USC Dornsife Magazine Fall 2016-Winter 2017

F O R A L U M N I A N D F R I E N D S O F U S C D A N A A N D D AV I D D O R N S I F E C O L L E G E O F L E T T E R S , A R T S A N D S C I E N C E S

fall 2016 / winter 2017

The Politics Issue

HEARTBEAT

OF A NATION USC Dornsife scholars examine the modern political landscape to get a read on the country’s pulse.

Magazine

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CON T R I BU T OR DAVID SALO ’91 Head Coach for USC Men’s and Women’s Swimming

According to David Salo, alumnus and 11-year USC head swim coach, the secret to great coaching is thinking like a scholar. Salo earned a Ph.D. in exercise physiology from USC Dornsife in 1991 and is the author of two books on his evidencebased approach to training swimmers.

“Usually coaches say, ‘Do more and you’ll get faster,’ ” Salo said. “But based on my research, I disagree.”

Salo’s record speaks for itself: He has led a number of swimmers to major championships. His protégé list includes Rio Olympic medalists Katinka Hosszu and Amanda Weir. (For a list of USC Dornsife students and alumni who won medals in Rio, see page 68.)

Salo’s unique methodology is based on the premise of swimming for less time at a higher intensity — a strategy that has proven successful even for distance racers.

However, Salo is adamant that he will never employ a coaching strategy without data to back it up.

“It’s the lesson of a Ph.D.,” he said. “You have to justify what you tell your athletes to do. You have to be analytical and never spout out ideas you can’t defend.”

PHOTO by Peter Zhaoyu Zhou Portrait courtesy of David Salo

Educating Enlightened Electors interim ASsistant dean for communication

Mira Zimet

Executive director of publications / art director

Dan Knapp

editor-in-chief

This November, American voters will participate in one of the most important presidential elections of our time. At its core, the word “election” is defined as “the right, power or privilege of making a choice.” As a scientist and an educator, I am drawn to this lesser-known meaning of the word, which divorces it from conventional politics and links it to the idea that the power to make informed decisions is our most valuable privilege.

Darrin S. Joy

WRITERS AND EDITORS

Susan Bell Michelle Boston Laura Paisley DESIGNERS

Letty Avila Matthew Pla Savino videographer and photographer

Mike Glier

Communications assistant

Deann Webb

contributORs Emily Cavalcanti, Joanna Clay, Lynell George, Emily Gersema, Andrew Good, Lizzie Hedrick USC Dornsife administration Amber Miller, Dean • Charles McKenna, Vice Dean for Natural Sciences • Peter C. Mancall, Vice Dean for the Humanities & Social Sciences • Steven Lamy, Vice Dean for Academic Programs • Donal Manahan, Vice Dean for Students • George Sanchez, Vice Dean for Diversity & Strategic Initiatives • Stephen Mackey, Chief Operating Officer & Senior Associate Dean • Eddie Sartin, Senior Associate Dean for Advancement • Kathleen Speer, Senior Associate Dean USC Dornsife Board of Councilors Jana Waring Greer, Chair • Robert Alvarado • William Barkett • Leslie Berger • Robert D. Beyer • Susan Casden • Richard S. Flores • Shane Foley • Lisa Goldman • Pierre Habis • Yossie Hollander • Janice Bryant Howroyd • Martin Irani • Dan James • Stephen G. Johnson • Suzanne Nora Johnson • Peter YS Kim • Yoon Kim • Samuel King • Arthur Lev • Robert Osher • Gerald Papazian • Lawrence Piro • Kelly Porter • Michael Reilly • Harry Robinson • Stephanie Booth Shafran • Carole Shammas • Glenn A. Sonnenberg • Kumarakulasingam “Suri” Suriyakumar usc dornsife magazine Published twice a year by the USC Dornsife Office of Communication at the University of Southern California. © 2016 USC Dornsife College.

The diverse opinions expressed in USC Dornsife Magazine do not necessarily represent the views of the editors, USC Dornsife administration or USC. USC Dornsife Magazine welcomes comments from its readers to magazine@dornsife.usc.edu or USC Dornsife Magazine, 1150 S. Olive St. T2400, Los Angeles, CA 90015

Amber Miller Dean of USC Dornsife Anna H. Bing Dean’s Chair

i l l u s t r a t i o n b y l e tt y a v i l a

At USC Dornsife, students interact with renowned experts from every possible field of study. The classes students take afford them opportunities to discover which problems and challenges they feel strongly about and which approaches resonate most with their interests and talents. Students passionate about arresting climate change might pursue atmospheric science, nonprofit management or the history of environmental policy and movements, while those hoping to combat disease might study biological sciences, economics or literature (such as Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain) and criticism (such as Susan Sontag’s Illness as Metaphor). The liberal arts give students the capacity to serve as global citizens, expanding their minds to think analytically, flexibly and with a driving sense of curiosity At Columbia University, one of the most gratifying courses I taught was “Science, Politics and Critical Thinking.” This seminar challenged students to pull headline stories from the news and subject them to rigorous questioning using analytical tools practiced daily in the liberal arts and sciences. The key was not just to learn to draw one’s own conclusions, but to seek the truth, whether it agreed with one’s opinions or not. As dean of USC Dornsife, I am honored to lead this community of current and future thinkers, with the hope that ultimately the elections our students make will generate a stronger, more sustainable and more peaceful future.

Contents

fall 2 0 1 6 / winter 2 0 1 7 2 4

From the Dean Life Line

New leader installed; IAS celebrates 11 years; Olympians made better through bioengineering; L.A.’s role in sci-fi explored.

5 social dornsife Alumnus finds a higher purpose underground.

6 from the heart of usc Researcher links genes to feelings; USC Dornsife welcomes its 22nd dean; Writing course links students with community.

7

Curriculum

8 Archive 10 Profile

13 Lexicon 14 In the politics issue

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Make ’Em Laugh

When it comes to politics, a dose of comedy can offer some relief from all of the posturing, polarization and news oversaturation. But can humor also influence our political ideologies? By Michelle Boston

32

Political Science

Scientific advisers have counseled presidents at least as far back as Franklin D. Roosevelt. Still, many politicians and much of the public seem slow to trust them — a situation that needs a remedy, and soon. By Darrin S. Joy

36

Vietnamese Horror Story

America has always regarded the Vietnam War as its own personal horror story. USC Dornsife scholars examine the legacy of what even the Vietnamese still refer to as “The American War.” By Susan Bell

44 i l l u s t r at i o n by r i c h a r d m i a

56

E Pluribus Unum

The Field

22 Our

World

62 Legacy

63 dornsife family Alumnus still busts a move; Religious leader comes out as social activist; Dornsife athletes excel at Rio Olympics.

63 Faculty

News

64 Faculty

Canon

67 Alumni

News

66 Alumni

and Student Canon

71 Remembering

Five alumni build on their USC Dornsife experiences to launch careers in politics and public service, representing both their alma mater and their fellow citizens. By Susan Bell, Michelle Boston, Lynell George and Laura Paisley

72 in my opinion

The Life of the Party

on the cover

In a saga lasting more than 200 years, political parties in the United States have shifted, evolved and, more importantly, persisted. By Laura Paisley

Divided We Fall

Toward a more perfect union.

Take a closer look at the rhythms of our nation’s political heart.

Illustration by Richard Mia.

Life Line

NEWS AND EVENTS

april

4.16.16

More than 600 guests gather at the Beverly Hilton Hotel to celebrate the 11th anniversary of the USC Institute of Armenian Studies.

6.28.16

8.26.16

9.27.16 “The goal for us is not to keep

pace, but to leapfrog ahead.”

Amber Miller is installed as USC Dornsife’s 22nd dean.

For more on Miller see page 10.

The USC Shoah Foundation Center for Advanced Genocide Research organizes a conference, co-sponsored with the USC Latino Alumni Association, to mark the 20th anniversary of the signing of the Guatemalan peace accords which ended decades of civil war.

OCTOBER

10.5.16

septemBer

The USC Biomechanics Research Lab, led by Jill McNitt-Gray, professor of biological sciences and biomedical engineering, brings science and engineering support to U.S. athletes competing in the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio.

10.28.16–10.29.16

november

Organized by Assistant Professor in the Practice of English DAVID ULIN and Professor of History WILLIAM DEVERELL, the SCIENCE FICTION LOS ANGELES conference explores the critical role L.A. has played in science fiction.

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The Los Angeles Press Club recognizes USC Dornsife Magazine with two awards at the 58th Annual Southern California Journalism Awards, including the top prize in the in-house or corporate magazine category.

august

8.8.16

USC Dornsife officially welcomes 18 new faculty members.

Learn more at dornsife.usc.edu/ new-faculty-2016/.

6.26.16

july

USC and The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens announce a renewed commitment to their joint advanced research enterprises: the USCHuntington Early Modern Studies Institute and the Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West.

june

7.1.16

John Wilson, professor of spatial sciences and sociology, speaks at the first-ever Esri science symposium aimed at connecting geographers and geographical information scientists with researchers in other fields.

tweets actress and activist America Ferrera (B.A., international relations, ’13) hours before being honored at the 83rd Annual USC Alumni Awards. Alumna and social work leader SUZANNE DWORAK-PECK (B.A., psychology, ’65) is also recognized.

11.5.16 HOMECOMING 2016 finds Troy hoping to roast the University of Oregon Ducks, following last year’s heartbreaking 48-38 loss in Eugene.

G a l a photo c o u r t e s y o f th e USC I n s t i t u t e o f A r m e n i a n St u d i e s ; H u m a n i t i e s i l l u s t r a t i o n b y L e tt y A v i l a ; LA X T h e m e B u i l d i n g i l l u s t r a t i o n c o u r t e s y o f a n d © T h e L u c k m a n P a r t n e r s h i p, I n c . | a S a l a s O ’ B r i e n Comp a n y ; H om e c om i n g i m a g e s c o u r t e s y o f USC Ath l e t i c s D e p a r tm e n t

may

5.22.16

“Can’t believe I’m getting honored by my alma mater! A long way from all those Leavey Library all-nighters!”

S o c ial D O R N S I F E YouTube Frontline Scholar: Justin Arana

Augmented Reality

USC Dornsife Magazine offers a great digital experience using the Layar App.

Download the free Layar App

a r a n a photo c o u r t e s y o f j u s t i n a r a n a ; g o n z a l e s photo b y m i k e g l i e r ; j a c a r a n d a photo b y m i c h e l l e b o s to n ; s o n g g i r l s photo b y m i r a z i m e t

find this symbol throughout the magazine, hold smart device over the page and click “scan” A Day in the Life of USC Dornsife Justin Arana ’05 was searching for purpose in his life when he traveled to Mozambique. There he encountered the country’s water crisis firsthand and founded the nonprofit organization Water Underground to address the multifaceted problem. Arana, a Frontline Scholar, is among the exceptional USC Dornsife faculty, students and alumni who are advancing human health, preserving and improving our environment, and strengthening our communities. View the video at dornsife.usc.edu/justinarana.

Discover interactive content

CONNECT WITH USC DORNSIFE Check us out on your favorite social media sites. We welcome your posts and tweets for possible inclusion in the next issue of USC Dornsife Magazine. dornsife.usc.edu/facebook Become a fan and get updates in your news feed.

dornsife.usc.edu/twitter Follow our tweets for the latest USC Dornsife news.

Instagram @USCDornsife ’Grams You Heart The top photos you loved from the past year feature Alfonso Gonzales ’15, our oldest graduate at 96, a dazzling view from the Widney Alumni House, and nine USC Song Girls who represent the Trojan Spirit. Add your ‘like’ to these images and more at Instagram.com/USCDornsife.

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dornsife.usc.edu/youtube Watch the latest videos from the USC Dornsife community.

dornsife.usc.edu/instagram Follow our feed for snapshots of the #DornsifeLife.

Fall 2016 / Winter 2017 5

F R O M T H E HE A R T O F U S C Numbers The USC Dornsife/ Los Angeles Times Poll The USC Dornsife/Los Angeles Times Poll is a series of statewide public opinion polls of registered voters in California designed to survey voter attitudes on a range of political, policy, social and cultural issues. Conducted throughout the year, the widely cited poll helps to inform the public and encourage discourse on key political and policy issues.

Eyewitness to History

USC Shoah Foundation — The Institute for Visual History and Education is developing technology to enable current and future students to have “virtual conversations” with Holocaust survivors long into the future.

64% of respondents support legislation that California Gov. Jerry Brown signed into law that will gradually increase the state’s hourly minimum wage from $10 to $15 by 2022.

2/3

of voters support raising the federal minimum wage, which is currently $7.25 per hour.

of voters support a state law that has allowed transgender students in public schools to access any bathroom and participate on teams of their choosing.

53%

of Californians said they favor the Affordable Care Act. dornsife.usc.edu/poll 6

A dozen Holocaust survivors who previously recorded their life stories for the Visual History Archive at USC Shoah Foundation — The Institute for Visual History and Education have given testimony a second time for a pioneering project called New Dimensions in Testimony.

This time, they sat in a light stage at the USC Institute for Creative Technologies, in the center of a half dome lined with a green-screen backdrop and equipped with a system of lights, microphones and more than 50 video cameras. The system captured their testimony so it can be delivered in a learning environment in which a survivor answers questions as if he or she were present.

Whether in a classroom or a museum setting, the technology features the filmed image of the survivor responding to questions conversationally with answers that are authentic and spontaneous. The survivor’s likeness will have the ability to engage with participants who can ask questions that trigger relevant, spoken responses.

Interviewees will be able to answer thousands of questions that cover a vast range of subjects.

New Dimensions in Testimony is especially useful to students. Asking questions of a survivor allows students to

participate actively in their learning and develop important communication and critical-thinking skills.

“With New Dimensions in Testimony, we have revolutionized the very concept and definition of oral history, giving the world another tool to guard against cultural amnesia, whose consequences can be cataclysmic,” said USC Shoah Foundation Executive Director Stephen Smith. “Moreover, our invention offers outside groups a blueprint for similar applications of technology to preserve the stories and physical likenesses of individuals whom audiences can interact with forever.”

An inaugural pilot was undertaken in 2015 at the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center with the first completed interactive testimony of Holocaust survivor Pinchas Gutter of Toronto.

A second pilot also using the Gutter testimony is underway at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

New Dimensions in Testimony will eventually be available at select museums and learning institutions around the world to enhance USC Shoah Foundation’s mission of keeping voices of the Holocaust and other genocides alive for education and action. scan for extras Details Page 5

photo c o u r t e s y o f u s c s ho a h f o u n d a t i o n — T h e I n s t i t u t e f o r V i s u a l H i s to r y a n d Ed u c a t i o n

23 vs.

22 51%

percent of voters who said the Affordable Care Act improved health care for them and their families versus the percent who said it worsened it.

Curriculum

q u i c k photo c o u r t e s y o f th e u s c o f f i c e o f th e p r o v o s t

From Epilepsy to Ecstasy Instructor: Michael Quick, USC provost, senior vice president for academic affairs and professor of biological sciences

Neurological illnesses and mental disorders affect an estimated 1 billion people throughout the world. Setting

aside the tragic human cost, the financial burden is staggering — $760 billion in the United States alone.

Fortunately, a virtual explosion in neuroscience research in recent years has helped increase understanding of many of these disorders. The course “From Epilepsy to Ecstasy: Biological Basis of Neurological Disorders” aims to use this wealth of knowledge to give students interested in neuroscience the basic principles of nervous system function.

Students are encouraged to think of the course as a

semester-long version of the television medical drama “House.” In the weekly series, physician Gregory House and his staff, confronted with a mysteriously ill patient, would act as medical detectives trying to boil down unusual symptoms to reach a diagnosis.

In the USC Dornsife course, offered each spring, Michael Quick leads his students to investigate symptoms from real cases to form hypotheses and systematically rule out possible diagnoses.

Each class offers a new challenge, and as the semester

B isc 4 2 3

progresses, the clinical puzzles become increasingly exotic. In a neural mapping drill called “The Lesion Game,” Quick will tell a student: “You can’t feel any pain in your right arm, and you can’t move your upper torso.” The students order hypothetical tests — check the patient’s Babinski reflex, for example — until they successfully locate the affected neural pathway.

While the course is engaging and fun, the goal is to teach students to think critically, Quick said. “If we’re successful, that’s a skill they’ll carry with them for a lifetime.” —D.S.J.

Alzheimer’s and other diseases stem from the brain’s inability to send signals across synapses, the gaps (blue) separating nerve cells (red) from one another.

USC Dornsife undergraduates can tap into their inner medical sleuths to learn about the nervous system and how to identify the disorders that can upset its delicate balance.

Fall 2016 / Winter 2017 7

Archive

8

the 1960s.

It was 1969, and after witnessing Ronald Reagan’s gubernatorial victory in California, Pulitzer Prize–winning author Norman Mailer decided to launch his bid to be the 104th mayor of New York City.

The Naked and the Dead author entered the Democratic Party primary as a “left conservative” with a provocative platform of secession.

Outraged by a report that New Yorkers paid nearly $14 billion annually in income tax yet received only $3 billion in funds from the federal government, Mailer campaigned with a call to secede from the state of New York and form a 51st state.

The press questioned the sincerity of Mailer and running mate Jimmy Breslin in seeking the two most powerful offices

in the city that never sleeps because of their iconoclastic campaigning style and unconventional ideas. After all, their campaign slogan was “Vote the Rascals In.” “Mailer’s run shows how the power of celebrity can get a candidate noticed,” said Christian Grose, associate professor of political science.

“However, to win, just like any candidate, a celebrity needs

to persuade the electorate that they can govern.”

On June 17, 1969, New Yorkers cast their ballots for mayor. Mailer finished fourth in a field of five candidates with just 41,000 votes. —D.K.

A diverse sampling of campaign buttons sporting a variety of slogans showcases writer Norman Mailer’s unorthodox approach to politics.

photo b y d a n k n a pp

Norman Mailer Collection New York City, 1969 Stop us if you’ve heard this one.

A member of the Manhattan glitterati decides to enter politics. He’s brash, opinionated and has a checkered history with women. He proffers some radical campaign ideas, hoping to ride a wave of antiestablishment sentiment.

Sound familiar? It might — if you lived in the Big Apple in

POLITICAL SCIENCE

F R O M T H E HE A R T O F U S C Recognition

Armenia via L.A.

Students explore the history of the Armenian diaspora in Los Angeles through a Maymester experience.

“I didn’t know any Armenians before coming to California and USC,” said Pedersen, who hopes to become a physician.

“I love the culture and people. The Armenians I know have so much passion.”

In fact, after visiting Armenian social institutions through this course, Pedersen said he would like one day to practice medicine in Armenia.

“Sometimes these passions make their way into your heart, and it’s hard to explain exactly how,” he said. “I think it comes from the love so many Armenian people here have shown to me. Now I want to go there and give back.” —L.H.

Blues Genes

Genoeconomist Daniel Benjamin finds genetic variants linked to feelings of well-being and depression. a r m e n i a photo b y m i k e g l i e r ; l e v i n e photo c o u r t e s y o f n a om i l e v i n e ; p e s a r a n photo b y m a tt m e i n d l ; m a r g l i n photo b y P e t e r Zh a o y u Zho u

Richard Antaramian has a goal: empower students with knowledge to make them more effective citizens. He is making headway through a Maymester course, “The Armenian Diaspora Community in Southern California — Los Angeles.”

Antaramian, Turpanjian Early Career Chair in Contemporary Armenian Studies and assistant professor of history, teaches the course to help students understand the deep history of Armenians living in Southern California.

“My hope is that through this course students who want to serve the community will get a nuanced understanding of how to create better institutions to help Armenian Americans or any immigrant communities,” he said.

Weekly full-day field trips allowed students to explore Armenian churches, markets, schools, social services agencies and other institutions in Los Angeles-area Armenian hubs such as West Hollywood, Pasadena and Glendale.

Each excursion provided an authentic view of the diversity within the expansive Armenian community.

Most Armenian Americans living in the vicinity of L.A. arrived during what is known as the second wave of immigration, which began in the 1960s. The Lebanese Civil War that started in 1975 and the Iranian Revolution of 1979 greatly contributed to the influx of Middle Eastern Armenians, many of whom settled in California.

“Unlike most other immigrant communities, those that live in diaspora are more used to establishing communities in foreign countries — and their central institutions are vital to the people they serve,” Antaramian said.

Ani Abrahamyan, a senior studying industrial psychology, moved to L.A. from Armenia when she was 14.

“I learned so much in this class,” Abrahamyan said.

“Previously, I’d had no idea about Armenian political parties in the U.S., so it was very interesting to learn about Armenian politics here.”

Biological sciences major Jordan Pedersen was the only student in the class not of Armenian descent.

In one of the largest genomic studies to date on behavioral genetics, an international group of scientists has found genetic variants that may influence our sense of well-being, depression and neuroticism.

“We have known for a long time that these traits have a genetic component, but until now, we had identified only a few specific genetic variants related to these traits,” said Daniel Benjamin, associate professor (research) of economics at USC Dornsife’s Center for Economic and Social Research.

The study also revealed that subjective well-being, neuroticism and depression are predominantly influenced by the same set of genes.

“When examined individually, each genetic variant explains very little about these traits,” Benjamin said. “But when taken together, these findings imply that the genetic influences on depression, neuroticism and subjective wellbeing result from the cumulative effects of at least thousands, if not millions, of different variants.”

The scientists said this finding indicates that researchers may want to study these traits jointly.

The researchers also cautioned that genetics is only one factor that influences these psychological traits. The environment is at least as important. —E.G.

NAOMI LEVINE Fellow, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Levine, Gabilan Assistant Professor of Biological Sciences and Earth Sciences, was named to the 2016 class of Sloan Fellows in the ocean sciences division. The two-year fellowships are awarded yearly to early-career scientists and scholars in recognition of distinguished performance and a unique potential to make substantial contributions to their fields.

M. HASHEM PESARAN Fellow, Eurasia Business and Economics Society Pesaran, John Elliot Distinguished Chair in Economics, was recognized as the inaugural Eurasia Business and Economics Society Fellow for his academic achievements and invaluable contributions to time-series econometrics, including modeling, testing and forecasting.

JESSICA MARGLIN Rome Prize, American Academy Marglin, Ruth Ziegler Early Career Chair in Jewish Studies and assistant professor of religion, has been awarded the Rome Prize in Modern Italian Studies by the American Academy in Rome. Recipients of the prize are invited to pursue their individual work during a residency at the academy.

Fall 2016 / Winter 2017 9

Profile

amber miller , 2 2 N D D ean of U S C D ornsife

Amber Miller is an experimental cosmologist who studies the earliest moments of the universe.

As dean, she aims to empower USC Dornsife scholars to help solve society’s many challenges.

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F R O M T H E HE A R T O F U S C

photo b y j oh n l i v z e y

Seeking New Ways of Thinking Amber Miller’s research as an experimental cosmologist has allowed her to look back in time billions of years to the origins of the universe.

Now, as the 22nd dean of USC Dornsife, her sights are set on the future.

Miller brings both a depth and breadth of research and leadership experience driven by what she jokingly describes as her “intellectual impatience.” It has led her to traverse traditional academic boundaries through crossdisciplinary collaborations and to apply her training as an astrophysicist to realworld problems.

“Growing up, I was always interested in both the manmade and natural worlds and how they work, but I was also intrigued by how people work, how institutions and societies work,” she said. “That curiosity led me to keep exploring.

I was always looking for the next subject that I didn’t know about, that I couldn’t yet figure out.”

A California native from Malibu, Miller attended the University of California, Berkeley as an undergraduate, with an invitation to play in the university’s symphony orchestra. She wasn’t sure what she wanted to study until she was introduced to the concept of relativity in a freshman seminar. “I realized there was a whole different way of looking at the world, and that set me off in a new direction.”

Miller declared a physics and astronomy major, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1995. She then attended Princeton University to pursue an M.A. and a Ph.D. in physics. She earned a prestigious Hubble Fellowship at the University of

Chicago and was soon invited to join the faculty of Columbia University, where she started her own research group in 2002. Named dean of science in 2011, she assembled a team of faculty to work on the first strategic plan for the sciences at the university.

Her academic research focuses on understanding the origin of the universe, its fundamental nature and evolution. As a physicist, she led her team to design, build and deploy balloonborne telescopes to gather data on the conditions in the universe when it was less than one second old. Studying the traces of the Big Bang has taken Miller to 17,000 feet above sea level in the Chilean Andes, to the Antarctic ice and to the arid deserts of the Southwest.

Miller has published more than 100 scientific papers, and her honors and awards include a National Science Foundation Career Award, an Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship and a Lenfest Distinguished Faculty Award. In addition, she was a NASA Graduate Research Program Fellow and is a fellow of the American Physical Society.

As Miller developed her early universe research, she also pursued her interest in societal issues by becoming a member in 2008 of the Council on Foreign Relations, among the country’s most respected independent think tanks devoted to international affairs.

“I think, for a lot of academics, they’re most comfortable when they’re deep inside a complex problem,” she said.

“I really enjoy thinking that way as well, but I’m equally intrigued by how the answers to these disparate problems — ones far beyond my discipline — can fit together.”

As a member of the council,

Miller found that her ability to analyze and build the advanced technological equipment needed for her research experiments could also serve her community: In 2009, she became the chief science advisor for the New York Police Department’s Counterterrorism Bureau.

people beyond the university?

How can we help?’ ” Now, as she takes the helm at USC Dornsife, Miller sees exciting opportunities for the College. She believes strongly in USC Dornsife’s capacity to become a model of the heart of a 21st-century research institution — a model

“I’m … intrigued by how the answers to these disparate problems — ones far beyond my discipline — can fit together.”

Serving for two years, she worked with the bureau to create and manage teams to analyze the best use of the city’s counterterrorism equipment. While advising the Police Department, Miller saw how a university research scientist’s analytical thinking and training could support agencies and institutions trying to solve realworld problems.

“That realization opened up a new perspective for me. As faculty and researchers, we have a tremendous amount to offer our communities, and we need to find opportunities to use our intellectual resources to partner with them.

“In an ever more complex and globally interconnected world, the capacity to think analytically is vital. We have a wealth of intellectual talent in our research universities, people whose disciplines train them to deconstruct problems. As a scientist, and now as dean of USC Dornsife, I am constantly asking myself, ‘How can academics apply their skills to engage with

that requires a new way of engaging with the world beyond the university to create positive change.

She is focused on supporting humanities, social sciences and natural sciences scholars in their pursuit of education and the creation of new knowledge and ideas for the sake of inquiry at the highest intellectual level, while also developing opportunities for these scholars and their students to apply their ideas to the many challenges facing society.

“The opportunity to lead at USC Dornsife — the heart of the university — and think deeply about further developing excellence in the production of new knowledge, while rethinking how we engage with the rest of the world and particularly Los Angeles, one of today’s most dynamic cities, is very exciting.”

Video: Watch Dean Miller’s installation address at dornsife.usc.edu/installationaddress

Fall 2016 / Winter 2017 11

F R O M T H E HE A R T O F U S C Word in the news Quotables

“Ali made being a Muslim cool.

Ali made being a Muslim dignified.

Ali made being a Muslim relevant.

Ali put the question of whether a person can be a Muslim AND an American to rest.”

SHERMAN JACKSON, King Faisal Chair in Islamic Thought and Culture and professor of religion and American studies and ethnicity, in a June 9 CNN report on legendary boxer Muhammad Ali’s memorial service, at which Jackson spoke.

“Perhaps one of the reasons why music is a cross-culturally indispensable artifact is that it appeals directly through an auditory channel to emotional and social processing centers of the human brain.”

MATTHEW SACHS, psychology graduate researcher, in a June 17 Popular Science article about his study of why certain people get chills when listening to music.

ANYA SAMEK, associate professor (research) of economics, in a June 28 NPR story highlighting her research on how context affects an adult’s tendency to lie or cheat.

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USC students, through the Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics and the Joint Educational Project, teach teenagers about politics and the value of voting. By Lizzie Hedrick Despite most being bilingual themselves, New Designs Charter Schools students Michael, Cora, Joselyn, Emmanuel, Eduardo and Alejandro finished their group discussion on California’s Multilingual Education Act, split on whether languages other than English should be used for instruction in public schools.

The conversation centered on whether the act, a November 2016 ballot measure, could help students who grew up in Spanish-speaking families by allowing them to receive homework that is in their native tongue — or hinder them later because they might not have the language skills to keep up in high school advanced-placement classes or college seminars taught in English.

“I think it could be a problem if kids are taught math and science in Spanish when they are in elementary school and then want to transition into higher level classes later on,” said Michael, 17.

All seniors studying government at New Designs Charter Schools’ University Park campus are participating in an eight-week program on civic engagement taught by USC undergraduates. The internship program, a partnership between the Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics and the Joint Educational Project (JEP), seeks to engage teenagers in local politics and show them that civic participation can make a difference.

“We wanted to connect students to the issues in their communities that matter and show them how becoming civically engaged can move the needle on important issues,” said Alexandra Bissonnette, deputy director of the Unruh Institute. “Also, since we know that the best way to motivate someone is to have them motivate someone else, our USC students also end up getting excited about the prospect of making change.”

The Civic Engagement Teaching Internship is offered for credit as a political science course. The program, which launched in Fall 2015, comprises eight one-hour sessions on topics such as 2016 ballot

measures and key issues facing each candidate in local Senate and congressional races.

Senior Cashae Ellis co-taught the course at New Designs Charter Schools. The sociology major has both an academic and a personal investment in the program.

“I grew up here, so I know that students don’t get a lot of education and awareness about civic engagement and local politics, so I wanted to give back by teaching it to them.”

Ultimately, the Civic Engagement Teaching Internship aims to increase voter turnout and civic participation in Los Angeles.

“Our hope is that if we educate our youth on practical and essential information about voting and find personal reasons for them to be politically involved, the buy-in from both USC students and local teenagers will be lasting,” said Catherine Shieh, the staff associate at the Unruh Institute who oversees the program.

Bissonnette emphasized that this program can benefit everyone, whether they are eligible to vote or not.

“Even if you’re not able to vote — whether it’s because you’re too young or aren’t a citizen — you can become civically engaged, advocate on behalf of a candidate or cause and persuade others to participate in elections,” she said. “We tell the kids, ‘If you can help turn out five people on Election Day, it’s as if you’ve voted five times.’ ”

c i v i c e n g a g e m e n t photo b y m i k e g l i e r

“For a long time we thought that perhaps we had honest people in the world and we had dishonest people in the world. But what we see now is that context actually really matters.”

Civic Lessons

Lexicon

american studies and ethnicity

WOKE \ wohk \ verb 1. A simple past tense of wake; adjective 1. actively aware of systemic injustices and prejudices, especially those related to civil and human rights.

2. aware of the facts, true situation, etc. (sometimes used facetiously) 3. awake.

Origin: “Woke” derived from the Germanic wak to become the past tense of “wake.” The first use of the term in its current sociopolitical form — calling attention to racial inequality — occurred in the 2008 Erykah Badu song “Master Teacher.” It gained further prominence with the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement and other social justice causes in the United States.

The term has found particularly widespread use in social media, often coupled with “stay” (i.e., “stay woke”) to inspire continued activism and vigilance regarding racial and social inequalities.

Usage: Stay woke: Remember that #BlackTwitter and #BlackLivesMatter were talking about racial and social justice when they encouraged people to #staywoke.

i l l u s t r a t i o n b y A n tho n y F r e d a ; d e l a r a P hoto c o u r t e s y o f J u a n D e L a r a

Juan De Lara is assistant professor of American studies and ethnicity at USC Dornsife.

His current research focuses on social justice and social movements, racial capitalism, urbanization, labor, California and the American West, Los Angeles, and the border between the U.S. and Mexico.

Fall 2016 / Winter 2017 13

In The Field

sociology

Economic Segregation

Neighborhoods are becoming less diverse and more segregated by income — but only among families with children, a new study has found.

Ann Owens, assistant professor of sociology and spatial sciences, examined census data from 100 major U.S. metropolitan areas. She found that, among families with children, neighborhood income segregation is driven by increased income inequality and a previously overlooked factor: school district options.

For high-income families choosing where to live, school districts are a top concern, Owens said. Those in large cities have multiple school districts from which to choose.

Income segregation between neighborhoods rose 20 percent from 1990–2010, and income segregation between neighborhoods was nearly twice as high among households that have children compared to those without.

For childless families, schools are not a priority for selecting a home, which, Owens said, likely explains the reason that the researchers did not see a rise in the income gap or in neighborhood segregation.

“Income inequality has an effect only half as large among childless folks,” said Owens.

The implication: Parents see extra money as a way to buy a home in a higher-performing school district.

A Troubling Sign

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; >40% >10%

50K Metropolitan Statistical Areas have at least one urbanized area of 50,000 or more people.

More than 40 percent of high-income kids’ neighbors have high incomes.

Only about 10 percent of low-income kids’ neighbors have high incomes.

203,872,488 As of 2010, the 100 largest Metropolitan Statistical Areas in the U.S., as defined by the White House Office of Management and Budget, comprised nearly 204 million people.

$

+ Children =More Segregation Income segregation between neighborhoods was nearly twice as high among households with children versus those without.

photo b y l e tt y a v i l a

Increased neighborhood income segregation may be a troubling sign for low-income families.

Studies have shown that integrated learning environments are beneficial for children of disadvantaged households and do no harm to children in higherincome families.

Childless households represent two-thirds of the country’s population.

Income segregation between neighborhoods rose 20 percent among families with children from 1990–2010. It changed little among childless households.

F R O M T H E HE A R T O F U S C

“Neighborhood and school poverty are big drivers of lowincome kids’ poor educational outcomes,” Owens said, “so rising income segregation perpetuates inequality and may reduce poor kids’ mobility.”

Increased availability of data on schools, teacher quality and student achievement have given rise to a sense of competition and rankings. Owens said this increased focus on performance and access to school information may have made school an even greater priority for parents.

Set New Boundaries?

mo n opo l y i s a l i c e n s e d t r a d e m a r k o f p a r k e r b r oth e r s

Policymakers have been trying to address economic inequities through measures such as wage increases, but based on the trend Owens found, they may have another option. She recommended that educational leaders consider redrawing boundaries to reduce the number and fragmentation of school districts in major metropolitan areas. Leaders also should consider designing interdistrict choice plans and strengthening current plans within districts to address inequities.

Changing school attendance policies could be “more feasible than reducing income inequality, raising the minimum wage, instituting metropolitan governance, or creating affordable housing stock to address residential segregation,” Owens wrote in her study.

Many researchers have argued that housing policy can drive education policy, but Owens wrote: “School policy can also be housing policy.”

Of Fruit Flies and Neuroscience

Undergraduates ride the SURF to an invaluable summer research experience.

his ability to work both independently and collaboratively.

“The laboratory environment really encourages initiative,” he said. “I’ve become much more confident and comfortable in both my knowledge of the nervous system and my interaction with others, especially academics.” —S.B.

Life Stories

Writing course allows undergraduates to work with community organizations to tell their stories.

Neuroscience major Daniel Hojoon Kim is determined to become either a neurologist or a neurosurgeon. This summer, he took an important step toward that goal when he joined the laboratory of Dion Dickman, assistant professor of biological sciences.

Dickman’s lab researches synapses — the points of communication between two different cells, usually neurons, in the brain.

“We study how synapses develop and function in general and in particular the remarkable plasticity of synapses, which allows them to change in structure and function,” Dickman said. Any defects likely contribute to various neurological and neuropsychiatric diseases.

Dickman’s lab is renowned for its work on a process called homeostatic synaptic plasticity, a process that keeps the brain functioning at stable levels. The team studies the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster to look for genes that, when mutated, disrupt this process.

“The genetics of a fly are very similar to that of a human,” Dickman said. “So studying Drosophila is a great way for young scientists to do real laboratory research and learn how genetics actually works.”

Kim joined the lab because of his interest in discovering how the nervous system functions and stabilizes itself.

Funding from the Summer Undergraduate Research Fund (SURF) made the experience possible.

“It’s this hands-on reinforcing that I love in the field of research,” Kim said. “You’re not just in class learning about an experiment; you’re actually doing it yourself, reviewing the results, thinking critically about why or how they occurred and how to resolve any issues or discrepancies.”

In addition to expanding his knowledge of neuroscience and genetics, Kim said the research experience has fostered

James is 74, a former inmate just released from state prison after 33 years and facing the challenges of his newfound freedom. Fortunately, he has the help of The Francisco Homes, an organization that supports formerly incarcerated individuals as they reintegrate into society.

James’ tale is told through the mini-documentary “The Francisco Homes Intake,” a film created by a group of undergraduates in the course “Writing in the Community.”

The class partners groups of students with community groups such as schools, nonprofits and social justice organizations, using the students’ storytelling skills to address social issues.

“We wanted to do something different, something that would engage the community as partners rather than clients or subjects,” said Stephanie Bower, co-instructor of the course along with John Murray. Both are associate professors (teaching) of writing.

Audrey Weber ’16, an international relations major, was part of the group that worked with James.

“Working with The Francisco Homes was one of the most rewarding experiences of my college career,” she wrote in her post-course reflection. “I now see those men not just as criminals, but as human beings.”

The students’ efforts impressed the instructors.

“Not only are our community partners extraordinary, but so are the students,” Murray said. “They work so hard to make these collaborations succeed. It’s really the sort of experience that reinforces our beliefs about the value of human connection.” —L.P.

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Fall 2016 / Winter 2017 15

F R O M T H E HE A R T O F U S C Numbers summer surf USC Dornsife offers undergraduates a number of ways to gain research experience so they can forge scholarly connections with faculty and test out potential career paths. The Summer Undergraduate Research Fund — known more commonly by its beachy acronym SURF — offers students a way to support their summertime research with faculty.

Whether working on campus studying how the nervous system functions or traveling throughout the Arctic to learn about climate change, students may use SURF stipends to subsidize their travel, equipment, living expenses, fees or other costs related to their research. Funds are also available for research during the academic year through the Student Opportunities for Academic Research (SOAR) program.

1,541 The total number of students funded since SURF’s launch during the 2007–08 academic year.

84% 193 of the 230 SURF applications received in 2016 were funded.

$2.5M

The total amount of funding granted to students since 2012.

120+ The number of USC Dornsife faculty members who work with SURF scholars each year.

$2.7K The average grant amount for 2016.

Learn more about the Summer Undergraduate Research Fund at dornsife.usc.edu/surf.

16

Building Brains Through Music

Five-year USC Dornsife study finds that children’s brains develop faster with music training.

compared with the two other comparison groups, were more accurate in processing sound,” Habibi said.

Within two years of the study, the neuroscientists found the auditory systems of children in the music program were maturing faster than those of the other children. The fine-tuning of their auditory pathway could accelerate their development of language and reading, as well as other abilities — a potential effect that the scientists are continuing to study.

BCI co-directors Antonio Damasio, David Dornsife Chair in Neuroscience, and Hanna Damasio, Dana Dornsife Chair in Neuroscience, and BCI neuroscientist B. Rael Cahn co-authored the study. —E.G.

Clean and Green

Chemists develop a method to generate and store hydrogen efficiently — without further polluting.

Music instruction appears to accelerate brain development in young children, according to initial results from a fiveyear study by USC Dornsife neuroscientists.

The Brain and Creativity Institute (BCI), in partnership with the Los Angeles Philharmonic Association and the Heart of Los Angeles (HOLA), examined the impact of music instruction on children’s social, emotional and cognitive development. The study shows music instruction speeds up maturation of the brain’s auditory pathway — areas of the brain responsible for processing sound, language development, speech perception and reading skills — and increases its efficiency.

“The auditory system is stimulated by music,” said Assal Habibi, the study’s lead author and a senior research associate at BCI. “This system is also engaged in general sound processing that is fundamental to language development, reading skills and successful communication.”

For the study, the neuroscientists are monitoring brain development and behavior in a group of children from underprivileged neighborhoods of Los Angeles. Several of the children, at 6 or 7 years old, began to receive music instruction through the Youth Orchestra Los Angeles program at HOLA. Using MRI to monitor changes through brain scans, EEG to track electrical activity in the brain, behavioral testing and other such techniques, the scientists are comparing the budding musicians with two other groups: children in a community soccer program and children not at all involved in any after-school programs.

These initial findings provide evidence of the benefits of music education at a time when many schools around the nation have either eliminated or reduced music and arts programs.

“These results reflect that children with music training,

Chemists at the USC Loker Hydrocarbon Research Institute have developed a way to produce hydrogen while also recycling harmful carbon dioxide. Unlike prior methods, the catalyst they have developed releases hydrogen without involving more pollutants.

The technique employs formic acid, which appeals to scientists.

“Formic acid is important as a hydrogen carrier because we can make it efficiently from carbon dioxide, which is at the center of the global warming problem,” said Travis Williams, associate professor of chemistry.

Scientists have struggled to store hydrogen in formic acid while minimizing toxicity and maximizing energy content.

This method appears to fulfill those objectives, and it is safe and sustainable, Williams said.

The chemists developed a new catalyst to release the hydrogen. It does not degenerate when exposed to air, making it ideal for vehicles or other devices, and it is reusable.

“In fact, we think it might never die. We’ve demonstrated it through 2.2 million turnovers over several months,” Williams said.

The catalyst’s staying power would be a big money saver for anyone who wants to generate and store hydrogen as fuel, he said. —E.G.

Spotlight

Volcanic Disruption

Earth scientists strengthen the case that a prehistoric disaster is a good model for investigating the potential effect of rising carbon dioxide levels. By Andrew Good

Im a g e o f Imp r o v e d P r ot e a n S c e n e r y : M o u n t V e s u v i u s a s R e p r e s e n t e d a t th e S u r r e y Zoo l o g i c a l G a r d e n s b y W i l l i a m M o r g a n , 1 8 4 0 ; Ro u d a photo c o u r t e s y o f Sh e a Ro u d a

Shea Rouda ’17 East Asian Languages and Cultures Major

“I’ve always been motivated to innovate, and I love technology and wrapping my hands around entrepreneurial activities. But I also love the creative outlet of working on a project like Drops. It’s been a complete learning process, each new step is a completely new thing.”

Just over 200 million years ago, long before dinosaurs, a cataclysm killed off a significant chunk of the planet’s animal life. The leading theory suggests massive volcanic eruptions.

Research by USC Dornsife scientists strengthens evidence for that theory. It also has wider implications for how rapid climate change can affect life on Earth because along with lava flows, the volcanic eruptions released massive amounts of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide, creating havoc in the ecosystem.

The research charts the sharp escalation of the element mercury in samples of rock preserved from the TriassicJurassic extinction event — mercury that can be traced to the eruptions. Study co-author Frank Corsetti, professor of earth sciences, said the rise in mercury seems to match changes in the planet’s biosphere during the era. As the mercury rose, it corresponded to a wave of animal extinctions. Biodiversity began to return once the mercury level receded, thousands of years later.

The reason the volcanic activity is suspected of being the culprit in the mass extinction has to do with carbon dioxide.

“By some estimates, it rose nearly as rapidly as we’re putting CO2 into the atmosphere today,” Corsetti said.

“We wanted to see how the Earth system responded to a rapid rise of CO2. The spoiler alert is that there was a mass extinction. What we’ve been able to do is use this mercury as a fingerprint to tie the [extinction] event to the volcanos, and therefore the emissions.”

The Triassic-Jurassic extinction is particularly pertinent because it was selective, Corsetti said. It preferentially affected coral reefs and animals most similar to the ones common in today’s oceans. That makes the event perhaps the most relevant to study when trying to predict what might happen with rising CO2 levels, Corsetti said.

David Bottjer, professor of earth sciences, biological sciences and environmental studies; Joshua West, Wilford and Daris Zinsmeyer Early Career Chair in Marine Studies and associate professor of earth sciences and environmental studies; and William Berelson, professor of earth sciences and environmental studies, co-authored the study with Corsetti. Several current and past USC Dornsife graduate students were also authors.

“Buy a zombie survival kit.

Buy garden gnomes. Buy shoes. Buy more shoes.”

So entreats the home page of Drops.la, the brainchild of senior Shea Rouda. But there’s a critical second step to these entreaties: “… and donate the spare change to charity.”

Drops is a philanthropic app that allows users to round up the amount of their everyday purchases, accruing money to donate to partner charities.

Drops is currently working with several Los Angeles organizations.

Though interested in business, Rouda decided to study Mandarin Chinese at USC Dornsife. Foreign language study requires students to dedicate a lot of time to the pursuit and take a hands-on approach, he said.

“That attention, focus and dedication I’ve learned is something I’ve been able to translate to my work with Drops,” Rouda said.

Fall 2016 / Winter 2017 17

F R O M T H E HE A R T O F U S C Spotlight

Cold Comfort

Biologists find single gatekeeper guarding path to cold-induced pain. By Darrin S. Joy

SABRINA ENRIQUEZ ’19 Mathematics Major

“I just always really, really liked math. When I was in the fourth grade, my teacher told me I was good at it.

So, I just stuck with it after that.

I thought ‘Wow, this is so much fun.’”

18

The onset of inflammation following injury or stemming from disease can heighten pain response to pressure and heat — and to cold. Researchers at USC Dornsife have found that increased sensitivity to cold-related pain stands out, however, because it appears to be controlled by just one protein receptor.

The finding opens the door to therapies that may one day alleviate suffering for millions of people with allodynia — pain caused by cold sensitivity — that is induced by neuropathy from chemotherapy, diabetes and other factors.

David McKemy, associate professor of biological sciences, and his team found that a single protein, called glial cell-line derived neurotrophic factor receptor α3 (GFRα3), controlled the ability of nerve cells to transmit cold-related pain signals after an injury.

e n r i q u e z photo Co u r t e s y o f S a b r i n a E n r i q u e z

Hyperbolic geometry. A mathematical concept beyond most peoples’ ability to imagine, it lies at the heart of Sabrina Enriquez’s undergraduate research. Mentored by Professor of Mathematics Francis Bonahon, the junior is working to verify the maximum and minimum values of a function that measures the growth statistics of the number of simple closed curves that can be placed on a oncepunctured torus. (Think of wrapping thin pieces of rope around an inner tube with a single hole in it — but in hyperbolic space, where the shortest distance between two points is not a straight line.)

“There’s applied math and pure math,” Enriquez said.

“Hyperbolic geometry falls under pure math; it’s one of the purest forms.”

Despite her study’s complex nature, Enriquez’s motivation for pursuing her project is rather simple.

“It’s something that I find beautiful,” she said.

“My minor is in human rights, and I do a lot of social justice work in general, which can be emotionally stressful.

But math requires your complete concentration. It’s very detached from the challenges in the world.”

“When your body reacts to an injury, it generates an immune response that is meant to begin the healing process,” McKemy said.

“Immune system cells travel to the site of injury, and they release a number of substances that cause inflammation. We call this mixture the ‘inf lammatory soup,’ and some of the compounds have been known to make sensory neurons more sensitive to stimuli after injury.” This is why a wound becomes sore to the touch.

Most studies have concentrated on factors that increase sensitivity to pressure or heat, but no one has been able to find any specific factors that can sensitize humans and other animals to a cold stimulus, according to McKemy. Until now, that is.

In laboratory studies McKemy’s group showed that GFRα3 was responsible for mediating cold sensitization after injury — a first-of-its-kind discovery.

“That was really kind of a surprise to us,” McKemy said. “For all of these other substances that have been known to induce heat and mechanical sensitization, if you get rid of the receptors, you just lose a little bit of sensitization at most because there is such a diverse repertoire of factors that actually induce heat and force sensitivity. This is the only thing for cold sensitivity that we’ve been able to find so far.”

The findings could one day lead to much-needed relief for patients.

“One of the things that people don’t appreciate is how allodynia related to these traumatic neuropathies — these issues such as chemotherapy or nerve injury or diabetes — is actually reported almost as prevalently as sensitivity to heat and mechanical [pressure],” McKemy said.

The research team included USC Dornsife graduate students Erika Lippoldt and Serra Ongun, and undergraduate Geoffrey Kusaka.

Viewpoint

Night at the Museum Doctoral students read poems they wrote in response to art at Los Angeles’ acclaimed new museum.

In the after-hours quiet of the museum, Callie Siskel stood before a captivated crowd reading aloud her poem Vanishing Points. Behind her, artist Mark Grotjahn’s Untitled (Dancing Black Butterflies), the series of nine, angular black and white drawings that inspired her verse, served as a backdrop.

Following Siskel, Liz “LA” Johnson read her poem Portal, similarly accompanied by her inspiration — Rudolf Stingel’s 2010 untitled landscape.

Siskel and Johnson were among five USC Dornsife doctoral students participating in the student poetry reading at The Broad in downtown Los Angeles. Organized by former California poet laureate and Professor of English Carol Muske-Dukes, the event capped off her graduate poetry course “A Tour of the Imagination.” Students selected art works currently exhibited at the museum and wrote poems inspired by their choices.

“The poems that emerged from the imaginations of students in this ekphrastic course and were showcased at the ‘Night at the Museum’ after-hours reading elicited intense enthusiasm,” Muske-Dukes said.

Siskel said she was attracted to the semester-long course by the opportunity to work with Muske-Dukes. “Also, what drew me to the class was the exceptional opportunity to be in The Broad, not as a visitor but as a poet,” she said.

“Grotjahn’s drawings evoked in me the sense of obsessive longing and loss, themes that I — and many poets — write about,” she explained.

Johnson, a Provost’s Fellow, said she, too, jumped at the chance to write a poem in response to a work of art.

“One of my favorite pastimes is going to museums, and I do get a lot of inspiration from art in my own work,” she said.

Both students expressed appreciation of Muske-Dukes’ teaching and mentorship.

“Professor Muske-Dukes has great insight for the heart of the poem and ensuring it has enough space to breathe,” Johnson said. “She makes all my poems better.” —S.B.

Pill-free Pain Protocol

Researcher Joan Broderick trains nurse practitioners to implement a chronic pain treatment plan.

expert opinions

“There is a cultural generation gap among feminists that helps to explain why younger feminists are less excited about the candidacy of Hillary Clinton than might be expected.”

ANGE-MARIE HANCOCK, associate professor of political science and gender studies, in a July 29 The Hill op-ed on the feminist generation gap that Hillary Clinton must overcome.

b r o a d photo b y s u s a n b e l l ; i l l u s t r a t i o n b y h a r v e y b a l l

Chronic pain has emerged as one of the most onerous health problems facing Americans. In many cases, it can lead to addiction to prescription pain killers.

Joan Broderick, senior behavioral scientist and associate director of the Center for Self-Report Science at USC Dornsife’s Center for Economic and Social Research, conducted research to help patients cope with pain without medication.

“We have a very pharmacologically oriented healthcare system in the U.S. because with medications there is a clear path to marketing products,” she said.

A clinical psychologist, Broderick proposed a different approach that centers on a 10-appointment series of coping strategies for patients. It includes progressive muscular relaxation training, guided imagery, activity pacing, distraction techniques and other problem-solving strategies.

“We found significant reductions in pain intensity, improved physical functioning, reduced fatigue and reduced use of pain medications, and the effects lasted at least 12 months,” Broderick said.

Broderick believes we are seeing an important shift in the way medical care is delivered in this country.

“Integrating our protocol is just the tip of the iceberg,” Broderick said. “For it to be maximally effective, it will need to be in the context of an overall approach to disease management that is more reliant on patient engagement and empowerment.” —L.H.

“Moments of chill and relajo — that’s what the men of South L.A. are finding in green spaces. This speaks to the power of plant nature, to the therapeutic aspects of being outside, where you can ‘ blow off steam,’ inhale fresh air, and touch soil with your hands …”

PIERRETTE HONDAGNEUSOTELO, professor of sociology, in a July 7 Zócalo Public Square op-ed on the benefits of the increasing number of gardens and green spaces in South Los Angeles.

“For me, one of the most exciting possibilities is finding life forms that might survive in extreme environments like Mars.”

MOH EL-NAGGAR, Robert D. Beyer (’81) Early Career Chair in Natural Sciences and associate professor of physics, biological sciences and chemistry, in a June 21 Quanta Magazine feature on his research studying electricity-eating microbes.

Fall 2016 / Winter 2017 19

F R O M T H E HE A R T O F U S C Spotlight

A Road Well Taken

A portion of a California freeway will soon bear the name of an American hero and USC Dornsife alum.

richard garcia ’20 Chemistry Major

“I know I did my part with academics, community service and extracurricular activities, but my parents worked so hard to give me this opportunity. It’s such an amazing thing to be here, and I’m so glad they get to be part of it with me.”

20

Shaking Things Up

The Southern California Earthquake Center hosts interns from around the nation to do seismic research.

State lawmakers have approved a resolution to name a 2-mile stretch of Interstate 405, the San Diego Freeway, after World War II hero Louis Zamperini ’40.

The section of the freeway that will be known as the Louis Zamperini Memorial Highway runs through Torrance, Calif., where the famed runner grew up.

“I’m proud to have led the effort to rename the Torrance stretch of the 405 freeway after Louis Zamperini. As an Olympic athlete and as a World War II hero, Zamperini has been an inspiration for generations of South Bay residents as well as the USC family for over 80 years,” said Republican Assemblyman David Hadley of Torrance. Hadley spearheaded the nonpartisan bill, ACR 157, aimed at renaming the freeway section.

Zamperini harnessed his teenage angst by running on the Torrance High School track team, earning an athletic scholarship to USC. While working on his degree in physical education, he competed in the 1936 Summer Olympics, placing eighth in the 5,000-meter race.

In 1941, Zamperini enlisted in the U.S. Army Air Corps. On May 27, 1943, his B-24 bomber crashed into the Pacific Ocean.

He spent 47 days adrift before the Japanese captured him and took him to a prison camp. Presumed dead by the United States government, Zampirini endured extreme conditions including torture for more than two years.

After the war, Zamperini returned to the U.S. and became a born-again Christian. He developed a career as an inspirational speaker, traveling the world detailing the many milestone moments he experienced.

Within the span of a week, two magnitude 7.1 earthquakes rocked greater Los Angeles. The seismic incidents, on the Puente Hills and Whittier fault lines, caused billions of dollars in damage and roughly 13,000 casualties.

But luckily, it was just a simulation — engineered by summer interns at the Southern California Earthquake Center (SCEC), housed in USC Dornsife.

Students came from community colleges and four-year universities near and far, with one coming all the way from Puerto Rico.

For eight weeks, the interns used thousands of years’ worth of real and hypothetical data to forecast earthquakes, immersing themselves in the world of earthquake science — calculating data on the largest academic supercomputer in the world, determining probability and identifying the ramifications.

They made visuals, a documentary and a virtual reality app. They also walked fault lines — from Hollywood to the Inland Empire — to see Southern California’s system firsthand.

And it wasn’t just practice. The students presented their findings at the SCEC annual meeting in September, according to SCEC Director Thomas Jordan, University Professor, William M. Keck Foundation Chair in Geological Sciences and professor of earth sciences.

“This is real research,” he said. —J.C.

P hoto o f Yo s e m i t e V a l l e y , Yo s e m i t e N a t i o n a l P a r k , c i r c a 1 9 3 0 c o u r t e s y o f th e USC D i g i t a l L i b r a r y

Richard Garcia’s earliest memories of USC were attending football games with his father.

Because of those experiences, USC held a special place in Garcia’s heart.

This fall, his family helped him settle into his new home in the Arts and Humanities Residential College at Parkside on the University Park campus.

The move marked a significant moment for Garcia: He is the first in his family to attend college.

Garcia chose chemistry as his major because it “was the most engaging subject for me, with all of the lab work and calculations.”

Garcia plans to use his time at USC Dornsife to explore his career options. He hopes to participate in research projects with faculty as well as an internship.

He said a liberal arts education will give him an opportunity to gain a multifaceted perspective on the world.

“I truly want to understand people and the world around me in order to make an impact,” he explained.

Zamperini’s life was chronicled in Laura Hillenbrand’s 2010 book Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience and Redemption (Random House) and in the 2014 film adaptation directed by Angelina Jolie. He died at the age of 97, one month before the film’s premiere, of pneumonia.

Hadley is currently working to raise $5,000 for two highway signs that will bear the freeway section’s new name. His goal is to get the signs installed by Jan. 26, 2017 — what would have been Zamperini’s 100th birthday. —D.K.

Word

Big Memphis Hair

A historian notes a national milestone

A writing instructor and alumnus’ first solo album takes him in new directions — both musically and follicly.

By Susan Bell Looking at the photograph of Robert Rex Waller Jr. gazing serenely out of a frame of intricately drawn cactuses on his new album, Fancy Free, one’s eye is drawn inexorably to his hair.

While Waller’s country musician beard is graying handsomely, in a traditionally manly manner reminiscent of, say, Kenny Rogers, his hair is … well, unusual. Perhaps best described as platinum blond, it has a certain bouffant quality more evocative of another impeccably coiffed country music star — Dolly Parton. The overall effect is arrestingly cool.

But Waller’s striking hairdo is not a tribute to the Nashville singer of “Jolene” fame, but to another Tennessee bombshell: his mother, Sarah Pickens Waller, who died in March last year while Waller was recording the album.

“My mom was this very fancy Southern woman from Memphis,” said Waller, associate professor (teaching) of writing. “She had this wonderful bouffant hairdo, and one of the famous stories about her was that she had kissed

Elvis after a high school football game. Getting my hair done for the album artwork became a way for me to remember and honor her and keep her present.”

Waller, who earned a master’s in professional writing at USC Dornsife in 2003, is best known as the lead singer/ songwriter of his band I See Hawks In L.A. But after seven Hawks albums and a decade of touring, he was ready for something different.

Inspiration for Fancy Free came partly from his students’ energy, commitment and ability to take risks.

Waller uses his own creative process in his teaching by exploring it though writing, then modeling that for his students.

His class helps students discover and explore their own artistic values through the process of writing — sometimes about their own work.

“That’s something that, as artists, we don’t do very often,” he said. “We write about other people’s work more commonly than our own.”

Established by the Organic Act in 1916, the U.S. National Park Service celebrated its centennial in August, marking 100 years of caring for some of the country’s most beautiful and diverse natural spaces.

There are now 59 parks throughout the United States and its territories. California boasts nine — the most of any state or territory — including Sequoia and Yosemite, the nation’s fourth and fifth. These important resources offer a gateway to nature, opportunities for research and, as noted

by USC Dornsife historian William Deverell, a reminder of the nation’s past and visionary spirit.

g a r c i a photo Co u r t e s y o f R i c h a r d G a r c i a ; w a l l e r P hoto b y A n a s t a s i a S i mo n e

“In the era of the Civil War, California’s National Parks, and especially Yosemite, played a critical role in the establishment of nature as restorative, even redemptive, places and spaces.

There had never before been anything like a national park movement — anywhere — and this vision of convalescent nature remains one key facet of the great power, meaning, and purpose of our national parks.”

William Deverell, professor of history and director of the Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West at USC Dornsife.

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Fall 2016 / Winter 2017 21

Our World students Japan

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students Turkey

View from the Bosphorus

A four-month stint at a renowned Turkish university gave senior Ida Abhari insight into the region’s important security role.

As a senior majoring in philosophy and international relations with a minor in Iranian studies, Ida Abhari’s experience studying for four months at Boğaziçi University, Istanbul — a city that bridges Asia and Europe both physically and culturally — gave her a valuable new perspective on the Middle East.

Abhari always knew she wanted to study abroad.

“I knew I wanted to go somewhere where I would be challenged, preferably somewhere where they didn’t speak English and where I was going to feel a bit confused and lost,” she said.

However, the program ended up being rather more challenging than she’d expected.

“As most students’ first language isn’t English, I thought classes would be easier. I was surprised to discover that many of the texts, theory and concepts we were studying at USC were the same. But because of the way Turkey is and Turkish politics works, they have a totally different perspective on world politics.”

Studying in Turkey in the current world climate, with so many problems that require global solutions, was a fascinating experience, she found.

“Being in Istanbul really helped me understand why the Middle East generally — and Turkey specifically — is so important to world peace and security,” she said. “Knowing about the region, the culture, the people, even the food — enables us to become part of the solution.”

j a p a n P hoto b y F e l i p e H e r n a n d e z

Marilyn Rodriguez was jetlagged, but excited after a long flight. She lifted the shade on her hotel window: “This view opened my eyes to my reality: I AM IN JAPAN!” The human biology major shared her experiences traveling to Tokyo, Hiroshima, Kyoto and Yokohama on the USC Dornsife Japan Summer Immersion Program (SIP) class blog. The program, led by George Sanchez, vice dean for diversity and strategic initiatives and professor of American studies and ethnicity and history, and run in partnership with the Norman Topping Student Aid Fund, takes 14 first-generation college students to sites in Los Angeles and Japan to illustrate the cities’ cultural, social, political and economic exchanges.

Of the experience, Rodriguez wrote: “Just looking outside of the window made me so appreciative of the privilege and blessing that I was provided … with my fellow SIP cohort scholars.”

faculty The Arctic In his “Ecological Security and Global Politics” Problems Without Passports course, Steven Lamy, vice dean for academic programs and professor of international relations, led 20 undergraduates to Iceland, Norway and Finland to study impacts of climate change on the politics, economics and cultures of the Arctic region.

“As polar ice caps shrink, the popular view of the Arctic as a region of frozen solitude and remote beauty is rapidly evolving into a more complex reality,” Lamy said.

“The Arctic is the canary in the coal mine whose health may determine the planet’s future. Offering a potential oil and gas bonanza, it will likely attract a new tourist industry alongside expanded commercial shipping, becoming a zone of interstate confrontation as these factors push Arctic powers to expanded territorial claims.”

Lamy urged students to consider whether positions on territorial, economic and environmental issues will harden into confrontation, or whether the Arctic can become the locus of a successful new regime of “global governance.”

Students worked with diplomatic, energy, environmental and other experts before drafting policy recommendations.

“Experiences like these promote active learning, helping students see things from a different perspective,” Lamy said, adding, “The world is the best classroom.”

F R O M T H E HE A R T O F U S C

students Micronesia

Dive Into Conservation

Students take the plunge to learn about coral reef preservation.

Health and human sciences major Eva Hilton recalled her first foray into the famed Palau diving spot Blue Corner, renowned for its diverse sea life and ideal position along a reef wall.

“We descended and swam along the wall, seeing an amazing school of black snappers and incredible marine life,” she said. “As we ascended to the top of the reef, the current started to pull us as the dive instructors said it would. We finally hooked on to some rocks and waited to see what the ocean had in store for us.”

This summer, Hilton and her classmates in the Problems Without Passports course “Integrated Ecosystem Management in Micronesia” learned about the challenges facing coastal environments. Coral reefs, in particular, are of extreme importance as they are home to nearly a quarter of the world’s marine species and contribute more than $170 billion annually to the global economy. The highest level of species biodiversity is in the Indo-West Pacific region, which includes Micronesia.

The course was led by David Ginsburg, associate professor (teaching) of environmental studies, and Karla Heidelberg, associate professor (teaching) of biological sciences and environmental studies, and director of the USC Environmental Studies Program.

Before leaving for Micronesia, students became certified scientific scuba divers. Once in Palau, they used their expertise on dives to collect and analyze data, and then presented their findings to their classmates.

“Witnessing reefs that were bleached, dead and showed little sign of hope were trumped by other dives that had life and color, with animals I could have never imagined,” said environmental studies major Elliot Patrick. “It showed me a lot about how much humans are impacting the planet and made me hungrier to make a difference.”

alumni San Francisco Dawn Gross ’89 knows how to talk about death. The hospice and palliative care physician is the host of a radio show, “Dying to Talk,” which aims to revolutionize the way people discuss what many feel is the last great taboo.

“People are averse to talking about death, but I’ve noticed that once you give them permission to do so, they really are dying to talk,” she said. “It’s an extraordinary conversation to get to be a part of.”

Gross, whose bachelor’s degree is in psychology and neuroscience, has years of experience supporting patients with life-threatening illnesses.

She is currently a member of a hospital-based palliative care team at UC San Francisco.

Her first job is to listen.

Once symptoms are brought under control, she helps patients plan their goals of care and identify what they want to do with the time left to them.

Gross said she’s profoundly grateful for the opportunity to practice her chosen specialty.

“It’s not depressing,” she said. “It is sad, and I think to untangle the two is important for people to do. But what we do — being with people and supporting them in the things that matter most in their lives — is a gift.”

FACULTY, STUDENTS, ALUMNI Los Angeles Aided by six students and an alumna from his “Trial Advocacy: Theory and Practice” course, Olu Orange of political science won a class-action lawsuit in March, forcing the city of Los Angeles to pay up to $30 million in education and job training for thousands of people subjected to unconstitutional gang injunctions.

Orange launched the federal lawsuit in 2011, accusing the Los Angeles Police Department of enforcing curfews written into many gang injunctions for years after they were declared unconstitutional in 2007 by California appellate courts.

He discovered the LAPD’s actions while successfully defending Christian Rodriguez, a straight-A community college student wrongly accused of violating a gang injunction curfew.

Orange praised MiRi Song ’09 and students Sarah Ayad, Mitchell Diesko, Min Ji Gal, Lauren Ige, Angel Lopez and Arpine Sardaryan, saying he could not have won the groundbreaking case without their help.

24

When it comes to politics, a dose of comedy can offer some relief from all of the posturing, polarization and news oversaturation, especially during an election year. But can humor also influence our political ideologies?

make ’em augh

By Michelle Boston

As President Barack Obama made his way to the podium, Anna Kendrick’s voice crooned through the speakers: “When I’m gone, when I’m gone … You’re gonna miss me when I’m gone …” It was the 2016 White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner, and the president was delivering his annual address to a hall full of White House press corps members, politicians and well-heeled celebrities.

The audience erupted in laughter and applause. “You can’t say it, but you know it’s true,” the president deadpanned.

Obama continued, reflecting on the year in politics and the recent election cycle. “Eight years ago I said it was time to change the tone of our politics. In hindsight, I clearly should have been more specific,” he quipped. The president concluded his 30-minute speech — which included jabs at Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, Bernie Sanders and Ted Cruz, among others — with the words “Obama out” and a literal mic drop.

As a president at the end of his second term with a strong approval rating, Obama’s speech was seen by many as a victory lap. But the tradition of roasting Washington and the reporters who cover it gets at something larger that perhaps only comedy has the power to do.

Through the lenses of anthropology, political science, psychology, art history and more, USC Dornsife researchers have been examining humor’s ability to cut tension, get at

truth and, perhaps, influence people’s politics. Whether it’s in a speech, performed in a stand-up routine, spoken on television, posted on social media or drawn in a cartoon, here’s a look at how laughing at our political system, our politicians, controversy and conflict just might be the best medicine.

Speak Truth to Power

Following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Lanita Jacobs, like most Americans, was in need of a reprieve from the aftermath of national tragedy. So she sought out a place where laughter is not only encouraged but celebrated — a comedy club.

As an ethnographer with an interest in stand-up comedy, she was also curious how comedians — particularly AfricanAmerican comics — were dealing with such a charged moment in history.

“I imagined that these comedians might have a different discourse than the one that was circulating in America in the mainstream pop culture,” explained Jacobs, associate professor of anthropology and American studies and ethnicity.

Her first stop was the Comedy Union, a comedy club in South Los Angeles known for showcasing black comedians.

It was early October 2001, less than a month after the Twin Towers fell.

Punch Lines and Politics Ethnographer Lanita Jacobs has made the comedy club her laboratory. She is currently writing a book examining how African-American comedians have responded to 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, the Iraq War and other events.

Fall 2016 / Winter 2017 25

That night, one of the comedians who took the stage was Ian Edwards. He posited that in light of the 9/11 attacks and the resulting war on terrorism, black people had been supplanted by Middle Easterners as a target of racism in America.

“Black people, we have been delivered,” Edwards announced to the crowd.

Jacobs recalled that a woman in the audience responded emphatically: “Finally!”

“Humor provides a salve in times of trouble. It provides a moment of redress when you need to speak truth to power.”

That narrative ran through not only Edwards’ set, but was reiterated in jokes by other African-American comics whose shows Jacobs later attended. “I was like, ‘Oh snap,’ ” Jacobs said. “I have got to figure this out.”

Jacobs made the subject the basis of a research project.

For eight years she frequented shows by black comics. She also interviewed comedians, clubgoers, promoters and club owners.

Her goal was to untangle what exactly was happening onstage when comics poked and prodded at racial constructions in the wake of 9/11 with their humor, and what audiences were saying with their laughter or their silence.

Jacobs published a paper on her research in the journal Transforming Anthropology. In the article, she wrote: “For many minority audiences, 9/11 jokes ‘work’ as political commentaries that resist pro-war rhetoric and implicate a larger shared history of racial marginalization. These jokes also work because they invoke problems of race in America, particularly comics’ ongoing struggles against violations of their civil liberties.”

Comedians were saying that “the way America is being constructed in the aftermath of 9/11 is not one I feel myself to be a part of,” she said.

Then, in the midst of Jacobs’ research into post-9/11 humor, Hurricane Katrina struck. Startling images of people — most of them black — stranded on rooftops without food and clean water appeared in media outlets internationally.

While agencies rushed to help the residents of New Orleans as the city disappeared under water, many noticed that the federal government was slow to respond.

“For five whole days in the so-called ‘First World,’ while the nation and the globe are watching, you see babies and older black people with flags for blankets,” Jacobs recalled.

“The two most vulnerable categories and we can’t get them water to drink? It was befuddling.”

She decided to continue her line of research and see what comedians had to say in the wake of the natural disaster.

“It was just painful,” Jacobs said. “In fact, it was the only time that I saw some comics who weren’t known to be political wax political.” She also saw another common thread emerge throughout their comedy: an assertion of black people’s resilience.

Audiences responded. “There was a lot of ‘Right!’ and ‘OK!’ ” she said. “I’ve never seen a comedy club feel like such a cathartic space.”

Jacobs continued her study of African-American comedians 26

through 2008 — the beginning of Obama’s presidency. She is currently synthesizing her findings into a book, which will also analyze comedians’ responses to the Iraq War as well as the controversies surrounding activist Rachel Dolezal, a white woman who purported to be African American, and white actor Michael Richards, who unloaded a racist rant at the West Hollywood, Calif., Laugh Factory in 2006.

What her research has shown is that humor cuts to the core of an issue and offers both comics and their audiences a way to cope with tragedy.

“Humor provides a salve in times of trouble,” Jacobs explained. “It provides a moment of redress when you need to speak truth to power. It plays with notions of truth. And sometimes comedy, when it’s the most successful, is the absolute truth. It’s the emperor not wearing any clothes.”

Reveal Yourself

In addition to being a balm in challenging times, comedy is used to highlight politicians’ authenticity and to shape the public’s view of them.

On March 30, 1981, an otherwise routine day in Washington, D.C., President Ronald Reagan was shot.

Secret Service agents quickly pushed the president into his limousine and raced him to the hospital. As he was placed on the operating table, bleeding — his lung pierced by a bullet — Reagan looked up and famously said to his doctors, “I hope you’re all Republicans.”

Reagan went on to make a full recovery. His sense of humor, which clearly remained intact even with his life in jeopardy, won him points with the public.

That’s no surprise to veteran political consultant Robert Shrum, whose career includes guiding presidential, senatorial and gubernatorial campaigns. Politicians can seem remote and inaccessible. Humor allows people to relate to them, explained Shrum, Carmen H. and Louis Warschaw Chair in Practical Politics and professor of the practice of political science at USC Dornsife. “It’s a powerful validator of their humanity.”

Using humor to connect with an audience — or an electorate — is nothing new. But doing it with authenticity is what really makes an impact, said Shrum. “For folks who can do that, and do it naturally, it can be a big asset.”

He pointed to Reagan as well as President John F. Kennedy and Sen. Edward M. Kennedy as politicians with a special knack for wit. Shrum, who served as speechwriter and press secretary to Edward Kennedy, recalled that the senator — who was thought to be a shoo-in for president, but never ran successfully — once joked: “Frankly, I don’t mind not being president. I just mind that someone else is.”

But it’s not just what politicians say that affects how they are perceived, but what other people are saying about them.

Politics is the bread and butter of comedy news shows like The Daily Show, Last Week Tonight and The Nightly Show. It’s popular fodder for late-night talk show hosts’ monologues.

And almost every weekend, Kate McKinnon and Darrell Hammond don wigs to skewer presidential nominees Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump on Saturday Night Live.

The repeated ways that comedians portray politicians can have an effect — either positive or negative — on how we perceive them, Shrum said.

These programs “shape the images of candidates,” he said.

“They become water cooler conversation. It can be a very powerful force. Humor cuts through in a way that simple rhetoric doesn’t.”

Shrum, who was himself a guest on both The Colbert Report and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, also noted that these shows are where most young people get their news. “They tend to trust those hosts more than they trust a lot of conventional journalism,” he said. “I think that they find that the humor is getting more at a truth, at a deeper truth, at an underlying truth.” A 2015 Pew Research survey of news preferences by generation backs up that claim: Millennials are more trusting of infotainment news shows like The Daily Show than are older generations.

The same report cites Facebook as the top source for political news among millennials. In fact, social media has been where some of the most hilarious — and cutting — political barbs have occurred.

Know Your Meme

As any social media user knows, you can merely post updates on your Twitter or Facebook account or you can “crush.” Effectively using funny memes helps achieve the latter.

Take, for instance, when the official White House Twitter account began holding “office hours” in 2011 so that its Twitter followers could learn about timely issues facing the nation. During a discussion about the debt ceiling and deficit reduction negotiations, at least one Twitter user considered the exchange to be less than thrilling.

David Wiggs, tweeting as @wiggsd, wrote: “This WH correspondence briefing isn’t nearly as exciting as yesterday’s.”

The official White House Twitter account quickly responded: “@wiggsd Sorry to hear that. Fiscal policy is important but can be dry sometimes. Here’s something more fun.” The Twitter account then did the unexpected — it linked to a video of British popstar Rick Astley singing his 1987 hit “Never Gonna Give You Up” on YouTube.

The practice is known as Rickrolling — a popular baitand-switch internet meme where someone lures an unsuspecting Twitter reader to the Astley video.

The tongue-in-cheek stunt from the White House Twitter account garnered more than 5,000 retweets and 1,429 likes, as well as significant news coverage.

On social media, memes like Rickrolling are popular ways to make a political point (or, in this case, divert from a dull policy discussion).

Morteza Dehghani, assistant professor of psychology and computer science, studies social media as a means to understand people’s behavior and reasoning. He sees memes as snippets of popular thought. i l l u s t r a t i o n s b y r o g e r c ho u i n a r d f o r u s c do r n s i f e m a g a z i n e

“If we think of cultures as a shared way of thinking — a shared pattern of mental representations and beliefs — then memes are the basic units of those beliefs,” explained Dehghani, who leads the Computational Social Science Laboratory and is a researcher at USC Dornsife’s Brain and Creativity Institute.

Adapting memes to serve a purpose in our culture ensures their staying power, particularly when they are funny. But when it comes to influencing the people with whom we share memes on social media, their real power appears to be in supporting what we already feel is true.

“That’s just general psychology,” Dehghani explained.

“We really like reinforcing our beliefs. Basically, it boosts our egos. It tells us that we’re right. It tells us that our point of view about the world is correct, and also it tells us that the opposing group is wrong, which is probably more important than knowing that we are right.”

One recent Twitter exchange that got a lot of coverage for this year’s presidential candidates took place after Obama announced that he was endorsing Clinton for president.

Donald Trump fired off the tweet: “Obama just endorsed Crooked Hillary. He wants four more years of Obama — but nobody else does!” Clinton responded with “Delete your account,” a popular Twitter meme that roughly translates to: Your tweet or opinion is so bad that you should be immediately disqualified from further participation on the platform.

Trump was quick with his own comeback to Clinton:

Don’t Force It Veteran political consultant Robert Shrum says humor is a powerful tool for politicians — but only if it comes naturally to them.

Fall 2016 / Winter 2017 27

28

“How long did it take your staff of 823 people to think that up — and where are your 33,000 emails that you deleted?”

Clinton earned headlines from Time, Politico, The Wall Street Journal and others for her clever use of the meme, and the exchange delighted followers from both sides who thought their candidate came out on top.

On the whole, the social posts were an effective communication tool because of their humor, reinforcing loyalty from each camp’s supporters, and spreading the candidates’ messages in a way that only the social platform can, Shrum said.

“Social media amplifies all forms of political communication,” he said. “In the old days — and the old days are not so long ago, 15 years ago — to get the kind of attention Clinton got for that tweet, you’d have to give a whole speech.”

Or, in the case of a political cartoonist — going back more than 100 years — it was his illustrations published in a weekly magazine that made even more of a clear-cut impression on voters.

The Mighty Pen of Thomas Nast

Satirist Thomas Nast held an enormous amount of sway at the end of the 19th century. According to art historian Jennifer Greenhill, “In the U.S., he was seen to be absolutely singular in terms of his political impact.” In fact, he’s credited with making the elephant the symbol of the GOP and popularizing the donkey as the symbol of the Democratic Party.

Nast, who is considered the father of the modern political cartoon, began sketching caricatures of New York City politician William “Boss” Tweed while he was an illustrator for Harper’s Weekly news magazine. Tweed, who ran the city’s Democratic Party throughout the 1870s, was also one of its most infamous corrupt politicians — he was exposed for extracting bribes, filling his party’s ranks with his cronies and stealing millions from public coffers.

Most often, Nast would depict Tweed with a money bag for a face, overweight, and with his brooch and hat embellished with dollar signs.

“Nast makes it incredibly clear what the man’s motives are,” explained Greenhill, associate professor of art history.

She is the author of Playing It Straight: Art and Humor in the Gilded Age (University of California Press, 2012), which examines deadpan humor in late 19th-century American art.

“Caricature strives to make legible the aspects of his character that are hidden — those he might work to conceal.”

For a public that included illiterate consumers of news magazines, Nast’s drawings on their own were a powerful statement. Tweed is reported to have said, “I don’t care so much what the papers write about me — my constituents can’t read. But, damn it, they can see pictures.” Eventually Tweed was brought to justice.

In addition to the role Nast’s drawings played in Tweed’s downfall, the cartoonist held great power in swaying one, if not two, presidential elections. His flattering images of Gen. Ulysses S. Grant were said to have helped Grant to his first term as president, but Nast’s influence was even more apparent during Grant’s bid for re-election when he took on Grant’s opponent, Horace Greeley.

“Nast shows Greeley shaking hands with the wrong sort — everyone that a Liberal Republican wouldn’t want to be associated with,” Greenhill said. In one image, Greeley is even clasping hands with Tweed. “It becomes a visual formula, an iconographic trope that is just relentless. It was a brilliant strategy because it suggests that Greeley has no integrity whatsoever.”

To further subjugate the candidate, Nast represented his running mate, Benjamin Gratz Brown, as a scrap of paper with his name scrawled on it attached to Greeley’s coattails. In the end, Nast’s artistic crusade helped Grant defeat Greeley (and, in fact, Nast developed a friendship with Grant).

The Art of Revelation

Greenhill sees a parallel between the function of Nast’s political cartoons in Harper’s Weekly and current comedic news shows.

“Because the magazine was weekly, Nast’s commentary was incredibly timely,” Greenhill said. “In a way, it’s The Daily Show of that period in terms of its timeliness, and with a comedic commentator who is shining a light on what’s going on in politics from his perspective.”

“Just as caricatures unmask hypocrisy, we look to comedy as an art of revelation.”

And that is what humor’s main function appears to be when it comes to politics — to render a truth, whether it is to further someone’s agenda, as in Nast’s case, or to shed light on something uncomfortable or challenging by wrapping it in laughter to make its consumption easier.

Obama, for instance, has been acknowledged for using his wit to connect with constituents to advance White House initiatives through channels that appeal to audiences of all ages. After the Affordable Care Act was signed into law, he appeared on comedian Zach Galifianakis’ parody talk show Between Two Ferns to encourage millennial viewers to sign up for health insurance while subjecting himself to Galifianakis’ inane questions. Recently, he was featured in a Buzzfeed video encouraging Americans to register to vote. His rundown of “5 Things That Are Harder Than Registering to Vote” included making friendship bracelets, anything involving the game Operation and listing all of the characters on Game of Thrones who have died. “Jon, but maybe that doesn’t really count?” Obama opined as he ticked off names on his fingers.

He could have just looked into the camera and told people to vote because it’s their right as citizens, but Shrum noted that Obama’s strategy is far more effective. “He’s meeting young people where they live and laugh,” he said. “And meeting them on their own media will always work better than a statement from a podium in the White House press briefing room.” Clearly Obama is using humor to his advantage. More than 2 million people have watched the Buzzfeed video.

So, humor can help politicians advance their agendas, and it can humanize them so their public can relate to them.

On Twitter and other social media channels, humor offers an outlet for political opponents to artfully level one another with pithy posts and to reinforce our ideologies. And as Nast’s work demonstrates, political humor can indeed influence the public. Meanwhile, in a world where we contend with injustice, we look to humor to help us cope and heal, and to bring people together.

“Just as caricatures unmask hypocrisy,” Greenhill said, “we look to comedy as an art of revelation.”

The Art of Humor Art historian Jennifer Greenhill studies how 19th-century artists like Thomas Nast used their craft to express their political ideologies and influence their audiences.

Fall 2016 / Winter 2017 29

A Colorful Career in Black and White

“In my early 20s, I had the energy to work myself into a fury every day.”

m.G. Lord, assistant professor of the practice of English

30

Most people know M.G. Lord as a prolific writer and cultural critic.

But long before she was writing nonfiction on topics ranging from robotic space exploration to the films of Elizabeth Taylor, she had a career as a daily political cartoonist for New York’s Newsday.

Lord, assistant professor of the practice of English, began her career at Newsday shortly after graduating from Yale University with a degree in politics, graphic arts and letters. Her tenure at the newspaper spanned the presidencies of Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. During her first eight years, she drew five cartoons per week. But she wanted to write as well as draw.

“My editors began to notice that I was shoving whole novels into the talk balloons in my pictures,” Lord said. “To discourage this, they gave me a weekly humor column and reduced my cartooning load to three per week.”

One column, about unearthing her baroquely cross-dressed childhood Barbie dolls after 20 years in storage, led to a contract for a social history of the iconic Mattel product. The resulting book,

by Dan Knapp

Forever Barbie: The Unauthorized Biography of a Real Doll (Morrow, 1994), was a critical and commercial success. It enabled Lord to put down her drawing pen and concentrate full time on writing.

“I left cartooning, in part, because it takes a lot of energy to conceive and finish a drawing each day,” she explained. “While I didn’t necessarily love the Clintons, I was much less angry with them than with Reagan — who arrived just as I graduated. And in my early 20s, I had the energy to work myself into a fury every day.

“Looking back on my work from the ’80s, what strikes me is how conventions of representation of culture and ethnicity have changed,” Lord said. “I am slightly aghast at how I depicted some groups — but I was following the example of the leading male cartoonists whose admiration I sought. Nor were political cartoons unique in their insensitivity to racial and cultural stereotypes.”

Lord, whose most recent book is the award-winning The Accidental Feminist: How Elizabeth Taylor Raised Our Consciousness and We Were Too Distracted by Her Beauty to Notice (Walker/ Bloomsbury, 2012), states that if she were drawing for Newsday on a daily basis, her jokes would still be just as hard-hitting, but her pictures would be very different, with more nuance in terms of cultural representation.

photo b y P e t e r Zh a o y u Zho u ; i l l u s t r a t i o n s b y m . g . l o r d w i th p e r m i s s i o n o f n e w s d a y

“The Presidential race, however, seems anything but nuanced,” Lord laughed. “Each morning, I thank the universe that I don’t have to log on to news sites to come up with a cartoon. When I’m working on a story that takes place in the distant past, I often avoid the news altogether.”

She is both writing and drawing her current project, a graphic novel about the astronaut selection process.

It is set in what she considers a “perfect world” — one populated exclusively by anthropomorphic animals.

“During the Apollo era, astronauts were selected for their ability to follow orders,” explained Lord, who wrote about the aerospace industry and her relationship with her engineer father in Astro Turf: The Private Life of Rocket Science (Walker & Company, 2006). “It was, ‘Houston, we have a problem’ not ‘we have a problem, let’s solve it.’ With long flights to other planets — it takes a radio signal about 20 minutes to get from Earth to Mars — following orders will no longer be an option.

“Dogs tend to follow orders.

Cats don’t,” she said. “My cat George in particular doesn’t.

I don’t want to give away the whole plot, but I have had a lot of fun recently drawing George in a space suit.”

no sacred cows Topics for M.G. Lord’s political cartoons ran the gamut from politics and international affairs to religion and reproductive rights. Many cartoons from the early days of her career were culled together in the book Mean Sheets (Little Brown, 1982) and are still as relevant today as when they were first published.

Fall 2016 / Winter 2017 31

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Political Science Scientific advisers have counseled presidents at least as far back as Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Even so, many politicians and much of the public seem slow to trust them — a situation that needs a remedy, and soon. By Darrin S. Joy

On an unusually cold February day in 2015, Sen. James Inhofe reached around the lectern to the plastic bag on the desk before him. Pulling a well-formed snowball from the bag, Inhofe addressed Sen. Bill Cassidy, who was presiding over the day’s Senate debate in Washington, D.C.: “I ask the chair, do you know what this is?”

Not waiting for an answer, Inhofe declared, “It’s a snowball. And it’s just from outside here. So it’s very, very cold out. Very unseasonable.” He then tossed the icy ball toward Cassidy.

Inhofe’s stunt was aimed at countering a report, filed jointly by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and NASA, that the preceding year had set record high temperatures for the globe.

Inhofe’s effort to show that global warming is a hoax swiftly gained attention from the media, most of whom were quick to point out his error in confusing local weather with global climate change. Still, the Oklahoma senator’s mistake might have been overlooked if not for the fact that he chairs the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, which sets the federal government’s energy and environmental policy. As chair, the senator should be aware of how climate change works and of the science behind the issue.

Or should he?

Informed decisions

Politicians ostensibly are paid to lead — to make decisions on a broad range of issues for the good of their constituents as well as the larger community and nation. While personal knowledge is no doubt helpful in decision making, no one person could be expected to hold expertise in all areas. However, they should know who does, and they should seek out those experts. i l l u s t r a t i o n s b y Ro y S c ott f o r u s c do r n s i f e m a g a z i n e

“I think one thing that we underappreciate in this country is the value of having a bank of people who are trained to think about our problems more broadly,” said Amber Miller, dean of USC Dornsife and professor of physics.

An experimental cosmologist, Miller has taken her own training as a scientist beyond academe: She has served as chief science adviser to the New York Police Department’s Counterterrorism Bureau, on the advisory board for Columbia University’s Center for Science and Society, and as a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. She is a proponent of the use of scientists as consultants and critical thinkers in the policy-making process.

“When government or communities need people to be able to work hard problems, scientists — and particularly physicists — are a good group of people to ask because that’s what they do professionally,” she said. “As a physicist, you’re trained to take problems apart and ask what we know, what we don’t know and how we can move more things from the ‘not know’ column over to the ‘know’ column.”

In fact, many politicians and policy makers do tap scientists for their expertise on complex subjects, said Jeffrey Fields, assistant professor of the practice of international relations.

Fields, who earned his Ph.D. at USC Dornsife in 2007, worked as an analyst and senior adviser at the Department of Defense and as a foreign affairs officer at the State Department supporting the Special Representative of the President for Nuclear Nonproliferation before joining USC’s faculty. His current research examines U.S. foreign policy, terrorism and counterterrorism, international security and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

“I think the public and pundits sometimes have this oversimplified view of the way that policy gets made, that it all happens in the Oval Office. Maybe the president

BRAIN TRUST Politicians and policy makers have access to important expertise and analytical skills through the nation’s scientists.

Fall 2016 / Winter 2017 33

is there with his national security adviser and a few other people, and they say, ‘Well, let’s make this deal with Iran,’ ” he said. “But it really doesn’t happen that way.”

He points to the 2015 international effort to curtail Iran’s nuclear weapons program as a prime example. There, decision makers brought in scientists with a deeper understanding of nuclear programs to analyze the situation and provide recommendations.

“There’s only so far a nonscientist can go,” Fields said.

“Scientists are going to have to weigh in, especially in talking about what’s feasible or how things work.”

While physicists and engineers played a crucial role in the Iran nuclear deal, their recommendations did not escape scrutiny. For example, the verification agreement, which outlined how the coalition nations would confirm Iran’s compliance, allowed the Islamic republic as many as 24 days to prepare for inspections. Many in government and the media expressed outrage at giving nearly a month’s forewarning, suggesting that it allowed Iran plenty of time to cover its tracks.

To the average person, so much lead time seemed clearly foolish, Fields said. “But that 24 days wasn’t just made up.

Scientists said there’s absolutely no way in that time period you can hide evidence that you are violating this agreement with respect to uranium enrichment.” They knew that telltale traces of radioactivity would be impossible to remove completely, he said.

This enquiry, while politically motivated to some extent, is also symptomatic of a larger distrust of science among both politicians and the public.

Failure to communicate

TALK IT OUT Clear and understandable communication is critical to building trust among scientific leaders, politicians and the public.

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Much of the suspicion aimed at scientists may stem from a single factor — poor communication. G. K. Surya Prakash, George A. and Judith A. Olah Nobel Laureate Chair in Hydrocarbon Chemistry and professor of chemistry, has made several forays to the nation’s capital to encourage support of research on climate-friendly energy sources, with limited success. He places much of the fault on himself and his colleagues.

“I think the problem with scientists is that we are poor communicators,” he said, explaining that scientists are trained to be precise and accurate. This can make communicating with nonscientists — including politicians — difficult.

“With science, unless you know all the facts, you cannot be very precise,” he said, “which leads scientists to speak in terms of probabilities rather than certainties. And usually people, especially politicians, don’t like that. They want ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answers.”

Norbert Schwarz, Provost Professor of Psychology and Marketing and founding co-director of the USC Dornsife Mind and Society Center, agrees. In fact, he said, adherence to good scientific principles actually lowers credibility in most people’s eyes.

“The good scientists usually acknowledge that future findings may change the conclusion, and that should enhance the credibility of science because it shows that the science is done well. Yet, for most people, acknowledging that you have doubts, acknowledging that you may change your mind, is typically something that undermines trust.”

So why then do people not believe what the scientific evidence clearly shows? Why would someone — politician or otherwise — veer from a rational conclusion to embrace a less credible idea?

The unreliable mind

For many, Schwarz said, the answer may lie in how the mind works.

“People use one very powerful heuristic, called social consensus or social proof, to determine what is true,” he said. In other words, if most people believe it, there is probably something to it. Social consensus is partly why

while we rely on consensus, we are very bad at tracking it,” Schwarz said. “If you ask people how many believe something or how often they have heard a statement, you find they really are not good at keeping tabs.”

So people fall back on familiarity. The more familiar something sounds, the more likely they are to believe it.

Because if it is familiar, it must have been said by others who in turn must believe it, which leads back to social consensus.

“There’s only so far a nonscientist can go.

Scientists are going to have to weigh in.”

In a somewhat worrisome turn, Schwarz’s research shows that all it takes is one voice to build familiarity. “You can literally have a single voice say the same thing over and over again. Just one squeaky voice that keeps saying the same thing,” Schwarz explained, and it is enough to cast doubt or solidify a belief.

What then to do?

websites like Yelp and Rotten Tomatoes are so popular.

“If most people think that a restaurant is good, we’re more likely to go there,” Schwarz said. Likewise, if most people, especially those in close social circles, believe global warming is not real, then it probably is not.

Unfortunately, the mind is not very reliable at keeping account of the actual numbers. “The problem here is that,

Schwarz, Prakash, Fields and Miller all agree: Scientists must communicate more and do a better job of it in order to elicit greater confidence from politicians and the public.

“In my opinion, professors and scientists should become a little bit more vocal,” Prakash said, “and then the elected representatives will pay more attention.”

Fields points out that government officials working with scientists also could be better at communicating the details behind issues to the public, and he worries that the complexity of issues may pose challenges.

“They’re talking about all these peer-reviewed studies and their results, and it’s really complicated to explain. Al Gore had to make an entire movie about climate change to try to explain it, which may be just what we need — more creative ways to present issues, especially when it comes to science,” Fields said.

Schwarz concurs and believes the research can help illuminate better ways of getting the points across. “I think we have to look at how people evaluate whether something is likely to be true, and have to take that into account when we design messages,” he said.

For her part, Miller believes that academic institutions can and should play a lead role in building trust through better communication. She believes that leadership at academic institutions such as USC Dornsife should encourage scientists and scholars to be more vocal and support them in doing so, a critical step in building trust with the public and politicians alike.

“I think that academics should be capable of explaining their work in a way that the public or a journalist can understand. Part of what is appealing to me about university leadership is the ability to have a role in shaping that interface, to really think about how we encourage our academicians and others to be more open to that kind of communication,” she said.

It is an important first step in making sure people, including politicians and other leaders, learn to trust and reap the benefits of science and critical thinkers — and not get snowed.

Fall 2016 / Winter 2017 35

By Susan Bell

vietnamese horror story

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Fall 2016 / Winter 2017 37

America has always regarded the Vietnam War as its own personal horror story.

As we recognize the 50th anniversary of this tragic conflict, USC Dornsife scholars challenge this one-sided perspective, re-examining the legacy of what even the Vietnamese refer to as “The American War.”

As the first hypnotic n o t e s

CLOUDING THE ISSUES An American soldier guides U.S. Army helicopters in to land through a haze of purple smoke.

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A QUESTION OF PERSPECTIVE

Twenty years later, that anger was the catalyst that drove Nguyen to write his Pulitzer Prize–winning first novel, The Sympathizer (Grove Press, 2015), which explores the Vietnam War from multiple perspectives through the lens of his conflicted protagonist, an American-educated spy for the Viet Cong.

“Although a huge amount of work had already been done about the Vietnam War, I felt that no one had yet tried to write a novel that dealt with all sides, and with the problem of looking at a war from all sides,” Nguyen said.

“That was going to be my subject, not just the war itself, but how the war was regarded.”

The question of perspective lies at the heart of Nguyen’s novel and is a vital one for anyone seeking to establish a more balanced, less-biased truth about the 20-year conflict.

As his protagonist puts it: “This was the first war where the losers would write history instead of the victors.” For not only America’s understanding of the Vietnam War but the world’s perception of the conflict has been shaped almost exclusively by the viewpoints of Americans — by American soldiers, politicians and journalists, and by the makers of American culture — while Vietnamese perception of the most deadly combat in its history has largely been ignored.

For Nguyen, winning the Pulitzer was a personal victory, a validation of his long-term project to force Americans and Vietnamese to reconsider the history of the war and their involvement in it.

“Winning the Pulitzer felt like an endorsement of the importance of the memory of this war and of seeing it from another perspective,” he said. “I think it’s a vindication of the idea that the Vietnam War remains very much in the American consciousness.”

Americans are still arguing about the Vietnam War, and the arguments today have changed very little from those that raged when the conflict was in full swing: Was it a good or a bad war? Was it a war of racism and atrocity, or a war of noble, failed intentions?

While Nguyen says the U.S. is not unique in the way it remembers and forgets its wars and those involved in them, it has nevertheless focused on the Vietnam War almost exclusively as an American war in terms of its cost — to American lives and unity, and with respect to damage to the American psyche.

This, he argues, is illustrated in presidential speeches, from President Jimmy Carter in the 1970s to President Barack Obama today. Carter described the Vietnam War as

( p r e v i o u s p a g e ) N a p a l m G i r l i m a g e b y N i c k Ut , c o u r t e s y o f A P P hoto ; P hoto b y B e ttm a n n / G e tt y Im a g e s

The Terror of War (Previous page) This photograph of terrified children fleeing from a South Vietnamese napalm bomb attack on their village on June 8, 1972, became an iconic image of the anti-war movement.

of The Doors’ “The End” played over a lush, idyllic Vietnamese jungle, 10-year-old Viet Thanh Nguyen’s eyes widened as the peaceful green palm trees erupted into a fiery, orange inferno. Sitting cross-legged on the floor, the young boy watched, mesmerized, taking in the drifting smoke and the rhythmic chopping sound of the United States military helicopters silhouetted against the hellish scene of destruction unfolding on the TV screen in his family’s cozy California home.

It was 1981, and unbeknownst to his parents — refugees from Vietnam who fled to the U.S. six years earlier with their then 4-year-old son when Saigon fell to the communists — Nguyen had rented Francis Ford Coppola’s Vietnam War epic Apocalypse Now to while away a solitary weekend while his mom and dad worked long hours at their neighborhood grocery store in San Jose. Watching it changed the 10 year old’s destiny, setting him on the path to becoming a USC Dornsife professor and a Pulitzer Prize–winning author.

“The World War II movies I’d watched weren’t horrific, and it was clear who was the good guy and who was the bad guy,” said Nguyen, Aerol Arnold Chair of English and associate professor of English and American studies and ethnicity. “Here that wasn’t clear to me, and what was worse, people like me were the ones being killed. My 10-year-old mind had no way to make sense of drugs, psychedelic rock, murder, atrocity, massacre and Playboy bunnies. It was a war movie that was horrific, and that placed me at the center of that horror. I was confused because I wasn’t sure whether I should be rooting for the Americans who were doing the killing, who were committing all the horrors, or whether I should be identifying with the

Vietnamese who had the horror being inflicted upon them and their voices taken away.”

For the young Vietnamese-American boy, watching Apocalypse Now opened the door onto a very different view of a very different war, one that was to have major personal and professional repercussions.

“Watching that film made me feel like there was no place for me in American culture,” he said.

It was only later, after he developed a political conscience at college, that fury also entered the picture.

“Looking back, I realized that rage had rendered it impossible for me to be an American. It made me feel like an outsider, and I knew that anger was going to be a catalyst for me to try to make sense out of the movie, the Vietnam War, and my place both in American society and in the history of that war.”

The Terror of War Previous page: This photograph of terrified children fleeing from a South Vietnamese napalm bomb attack on their village on June 8, 1972, became an iconic image of the anti-war movement.

CLOUDING THE ISSUES An American soldier guides U.S. Army helicopters in to land through a haze of purple smoke in this photograph from 1970.

Fall 2016 / Winter 2017 39

one “of mutual destruction.” While no one denies the tragedy of the 58,000 American dead, that figure pales next to the 6 million Vietnamese, Laotians and Cambodians who died during the war and its aftermath. Obama’s 2012 speech commemorating the 50th anniversary of the war continued to focus squarely on American soldiers with virtually no mention of Vietnamese fatalities. It also went a step further, explicitly describing the war as one of “noble sacrifice” — a perspective on the war that has also found favor among Republicans.

“I think of it as a civil war in the American soul.”

“The bipartisan recasting of American memory is not simply to focus on American soldiers,” Nguyen argues, “but to turn the memory of what was at best an ambivalent war for Americans into one that is now a war of noble intentions and human failure, rather than one of atrocity and racism as it was portrayed by the anti-war movement in the 1960s and 1970s.”

Brig. Gen. Viet Luong also takes issue with this effort to rewrite history. The alumnus, who earned a degree in biological sciences in 1987, is the first Vietnamese-born general officer in the U.S. military.

“It’s very difficult for me to view the Vietnam War as anything other than an ugly conflict that should never have occurred,” Luong said. “So it’s very hard to recast it as a noble struggle between people with different ideologies because there was nothing noble about that war.”

BRAVERY AND SACRIFICE

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Luong was 9 years old when he escaped the ravages of war-torn Vietnam with his family, just a day before Saigon fell to the North Vietnamese on April 30, 1975.

Communist forces had already started shelling the airport when U.S. marines flew Luong, his father — an officer in the South Vietnamese marine corps — mother and seven sisters to a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier, the USS Hancock. From there, Luong and his family, along with thousands of other Vietnamese refugees in danger of communist reprisals, made their way to the U.S. under Operation Frequent Wind, a political asylum program.

“We barely escaped,” Luong said. “My sisters and I were scared to death. I still remember the formation of marine helicopters coming in to rescue us. They appeared, like images of angels from the sky.”

When they landed on the USS Hancock the ship was so big, Luong remembers, that he and his siblings were disoriented.

“We asked our father ‘Dad, where are we?’ He said ‘We’re on a U.S. carrier.’ We said ‘What does that mean?’

A LESSON IN DEMOCRATIC THINKING

Although their childhoods and backgrounds could not have been more different, Thomas Gustafson, associate professor of English and American studies and ethnicity, shares with Nguyen a youth so profoundly impregnated by the Vietnam War that he, too, cites the conflict as the greatest influence in shaping his scholarship.

Raised at the dead end of a dirt road in a small, conservative town in New Jersey, Gustafson first became aware that there was more than one perspective on the Vietnam War during his hometown’s Fourth of July parade.

It was 1967 and Gustafson was 13 years old.

“Amid all the Americana, high school students just a few years older than me were carrying a coffin in the parade to protest the Vietnam War. When the ‘Star Spangled Banner’ played they sat down,” Gustafson recalled. “My baseball coach, who was also chief of the fire department, made them stand and respect the flag. His politics were different from mine, but I knew he had a nephew who’d been killed in Vietnam. I felt sympathetic to the high school protestors, but I could also see the war from the point of view of this wonderful man who had lost his nephew.”

The rift Gustafson felt within himself that day was an echo, he realized, of the division he now knew existed within his country.

Gustafson, who is writing a memoir about the events of that parade, said growing up during the Vietnam War gave him his first lesson in what he calls “democratic thinking.”

“Tyranny tells people to learn from or respect one voice,” he said. “Democratic thinking teaches you to see things from multiple perspectives, to trust no single point of view.”

At university, his first politics course had him reading the Pentagon Papers. “I was completely shaped by responding to

P hoto b y L e e Lo c k wood / T i m e & L i f e P i c t u r e s / G e tt y Im a g e s

UNDER SIEGE The cover of Life magazine from April 7, 1967, featured Hanoi residents taking shelter underground during an air raid. The headline reads “First American Photograph in North Vietnam Under Siege.”

And he replied, ‘It means nothing in the world can harm you now.’ ” Standing on the deck of the Hancock, Luong said, he already knew he would serve in the U.S. military to give back to the nation that had saved him and his family from almost certain death. Thirty-nine years later, he pinned on his first star as he was promoted to the rank of brigadier general.

While Luong condemns the war, he pays tribute to the bravery and sacrifice of the American soldiers who fought in Vietnam.

“They did a super job,” he said. “You can’t take anything away from those men and women who fought over there. It took a little time, but I think we’ve recovered from Vietnam and that, demonstrably, our men and women across the armed forces have done a great job in the last decade or more of war.”

Nguyen, however, believes that the scars left by Vietnam, both in America’s psyche and on its soul, have yet to heal.

Before Vietnam, he argues, the U.S. saw itself as a world benefactor, a strong country that had never lost a war.

“The aftermath of the Vietnam War meant that no longer could Americans be self-confident about either their military prowess or their good intentions,” said Nguyen, describing the conflict as “deeply divisive.”

“I think of it as a civil war in the American soul,” he said. “American self-confidence still hasn’t been restored to the quality it had in the 1950s. The long shadow of the Vietnam War continues to hang over every American foreign policy venture, even today.”

Vietnam and it still affects how I teach today,” he said.

Just as Nguyen’s world was turned upside down by watching Apocalypse Now, Gustafson experienced a cataclysmic awakening when, as a junior at Yale University in 1974, he saw the anti-war documentary Hearts and Minds, which affected him so much emotionally he couldn’t sleep at night.

“I was struck by Gen. William Westmoreland’s statements in the documentary that ‘Orientals’ don’t have the same respect for life as Americans. His words are juxtaposed with a funeral in South Vietnam showing a mother, ravaged with grief, throwing herself on a grave,” Gustafson said. “That Westmoreland, the leader of this war, is engaging in this dehumanization, this prejudice and stereotyping of ‘Orientals,’ shows that either he doesn’t understand anything about Asian culture, or that he is engaging in this dehumanization as propaganda or because it allows him to conduct the war.”

Gustafson still shows the documentary to his students at the end of his American studies class “America, the Frontier, and the New West.”

“I don’t want there to be any softening of the horror,” he said.

The birth of his oldest daughter in 1983 added another perspective — one of empathy.

“When I saw parents visiting the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., I imagined what it would be like to lose a child, and I broke down and cried. As a literature professor, I teach critical thinking, but it must be supplemented by empathy, the ability to put ourselves in the shoes, the souls, hearts and minds of someone different from ourselves. For me, the seed of that came from Vietnam.”

Gustafson, who is fascinated by the politics of memory and whose research focuses on the power of political language and discourse to shape those memories, agrees with Nguyen that those who are pushing to rewrite the Vietnam War as a war of noble failed intentions are winning.

“We’re such a militaristic country, but we shy away from that, preferring instead to see ourselves as a republic, not as an empire,” he said. “We want to cover up how we began and developed as an empire. And now we’re covering up Vietnam.”

THE WRONG WAR

“Covering up” is not a new concept where Vietnam is concerned, argues Steven Ross, professor of history and director of the Casden Institute for the Study of the Jewish Role in American Life at USC Dornsife. While President Lyndon Johnson’s government maintained the official line, telling Americans that Vietnam was about saving democracy — that if Vietnam fell to communism, everything else would fall — it knew this to be untrue, Ross said.

In fact, he added, according to a secret CIA memo, 70 percent of America’s reason for fighting the Vietnam War was a face-saving exercise to avoid a humiliating defeat to the U.S. reputation as a guarantor.

“Only 20 percent was to keep South Vietnam from falling into Red Chinese hands, while 10 percent of our war aims were committed to helping the South Vietnamese enjoy a better, freer democratic way of life,” he said.

When such memos were revealed, the result, Ross said, was that Vietnam killed Americans’ confidence in the ability of American military power to fight the right wars. “Vietnam was the wrong war at the wrong time in the wrong place.”

Fall 2016 / Winter 2017 41

For many, the horrors of the Vietnam War were — and still are — unforgettably distilled in one unbearable image: that of Phan Thi Kim Phuc, the 9-year-old Vietnamese girl running naked in the collective eternity of our imaginations down a road, wailing in agony. She is naked because she tore off her burning clothes after a South Vietnamese napalm bomb attack on her village on June 8, 1972. The photograph, which became emblematic of the anti-war movement, dominated the front pages of the American press. In it, the callous cruelty of war is stripped bare and the viewer is forced to confront America’s complicity in committing atrocities against the innocent.

Today, despite our perception that we are more knowledgeable about current events thanks to 24/7 internet news access, Nguyen says censorship of war-zone images has increased, leaving us paradoxically sometimes less well informed than we were during the Vietnam era.

Ross agrees, noting that footage similar to that showing military coffins being unloaded from troop ships, which appeared on the nightly news during the Vietnam War and helped sway public opinion against the war, was banned by President George H. W. Bush — a ban that endured for 18 years during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

“Censorship is much more pervasive now so the media simply doesn’t have access to U.S. military operations in the same way American and foreign media did in Vietnam,” Nguyen said. “This means the possibility of capturing and seeing horrific images like the napalm girl, which played a role in bringing American involvement in the Vietnam War to an end, is now reduced for the U.S. population.”

REDUCED IMPACT

Even when such images do emerge, their impact is diminished, Nguyen said.

“When that image of Kim Phuc came out it was 1972.

America hadn’t seen images like that before, so it had tremendous shock value. I was 10 to 15 years old when I first saw these types of images, and they were devastating for me. One I particularly remember showed a woman weeping over the remains of her husband that were in a small garbage bag.”

Nguyen argues that the impact of such images is now reduced due to the desensitization caused by the rise in terrorism and our exposure to widespread graphic imagery in movies, video games and terrorist videos.

“These images are simply not as raw and shocking to us as they might have been to people 40 or 50 years ago,” he said.

If we maintain that the photograph of Kim Phuc resonated so deeply on so many levels that it had an impact on policy and indeed hastened the end of the war, what can we say about a more recent shocking photograph of another child tragically caught up in the consequences of war — that of Alan Kurdi, the 3-year-old Syrian refugee boy washed up on a Turkish beach in September 2015?

Although the Kurdi image went viral, it did not have the impact of the napalm girl in mobilizing people and governments to find a solution to the refugee crisis, or to end the conflict that is causing such suffering, argues Sarah Gualtieri, associate professor of American studies and ethnicity, history and Middle East studies.

“There were platitudes about caring for people in crisis, but the Kurdi image had limited resonance in American policy debates, despite the fact that it circulated so widely in the U.S.,” she said.

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“Images of children resonate very deeply with us. Children symbolically represent innocence, and we share a global ethic of caring for them. The image of the napalm girl fleeing in terror, the way she is robbed of her innocence in that moment, captured the deplorable longstanding involvement of the U.S. military in the region.”

But the Kurdi photograph, although equally heartbreaking, is more complicated. It’s only a matter of time, Gualtieri notes, before the sympathy it evokes is overshadowed by more recurrent and powerful images of terrorists.

UNEASY LISTENING

P hoto b y P a u l S c h u t z e r / T h e LIFE P i c t u r e Co l l e c t i o n / G e tt y Im a g e s ; photo c o u r t e s y o f v i e t n g u y e n

Nguyen and Gustafson think that while these images of children caught in war can still have an impact, the possibility of them moving us to take action has been reduced.

“What we learned from Vietnam is not to show pictures of war,” Gustafson said. “Our media is not as willing to show the ugly, tragic, atrocious side of war. We try to learn some wisdom from the suffering caused by the tragedies of history. But in some ways we don’t want to learn; we don’t want to confront it. We have such trouble seeing the ugly sides of America. There’s easy listening and uneasy listening, and we have the hardest time doing the uneasy listening to the voices that don’t flatter us, that don’t self-justify us. But that’s what we do in the humanities. We try to get students to listen to those voices, even when it’s challenging.”

Luong first saw Apocalypse Now in his late teens. Unlike Nguyen, it had little effect on him. “To me it was just another movie, it didn’t have an impact on me either way,” he said.

However, like Gustafson, he says he has been deeply moved by some of the documentaries made about Vietnam.

He cites Last Days of Saigon and certain combat documentaries. As an American soldier and a former Vietnamese refugee, seeing images of the war triggered conflicting emotions.

“They made me feel absolutely torn and very committed to the cause in South Vietnam,” he said. While such images fueled the anti-war movement in the U.S., they served to reinforce Luong’s determination to continue his family’s legacy of military service. “That’s the ethos I was raised with — that as ugly as war is, it’s important to sign up to defend your country.”

Luong believes that among Vietnamese who arrived in the U.S. as young adults and those who served in the South Vietnamese army, anger still lingers over what is perceived as a sense of abandonment, even betrayal, by the U.S. “Resentment persists among the diaspora, especially among South Vietnamese officers and those left behind to suffer communist re-education camps and all the oppression that followed,” Luong said, noting that he personally doesn’t have those feelings, although his father and his father’s comrades certainly did.

“Looking at the last years of that conflict and talking to some of the very few remaining U.S. advisers in Vietnam, we learn that the South Vietnamese fought for the most part heroically. Yet, in movies and the media, they weren’t positively portrayed.” Luong feels the suggestion that somehow they didn’t do their part or were a bunch of cowards who didn’t defend their homeland, is very painful to his father’s generation.

“That hurts even more than the sense of abandonment,” he said.

Ross stresses that the film studios largely remained silent on Vietnam until after the war was over.

“Images of children resonate very deeply with us.”

“Hollywood is in the money-making business not the consciousness-raising business. It didn’t want to risk being accused of a lack of patriotism, so it avoided putting out films critical of the war until it was over,” Ross said.

The Deer Hunter, Apocalypse Now — these films changed our post-war view of Vietnam, recasting it as our very own personal horror story.

However, Nguyen warns there’s a real danger in arguing that any kind of atrocity or war is unique, or more horrific, than any other. “What that means is that we’re personally invested in it,” he said. “Our war, our horror, is more unique than other peoples’ and that’s actually not true.”

The deaths of 3 million Vietnamese and 3 million Cambodians and Laotians during and after the Vietnam War represent horror on a grand scale. Yet we must not forget, Nguyen reminds us, that 6 million Jews and 20 million Russians died during World War II, and that 800,000 Rwandans were slaughtered during the Rwandan genocide.

“What is really horrific about the Vietnam War is that it wasn’t unique,” Nguyen said. “The fact that 6 million people died during a war was actually not unique during the 20th century. That is the most horrific thing about it.”

SUFFER THE CHILDREN (Opposite page) A wellmeaning American soldier from the 7th Marine Regiment tries to comfort a distraught Vietnamese child by giving her a doll, near Cape Batangan, Vietnam, 1965.

Long Walk to Freedom Viet Thanh Nguyen as a small child in Vietnam with his mother, Linda Kim Nguyen, at a rubber plantation in Ban Me Thuot in 1973.

Fall 2016 / Winter 2017 43

44

E

E Pluribus unum

(Out of Many, One)

Public service represents one of the most

noble of career paths, one centered not

on the individual’s betterment but rather

on the greater good. Five remarkable

alumni representing the spectrum of

political ideologies carry with them a

breadth of lessons garnered from their time

at USC Dornsife to undertake storied careers

in service to their communities, whether

local, regional or national. Drawing from

their experience at the university,

these exceptional citizens set a high

standard for what it means to represent

their constituents — and their alma mater.

By Susan Bell, Michelle Boston, Lynell George and Laura Paisley

Fall 2016 / Winter 2017 45

By Michelle Boston

Community Commitment After a successful threedecade career in business, Diane Brooks Dixon is now helping shape the future of Newport Beach as mayor of the affluent coastal California town.

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/ From the Mayor’s Desk /

When Diane Brooks Dixon was in junior high school, she and her parents attended a campaign event for Richard Nixon’s 1960 presidential run. Nixon’s wife, Pat, gave Dixon a hug and pinned a carnation to her sweater. It was a seminal moment that spurred her interest in politics and public affairs.

“I was going to be president when I grew up,” recalled Dixon, who now serves as mayor of Newport Beach, Calif.

As a girl growing up near Phoenix, Ariz., Dixon spent a lot of time going to political events. She was the daughter of journalists — her father was a prominent newspaper publisher in the region and her mother a managing editor — so local and state politics was a regular topic of conversation around the dinner table.

“I was always involved in school government activities,” Dixon said. Around the same time as the Nixon campaign event, she learned the term political science — and knew that it would be her major when she attended college.

Dixon started her freshman year at USC in Fall 1969. It was a politically charged time. The Vietnam War had been going on for several years. The Civil Rights Movement was fresh in people’s minds.

“A different kind of political engagement was evolving,” said Dixon, who earned her bachelor’s degree in political science in 1973. “All of this was happening while I was a student, so politics was really at the forefront of our lives on campus.”

During her time at USC Dornsife, Dixon absorbed everything that she could about politics. She was inspired by her professors — “every one of them was really good,” she noted — including political science faculty members William Lammers, Totton James Anderson, Carl Christol, Larry Berg and Judith Stiehm.

Dixon aspired to intern in Congress. The summer before her junior year, she set out to make her dream a reality.

“I remember sitting in my room typing letters on a typewriter to everyone I could think of in Washington, up to the White House,” Dixon said. “One of my letters got to the right people and I was offered an unpaid internship working with the House Republican Conference Committee.”

Although politics remained at the forefront of Dixon’s interests — she worked on a variety of local and state political campaigns throughout college — her own entrée into the world of politics didn’t begin until almost four decades after she earned her degree.

Dixon spent more than 30 years working in the corporate world, most recently as a senior executive in global strategic communications and government relations with Fortune 300 company Avery Dennison. She credits her corporate experience with setting the stage for her foray into local politics.

“My business experience really grounded me in solving problems and working with people,” Dixon said. “In business, you have to bring people together if you want to sell an idea or get funding within a corporation.”

In a chartered city such as Newport Beach, for example, things don’t get done without a majority vote on a particular issue, she said. “That means working with people and making your case. I say this often, whether it’s to a nonprofit that wants funding or to an organization or to a resident: Make your case. Be your best advocate.”

In 2014, Dixon was seated on the City Council in

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diane brooks dixon

Newport Beach — a tony coastal town of about 87,000 residents situated in Orange County between Los Angeles and San Diego — with a platform of fiscal responsibility, transparency and listening to residents. Almost immediately, councilmembers appointed her mayor pro tem. In December 2015, she became mayor.

During her campaign, Dixon walked through much of Newport Beach speaking with residents. “It’s a fantastic community and the people care deeply about their neighbors and their quality of life,” Dixon said.

She learned that people were concerned about issues that might affect the value of their property. “From one end of the city to the other people believe that their property is their most important asset,” she explained. Above all, they wanted a council representative who would listen to them about issues important to them and the quality of life in their neighborhood. So once in office, Dixon instituted monthly town halls for residents to bring up concerns they had about their city and the way it is run.

At Dixon’s first town hall, people filled the room, spilling into the aisles.

“It was standing room only,” she said. “People were upset about one thing or another, but then we had our staff there, listening to them.” City employees were on hand to answer questions.

“Now, 18 months later, we’re still holding town halls, but attendance has dropped. Of course, there are still issues, but we’re seeing the overall temperature on hot-button issues decline by allowing open conversation and listening to the debate. It’s a really wonderful example of the power of communication.”

Dixon is committed to keeping the lines of communication open with residents. She’s also hoping to share what she’s learned about leadership with her constituents, particularly women.

Along with others in city government and city services, Dixon developed the Women in Newport Networking Forum, which encourages Newport Beach women to serve with local civic and community groups. Dixon’s key message to women who aspire to serve in local government but who may need some encouragement is the same she has for community groups and residents who are looking for support from the city.

“I tell them, ‘You are your best advocate. Tell your story.’ In life you can’t wait for the phone to ring, whether it’s for a new job or a new opportunity. Be proactive and define yourself.”

She also offers the lessons she’s personally learned while in office. “I’ve learned to trust my judgment, to stay true to my principles, to be honest and transparent, to listen to others, to tell it like it is and to ask questions — always ask ‘Why?’ “That’s my lesson in life, not just politics,” Dixon said. “‘Why did something happen? Why does it cost this much?

Why do we do it this way?’ I would say while I was running for office, ‘If it ain’t broke, look again.’ There’s always a way to make something more efficient and cost less.”

Dixon credits her time at USC Dornsife with shaping who she has become.

“My USC experience helped make me who I am today,” Dixon said. “It prepared me for my career, and I am grateful for that.”

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Mark Ridley-Thomas

/ The Winning Point of View /

From an early age, Mark Ridley-Thomas understood the distinction between politics and activism. There was, he discerned, a time and place for both.

There were the politics of the grand stage: the elected office and the figures one saw on the stump in newspapers or television. But too, there were the in-the-trenches folks pressing for change — the ministers, the community organizers. Here, he saw close-up the influence of interaction, the handshake, the day-to-day conversation. It was close-tothe-ground interaction that put one in touch with the most urgent needs of a community at a block-by-block level.

The Los Angeles in which Ridley-Thomas came of age was a tinderbox. The Watts uprisings of 1965, the largest, most devastating urban unrest of the time, revealed Los Angeles for what it was — a city deeply divided racially and socioeconomically. It also shed harsh light on the disparate cities that existed within one region: one that was cordoned off by politics and the other in desperate need of advocacy. Those seven smoky days in August 1965 — symbolically a community’s raised voice — recalls RidleyThomas, “had an undeniably profound effect.”

In a long season of unrest, another tragedy seized his attention: the 1968 assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. A leader and activist who had figured prominently in Ridley-Thomas’ consciousness, King both preached and organized out of the church Ridley-Thomas’ family attended.

“Upon his assassination, he became so large,” RidleyThomas remembers. He recalls hearing that unmistakable intonation on every radio and television station. And in that echo, he recognized the power in both the day-to-day presence and the impact of a platform.

“I was transfixed,” said Ridley-Thomas. “Ultimately, those speeches were transformative. They began my journey in terms of understanding the philosophy and methodology of nonviolent direct action.” Ridley-Thomas saw a legacy to uphold.

Transforming the conditions of place and enhancing the lives of those who live in it can be an incremental process, he would come to learn. Currently a supervisor in Los Angeles County’s 2nd District, he has served 25 years in public office. “I’ve been in four different seats over that period of time — city council, state Assembly, the state Senate, the board of supervisors.” In his current post, he represents 2 million residents, including the USC campus, which he has always represented as an elected official.

Initially, electoral politics had not been his plan. “I had been working in civil and human rights [in the ’80s] at the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in Los Angeles, an organization founded by Dr. King.” In his post as executive director, he framed the organization’s agenda, focusing on a range of public policy and advocacy issues including school desegregation, child welfare, police misconduct and dispute resolution. But in the early ’90s, when a city council seat opened up on his home turf, taking it felt like a natural step. “I saw a need for leadership. So I stepped forward.”

His depth of knowledge about vulnerable neighborhoods was rooted in firsthand experience. Ridley-Thomas had

grown up in the heart of Los Angeles, in what was then called the Eastside, those neighborhoods “east of Main Street.” The youngest of five children, he attended Ascot Avenue Elementary and George Washington Carver Junior High, a predominantly black campus at that time.

While enrolled there, he would be selected to take part in a summer program offered at the Claremont Colleges. The experience opened his world academically and launched a tradition of summer-program participation that put him in conversation with diverse students from across the region.

This experience became a window onto what it meant to connect through common interests, as well as to find common ground.

After graduating from Manual Arts High School, he began his undergraduate work at Immaculate Heart College, majoring in social relations. He earned a master’s degree in religious studies and completed his Ph.D. in social ethics with an emphasis on policy analysis from USC Dornsife’s School of Religion in 1989.

USC served as a rich proving ground. “I’m formally trained as an ethicist,” he explained, “and for the last 25 years, the range of issues that I’ve worked on — economic justice, issues related to criminal justice, health-care reform — we were studying [back then]. Not from a political perspective, but from an academic perspective. That academic preparation gave me the ability to think about those issues from a variety of vantage points.”

His USC experience helped to both clarify the depth of his political engagement and shape the arc of his professional path. “One has to be able to make the distinction between the academy and the laboratory. I function now, and have for the last quarter of a century, in the laboratory — the political [world]. I put a lot of emphasis on both thinking and doing. I allow my training to inform how I think and act, and ultimately, the policy perspectives that I seek to advance are informed by my training.”

In all, he said, “I’ve had many more good days than bad.”

He can count among his successes construction of the Metro Crenshaw/LAX light rail line on L.A.’s west side, due to open in 2019, the reopened and reimagined Martin Luther King, Jr. Community Hospital, which attends to a historically underserved community, and the Empowerment Congress, a citizen-involved, civic engagement forum that holds its annual summit at USC. But he does not like to spend a lot of time cataloging wins or losses: What gets passed or stalled, dismantled or transformed is an exercise of endurance and grit. When things do not work, he has learned, there is usually another opportunity, as in the current fight to reduce homelessness in the county and statewide.

“Dust yourself off and be ready to go tomorrow. That’s the nature of this business. You don’t get it done in one shot.

You have to try again, learn how to craft the argument differently, await new colleagues to join you who share your vision. Allow your colleagues to appreciate what is not simply your own point of view. In other words, their views matter and their votes count. In the end, it always has to be the winning point of view.”

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By Lynell George

hometown leadership Mark Ridley-Thomas, drawing inspiration from civil rights leader and activist Martin Luther King Jr., has spent more than a quarter century working to transform the Los Angeles community he calls home.

i l l u s t r a t i o n s b y d a v i d j oh n s o n f o r u s c do r n s i f e m a g a z i n e

Fall 2016 / Winter 2017 49

By Laura Paisley

politics and law Lynne Williams transitioned from political campaigning and working as a jury selection consultant on political trials to law school and a law career when she was 44 years old.

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/ A Career Serving the Public / Lynne Williams wasn’t planning to become a lawyer.

Her academic background was in psychology, having earned a Ph.D. from USC Dornsife’s program in 1981.

After graduating, the Brooklyn native spent more than a decade in the realms of progressive politics and community organizing. She worked as a jury selection consultant on political trials and for Democrat Gary Hart’s 1984 presidential campaign, driving from state to state “for like 50 bucks a week.”

But in 1994, Williams was a single mother living in Northern California with her 6-year-old son, Brendan, who was about to start first grade.

“I had been working out of my house so I could be there when he got home in the afternoons,” Williams explained.

“On his first day of school I said, ‘Have fun, you’re going to love it!’ and he replied, ‘I’m so excited to be starting big boy school — what are you going to do now?’ I was 44 at the time, but I thought, “Oh, I don’t know, maybe I’ll go to law school.”

And that she did, graduating from Golden Gate University School of Law in 1998 with a J.D. and a certificate in public interest law. Partly because her son had a disability, she became interested in special education law and estate planning for families with disabled and mentally ill members.

Later, Williams added land use, zoning and environmental law to her specialties in addition to representing political activists arrested for civil disobedience.

Her initial engagement with politics began after she finished her doctorate and volunteered for Democratic social activist and politician Tom Hayden. He was leading the Campaign for Economic Democracy, a progressive, grassroots political movement that promoted environmental protection, civil rights and solar energy.

“During that time, I met [California Gov.] Jerry Brown and was very interested in what he was doing and wanting to pursue in terms of alternative energy and sustainability,” Williams said. “I got totally hooked.”

In 1982, she was hired as Hayden’s finance director during his election campaign for the California state Legislature.

“I’m outgoing and I liked fundraising, and I was thrilled that he got elected. I was spoiled by working for someone in my first campaign who actually got elected,” she laughed. “Luckily I had that to look back on along with all the people I worked for over the years who didn’t get elected, including myself.”

Williams, former state chair of Maine’s Green Independent Party, decided to run for political office in 2004, making an unsuccessful bid for the Maine House of Representatives as a Green Party candidate. She announced her candidacy for the party’s nomination for governor of Maine in the 2010 election, though she dropped out of the race that March in order to run for the state’s District 28 Senate seat. Williams received 12 percent of the votes in her district, finishing in third place, though she hardly considers these experiences a failure. “[The campaigns] were very satisfying to me. Sometimes I think it’s easier to run as a third-party person

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lynne williams because you don’t have the same high expectations. If you do better than you are expected to do, it’s still a big win.”

At USC Dornsife, Williams studied alternative dispute resolution as part of her dissertation research. She did field work and observation at the country’s first community mediation program, in Dorchester, Mass. This work was the foundation of what is now 30 years of experience as an interpersonal and community mediator.

“I feel like I have always used my psychology training in many different real-world ways in my legal profession, my writing and all sorts of other ways,” she said.

Williams is considering running for probate court judge for Hancock County, Maine, in 2018, a part-time position that would allow her to keep her solo law practice in Bar Harbor. “[In Maine] probate isn’t just wills and estates,” she explained. “It also involves people who are judged to be incompetent and have hearings, plus guardianships, adoptions and name changes. People go in to see this judge when they’re not in very good situations.”

Williams considers public service to be extremely important, believing it should be something that you contribute to your community, state or government separate from your paid job.

“About 30 percent of my legal work has always been pro bono. Sometimes when we need gas money we’ll have them pass the hat,” she joked. “But basically it’s my community service.”

Williams is one of the leading authorities on medical marijuana law in Maine and, as general counsel of Legalize Maine, she co-authored the recreational marijuana legalization initiative appearing on the Maine ballot in November.

She sees this popular initiative as providing a new economic sector for her state.

“We only have a few paper mills left. We need to create new economic sectors, and we’re a big farming state, we have a lot of land and it’s affordable, so it’s a natural fit for Maine.

We’re a libertarian state, people are very tolerant and I think it will provide opportunities for small businesses.”

One of the achievements she is most proud of in her legal career was a 2008 civil disobedience trial in which she represented a group of political activists who had been arrested after entering a Republican senator’s office and refusing to leave.

“My colleague and I worked really hard with the defendants to frame a story of why they did this. We told the story about why — even if they were mistaken, which they were — they felt that international law compelled them to do this.

“There were tears in the jury’s eyes, and they went out and came back two hours later and said not guilty for all of them. Even though technically they were guilty, that was what we call in the trade ‘jury nullification,’ where a jury decides to acquit even though the law would compel them to convict these people. Afterwards, some of the jury members came out and met with us, and they said, ‘We would’ve been out in 45 minutes … but we wanted to get the free lunch.’ ”

Fall 2016 / Winter 2017 51

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blAKE OSHIRO

/ Passionate Civil Rights Advocate /

When Blake Oshiro ’92 made the most important speech of his political career, he based it on an analogy drawn from a Greek myth he had studied as an English major at USC Dornsife.

It was 2010 and Oshiro was the Democratic majority leader in the Hawaii House of Representatives. The Islands of Aloha were embroiled in a highly charged debate over civil union for same-sex couples — a deeply controversial issue in a state that traditionally had strongly resisted same-sex unions.

“When I gave my speech, I used the myth of Sisyphus, condemned to eternally push a boulder up a hill, as an analogy for the ongoing battle faced by civil union advocates,” Oshiro said.

Civil union was an issue that lay close to Oshiro’s heart and he was determined to convince his fellow lawmakers that all people, regardless of their sexual orientation, should have the right to legal union with the person they love.

In an effort to achieve that cherished goal, he had recently taken a courageous step. Though family and close friends had long known he was gay, Oshiro came out publicly during Hawaii’s civil union debate.

“I thought it was important that I state that unequivocally so that people knew what I stood for and why I was fighting for this,” he said.

The bill passed. Oshiro went on to beat socially conservative challenger Gary Okino in his 2010 race for re-election and to serve as one of the leading political strategists involved in passing same sex marriage in Hawaii.

“Getting that vote felt like we had finally overcome the long battle of moving that boulder,” Oshiro said. “It was a victory for gay rights and it was reaffirming for me to realize that so many community, political and business leaders supported me and hadn’t rejected me.”

The experience, he said, taught him not to be afraid of doing the right thing.

“Seeing the movement towards equality was extremely heartwarming and rewarding for me. It’s one of my greatest personal achievements because it really demonstrated to me why I wanted to be in elected office in the first place, which was to make a difference.”

Oshiro’s proudest professional achievement, he said, has been his ability to maintain good relationships with his colleagues, despite the harsh and bitter infighting that is often a reality of political life.

“They understood my role, and even if I had to be tough or hold people accountable, they knew I did it for the betterment of our majority caucus,” Oshiro said.

Growing up in a Honolulu suburb, the son of a bluecollar electrician and an elementary school teacher, Oshiro never considered a career in politics, although a teenage fascination with the TV show L.A. Law ignited a desire to move to Los Angeles, attend USC and become a lawyer.

“It wasn’t until I was majoring in English at USC Dornsife and my professors showed me the big picture — how politics interrelates with history, social studies, literature and art —

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that I became fascinated with political science,” he said.

After returning to Hawaii for law school, Oshiro volunteered with the Sierra Club. He was helping with lobbying efforts when several young legislators convinced him to stand for election.

Oshiro threw his hat into the ring and was elected as representative of Hawaii’s 33rd District in 2000. He held the post until 2011, serving as Democratic majority leader from 2008 until his final term ended.

Oshiro said his USC Dornsife education gave him excellent communication skills.

“That’s extremely important when it comes to any public office, but especially so in political office, where the ability to be precise, accurate and still convey a strong sense of sincerity is paramount,” he said.

Oshiro was also able to put those skills to great use while serving from 2011–14 as deputy chief of staff to thenHawaii Gov. Neil Abercrombie — a job that required Oshiro not only to be the governor’s primary political and policy adviser and to oversee the state budget, but also to write Abercrombie’s annual state-of-the state speech.

Oshiro believes the most important value in politics is credibility.

“People need to know they can rely on your word, that you’re not misleading them and that you’ll give them the answer and the information they need. I’m grateful it was a lesson I learned early because it contributed to a lot of my successes. However, it led to some failures, too, because if people ask me a tough question, I’ll give them the honest answer, even if it won’t necessarily help my cause.”

Before getting into politics, Oshiro said he shared much of the population’s cynicism about politicians. “Having worked with great political leaders, my view of why a majority of people get into public office really changed. I found most have a sincerely held belief of wanting to make things better and contribute to our society by becoming civic leaders. That’s really heartening to me.

“Having seen democracy at work, I think it’s an extremely messy and complicated system, but I do think it’s one of the best forms of government that exists. The level of debate and exchanges of insults in this presidential election are very disheartening, but I’m still optimistic that at the end of the day a sense of diplomacy and maturity, and an overall sense of doing what’s best for our country will prevail.”

When Abercrombie was not re-elected, Oshiro opted to return to the private sector. He is now executive vice president of Capitol Consultants of Hawaii, one of the largest lobbying firms in the state.

“After 14 years of public service, 11 in elected office in the House of Representatives and three in the governor’s office, I felt it was time for me to try something different,” Oshiro said. “People ask me all the time if I’m ever going to return to politics and elected office. I tell them I’ll never say never, but it has to be the right time and opportunity.”

By Susan Bell

politics in paradise Blake Oshiro spent 14 years in public service in Hawaii, three of them as Democratic majority leader in the state’s House of Representatives, where he successfully championed civil union for same-sex couples.

Fall 2016 / Winter 2017 53

By Laura Paisley

congress via the cia Bob Barr started out working for the CIA. His love of politics then led him to serve as a U.S. attorney for Georgia and eventually a Republican U.S. congressman.

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/ The Importance of Individual Freedom /

Though the product of a modest, Midwestern provenance, Iowa native Bob Barr gained a wider world view early on.

His father, a civil engineer who often received lengthy assignments in places as far-ranging as Malaysia, Pakistan, Panama, Peru, Iraq and Iran, chose to bring his family with him rather than be separated. Living abroad for nearly a decade was an experience that made a lasting impression on Barr.

“Having grown up overseas from third grade through high school graduation in Tehran, I was exposed to a lot of different cultures and political environments — everything from military dictatorships to monarchies,” the former U.S. congressman said. “At a very early age, through those experiences, I gained a deep appreciation for the freedoms we have here in America.”

Barr’s political views put a premium on, in his words, “the absolute importance of protecting, to the greatest extent that we can, individual freedom.”

His ideologies continued to develop when he came to USC Dornsife to study international relations. Discovering philosopher Ayn Rand as a junior deepened Barr’s appreciation for conservatism and prompted him to join the Trojan Young Republican Club and the Objectivist Society. He was also a member of the Tau Kappa Epsilon fraternity.

“Through the fraternity I learned a great deal about individual responsibility and leadership,” Barr said. “That, coupled with the broader experience at USC, with its large and diverse student body, helped prepare me for politics and being involved in a very complex environment with a diversity of backgrounds and political views.”

Following his graduation in 1970, Barr began his career as an analyst of Latin American issues for the Central Intelligence Agency. Though he lived at the epicenter of national political activity in Washington, D.C., his job prohibited partisan involvement. By the time he earned his J.D. and moved to Georgia to practice law in 1978, he “had a tremendous amount of pent-up interest in politics.”

In Atlanta, Barr got heavily involved with the local — and eventually state — Republican Party. In 1986, President Ronald Reagan appointed Barr U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Georgia. During his tenure, he led prosecutions against state officials and members of the Medellín drug cartel, and indicted a sitting Republican congressman for perjury.

Barr entered the congressional arena in 1994 with his election to the U.S. House of Representatives and served four terms between 1995 and 2003. He was a member of several legislative committees during this time.

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Following his initial service as a Republican congressman, Barr spent two years as an Independent before joining the Libertarian Party in 2006. He served on its national committee before being nominated as the party’s 2008 presidential candidate. He returned to the Republican Party in 2011.

Barr said he is particularly proud of several accomplishments during his time in Congress. These include his role in balancing the federal budget — the first time in 40 years — through the 1997 Balanced Budget Act. Though it only lasted a few years, he said, at least it set a standard and showed the country that it can be done.

Also a leader in the impeachment of President Bill Clinton, Barr said he succeeded against tremendous odds in holding Clinton to the standard of “we are a nation of laws, not of men” when he passed articles of impeachment for perjury and obstruction of justice in 1998. Despite this victory, Barr experienced how brutal politics can be. “[During the impeachment process] the political maneuvering and the media became extremely personal and nasty,” he said. “That affected my family as well as me, which I think emphasized to me just how important it is to develop a very thick skin.

“The downside of that is that you learn to be very skeptical, almost cynical about people and things that happen in the political arena. It teaches you to be very tough, but on the other hand, it can develop callouses against perhaps the better side of humanity.”

Barr tries to resist the temptation of cynicism in this era of staunchly partisan politics.

“My philosophy of public service and politics generally is that if you cave in to a sense of absolute pessimism and cynicism, which is fairly easy to do, then you are admitting that you’ve lost and you have no ability to change the direction in which our political system is going.”

Barr said he works to maintain a sense of optimism and encourages young people in particular to do the same. He also noted that politicians must learn to deal with failure as well as success.

“Nobody is going to go through life without experiencing failure. It’s extremely important to recognize that and to learn how to deal with it. It’s no fun losing an election but sooner or later it does happen — it happened to me when I lost my election as an incumbent member of Congress in 2002 — and you have to deal with it.

“It was also important to me to convey to my two sons, who had worked very, very hard for the campaign, that you can’t take it personally. You have to learn from it and then move on and look for new opportunities.”

Fall 2016 / Winter 2017 55

the of the party

In a saga lasting more than 200 years, political parties in the United States have shifted, evolved and, more importantly, persisted. By Laura Paisley Despite the fundamental nature of political parties in the daily life of American politics, the U.S. Constitution never even mentions them. Our first president had no party affiliation, and the Founding Fathers were a bit wary of the whole idea and the potential problems these “factions” could cause. But in the last two centuries, political parties have emerged to play a significant role in our system of government and beyond, helping to shape legislation, culture, identity and our ideals as a nation.

This year, the United States has been immersed in an election full of personalities that at times seem larger than the parties they ostensibly represent. Donald Trump’s candidacy as a Republican who has alienated many prominent members of his own party while embracing a stance that is uniquely his own has raised the question of whether this election could realign the electorate and the GOP. Is there any historical precedent for this? Well, yes and no. But understanding how our dynamic party system works can help us understand whether or not this election is just an anomaly and how much influence it might have on the political landscape moving forward.

The party system is born

WHERE’S THE PARTY? The U.S. Constitution does not mention political parties at all, and our first president had no party affiliation. But today, it is hard to imagine politics without them.

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Christian Grose, associate professor of political science and director of graduate studies of the Political Science and International Relations (POIR) Ph.D. program at USC Dornsife, studies American politics.

“Even at the founding of the United States, George Washington and the others were really concerned about the idea of political parties,” he explained. “They thought they would be too confining and would create permanent coalitions that would be problematic.”

Looking at the current state of affairs in Congress and

election politics, perhaps their predictions weren’t too far off. And yet almost immediately in the early years of our government, informal coalitions began to form within the legislature. It was almost impossible to get anything done in Congress without them, Grose said — after all, a coalition is how something gets passed when there is a large group of people trying to make a decision.

Parties became a fixture in our political system for another reason, too: They came in very handy in terms of organizing and supporting candidates in elections.

It was the campaign leading to Andrew Jackson’s presidential election in 1828 that cemented the Democratic Party, Grose noted. The Whig Party emerged in opposition to Jackson’s policies shortly thereafter, sticking around for a little more than two decades.

“The Republican Party came about in the mid-19th century,” Grose said, “and our modern two-party election system really emerged after that.”

It takes two to tango

For better or worse, the two-party system is thoroughly entrenched in the U.S. But why only two? And which is it: better or worse?

“A lot of political science research shows that the number of parties in a constituency [the voters in a specified area who elect a representative to a legislative body] is basically the number of available seats plus one more,” Grose said, adding that this is based on a mathematical proof. We use the “firstpast-the-post” voting system, which means voters each choose one candidate and the candidate who receives more votes than anyone else is the winner — and one winner takes all.

“As a result, we tend to have two dominant parties in the U.S.,” he said.

Fall 2016 / Winter 2017 57

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So how is it working for us? On one hand, it could be argued that the two-party system promotes centrism, compromise, political stability and, by extension, economic growth. Governance is simpler, with less fractiousness and fewer radical parties, and without the hung parliaments that can occur with multiparty systems in other countries.

“In a positive sense, it creates two easy choices and it’s not as complex as other systems,” Grose said. “On the other hand, when there are only two major parties, it makes it harder for viewpoints that are less mainstream to be represented. There’s a tendency toward keeping difficult issues off the agenda.”

From this perspective, the two-party system potentially prevents alternative views from getting serious consideration and encourages voter apathy if voters perceive that their choices are limited. And as we’ve seen in the current political climate, the two-party system has often led to vociferous partisanship and impasse. So what is the most efficient system?

“That depends on how you feel about compromise,” said Dan Schnur, assistant professor of the practice of political science and director of USC Dornsife’s Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics. If a person believes strongly in a particular policy position, he said, and doesn’t want to compromise, then the two-party system becomes a source of frustration and inefficiency. “If there are a dozen parties, you can be absolutely pure on the issues that are important to you. With only two major parties, there’s a necessity for compromise.

“But the U.S. system of government is designed to encourage compromise,” he said. “The Founding Fathers put together a system with three branches of government and two houses of Congress in order to protect against what they called ‘the tyranny of the majority.’ So even though we don’t see it that much in 21st-century America, compromise is part of our country’s political DNA.” The parties they are a changin’

Despite the steadfastness of the two-party system, political parties themselves tend to evolve and change dramatically over time. This happens for a variety of reasons, such as changing attitudes and demands within the electorate as well as the efforts of parties to adopt different positions to try to win elections and reach new voters.

The platform of the Democratic Party, for example, changed considerably over the early 20th century.

“Today’s Democratic Party is identified as being pro-civil rights,” Grose explained, “but prior to [President] Lyndon Johnson and [President] Franklin Delano Roosevelt, it was not considered the party in favor of civil rights. In fact, it was anti-civil rights, a party of whites that was disenfranchising minority voters.

“During the Johnson era and going forward, the Democratic Party tried to adopt more pro-civil rights policies because that’s what the electorate wanted, especially with the enfranchisement of African Americans in the South.

So conservative white voters moved to another party, the Republican Party.

“We see patterns like this throughout history where parties take different positions than they would have a generation prior.”

A theory called realignment helps explain how some elections can realign the electorate and alter positions of a party in a way that shifts the balance of power on a lasting basis.

“Realignment has met with some challenges by scholars, but it’s an interesting theory because it helps to explain how things happened in the past,” said Professor of i l l u s t r a t i o n s b y B r i a n St a u f f e r f o r u s c do r n s i f e m a g a z i n e

Political Science Ann Crigler. “It helps explain how partisan politics can change rather dramatically.”

A notable period of political realignment occurred in 1932, when FDR was elected by a large coalition of Democrats in addition to other groups of voters not traditionally associated with that party, Grose said.

“You had northern liberals, minorities and southern racist whites all voting for FDR because of the Great Depression.

That kind of stuck for the next few elections, with many of the same people continuing to vote Democrat.”

Fractured beyond repair?

The unexpected rise of Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential race has led to a state of turmoil within the Republican Party, as it highlighted existing divisions and wrenched open new ones. Likewise, Bernie Sanders’ ascent posed significant challenges to the Democratic Party as a groundswell of support shifted toward him. There has even been some speculation as to whether, in the face of the disunity stemming from Trump’s candidacy, the GOP might split into two parties.

Historically, however, there are very few examples of this phenomenon in the U.S., called third-party fracturing. This generally occurs when the two dominant parties ignore a critical social or policy issue. The best example of this in our country’s past was the divisive issue of slavery, which was coming to a head in the early 1850s when the Democrats and the Whigs were the two major parties.

“Neither party was addressing slavery in any serious manner,” Grose said. “They were just trying to avoid the issue because it was very difficult for their coalitions, but it was a massive issue.”

Meanwhile, the nascent Republican Party was promoting the abolition of slavery along with other northern political and economic interests. Significantly, they were the only party to take such a position on slavery.

“When two parties keep a major policy item off the agenda, that’s where a third party could actually emerge to become a second or first party,” Grose said.

This is largely how an ascending third party, the Republicans, overtook the Whigs. While the Democrats were able to maintain cohesion as a party, over the course of the 1850s the Whigs experienced a swift decline due to internal divisions and a lack of national leadership — exacerbated by the disastrous mid-century presidency of Whig Zachary Taylor. Within the space of four years, Gross said, Whigs were supplanted entirely in Congress by Republicans.

Nothing like this has happened since in American history. Even though the candidacy of Donald Trump seems like an anomaly in some ways, even a potential threat to his own party, the demise of the Whig Party cannot really be compared to what is happening with the Republican Party of today.

“There are definitely issues being ignored by both parties now,” Grose said, “but those issues don’t rise to the level of slavery.”

The upside of a splinter

Much more common than third-party fracturing, splintering occurs when a group of voters separates from a major political party due to specific issues, ideologies or, often, economic conditions.

“Under most political circumstances, a third party comes into being in response to an unmet policy need,” Schnur said.

“Populism is in the eye of the beholder.

If a voice from the grassroots agrees with you, then they represent a powerful brand of populism.

But if that same voice disagrees with you, they’re irresponsible demagogues.”

ADAPTIVE STRATEGIES Political parties can change dramatically over time due to factors such as changing attitudes within the electorate and parties’ efforts to adopt different positions to attract voters and win elections.

Fall 2016 / Winter 2017 59

“Emotion is not separate from some kind of cognitive or rational process; it’s fundamentally a part of the way we understand the world.

Good politicians know that.”

“In another system, the Tea Party would not simply be a faction in the Republican Party, it would represent a new party unto itself. Similarly, Sanders supporters would be much less likely to become active parts of the Democratic Party, they’d be more likely to set up a party of their own.

“But in our system, the two major parties have become very talented at recognizing unmet policy needs and adapting themselves to co-opt an emerging ideological strain among the voters.”

In the 1960s, the civil rights movement was “adopted” by the Democratic Party, potentially avoiding the emergence of a third party defined by that issue. A more recent example is the 1992 presidential election in which Ross Perot ran as an Independent. He mounted a highly successful third-party campaign, attracting nearly 20 percent of the vote that November. His major campaign issue was reducing and eliminating the federal deficit, Schnur said, which neither Democrats nor Republicans were devoting much attention to.

“In 1993, the new Democratic president, Bill Clinton, made deficit reduction a very large priority,” he continued.

“The following year, Newt Gingrich and the congressional Republicans took over the congressional majority by emphasizing deficit reduction as one of their key issues. By 1996, when Perot ran for president again, his issue had been co-opted by the two major parties and he barely made any impact.”

Major third-party candidates tend to emerge every three or four elections in contemporary politics, said Grose. Some of the more successful 20th-century candidates include Ralph Nader, Ross Perot, John Anderson, George Wallace and Huey Long. While third-party candidates are often a source of splintering, they’re certainly not the only driver, as we’ve seen with Trump.

“What’s interesting about Trump is that he’s a Republican and not a third-party candidate,” Grose explained. “And that has created splintering in the Republican Party, where mainstream Republicans and a lot of people who worked for the Bush administrations are very hesitant to support Trump. Still other Republicans are splintering away to support Libertarian Party candidate Gary Johnson, a former Republican governor who has garnered up to 10 percent in the polls this year. So what does this mean for the future of the Republican Party?

“If Trump loses and four years from now a mainstream Republican runs again, things could probably go back to normal and perhaps the Republican Party would adopt certain positions that are more in line with what Trump has said, if that’s what voters want,” Grose said, “but it could also just be a one-off. On the other hand, if he wins, that could potentially lead to a realignment where you see people who, having been Republican, would become Democrats.

“That’s another way parties can shift and evolve — due to the candidates that get nominated and the conditions that result.”

Populism: ‘In the eye of the beholder’

Even if some third-party issues end up getting co-opted

by Democrats or Republicans, third parties and populist candidates still play a critical role in bringing alternative viewpoints to the forefront and helping the electorate articulate their political desires.

“Populist voices in both parties tend to represent passions within the electorate — matters that voters don’t think are being addressed by the political leadership,” Schnur explained.

The rhetoric of populism — when a politician claims 60

to represent the common people, vowing to protect them against the mainstream elites — is a powerful force for partisan change, Crigler said. This year’s presidential election is noteworthy for having had two impactful populist candidates: Sanders and Trump.

Together with POIR graduate student Whitney Hua and a colleague at Wellesley College, Crigler authored the paper “Populist Disruption: Sanders and Trump Tweets in the 2016 U.S. Presidential Primaries” about the candidates’ use of social media.

“Social media provide a platform that allows populist candidates who normally would not have been successful within the two-party structure to work around it,” Crigler said. “Now the institution of social media allows candidates to communicate more directly with people and allows voters to magnify those messages to their friends.”

Populism, as it lashes out at the establishment and the traditional party structure, has a very strong affective component.

“Emotions are incredibly important in electoral politics,” Crigler said. “You want to be able to tap in to and mobilize people. Emotion is not separate from some kind of cognitive or rational process; it’s fundamentally a part of the way we understand the world. Good politicians know that. So all parties make emotional appeals to voters.”

But is affective politics effective politics?

“Populism definitely has two sides to it,” Crigler said. “It can allow for some political movement and representation of public frustrations, as well as an influx of ideas, which representation and democracy need. But a lot of it can be quite detrimental because it can play on authoritarianism and demagoguery.”

Schnur agreed, illustrating how populism can be fickle.

“Populism is in the eye of the beholder,” he said. “If a voice from the grassroots agrees with you, then they represent a powerful brand of populism. But if that same voice disagrees with you, then they’re irresponsible demagogues.”

Parties as they were meant to be

Beyond any potential to create divisions, political parties also exist in order to facilitate our system of government.

“Parties serve a very vital function,” Crigler explained, “which is to help govern as well as get people elected. The whole structure of the legislative branch is organized around the majority party.”

The majority party controls the seats and chairmanships of committees in Congress, and provides the speaker of the house and majority and minority leaders. It is also the job of political parties to recruit candidates for the next election cycle, register voters and get people involved in politics.

Parties groom individuals for elections, offer an organizing structure and work together internally to set an agenda.

The challenge is to keep parties strong and functioning as they are meant to within a democratic government. Super PACs and the growing role of huge wealth in politics represent an outgrowth of the weakening of the parties in recent years, Crigler said. These forces can create undue influence in the political sphere because individuals and groups can fund their special interests and disseminate their message with relatively little accountability.

“With the rise of more candidate-centered politics and reliance on big money and independent groups to help fund candidates, it’s really shifted the role of parties. For a political scientist, that’s a big problem. Because when parties don’t work effectively to recruit candidates, inform voters and coordinate governance, other players fill the gap.”

The Intersection of Politics and Communication fred ryan, a former longstanding senior aide to President Ronald Reagan, is now publisher and chief executive officer of the washington post.

photo b y P h i l i p B e r m i n g h a m P hoto g r a ph y

As Air Force One touched down at Los Angeles International Airport on Jan. 20, 1989, Ronald Reagan prepared to disembark.

Earlier in the day, he had relinquished the presidency to his successor, George H. W. Bush, and the expectation was that the former president would now unobtrusively resume his life as a private citizen.

Longstanding aide Fred Ryan ’77, now Reagan’s newly appointed chief of staff, had other plans.

As the former president emerged from the plane, the Spirit of Troy — waiting on the tarmac to welcome America’s 40th president home to California — struck up the stirring first notes of “Fight On!” “He was very touched because after the fanfare in Washington, he thought it would just be a quiet arrival, so he was really surprised and delighted to see the USC Trojan Marching Band there to greet him,” said Ryan, who organized the welcome tribute.

Such loyalty is characteristic of Ryan, who served Reagan at the White House for seven years after joining the successful Reagan/ Bush campaign in 1980. In 1987, Reagan appointed Ryan assistant to the president, a senior staff position in the White House, before making him his chief of staff, a position he held from 1989–95.

Ryan was instrumental in creating the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and currently serves as chairman of the Board of Trustees for the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and chair of the White House Historical Association.

In 2014, he became chief executive officer and publisher of The Washington Post. “It’s amazing — I was a double major in political science and speech communication, and decades later, here I am in a job that is at the intersection of communications and politics,” Ryan said of his new role.

Born in Tampa, Fla., Ryan’s father was a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Air Force. This meant a peripatetic childhood that included a stint in Italy before the family eventually settled in L.A., where Ryan attended high school and became “an uncontrollable USC fan.”

His lifelong passion for politics was sparked by family conversations around the dinner table.

“Neither of my parents were office holders, but they were both interested in politics and knowledgeable about it,” he said. “I was able to participate in conversations about politics from my early years. It’s something that just fascinated me and encompassed my interest then, just as it does today.”

After being accepted to USC — his top choice for college — he drew inspiration from faculty, who combined an academic background with the rich experience of engagement in the political arena.

“They were able to give us the substance and theories of politics as well as real insight into the day-to-day engagement of what political campaigns or political process were all about. I felt that was very useful.”

Ryan paid tribute to USC’s “unique, competitive spirit” and to his “stellar” professors, in particular the late William Lammers, professor of political science. “Many were leaders in their field and

that really added to my USC experience,” he said.

After earning his bachelor’s degree in political science from USC Dornsife and in speech communication from USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, and then graduating from USC Gould School of Law in 1980, Ryan first considered pursuing elective office but took a staff position at the White House instead.

“I found being part of the White House staff gave me the experience I originally sought in office,” Ryan said. “It was an exciting time of positive change. America was going through a transition and moving in a very positive direction and it was great to be a small part of that.”

Asked why Reagan selected him to be his assistant, Ryan laughs.

“Boy, I don’t know,” he said. “I’m just glad he did. I enjoyed working for him and with the team he put together, which included a number of Californians, several from USC.” Ryan, who traveled extensively with Reagan after his presidency, drew great personal satisfaction from observing people’s response to his boss after two successful terms in the White House.

One overseas visit that stood out was Reagan’s trip to Germany.

“He went to Berlin and got a hero’s welcome as the wall was coming down. That was an amazing trip.”

In 1995, Ryan’s career took a new turn when he became vice chair of television, cable and internet company Allbritton Communications.

As president and chief operating officer, he managed its multiple broadcast and cable properties.

In 2007, Ryan co-founded Politico, a politically focused website and newspaper, serving as its president and CEO. Then, seven years later, Jeff Bezos, owner of The Washington Post, named Ryan to his current position, signaling a new, digitally focused direction for the publication.

Ryan says he is excited to be a part of the rapidly evolving fusion of media and technology. “Journalists know that because of the increasing role of technology, they should expect their entire career to be one of unprecedented change. Anyone in media today realizes it’s not a profession for the timid. It’s one that attracts people who are willing to seek, embrace and shape change.”

If Ryan has learned one lesson from his career — one he says applies equally to politics or journalism — it’s to come armed with a thick skin.

“President Reagan was always able to keep it positive and respectful, even with political opponents. Today, as we’re witnessing in this campaign, that’s changed. But you can’t look at one election cycle in isolation and let it color your perspective on the political system. You have to take a long-term approach.” And in the reigning climate of political cynicism, Ryan remains optimistic that the American people will make the right long-term decisions.

In a Washington, D.C., career spanning almost 30 years, Ryan has seen administrations come and go, but one constant is his satisfaction at watching USC’s prominence blossom.

“When I first came to D.C., USC was certainly known and respected, but in the last few years, its presence here and the appreciation and admiration for what the university does has grown enormously,” Ryan said. “As a proud Trojan that’s been great to see.”

by Susan Bell

“You can’t look at one election cycle in isolation and let it color your perspective on the political system. You have to take a longterm approach.”

FRED RYAN, Publisher and Chief Executive Officer of The Washington Post.

Fall 2016 / Winter 2017 61

Legacy

In recognition of her discovery and authentication of the manuscript “Defense of Poesy,” Mahl was presented to Queen Elizabeth II in London in 1968.

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i l l u s t r a t i o n c o u r t e s y o f © T r u s t e e s o f th e B r i t i s h M u s e u m ; m a h l photo c o u r t e s y o f USC U n i v e r s i t y A r c h i v e s

If not for want of an umbrella, one of literature’s greatest treasures might never have been found.

While conducting research on a relatively minor literary figure for her doctoral dissertation in Norwich, England, in 1960, a sudden storm caused Mary Mahl, then a lecturer in the Department of English, to take shelter in a city library.

There, among the musty books, she spotted a priceless manuscript that no one had yet identified: a 1585 version of Sir Philip Sidney’s “Defense of Poesy.”

Mahl, who received her Ph.D. in literature from New York University following careers as a Sudan Interior Mission worker, a bank teller and a nurse’s aide, became one of the world’s foremost experts on Sidney.

Mahl taught at USC Dornsife for 21 years, retiring in 1981.

During that time, she taught the works of Wordsworth, Coleridge and Byron, and helped pioneer research trips abroad, when she returned to England each summer with students eager to unearth other treasures.

“There are so many things in England that need research,” Mahl said. “There are tremendous collections that are untouched, the English don’t even know what treasures there are waiting to be brought to light.”

M ary M ahl , 1 9 6 0

dornsife fa m ily HONORS

Faculty News DAVID ALBERTSON, associate professor of religion, has received a National Endowment for the Humanities grant for his project “The Tegernsee Debate on Love and Reason: Mystical Letters and Treatises in Late Medieval Germany.”

PABLO BARBERÁ, assistant professor of international relations, has been awarded the 2016 Miller Prize by the Society for Political Methodology for his article “Birds of the same feather tweet together: Bayesian ideal point estimation using Twitter data.” The Miller Prize is awarded for the best work appearing in the journal Political Analysis the preceding year.

RONGDAO LAI, assistant professor of religion, has been awarded a postdoctoral fellowship at the National University of Singapore, where she will pursue a new research project on transnational lineage networks in 20th-century Chinese Buddhism.

M.G. LORD, assistant professor in the practice of English, was honored by the Los Angeles Press Club at the 58th Annual Southern California Journalism Awards for her Dame Magazine article “You’d Be Such a Good Mother. If Only You Weren’t You.” The awards recognize and honor professional journalists who produce outstanding work.

Fo r s b u r g photo b y P e t e r Zh a o y u Zho u

JILL MCNITT-GRAY, professor of biological sciences and biomedical engineering, received the 2016 Jim Hay Memorial Award for Research in Sports and Exercise Biomechanics from the American Society of Biomechanics.

MICHAEL MESSNER, professor of sociology and gender studies, was awarded a 2016 Ethel-Jane Westfeldt Bunting

Fellowship at the School for Advanced Research in Santa Fe, N.M., where he will pursue his project, “Guys Like Me: Six Wars, Six Veterans for Peace.”

ANN OWENS, assistant professor of sociology and spatial sciences, was chosen as a 2016 National Academy of Education/ Spencer Postdoctoral Fellow.

Her fellowship will support her research on the consequences of school and neighborhood economic segregation.

MARJORIE PERLOFF, Florence R. Scott Professor of English Emerita, received an honorary doctorate in philosophy from the University of Innsbruck at a ceremony at the Austrian university in recognition of her outstanding scientific work.

NATHAN PERL-ROSENTHAL, assistant professor of history and spatial sciences, was awarded the 2016 Gilbert Chinard Prize by the Society for French Historical Studies and the Institut Français d’Amérique for his book, Citizen Sailors. The award recognizes a distinguished scholarly book published in North America in 2015 on the history of themes shared by France and the Americas.

NORBERT SCHWARZ, Provost Professor of Psychology and Marketing, was awarded an honorary degree from the University of Basel, Switzerland.

He also received the Distinguished Scientist Award from the Society for Experimental Social Psychology.

RAYMOND STEVENS, Provost Professor of Biological Sciences and Chemistry and professor of neurology, physiology and biophysics, and chemical engineering and materials science, has been elected a member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters.

Closing in on Cancer

Susan Forsburg receives recognition for both her outstanding research and exceptional teaching abilities.

As dissimilar as they are, certain yeast and human cells have much in common when it comes to how they deal with instability in their genomes. Studying the simpler yeast, Susan Forsburg hopes to shed light on these essential, shared processes — revealing information that one day could lead to cures for cancer and other genetic disorders.

“At a fundamental level, we’re interested in how cells try to maintain the integrity of their genome, specifically in response to challenges during the process of DNA replication, which is a very vulnerable time,” said Forsburg, Gabilan Distinguished Professor in Science and Engineering and professor of biological sciences.

Forsburg’s research aims to understand how cells manage stresses during DNA replication to minimize damage, focusing on three main areas of inquiry. The first seeks to determine how cells respond to replication stress throughout the whole cell, and particularly what happens to those that survive. The second looks at meiosis, the specialized process leading to the production of reproductive cells — spores in yeast and eggs and sperm in humans.

The third aims to uncover regions of the genome that are particularly vulnerable sites and understand how protections may differ for them.

The work recently gained support from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences through a new grant program dubbed MIRA (short for Maximizing Investigators’ Research Award). Forsburg was among the first group of investigators in the nation to receive MIRA awards.

In addition to her research, Forsburg places strong emphasis on instruction. Her dedication earned her the 2016 USC Associates Award for Excellence in Teaching, which she received at the university’s 35th annual Academic Honors Convocation in April. —D.S.J.

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Fall 2016 / Winter 2017 63

F A C U LT Y C A N O N

TOURIST DISTRACTIONS: Traveling and Feeling in Transnational Hallyu Cinema Duke University Press / Associate Professor of East Asian Languages and Cultures Youngmin Choe shows how the integration of the tourist imaginary into hallyu (Korean-wave) cinema points to the region’s evolving transnational politics and the ways Korea negotiates its colonial and Cold War past with East Asia’s neoliberal present.

Combing the White Sands

In his genre-defying new collection of thoughtful and self-deprecating essays, USC Dornsife Writer in Residence Geoff Dyer explores “the power that some places exert and why we go to them.”

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HAJIME HOJI

LANGUAGE FACULTY SCIENCE Cambridge University Press / Associate Professor of Linguistics and East Asian Languages and Cultures Hajime Hoji offers a articulation of how we deduce definite predictions about the judgments of an individual speaker on the basis of universal and language-particular hypotheses.

RATIONALIZING KOREA: The Rise of the Modern State, 1894–1945 University of California

d y e r photo b y M a tt St u a r t ; Sp i r a l J e tt y P hoto c o u r t e s y o f G e o f f D y e r

Liberally infused with generous helpings of the author’s deadpan wit and philosophical wisdom, Geoff Dyer’s new book White Sands: Experiences from the Outside World (Pantheon, 2016) is both enlightening and hilarious.

Dyer’s secular pilgrimages are permeated with the disappointment of not encountering what he set out to find. Yet, his blighted hopes are constantly redeemed by finding other things on the journey — things unexpected and more intriguing than what was originally sought.

Among the tales in White Sands are a trip to Norway, during which Dyer and his wife spectacularly fail to see the longed-for spectacle of the Northern Lights, a deeply unsatisfying voyage to Tahiti to walk in artist Paul Gauguin’s footsteps and a curtailed sightseeing tour of Los Angeles’ Watts Towers.

If the settings couldn’t be more disparate, certain common themes emerge, one being that Dyer’s stories are never what they seem.

Dyer’s desire to see Gauguin’s 1897 masterpiece Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? launches this series of essays. The painting was — of course — disappointingly not on display at the museum where Dyer went to see it. But its title clues us in to some of the elemental questions the author, winner of the 2015 Windham Campbell Prize for Nonfiction, tackles in this volume.

If Dyer rejects any suggestion that his work could be pigeonholed as travel writing, he embraces the importance of place in both his fiction and nonfiction, stressing that nothing has been more important to him as a writer.

Dyer is the author of four novels and nine works of nonfiction. The latter occupy a particular place in the world of English letters, a place where the borderline between fiction and nonfiction is deliberately — and intriguingly — blurred.

“It’s been one of the bees in my bonnet, this idea of the nonfiction work of art,” he said. “There’s this notion that typically you go to fiction for style and inventiveness and you go to nonfiction for the information, the content, and if the nonfiction book is well written that’s a sort of bonus. This is why I’m always trying to make a case for the nonfiction book that’s defined by the experience you are having as opposed to the book that you go to for the content.” —S.B.

Language Faculty Science

dornsife fa m ily

Press / Professor of History and East Asian Languages and Cultures Kyung Moon Hwang explores the institutional, ideological and conceptual development of the modern Korean state and analyzes the state’s relationship to five social sectors, each through a distinctive interpretive theme: economy (developmentalism), religion (secularization), education (public schooling), population (registration), and public health (disease control).

Elliott Distinguished Chair in Economics, provides a rigorous though user-friendly account of the time series techniques dealing with univariate and multivariate time series models as well as panel data models.

ACROSS LEGAL LINES: Jews and Muslims in Modern Morocco Yale University Press / Through the experiences of a single Jewish family, Ruth Ziegler Early Career Chair in Jewish Studies and Assistant Professor of Religion Jessica Marglin charts how Moroccan law helped Jews to integrate into Muslim society — until colonial reforms abruptly curtailed their legal mobility.

IN THE NOT QUITE DARK Counterpoint Press / Associate Professor of English Dana Johnson illuminates the travails of contemporary Los Angeles life faced with aspects of gentrification — social, economic, sexual and racial.

St e i n b e r g photo b y M e i k o A r q u i l l o s ; R e d D a w n s t i l l c o u r t e s y o f S a m u e l St e i n b e r g

EDGE OF IRONY: Modernism in the Shadow of the Habsburg Empire University of Chicago Press / Florence R. Scott Professor of English Emerita Marjorie Perloff explores how Austro-Modernist literature is characterized by a radical irony beneath a seemingly conventional surface, an acute sense of exile and an erotic (and quixotic) sensibility.

BLUE SKIES OVER BEIJING: Economic Growth and the Environment in China Princeton University Press / Professor of Economics and Spatial Sciences Matthew Kahn co-authored an examination of how Chinese urbanites are increasingly demanding cleaner living conditions.

TIME SERIES AND PANEL DATA ECONOMETRICS Oxford University Press / Hashem Pesaran, John

FOOD, HEALTH, AND CULTURE IN LATINO LOS ANGELES Rowman & Littlefield / Assistant Professor (Teaching) of Spanish Sarah Portnoy explores the history of Latino cuisine in Los Angeles and the contemporary Latino food scene, one that sharply contrasts with urban Latino neighborhoods where access to affordable, healthy food is a struggle.

In a Flash

Samuel Steinberg re-examines the student movement — and massacre — in Mexico City.

It is 1968, and like many countries worldwide, Mexico is experiencing student-led revolt. However, unlike Paris, which romanticized its cultural and sexual revolution as a celebration of youth, and London, where youthful rebellion was expressed principally through music and fashion, Mexico’s student movement ends in bloodshed. On Oct. 2, up to 300 young protesters (the exact number is still unknown) are murdered while protesting in Tlatelolco, Mexico City, by paramilitaries in a statesponsored massacre.

Samuel Steinberg’s book, Photopoetics at Tlatelolco: Afterimages of Mexico, 1968 (University of Texas Press, 2016), explores the state’s dual repression in terms of both the massacre’s crushing effects on the movement and the manipulation of cultural discourse and political thought in the aftermath. Through this lens, Steinberg, assistant professor of Spanish and Portuguese, considers the broad photographic and photopoetic nature of modern witnessing as well as the specific elements of light (gunfire, flares and camera flashes) that he argues ultimately defined the massacre.

Said Steinberg: “My hope is that this book can free Mexico 1968 from the way dominant historical narrative has presented it up until now and recover its lost legacy.” —S.B.

EDO KABUKI IN TRANSITION: From the Worlds of the Samurai to the Vengeful Female Ghost Columbia University Press / Associate Professor of East Asian Languages and Cultures Satoko Shimazaki revisits three centuries of kabuki theater and its dynamic representations of medieval Japanese tales and tradition, reframing Edo kabuki as a key player in the formation of an early modern urban identity.

Actors portray a mother and her young son witnessing Mexico’s Tlatelolco student massacre of 1968 in this still from director Jorge Fons’ 1989 film Red Dawn.

Fall 2016 / Winter 2017 65

alumni and student canon

THE FACE: Cartography of the Void Restless Books / Nigerianborn Chris Abani (Ph.D., creative writing and literature, ’06) explores his personal identity through a meditation on the face and provides insights into the role of race, culture and language in fashioning our sense of self.

ONLY MORE SO Salmon Poetry / Weaving jazz imagery throughout her lyric poetry, Millicent Borges Accardi (MPW, ’93) explores themes of sex, gender, marriage, the Holocaust, violence, war, music and silence.

THE TROUBLE WITH HUMPADORI The (Great) Indian Poetry Collective / Vidhu Aggarwal (Ph.D., creative writing and literature, ’04) moves from lyrical intimacy to predatory rage, examining the “textures” of feeling available to marginalized bodies in a globalized world.

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LEVIATHAN Hyacinth Girl Press / Neil Aitken (Ph.D., creative writing and literature, ’15) follows the extraordinary life and losses of Charles Babbage, a 19th-century mathematician who dreamed of building what would have been the first Turing-complete computer.

CURED Infinitely Improbable Press / Melissa Delangis Dickerson (B.A., international relations, ’05) reimagines the walking dead apocalypse when her zombie heroine is (mostly) cured and has to figure out who unleashed Armageddon in the first place.

MAKING MONTE CARLO: A History of Speculation and Spectacle Simon & Schuster / Mark Braude (Ph.D., history, ’13) reveals how the world’s first modern casino-resort emerged as a glamorous destination and then was reinvented to suit the desires of Jazz Age tastemakers such as Coco Chanel and F. Scott Fitzgerald.

EAST & WEST Lost Horse Press / Tearing down linguistic borders while also preserving cultural peculiarities, current creative writing Ph.D. student Piotr Florczyk investigates themes of identity, politics and memory while wrestling with what it is that makes us human.

DATING YOUR CHARACTER: A Sexy Guide to Screenwriting for Film and TV Stairway Press / Co-authored by Devo CutlerRubenstein (MPW, ’15), this guide offers screenwriters practical advice on how to create a working relationship with a character.

THE ARRESTING EYE: Race and the Anxiety of Detection University of Virginia Press / Jinny Huh (Ph.D., creative writing and literature, ’05) examines the racial formations of African and Asian Americans not only in detective fiction, but also in narratives centered on detection itself.

IT’S NOT JUST THE ECONOMY, STUPID! Trade Competitiveness in the 21st Century Cambridge Scholars Publishing / Sarita D. Jackson (B.A., Spanish and broadcast journalism, ’99) argues that market factors and business strategies alone do not determine industry competitiveness and firm import behavior.

LIONS Grove Atlantic, Black Cat / Bonnie Nadzam (M.A., English, ’09; Ph.D., creative writing and literature, ’11) excavates a “living ghost town” on the brink of collapse, and the individuals who are confronted with either chasing their dreams or — against all reason — staying where they are.

AMERICA, THE “BEAUTIFUL” Kalimbaradio / Khefa Nosakhere (aka Kef Marks) (B.A., creative writing, ’09) imagines what would happen if there was a second Great Depression.

IN THE CROCODILE GARDENS Sundress Publications / Saba Syed Razvi (Ph.D., English and creative writing, ’12) draws contemporary currents of political concern and cultural identity through the sieve of inherited mythos and ecstatic awareness.

HOPE FOR COMMON GROUND: Mediating the Personal and the Political in a Divided Church Georgetown University Press / Julie Hanlon Rubio (Ph.D., religion and social ethics, ’95) presents a case for local engagements around commonly held values as a way beyond the stale left-right, liberal-conservative polarizations.

CANNIBAL University of Nebraska Press / Confronting The Tempest and postcolonial identity, the poems of current creative writing Ph.D. student Safiya Sinclair explore Jamaican childhood and history, race relations, womanhood, otherness and exile.

dornsife fa m ily

Composed Connection Creative writing alumna chronicles dating after being diagnosed with a chronic disease.

P hoto c o u r t e s y o f Co r y M a r t i n

THIS BORING APOCALYPSE Civil Coping Mechanisms / Part The Notebook, part Re-Animator, the third book by current creative writing Ph.D. student Brandi Wells is a Frankenstein-like idea sprawl of gore and impulsive feeling, set in a mutative landscape where bodies are playthings and death reigns on in brutal, fertile wonder.

1960s

KARIN FRIEDRICH DONALDSON (B.A., philosophy and religion, ’62) was honored among the “Women of Dedication” by the San Diego Salvation Army in April.

DALE GRIBOW (B.A., history, ’65) was again named a top lawyer

by Palm Springs Life magazine and listed among its “Legal Eagles.”

Gribow received an Avvo 10.0 perfect rating by his fellow attorneys.

FOREIGN AGENT Atria/Emily Bestler Books / Brad Thor (B.A., creative writing, ’92) takes his hero, Scot Havarth, around the globe in order to confront one of the greatest evils the world has ever known.

BELLE LA FOLLETTE: Progressive Era Reformer Routledge / Nancy Unger (M.A., history, ’81; Ph.D., history, ’85) shows how women’s suffrage and peace advocate Belle Case La Follette wielded influence through her speeches and journalism.

Alumni News

At 27, Cory Martin had the life any college graduate would dream of. She lived in Hollywood, writing scripts for TV — most notably for Fox’s drama The O.C. — and had a flourishing social life. Just before she turned 28, everything changed.

Martin, who graduated with a bachelor’s degree in creative writing in 2001, was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS), a disease that attacks the body’s central nervous system.

“I started looking for books about young women dealing with MS, and there was nothing out there,” Martin recalled.

The internet was even more disheartening.

“I found terrible message boards where people wrote, ‘I’m in bed, and I hate my life,’ and then 50 other people would echo that,” she said. “It was a depressing place.”

Inspired by her education, Martin embarked on writing her story, Love Sick (Write Out Publishing, 2016), which chronicles her experiences meeting men in the wake of her diagnosis, broaching topics such as when it’s OK to tell potential boyfriends about health problems.

While she studied at USC Dornsife, English professors Aimee Bender and T.C. Boyle stood out as mentors because of their quirky styles and abilities to help students “think outside the box.”

Martin believes her college education has helped fuel her resilience. But she wishes she had learned sooner that life isn’t always what you expect it to be.

“When I graduated and my dreams started coming true it was pretty empowering,” she said. “The hardest part of dealing with my diagnosis was watching everyone around me move forward and feeling like I was being held back.”

She added, “I wish someone had said, ‘Eventually you’ll find your place again. It may not be what you thought it was, but you can keep going in a different direction and be just as successful.’ ” —L.H. Tell us about your book Write to USC Dornsife Magazine, 1150 S. Olive Street T2400, Los Angeles, California 90015 or magazine@dornsife.usc.edu

CHRIS MUNN (B.A., political science, ’99) was named director for watchlisting and countering terrorist travel at the Executive Office of the President’s National Security Council.

2000s

Public health nurse JENNIFER L. SMITH (B.A., neuroscience, ’07) was selected from a pool of 90 nurses to be named Outstanding Nurse of the Year for 2015 by the Los Angeles Department of Children and Family Services.

1970s

DIANE BROOKS DIXON (B.A., political science, ’73) was elected mayor of Newport Beach, CA. Dixon was elected Councilmember for District 1 in November 2014 and served as mayor pro tem in 2015.

ANNA WALTHER (B.A., international relations and German, ’04), a human and civil rights lawyer, will work with the Guatemalan government after being selected for a FulbrightHillary Clinton Fellowship in public policy for 2016–17.

1980s

2010s

DANIEL DODGEN (B.A., psychology and Spanish, ’86) spoke at the White House on April 4 during an event celebrating the release of the United States Global Climate Research Program report, The Impacts of Climate Change on Human Health in the United States: A Scientific Assessment.

DAVID HIZAMI (B.A., political science, ’88) was appointed a judge in the Los Angeles County Superior Court after serving as a deputy public defender at the Los Angeles County Public Defender’s Office since 1993.

TOM MIRTI (B.A., international relations, ’81) was named director of the Division of Water Resources at the Suwannee River Water Management District in Live Oak, FL.

1990s

JOHN BANKS (M.S., applied mathematics, ’90) became director of the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Center at California State University, Monterey Bay.

NATHANIEL HAAS (B.A., political science and economics, ’15) received a first-place award at the 58th Annual Southern California Journalism Awards for an online investigative report he wrote as a USC student for Neon Tommy: Annenberg Digital News.

LOGAN HELEY (B.A., journalism and history, ’15) is running for election in the 21st Kansas State Senate District.

Educational psychology graduate student CHRISTINA ZDAWCZYK (B.A., neuroscience and East Asian languages and cultures, ’14) received a prestigious three-year National Science Foundation research fellowship that supports graduate students studying science, technology, engineering and mathematics (commonly called STEM) subjects and education.

Continued on page 70

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Microeconomics and a Microphone

Heavy Medal Performances

USC Dornsife students and alumni dominate at the 2016 Olympic Games in Brazil, shattering records along the way.

For Marvin Young — aka rapper Young M.C. — a phone call to his USC dorm room led to his big break.

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When the quadrennial celebration of athletic prowess known as the Summer Olympic Games was over and the hullabaloo had died down, nine USC Dornsife graduates had ascended the podium to collect their well-earned medals. Of the 44 Olympians representing USC at the games in Rio de Janeiro, three-quarters of them were from the College.

The “Iron Lady” Earns Gold and Silver

Hungary’s Katinka Hosszu (B.A., psychology, ’12) — known in swimming circles as the “Iron Lady” — was the first USC athlete to win a medal at the games. Handily winning gold, she also set a new world record in the 400-meter individual medley, besting the previous record by 2.07 seconds.

“Honestly, I didn’t think I could go this much faster, but it’s just unbelievable I’ve been able to break it by this much,” said Hosszu, who set another record, as the oldest woman to ever win in the event.

She also won two additional golds, in the 100-meter backstroke and 200-meter individual medley, and a silver in the 200-meter backstroke. scan for extras Details Page 5

y o u n g m . c . P hoto b y A l l e n B e r e z o v s k y / W i r e Im a g e

It was 1987. When Marvin Young was not studying microeconomics or serving as a student senator, he was looking to make a name for himself in hip-hop, rapping under the name Young M.C. Fall semester of his junior year, Young got a call from the Los Angeles-based Delicious Vinyl record label asking for a sample of his rhymes.

“I rapped about five verses over the phone and they liked it,” Young said. They sent a record contract to his dorm room.

The first record he produced was Stone Cold Rhymin’ in 1989 — the same year he earned his B.A. in economics from USC Dornsife. His break-out single, “Bust a Move,” debuted during finals week and skyrocketed Young to stardom. The song earned him a Grammy Award for Best Rap Performance, an American Music Award for Best Rap Artist and Billboard ’s Best New Pop Artist Award.

Young has released nine albums and continues to perform. When it comes to dreaming big, his advice to students is to keep working hard at what they love and to focus on their successes.

“Even if you fail 99 times, if you feel success is your norm, that one time you make it, it will feel normal and those 99 failures will feel like anomalies. That’s how I approach things.” —M.B.

dornsife fa m ily

ALI P H O T O BY CA M ER O N S P ENCER ; C H RIS T ENS O N AN D T R O Y P H O T O BY BU D A M EN D ES ; CRAIG P H O T O BY AN T H O NY L . S O LIS ; D E GRASSE P H O T O BY KIRBY LEE ; H O SSZU P H O T O BY CLIVE R O SE ; J O H NS O N P H O T O BY CLIVE BRUNSKILL ; R O SS P H O T O BY A M IN M O H A M M A D JA M ALI ( ALL P H O T O S C O UR T ESY O F GE T T Y I M AGES ) ; BR O W N P H O T O BY JAS O N RANS O M , C O UR T ESY O F T H E CANA D IAN O LY M P IC C O M M I T T EE

The Rio Games were Hosszu’s fourth appearance at the Olympics, and the first in which she won a medal. Her coach and husband, Shane Tusup (B.A., human performance, ’11), raised a few eyebrows with his exuberant, fist-pumping poolside jubilation over Hosszu’s wins, leading an NBC commentator to advise Twitter followers to “find someone who loves you the way Katinka Hosszu’s husband loves her.”

Inspirational Feet

Another strong show of familial support came in a pintsized package.

When first-time Olympian Nia Ali (B.A., psychology, ’11) ran off with the silver medal in the women’s 100-meter high hurdles, her 15-month-old son, Titus, ran onto the track and stole the show with his toothy grin. The toddler embraced his mother, who helped Team USA become the first-ever to sweep the event.

“He won’t remember this, but he will see photos and see that you can do anything you put your mind to,” Ali said. “I knew it was going to be hard to medal.”

Canadian runner Andre De Grasse (B.A., sociology, ’15) received similar messages of encouragement, albeit from an unexpected source: Jamaican world champion Usain Bolt.

“He told me to go out and do my best,” said De Grasse. “He feels like I’m the next one, and I’m just trying to live up to it.”

Although Bolt bested De Grasse in the 100-meter dash, competing against Bolt inspired the sprinter to a personal best of 9.91 in the event and a bronze medal.

“I’m feeling pretty good right now, I can’t complain,” De Grasse said after the race. “To be able to race against Usain and [Justin] Gatlin, being a part of the same race as them and being a part of history today in Rio, it was a great feeling for me, and I just have so much to learn from that race.”

Days later, De Grasse finished second in the 200-meter with a time of 20.02, a scant 0.24 seconds behind Bolt.

De Grasse and fellow Trojan Aaron Brown (B.A., political science, ’14) were both part of Canada’s bronze medal–winning team in the 4x100-meter relay. The team’s 37.64 time broke the record that won Canada Olympic gold at the 1996 Atlanta games.

“Glenroy [Gilbert] is our coach, and he’s the one that ran it in the Canadian record in 1996,” said Brown. “We’ve been wanting to break that record — no better place than at the Olympics.

It’s the 20th anniversary; it’s about time it goes down.”

You Gotta Have Friends

Numerous other award-winning partnerships played out during the games.

Steve Johnson (B.A., human performance, ’12) took bronze in men’s tennis doubles with partner Jack Sock.

“I grew up my whole life playing team sports,” Johnson explained. “I love being part of a team atmosphere. You play for yourself every week on tour. Here you get to play for something bigger than yourself. To have good buddies around, it’s all good fun for me.”

“I couldn’t be any happier,” he added after winning 6-2, 6-4 against Canada. “I might sleep with [the medal].”

Men’s volleyballers Micah Christenson (B.A., human

biology, ’15) and Murphy Troy (B.A., physics, ’11) helped capture bronze medals for the U.S. Following a heartwrenching semifinal loss to Italy, the American team faced Russia in a bid for the third spot on the podium. The U.S. trailed 0-2 early on, but stormed back to win the next three sets and left Rio’s Maracanãzinho Arena as Olympic medalists.

“It wasn’t the storybook ending like we all planned for and wanted, but this is a great honor to be coming home with an Olympic medal, and we’re going to wear it proudly,” said Christenson, the 6-foot-6-inch setter from Hawaii.

Proving that cameraderie is not just for the guys, U.S. volleyballers April Ross (B.A., international relations, ’03) and Kerri Walsh Jennings captured bronze medals in a three-set win (17-21, 21-17, 15-9) over the top-seeded Brazilian team on the sands of Copacabana Beach.

It was Ross’ second consecutive Olympic medal; she previously won silver in London.

“My goal now is Tokyo for sure,” Ross said of her hopes for a chance at winning the elusive gold medal at the 2020 games. “It feels so far away, but it just flies by.”

Kami Craig (B.A., sociology, ’10) knows a thing or two about competing in multiple Olympics. Rio marked her third games, and her third medal as well — a gold as part of the American women’s water polo team. Craig previously won a bronze in 2008 in Beijing and a gold in 2012 in London.

The team’s 12-5 win over the Italians cemented Team USA’s dominance in the event; they are the only nation to win a medal at every Olympics where water polo has been held.

A Medal-winning Powerhouse

USC Dornsife athletes won as many gold medals as the nations of New Zealand, Canada and Uzbekistan. Moreover, if the USC Dornsife athletes had competed as a country, their total number of medals would have eclipsed those of Ukraine, Sweden and Cuba, among others.

“Competing at the elite level in any sport requires an incredible amount of focus, discipline, self-motivation and resilience,” said Amber Miller, dean of USC Dornsife. “I believe these are qualities found in all Dornsife students, but I am so proud that our athletes were able to prove it with the world watching.” —D.K.

all hail, troy Nine USC Dornsife alumni won medals at the 2016 Rio Games, including (clockwise, opposite page) Katinka Hosszu, Andre De Grasse, Aaron Brown and Steve Johnson; (top to bottom, this page) Kami Craig, April Ross, Micah Christenson and Murphy Troy, and Nia Ali.

Fall 2016 / Winter 2017 69

TROJANA LIT Y

Weddings and Births

JASON BUCKNER (B.A., political science, ’11) and Christabel Saldana-Buckner welcomed their second daughter, Emmy Niamh, on March 10, 2016.

CORAL SCHNEIDER EBY (B.S., business administration, ’08; M.A., applied psychology, ’18) and Christopher Eby welcomed a son, William James Eby, on April 2, 2016.

Voice of the People

Serving Congregation Kol Ami, alumna Denise Eger uses her rabbinate as a platform for social activism.

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JOANNA KAHN (B.A., English, ’04) married Robert Ar on June 11, 2016, in Corona Del Mar, CA. IAN MICHAEL LIVIE (Ph.D., history, ’10) married Lana Lea Adlawan on July 3, 2016, in Petaluma, CA. M. BEAUMONT SHAPIRO (B.A., religion, ’05) and Ashley Shapiro welcomed their first child, a daughter, Evelyn Wallis Shapiro, on May 19, 2016.

In Memoriam

RAYMOND “RAY” ALSWEET (B.S., international relations, ’56) Pasadena, CA (4/19/16) at age 94; served in the U.S. Navy during WWII; founded labor relations firm Fortune & Alsweet; among his clients were Hollywood Park and Santa Anita racetracks, spurring his lifelong passion for horse racing.

ROGER DEAN AYERS (B.A., economics, ’48) Los Angeles, CA (4/11/16) at age 92; served in the U.S. Air Force as a B-17 pilot during WWII, flying 35 missions; served as a juvenile probation officer before joining Pacific Press; co-founded Pohl and Ayers Marketing Corporation in Los Alamitos, CA.

JOSEPH MEDICINE CROW (M.A., anthropology, ’39; honorary doctorate of humane letters, ’03) Billings, MT (4/3/16) at age 102; last living war chief of the Crow Tribe of Montana and celebrated Native American historian and anthropologist; recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Obama for his contributions in WWII; author of seminal works on Native American history, including a history of the Battle of Little Bighorn based on the memories of his great uncle, a scout for George Armstrong Custer.

CHARLES ROY HARPER (MLA, liberal arts, ’75) Saint-Hilaired’Ozilhan, France (5/25/16) at age 82; director of the Latin American human rights resource office at the World Council of Churches from 1973–92; recipient of presidential awards from Chile in 2011 and Argentina in 2014 for his dedication to the defense, protection and restoration of human rights in those countries.

RONALD S. HAY (B.A., psychology, ’69) Saratoga, CA (12/6/15) at age 68; an orthopedic hand surgeon; honored with the dedication of the Ronald S. Hay Hand Surgery Center at the Palo Alto Medical Foundation Facility in Sunnyvale, CA. SAMUEL “SAM” MOLE MOORE (B.A., zoology, ’61) Los Angeles, CA (6/10/16) at age 87; served in the U.S. Army for four years

during the Korean War then returned to attend USC School of Architecture on the GI Bill; worked for the LA Unified School District for 24 years, retiring as chief architect.

BARBARA JEAN POLLARD (B.A., psychology, ’46) Santa Barbara, CA (5/21/16) at age 92; a third-generation Californian with family roots reaching back to the Mayflower; active member of the Assistance League of Santa Barbara.

LEONARD ROBERT SAGER (B.A., political science, ’60) Palm Springs, CA (4/19/16) at age 78; served as Deputy District Attorney for South Orange County judicial district for 26 years; worked for 10 years as pro bono counsel and at a free L.A. clinic providing legal services; director of the California Association of Realtors for eight years; owned a general real estate business in Palm Springs, CA. JOHN SMART (B.A., international relations, ’55; M.A., international relations, ’55; Ph.D., political science, ’68) Huntington Beach, CA (4/19/16) at age 81; California State University vice chancellor emeritus; served in the U.S. Army Psychological Warfare School at Fort Bragg; joined the Coordinating Council for Higher Education as assistant director before beginning a 40-year career with the California State University system; held positions of associate dean of academic affairs, director of institutional relations and deputy provost.

BARBARA FLETCHER STEWART (B.A., international relations, ’49) Worcester, MA (9/19/15) at age 88; worked for U.S. State Department in Lyon, France, from 1951–53; founding member Lake Shore Unitarian Society, Winnetka, IL.

e g e r photo c o u r t e s y o f r a b b i d e n i s e e g e r

Ordained in 1988, Rabbi Denise Eger began her rabbinical career serving a gay synagogue in Los Angeles at the height of the AIDS crisis.

“I was 28 years old and working every day to bury young men who passed away,” Eger said. “Those years shaped me.”

Eger, who is the founding rabbi of Congregation Kol Ami, a Reform Jewish synagogue in West Hollywood, Calif., helps those who are marginalized, using her rabbinate as a platform for social activism. She advocates for social justice issues, including equal rights for the LGBT community, prison reform, racial equality and economic justice.

She also serves as president of the Central Conference of American Rabbis, the largest and oldest organization of rabbis in North America. Eger is the first openly gay or lesbian rabbi to head the Reform rabbis.

Eger, who grew up in the South, earned her bachelor’s degree in religion with a minor in Jewish studies from USC Dornsife in 1982. Her early years cultivated the roots of her dedication to social activism.

“Growing up in Memphis, Tenn., where Dr. King was murdered, you can’t help but be surrounded by the civil rights struggle,” she said. “That inspired me to see that wherever there’s injustice and oppression, good people can’t stay silent.”

Eger said she felt privileged to study at USC. “I had been a young person from Memphis who knew nothing about the big city of Los Angeles. Within a year I was blessed to have amazing experiences on campus. That was really a growing period for me, and the kindness and mentorship that I received at USC really helped launch me in a way that I will forever be grateful for.” —M.B.

CHESTER BARRY FERNANDO (B.A., economics, ’04) and KATRICE QUIJANO (B.S., kinesiology, ’07) welcomed their first child, a son, Miles Barry, on July 2, 2016, in Pasadena, CA.

RUTH ELOISE CARTER (B.S., nursing, ’53) Broken Arrow, OK (4/11/16) at age 93; former U.S. Army nurse who survived the Battle of the Bulge; was awarded a European Theater of Operations Campaign Ribbon with one Battle Star, an American Theater Ribbon and a Victory Medal for her service; member of the Disabled American Veterans Association and supporter of the Wounded Warrior Project.

dornsife fa m ily REMEMBERING B i l s photo c o u r t e s y o f USC U n i v e r s i t y A r c h i v e s ; c h a n d l e r photo c o u r t e s y o f Sh e r r y M a r i e V e l a s c o ; K i m photo Co u r t e s y o f f a m i ly ; g o l om b i l l u s t r a t i o n c o u r t e s y o f St e ph e n W o l f r a m ; g o l om b photo b y j oh n l i v z e y

Professor Emeritus of Biological Sciences ROBERT BILS died on March 26, 2016. He was 85.

Bils spent 37 years at USC Dornsife before retiring in 1996.

He is remembered as a skilled electron microscopist who played a crucial role in founding the Center for Electron Microscopy and Microanalysis (CEMMA) at USC. In 1983, under Bils’ leadership, USC received a National Institutes of Health grant to purchase a state-of-the-art transmission electron microscope.

“CEMMA has played an essential role in attracting outstanding researchers to USC, and it is now a powerhouse in the field of ultrastructural analysis in Southern California,” said Chien-Ping Ko, professor of biological sciences. “[Bils] was enthusiastic about science and committed to the long-term development of our department and its faculty,” added Professor of Biological Sciences Albert Herrera. “He was a consummate professional, a class act.”

PAULETTE CHANDLER, lecturer in French language and culture, died on March 7, 2016.

Chandler, who earned her Ph.D.

in French literature from USC Dornsife in 1992, taught in the Department of French and Italian for 24 years. Former students admired her passion for teaching, praising her great interest in students’ progress and her ability to motivate them to continue their French studies.

“She was very dedicated to USC,” said Julia Chamberlin, a senior lecturer of French language and culture. “Even on days when she wasn’t teaching, she would be on campus, meeting with students.”

YOUNG BAE KIM, professor of physics and electrical engineering, died on July 7, 2016. He was 93.

Joining the USC faculty in 1968, Kim focused his research in the fields of low-temperature physics, cryogenic engineering and superconductivity. He was renowned among scientists investigating superconductivity materials, publishing more than 70 technical papers on the subject. Many of the empirical laws in high-field superconductivity — in which superconducting materials help produce exceptionally strong magnetic fields — bear his name.

Stephan Haas, professor and chair of physics and astronomy, noted Kim’s contributions to the field.

“Young Bae is well remembered for his kindness with students, dedication to teaching and work to build a vibrant physical sciences community at USC. We would certainly not be in the position of international leadership we now are without his tireless dedication to our community.”

This tribute portrait of Solomon Golomb by computer scientist, mathematician and physicist Stephen Wolfram is constructed from polyominoes, which Golomb invented.

An Imaginative Mathematician

Legendary scholar’s work was key to modern communications, and his invention of polyominoes inspired the popular video game Tetris.

Solomon Golomb, a legendary and longtime electrical engineering and mathematics professor, has died. He was 83.

Golomb, who held joint appointments in USC Dornsife and USC Viterbi School of Engineering, began his career at USC in 1963 and continued to teach into his 80s.

Video images from the Mars Rover Curiosity owe a debt to Golomb’s mathematical coding schemes, and his work is key to the functioning of cell phones. His cryptology research ushered in new ways of securing communications signals.

“Professor Golomb was truly a giant in the fields of mathematics and engineering,” said USC President C. L. Max Nikias. “He was an exceptionally imaginative thinker, and so many enduring innovations and highly creative games — including polyominoes and pentomino — emerged from his inimitable genius. But beyond the innumerable accomplishments, Professor Golomb was also a dear friend and colleague, having served on USC’s faculty for more than half a century.

Indeed, he helped transform our university into the world-class institution it is today.”

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I N M Y O p inion

Divided We Fall Nathaniel Haas ’15 draws from his USC Dornsife experiences to address the nation’s political woes.

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Nathaniel Haas earned his bachelor’s degree from USC Dornsife in 2015 with a double major in political science and economics.

He currently is a law student at USC Gould School of Law.

i l l u s t r a t i o n b y R i c h a r d M i a ; photo b y j oh n l i v z e y

Political forecaster Nate Silver said it best: “ ‘With the exception of the 2016 election’ will be a common phrase in Ph.D. dissertations in 2044.”

This presidential election is the first or second that my generation will have voted in. When the dust clears, we have a simple job: to ensure that the extreme political divisiveness that has defined the period leading up to this election remains the exception and does not become the norm.

The task of understanding how to accomplish that was before me and five other USC students when we traveled to Washington, D.C., last summer. Led by Robert Shrum, Carmen H. and Louis Warschaw Chair in Practical Politics and professor of the practice of political science, we had come to explore the workings of our nation’s capital.

I’ll never forget the first thing we learned: Starting sometime in the 1980s, the most moderate Democrats moved further left than the most moderate Republican. The American people, their constituents, soon followed suit. This

may seem shocking, but according to The Washington Post, “Before the 1980s, if you knew which party an American voted for, you couldn’t predict very well whether the person held liberal or conservative views.”

That’s because of a logical observation most people are capable of understanding, but incapable of following: How you think about a particular issue in a given political party’s platform should have little or no value for predicting how you will think about another issue.

For example: The Republican Party platform is both progun rights and skeptical of human-caused climate change.

But is there a commonality in these issues that should enable one to predict how a Republican gun owner will think about the environment? Of course not. The two are totally distinct issues. And yet, the vast majority of climate change skeptics turn out to be strong gun-rights advocates.

The same is true for Democrats: Despite little issue overlap, most supporters of the Affordable Care Act are also strong believers in the science supporting human-caused climate change.

After listening to Professor Shrum moderate panels with icons like former Federal Reserve Chair Alan Greenspan, Chris Matthews and Chuck Todd of MSNBC, The Washington Post’s George Will, and other D.C. thought leaders, the path forward seemed much clearer. I’ll highlight two suggestions we developed.

First, revamp the Washington — and by extension, the American — political culture. For years, members of Congress lived in Washington, D.C. That’s no longer the case. They jet home for long weekends to campaign, and many no longer have permanent residences in the district.

Beyond that, cross-party interactions often seem forced.

Gone are the days when President Reagan and Speaker of the House Tip O’Neill would share a 5 o’clock scotch and hammer out compromises.

Corporations, by contrast, promote after-work gatherings.

They know that when their people are happy together outside the office, they work better inside the office. The same is true of Congress. But Washington isn’t a vacuum — improving cross-party dialogue all across the country is both possible and necessary.

Second, fix the media echo chamber. In a blatant example of confirmation bias — surrounding oneself with likeminded opinions to feed the notion of one’s correctness — most liberals I know watch MSNBC, and most conservatives watch Fox. That practice has made us less willing to consider each other’s opinions. Challenge yourself to watch or read a news source that you don’t agree with.

It might open your eyes.

I don’t mean our opinions should become more vanillaflavor bland, but rather that we should be more receptive to flexibility. If you think some give-and-take between the parties is a bad idea, ask yourself if it’s not an improvement over what we have now.

After Hours Learning is not just a day job. At USC Dornsife, students have countless opportunities to expand their educations well beyond their time in the classroom. Research, internships and programs are offered throughout our more than 40 specialized institutes and centers. This allows students to augment their core curricula and enhance their training to meet the ever-expanding challenges of a 24/7/365 world.

Learn more about the many USC Dornsife institutes and centers and their options for discovery at dornsife.usc.edu/institutes-and-centers.

Fall 2016 / Winter 2017 73

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anniversary of a T R A N S F O R M AT I V E N A M I N G G I F T

Five Years On ‌ This year marked the fifth anniversary of a visionary $200 million gift from international philanthropists Dana and David Dornsife, renaming USC’s college of letters, arts and sciences. photo b y j oh n l i v z e y