of the way we worked.”
Notable Players: Goaltender Mitch Benson ’22 was back on the ice following more than a year away due to an injury — this season was the best of his Colgate career. A dynamic duo, captains Josh McKechney ’22 and Paul McAvoy ’21 returned for their fifth seasons.
Goals: The Raiders finished the season on an 8–2 run, then they swept Yale in the first round of the ECACH Tournament before beating Cornell to advance to the semifinals against Quinnipiac.
financial aid 13 Women, $13 Million
Colgate University, founded in 1819 by 13 men with 13 dollars and 13 prayers, has added a new chapter to its founding story. Thirteen women graduates of the University have each stepped forward with $1 million gifts to the University to support the Third-Century Plan. Through these gifts, they hope to inspire the philanthropy of fellow alumnae. Funds from the Thirteen Women Initiative — announced during the culmination of Colgate’s 50th Anniversary of Coeducation celebration in March — will support financial aid and the University’s academic programs.
“On behalf of the campus community, I thank these 13 women for their generosity,” says President Brian W. Casey. “Colgate’s success as an academic community has always relied on a tradition of philanthropy. These gifts are a testament to the power of women’s philanthropy in particular, and they allow us to move with even greater boldness into our third century.”
The Thirteen Women Initiative was brought about by the Women’s Leadership Council, which was established in 2005 as the Alumnae Leadership Council and is one of seven leadership giving societies at Colgate. With more than 170 members, the council builds community among Colgate women seeking to make a transformational impact on students.
“The opportunities and experiences I had at Colgate were transformative,” says Liz Buchbinder ’77, council chair and one of the initiative’s 13 members. “I always wanted future generations of students to have their own, in their own unique ways. The philanthropy of Colgate women will be essential to making the Third-Century Plan a reality, and I encourage alumnae to engage in ways that are meaningful and impactful to them.”
The University recognizes and thanks the following alumnae for their involvement with the Thirteen Women Initiative:
→ Linda J. Havlin ’72, P’10 (posthumously) → Donna O. Golkin ’74 → Elizabeth Buchbinder ’77 → Gretchen H. Burke ’81, P’11,’20 → Becky B. Hurley ’81, P’12,’12 → Pam E. Odeen-LoDato ’81 → Nora Gleason Leary ’82 → Christine J. Chao ’86 → Amy Everett Di Sibio ’86, P’18,’21 → Kimberly Huffard ’87 → Jennifer Heltzel Farrior ’95 → two anonymous women
L to R: Women’s Leadership Council members Elizabeth Buchbinder ’77, Sandi Drucker '96 Wright, and Kimberly Huffard ’87 participated in the March Charter Day Luncheon, which included a panel discussion with alumnae around the theme of social entrepreneurship and community engagement.
On April 22, Colgate launched the Campaign for the Third Century, which promises to usher in the largest and most important transformation in the history of our University.
For more than 200 years, Colgate has built a reputation for academic rigor as one of the nation’s leading liberal arts colleges. Our first century was spent building that foundation. Our second was dedicated to the development of the traditions and the essential elements that make us distinctive. Our third will hinge on our ability to advance those hallmarks on an international stage.
The Campaign for the Third Century will therefore touch upon every aspect of the Colgate experience and will allow us to implement the structures — both physical and intellectual — that will help the University solidify its place as a leader in higher education.
Together, we can help realize these bold ambitions. We can secure the value of a Colgate education for generations to come. And we can put Colgate on the path toward becoming the most outstanding undergraduate institution in the country.
Learn more: thirdcenturycampaign.colgate.edu T he creation of four new endowed chairs has been approved by the Board of Trustees and made possible due to the generosity of alumni. They include:
The Himoff Family Chair in Legacies, established by James E. ’65 and Margaret Sue Himoff P’95: This fund was created to recognize a member of the faculty who, through their excellence in teaching our students and through their scholarship, reveals important lessons from the past for our understanding of the present — and the possibilities for a caring, humane community in the future. By highlighting learning through informed action, the chairholder helps students to take responsibility for their actions and understand their purpose to become forces for positive change in their communities.
The Sweet Family Chair, established by Andrew W. Sweet ’93: Chair-holders will engage in new areas of intellectual inquiry through sustained immersion into knowledge beyond their current discipline. Their academic and scholarly transformation will be demonstrated through curricular and programmatic innovation, and they will be encouraged to develop new courses within all University programs, including the Liberal Arts Core Curriculum, and explore new pedagogical approaches also to be shared with the faculty.
The Hurley Family Chair in Dialogue, Deliberation, and Decision Making, established by Becky ’81 and Christopher Hurley ’81, P’12,’12: created to recognize one or more faculty members who serve as leaders in strengthening dialogue and deliberation in the Colgate community. Recognizing the importance of education in democracy, the chair-holder supports a climate of debate and deliberation that is open and robust; that does not suppress ideas because some consider them wrong, immoral, or offensive; and that helps give students the power to summon reason, gather facts, and encourage discourse that is sound, fair, and powerful. The chair-holder models to our scholarly community the importance of careful and responsive listening and routes of moving conversations forward in positive ways. Through scholarship and teaching, the chair-holder promotes habits of mind that are necessary for productive and civil speech and deliberative decision making both within the Colgate community and in our democratic society.
Nora Gleason ’82 Leary and Robert G. Leary Chair in Environmental Studies, established by the Gleason-Leary Foundation: created to recognize teaching excellence and scholarly achievements in the study of the environment and sustainability.
Endowed chairs recognize Colgate faculty members for their academic achievement and distinguished teaching, providing chair-holders with dedicated funds to enhance their research and teaching efforts. Being named to an endowed chair is one of the highest honors available to a faculty member. The endowment that allows for the creation of a new chair ensures, in perpetuity, the faculty position and the academic fields represented in the chair’s designation. Currently, Colgate has 47 endowed chairs. In the years ahead, Colgate will add more than 20 new endowed chairs. These additions will allow the University to attract and retain outstanding teacherscholars and to support emerging academic initiatives. It will also bring Colgate’s number of endowed chairs in line with the nation’s leading colleges and universities. Since the Third-Century Plan’s inception, 10 new endowed chairs have been funded.
Faculty Highest Honors
Middle Campus Investing in the Arts
Rob Kindler ’76, P’04,’08,’12 remembers it like it was yesterday.
He was at his family’s home in Bayside, Queens, when his mother said there was a man on the phone who wanted to talk to him.
“I see you play the flute,” said Dexter Morrill ’60, a Colgate professor who was also known as a talented trumpeter and pioneering composer. “If you came to Colgate, would you commit to playing in the concert orchestra?”
For Kindler, who’d played the flute since the age of 7 and had once aspired to be a musician in his own right, the answer was clear: “Absolutely.”
Spending most of his collegiate career at the Dana Arts Center, Kindler explored his musical interests despite ultimately deciding to major in English. He took up the bassoon as part of an independent study course with Professor William Skelton, who founded the concert orchestra in 1965 and spearheaded Colgate’s first venture into electronic music with the installation of a Moog synthesizer in 1967.
A classically trained flutist, Kindler’s first experience with computer-generated harmonies came from Morrill. Best known for being among the nation’s earliest college professors to teach computerized music, Morrill developed a first-of-its-kind computer music studio during Kindler’s time on the Hill, and he composed an electronically accompanied piece specifically for the flutist he helped bring to Hamilton.
Now a trustee emeritus, Kindler has long been a champion for artistic innovation at Colgate, having previously endowed the Kindler Family Chair in Global Contemporary Art and the Kindler Family Music Room in Case Library. Then in February, the University announced a generous $5 million gift from Kindler and his wife, Sydney P’17,’20, in support of the Middle Campus Plan for Arts, Creativity, and Innovation.
“Music was a big part of my life at Colgate and the reason why I went there,” says Kindler. “We want Colgate to be a destination for talented students interested in the arts, and I’m excited to invest in the facilities that will allow the University to support its outstanding arts programs.”
A key component of the University’s ambitious and far-reaching Third-Century Plan, the reimagined Middle Campus will promote connections among the arts, sciences, and technology, and establish a central hub that links departments, curricula, and co-curricular interests that touch on creative processes and student expression.
Long-term planning for the Middle Campus calls for a series of projects, including construction of the new Benton Center for Creativity and Innovation; renovation of James C. Colgate Hall as a site for curricular music programs; creation of the Picker Pavilion and interconnected facilities to house Colgate’s museum collections; and the renovation of the Dana Center for Curricular and Co-Curricular Innovation as well as Brehmer Theater.
The Kindlers’ gift will support these efforts and will help bring the University one step closer to its vision of integrating arts and innovation into a wide range of programs across campus.
“It is clear from speaking with Rob and Sydney that their family shares passions for music, dance, and the visual arts and that they and their children are interested in technological and educational innovation,” says Lesleigh Cushing, senior adviser to the president for arts and innovation initiatives and the Murray W. and Mildred K. Finard Professor in Jewish studies and religion. “The Kindlers’ gift supporting the arts and innovation celebrates the intersection of these interests in their lives and recognizes the exciting potential of these areas intersecting in Colgate’s Middle Campus.”
Artist’s initial interpretation of Middle Campus with new buildings
Rob Kindler ’76, P’04,’08,’12
Discover
Psychology Traumatic Tales
PTSD research finds that the way veterans tell their own stories predicts their mental health.
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hen Peter Tappenden ’18 arrived on campus in the fall of his senior year, he knew exactly what he wanted to study for his honors thesis in psychology. He’d spent the summer in Boston, working at an outpatient program for veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). He was excited to learn more about the factors that make some people vulnerable to PTSD after experiencing trauma, while others are more resilient to the condition.
The only hitch was that Tappenden’s adviser, Rebecca Shiner, had done extensive research on personality development but had never worked on PTSD.
Undaunted, the pair sat down to brainstorm. “I wanted to try to find a way to support his interest in that topic,” says Shiner, who is the Charles A. Dana Professor of psychological and brain sciences. “I’m always game to learn about something new.”
She proposed that they merge Tappenden’s interest in PTSD with a new interest of her own. She’d been learning about a field called narrative identity. It’s “the study of the way people tell the stories of their lives,” Shiner explains. The research appealed to her, “because I have a strong attraction to the humanities,” she adds. Studies have shown that the style in which people describe their experiences is an important aspect of personality and may be related to mental health.
Tappenden and Shiner recruited 154 veterans to complete an online survey. They gave the study participants two writing prompts. The first was to describe a “highly stressful” event from their military experience. The second was to describe a “key scene” that didn’t have to be stressful. Participants also answered questions that assessed their overall well-being and symptoms of mental illnesses such as depression and PTSD.
Tappenden worked with co-author Fanyi Mo ’20 to comb through all the narratives and score them for different variables. They found two factors that correlated with the veterans’ current mental health: agency and personal growth. The people whose stories about a highly stressful experience
demonstrated a sense of control in their lives, and who expressed ways they had grown through their ordeal, had better mental health.
But the researchers didn’t see the same connection in the nonstressful “key scenes” that veterans described. “There’s something important about reflecting back on these highly stressful events, specifically,” Shiner says.
The results suggest that veterans who can draw meaning from potentially traumatic experiences in the past are mentally better off today. Shiner says the findings lined up with what other narrative identity studies have shown.
“As a first step, I think the results are really interesting and important,” Shiner says. The group published their findings in 2021 in the Journal of Traumatic Stress. She hopes there will be further studies of narrative identity in veterans that tease out the factors that might make some people more vulnerable to PTSD.
Tappenden is now in graduate school at Northern Illinois University, studying PTSD in first responders. During the COVID-19 pandemic, he says, there’s been “almost an unprecedented level of distress placed on those populations.”
He hopes to one day work with patients with PTSD, while continuing to research ways to improve their care. With the veteran study, Tappenden says, he was struck by just how long the effects of trauma can reverberate. Many of the vets in his sample had served in Vietnam, as long as half a century ago. “And still, the way that they reflect back on these highly stressful events from their service was important for their present functioning,” he says.
After dipping her toe into the field of narrative identity, “I now really love this line of research,” Shiner says. In an ongoing study, she’s looking at the narratives of a group of Colgate students. She started gathering data on the students’ personalities before the pandemic, and now the students have written twice about scenes from their lives during the COVID-19 pandemic. Shiner hopes analyzing these stories will reveal something about whether the students’ styles of narration affect how well they are coping.
“The stories themselves are often so engaging,” Shiner says. “There’s something very special about doing this kind of research in psychology, because it’s very close to the lived experience of the person.”
Inquiry Did You Know?
Snippets from Colgate Research articles
→ Read the full articles at colgate.edu/ researchmagazine. Someday, ordinary houseplants could be part of a device that harnesses the power of nature to do computing or monitoring in an Earth-friendly way.
Assistant Professor of Physics and Astronomy Ramesh Adhikari and his students used a $15 golden pothos as a test, plugging their equipment into its heart-shaped leaves. They discovered properties that might make it perfect for building leaf-based electronics that are biodegradable and address the problem of electronic waste.
African Americans played an integral role in the
Revolutionary War. A new edition of The Book of Negroes (Fordham Press, 2021), co-edited by Professor Graham Russell Gao Hodges, expands on the 1996 famous accounting of Black freedom during the British evacuation of Loyalists from New York City in 1783. The recent publication offers new insights into the courage of selfemancipated Black Americans and free people.
How do smart home devices compromise our data security
and privacy? To find out, computer science professor Noah Apthorpe collaborated with colleagues from universities across the country to develop IoT Inspector, an open-source tool that allows users to observe the traffic from smart home devices on their home networks — from TVs to thermostats. The researchers discovered that, despite wellknown best practices, many devices are not using good encryption for their network traffic.
We’ve become a world of
city dwellers. At the turn of the 20th century, only 13% of people around the world lived in cities — now 55% do. Professors Jessica Graybill (Russian and Eurasian studies) and Maureen Hays-Mitchell (geography) are co-editors on the seventh edition of Cities of the World (Rowman & Littlefield, 2020), which addresses city structures, demographics, trends, and challenges.
Manhua, pictorial magazines filled with vivid illustrations, are more than just Chinese
cartoons. John Crespi, associate professor of Chinese and Asian studies, has been studying this pop art medium that served as cultural commentary during China’s tempestuous 20th century. In his book, Manhua Modernity: Chinese Culture and the Pictorial Turn (University of California Press, 2020), Crespi argues that these magazines were important mediators of the modern Chinese experience, staying on the cutting edge of both politics and style.
In Syria, hundreds of Better Shelter units have been installed for displaced people.
Humanitarianism Reimagining Refuge
What do IKEA and Airbnb have in common? They are both part of a “global shelter imaginary” — a dangerous new trend in humanitarian aid, writes geography professor Daniel Monk in a new book.
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hen the social enterprise Better Shelter unveiled its alternative to tents for refugee camps in 2015, it took the humanitarian world by storm. A moderately durable shelter that could be assembled in four hours, the units came in two flat boxes that could be easily shipped in bulk on shipping containers. The design received funding and logistical support from the IKEA Foundation, won architecture awards, and was deployed by the U.N.’s refugee agency UNHCR to camps around the world.
There’s an issue with the shelters, however, says geography professor Daniel Monk: They are solving the wrong problem. “Lack of shelter is not the fundamental problem that the displaced people of this world face,” says Monk, who is also the George R. and Myra T. Cooley Professor of peace and conflict studies. “The fundamental problem they encounter is a lack of rights.” He explores this crucial difference in The Global Shelter Imaginary: IKEA Humanitarianism and Rightless Relief (University of Minnesota Press, 2021), cowritten with his former student at Harvard, Andrew Herscher, now an architecture professor at the University of Michigan.
Monk and Herscher use the term “global shelter imaginary” to refer to practices that prioritize the appearance of providing assistance to refugees over actually providing meaningful legal protections guaranteed under international conventions. For example, Monk says, there is nothing inherently wrong with Better Shelter: “I think it is a well-intentioned organization.” But for refugees living in camps for short periods of time, tents could help many more people at a much lower cost. And for those living in camps for long periods, the structures provide the appearance of a solution while papering over the real issue. “The majority of displaced people are stuck in a kind of limbo where they cannot return to their country of origin, where they nominally have the rights of citizens, and they are neither permitted to settle where they have landed, nor to move on to another country,” Monk says. “That’s a condition that some people live in for decades — a sort of perpetual rightlessness. The Better Shelter is a material artifact of that suspended animation.”
Theoretically, that condition should be alleviated by international human rights conventions that obligate countries to take in refugees who are victims of political violence and displacement. Instead, countries, including the United States, have made it more difficult than ever for refugees to qualify and apply for asylum, carving out exceptions for certain groups or constraining border crossings to gain admittance while their applications are considered. “The global shelter imaginary is how all of those processes get normalized,” Monk says, “and architecture plays a really important role in that.”
He compares the phenomenon to “greenwashing” for environmental issues, whereby companies give the appearance of solving a problem while actually failing to address the underlying issues they themselves help to cause. “Instead of having to come up with actual solutions, the image of architecture stands in for a right that is disappeared,” Monk asserts. Promotional videos produced by the UNHCR feature refugees enthusing about the shelters, rather than pleading their cases. “Their situation is infinitely worse because they are expected to regularly speak well of the conditions under which they are living,” he says. “Basically, they only get to appear as a subject of humanitarian action, not as someone with political claims or agency.”
The true solution to the crisis of displaced people, Monk says, is “political, not architectural.” And yet, the humanitarian community keeps going in the wrong direction “by pointing to plastic huts as solutions to dispossession,” he adds. The latest iteration of the global shelter imaginary, according to Monk, is a program started by Airbnb called Open Homes (now Airbnb.org), through which people volunteer to host refugees. The program essentially privatizes humanitarian relief, while doing little to address the issue. Only a few thousand people are able to take advantage of the program, and to do so, they have to jump through hoops to gain asylum — leaving out the vast majority of displaced people in refugee camps, squatters camps, and cities who are prevented from seeking asylum. “It’s nothing more than a fig leaf,” Monk says. “I’m interested in solving a broader sociological problem.”
ASK A PROFESSOR How Does a Country Balance Its National Security With Civil Liberties?
T
he long-standing debate over how to balance our concern for security with our desire for freedom tends, these days, to focus on threats to so-called national security. Ever since the Rubicon events of 9/11, we have entered a new political space in which the concern about terrorism dominates our national consciousness. But the question of how to balance liberty and security also arises in contexts that don’t involve national security: Consider debates between those who want stricter gun control and those championing the Second Amendment, for instance. Depending on the context in question, these various debates will naturally stress different issues. But if we zoom out a bit, and concentrate not on specific controversies but larger framing issues, we can see important similarities we might have overlooked.
Let’s begin, perhaps surprisingly, with a cartoon I saw in a Chicago newspaper in the early 1990s. At the time, a debate was swirling around whether to grant to the Chicago police certain unusual powers (I can’t recall exactly what) to help combat an outburst of violent crime but with some attendant loss of liberty. The cartoon showed a map of the greater Chicagoland area, including the city and surrounding suburbs. From a downtown neighborhood came a plea to grant the police those unusual steps. From the suburbs, the voice of the ACLU denounced the proposed threat to freedom.
The cartoon’s brilliance lay in capturing the importance, always, of attending to perspective and position when we think about balancing freedom and security. The wealthy suburbanites, not facing fatalities and violence in their own backyards, would gain little by the proposal to increase police powers; their position made it easy for them to take a stand defending the extraordinary importance of freedom. Many whose lives were most directly affected by the threat of violent crime, on the other hand, seemed willing to concede some freedom to make their lives more secure, thereby aligning with a strong tradition of political thought stressing that freedom means little where our safety is not secured and that security is, in this sense, the more basic value.
But, of course, (and this is the cartoon’s final point) not everyone is forced to choose. Even as we understand the position of those who wanted to give the police greater powers, that is hardly a solution to be happy with. For it means that some people will, predictably, have their freedom constrained in ways others don’t, and that the state is therefore not treating all its citizens equally. This worrisome implication the ACLU grasped astutely. (To say nothing of the fear, enacted in the killings of people like George Floyd, Eric Garner, and Breonna Taylor, that members of certain communities remain especially vulnerable to harm from the police.)
When we turn to the context of national security, we see many of the same issues. If we grant the state increased powers of scrutiny and oversight, they are likely to be deployed in ways that have a disproportionate effect: People who look a certain way, worship a certain god, and fit a certain profile are more likely than others to be the object of close surveillance. Given limited energy and resources, some such narrowing of focus may seem both tempting and sensible. But the challenge such measures present to basic principles of equal treatment, the likelihood they will be abused, the undermining of a common idea of citizenship encompassing all people — all of these should make us gravely concerned over such approaches. The worry, in short, is that we are choosing not for all of us to sacrifice some liberty to improve our security, but for the liberty of some to be sacrificed to improve the security of others.
The importance of positionality also plays out in our collective decision to identify a challenge called “national security” and then elevate it to unmatched prominence. One question we might ask ourselves is how, exactly, national security differs from the security of our fellow nationals. In 2021 the city of Chicago reported 797 murders. At that rate, the number killed would, over four years, surpass that of all who died on 9/11. And that’s just one city. To be sure, the 9/11 attacks, and the threat of terrorism on the whole, seem to carry a unique significance; that fact I can’t deny. But then again, how much does that judgment reflect the fact that I, myself, am much more likely to be flying on a plane than to be walking the streets of a Chicago neighborhood with high crime rates? Even as the worry over terrorism magnetically absorbs our collective concern over security, we shouldn’t lose sight of more prosaic, more pedestrian, but equally lethal threats to the security of our fellow Americans. In thinking about balancing security and liberty, it turns out, there are not just two values at stake.
— David McCabe, who is the Richard J. and Joan Head Chair in philosophy, published an essay on this topic, “National Security, Self-rule, and Democratic Action,” in the Journal of Ethics: An International Philosophical Review in 2021.
