Yale Daily News Magazine | November 2019

DAILY NEWS

MAGAZINE VOL. XLVII ISSUE 2 NOVEMBER 2019

MUSLIM DEATHCARE IN NEW HAVEN

BY KO LYN CHEANG

TABLE OF CONTENTS

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DAILY NEWS

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MAGAZINE Magazine Editors in Chief Jever Mariwala Marisa Peryer

Associate Editors Lorenzo Aravanitis Ko Lyn Cheang Elena DeBre Ashley Fan Claire Lee Isaac Scobey-Thal Macrina Wang Isabella Zou Magazine Design Editor Laura Nicholas Photography Editors Logan Howard James Larson Eric Wang Daniel Zhao David Zheng

Feature by Matt Kristofferson

Illustration Editors Susanna Liu Claire Mutchnik Copy Editors Mary Chen Joshua Gonzalez Queenie Huang Christopher Sung Editor in Chief & President Sammy Westfall Publisher Yeama Ho Cover illustration by Valerie Pavilonis

ASSISTANT DESIGN EDITORS: Crystal Cheung Ella Stark Nicole Wang Will Wang Christie Yu

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VALERIE PAVILONIS & MARY CHEN

THE NEW POST-POST DOC

14 BAKING AND BREAKING BREAD Insight by Annie Cheng

feature

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MEERA ROTHMAN

Clean or Green?

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Senior Editors Jordan Cutler-Tietjen Jack Kyono TC Martin Liana Van Nostrand

Procession of Plastic

Managing Editors Aidan Campbell Zoe Nuechterlien

fiction

insight

Everything You Need to See ISAAC SCOBEY-THAL

TABLE OF CONTENTS

22 DISCOVERING YALE’S WEST CAMPUS Insight by Margaret Sun

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34

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insight

THE WRITING ON THE WALL

Mind on the Brain NICOLE DIRKS

Insight by Ashley Fan

visual

Yale Bubble MEERA ROTHMAN

26 AFTER LIFE: MUSLIM DEATHCARE IN NEW HAVEN Cover by Ko Lyn Cheang

Yale Daily News Magazine | 3

FICTION

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FICTION

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Procession of plastic

BY MEERA ROTHMAN

n the gray morning, she wakes. The room is full of soothing silence and she feels numb. It is six thirty and she rises from her rest and finds herself in the big bed. For just a moment, she lets herself shrink. Wraps her arms around her shoulders and squeezes everything into a tight knot. Arms, knees, ankles, hands. She is all here.

She remembers that there are stickers on the calendar. It is October 5th and she cannot be so small today. In the half-dark, she brushes her teeth. Her feet find the carpeted hallway to her son’s room. A tiny form buried under a mound of stuffed creatures. Like her, he sleeps with his hands tucked under his chin. His body swells and dips to the rhythm of tiny blue breaths. A pacifier hangs from his mouth. She kisses his forehead to wake him, and his hair is damp and curly with sweat.

In the kitchen, they eat marshmallow cereal at the round table. During the week, he sleepily sifts through the cereal, picking out the messed up marshmallows, but today his eyes are wide and awake. He looks at his mother looking out the kitchen’s small square window. The neighborhood outside is quiet and full of sleeping cars.

Do you know what today is? He nods, excitedly. Colorful milk dribbles down his chin, and she melts that he is hers. She gives him a napkin and two hugs and a glass of orange juice. He beams. Do you think the other little boy drinks orange juice too?

She places the plastic container full of all 16 of his pacifiers into her blue striped backpack. She threads his arms through too-big coats and pulls on his strap-on shoes. She turns the top lock and shakes the door handle just to make sure. They step into the vacant street. The sky is too soft, and it whispers that it could swallow them up.

She takes his hand and finds that his little fingers are still wrinkled. Last night, they had stood at the kitchen sink and washed the pacifiers. She had plopped him on the plastic yellow stool and he had handed them to her one by one. The water was scalding, and she had burned her hands at first, but soon the sink was full of suds and little pieces of plastic sparkling with newness. So the other little boy will know they are a present.

They walk, hand in hand, chattering.

Do you think the other little boy also likes dinosaurs? Probably.

And does he have to hold his mom’s hand on the sidewalk too?

Yes. Does he have a dog?

Maybe.

And a dad? ...

The walk is long but familiar. They pass two cats and no people. When they reach the park, their sneakers are wet. They walk through long grass and past an old couple sitting on a bench. The boy asks to hold the bulky container, and she takes it out of her backpack for him. The rocky bank of the river calls them.

She watches the water bubbling downstream. When they moved here a couple months ago, she had balked at the green river. How strange, she had thought, to live in a town where rivers were the color of moss. But the peculiarity has grown on her. Today as she stares, mesmerized, she forgets that other rivers are blue.

She glances down at her son, cross-legged and clutching the container in his hands.

Doubts float up from her chest. Without the comfort of the pacifiers, he will not sleep for weeks, but this is what the doctor had insisted. Some bullshit about development and peers and milestones. That god-awful word – abnormal. She sits down beside him.

Do you think the other little boy will find them?

Of course.

And for a moment she lets herself imagine too. A little boy, identical to her own with ashy brown hair, crouched by the river downstream. He scrunches his face in concentration like her son does. Scrounging for shells and coming across glimmering treasures.

Her son tosses the first pacifier in. They watch it dance idly in the current, bobbing up and down. Their eyes track its journey and they lose it somewhere under the bridge. She throws another. This one hits the water more forcefully, making a satisfying splash, and quickly disappears into a wave.

Soon, they are hurling them in, jerking their arms in spasms of energy. They shed the pacifiers like memories they have outgrown, flinging them until they are out of sight. She lets out a small shriek.

A procession of plastic and an empty container. This is how they ring in the morning.

ANASTHASIA SHILOV

Yale Daily News Magazine | 5

FEATURE

The new post-post-doc Fraught with anxiety for most — a “great first job” for others — chasing tenure comes with high stakes for Yale’s junior faculty members.

BY MATT KRISTOFFERSEN

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n his office on the third floor of 27 Hillhouse Ave., economics assistant professor José-Antonio Espín-Sánchez has a picture of his 1-year-old son and little else.

There is a black sticker of the Iberian Peninsula — where he is from — adjacent to a wooden bookshelf and a print of “The Great Wave off Kanagawa,” that famous woodblock of an impending, almost apocalyptic rogue wave.

The rest of the room is relatively bare.

After all, he is fairly new to Yale. While older, tenured professors have stacks of books, plaques and pictures of themselves posing with celebrities and presidents, Espín-Sánchez has a white wall and a slowly crowding desk. The few decorations that co-opt the various shelves and corners of his office have accumulated since 2014.

That would mean only a few more years until tenure, if he gets it. Historically, Espín-Sánchez said around 30 percent of professors are awarded tenure.

Tenure, he explained, is the ultimate job interview. Assistant professors are evaluated on nearly every aspect of their academic career. Write enough papers for the top academic journals, attend the most prestigious conferences and win lucrative awards, and you get a job for life at one of the country’s most elite universities. Fail to do so, and you are out of a job. He said he plans to submit five research papers. If all five are accepted, tenure could be very likely. But if only one gets in, “I’m screwed,” he said.

Yale’s tenure process has become less painful than most since a 2016 overhaul improved transparency and sped up the agonizingly slow tenure clock. Still, Espín-Sánchez and his colleagues say they are faced with subjective and uncertain requirements to earn tenure.

Several have criticized the arbitrariness that goes into Yale’s decision to hire them for life — or to force them to look for alternative trajectories.

“It’s very hard to predict,” Espín-Sánchez said. “You can do all the work you can, [but] at the end it just depends on if someone likes your work or not.”

Espín-Sánchez turned to his bookshelf and sighed.

He’s racing against the clock. He worries if his papers will be published by the time the University Tenure and Appointments Committee mulls over his performance.

And even if they are, would the committee appreciate his work?

A picture of Espín-Sánchez’s smiling son hangs on the wall behind him, looking over him as he works at his desk. The young professor’s periodic review is coming

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PHOTOS BY SANYA NIJHAWAN

FEATURE soon. If he gets the sense that pursuing tenure at Yale may not be the right idea, he will consider moving to a lower-tier institution. If so, his stint at Yale, he added, would have been more of a training opportunity, a “post-post-doctorate,” than anything else.

“IT WAS TRAUMATIZING” University of Florida professor Lillian Guerra knows what it’s like to go through Yale’s tenure process — or, at least, part of it.

An expert on Cuban and Caribbean history, Guerra said she joined the Yale faculty in 2004 with two acclaimed books already on her résumé. Soon after she arrived, however, the young professor felt like she was not taken seriously. Some of her colleagues told her that her research interests were irrelevant. Cuban history was “a waste of time,” she remembers one saying.

In her first week, Guerra said that a male colleague told her that two other women previously occupied her new office in the Hall of Graduate Studies — and hoped she’d last longer than they did.

“You could talk to them until you’re blue in the face about [Cuban history],” she said. “It was extremely disturbing to me that people who already had tenure ... all seemed to be convinced that never would I really be able to achieve the throne. It didn’t matter what I did.”

Guerra left in 2010. Retrospectively, she is happy she decided to pull out of her

tenure-track position before she “lost her sense of purpose.” But along the way, while she was writing the manuscript for a new book and teaching classes at Yale on Latin American history, she said senior faculty members presented her with insurmountable roadblocks to tenure, aiming to nudge her out of the University.

“There is nothing I could have done to change the minds of many people who were required to evaluate me,” she said.

By the time Guerra was up for review at Yale, she had drafted her book “Visions of Power in Cuba: Revolution, Redemption and Resistance, 1959-1971” based on recommendations she had received from Laura Engelstein, the then-chair of the History Department. According to Guerra, Engelstein told her to compile all her research into an entire manuscript — instead of sending in several polished chapters.

Guerra now believes that the advice was malicious and was meant to torpedo her chances at earning tenure.

“It wasn’t just bad, it was incorrect,” Guerra said. “It was erroneous, and probably deliberately so.”

Engelstein wrote she did not remember the details of Guerra’s tenure review in an email to the News. But, she wrote, “I can say with assurance that as chair I always gave junior faculty members the advice I thought would best serve their interests in advancing their careers at Yale.”

For Guerra, the experience was telling: Not long after she left Yale for her new ap-

pointment at the University of Florida, her book won a handful of prestigious awards and even helped her win a Guggenheim Fellowship — an honor that comes with a hefty, no-strings-attached research grant.

Compared to the committee that awarded the grant, Guerra said that those who handled her professional fate at Yale were not nearly as objective. In fact, she argued that they reeked of “ethical flaws and racism.”

Yale’s tenure process, she said, was not traumatizing as much as it was “outrageous and revolting.” As she recounted her experience at Yale she began to cry. “You have to continue to believe in fairness and justice,” she said between sobs.

At Florida, Guerra has served on tenure committees herself and knows how much sway members of these bodies have over their colleagues’ futures. Like a lever, workplace spats that happen early in one’s career can mean drastically different outcomes later.

As other professors inch closer to their evaluations, Yale Molecular, Cellular, and Developmental Biology professor Valerie Horsley said that the high stakes of tenure caused her stress and anxiety. Like Guerra, Horsley built a résumé thick with honors, articles and awards. Still, the process made her nervous — so much so that she often lost sleep over it.

Horsley received tenure in 2016. She currently leads her own lab in the new Yale Science Building, where she conducts research on wound healing in the skin. Three

Yale Daily News Magazine | 7

FEATURE

years after she learned she would indefinitely hold a post at the University, the tenure process still haunts her.

“I was terrified,” she said. “It was traumatic — especially when you’re 40 and you have a family.”

By the time she came to Yale, Horsley had already completed an extensive post-doctoral fellowship at the Rockefeller University in Manhattan. When she arrived, she recalled that many of her colleagues told her to think of her time at Yale as another long fellowship or a multi-year ticket to tenure at another institution. Without much feedback from senior faculty members, Horsley said that her ability to gauge her chances at tenure was significantly stunted. “I did feel that my department supported me, and that they thought I was successful,” she explained, “but I didn’t feel like it was a slam-dunk case.”

Then, after waiting for months, she learned she was approved for tenure. Her post-post-doctorate had been a success.

But at what cost?

INSIDE THE PROCESS The tenure processes that Guerra and Horsley endured were different than current University protocol. Reformed in 2016, the new Faculty of Arts and Sciences

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Tenure and Appointments System dedicates two periods of performance review — one at the four-year mark, the other at year seven — and a total of eight years until tenure is usually granted. Compared to the old model, the new system’s tenure clock is shorter by one year and far less arduous, Horsley said.

“It used to be much more horrible,” she said. “They would advertise your job and if someone better than you, more famous, or more senior applied, then you wouldn’t get tenure.”

The reviews also give assistant professors the chance to hold their fingers to the wind and gauge their chances for tenure without going through an arduous review process.

But these windows also cause many to cut their losses and apply for jobs outside Yale.

The University has “high expectations” for its tenured faculty members, according to FAS Dean Tamar Gendler. And because of this, the FAS offers various means of support for assistant professors, including resources for a colloquium on their academic work and three semesters of academic leave.

For those who stay on board, the path to tenure is steep. Candidates must submit a portfolio of materials for review by a tenure and appointments committee, which works confidentially with the department

chair and departmental review committee to determine if promotion is appropriate.

Then, the relevant faculty members review at least 10 letters from outside experts in related fields to verify that a candidate “stands among the foremost leaders in the world.”

If they vote positively, the candidate’s dossier must receive approval from three additional bodies: the Tenure and Appointments Committee, the Joint Boards of Permanent Officers of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and the Fellows of the Yale Corporation. Multiple professors said cases that reach the Corporation are more or less a shoo-in.

For associate professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Joseph Fischel, the experience was all fairly recent: He learned that the Tenure and Appointments Committee had voted in his favor in late October.

Before the announcement, Fischel told the News he had several backup options if tenure failed to materialize. Plan B, he said, was to look for jobs at other top-tier institutions. That way, he could use offers to leverage tenure at the University or to secure other employment opportunities if he decided to jump ship.

Fischel said he had emotionally prepared himself for not receiving tenure. After all,

FEATURE

when he first arrived at the University, he said his advisor told him that the post was “a great first job.”

“Just consider it a nine-year post-doc,” he remembered his advisor saying.

Fischel is now the University’s only tenured professor with a sole appointment in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies.

Along the way, Fischel pursued leadership positions and teaching experiences as much as he could. Just a short time after starting his job in 2012, he became the director of undergraduate studies for his department.

Then, he assumed his current post as the director of graduate studies — which he will occupy at least until 2021, according to his curriculum vitae. His list of honors, awards and publications spans several pages.

Despite this, over the last few weeks, he was still worried about his chances. He had the option of switching to the new, faster tenure clock, but decided against it. He was too far into the old one, he said, and it seemed like a better fit for him. Even so, the past few weeks were “very anxiety-filled,” and he said he did not sleep much. Despite Fischel’s hard work, the decision was ultimately up to Yale and other external arbiters.

“I believe I performed well, and I worked very hard on my research projects,” he said. “I’m very committed to teaching and

equally committed to institution-building at Yale.” Fischel had checked off most, if not all, of Yale’s boxes. If he didn’t get tenure, he said, “I would have been devastated.”

“HOW CAN THIS CHANGE?” Sixteen current and former Yale professors — including those in tenure-track positions — declined to comment on the tenure process. Some feared retaliation if they spoke candidly. Others declined without providing any explanation. Twenty-nine others did not respond to several requests for comment.

Professors interviewed by the News all agreed that Yale’s tenure system was a source of stress and anxiety in a way unique to only the nation’s top institutions. For a university that already courts scholars in the highest echelons of their fields, Yale’s expectation for standout professors often makes tenure difficult to achieve, they said.

Several pointed to other systems across the country, like that of the University of California, as exemplary processes for awarding tenure.

The University of California, which includes nine undergraduate campuses across the state, has a tenure process with clear rules and guidelines. According to the system’s website, it cuts checks to over 10,000

tenure-eligible or equivalent faculty members. A publicly available 40-page document lists the requirements for promotion.

A portrait of the ideal candidate emerges: one who is a steward of intellectual freedom, who fosters academic growth and pursues equality and free speech.

Yale and the University of California are very different. But as Espín-Sánchez looked down at his desk and sorted through books and papers piled high in a relatively barren room, it was an indication that something needed to change. At the very least, he said that Yale’s tenure process could be more transparent. Guerra agreed. So did Horsley and other professors who spoke to the News.

Hanging on the wall, “The Great Wave off Kanagawa” is caught frozen in action, as if the blue, brackish water is ready to devour what’s out of frame at any moment. As in the painting, the tension in the office was palpable, but Espín-Sánchez said he wasn’t afraid of the ultimate tenure decision. After all, come what may, his future will involve academics. That, he said, was comforting.

But when it comes to decision time, will his work speak for itself? Will his time at the University be considered a post-postdoctoral experience?

“It depends on what my colleagues think of my work,” he said. “That’s all that matters.”

Yale Daily News Magazine | 9

FEATURE

Clean or green?

Yale’s role in the “super highway of power” slated for Maine’s forests.

BY VALERIE PAVILONIS AND MARY CHEN

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n a time when deforestation and wildfires have ripped apart miles of America’s green space, Maine, despite hosting a bustling logging industry, remains about 90 percent forest. But while Maine — aptly nicknamed “the Pine Tree State” — has managed to preserve much of its natural environment, a new project may place some of its forests in jeopardy.

And activists argue Yale is complicit in that threat.

In Maine, Yale allocates a small part of its $29.4 billion endowment into roughly 814 square miles of timberland through two companies, Bayroot LLC and Typhoon LLC, according to the Bangor Daily News. Yale is heavily invested in both businesses, owning 99 and 91 percent, respectively. Recently, Yale’s stake in the timberland has faced local scrutiny in the wake of a proposed project to construct a new hydroelectric transmission line that will cut through the area.

Measuring 300 feet wide, the power line would snake through 145 miles of forest between Quebec and Lewiston — a Maine town not far from the capital, Augusta. Called the New England Clean Energy Connect and proposed by electricity company Central Maine Power, the power line is anticipated to supply 1,200 megawatts of power to New England. But to Maine’s lawmakers and activists, the move prioritizes profit at the expense of Maine’s greenery — even as Central Maine Power promises renewable energy.

While proponents of the project say that the power line will reduce greenhouse gas emissions in Maine, its builders have not

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publicly stated if it will reduce overall emissions when other regions are included, according to Maeghan Maloney, the district attorney for Kennebec and Somerset counties in Maine.

“There’s no actual promise that it’s going to reduce greenhouse gas emissions,” Maloney told the News in an interview. “But [that promise is] not part of their actual proposal; their proposal is that they want to cut this scar through the forest of Maine, and we’re not actually being given a promise.”

Maine’s power line The corridor is a “superhighway of power,” according to Sandi Howard, director of Say NO to NECEC, a grassroots organization campaigning against the corridor, who also said the company will need to carve out 2,000 acres of forest to support the power line. Other groups have echoed Howard’s sentiments, saying that the project comes with environmental repercussions.

To the Natural Resources Council of Maine — an environmental activist group — the line is a “bad deal” for Maine, possibly increasing pollution and jeopardizing growth of Maine’s clean energy market.

According to the Council’s website, Central Maine Power — owned by the New England-serving energy company Avangrid — and its Canadian partners would reap the profits, leaving “very little” for local companies. Others argue the power line will curb Maine’s lively tourism and recreation industry.

In Maine, the consequences may be se-

FEATURE vere for rural towns flanking the power line. Susan Shaw, founder and executive director of the environmental nonprofit Shaw Institute, said the volunteer units supporting these communities lack equipment to handle potential mass blazes from the construction of the corridor. The Maine Federation of Firefighters raised the concern in a letter to the state, underscoring the lack of resources to quench wildfires.

Two of Maine’s counties lining the proposed construction site significantly oppose the proposal. According to an April poll by the Natural Resources Council of Maine, 90 percent and 83 percent of residents oppose the project in Franklin and Somerset counties, respectively. In addition to the counties, 24 towns — many of which are located within the designated building site — oppose the power line, according to Howard.

State approval for the project is still in flux: While Central Maine Power has already received a permit from the Maine Public Utilities Commission,

Howard’s organization Say NO to NECEC aims to gather 80,000 signatures by Dec. 31 to leverage a statewide vote on the corridor, which will be on the 2020 ballot if successful in getting the necessary support. According to Howard, the organization has collected about 30,000 signatures in the last few weeks.

“There is legislation currently pending for the session that starts in January that could derail the project,” wrote Maine state Rep. Janice Cooper in an email. According to Howard, “The Maine Land Use Planning Commission will likely decide on the permit at the Jan. 8th meeting.”

For the project to proceed, Central Maine Power needs permit approvals from the Maine Land Use Planning Commission, Army Corps of Engineers and the Presidential Permit, which are all in current review. If Central Maine Power fails to receive the necessary permits from Maine, then the company will have to attempt getting them approved in Vermont.

Maine state Rep. Seth Berry, chair of

the Joint Standing Committee on Energy, Utilities and Technology, said “If Maine says no — which appears likely, and Yale has not made friends in Maine by assisting the Maine project — the next choice for Massachusetts of the 46 options is the competing project in Vermont, called the New England Clean Power Link.” The NECPL line is already fully permitted

by Vermont and other federal authorities, according to Berry.

But while opposition to the power line is mounting, its builders say the project, in fact, will benefit Maine’s environment and economy. Activists’ accusations against the power line are unfounded, according to Ted Varipatis, director of communications and media relations for Serra Public Affairs, a communications firm representing Central Maine Power. Varipatis said the power line will definitely reduce Maine’s carbon footprint, citing the State of Maine Public Utilities Commission report from March, which analyzed the environmental impact of the proposed corridor.

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FEATURE The state-commissioned report said that the power line will reduce New England’s greenhouse gas emissions by approximately 3 to 3.6 metric tons per year, the equivalent of removing about 700,000 cars from the road. The company noted that the new line will deliver power to New England without redirecting energy from existing markets or increasing emissions elsewhere.

Central Maine Power also dismissed allegations that the planned 53-mile line cuts through undeveloped forests. Varipatis said the project’s engineers and developers ensured the corridor meets or exceeds environmental regulations in addition to minimizing its impact on the surrounding ecosystems. He added that project will weave through forest used by the Maine timber industry for decades — not through forests that are “pristine and untouched.”

“Another major benefit is that Mainers

will be breathing cleaner air,” said Varipatis. “The benefits of the hydropower being brought in from Quebec will be felt across New England.”

On-Campus Response Though Yale has made headlines in Maine press for its affiliation with the project, the University has remained mostly silent on the issue — typically, the University does not comment on its investments. Still, it is not the first time Yale has fielded questions on its role in the development of green spaces.

Yale’s involvement in New England power grids precedes the Maine project. In 2017, another proposal called the Northern Pass sought to deliver hydroelectric power to New England through a 192-mile transmission line through New Hampshire. At the time, Wagner Forest Management — which oversees the Yale-controlled Bayroot — leased some of

Bayroot’s lands in northern New Hampshire to Eversource, the power company in charge of the project. While the Northern Pass effort came to a halt in 2018 after leaders failed to gain appropriate permits, the months leading up to the shutdown saw heightened awareness on campus.

In May 2017, New Hampshire Coos County commissioner Richard Samson spoke at a campus teach-in about his concerns that the Northern Pass would degrade the forest. Months later in October 2017, Yale students signed an open letter urging the University to withdraw its support for the project.

“What [Yale is] doing to the land up here and the people up here is just ridiculous,” Samson told the News in April 2018. “We’re asking Yale to be a responsible land owner. That’s what they teach and that’s what they preach, but that’s not what they’re doing.”

When asked for Yale’s response to local

May 2017 New Hampshire Coos County Commissioner Richard Samson speaks at a teach-in at Yale, describing the effects that the Northern Pass would have on New Hampshire land

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October 2017 June 2017 Yale publishes a press release stating that it takes a limited approach when handling its individual investments

Yale students march to the Investments Office with an open letter to administrators asking them to withdraw support from the powerline

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FEATURE concerns about the current power line proposal, University spokesperson Karen Peart referred the News to a 2017 press release, in which the University reacted to the initial wave of protests against the Northern Pass.

The release stated that Yale does not directly oversee its investments, opting instead to “invest with managers through partnership arrangements that limit the investors’ ability to control decisions from both a legal and best practices perspective.”

Wagner Forest Management — the company maintaining lands owned

by Yale-controlled Bayroot — did not possess the legal ability to terminate the lease, according to the 2017 press release. The release also stated that the Yale Investments Office viewed Wagner as a “world-class manager of timberland.”

In an email to the News, Varipatis

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said that Central Maine Power negotiated with Bayroot to purchase land for its newest project. He added that there was “no reason” to discuss the purchase with University officials.

According to a Sept. 27 press release from the Yale Investments Office or YIO, the University’s endowment totaled $30.3 billion on June 30, 2019.

While the majority of the University’s investments are held in asset classes like private and foreign equity, natural resources make up 5.5 percent of the endowment. According to the YIO, most recent endowment update, investing in natural resources — which include oil, gas and agriculture as well as timberland — offers protection against unanticipated inflation and provides the University with “high and visible” cash flow.

But on campus, some are critical of Yale’s hands-off approach. According

to Zander De Jesus ’20, co-president of The Yale Student Environmental Coalition, those who make decisions affecting the environment must consider both the people and ecosystems impacted. He added that in a time of climate crisis coupled with accelerating fossil fuel emissions, it is imperative for institutions to weigh the environmental costs and benefits of their policies.

De Jesus also referenced Yale’s mission as a nonprofit institution dedicated to, among other things, improving the world through “outstanding research and scholarship, education, preservation, and practice.”

De Jesus said, “I think it’s important that we also scrutinize and evaluate whether or not a profit motive is involved in these types of land transfers, and making sure that all costs be considered.”

March 2019 February 2018

A Natural Resources Council of Maine poll shows that 65 percent of Mainers surveyed oppose the NECEC

New Hampshire regulators reject the Northern Pass Project

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August 2019 Central Maine Power buys land from Bayroot to build the NECEC

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INSIGHT

Baking and breaking bread The communities within four Elm City bakeries

BY ANNIE CHENG

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lour, water, egg and yeast. The sweet, sour fragrance is the first greeting of a bakery. Next, the buttery indulgence rising from rolling racks of fresh pastries. They say baking is a science: A product can change radically in the transformation from dough to loaf. Just 10 more minutes of dry air exposure, and a perfectly proofed dough can collapse into a disappointing heap. With innovative flavor combinations or new shapes and structures, bread and pastries carry communal stories from all over the world. In many ways, bread forms a foundation for cultural togetherness: To meet someone new is to offer a bite; to share a loaf is to connect; to roll out the dough is to understand the history of the grain and economy and society around it. The art is in the simplicity and the possibilities alike. Civilizations are born from the grains that sustain them: rice, corn, wheat, durum, millet and so many more. New Haven is home to histories as rich and diverse as the bakeries it hosts. In mapping the Elm City through bakeries, we understand the people who rise before the sun to feed our neighborhoods.

Mi Lupita Bakery, Fair Haven The racks are laden with Mexican pastries, stacks on stacks of pan dulce: conchas, coyotas, orejas and more.

As my eyes wander — and my mouth waters — my daze is interrupted by two kids poking at my scooter. I ask to talk to their abuela and she comes from the kitchen all smiles and flour dust. The family matriarch Yolanda Guzmán grins as she shakes my hand.

She keeps a stern eye on the little girl,

who introduces herself in a tentative whisper as Elena. Elena wobbles on unfamiliar wheels as we tuck our bodies into the single corner table of the shop. Since I have arrived near the end of the day, the baking process is beginning to wind down. Guzmán’s daughters lean over a sink scrubbing mixing bowls and other baking tools; her brother Fidel hovers near the stove tending tlayudas.

Guzmán’s family has been running the tiny Fair Haven bakery for several decades. “Thanks to God, we have continued to be able to sell delicious bread from my country of Mexico,” says Guzmán. Hair tied up, she presses her fingers into the dough, kneading it to check the elasticity under her palms. Her shop is the only Mexican bakery in the area, and she takes pride that “[they] get to feed la gente with fresh, hot bread for the people every day.” Their customers include Mexican and Latinx neighbors along the historic Grand Street, as well as other small grocery stores just steps away.

She proudly states that their bakery is the only one selling the round, eggbased pan de yema of traditional Oaxacan origins.

In The Politic, Oscar Lopez Aguirre ’20 wrote of his experience at the bakery: “I had found a home not in the concha nor in the bakery — maybe not even in Yolanda’s family — but in the baking of the bread. Identity, I thought to myself, then, cannot be encapsulated and consumed. It has to be made.” In many ways, Mi Lupita forms a community space for people to stop by for daily fresh bread on their way home from work, a common tradition across Latin America mostly absent in the U.S. It’s an affirPHOTOS BY ANNIE CHENG

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INSIGHT

mation of identity for the first-, second- and third-generation immigrants of the neighborhood — bread is a tangible, grounding reminder of home.

A bell dings, and her grandson walks in from his day at Fair Haven School, sneaking a shy wave before heading to the back. Her other grandkids squabble over the scooter, playing amongst the shelves of pan dulce. Mi Lupita has sustained three generations since Guzmán moved the operation out of her home kitchen in the early 2000s, citing increased demand. The Guzmán family flows through the shop in the same rhythm as they always have, moving through the motions with a practiced choreography. The kids watch TV on their phones to a constant backdrop of childish theme songs.

The first time I visited the bakery, I collected nearly a dozen pastries with plastic tongs, my mouth watering. Wide-eyed and hungry, I peeked into each tray at the rows of treats, each one fluffier than the next. Sitting in the car, I took a rushed bite of each one and saved them for later, a terrible habit from my childhood days of untethered dessert consumption. This time, I sit in the shop quietly and listen to the Spanish “Peppa Pig,” the steady slap of dough on tabletop, the quiet rush of the kitchen tap. I tear open a concha with my fingers, and slowly, I savor it.

Pan Del Cielo 2, Fair Haven A young man in running shorts accompanies his grandfather, both ordering in Spanish with the familiarity of longtime

regulars. Un sandwich de pernil, pastelito de queso. Beneath glass cases, buttery pastries glisten invitingly, each labeled carefully with their fillings: guava, cheese, pineapple, strawberry and more. The sweet scent of melted sugar sticks to the walls, and the ongoing gentle hum of dough mixers and machines hovers in the air. Since 2007, the Mera family has been serving up traditional Latin American pastries to Fair Haven families. “[The neighborhood] has grown a lot in the past decade,” says Edwin Mera, owner and panadero.

After immigrating to the United States from Ecuador in the early 2000s, Mera worked in New York City waiting tables and working in restaurants while saving to open his own business.

Pacing around the stainless steel counters that double as his desk after baking hours, he confesses that buying and operating Pan Del Cielo 2 with his family was his first experience with baking.

“The first thing I did here is treat the customers well and learn more and more because I knew almost nothing from the beginning,” says Mera.

Since then, he’s grown the business significantly by appealing to a broad variety of clientele. “I returned to Ecuador and brought back recipes, fusing breads from Ecuador, Puerto Rico and Central America.”

The demand is clear — despite the late afternoon hour of our conversation, a steady stream of customers cycles in and out, paper bags in hand. “Every day, every day. We do fresh bread from five in the morning … and very rarely do we not sell out,” Mera says.

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INSIGHT Retail customers, mainly Puerto Ricans and Central Americans, come for pan sobao and pastillitas of all types. But Pan Cielo 2 distributes as far as Brooklyn, serving grocery stores all over Connecticut and New York. Even so, Mera describes himself as old school and says the business doesn’t actively promote itself across any platforms. “El chisme is the best way to advertise for me,” he says.

The next location will open in West Haven with improved machinery and a more spacious layout. His goal is to continue serving his changing customer base, adapting the menu to reflect and welcome the tastes of new arrivals. On the day of my visit, the store is set up for the Ecuadorian holiday el Día de los Difuntos, selling guaguas de pan (baby-shaped breads) and colada morada (a maize- and fruit-based beverage).

Pan Del Cielo 2 is a gastronomic node of the community, feeding folks from all over with simple ingredients made from scratch. After Mera retires, his son will take over the bakery and serve the New Haven community with the same commitment to consistency and quality products — from tres leches to empanadas.

Atticus, Campus + New Haven Originally opened as a used book store, local favorite Atticus has been frequented by New Haveners for 45 years. The bookstore-café welcomes students and residents alike to check out new books, simple fresh salads and delicious pastries throughout the day. Espresso machines whir constantly, and conversations abound at the crowded fine line between bookshelf and dining area. Similarly, the partnership between Atticus and the Chabaso Bakery, where it sources its bread, verges on the seamless.

Atticus owner-operator Charlie Negaro does not take his multiple roles lightly. As of Nov. 1, he has become the CEO of Chabaso Bakery, the home of the best 99-cent coffee in the city. Since taking it over from his father, Negaro has ushered in a new age for the company. He emphasizes that his responsibility to customers is “creating great bread.” Through programs like free bread for election stickers, Chabaso and Atti-

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cus have become more than just retail locations. The Chabaso and Atticus teams aim to serve the city in other ways besides their country rye bread. For example, Chabaso uses excess energy from the plant to power a nearby garden of New Haven Farms — which is now an independent organization. “‘Bakers for a better world’ has been an internal rallying cry for us [from the start],” says Negaro. ”Who are we trying to be? What are we all about?”

Both companies view New Haven as integral to their identities, especially for the workers they employ. Most of their staff live within a five-mile radius in Fair Haven. Negaro has emphasized the importance of a people-first business philosophy in his work, and the intergenerational lineages of his employees represent his success.

Production manager Maribel Rodriguez, who started at the company 22 years ago, notes how company culture has affected her career at the Chabaso factory. Her husband has worked alongside her for over a decade. They are one of the many families who have been with Chabaso since Negaro was a child. “I love working with this company for its values, and the community is really positive. We have opportunities to grow on the daily,” says Rodriguez. She adds that the bakery is a career, allowing for continued development of advanced skills and baking knowledge with annual review of promotions. Most of the kitchen and client-facing staff have been at Atticus or Chabaso for years, building its institutional memory.

But Negaro’s dreams go beyond New Haven.

“We’ve become more interested in the local grain movement in the past few years in the Northeast,” says Reed Immer, communications director for Atticus.

According to Negaro, most Connecticut grain production serves dairy farms. “It’s a hard economy to make money, to be a better steward to the land … it’s a commodity grain.” Localizing production would allow grain producers to be more selective about sustainable crops and charge a premium to survive competitive agricultural pressures.

In response to these concerns for grain movement in Connecticut, the Chabaso and Atticus duo have recently hosted the

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first annual Grain Gab conference — an event bringing together local bakers, brewers, large industry partners and agricultural scholars. According to Negaro, this was an effort to begin establishing a foundation for a circular New England grain economy, a more sustainable form of food production that minimizes waste.

G Café, Everywhere Owner and operator Andrea Corrazino is a well-traveled business mogul, having passed through Venezuela, Spain, Italy and Germany before finally settling in New Haven. He moves with a certain grace and knowledge of industry, greeting customers and pouring cappuccinos between snippets of conversation. “Simplicity is the most important thing,” says Corrazino as he foams a cup of coffee.

He lives by this rule, and the company keeps ingredient lists short and flavor profiles complex — as per the classic German bread-baking techniques that birthed the name Whole G. Despite overseeing both Whole G Bakery and the retail storefront G Café, Corrazino still finds time to bake every day, explaining that it’s important for his staff to see him interacting at every level of production. Whole G leaves its mark all over the city, including Yale dining halls, Willoughby’s, Nica’s Market, East Rock Brewing Company, Blue State Coffee and the newly opened Graduate Hotel’s Old Heidelberg restaurant. Every morning, the downtown factory’s freshly baked goods are shipped all over Connecticut with the finest attention to detail. “We have a very informal atmosphere, but behind the scenes, everything is rigorously under control,” Corrazino says.

This painstaking attention to detail is even evident in their

coffee offerings, such as the Italian house blend which they have used since opening. “I think once you find the perfect cup of coffee, you never want to change,” Corrazino nods. Most recently, they began grinding Willoughby’s beans as well. Though I’m a relatively new coffee drinker, I can tell that the cappuccino here is like no other — smooth, decadent and buttery.

Alex Hall, who started as a barista, took over as the manager of G Cafè in January 2019. A hint of an English accent lingers in his voice. He emphasizes the long hours and list of responsibilities required for the café’s upkeep, gesturing to Corrazino’s high standards as directly reflected in the carefully managed café and consistent customer experience. “But I like it because I’ve learned a hell of a lot in a short amount of time … the philosophy has begun to rub off on me.”

G Café employees are a family, Hall says. When someone goes on maternity or sick leave, they are promised their jobs upon return while the rest of the team works extra hours to make up. All employees try the new pastries coming off the bakery line, and Hall says there hasn’t been a single one he hasn’t liked. “There are people who come here every day; we serve them every day,” says Hall. Their customers range from downtown office workers to politicians. They’ve even sold pastries to Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-New Haven, and Gov. Ned Lamont.

A massive print of Eric Carle, author of the children’s book “The Very Hungry Caterpillar,” welcomes customers into the space. A hand-scrawled annotation sings the praises of Corrazino, his wife and his bakery. “[Eric and I] are good friends, in fact,” Corrazino laughs. The painting brings a certain joy to the space, a sense of earnestness complementing the company’s precision and passion for bread.

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The Writing on the Wall Taipei’s “Lennon Wall,” a vivid but fragile form of protest art, emerged as a liminal symbol of Hong Kong’s ongoing protests.

BY ASHLEY FAN

A

worn-out underpass lies beneath the busy street that divides National Taiwan University and a bustling night market.

I traveled back and forth through its crisscrossing underground tunnels often during my summer in Taipei, never glancing twice at its dull walls until one August afternoon — I descended the underpass stairs into the middle of a colorful spectacle. Thousands of sticky notes had been posted all over the tunnel walls, covered in scrawled handwritten messages. The same four Chinese characters appeared everywhere — 香港加油 (“don’t give up, Hong Kong”). Overnight, the underpass had transformed into a “Lennon Wall,” a bold form of political art in solidarity with Hong Kong.

An organization of Hong Kong student activists set up this particular wall in Taipei, one of many that have sprung up around the world to support Hong Kong’s ongoing anti-extradition protests. These Lennon Walls emulate the original graffiti-layered Lennon Wall in Prague, originally a tribute to John Lennon as a symbol of peace and resistance in the ’80s and a popular space for free expression. But Taipei’s Lennon Wall was graffiti-free — instead, colorful collages of crowd-sourced sticky notes and posters lined the tunnel walls from ceiling to floor. Sketches of umbrellas and Hong Kong’s bauhinia flower emblem, crude caricatures of politicians and vivid shots of violence on Hong Kong streets accompanied the notes’ messages. They voiced a simultaneous pride in Hong Kong’s democratic ideals and rage at Hong

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Kong’s undemocratic reality.

In the sea of notes, a few stood out: “Today Hong Kong, tomorrow Taiwan,” a chilling premonition commonly chanted in Taiwan’s solidarity rallies. “Freedom is not free,” an American idiom that had taken a new meaning in the context of Hong Kong’s protests. A pointed “Fuck USA/UK/ Japan” scribbled right underneath a poster that claimed “USA stands with Hong Kong.” But most notes simply echoed 加油, 加油 (“don’t give up!”)

— the same characters written in thousands of different handwritings rang like thousands of voices in unison.

The Lennon Wall’s daily growth followed the protests’ developments — each visit, I encountered freshly penned messages and fragments of cross-strait politics from overhead conversations. This Lennon Wall was a form of activism I had never seen before, lively and visually representative, a variation on political graffiti that maintained order and respect. For the first time, the underpass interrupted the commutes of its countless passersby, who stopped to observe or add their own notes to the protest art. As word of the Lennon Wall spread, journalists and photographers materialized, distinguishable by their impulse to document everything while it lasted. They knew what I didn’t want to admit — that this Lennon Wall, while powerful and captivating in the present, was only fleeting. For a moment, the underpass itself had become the destination.

It must be more than a coincidence that almost all Lennon Walls in the

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ZIHAO LIN

world appear in various liminal spaces — in tunnels, bridges, subway station hallways — spaces where people can’t help but pass on the way to somewhere else, spaces where people do not normally linger. Liminal spaces facilitate change, in the way that the Hong Kong protests’ period of disorder actually gave rise to the explicit “Five Demands” that protesters now march for.

The Taipei Lennon Wall’s physical location at the crossroads of an underpass transcends to the metaphorical crossroads that Hong Kong’s protesters face — one path towards democracy, the other towards the unthinkable alternative.

In anthropology, a liminal space is a threshold, a phase of transition in both space and time; liminality induces overturned social hierarchies, broken traditions and doubt cast upon what was once taken for granted.

In this period of fluidity, protesters have called on a famous Bruce Lee philosophy to symbolize the mobile, adaptive nature of the protests — “be water.” As people record their grievances on notes at the Lennon Wall — against Hong Kong’s current administration, against the “one country, two systems” policy, against the undermining of autonomy — they mark these signs of liminality. The Hong Kong protesters chose the long shot, and they must know they have already passed the point of no return.

It is the youth of Hong Kong and Taiwan that lead this movement, because they live on this cusp. During a visit to the Lennon Wall, a student approached me and introduced himself as a Hongkonger studying in Taipei.

He had dedicated all his free time to his self-appointed station at the Lennon Wall, advocating Hong Kong’s cause to anyone

who would listen. His pride for his hometown glowed in his words as he described his ideals of freedom and democracy, but faltered when I asked about Hong Kong’s future. Hong Kong’s youth were born into democracy, he told me, and that is why they are so afraid to lose it. They take autonomy for granted in a way that even those one generation older could not, and refuse to accept anything less. The openness and urgency with which he spoke to me, a complete stranger, revealed his near-desperate belief in the protests. The lives of young people in Hong Kong have been so quickly and irreversibly altered, the liminality of their teenage years disrupted by something much greater — the upheaval of their home. He told me he was going back home to Hong Kong next week to participate in the protests, risking his own safety to make a point right

when the rest of the world was pulling away. “Wish me luck,” he had said. His contagious, reckless hope — the tunnel was alive with it.

That was over three months ago. Neither of us could have guessed that the protests would continue in full force to this day.

In the face of escalating violence and rising stakes for Hong Kong’s future, it can be hard to have faith in sticky notes and symbolism. Caught in the midst of an infinite shuffle of people and paper notes at the Lennon Wall, I was uncertain whether there would be a light at the end of this tunnel. The underpass has since returned to its original bare state, but neither I nor anyone else who saw its full glory would be able to walk through the empty tunnel without seeing a phantom explosion of color, feeling the spirit of protesters that once inhabited its walls.

Yale Daily News Magazine | 19

INSIGHT

Everything You Need to See House of Highlights and the Fusion of Sports and Social Media

BY ISAAC SCOBEY-THAL

O

n the night of Oct. 12, a group of Rocklin, California police officers pulled up on a dozen high schoolers playing football in a parking lot. Instead of shutting down the game, they joined in — police vs. kids, four per side, playing two-hand touch under the glow of fluorescent streetlights. Kids peering from the sidelines went wild at the players’ every move, letting out piercing laughs and yelling “break him” after every nifty play.

Miles Hughes caught the whole thing on tape. That night, he submitted the video to the @HouseofHighlights Instagram account, which posted it the next day with the caption: “They were playing football in a parking lot and the cops pulled up and got into the game. ” As a result, a lot of people ended up watching Hughes’ video — over two million people since Oct. 13.

House of Highlights, or HOH, is as a social media conglomerate that posts highlights from sporting events. It was created by a 25-year-old internet entrepreneur and NBA fanatic Omar Raja, who originally envisioned the account as a place to post memorable clips from the LeBron James era of the Miami Heat (his favorite team). Since its conception in 2014, HOH has been acquired first by Bleacher Report and then by ESPN. In the process, it has garnered 14.8 million Instagram followers and cemented Raja as one of the most influential figures in contemporary sports media.

HOH publishes around a dozen videos a day, all of which amass millions of views and thousands of comments. Roughly half of their content is user-generated: videos that their followers send through direct message and that they then repost.

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And that’s where it gets really interesting.

Some of these videos depict nonprofessional athletes being impressively athletic — a surprising play from a pickup basketball game, for instance, or a high school linebacker’s big hit. But many of the user “highlights” have tangential (at most) relationships to sports. An older sibling encouraging a younger one to jump in the pool despite a fear of water; a guy on a motorcycle fist-bumping other drivers at stoplights; a baby dancing to Kendrick Lamar’s “Humble” with a caption that reads, “Realizing it’s the last weekend without NBA until June. ” Pairing user-generated content with professional highlights is a new phenomenon in sports media. In order to make sense of this practice — and reveal the parts of it that, I believe, warrant skepticism — we must remember that HOH is exclusively a social media product. It has no televised component (unlike, say, SportsCenter — the ESPN show and one of the few sports media Instagram pages with more followers than HOH), and is therefore catering only to the whims of the social media market. Understanding how it is doing that — how it blends the consumption of sports with the staging of social media — is crucial to fully understanding the product. And, as is the case with anything incredibly popular, understanding the product is essential.

In some ways, the influence of social media on HOH is quite obvious. HOH expands the word “highlight” to mean more than just professional athletic accomplishment: According to the app, everyday human experience produces highlights that deserve to be showcased on the same page as the most impressive

athletic feats. Hughes provides a useful example. According to HOH, the video he posted is worth sharing alongside clips from professional sports. Is that not the foundational principle at the heart of social media itself? Facebook users are convinced that their status updates, profile pictures, likes/dislikes, the very minutia of their lives are interesting enough to be published. A platform like HOH adds incentive to a practice already almost ubiquitous — obsessively documenting everything in order to digitally validate human experience.

I am generally screen-averse and believe any incentive to further filter our lives through phones is bad, but I carry this unease especially so with an app like HOH. Sports are beautiful because they embody unmediated human contact without the influence of screens in a world where that’s increasingly rare. This “screenlessness” is true of the athletes, of course, but also largely of the spectators: While concertgoers watch their favorite bands through their smartphones, fans rarely do so with their favorite teams. In this way, sports are rooted in a profound humanity — one that, I believe is worth preserving. The picture of sports on HOH, however, is viewed through and thus rooted in the ubiquitous smartphone. As such, the app encourages its followers to always keep the camera rolling in case they catch a highlight, whether it be at the game or in their living room, as Hughes did in the parking lot on Oct. 12.

But there’s something else about the Hughes video — namely, the way it marks a distinct pattern within the app’s user-generated content. Some of HOH’s non-highlight posts have nothing at all

INSIGHT to do with police in parking lots: many are dedicated to young parents conducting sports-themed gender reveals; many depict high school students buying their teachers expensive gifts; others portray little Asian kids being good at basketball.

But the most categorically popular, by far, are videos depicting friendly neighborhood interactions with police. Most of them feature cops joining pickup games with groups of young black kids. Videos of this kind were published on Aug. 25, Sept. 7, Sept. 12, Sept. 20, and Oct. 13 of this year. It’s a pattern that is both oddly specific and uniquely recurrent.

A link between sports and law enforcement is not necessarily surprising.

At an American professional sporting event, one is bombarded with patriotic subliminal messaging: military flyovers, flag unfurlings, emotional color guard ceremonies, enlistment campaigns and elaborate national anthem performances. The NFL, in fact, has received millions of dollars from the Department of Defense in exchange for just such practices. The recent controversy caused by professional athletes kneeling during the national anthem is inextricably tethered to this connection between

sports and reverence for the law.

HOH brings that messaging to the level of the individual. It operates within the same framework, but showcases friendly neighborhood cops instead of elaborate military flyovers. It takes patriotic reverence out of the sky and into one’s backyard, and this practice is dangerous. We have to think critically about what a platform like this encourages us to consider a positive good. As with everything on social media, the relationship with police in videos like the one Hughes submitted is distilled and simplified, presented as only the shiniest version of itself. Looking at HOH, one would never be able to tell that there was a fatal officer-involved shooting in Rocklin, California, in 2017 in which officers shot dead a 23-year-old named Lorenzo Cruz. One would never know that a year later and 20 miles down the road, Sacramento police would shoot Stephon Clark seven times, assuming that his cellphone was a pointed gun. HOH would never publish footage from the statewide movement sparked by the shootings.

It would be fair to point out that we shouldn’t expect outlets such as HOH to provide complex, nuanced treatments of political issues. I would agree. But

we should be careful about what is being treated as a “highlight,” as the most desirable version of something. HOH’s bio reads, “Everything you need to see in sports.” What we consume becomes what we envision; those who are given only what HOH provides will cultivate a narrow understanding of a positive interaction with police. Friendly pickup games with cops are not bad, but they are also not “everything you need to see.” It would be just as easy to post “highlights” from a community coming together in protest, or an officer genuinely familiar with the neighborhood he is trying to protect. These are, of course, omitted from the HOH feed.

I suppose all of this — the police videos, the ubiquitous smartphones, the evolution of the “highlight” itself — is about distilling human experience. That is what we’re being asked to do every day in the age of social media: to film, to post, to reduce. Constructive policing could never be evoked in a 10-second clip; sports, at their very essence, are governed by human contact that Instagram could never contain. HOH is one of many engines of reduction that we face on the internet.

Let’s remain skeptical of them all.

ALEX TARANTO

Yale Daily News Magazine | 21

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PHOTOS BY MARISA PERYER AND NICK TABIO

DISCOVERING YALE’S WEST CAMPUS Exploring the intersection between art and science

BY MARGARET SUN

O

n a cold Friday afternoon, I left Yale’s gothic stone and red bricks and made my way 7 miles southwest to a bustling research hub: West Campus. Barely resembling my conception of Yale’s architecture, the campus is an expansive space that features modern buildings and pastoral surroundings. Few students have made the trek to see it.

Located in West Haven, Yale’s West Campus has belonged to the University since 2007, when it purchased 136 acres

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of land and research space from Bayer Pharmaceuticals for $109 million. At the time, former University President Richard Levin crowned it “Yale’s Louisiana Purchase.”

West Campus has become not only one of Yale’s research centers alongside the School of Medicine and Science Hill but also a hub of arts and culture. Designed to promote “collaborative and interdisciplinary dialogue,” it consists of seven institutes: Energy Sciences, Systems

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Biology, Chemical Biology, Cancer Biology, Nanobiology, Preservation of Cultural Heritage and Microbial Sciences.

Among the undergraduates who regularly travel to West Campus, Jerry Zhou ’21 has conducted research in one of its labs since his first year at Yale. He described West Campus as his “break from classes.” As a nature lover, he appreciates the natural beauty of the campus where he can see the trees, walk the hiking trail or visit the Landscape Lab’s research garden.

Zhou previously worked in a lab in Kline Biology Tower, which he said felt “closed” because of its narrow architectural design.

“The only space where you actually interact with people in other labs is in the elevator,” he said. In comparison, West Campus is more open, with beautiful scenery and natural light streaming through the large windows, he said.

Jon Atherton, the communications officer for West Campus, believes this openness is what attracts people to the campus. Most of the faculty members working there are new recruits to the University, many of whom enjoy the immersive setting where they can easily meet colleagues from different backgrounds and work side by side with others in their field.

Though students and staff often brought up “collaboration” and “people” when describing West Campus to me, my first impression was radically different — the campus felt empty. All I could see were trees, buildings and a huge parking lot. I was told that lunch was the only time to see people on the street, when everyone leaves their buildings for the café, located in the conference center.

It wasn’t until I entered the Collections

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Studies Center that I realized the ghost town appearance was just a facade. The interior of the building was vibrant, displaying collections from the Yale University Art Gallery, the Yale Center for British Art and the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History. As I walked down the hallway, I couldn’t help but peek into the art conservation labs. It felt like I was entering a special hospital where items in the University’s collections went for treatment. There, the sciences merged with the arts to restore priceless paintings and artifacts.

Eric Litke, museum assistant for the American decorative arts collection, gave me a tour of the Leslie P. and George H. Hume American Furniture Study Center, which houses 1,300 artifacts, including American furniture, clocks, wooden objects and historical tools from the 17th century to the present. Since its opening in September, the center has offered public tours every Friday at 12:20 p.m.

Unlike a typical gallery space, the furniture study exhibits artifacts in an “open storage” configuration. Divided by categories, the furniture pieces are displayed in rows. The large space exhibits some 40-feet-wide architectural woodworks to be shown, the first time since their storage in the 1930s. There are also dozens of stations scattered over the study devoted to different craft aspects of pre-industrial furniture making. Before its relocation to West Campus, the furniture study had

24 | November 2019

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a 60-year history in the basement of 149 York St., a historical building in downtown New Haven across from Zaroka. The new site on West Campus is twice as large and has better climate control and lighting, Litke said.

Art history professor Edward Cooke takes his students to the Furniture Study Center once a week and has them complete “looking assignments,” in which students study the furniture in person and then present their experience to the class. “Spending 30-60 minutes with an object with the privacy of the furniture study is a fundamental experience,” Cooke said. He also doesn’t think of the move as

an obstacle to his classes. For him, teaching on West Campus “simply requires some rethinking of the structure or frequency of the class.”

In addition, Cooke notes that compared to upperclassmen, the students in his first-year seminar aren’t bothered by the weekly West Campus trip.

“There is a sense of adventure,” Cooke said.

After talking with Cooke, I couldn’t help but wonder — how many of us would be willing to make a weekly trip to West Campus or even a single visit?

I asked around. Several pre-med students said they wouldn’t mind the hour-long commute to conduct research

on West Campus’ cutting-edge equipment. Art history majors also expressed an interest in a first-hand experience with the collections on West Campus.

But most others expressed no interest in visiting West Campus. One student even called it “irrelevant.” The overall excuse was that no one had the time.

Perhaps, I will feel that same way in a year. Perhaps, the Chapel and Prospect bounded campus will come to make up my Yale world. But, for now, the sense of adventure is still there. And, maybe if we take the time to leave campus once in a while, venture out beyond the Yale bubble, we just might find a place worth returning to.

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COVER

After Life: Muslim Deathcare in New Haven Secular regulations hinder Muslim burial practices in Connecticut.

BY KO LYN CHEANG

W

hen a Muslim woman dies in New Haven or a nearby town, Sana Fatima Farooqi is informed by the local imam. She finds someone to take care of her sons for the hours that she will be gone. Then she messages one of her WhatsApp groups — “Gosl Sisters Group” or “Washing and Shrouding CT” — to find two to five women who will join her to wash the body of the deceased woman in the Muslim ritual of ghusl before the woman is shrouded and laid to rest.

When she arrives at the funeral home, Farooqi prepares warm water scented with camphor oil to wash the body.

Sometimes the home will have running water available in the preparation room. If not, she and the women helping her carry buckets of water for the washing. Out of respect for the modesty of the deceased woman, Farooqi covers her from neck to foot in a white cloth. Just as Muslim women cover themselves in life, they give the same respect to a Muslim sister in death.

The hardest part for Farooqi is washing the breasts and genitals without ever looking at them. The women always wash the right side of the body first, then the left. They repeat this process twice, more if necessary. They must not clip her nails. They must not cut her hair. The body is sacred, as is her resting soul.

Sometimes they must clean blood that trickles from the nose or from exposed wounds on the body. Farooqi takes care not to let any blood get on the white sheet that will shroud the woman in the grave. The cloth, called the kafan, must remain pristine.

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Once the washing is completed, Farooqi will dry the body and perfume it with camphor, sidr (jujube) leaves or scented oil so the woman smells as if she had just taken a bath. They dab the scented oil on the parts of the body that touch the ground when Muslims prostrate themselves before God. The forehead, the tip of the nose, the hands, the knees, the feet — these are the places where you are closest to God. Finally, the women take three seamless white cotton sheets and wrap the body, folding the right side of the cloth over the left. When Muslims bury the body the traditional way, in a shroud without a burial container, the fabric decomposes and the shroud, along with the body, returns to the earth.

— I met Farooqi at the mosque on George Street. She invited me to sit with her on the carpet. The material was scarlet and gold-patterned, vibrant against the black velvet skirt beneath her knees.

From the outside, a passerby would never guess that the unassuming two-story New England-style house with the white cladding, pitched roof and dormer windows is a mosque. But for the Muslim community in New Haven, finding a way to practice their faith within a secular context is not something new but a fact that they have long accepted. The daily call to prayer sounded quietly within the walls of the mosque; in this country, public broadcasts

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PHOTOS COURTESY OF SANA FAROOQUI

of the adhan are inconceivable.

I would soon learn that in death practices, too, Muslims in America have had to learn to adapt.

Small-boned and bespectacled, Farooqi’s soft-spoken voice belies the hefty responsibility she bears in the local Muslim community.

Farooqi manages a loose coalition of about 10 women who volunteer their time and, in some cases, money, to carry out ghusl for any Muslim women who pass away in New Haven.

“A lot of people are scared to do it because they think, ‘It’s a dead body,’” said Farooqi. “But I think, what if it were me? Who is going to do it for me? Everyone passes away, so you feel honored that you can help somebody in that state.”

For Muslims, washing the body prior to shrouding and burial is obligatory, according to hadith, which are the recorded words and actions of the Islamic prophet Muhammad. It is written in hadith that when the daughter of the Prophet Muhammad died, he gave instructions to women to wash her three times or more, with water and sidr and camphor. Muslims today continue to follow these instructions on how to wash the bodies of the deceased.

Farooqi rarely knows the families of the women whose bodies she washes. She has met families from Bosnia and Bangladesh, families who don’t speak English and families who have lived in Connecticut all their lives. Since 2012, she has washed the bodies of over 20 women.

The women who assist Farooqi are usually younger, since the washing involves lifting the body, requiring physical strength. Most are devout and pray five times a day. For many, their motivation is deeply religious. Farooqi and the women who volunteer their time to do ghusl never charge for what they do. Sometimes, appreciative family members will give them some money to replenish ghusl supplies. Every few months, Farooqi purchases towels, soap, camphor, cotton buds, Q-tips and other materials for ghusl, usually with her

own money. Recently, Farooqi has begun using burial kits provided free of charge by a nonprofit organization called Akhiri Tohfa based in Connecticut.

She is not alone in what she does.

In Windsor and Bridgeport, Orange and Weston, other Muslim sisters like Farooqi take the lead and organize similar teams to wash the bodies of women in their communities who pass away.

The women on these ghusl teams have a spiritual connection to these rituals and feel an obligation to perform ghusl. Based on Islamic teachings, if someone in the community fails to carry out this responsibility, there is a sin on the whole community.

The ghusl ritual is a cornerstone of Muslim deathcare practices.

“The washing of the body is integral,” said Omer Bajwa, director of Muslim life for the Chaplain’s Office at Yale, “Islam doesn’t have many requirements [for death rites] but the washing of the body is one really prominent requirement.”

According to Bajwa, Islam sees death as a departure from our mortal life where the body is fundamentally vulnerable to degeneration. “Islam is very realistic about the human body and human limitations,” he said.

In line with this thinking, the ideal Islamic burial is simple. Muslims prefer not to use a casket for burial and certainly not a burial vault, a concrete container that encases the casket and prevents the grave from sinking. In strict Islamic tradition, Muslims are laid to rest in a simple burial shroud in the soil.

Bajwa quotes a verse from the Quran to me: “From the earth We created you, and into it We will return you, and from it We will extract you another time.”

For this reason, embalming is also frowned upon in the religion.

By wrapping the body in nothing but three plain cotton sheets, the body can naturally decompose and return to the earth.

But in practice, very few Muslims are able to fulfill their vision of a simple Islamic burial. Many modern cemeteries have regula-

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COVER tions that require burial vaults. One such cemetery is Beaverdale Memorial Park, a modern nonsectarian cemetery in New Haven founded in 1929.

The manager, Dan Krueger, has a neat, white beard that trims his slim face. He has been working at the cemetery since he was 35 years old. He is soft-spoken and kind, almost as if he is anticipating what you are about to say. He says “yes” a lot.

At Beaverdale, it is a requirement that all caskets are encased in a burial vault. The reason is practical: Without the concrete vault to prevent the grave from sinking, the ground covering the burial site can drop several inches. It would be harder to maneuver trucks and equipment and excavators over the grounds.

Visitors could trip.

When Muslim or Orthodox Jewish families approach Krueger to help with the burial of their loved ones, Krueger has to explain that regulations require the burial vault for safety reasons. State regulations on burial tend to be permissive, according to Krueger — the body doesn’t have to be embalmed by state law and

28 | November 2019

burial vaults are not required.

However, cemeteries tend to set stricter policies. “We put in regulations so we can maintain the cemetery in the manner we think is fitting,” said Krueger. Being the final resting place of loved ones, a cemetery has to project an atmosphere of serenity and order befitting of the dead. Sunken graves, overgrown grass, and faded plastic flowers littering the grave sites are high on the list of things that Krueger tries to avoid.

Since he was the imam for Masjid Al-Islam from 1996 to 2001, Saifudeen Hasan has been responsible for managing funerals for the mosque and its members. He has noticed that in the past 10 years, cemeteries have started imposing more restrictions on burial procedures.

There is a cemetery in Enfield, Connecticut, where Muslims in New Haven have been buried for over 25 years. After years of burying Muslims the traditional way, without a casket or vault, the cemetery began imposing requirements on using a burial container.

Hasan explained that the cemetery was con-

cerned because of its proximity to residential housing and the risk that human remains could contaminate the water.

There’s nothing in the Quran that says the use of a burial container is strictly forbidden, but Muslim burials without a vault or casket are a matter of tradition.

“Sometimes, you have to conform to the state laws as long as it’s not completely against Islam,” said Hasan. “If it was, we would try to go to the state to make exceptions for religious reasons.”

However, given the high cost of funerals, the requirement on burial vaults only increases the financial hardship of a loved one dying.

Death is expensive in America. In 2017, the Bureau of Labor Statistics found that the price of funerals in the United States had risen almost twice as fast as consumer prices for all items since 1986. There are transportation fees to pay the funeral home, burial plots which can cost upward of $1,000 and burial caskets priced at $2,000 or more, among other costs.

COVER Muslims funerals are considered to be on the cheaper end of deathcare rites: Hasan estimates the average Muslim funeral would set a family back by about $5,000. In comparison, the average cost of a funeral with a burial and vault in 2017 was $8,755, according to National Funeral Directors Association statistics. Still, for many members of the mosque, he says, cost is an issue.

“Our community is more blue-collar taxi drivers and social workers, whereas a lot of other communities have doctors and lawyers and engineers,” Hasan said. According to 2017 data by the Pew Research Center, Muslim Americans report lower household incomes and are less likely to be middle class than the general population.

“Muslim families, especially Muslim American families, don’t always have the money to pay for it because they don’t have the insurance,” said Hasan. “So a lot of the time the cemetery will waive the fees or the masjid pays for the funeral.”

But the mosque does not always have the funds on hand to cover the funeral and burial costs of their members. When accounts are

“

When Muslims bury the body the traditional way, in a shroud without a burial container, the fabric decomposes and the shroud, along with the body, returns to the earth.”

running low, the mosque leaders will appeal to the congregation for donations to contribute to the funeral expenses of deceased members. If members don’t have the money, the mosque makes an appeal to other mosques in the area.

Between the Muslim communities in Orange, Hamden and New Haven, they have always managed to pull together the funds in the end, Hasan said. He cited the Muslim concept of “Sadaqah,” or voluntary charity, as the reason for the mosque to shoulder the financial burden for families that cannot afford it.

“Honestly, economically, people are struggling right now so the donations are not as great as they used to be in the past,” said Hasan.

Technically, the Connecticut Department of Social Services offers burial assistance of up to $1,400 for individuals with very limited means. But in practice, Hasan says the assistance has not been immediately useful as it takes days to process.

Since Muslims do not embalm the body, they prefer to bury the dead as quickly as possible, within 24 hours. If they delay until after state assistance is approved, the body will deteriorate.

Hasan recently buried a Muslim man whose family could not afford the funeral.

Although they applied for state assistance, it took too long and by that time, the mosque had already covered funeral expenses.

“We don’t get any support from the government,” said Hasan. “Everything is done individually by the mosque.”

— When Farooqi’s father passed away seven years ago, she inadvertently found herself becoming acquainted with the rituals and regulations of death — both Islamic and state-imposed.

Connecticut law generally prohibits people from bringing dead bodies into their homes, unless they have special permission.

But for Farooqi, part of Muslim tradition is that a body should never be left unattended.

Farooqi gained permission from the state to bring her father back home where she stood vigil over him through the night, saying prayers over his body. Outside, a state official was parked all night to ensure that the body was buried the following morning in line with state health and safety regulations.

At that time, the only Muslim cemetery in Connecticut was located in Enfield, almost 60 miles and an hour’s drive from New Haven. So to Enfield Farooqi went.

For a Muslim, it is ideal to be buried in a Muslim cemetery. Bajwa explained that the idea of community is deeply rooted in Islam.

Even after death Muslims see themselves — irrespective of race, nationality and ethnicity — as part of a global ummah, or global Muslim community.

“These are people who you will be resurrected with on the day of judgement,” Bajwa explained, “Muslims believe at the end of time, it was prophesied by the prophet that all souls will be resurrected from the graves.

These are brothers and sisters of faith, co-religionists, that you will be resurrected with before you go to meet god.”

For many years, Enfield was the only option in Connecticut for Muslims who wanted to stay together as a community after death.

That changed three years ago, when the Tariq Farid Foundation, a philanthropic organization that has funded U.S. soup kitchens and the rebuilding of schools in northern Syria, opened a second Muslim cemetery in Cheshire, just a half-hour drive from New Haven.

There is still no Muslim cemetery in New Haven, however. For the Elm City’s growing Muslim community, it may be quite some time before that becomes a reality.

— After her father passed away in 2012, Farooqi felt an urge to give back to her community and attended a workshop by Sister Matiniah Yahya to train women in washing and preparing bodies.

Farooqi didn’t know it then, but Yahya would become instrumental in mentoring Farooqi in the ghusl process. Eventually, Yahya passed the role of leading the women who do ghusl in New Haven to Farooqi.

Yahya has been involved in the ritual washing of bodies for most of her adult life. She was 21 when she first participated in a ghusl for a dead person. The imam at a mosque

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COVER

in Quincy, Massachusetts, had called to ask if she could help wash bodies — they were short one person. Her heart pounded as she entered the preparation room where she was to assist the ghusl team in the washing. She told herself, “Don’t faint, just stay

willing to shoulder the responsibility of ghusl. They have a list of women they know they can call when a Muslim sister dies. But Yahya admits it takes a special kind of person to do this task.

—

“

The air was thick with the piquant aroma of camphor and sweet aroma of oils for ghusl.”

30 | November 2019

there.” She said a prayer to calm herself.

The room was very hot. The air was thick with the piquant aroma of camphor and sweet aroma of oils for ghusl. But despite the heat and her nerves, she felt a sense of calm. The women were all quiet as they methodically worked. All attention was on the body.

“Everything became real to me at that point, all the questions about who is going to wash me? Am I going to be too fat for them to roll over? What is it going to be like? My family, are they going to be here? And the angels are going to come and question me?” said Yahya.

When she arrived in Connecticut after getting married, women were doing ghusl without formalized classes on the ritual. Motivated by her knowledge of Islamic theology, Yahya developed a detailed three-day workshop that explained the scriptural basis for ghusl, examined the ritual’s origins in the teachings of the Prophet Muhammad and taught participants how to wash and shroud dead bodies.

Back then, a large group of stay-at-home wives and mothers volunteered their time to do ghusl.

But it has since become harder to find women to help. In the past 15 years, Yahya has noticed more women going back to school or work, with less and less time to volunteer.

Yahya and Farooqi have begun to reach out to towns around New Haven to find other women

On the day I met Farooqi in the mosque on George Street, a crying toddler being consoled by his older sister — barely adolescent age herself — and an elderly woman in a hijab sat in the corner of the room. When Farooqi, the girl and the elderly woman lined up for the sunset prayer, they stood from youngest to oldest, a physical reminder of the inevitability of aging and mortality.

“I have seen so many people who have been dead that I [often] think about my own death and what am I going to leave behind,” said Farooqi later.

“It’s something I think all Muslims are supposed to think about.”

I thought of my visit to Beaverdale Memorial Park, the secular cemetery, less than two weeks before. I had stood with Dan Krueger before the yawning grave — 36 inches wide, 8 feet long and 5 and a half feet deep, standard-issue size. The sides and bottom of the grave were perfectly flat, like the bottom of a big chest. Below my feet were 32,000 graves, people buried between 1929 and 2019, men, women, large and small, all stacked side by side in this resting place for the dead.

Looking at the grave, I had found it easy to think of death and burial as a strictly mechanical process.

The excavator that digs the grave with its metal claws would belong just as much on a construction site or a scrapyard as in a cemetery.

But then I remembered what Bajwa told me.

“Death is a powerful, profound reminder on how you should live your life: You can live your life, be obsessed with your job, your career, accumulate power and prestige, but when you go to the grave … no wealth, power will go with you,” he said. “You were born into this world naked and you will go to the grave naked. And, at that moment, you will hear the fading footsteps of your loved ones. That is a moment of feeling profoundly alone.”

INSIGHT “Do you need a little darkness to get you going?”

– Mary Oliver, The Fourth Sign of the Zodiac

MIND ON THE BRAIN

Medical history on display: The ethics of appreciating the Cushing Center

BY NICOLE DIRKS

G

ive into that low, fizzing, queasy feeling, and it gets easier. Resist the urge to shield your eyes from the brains in labeled jars that are meticulously preserved and line the room from wall to wall. Let your mind wander and take a turn to the grotesque, and you might think these are brains from nothing less than a zombie cult. You glance at the portraits on the walls, all depicting the same man, and realize the cult’s leader is the real subject of this shrine; he is to blame for this discomfort. Your nausea sharpens. You may even throw up into the drawer you open containing the bones of a 5-month-old fetus. However, your confusion about how to feel has faded; you have chosen a stance over the in-between. Now, you can conclude: this headquarters for a horror story is as foreign to beauty as you are to the universe contained in this room.

Quiet confrontation is the mechanism of the Cushing Center, located in the base-

Yale Daily News Magazine | 31 PHOTOS BY XANDER DEVRIES

INSIGHT

“

ment of the Medical Library at Yale University. The museum is named after Harvey Cushing, the pioneering neurosurgeon who treated the patients whose remains are on display. Just one jarred brain would have been sufficient to provoke me on my visit, but here there are 550 jars of whole brains, scalloped brains and lone spheres of tumors.

Most lie on a spectrum between charred and pristine. Others are frayed like hamster cage bedding. They are all nestled side-by-side on shelves that wrap around the ceiling’s perimeter. There’s J. Wilcox, R. Macmellon, F. Delano, H. Dodds, T. Condon; medulloblastoma, carcinoma, craniopharyngioma, meningioma, multiple glioblastoma. I feel ambushed, but the brains themselves are indifferent or unaware.

They simply sit, modestly sunken in their amber, formalin brine. Detached from responsibility for their imposing presence, the jars glow over spotlights and in my face. They have accepted the permanence of their –omas, their enigmatic tumors, and I think: Should I be acquiescent too?

My first inclination was yes. Because the museum implores us to admire, I felt I should not only accept the museum, but also applaud it.

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Without this underhanded moral violation for the sake of science, this testimonial of human suffering would not exist.

The space isn’t sterile: Soft, cherry wood walls, shelves and tables have replaced the stale white drywall and linoleum of hospitals where the brains were once kept alive. Typewritten names label jars and exude intimacy despite the facelessness of the remains they contain.

Cushing’s intricate and impressive anatomical drawings, mostly found in drawers, include facial details, like one patient’s wooly moustache. Even more surprising are the efforts to make the space child-friendly.

In one corner, an enlarged drawing of several jars made by middle school students sits on display in between staged photographs of patients in hospital gowns.

Written on the jars is a thank you message and the note “I HAVE A BRAIN, TOO!” Near the entrance, activity sheets, including a word search and scavenger hunt, are laid next to the guest book. The comments left in the scribbles include: “BRAINS!” zombie sketches (confirming I am not alone in my interpretation), “death” and “I LOVE brains.” For kids, there are even assembly instructions for a brain hemisphere hat, inviting them to pretend their own brains lie outside their heads by folding paper that maps their anatomy.

I turn to a frame with six photographs, one of which is a black-and-white portrait of a patient with a disturbing malformation. His scalp suctions inward, and the maze of folds in his cortex are hugged by the skin on top of his head. It’s as if his skull has disappeared. His brain hemisphere hat is no origami. It’s the real deal. Dark hair buds sparsely in the grooves, creating the illusion of a shadow. He is frowning more with his crown than he ever could with his face. Neither his name nor his condition is listed anywhere, rendering the photo more of an art piece than evidence.

Neighboring this portrait are photos of his skeleton, dismembered skull, vertebrae and clavicle juxtaposed with normal-sized bones. Across from this frame lies a glass case containing a whole skeleton, nearly seven feet tall and strikingly similar to the man from the portrait. He hangs daintily from a rod drilled into his skull, impaled by his disease.

The Cushing Center is far from being a natural history museum.

The place is far too infused with affection. Artwork from Cushing’s personal collection, like a print with 12 different drawings of lips, is draped across the exhibit and obstructs any comparison between this space and, say, the Peabody Museum. However, the material displayed in the Cushing Center is too punishing and funereal for an art museum. It would be wrong to appreciate Harvey Cushing’s specimens as samples of his creative expression.

According to a 600-page biography in the middle of the museum — and every Cushing biography — Harvey Cushing is the father of neurosurgery. He identified countless tumors, instituted neurosurgery as its own discipline, spearheaded surgical techniques, maintained and steadily reduced low surgical mortality rates, and vastly expanded our understanding of the pituitary gland and its disorders.

INSIGHT

He insisted on preserving tumors and other specimens for future study because of his characteristic obsession with documentation. Oh, and he won a Pulitzer Prize for his biography of Sir William Osler, a fellow father in medicine. Noteworthy, preeminent, respected — he is all these words.

Yet, I think I hate him. In the rotunda two floors above the museum, a gold inscription describes Cushing as an “Inspiring Teacher Pathfinder in Neurosurgery Master of the Science and Art of Healing.” Turning 360 degrees to read the whole dedication, I nearly laugh out loud. Could someone who incises and bottles the stuff of our minds for a living be so inspiring? On my descent into the museum, I encounter a blown-up image of Cushing posing with intent, one knee slightly in front of the other. His eyes scathe, his forehead extends and his nose is downturned. He stares down his patient, who, unlike Cushing, looks at me. The man is shirtless, docile, and lost. Then, upon entry to the museum, Cushing refuses to make eye contact yet again. In the first photo that greets me, he stands alone, his gown only half on, nonchalant and staring into the distance.

If he is a god, he knows it.

Cushing’s air of scientific egotism is not exactly remedied by surrounding portraits: a woman tries to cover herself with a slipping bedsheet, her eyes both undirected and always on me; a toddler with a crumpled head, held between the hands of a distant, headless nurse; a girl, smiley and woozy, hand over her heart, who is almost more heartbreaking to me because she seems oblivious to her illness and her destiny in a jar.

Harvey Cushing was no god, nor was he a sadist, but his contributions are lauded

by this space in a way that compels me to reciprocate with an equally naïve but opposite response: rebellion. What I skeptically intuited and what the museum does not explicitly detail is the means through which Cushing obtained his collection. Indeed, it takes both cunning and ludicrousy for someone to commit to creating such a registry. According to Michael Bliss’s biography of Cushing, he often bypassed patient consent for operation and autopsy and bribed patients’ families or undertakers.

Without this underhanded moral violation for the sake of science, this testament to human suffering would not exist.

“

The Cushing Center unabashedly presents a corner of medical history in its rawest — and most uncomfortable — form. It represents both the quintessence of human intelligence and an ugly reminder that our minds are just brains.

I am not a medical student well-versed in how to stomach such a flesh overload and therefore found myself drifting between admiration and disgust; however, someone who, say, frequents the medical library is likely more comfortable with the biological bluntness of the museum. For these students the brain collection has a reasonable allure. Before they were in the Cushing Center, the brains, located in the basement of the Harkness Hall dormitory, were the end-goal of medical students’ breaking-and-entering quests through

dusty crawlspaces. And now, the majority of comments in the Cushing Center guest book are written by recent medical school graduates and those aspiring to or practicing in neuroscience.

More than I am angered by the involuntary collection and display of these brains, I am unraveled by the involuntary affliction of these patients by their radical diseases. It is just much simpler to be angry at Cushing. This confrontation that visitors must face is the museum’s strength. Ten feet below a reading room where students abstract knowledge on human anatomy, the Cushing Center unabashedly presents a corner of medical history in its rawest — and most uncomfortable — form. It represents both the quintessence of human intelligence and an ugly reminder that our minds are just brains.

In my senior year of high school, during a special wellness-themed week, my eccentric but well-intentioned biology teacher had the bright idea of making a sculpture to display near the school entrance. Her medium: goat brains. She elevated three of the mouse-shaped, gummy organs onto a base of brown Play-Doh. She pierced them with toothpicks, joined by a paper banner inscribed in marker with a wellness mantra. Somehow, the sculpture stayed — and decayed — on display for weeks. Whenever I walked by, a smell damp and offensive hijacked the air, a combination, I imagine, like marijuana and sulfur dioxide. Yet I cannot remember the mantra because I was so preoccupied by my teacher’s unpalatable creation. But now I wonder: even if we cannot see the sculpture’s beauty, doesn’t our repugnance make it an art in itself?

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VISUAL

BY MEERA ROTHMAN

34 | November 2019

VISUAL

Yale Daily News Magazine | 35

Discovering Yale’s West Campus by Margaret Sun page 22