�e magazine of the Columbia Spectator 02 April 2009 / vol. 6 issue 8
the eye
Alma, Can You Spare a Dime? the uncertain future of columbia’s business model by Anna Feuer
how much is a columbia education worth? \\\ america gets corny \\\ topshop crosses the pond
Rebekah Kim
Editor-in-Chief �omas Rhiel Managing Editor, Features Melanie Jones Managing Editor, A & E Hillary Busis Deputy Editor, Features Raphael Pope-Sussman Senior Design Editor Meredith Perry Photo Editor Kristina Budelis Online Editors Ryan Bubinski Laura Torre Eyesites Editor Carla Vass Contributing Ideas Editor Jia Ahmad Interview Editor Zach Dyer Film Editor Peter Labuza Music Editor Rebecca Pattiz Books Editor Yin Yin Lu Food Editor Devin Briski Art Editor Hannah Yudkin �eater Editor Ruthie Fierberg
CORE CRISIS Why the humanities’ ivory tower may be in danger of crumbling, pg. 07. by Anna Feuer cover illustration by Matteo Malinverno
FEATURES
Dance Editor Catherine Rice
\\\ EYESITES 03 Closely Watched Trains Nishi Kumar
TV Editor Christine Jordan
04 Analyzing Inequality Victoria Fox
Style Editor Helen Werbe
05 Value of Education Carla Vass
Photo Associate Vitaly Druker Production Associates Samantha Ainsley Alexander Ivey Talia Sinkinson Shaowei Wang Copy Editors Wesley Birdsall Katrin Nusshold Spectator Editor-in-Chief Melissa Repko Spectator Managing Editor Elizabeth Simins Spectator Publisher Julia Feldberg Contact Us: eye@columbiaspectator.com eye.columbiaspectator.com Editorial: (212) 854-9547 Advertising: (212) 854-9558 © 2009 �e Eye, Spectator Publishing Company, Inc.
\\\ EYE TO EYE 06 House by the Ferry Zach Dyer
ARTS \\\ MUSIC 11 We Rule the School Jennie Rose Halperin
LETTER FROM THE EDITOR My generation—our generation, twentysomethings and near-twentysomethings—is used to witnessing the debilitation of once secure institutions. We’ve grown up with it. During my middle school years, it was the music industry, litigiously contending with Napster, that we watched wobble on its perch. Since then, Netflix and BitTorrent have shaken up the film and movie rental businesses, Hulu and YouTube are doing the same to television, and, who knows, maybe the Kindle, that weird white thing you see every so often on the subway, will one day replace our personal libraries. �ese are changes, yes, big ones, sure, but not entirely revolutionary. (�e Kindle, which costs $359, is more likely to be a bourgeois convenience than a catalyst of social upheaval; creator Jeff Bezos is no Johannes Gutenberg.) Ultimately, music is music and movies are movies and words are words, no matter how they’re heard or watched or read. Education is not so fungible a commodity. And as Anna Feuer explains in our cover story this week, the once irreplaceable disciplines that defined the university experience, that gave it its
serious scholastic musk, are slowly being replaced. Just as journalistic outfits watch with anxious eyes as online aggregators and blogs out-profit their solemn, noble enterprises, so do humanities departments watch as other, more lucrative departments siphon off their funding. Feuer’s story asks a question that would rattle Columbia’s viewbook copywriters and subvert the schticks of the campus tour guides: What if the Core Curriculum, the putative centerpiece of our school’s humanities-oriented pedagogy, isn’t so central after all? What if great books end up being as dispensable as, well, books? To someone like me, an English major who’s enjoyed the Core experience so far, such a truly revolutionary thought is almost impossible to believe. But as Feuer’s article considers, and as the surprising changes I’ve seen in my brief life (including the recent implosions of the banking and auto industries) make clear, nothing—not even the supposed literary and philosophical foundations of Western civilization—is immune from the forces of expediency or from the threat of eventual collapse. —�omas Rhiel
\\\ DANCE 12 �e Dance Divide Maddy Kloss \\\ THEATER 13 Now and �en Hannah Mackler \\\ FOOD 14 Corn off the Cob Janine Carpenter \\\ STYLE 15 �e British Are Coming! Jessica Schwartz
Submit your creative writing to the Eye. We are now accepting short stories, narrative non-fiction, and humorous essays. For more information, e-mail eye@columbiaspectator.com.
THE EYE ABROAD
EDITORS’ TEN
1. Twilight, the movie: It’s finally out on DVD (and I just couldn’t bring myself to actually go see it in theatres). Tortured, pale teens have never looked so good! —Carla Vass, Eyesites Editor
TEXT AND PHOTO BY NISHI KUMAR �e scene of the train pulling away from the platform was almost picture-perfect. Children hanging out the windows, relatives shouting their last goodbyes ... and me, sprinting uselessly down the side of the track as my train sped into the Czech countryside. I had planned a weekend in the small Moravian town of Olomouc with some friends, seeking a brief escape from the spring breakers that had recently descended in hordes on Prague. We were looking forward to a quiet weekend of good food, pretty cathedrals, and world-renowned microbreweries, away from the daily madness of cosmopolitan life. Unfortunately, my (usually) harmless habit of running perpetually late left me watching the train with my friends aboard fade quickly into the darkening horizon. Overly confident in my resourcefulness after a successful stint in Budapest on the previous weekend, I decided to take the next available train and meet up with my friends at the hostel in Olomouc. After all, how much trouble could I get into on a three-hour train ride? When the next train left an hour later, I grabbed a window seat, popped half a Tylenol PM, and turned up my iPod, feeling pretty smug in my independence. I was jolted awake about an hour later as the train came to a screeching and sudden halt, and groggily glanced out the window to check the station, and instead saw ... nothing. No station, no houses, no lights—just the train track extending indefinitely into the vast, silent countryside. As the conductor opened the door to my compartment and yelled something indecipherable in Czech, everyone quickly gathered their luggage and started pushing their way out of the rickety train. Confused and disoriented, I tapped the conductor on the shoulder. “Prosim? Mluvite anglicky?” From his hassled response (in Czech) and violent hand gestures, I gathered that no, he did not speak English, and furthermore that, if I did not immediately exit, he was very likely to conquer the language barrier by physically throwing me off the train. One thing I have realized about studying in Prague, with its large expat community and isolated population of English speaking students, is that “immersion” into a city culture does not necessarily mean learning the language or local customs. In fact, while I have met plenty of Western Europeans and students from just about every college in the States, my interactions with Czechs have been brief, formal, and almost completely in English. Immersion has come more from learning the winding streets, public transportation system, and cheapest non-touristy bars. Stranded on the side of the tracks, with no map, cell service, or Czech-English dictionary, was an experience I was wholly unprepared for. My smugness of the hour before quickly vanished and was replaced by a panic that I hadn’t
What We’re Into �is Week
EYESITES
Closely Watched Trains
2. Kenka: It’s this Japanese restaurant on St. Mark’s. �e menu had a list of rules for diners, like “no vomiting, fighting, or having sex.” Also, no graffiti. Except for Japanese graffiti. �at was allowed. —Raphael Pope-Sussman, Features Editor felt since I was a lost five-year-old at the Atlanta Zoo—except that this time, there was probably no friendly woman in a monkey hat to take my hand and help me find my way. “Excusing me, but you are an English-speaking, no?” I warily turned around, expecting a suspicious-looking Eastern European man, ready to prey on the obviously lost and vulnerable American girl. Instead I found a group of suspicious-looking Eastern European men with broad toothy grins on their faces. “You should be acoming with us, the train it is a Russian and a no good.” After weighing my non-existent options (and checking that I still had my mace) I reluctantly followed them the mile along the track to the next station, where we waited for a train to pick us and our fellow stranded passengers up. I surmised from their broken English and my severely limited Czech that my particular train was a relic from the Communist era, built in the ’60s or ’70s, and one of the few that the Czech train controllers still liked to use as a “novelty” once in a while—at reduced ticket prices, since they usually broke down somewhere along the way. Overcoming my initial reservations, I found my saviors friendly and boisterous as they made friends with the passengers around us, passing around cans of Pilsner and spontaneously breaking out into Czech drinking songs. �ey were eager to share their colorful stories with an American separated from her usual herd, and I heard of their double lives as musicians/exterminators in Prague, adventures as “testers” for the infamous “cafes” in Amsterdam, and childhood experiences growing up in various small Moravian towns. During our hour-long wait and over the course of our train ride, I tripled my Czech vocabulary, completely reversed my impression of Czechs as reserved and unfriendly, and received various invitations to dinners and parties in the homes of my newfound friends and other fellow passengers. When we finally arrived in Olomouc and I stepped off the train, I waved goodbye to my travel companions—who were hanging precariously out the windows—already feeling nostalgic for my few hours of true immersion, and glad that I was lucky enough to miss my train. a Nishi Kumar is a Columbia College junior studying abroad in Prague.
3. Moisturizing chapstick: I’ve never been a huge fan of the cherry-flavored variety, and I like it even less after that awful Katy Perry song (a redundancy, I know). �e kind that comes in the blue tube, though, is pretty much perfect. —Hillary Busis, Managing Editor 4. Chia Obama: Yes, the minds behind the Chia Pet have upped their own standards of ridiculousness— you can now order your own Chia rendition of our 44th president and even choose between “Determined Chia Obama” and “Happy Chia Obama.” —Christine Jordan, TV Editor 5. My freudian slippers: they’re super-cozy, and the ultimate form of foot therapy. When I put them on, slipping my toes into Freud’s tongues, I feel my worries and mental imbalances dissipate into oblivion. �e Unemployed Philosophers Guild has the snazziest merchandise! —Yin Yin Lu, Books Editor 6. Sharon’s sorbet: �e mango flavor is the best, and you feel more virtuous than with ice cream because there’s some fruit in it—see, it’s healthy! —Melanie Jones, Managing Features Editor 7. Skeleton watches: Sleek, with a touch of nerdy. Skeleton watches are really in right now, and I want one! —Helen Werbe, Style editor 8. Bikes: �ey’re green, even if they’re not green! —Devin Briski, Food and Drink Editor 9. Squashed philosophers: It has basically all of the Contemporary Civilization texts in condensed form, but unlike SparkNotes, it uses the author’s own words. Marx’s �e German Ideology in 4,900 words? Das ok with me! —Zach Dyer, Interview Editor 10. �e Where the Wild �ings Are trailer: I expect grouchy people to be all over this movie for being twee or indulgent or whatever, but personally, I can’t wait. I’ve been hitting the trailer pretty hard for the past week now, and I expect to continue doing so until the movie comes out in October. —�omas Rhiel, Editor-in-Chief
COMPILED BY CARLA VASS
03
IDEAS
EYESITES
Analyzing Inequality how columbia is redefining social difference BY VICTORIA FOX ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY CARLA VASS PHOTO COURTESY OF BARNARD COLLEGE AND SOCIALDIFFERENCE.ORG For students perusing the course catalogue, the separations between different departments and disciplines can seem daunting. In spite of these traditional institutional divisions, however, endeavors like the Center for the Critical Analysis of Social Difference showcase the importance of making connections across traditional disciplines, which allows for a better understanding of the overall impact of scholarly work. �e CCASD, which was officially launched last year, is creating a forum that combines five separately existing centers and institutes—the Institute for Research on Women and Gender, the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race, the Institute for Research in African-American Studies, the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society, and the Barnard Center for Research on Women. By keeping an overall focus on the implications of social differences, this collaboration is intended to allot a shared research space for these groups, many of which would otherwise have a primarily curricular focus. �ough all of these centers and institutes deal with the issues of social differences independently, the synergy of CCASD provides the opportunity to create a fuller picture of its global effects by crossing traditional academic disciplines.
“PEOPLE RECOGNIZE THE INEQUALITIES IN THE WORLD” As can be seen in the course registry, it is not uncommon for the subjects of race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality to be divided. Yet, in reality, overlap is inevitable. “You have multiple differences that structure your identity,” CCASD’s director Neferti Tadiar states, explaining that these multiple identities make it insufficient to label individuals with singular descriptors. With that idea in mind, CCASD is trying to integrate this complexity into its research. An intersectional approach to research also reflects the overall intent of CCASD, which is to examine how the categorization of social difference affects the world, and in particular its inequalities. “People recognize the inequalities in the world, [but] they don’t always connect them to the way we categorize
04
social differences,” says Tadiar. �is desire to shape global solutions to social inequality is apparent in the project “Borders and Boundaries.” As one of four projects CCASD is currently working on, “Borders and Boundaries” focuses on fleshing out the connection between international borders and social divisions within countries. Currently, the project has institutional bases at both Columbia and the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales in Paris. In order to broaden its research network and to invite further comparisons, the project is also looking to establish bases in Australia, Turkey, Mexico, and Germany. As inspiration, CCASD’s Web site, socialdifference.org, cites the current paradoxical relationship between the widespread flow of information across national boundaries, and the simultaneous crystallization of ethnic and racial boundaries. Its relevance to pressing global issues is apparent. “International immigration is going to be huge over the next decade—it already is,” says Claudio Lomnitz, who, in addition to being the director of the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race, is currently working with the project. According to Lomnitz, foreseeable factors
such as changes in climate, technology, economics, and tensions over migration management portend not only an increase in migration, but also in migration controversy. “�e systems of inclusion that various kinds of nations impose for their citizens and people ... all of those are under stress right now,” Lomnitz cautions, citing the example of anxiety presented by international gangs, who can be seen as loosely tied together by a shared migratory experience. While CCASD is devoted to research, not policy-making, the center still hopes to “find new ways of addressing these pervasive problems of inequality, both locally and globally,” Tadiar says, by aiming to change the way in which individuals conceptualize social difference in their approach to problem-solving. CCASD aims to clarify that current social divisions are not benign categorizations, but rather issues that have a dramatic impact on resource distribution and social inequalities. She adds that people “might see it as a purely economic issue, a purely political issue,” and that this “sets limits to how they would respond to those inequalities.” What we need instead, the center argues, is a solution without borders. a
THE VIEW FROM HERE / ESSAY
EYESITES
�e Value of Education? Or, Justifying the $200K Price Tag BY CARLA VASS ILLUSTRATION BY REBEKAH KIM Let’s be honest. I have friends that are spending $ 20,000 on college. And not just this semester. For the entire four years. �ey go to a very well regarded, respectable state school. And they pay in-state tuition. Don’t even get me started on the people I know who go to Oxford, which, the last time I checked, was ranked the No. 1 school in the world. For the entire four years, those students will pay the equivalent of approximately two years of tuition at Columbia (depending on exchange rates). Did I mention that I’m an English major? �is means that while I can go on and on about the incredible English program, basically what people hear is that I’m paying about 200 grand to read books that could be procured at the library for a grand total of $1. On the other hand, if I’m going to be getting a degree in reading and writing, it’s probably good to be able to say that I got it from Columbia. I find myself thinking about the cost of my education more and more these days, usually in inverse proportion to the height of the Dow. More specifically, I wonder if I can really justify spending such a large amount of money on school, when I know that I could be getting more or less an equivalent education for a fraction of the cost. I recall many kids from my high school, who, despite having had their pick of the Ivies, decided to attend our local state university and save money for graduate school. In particular, one of my best friends plans to attend medical school, and I doubt very much that her future school will mind where she earned her 4.0 GPA and magna cum laude honors. I am certainly grateful to go to such a wonderful, well regarded school. Most of the professors are rock stars in their own right, with interesting books and research under their tenured belts. Class sizes are small (for the most part) and I get the kind of individualized attention that is harder to come by at a larger school. �e facilities are wonderful—Butler has such an old and storied feeling to it that, when I study there, I’m sure to become smarter just by osmosis. �ere is also the unbeatable combination of attending a top university that is actually located in New York City—Dartmouth is quaint, but I can’t hop in a cab and find myself, five minutes later, at some fabulous, overpriced restaurant downtown, can I? On the other hand, I’m sure that no one at Dartmouth has the problem of having to avoid public urinators.
But I have a sneaking suspicion that a large part of what I’m paying for is also the privilege of being able to say that I went to Columbia. And now, when as a country we’ve exhausted our main forms of currency, is this brand-name currency worthless as well?
I HAVE A SNEAKING SUSPICION THAT A LARGE PART OF WHAT I’M PAYING FOR IS ALSO THE PRIVILEGE OF BEING ABLE TO SAY THAT I WENT TO COLUMBIA. At this school, we are undeniably given internship and job opportunities vis-à-vis high powered alumni that one would not necessarily get at another university (part of this is also just virtue of being in New York City). We also have
the opportunity to meet extraordinarily talented, driven students, who will most likely be running things one day and perhaps giving us our paychecks. A college education is still a means to an end, the end being a high-paying job (why else are banks more willing to give student loans to students attending selective schools?). But maybe that’s the problem. In the postBush, post-consumer driven economy days, we all find ourselves forced to reevaluate our priorities. Statistically, all of us aren’t going to become extremely wealthy, regardless of where we attend college. I’ve come to accept that I may never rise above the ho-hum middle class. But I also don’t really mind. I don’t want to be a corporate robot, endlessly turning out excel data sheets all day, 8:30am to 6:30pm (welcome to the new working hours, buddy). Today’s luxuries are the ability to make your own hours, to do something you find enjoyable, to be able to spend time with friends and family, and in the process, to be able to earn enough. So where does this leave me in terms of education value? Maybe graduating with a degree from Columbia means nothing more or less than the fact that I went to an exceptionally good school. And that might just be worth 200 grand. a
05
EYE TO EYE
House by the Ferry zach dyer interviews lee briccetti BY ZACH DYER PHOTO COURTESY OF WRITERCENTER.ORG
Poets House, one of the largest public collections of poetry in the United States, has been homeless since the end of 2007. In the past, Poets House was home to over 200 public programs, over 50,000 volumes of poetry, and ongoing workshops and master classes. With the promise of a rent-free location in beautiful Battery Park City for the next 60 years, however, Poets House is now on the brink of a rich rebirth. Zach Dyer chats with Lee Briccetti, the executive director of Poets House, about the history of the House, the new location, and an exciting opportunity for poets taking place this weekend. What exactly is your role and history with Poets House? I am the longtime executive director. I have been here for many, many years, and have seen the organization grow from a two-person organization in a home economics room in a high school to an organization that is about to have a world-class, major facility on the banks of the Hudson that will become our permanent home. I understand the late Stanley Kunitz, a then-professor of the Columbia writing department and an extraordinary poet in his own right, was somehow involved. In what way? Stanley Kunitz was the founder, along with Elizabeth Kray, who had been the longtime executive director of the Academy of American Poets. She felt there needed to be a place for poetry that was
Poets House holds its grand reopening this September, though it continues to offer programs until then.
06
tantamount to the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts—a place people could go to, where they could learn more about poetry and they could have their own practice nurtured. She pulled Stanley Kunitz in as co-founder, and he was so beloved by the community of poets that they made a fantastic team, and they became the organization articulating the mission to a very wide group of poets. What is the mission of Poets House as it prepares to move into its new locale? We are a place for poetry that invites everyone into the living tradition of poetry, so that they can explore it with pleasure and understanding. We are a library, a meeting place, a program presenter, that really tries to get people into the world of the varied traditions of poetry, and to document those traditions. ... We are not telling people “this is good, and this is bad,” we’re trying to create a place and an ethos where people can come in and have all the resources at their fingertips to explore the widest expression of the art. You mentioned Poets House as a library. What makes its collection particularly special? It is a 50,000-volume poetry collection. It is one of the greatest poetry collections in the country in open stacks, meaning there may be other quite great comprehensive poetry collections in universities, but this is really one of the great ones in the country that is open to anyone, free of charge, so that the idea of people bumping into books—the living and the printed meeting each other— is something that is for everyone, not just for matriculated students. We have many, many poets and poet practitioners come and use the collection, but one of the things that make it really fun is that it’s open for everyone—so you can see high school students working on a project side-by-side with the U.S. poet laureate. What does the new space mean for Poets House— besides an incredible view? �is is an extraordinary amount of security for the programs and for the library, and what that means as we are building together—staff, board, a community of people who care—we know that we are building together something that is going to last and speak across generations. �e space will give us room for the library to grow, in one of the most beautiful parts of the city. �ere are views of the Hudson River in every window of the new library. �ere is a wonderful program space that will ... allow us to do indoor and outdoor programming, Tanglewood-style, which is excellent for us. We will have a new exhibition space where we can mount exhibitions specifically about the relationship between poetry and the visual arts. ... �ere will also be a won-
derful children’s room that will help youngsters experience poetry. Write it, experience it, read it, have fun with it, have fun with language. More practically, it is right across the street from where the NY Waterway has just instituted its new ferry terminal, which will bring in about 30,000 people a week from New Jersey. So, really, it is the first time we will not be in a secret location. Poetry will now have a much more public role in our cityscape, so it will be a prominent place with a ground-floor presence. We are reaching out to all our cultural friends in lower Manhattan. The NY Waterway wants to work with us and put poetry on their ferries. They have already wrapped some of their boats with lines of poetry! The programmatic possibilities are pretty much endless.
YOU CAN SEE HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS WORKING ON A PROJECT SIDE-BYSIDE WITH THE U.S. POET LAUREATE. What opportunities or programs do you offer for students who want to get involved with such a worthy project? First of all, if anyone is interested in poetry, we have a program coming up over the weekend. Our showcase, which is a display of all the year’s new books of poetry, is one of the great first stops to get a sense of the entire annual production of our field. �ere is nothing like it anywhere. You walk in, and you see the 2,000 books that have been produced this year, and there is a catalogue, as if it was an art show, and you walk through with the catalogue and really learn about the kinds of poets and presses that are out there. If you are a practitioner, it is a great way to learn what the field looks like... �e event lasts a week and generally we do it in our own space, but because we’re space-less at the moment, we are doing it at a partner library—the Jefferson Market Library—and it opens on Saturday. It’s a great way for people to get a glass of wine and look at some poetry! If people want to volunteer or intern, there are tons of opportunities; and specifically, when we are moving into the new space, there are going to be lots of opportunities to greet people, learn about the space, give people tours of our incredible, new, green, LEED-certified facility. We will need people to volunteer in the library, and also we’ll need people to interact with our many, many new visitors. a
illustration by Rebekah Kim
Alma, Can You Spare a Dime?
the future of columbia’s business model by Anna Feuer • inside illustrations by Matteo Malinverno �e ivory tower, often under scrutiny, has wobbled during the current economic crisis. Finally, critics proclaim, smarter-than-thou academics must turn their gazes downward as financial chaos takes hold of their ivy-covered halls. Is the end of the vaunted liberal arts curriculum at hand?
T
or professional concerns, students may examine and challenge their own perspectives. But the recession has hit higher education hard: Ivy endowments have decreased by as much as 27 percent (Cornell), with Harvard and Yale’s each down by 25 percent and Columbia’s down by a slightly less drastic 22 percent. Having experienced portfolio losses of 15 percent over the sixmonth period ending Dec. 31, 2008, Columbia has seen an 8 percent decrease in endowment payout, affecting every part of the budget. Cost-cutting measures have included a hiring review board, the postponement of faculty hiring searches, a 10 percent decrease in the number of doctoral students, and a faculty wage freeze. Columbia has made some tough financial decisions, and it seems the choices will only get tougher. In debating which academic programs should carry the burden of the financial crisis, many schools have targeted the humanities. But for a place like Columbia to de-emphasize its liberal arts curriculum would be to sacrifice its fundamental educational philosophy.
IN FOCUS
he humanities, more than other fields of study, embody elite education’s cloistered mentality. And as the recession wears on, they bear the brunt of shrunken endowments. Faced with budget cuts and hiring freezes, top universities have prioritized hard sciences over their philosophy, religion, and anthropology departments. Classics majors find themselves relegated to the bottom shelf. With strained resources and choked budgets, the humanities, while still holdouts for intellectual isolation, have found themselves on shaky ground.
WITH STRAINED RESOURCES AND A CHOKED BUDGET, THE HUMANITIES HAVE FOUND THEMSELVES ON SHAKY GROUND. “ With its Core Curriculum—a program emblematic of the traditional liberal arts education— Columbia embraces the life of the mind more than most schools. �e Core claims to promote learning for its own sake. As its mission statement notes, the “enduring habits of mind developed in the Core will leave an indelible mark in the capacity to experience one’s own life in a richer and more meaningful way.” �e Core ultimately aims to promote students’ self-cultivation. Removed from financial
W
herever you are, and wherever you live in America, you cannot spend a day, you can hardly spend an hour of your life, without paying tribute to Columbia University,” Upton Sinclair declared in 1923, referring to Columbia’s large stake in the business world. In �e Goose-Step: A Study of American Education, Sinclair describes how the activities of everyday Americans support the University: “I helped to build it up when I telephoned my friends to make engagements, for Columbia University
owns $50,000 of the New York Telephone Company’s 4 ½ per cent bonds; I helped to build it up when I took a spoonful of sugar with my breakfast, for Columbia University owns some shares in the American Sugar Refining Company.” Sinclair’s words still ring true. Columbia remains an elite educational institution, but it’s also a big business. In fact, it’s a voracious machine. In 2007, Columbia’s investment returns alone reached $331 million. And with the markets down across the board, Columbia must reorganize its financial priorities to account for decreased capital flows. �e difficulty is in choosing what to save and what to sacrifice. Left with only three-quarters of their original endowments, schools like Columbia are in the process of juggling resources and reallocating funds. Nationwide, fields like literature, classics, religion, and philosophy are taking the brunt of the burden. �e New York Times reported in February that “in the last three months at least two dozen colleges have canceled or postponed faculty searches in religion and philosophy. ... �e Modern Language Association’s end-of-the-year job listings in English, literature, and foreign languages dropped 21 percent for 2008-09 from the previous year, the biggest decline in 34 years.”
WHAT REMAINS TO BE SEEN IS WHETHER THIS REPACKAGING— THE HUMANITIES STRIPPED OF THEIR STATURE—WILL ALTER OR DISTORT THE FUNDAMENTAL INTELLECTUAL PRINCIPLES BEHIND THE LIBERAL ARTS. �e Core Curriculum adds an additional and substantial cost to Columbia’s liberal arts program. �e fact is that the Core is expensive to maintain: slightly over 50 percent of Core classes are taught by full professors, whose average annual salaries can reach $162,500 according to the American Association of University Professors. To control costs, Columbia has increased Core class sizes (now capped at 22 students in each Literature Humanities and Contemporary Civilization section), as well as the proportion of adjunct professors and graduate student instructors. �ese changes reflect the reality that the Core does not exist solely for the edification of undergraduates. Professor Michael Rosenthal, who has taught Literature Humanities on and off since the ’60s, believes alumni loyalty helps shield the Core from substantial change. “My sense is that the Core has been maintained out of loyalty to alumni rather than a true academic commitment of the
08
administration,” Rosenthal says. “I think that in the innermost heart of the administration, they probably place less significance on the Core.” Roosevelt Montas, associate dean for the Core Curriculum, elaborates on the administration’s desire to keep alumni happy. “Alumni tend to think their education is best exemplified by the Core,” Montas says. “Alumni are really central
AND SO A NEW IVORY TOWER HAS BEEN ERECTED, ONE IN WHICH THE UNTOUCHABILITY OF SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH HAS BROUGHT THE VALUE OF THE HUMANITIES INTO QUESTION. to the Core’s sustainability.” To retain alumni donations, Columbia College must keep a consistent educational philosophy across the decades, leaving it little opportunity to adapt to changing circumstances.
�at the Core is, to an extent, preserved to sustain alumni loyalty—rather than for its own perceived merits—does not bode well for humanities programs with less history. While the Core is privileged at Columbia, the obstacles the humanities face here and elsewhere are many. �e financial crisis has heightened these challenges, but it did not create them. Hard times have merely brought a simmering pot to a boil. �e last few decades have seen top universities placing increasing emphasis on the hard sciences. In his 2007 book Education’s End: Why Our Colleges and Universities Have Given Up on the Meaning of Life, Yale law professor Anthony Kronman offers an explanation for the troubles facing the humanities. “�e mood in the humanities is one of insecurity and doubt,” he explains. “Teachers of the humanities, unlike their counterparts in other fields, do not share a clear and confident understanding of the contribution they make to higher education.” Not only do the humanities lack a clear sense of purpose, Kronman argues, but their academic prestige has also diminished as that of the research sciences has increased. He writes, “While those in the natural and social sciences often express a conventional respect for the humanities, their real attitude is frequently one of bemusement or even contempt for these disciplines, whose paroxysms of political correctness have made them appear increasingly ridiculous.” And so a new ivory tower has been erected, one in which the untouchability of scientific research has brought the value of the humanities into question. And unlike the humanities’ ivory tower, this one brings in about $500 million a
IN FOCUS
year in research grants, as well as the possibility of lucrative patents in fields like medicine or engineering. In 2007, Columbia received approximately $437 million from the Department of Health and Human Services, $70 million from the National Science Foundation, $17 million from the Department of Defense, $16 million from NASA, and $12 million from the Department of Energy. �e concrete benefits of the sciences, in terms of the research they produce and their marketability in the job world, stand in contrast to the standard image of the liberal arts as selfindulgent and overly abstract. �at $500 million isn’t chump change—it’s certainly a number the humanities can’t match.
THE CORE, ROSENTHAL ARGUES, “PROMOTES A FULLY COMPLEX AND RICH LIFE. AND THAT’S WHAT AT LEAST A PORTION OF EDUCATION OUGHT TO BE ABOUT.”
T
he debate over whether the Core’s learning-for-the-sake-of-learning philosophy is outmoded prompts an evaluation of what the program offers to its students and how to justify its funding. �e most common defense of the Core is that—like the humanities in general—it offers students intellectual edification. In an interview in his book-filled office in Philosophy Hall, professor Rosenthal recalls a passage from Michel de Montaigne’s Essays. “Who says it better than Montaigne?” he asks, quoting: “To compose our character is our duty, not to compose books, and to win, not battles and provinces, but order and tranquility in our conduct. Our great and glorious masterpiece is to live appropriately.” �e Core, Rosenthal argues, “promotes a fully complex and rich life. And that’s what at least a portion of education ought to be about.” To focus university learning entirely on practical knowledge, to “deprive students of the opportunity to explore their own complexity, would be an abrogation of the university’s full responsibility.” �e practicality of the Core, then, resides not only in its relevance to future employment. It is practical in the sense that it gives students the tools to reflect on their daily lives. Like Rosenthal, University President Lee Bollinger believes the intellectual inquiry of the humanities is irreplaceable: “�ere’s material well-being, and there’s health, and there are ways in which we organize ourselves and understand the world through science ... [but] the meaning of life, friendship and love and wars ... these are the subjects of the humanities.”
09
IN FOCUS
Other defenders of Core argue that Literature Humanities and Contemporary Civilization offer practical or tangible benefits equal to the sciences. According to Gareth Williams, chair of Literature Humanities, it just depends on what is meant by practical knowledge: “I resist the idea that the Core is confined to the ivory tower. It has a practical dimension that directly contributes to life skills.” �e humanities, says Williams, are “a prime education in ordering logic.” Times may change, but employers will always be looking for the same qualifications in applicants. �ey want “intelligence, articulate speech—someone who can evaluate different sides of a situation.” Columbia College Dean Austin Quigley shares Williams’ view that the Core teaches useful skills: “�e Core provides wide-ranging forms of knowledge that can be adapted for many kinds of circumstance, and it helps develop a variety of transferable skills that are applicable to many kinds of careers.” In a time when people often have multiple careers, it is “an education in adaptability.” �e Core, Quigley says, teaches students “how to develop an individual voice, how to argue a case, how to weigh competing principles and conflicting criteria, how to listen well, how to make sophisticated judgments, how to write effectively, how to ask unorthodox questions, and how to develop unexpected answers.” As the recession eliminates more and more jobs, he argues, there is no more valuable education than the Core’s training in intellectual flexibility.
D
uring rocky financial times, it is more difficult than ever for Columbia to reconcile its academic ideology with its business plan. �at plan poses particular challenges for the humanities. Founded on the belief that knowledge is inherently valuable, they are not easily commodified. For the humanities to fit into the new University business model, they will need to promote their concrete advantages, to emphasize their connection to the practical, not just the theoretical. Quigley’s views are echoed by Lisa Carnoy, who graduated from Columbia College in 1989. Carnoy, who was named a top banker under the age of 40 by Investment Dealers’ Digest in 2006, states in a Forbes article, “It turned out that Columbia’s core curriculum was essential in helping me develop good judgment and reasoning skills, which are vital to me today. Nothing in life is ever going to be as hard as taking a stand on a philosophical point raised by Kant or Plato.” Many administrators make this argument for the Core, packaging it as preparation for lucrative fields like finance or corporate law. In offering his vision of the humanities, Quigley references Goethe, one of the names inscribed on the façade of Butler Library. A good education, he says, is “a matter of providing young people with roots and wings, with an ability to ground their personalities in chosen aspects of personal and social history, and with a capacity to acquire and refine the abilities needed to create a better self and a better world.” �e humanities provide the space for that self-development. Is there any more important task? �e University is forging a new educational dogma to meet changing demands. What remains to be seen is whether this repackaging—the humanities stripped of their stature— will alter or distort the fundamental intellectual principles of the liberal arts. For now, Columbia appears to be something of a last bastion of liberal education. Its charge is to protect that education from the many roadblocks—financial and ideological— that lie ahead. a
10
Where Have All the Cowboys Gone? FILM
how the western was lost BY PETER LABUZA PHOTO COURTESY OF WARNER BROS. PICTURES
I don’t recall ever going to see a western when I was growing up, but when I became interested in classic Hollywood, I rented as many as I could. �e films were simply marvelous: the excitement of lone heroes, standing for truth and justice against the lawless villains of the frontier. �ey came to town, restored the rights of the townsfolk, then rode off into the sunset. As I watched John Wayne and Gary Cooper walking tall, I couldn’t help but wonder why cinematic heroes today don’t have that same sort of mythical status. �e western is often described as the most recognizably American genre, largely because those movies take a nostalgic look back at an American landscape that no longer exists. Movies like Stagecoach, High Noon, and Shane represent the best of American ideals from 1930s to the 1950s—masculinity through strength, the power of individual authority, and a truly American attitude about getting things done. But these sorts of heroes have been absent on-screen for some time. Action stars like Bruce Willis and Jason Statham just don’t carry themselves with the same strength and presence—the western hero simply stands while the action hero needs to shoot. Sure, every once in a while a major studio releases a western—think of films like 3:10 to Yuma, �e Assassination of Jesse James,
and even No Country for Old Men. While these films present critiques of the old western formula through a retrospective lens, they lack the idealistic vision that made the westerns of the past so enjoyable. So why did the western, America’s most iconic film genre, disappear in the 1960s? Perhaps an examination of Howard Hawks’ 1959 classic Rio Bravo, released 50 years ago this week, could help answer my burning question. At first, Rio Bravo may seem to lack many of its genre’s typical traits. �e plot is strange, as far as westerns go—instead of an action-packed adventure, men sit around a jail and talk. Local sheriff John Wayne hauls antagonist Claude Akins to jail for murder. Later, his villainous gang prepares to break their comrade out while Wayne and his ragtag group wait for the impending storm. During that time, there are no shots of the frontier, only a few gunfights, and no final showdown. So why is Rio Bravo considered an iconic western? Like other Hawks films, including �e Big Sleep and Only Angels Have Wings, Rio Bravo explores the theme of masculinity through professionalism. Although Wayne is billed as the star, the true focus of the film is Dean Martin as a sheriff recovering from alcoholism. Martin spends the entire movie attempting to sober up so he can once again restore his strong, masculine image as the best gunslinger in town. But the protagonists of westerns are not supposed to be weak or recovering—they should be perfect, iconic heroes. Despite its cultural status, Rio Bravo is, at heart, a deconstruction of the western film. It is shot mostly indoors so that we
Classic westerns convey American values, but Rio Bravo has a sense of realism that’s lacking in other cowboy flicks.
never see the boundless horizon that dominates the films of John Ford, Hawks’ contemporary. Rio Bravo is also about a group of individuals working together—Wayne, Martin, Walter Brennan, and Ricky Nelson—rather than a single man promoting justice on his own. Rio Bravo takes the generic western formula and gives it a sense of realism. Iconic westerns like John Ford’s �e Searchers are grandiose stories of epic proportions, but Rio Bravo is simple, believable, and practical. Maybe that’s why filmmakers like John Carpenter and Quentin Tarantino often
RIO BRAVO HAS ONLY A FEW GUNFIGHTS AND NO FINAL SHOWDOWN, BUT IT’S STILL CLASSIC. cite Rio Bravo as a major influence on their own work: It plays with the genre’s formula by featuring characters that seem sensible. But Rio Bravo’s release came at a turning point in American history, just as the 1960s were beginning. During that decade, a generation turned away from its leaders and toward themselves, while the counterculture movement made it difficult to believe in heroes. New role models came in the form of over-sexualized gangsters in Bonnie and Clyde and the ultimate rebels at the center of Easy Rider. �ere was no longer any place for a great American symbol like the honorable cowboy. When Italian filmmaker Sergio Leone made his 1964 western A Fistful of Dollars, starring Clint Eastwood, he made sure of one thing—Eastwood’s goal was not to serve justice, but to get paid. In America’s changing landscape, the western hero was seen as a relic of the past, someone with no relevance in a world defined by protests, assassinations, and war. Comic book heroes in films like Spider-Man and �e Dark Knight seem to have replaced the western hero today, but these heroes also have to question their motives and whether they are truly fighting for good—something the traditional western hero would never do. And while many western films are considered classics, Rio Bravo is one of the best because of the way it strays from the formula. �at movie stands out by positing that paragons can be real people with problems who nevertheless defend the world against criminals and outlaws. In a world that too often criticizes America instead of praising it, defending classic American ideals seem more important than ever. Maybe this would be the perfect time to turn to films like Rio Bravo for an image of what idealized men could be—flawed, perhaps, but still fighting for the good of their country. a
11
DANCE
�e Dance Divide the growing gap between traditional dance and streetform in musical theater BY MADDY KLOSS ILLUSTRATION BY REBEKAH KIM
The phrases “pop, lock, and drop” and “Broadway musical” may seem completely unrelated, but surprisingly, they can be definitively linked. Though hip-hop and club dancing have yet to take over musical theater choreography, the influence of street dance has slowly but surely been creeping onto the Great White Way. �is may just be a temporary phase of dance in theater, soon to be replaced with the changing times. But, at least for now, professional theater choreographers must adapt their work to fit the constantly shifting vision of what contemporary audiences expect Broadway shows to portray. Just as the message of Broadway has morphed over the last 70 years, theater choreography has accumulated influences ranging from classical ballet to Latin fusion and evolved to reflect trends in movement and music. At the beginning of Broadway’s “Golden Age” in the 1940s, dance first began expanding upon shows’ themes in a way words alone could not. As choreographer for Oklahoma!, Agnes de Mille pioneered the “dream ballet,” in which professional dancers temporarily replaced the actors and furthered the plot through dance and pantomime. Oklahoma! is one of the most groundbreaking musicals in terms of choreography, primarily because de Mille was the first to develop character through movement.
ON BROADWAY TODAY, “THERE’S A LOT MORE FOCUS ON TRICKS, LIKE, CAN YOU KICK YOURSELF IN THE HEAD?” Bob Fosse, another renowned Broadway choreographer, ushered in a revolution in theater dance with his stylized, sensual, jazz-inspired movement. In his signature choreography, body parts that traditionally had been aligned and turned-out according to classical form suddenly became wrenched inward or arched dramatically. In classic Fosse productions such as Sweet Charity and �e Pajama Game, dancers slink around the stage, drape themselves suggestively over chairs, or peer coyly from under bowler hats. Fosse’s technique is the most frequently copied dance style in theater today. His re-interpretation
12
of Broadway choreography also set the stage for the influx of more modern and jazz dance. Bill T. Jones’ angsty modern movements for Spring Awakening and the balletic choreography crafted by Garth Fagan for The Lion King exhibit traces of these previously popular dance styles. But In the Heights breaks new ground with its Tony Award-winning fusion of break dancing, hip-hop, Latin, and jazz. Judging by In the Heights’ popularity, the cutting-edge choreography is a hit, and just might spark a full-blown trend toward edgier, funkier dance on Broadway. Allyson Tucker, a professional dancer and veteran of six Broadway productions, has observed the recent evolution of theater dance and its trend toward hip-hop. “I’ve noticed more pluses than minuses,” she says, “especially with the ability to infuse more street funk and hiphop into choreography.” The turn toward styles like hip-hop and club dancing, which have only become popularized in the last 20 years or so, prompts an important question: will older performers, who have not grown up with the influence of street dance, be able to keep up with the booty-popping and grinding skills of younger dancers? Tucker seems to believe that there is no definite favoritism toward younger dancers on Broadway these days. The most important quality a dancer can possess is not the ability to pop and lock, but versatility. “You want a trained dancer that can morph,” Tucker says. That necessary versatility extends into dance-flavored gymnastics. A surge in dar-
ing acrobatic stunts tends to favor younger performers, making choreography as much of a spectacle as it is an art. “There’s a lot more focus on tricks, like, can you kick yourself in the head?” Tucker says. “There’s a real call for people to push themselves to dangerous levels.” Tucker believes that this is due to the influence of television shows like MTV’s America’s Best Dance Crew and Bravo’s Step It Up and Dance. These competitions promote dancers who take enormous risks with their movements. However, watching these awe-inspiring performers on television can actually be detrimental to young dancers. Inexperienced dancers often try steps they are not strong enough to handle, and end up getting injured. “Younger performers often think they’re invincible,” says Tucker. “I’d never give up the experience of my age.” The Broadway dance divide stands as such: fresh and funky young dancers pulled off the street with little formal training performing alongside veterans with 20 years of classical ballet experience. Strangely enough, such a seemingly odd pairing can actually be effective. This abundance of differing dance styles and attitudes helps keep Broadway interesting, and the influx of new talent motivates older performers to kick their highest and turn their fastest in order to keep up. Though it is difficult to predict exactly how long the current daredevil spirit and blossoming hip-hop aesthetic of Broadway choreography will last, one thing is certain: dance will continue to be an integral part of musical theater, no matter what the current trends dictate. a
Now and �en DANCE
comparing dance in original musicals with their revivals BY HANNAH MACKLER PHOTO COURTESY OF JOAN MARCUS
Michael Kidd. Jerome Robbins. Bob Fosse. �e choreography of these legends flourished during the Broadway musical’s Golden Age in the ’50s, ’60s, and ’70s. Now, 2009’s audiences are putting their work to the test. Revivals of Guys and Dolls, West Side Story, and Chicago—each of which, respectively, displays the genius of one of those venerable choreographers— are all currently on Broadway. �ese landmarks of musical theater and dance history come to life once again for audiences who already know their stories, love their songs, and have seen their film versions. Generally, those audiences leave the revivals somewhat disappointed—except when it comes to the dancing. Perhaps this is because their expectations for that aspect of the show are not particularly high: Choreography just isn’t a part of the average American’s everyday life. Or maybe the dancing really is that good. But what makes the choreography so strong that it can reach an audience in 2009, even though it was originally created for spectators of different era? As Liza Gennaro, professor of dance at Barnard and a choreographer, notes, “Musical theater is a reflection of the moment in which it is created.” Guys and Dolls, West Side Story, and Chicago were each created at a particular moment, and each also depicts a very specific period. Guys and Dolls and West Side Story reflect the 1950’s America in which they were born. Clear ties between choreography and time period were no accident on the parts of Kidd and Robbins, respectively. �e athleticism and hyper-masculinity of Kidd’s dancing gamblers reflect the nation’s post-World War II attitudes. �e tension that Robbins’ Jets and Sharks generate when they dance around each other onstage mirrors the daily newspaper reports about gang warfare that were taped up in the cast’s dressing rooms. Audiences of the ’50s lived in the world that these shows stylized—a world that’s unavoidably alien to today’s audience. �e revivals of those two shows try to make due by adjusting what time period is presented: Guys and Dolls takes a dramatic step back into the Depression era. West Side Story more subtly separates itself from any specific time through modern costuming and the addition of an abstract dance number during the song “Somewhere.” However, these time shifts are more jarring than anything, especially since the revivals’ choreographers rely heavily on Kidd’s and Robbins’ original work, which is itself greatly tied to the ’50s. Unlike those two artists, whose custom-tailored their choreography to each show, Fosse had a distinct, immediately recognizable movement technique—he prioritized dance’s style over its integra-
tion into a narrative. Fittingly, Chicago’s emphasis is on performance itself: �e musical satirizes the conscious role-playing and insincerity present in our world and is very self-conscious of the fact that it is a form of entertainment. While murder is performed on stage in West Side Story, in Chicago, murder itself becomes a show.
AUDIENCES TEND TO LEAVE REVIVALS DISAPPOINTED— EXCEPT WHEN IT COMES TO THE DANCING. Although Chicago certainly reflects its setting— the prohibition era—in terms of narrative as well as its Vaudeville-inspired structure, Fosse’s movement vocabulary reflects Fosse in 1975. But this is not a problem, since in this show, authenticity is thrown out the window from the start. Fosse completely disregarded the notion that dances must be integrated into the narrative, exhibiting a postmodern attitude that would meet more acceptance in years to come. In contrast, part of the problem with the revival of West Side Story is that in the original, the choreography is seamlessly integrated into the story, which was in turn interwoven with the real world. In the 2009 version, director Arthur Laurents attempts to produce authenticity by introducing Spanish dialogue and toning down some of the dancing while heightening the musical’s violence. Nevertheless, its gang members still execute pirouettes and tour jetés. To some degree, Laurents’ ventures into realism underestimate the effect of Robbins’ choreography. In a musical, reality must necessarily be suspended A dramatic dip in West Side Story.
to make room for a more creative telling of a story through a means that can only exist on stage. Chicago does not have the same translation problems that West Side Story and to some extent Guys and Dolls do, since its 1975 audience had no more connection to the period represented than does today’s audience. Perhaps this accounts for Chicago’s success—the revival has been running since 1996— and the corresponding mixed-to-poor reviews that have been directed at the revivals of West Side Story and Guys and Dolls that opened this year. So what do contemporary audiences end up receiving from these revivals, particularly in terms of dancing? “In the case of West Side Story,” Gennaro notes, “the dance is an authorship.” �e choreography in this musical tells part of the story, and, in a sense, acts as the glue holding the show together. �e presence of Robbins’ choreography in the revival lends support to the show as a whole, while the revival of Guys and Dolls, for instance, may suffer because the dancing there does not play as vital a role in the narrative in the first place. Chicago’s revival, interestingly, has been more successful than its original run, perhaps showing how ahead of the curve Fosse’s innovative choreography was. �en again, maybe we shouldn’t even bother comparing a revival to the original—as Gennaro says, “�e director will decide what he [or] she wants to accomplish with the revival and it should be judged within the context of those directorial decisions.” Ultimately, the value in seeing a revival lies in observing the consequences of these directorial decisions. Perhaps it will turn out that the new direction is actually a wrong turn, as appears to be the case in Guys and Dolls—but maybe, as in Chicago, that new direction will give the show a certain je ne sais quoi that was lacking the first time around. a
asdfasdefadsf
13
FOOD
Corn Off the Cob a closer look at america’s favorite crop BY JANINE CARPENTER ILLUSTRATION BY MEREDITH PERRY
In the 1700s, Americans celebrated a revolutionary agricultural achievement: the corncob. Native to the New World, sweet corn emerged from thousands of years of domestication to become a favorite of colonial settlers over the next three centuries. As Caribbean-grown sugar simultaneously made the drastic transition from consumer luxury to household staple, the idea that corn would one day replace cane sugar as America’s primary sweetener would have seemed just as controversial as the idea of corn-based biofuel and bioproducts are today. �ese days, corn sweeteners seem much more important than sweet corn. According to the Corn Refiners Association, “Last year, corn sweeteners supplied more than 55 percent of the U.S. nutritive sweetener market.” In fact, Americans are consuming more calories in the form of cornsweetened drinks than ever before—in Brooklyn alone, about 139 million gallons of soda, equivalent to 20,000 acres of corn, are consumed each year. �at’s larger than the area of Manhattan. Clearly, a major transformation in the American diet has taken place. Whether or not we should care that synthetic corn sweeteners have largely replaced table sugar is another question. Walter Willett, professor of epidemiology and nutrition at Harvard University, thinks we should care—a lot. In King Corn, a 2007 documentary, Dr. Willet states that obesity may be the “most conspicuous symptom of the nutritional crisis occurring in America.” But increased girth is only part of the problem: “high consumption of sweeteners like high fructose corn syrup has quite adverse metabolic effects,” he continues. �e history of USDA agricultural policies and farm subsidies helps explain how our country made the transition from sucrose to corn syrup. In an interview, Gabriella M. Petrick, assistant professor of food studies at NYU, explains that “industrial farming is a product of the post-WWII economy.” During the Great Depression, when people tended to be poor and undernourished, new agricultural practices led to overproduction and, subsequently, cheap food. More recent changes in technological infrastructure have led to an even greater shift over the past 25-30 years: While Americans once ate too few calories altogether, now we tend toward consuming too many empty calories. But according to Dr. Petrick, corn alone can’t account for America’s expanding waistline. “Not to say that corn doesn’t contribute, but it could be a million things people associate with corn, with processed food,” she says. “It could just as easily be soy, which is equally ubiquitous in our diets.”
14
She adds that our dietary problems probably have more to do with the changing availability of food calories and the lack of moderation in people’s diets than they do with corn. Dr. Petrick points out that it’s easy enough to tell people to eat more fruits and vegetables, but the price of produce poses great limits on people’s food choices and likewise shapes their eating habits. “Obesity is class-based. �e working class and the working poor suffer more,” she says.
“LAST YEAR, CORN SWEETENERS SUPPLIED MORE THAN 55 PERCENT OF THE U.S. NUTRITIVE SWEETENER MARKET.” According to Dr. Marion Nestle, author of Food Politics: How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition and Health, we should focus on reducing corn subsidies rather than narrowly fixating our national awareness on high fructose corn syrup. �ose subsidies also fund corn production for use as cattle feed, even though cows’ stomachs are made to digest grass. “Cheap feed promotes industrial meat production, with all of its environmental and health implications,” she explains. “CAFOs (confined animal feeding operations) ... have truly dreadful effects on the environments of the communities in which they operate, are not healthy for animals, and overuse antibiotics, which affects human health. Corn subsidies make CAFOs possible.” Corn-fed beef can also contain up to seven times as much saturated fat as grass-fed beef. Additionally, livestock is responsible for 70 percent of antibiotic consumption in the United States. It doesn’t take an Ivy League-educated brain to
guess where all those antibiotics eventually end up: unsuspecting consumers. But how did corn get so cheap? Before the 1970s, corn farmers primarily produced food. But after President Richard Nixon appointed Earl Butz as secretary of agriculture in 1971, America’s corn crop was transformed from a food into an industrial raw material used in food processing. As a result of subsidizing farmers to overproduce corn, a few farms expanded at the expense of many other smaller family farms. As expected, those small family farms gradually disappeared while major agribusiness corporations flourished. Over the course of the next 10 years, $190 billion in taxes will go towards corn subsidies. Our tax dollars are subsidizing junk food corporations’ cheap use of high fructose corn syrup, America’s obesity epidemic, and the lack of diversity within our diets—and that’s without taking corn-based biofuels and bioproducts into consideration—things that affect our environment as well as our food security. Perhaps our money would be better off subsidizing healthier foods, like fruit and vegetables. At least Ina Tsagarakis, Columbia’s registered dietitian, has some reassuring words. “Dining Services prides themselves on preparing food fresh. Most of our ingredients come in fresh and our chefs prepare meals each and every day,” she says. “When you use fresh ingredients, you do not have to worry about HFCS [high fructose corn syrup]. Some prepared products may have HFCS, but as mentioned, our use of prepackaged, convenience foods is minimal. Only the Regular Russian Dressing and fountain soda contain HFCS.” Then again, she also admits, “While we surely try to purchase local meats at every opportunity and our meats are sometimes provided by local farms and are pasture-raised and antibiotic-free, the majority is produced by conventional methods.” That’s right: government-subsidized corn. a
On the Lookout: Gareth Pugh STYLE
BY STELLA TAN PHOTO COURTESY OF AFTER PRUFROCK
�e British Are Coming! trendy topshop opens its first american store in soho BY JESSICA SCHWARTZ PHOTO COURTESY OF NITRO:LICIOUS Although it’s been almost 300 years since the United States booted out Great Britain, the English still maintain some sort of magical sway over us. After all, who doesn’t love �e Beatles, pub crawls, and Cadbury chocolate? Today, April 2nd, yet another export from across the pond will reach our shores: Topshop. High Street fashion megahouse Topshop will finally open on Broome and Broadway after several delays and much anticipation—it was originally set to debut in November 2008. Sir Philip Green, owner of Arcadia Group—Topshop’s parent company—and the seventh-richest man in Britain, explains to the press that drastic reconstruction and remodeling pushed back the store’s inauguration. Luckily, the store’s postponed opening has not put off fans of the British chain. Blogs like nitro:licious have been saturated with fashionistas’ declarations of love for Topshop. Many bloggers are promising to be more than ready to tackle tweens in order to snag the elusive giveaways—including free T-shirts, beauty treatments, and candy—set to be distributed on opening day. In the past few weeks, Topshop has handed out free bags in Washington Square Park, and rumors abound that that celebrities like model and guest designer Kate Moss will be present for the store’s debut party. �at’s a lot of hoopla for the opening of a chain store—what, exactly, is all the commotion about? Some background information, for the less fashion-minded: Topshop prides itself on delivering the latest dresses, tops, bottoms, shoes, jewelry, bags, and so on, at accessible prices. Okay, maybe H&M, Forever 21, Zara, and UNIQLO all offer similar deals, but somehow Topshop has managed to outdo its competition back home and hopes for similar success here.
True to its roots, Topshop offers styles with a British edge, some of which seem made only for runway models. It’s no coincidence that Kate Moss designs for the store each season—her ninth collection debuts the very same day the New York store opens. Even Topshop’s “Miami” and “Memphis” collections for Spring 2009 are imbued with a sophistication and gusto that practically yell “London.” Take it from me, a Miami resident: no one there walks around in mint green trilby hats. Since the launch of the U.S. Web site, thousands of purchases have been made online and delivered to customers on this side of the Atlantic. Fashion bloggers cannot wait to shop in person at the SoHo locale. Not all the hype surrounding Topshop’s opening is positive. Shoppers familiar with the chain are quick to point out that the quality of the merchandise is less than superb. �en again, is quality really what matters for seasonal clothes? As the name implies, aren’t they meant to last exactly that—one season? It must also be said that Topshop’s prices aren’t as low as those of other trendy stores, although they will offer a 10 percent discount to students. Moreover, some New Yorkers begrudge yet another large chain setting up shop on SoHo’s streets. In this tight economy, many people are worried about the survival of the small, stand-alone boutiques scattered throughout that neighborhood. Despite these complaints, Topshop is still garnering a lot of positive press and guarantees to be quite a sight. The New York store will offer services similar to those at its massive London flagship: shoppers will be able to consult style advisors and take advantage of an in-store salon. Many west-coast bloggers are already demanding that a branch be opened in San Francisco or Los Angeles so that they, too, can take advantage of all this British import has to offer. As lucky New Yorkers, we should take the Beatles’ song to heart and not let the chance to shop at Topshop pass us by. a
Cynical folks say there’s nothing new in fashion, but the Paris runways served up a fresh retort this season in the form of Gareth Pugh. �e British designer, who once dressed a model in a velvet poodle costume with condom-balloon ears, has never been short on surprises. Yet Pugh’s fall 2009 collections combined his characteristic invention with a maturity of vision that took even jaded industry veterans by storm. His first menswear line, a dark and gritty mash-up of android-inspired looks, debuted in January and earned him an important new fan: luxury goods conglomerate Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton. LVMH’s CEO announced shortly after that his company would finance Pugh’s shows.
What seems like a mundane business partnership is actually a ray of hope—not only for the 27-year-old’s career, but also for an industry struggling to balance creative progress with economic feasibility. Despite garnering critical acclaim immediately after graduating from design school in 2003, Pugh created his famous first collection as a London club kid squatting in an abandoned warehouse. He didn’t sell a single piece until 2007. Even now, Pugh, a former costume designer, has staunchly refused to compromise his ideas in favor of commercial appeal, continually pushing the boundaries of silhouette and experimenting with everything from chain mail to electrically charged plastic to dead rats (a commentary on fur). LVMH’s support of Pugh bolsters fashion’s status as an evolving art and as a forum for conceptual innovation. Pugh’s unconventional aesthetic seems to be catching on. Most recently, Beyoncé herself donned a Gareth Pugh creation—granted, not the velvet poodle—to the MTV Europe Music Awards, and the designer has also been commissioned to style Ken for Barbie’s 50th birthday gallery exhibit in London. �e rumor mill has even named Pugh as a possible candidate to take the reins as head designer at LVMH giant Dior Homme. �is endlessly energetic wunderkind has emerged from the fall shows as one of fashion’s most promising new voices. a
15