HWS Pulteney Street Survey - Summer 2022

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HOBART AND WILLIAM SMITH COLLEGES

THE PULTENEY STREET SURVEY

Meditations for a Bicentennial Fidelity Chairman and CEO

ABBY JOHNSON ’84

and 10 alums who are thinking about the future

SPECIAL BICENTENNIAL ISSUE

Raise the Orange and Purple High President Murray Bartlett hoisting the Hobart College Centennial flag in 1922.

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CONTENTS

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02 Upfront: Life and Light 8 Primary Sources 10 Remember the Past, Imagine the Future 18 The Waiting Game

C O M M U N I T Y

22 We the People

63 A Culinary Celebration

28 Hip Hobart, Then/Now/Forever

66 Gifts that Keep on Giving

46 Thinking about the Future

67 Life-Changing Service

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N O T E S

70 Dispatches from Alums 116 The Last Word

Volume XLVII, Number 1 / THE PULTENEY STREET SURVEY is published by the Office of Marketing and Communications, Hobart and William Smith Colleges, 300 Pulteney Street, Geneva, New York 14456–3397, (315) 781–3700. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to The Pulteney Street Survey, c/o Advancement Services, Hobart and William Smith Colleges, 300 Pulteney St., Geneva, New York 14456–3397.

Hobart and William Smith Colleges are committed to providing a non-discriminatory and harassment-free educational, living, and working environment for all members of the HWS community, including students, faculty, staff, volunteers, and visitors. HWS prohibits discrimination and harassment in their programs and activities on the basis of age, color, disability, domestic violence, victim status, gender, gender expression, gender identity, genetic information, national origin, race, creed, religion, sex, sexual orientation, marital status, veteran status, or any other status protected under the law. Discrimination on the basis of sex includes sexual harassment, sexual violence, sexual assault, other forms of sexual misconduct including stalking and intimate partner violence, and gender-based harassment that does not involve conduct of a sexual nature.

EDITOR, VICE PRESIDENT FOR MARKETING AND COMMUNICATIONS Catherine Williams / SENIOR MANAGING EDITOR Andrew Wickenden ’09 / DESIGNER Lilly Pereira / aldeia.design / CONTRIBUTING WRITERS/EDITORS Ken DeBolt, the Rt. Rev. R. William Franklin, Mackenzie Larsen ’12, Janice Leary, Mary LeClair, Doug Lippincott, Colin Spencer ’19, Natalia St. Lawrence ’16, Mary Warner ’21, Andrew Wickenden ’09 and Catherine Williams / CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS J. Scott Applewhite-Pool/Getty Images, M. Scott Brauer/Redux, Kevin Colton, Anthony Cruz, Adam Farid ’20, Lindsay France/Cornell University, Ben Jenkins, Fred W. McDarrah/MUUS Collection via Getty Images, Jonathan Michaeli, T. Prutisto, Reuters/Brian Snyder, Justin Sullivan/Getty Images / Additional images courtesy of Colgate University, Hobart and William Smith Colleges Archives, National Museum of the American Indian Archives Center, Smithsonian Institution and the New York Historical Society / PORTRAIT ILLUSTRATOR Kathryn Rathke / PRESIDENT Joyce P. Jacobsen / THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES CHAIR Craig R. Stine ’81, P’17 / VICE CHAIR OF THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES Cassandra Naylor Brooks ’89 / VICE PRESIDENT FOR ADVANCEMENT Robert B. O’Connor P’22, P’23 / William Smith Alumnae Association Officers: Kirra Henick-Kling Guard ’08, MAT ’09, President; Katharine Strouse Canada ’98, Vice President; Julie Bazan ’93, Immediate Past President; Carla DeLucia ’05, Historian / Hobart Alumni Association Officers: The Hon. Ludwig P. Gaines ’88, President; Paul Wasmund ’07, Vice President; Dr. Richard S. Solomon ’75, P’10, Immediate Past President; Andrew Donovan ’12, Historian. / For questions and comments about the magazine or to submit a story idea, please e-mail Andrew Wickenden ’09 at wickenden@hws.edu.

The pages of this publication were printed using 100% recycled paper which enables the environmental savings equivalent to the following: • 244 trees preserved for the future • 18,227 gal. US of water saved • 35,342 lbs. CO2 saved from being emitted • 403 MMBTU of energy not consumed * * These calculations were derived from the RollandEco-calculator.

ON THE COVER: Abby Johnson ’84, Chairman and CEO of Fidelity Investments. Photo by M. Scott Brauer/Redux.

U P F R O N T

Life and Light

“Through all these changes, our goal remains, as it has always been, to prepare graduates to engage with the world in all its complexities, mysteries and joys. Our alums meet the future head-on and, like the Colleges themselves, adapt, persevere and flourish.”

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Anniversaries bring the past and the future into focus, allowing us to glimpse both at the same time. This special Bicentennial issue of the magazine looks back to Bishop John Henry Hobart and the vision that animated his desire to establish a college on the shores of Seneca Lake. On the heels of the largest fundraising year in HWS history, this issue also looks ahead — to new academic developments, the outlook for our third century, and the future we are all working to build. Starting on page 46, we asked some of our alums who are leaders in a variety of fields — like Abby Johnson ’84, Jamey Mulligan ’07, Peter Luchetti ’77 and Kanchana Ruwanpura ’93 — to share how they think about the future. Their meditations are imaginative and thought-provoking, and underline again the extraordinary contributions of our graduates who are working with ingenuity and perseverance to create a better world.

From my position in this anniversary moment, it’s clear that those terms — ingenuity and perseverance — have been the watchwords of our 200-year history. From the Civil War to the Vietnam era, the 1918 pandemic to COVID-19 — whatever the challenge, the Colleges have adapted and thrived. Our institutional identity has evolved at critical points in our history, such as with the founding of William Smith, and our curriculum has been revised, even overhauled, to equip students with a timely and timeless education, no matter the era. Through all these changes, our goal remains, as it has always been, to prepare graduates to engage with the world in all its complexities, mysteries and joys. Our alums meet the future head-on and, like the Colleges themselves, adapt, persevere and flourish.

At the center of Hobart College’s seal is the school motto, disce, the Latin word for “learn.” On a scroll below the motto, the seal also includes the phrase vita lux hominum, Latin for “life is the light of humankind.” Together, these phrases evoke the historical emphasis of a Hobart and William Smith education, and they orient our mission for the future: the imperative to learn not simply to start a career but to illuminate an entire life — and not just one’s own life but the life of humanity. We can’t predict the future, but with a Hobart and William Smith education lighting the way, we can certainly be prepared for it.

Finally, as we were going to press with this issue of the magazine, we learned that James F. Caird ’56, L.H.D ’12 passed away. Although we will do a full remembrance in the next issue of the magazine, I cannot let this moment pass without recognizing Jim and his wife Cynthia L. Caird L.H.D. ’12. From scholarships to athletics facilities to student housing, the Colleges have made significant leaps forward thanks to their vision, generosity and lifelong affection for Hobart and William Smith. In Jim’s exemplary career as an entrepreneur and in his commitment to perpetuating meaningful, well-rounded educational experiences at Hobart and William Smith, he set a high bar. Jim was a Statesman through and through, and he will be missed.

Hip Hobart, forever!

J OYCE P. JACOBSEN President

ILLUSTRATION BY KATHRYN RATHKE

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A spring sunrise greets campus. Early one morning in 1820, John Henry Hobart, the third Episcopal Bishop of New York, stood overlooking Seneca Lake and, striking his cane on the ground, announced that he had found the site for the college that would one day bear his name. >>

PHOTO BY ADAM FARID ’20

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E pluribus unum The Bicentennial celebration kicked off this winter at Trinity Church in Manhattan, where Bishop Hobart once served as rector. After a singing of the alma mater by Trustee Garrett Mathieson ’74, the audience heard reflections on the Colleges’ history and future from President Jacobsen and Board Chair Craig R. Stine ’81, P’17, who recalled the story of Hobart’s founding and his own memories of arriving in Geneva. There, on the edge of Seneca Lake, Stine remembered finding “a community that would become the center of everything,” a place “to imagine the world as it could be, and to understand that the better world would be one that is built together.”

The evening culminated with an address from the Most Rev. Michael B. Curry ’75, D.D. ’20, the Presiding Bishop and Primate of the Episcopal Church. Curry, who is the honorary chair of the Bicentennial Committee, recalled the undergraduate history course in which he learned the origin of the Latin phrase etched on the Great Seal of the United States: e pluribus unum. With one of his old college textbooks perched on the podium, he ruminated on the national motto and its harmony with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s vision of a “beloved community,” with its promise of healing, restoration, justice and equity.

“A motto is the aspiration,” Curry said. “It is the statement of who you long and pray and hope and labor to be. It is a claiming of your identity that can strengthen you for the present and clarify for the future. From many diverse peoples, one people, one nation, with liberty and justice, not for some but for all…. Cicero used the phrase [to describe]…how the Roman family or household unit is constituted.

And he said this: ‘When each person loves the other as much as he loves himself, it makes one out of many possible.’ E pluribus unum.

Love for others besides yourself makes e pluribus unum possible. Love for others besides just the self makes the United States of America possible. Love for others besides just the self will show us the way to take our jangling discords and create a beautiful symphony of love and compassion and justice and goodness and kindness.… And the day will break through, and the midnights of our greatest despairs will be the beginnings of the dawns of new days. I learned that at Hobart and William Smith Colleges.”

PHOTO BY KEVIN COLTON

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Celebrating Hobart’s 200th IN PERSON, ONLINE, EVERY DAY, ALL YEAR. Festivities began this winter and continue throughout 2022, with tributes to Hobart history, virtual forums, events on and off-campus, and of course the October gala celebration.

▶ The Bicentennial Gallery opened in the Warren Hunting Smith Library in February. On display are iconic artifacts dating back to the College’s founding, including the charter.

Commencement During the Bicentennial year Commencement ceremonies, three distinguished members of the HWS community were recognized with honorary degrees for their demonstrated excellence in their respective fields and their embodiment of the Colleges’ commitment to natural and social sciences, athletics and the arts. In addition, the President of Ukraine was recognized with an honorary degree in absentia.

Dr. Christopher Beyrer ’81, Sc.D. ’22, who delivered the 2022 Commencement address, is an epidemiologist who has worked on the frontlines of HIV/AIDS and COVID-19. Recently named the director of the Duke University Global Health Institute, Beyrer is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Medicine and a past president of the International AIDS Society. He previously served as the inaugural Desmond M. Tutu Professor in Public Health and Human Rights at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. He was the founding director of the Bloomberg School’s Center for Public Health and Human Rights and served as associate director of the university’s Center for Global Health and Center for AIDS Research.

Eric Andersen ’65, L.H.D. ’22 is an award-winning singer, songwriter and musician whose work has been recorded and performed by Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, The Grateful Dead and Linda Ronstadt among

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many others. Andersen was enrolled in pre-medical studies at Hobart before leaving school in 1963. In his musical career since, he has recorded dozens of albums and performed and toured internationally with other renowned artists. Called an “American master” by New York Times’ music critic Robert Palmer, Andersen is currently writing his memoir and an episodic novel called Bastardo.

Aliceann Wilber P’12, L.H.D. ’22 has been the only head coach during William Smith soccer’s 40-plus years as a varsity sport. She led the Herons to two national championships and a Division III-record 30 NCAA tournament appearances. In 2021, she became the second coach — and first woman — in NCAA soccer ever to hit the 600-win milestone.

She is the recipient of the 2021 United Soccer Coaches’ Women’s Soccer Award of Excellence and was inducted to the organization’s Hall of Fame in 2018. She is the first woman to receive the United

Soccer Coaches’ prestigious Bill Jeffrey Award for her service to the collegiate game.

Volodymyr Zelenskyy L.H.D. ’22 was elected President of Ukraine in 2019 and has led the country against the unprovoked invasion

by Russia. Before his election, he was a comedian best known for his television role as an ordinary schoolteacher accidentally catapulted into political power.

President Jacobsen said earlier this year, “In awarding this degree to President Zelenskyy, Hobart and William Smith honor not only his courage but also the bravery of all Ukrainians, including those under attack in their country or recently exiled, and who call Upstate New York home.”

PHOTO OF ZELENSKYY BY J. SCOTT APPLEWHITE-POOL/GETTY IMAGES

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“One of the values I find in the liberal arts…is that it makes us ask a question, or provides us with tools to answer the question: why are we here?”

Dean Clarence Butler L.H.D. ’06 During “Hobart College Deans of Yore: A Panel Discussion” in April, Butler joined five other Deans of Hobart College — Eugen Baer P’95, P’97, Scott Brophy ’78, P’12, Richard Guarasci, Khuram Hussain and Charles Love ’62 — in honor of the Bicentennial. The full discussion is available online.

STILL TO COME

FROM THE ARCHIVES For many years, Hobart College’s permanent charter sat dormant in a box atop a storage rack in the library archives — until Archivist and Special Collections Librarian Tricia McEldowney and Archives Technician Brandon Moblo uncovered it in 2019. The parchment was hard to read, but between the date and the embossed seal from the Board of Regents, it was quickly apparent that they had uncovered the official certificate that granted Geneva Academy status as a college.

While the document was well-secured in an environmentally controlled space, it was not cataloged. On the cusp of the Bicentennial, the surprise discovery offered a chance “to reflect on that time in history when the hope for a college in Geneva first became a reality,” McEldowney says. “It connects us to our past in a physical way.” Due to COVIDrelated delays, the charter’s restoration took nearly two years, but it returned to campus in 2021 following a thorough cleaning and a humidification process that made it flatter and more legible. It is now housed in a 28” x 31” preservation package on display in the library’s Bicentennial Gallery — and yes, it’s cataloged.

Bishop John Henry Hobart Day Lecture and Symposium

On Sept. 12, explore the life and legacy of John Henry Hobart with the Rt. Rev. R. William Franklin, a church historian and Assisting Bishop of Long Island, and the Rev. Canon Kelly Brown Douglas, Dean of the Episcopal Divinity School at Union Theological Seminary.

Two Cities Reunion SEPT. 29 – OCT. 2

Homecoming and Family Weekend SEPT. 30 – OCT. 2

Bicentennial Gala SATURDAY, OCT. 22

MORE

For a timeline of the College, Hobart lore and the extended schedule of Bicentennial events, visit www2.hws.edu/hobart-bicentennial.

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Primary Sources A history course digs into the Colleges’ past.

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Professor of History Clifton Hood admits that titling a course “History of HWS Colleges” was “bait” — a hook to draw students into a course structured around archival research and writing — but it worked. The class filled quickly, mostly with seniors in their final semester who were “intrigued by learning the history of the place literally under their feet, in part, I think, as a way of ending their time as students,” says Hood, the George E. Paulsen ’49 Professor of American History and Government.

The course lived up to its research-intensive billing as students waded into the HWS archives in search of the narratives, told and untold, that have shaped the Colleges. Guided by Archivist Tricia McEldowney and Archives Technician Brandon Moblo, students pored over precious documents and artifacts. Relying on diary and yearbook entries by early William Smith students, Quin Kenny ’22 examined courtship in the early 20th century and “the pressures women felt to marry” — a project inspired by her grandfather’s memories of his years on campus. Kenny, whose father is also a Hobart grad, says the “deep dive” into HWS history, and “what the Colleges were like when my family attended,” proved to be “enlightening and a great way to connect to them.”

Molly O’Toole ’23 notes that the reading list helped “situate our research into a larger context,” supplementing archival materials “with historical studies about higher ed and other institutions.” The workshop-style classroom critiques — and “the leeway to have fun and explore” — was especially rewarding as she drafted her essay, examining the impacts of first wave feminism on the founding of William Smith and the coordinate system.

Other projects looked back at student protests in the ’60s and ’70s, town-gown tensions, the waxing and waning of the Episcopal Church’s presence on campus, the Air Force ROTC, the impact of World War II, the emergence of women’s athletics, the evolution of the Dance Department and the role of campus spaces in shaping social cohesion. The wide range of topics spurred “in-depth conversations about HWS and how we would like to see it change for the better,” Kenny says. “By reflecting on the past, we can see how much HWS has grown as an institution…and how much potential it has to grow even more.”

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▲ Hitting the books in Demarest Library, ca. 1960.

FURTHER READING Want to explore the Colleges’ past? Page through old yearbooks, review historical correspondence and read the histories of Hobart and William Smith at library.hws.edu/ digital_collections.

CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS Interested in telling your part in the story of HWS? Submit oral histories at www2.hws.edu/ hobart-bicentennial/oral-histories.

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CAM P US P LA N

Alternate History

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In a parallel universe, campus might look something like this scale drawing from architect Hobart Upjohn. Created ca. 1930–31, Upjohn’s plans would have reoriented the Quad and added a number of buildings, none of which was ever realized. Proposed and existing buildings are marked. The legend is reproduced below for the reader’s ease.

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1. Theater 2. President’s House

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3. Memorial Bldg.

4. Administration and

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Class Room 5. Science 6. Library 7. Trinity (Dormitory) 8. New Dormitory and

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10. Geneva (Dormitory) 11. Student Club

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12. Rectory

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13. Chapel 14. Medbery (Dormitory) 15. Power House and 14

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Utilities…Storage

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16. Gymnasium 17. Field House and Locker Bldg.

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Remember the Past, Imagine the Future Taking inspiration from the words inscribed above the entrance to the Warren Hunting Smith Library, HWS leaders reflect on the past two centuries, the state of the Colleges today and what the next 200 years have in store.

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When we developed and approved our current strategic plan in the spring of 2020, we focused on three broad areas: increasing academic effectiveness, building financial and operational excellence, and enhancing the Colleges’ reputation. We continue to work toward multiple goals in all those areas. I have been so impressed with how the HWS community has rallied to support our ambitions even through the challenges of the pandemic. We have seen major curricular innovations spearheaded by faculty and staff, There’s a reason we’ve increased our fundraising substantially over the past three years, significantly been at it 200 years. increased the number of applications Students apply to many other competitive from prospective students this institutions, but when they come to HWS admissions season, implemented and spend time with the people here, they numerous behind-the-scenes realize that they made the right decision. innovations in how we conduct HWS wasn’t my first choice, but I obviously our business, and completed a made the right decision (even though it’s significant project of rebranding cold in the winter). Over 200 years, we’ve and updating our website, print accomplished a lot, adapting to what the and social media strategy. I like to world requires without letting go of the refer to the Colleges as ‘spunky’ and ‘scrappy,’ as they have always persisted past and what got us here today, and we through difficult times, but they also can do it for another 200. The work Nuzhat need more underpinnings of support Wahid ‘22 and I have done with the Board for their journey. We must continue on belonging, diversity and equity, which is developing relevant academic options probably our most critical contribution as for the 21st century, along with building Student Trustees, highlights that trajectory on a strong infrastructure of financial and of growth and progress. As we move into technological support for our students, our next 200 years, we see both how rich faculty and staff. With that support, the our past is and how promising our future is.

Colleges will have the ability to become even more innovative going forward.

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Recent years have witnessed an historic reckoning with institutional injustices, as concurrent movements for racial and gender justice have reshaped our world. HWS arrives at this moment, in its Bicentennial year, with a distinct opportunity to acknowledge our past and envision a diverse and inclusive future.

To participate fully in the world, students need Our community and our partners in Geneva unique perspectives that connect different are working to heal our collective wounds disciplines and ideas. They need to be able to and affirm a community that represents a communicate with a broad range of people wealth of diverse identities, cultures and and to embrace difference. If a successful backgrounds. So instead of simply telling dedicated and conscientious people about education depends on being able to grow and the virtues of inclusion, we can focus this develop with an open mind, I think the same is moment on building DEI into our true of the curriculum. The flexibility to grow institutional DNA so that we and innovate allows us to hold on to what are all thriving together.

We have made a promise we do best but also look to the future and to ourselves, articulated think differently moving forward. We have an in the Strategic Diversity amazing faculty; they’re outstanding scholars Plan, to build for belonging. who bring their scholarship to the classroom Upholding that promise requires all corners of our in a highly intentional way, helping students to community to practically grapple with big topics and to do so critically. advance inclusion. From teaching We have incredible academic centers that that supports diverse learners from diverse help students put knowledge into action. We backgrounds, to inclusive hiring practices have living laboratories all over the region — and courageous dialogues across difference, we can all reckon with this moment through in Geneva and the surrounding communities, our everyday choices. We can ask, ‘Who in the environment of the Finger Lakes and in feels they belong in my spaces and who does the deep historic roots of the women’s rights not?’ Addressing these questions moves us and abolitionist movements. These strengths, beyond good intentions to a place where we can sincerely embody our values. I can’t think and a curriculum that serves all students of a better way to begin our next 200 years. regardless of background, will

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help them capitalize on the interconnectivity of what they’re learning.

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Thanks to our proud, innovative liberal arts heritage, we’re among a select group of institutions to reach 200 years, and it’s the intention of the Board to continue that progress. The ingredients for success in the next 10 to 25 years are academic offerings that are attractive to a wide swath of young people, coupled with an endowment that will enable us to continue to provide strong financial aid and key programmatic support. That combination will ultimately fortify HWS for the next era of higher education. We recently launched the Master of Science in Management program and the aquatic science minor; we have a minor in data analytics that will be ready in the next academic year and other programs are in development — all to take advantage of the academic offerings that have been our historical strengths and connect them with what today’s students need. Enhancing and extending our academics, our endowment and our commitment to diversity and belonging will help us attract more students and cement a path forward for the Colleges’ next 200 years.

The world was different 200 years ago, and the Colleges have done a good job of changing with it.

We’ve become more inclusive, and we continuously work toward our goals and aspirations, encouraging students to achieve success, whatever that might be for them, whatever year we’re in. One thing I’ve loved at HWS is how many different people I got to meet and interact with, which in part is a testament to the Colleges’ ability to broaden your horizons through connections to a diverse community and access to incredible opportunities. Gib Shea C H A I R O F T H E B O A R D O F T R U S T E E S C R A I G S T I N E ’ 8 1 , P ’ 1 7 ’22 and I were members of the Board’s first Belonging, Diversity and Equity committee, which is one of the things we’ve done that will have a lasting impact at HWS. Imagining the future, I’m really excited for what our post-pandemic community will look like. The pandemic has shifted our ability to go places; people are eager to get back out there with our faculty and staff, so I’m especially excited to see how our study abroad program will grow, how our communities will continue to progress, and how we will continue challenging and supporting the next generation of scholars and change-makers — because we’re pretty amazing at that already.

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Although much has changed since I arrived at the Colleges in 2003, and certainly over the past 200 years, the one constant throughout our history is the power of transformation, on both an individual and institutional level. Change is constant here, and the dean’s office has evolved along with the rest of the institution and with society. This ability to transform and to grow is the primary reason why we have reached this impressive milestone. There is also a sense of continual self-reflection at HWS: we are always looking at our history, at where we are now and who we hope to become. Our history and heritage are important to our identity as are the ways in which each generation of students has fundamentally shifted our understanding of gender, of development and of the uniqueness of each student’s story. Our core values of inclusion, mentorship, community and leadership remain the hallmarks of our office, as they have for so many students and alums.

This place is bustling. Our student organizations and clubs lead the social fabric of the institution — from club sports and intramurals to clubs focusing on cultural heritage and advocacy, and social networks that help students feel connected to one another. I know that will only continue to grow. With an expanded Intercultural Affairs Center, evolving living/learning communities that provide hybrid lounges and classrooms in residence halls, and a theme house program that lets students program and live with students who share common interests, I hope HWS D E A N O F W I L L I A M S M I T H C O L L E G E L I S A K A E N Z I G P ’ 2 2 students stay empowered to have their voices heard and How do we celebrate our founding 200 years ago? We can’t take create activities for each other. the past entirely on its own terms, uninformed by the present; As Campus Life continues to yet it’s not fair to judge the past entirely by today’s standards. change to meet their needs, in addition to supporting One leads to an uncritical moral relativism, the other to cancel student-to-student connection culture. We resolve that dilemma by engaging with the past as programs, we also will provide part of celebrating it. In studying the people and events that additional mental health have made us, we find stories that deserve to be told with more support, added transitionrelated programs that help nuance and accuracy, such as the role of Bishop Hobart and our students get a head start the Episcopal Church in relocating the Oneida. Or the Rev. Dr. in becoming a part of our Alger Adams ’32, D.D ’83, who became the first African American community, and make sure our graduate 90 years ago; he was a member of Phi students are able to articulate the skills they develop as a Beta Kappa, learned ancient Greek and the result of their co-curricular classics, became an accomplished painter involvement as they leave the and novelist as well as a clergyman, but Colleges and take the first step couldn’t eat with or room with his classmates into their future careers.

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because of the color of his skin. Adams — and generations of alums in all walks of life, rich in the life of the mind — reminds us of the values associated with a liberal arts education that are worth celebrating after 200 years. Investigating these stories in both direct and nuanced ways will help us preserve those values for the next two centuries.

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New Streams of Thought Introducing an innovative graduate program and three new academic minors, all with exciting possibilities for classroom learning, student research and future careers.

MASTER OF ARTS IN HIGHER EDUCATION LEADERSHIP

“Much of leadership in higher education is creative problem-solving,” says Associate Provost for Curricular Initiatives and Development and Professor of Education Jamie MaKinster.

“But in order to address problems effectively, one needs to have a strong understanding of the context, the people involved, and the resources at hand.”

Enter the new Master of Arts in Higher Education Leadership program. With an emphasis on social justice, systemic change and student development, the two-year master’s prepares graduates to challenge the current state of higher education and lead the change needed to support the next generation of college students.

Competitive graduate assistantships offset tuition and support immersive higher-ed leadership experiences on campus. The program builds on the Colleges’ robust educational offerings, including the undergraduate Educational Studies major and the Teacher Education Program.

“Through immersion in coursework and applied experiences, students in the program will develop their ability to think on their feet and work with others, leading to productive and viable

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programs or solutions,” says Centennial Center Director Amy Forbes.

AQUATIC SCIENCES

Designed for students to explore how water shapes the world, the interdisciplinary minor operates at the crux of geoscience, biology, chemistry, physics, computer science, mathematics and environmental studies. The aquatic sciences program challenges students to cultivate a holistic understanding of the lakes, rivers and wetlands around campus (and beyond), alongside “the skills necessary to gather and analyze data, and then write it up,” says Professor

of Environmental Studies John Halfman. The research-focused course of study is ideal for students interested in pursuing limnology, hydrology, freshwater or marine biology, and conservation careers. [course preview] GEO 186: Introduction to Hydrogeology Topics include the role of water in natural systems; floods and stream processes; and the physical, chemical, and ecological characteristics of lakes, oceans, aquifers, groundwater processes and wetlands.

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◀ Professor of Environmental Studies John Halfman and students collect data from a Finger Lakes tributary.

DATA ANALYTICS

PHOTO BY KEVI N COLTON

MUSIC ADMINISTRATION AND ENTREPRENEURSHIP

From music theory, history, and criticism to business skills and economic principles, the new minor situates the complex business of music in a holistic context. In their coursework, internships and study abroad opportunities, students develop a deep and pragmatic understanding of the role of creativity and leadership in the industry. “Students are thinking about their futures, and we want to give them some concrete directions,” says Associate Professor of Music Katherine Walker, who chairs the department. “When you say you love

music, we hear you and want to help you build a life and career that is secure, rich and fulfilling.” [course preview] MUS 194: A Historical Genealogy of Hip Hop An exploration of the roots and evolution of hip-hop from its emergence in 1970s New York to its present-day artistic and commercial successes, examining the interdisciplinary genre in which poetry, drama, music, art and dance are inextricably linked.

Combining quantitative analysis skills and qualitative liberal arts imagination, the data analytics program engages students in cutting-edge tools and strategies for effectively and ethically substantiating facts. Students explore a variety of data types, collection methods and modeling, as well as related issues like data privacy, collecting ethics and the specter of bias. The program’s co-chairs, Associate Professor of Mathematics and Computer Science Jonathan Forde and Associate Professor of Sociology Kendralin Freeman, note that a data analytics minor will show students “how they can enhance their reading of data with action,” enabling them to “communicate what it means” beyond ones and zeroes. [course preview] DATA 251: Data and Context A deep dive into the questions and choices that can shape data in real world applications in a range of fields.

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Viewfinder Since 2019, television anchor and political commentator George Stephanopoulos has donated nearly 2,000 photographs to the Collections of Hobart and William Smith Colleges. Depicting some of the most important historical moments and artistic movements of the 20th century, the final installment of approximately 700 photos arrived at HWS last fall, bringing the appraised value of the Stephanopoulos Collection to nearly $5 million.

Spanning politics, institutions and momentous events including the Great Depression, the Civil Rights movement and the Vietnam War, many photos in the Stephanopoulos Collection have a “‘snapshot’ quality” that belies “the skill and artistic labor needed to make something seem effortless,” says HWS Visual Arts Curator Anna Wager ’09. The photos capture “powerful, poignant, unflinching images of people and places, some in really dangerous, damaging or damaged circumstances.

There is a privilege and a duty in being able to view their lives in this way, and I look forward to working with our community in dissecting the webs that connect these artists and their works.”

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▶ Vintage Associated Press wirephotos: 1. Ferd Kaufman, Salutes Shore (1965).

2. Joe Holloway Jr., Widow Announces For King “Living Memorial” (1968).

3. John Lent, He’ll Say Wednesday (1962).

4. Harvey Georges, Roadblock For Peace Marchers (1962).

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“…powerful, poignant, unflinching images…. There is a privilege and a duty in being able to view their lives in this way…”

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▲ Arthur Dove, 1903, painted Cow V in 1935; Cow I and Cow II are part of the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

HOMECOMING Considered America’s first abstract painter, Arthur Dove, 1903, lived much of his life in Geneva, N.Y., where he took “as his subject matter the family farm and the local barnyard animals, as well as the rural landscapes and industrial areas nearby,” as the Skinner auction house noted in its listing of Cow V. The watercolor painting, which demonstrates “Dove’s impulsive, momentary response to nature through gestural lines and washes of color,” returned to Geneva last fall, arriving at its permanent home in the HWS Collections thanks to an anonymous donor.

Dove studied at Hobart for two years before transferring to Cornell. He later moved to New York and worked as an illustrator for magazines like Life and the Saturday Evening Post. Dove’s first solo exhibition in 1912 established him as a prominent abstract painter, and he spent the rest of his career developing his idiosyncratic style of formal abstraction and experimentation.

His work is associated with Alfred Stieglitz’s circle of modern American artists, which included Georgia O’Keeffe, who credited Dove with inspiring her to experiment with abstraction.

The HWS Collections house five other works by Dove, and the Colleges pay tribute to his memory through the Arthur Dove Scholarship for Studio, Fine Art and Architecture, as well as the Arthur Dove 1903 Art Award. Established in 1980 by William B. Carr, the award is used to purchase a piece of art by an HWS student that best expresses the spirit and ideas that Dove sought in his works.

AT FACE VALUE

This winter, coinciding with the beginning of Hobart’s Bicentennial year, the Davis Gallery at Houghton House explored the “fraught and powerful nature of portraiture.” Featuring paintings and photos from the HWS Collections, including portraits of and by the Colleges’ own, the exhibit showcased the genre’s techniques and tropes, and what they suggest about the artists, their subjects and the viewer.

▲ Clockwise from top left: 1. Jonas Wood ’99, Hairy Head (2002).

2. Alice Neel, Mother and Child (1985).

3. Kara Walker, Boo-Hoo (2000).

4. Ilse Getz, Ninth Avenue Window (1980).

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ATHLETICS

▲ Gagik Malakyan ’24 and Artem Buzoverya ’24 helped the Statesmen clinch the conference title, but the war between their home countries is never far from their thoughts.

The Waiting Game For the Hobart hockey team, the Russian-Ukraine conflict is personal.

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In February, teammates and friends Artem Buzoverya ’24 and Gagik Malakyan ’24 watched from halfway around the world as the political turmoil between their home countries turned violent. Buzoverya was born in Kharkiv, Ukraine, less than 30 miles from the Russian border, not far from where Russian forces invaded.

Malakyan grew up in Moscow. Both have family in their respective countries, and the conflict cast a shadow over the spring semester that saw the Statesmen into the NCAA quarterfinals.

“You sit every day and just hope for the best but in reality you never know. You don’t control it. None of us do,” says Buzoverya.

He and Malakyan came to the U.S. during high school to join junior hockey leagues. When the junior leagues ended, both came to HWS, where they met and built

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PHOTO BY KEVI N COLTON

“You sit every day and just hope for the best but in reality you never know. You don’t control it.

None of us do.”

a strong friendship, bonding over economics coursework, a shared language (Russian) and Hobart hockey.

“These are the guys you want to spend time with,” Malakyan says of his teammates. “As soon as you step in the locker room, you feel like this is your family.”

The 2020 season, their first at HWS, was limited to three exhibition games due to the pandemic, meaning little time for the two on the ice. But during their sophomore year, they helped the team post a 19-4-2 overall record and clinch the New England Hockey Conference’s regular season title.

A center on Hobart’s top line, Buzoverya is one of six Statesmen with 20 points on the season. Malakyan, a defender, posted six points on a goal and five assists, despite playing only 10 games this season because of injury.

“From day one, these two young men have distinguished themselves on and off the ice as athletes, citizens and especially students,” says Hobart Hockey Head Coach Mark Taylor. “They are going through a lot right now, and we are doing everything we can to support them. In this uncertain time, what I know for sure is they have the full support of the Colleges, certainly of their teammates and most importantly of each other.”

Malakyan says hockey helped keep news of the war at bay, though only for so long. “Every time you step on the ice, you kind of forget about your problems and enjoy the moment with the guys,” he says. “But then you get off the ice and you’re back in reality again, picturing all this stuff that is going on in the world and you can’t do anything about it.”

That sense of uncertainty and vulnerability can be consuming, Buzoverya says. “Lately, it’s been kind of hard just to close your eyes and go to sleep without thinking about it, because it’s always there,” he says. “You might go to sleep with a seven-hour difference and wake up to 100 messages saying the worst has happened.”

While “it’s hard not to feel anxious and helpless at times,” Malakyan says he’s “thankful for my teammates, coaches, friends and faculty who are doing what they can to help.”

GOING

BIG

FOR HWS ATHLETICS In just 24 hours, the HWS community posted record-breaking stats in support of the Herons and Statesmen. During the Colleges’ single biggest fundraising day ever, thousands of members of the HWS community ADOD: participated in the annual Athletics by the numbers Day of Donors, boosting individual teams and the Colleges’ programs in sports medicine and strength and conditioning by nearly $900,000.

Once again, ADOD was anchored by donated the late James F. Caird ’56, L.H.D. ‘12 and Cynthia L. Caird L.H.D. ’12, who generously funded the Caird Challenge, putting up $25,000 in of the bonus cash for Hobart and William $270,000 goal Smith athletic teams.

“On behalf of HWS Athletics, we all send our heartfelt thanks to the more than 3,000 alums, parents, student-athletes and friends of our 29 donors sports and support staffs who made a gift,” says Brian Miller, associate vice president and director of athletics and recreation.

“These gifts will allow our programs to prosper and give us the ability to enhance the entire studentathlete experience, while providing the necessary funding to help each sport and individual reach their full potential.”

$883,998 327% 3,057

JACOBSEN JOINS NCAA PRESIDENTS COUNCIL In June, President Joyce P. Jacobsen began her four-year term of service on the NCAA’s Division III Presidents Council, the highest governing body in Division III athletics.

The Council establishes and directs the general policy of the Division, while also setting D-III’s strategic plan. “It’s an honor to represent the Colleges, our coaches, staff and student athletes, particularly in this exciting time when our athletics department is expanding,” Jacobsen says.

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HOBART LAX SCHOLARSHIPS GET THE OK Since Hobart lacrosse moved to Division I in 1995, NCAA legislation has prevented the Statesmen from offering athletic scholarships.

That changed at this year’s NCAA Convention. In January, the Liberty League proposal to permit multidivisional institutions to award athletics aid to their D-I studentathletes passed by an overwhelming majority. Prior to the vote, Hobart lacrosse was bound by D-I rules except those regarding financial aid, making the program unable to grant scholarships based on athletic ability.

Between the efforts of HWS Athletics, NCAA compliance staff and financial aid staff, the Colleges will soon be able to announce the institution’s first athletic scholarship.

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ACADEMIC ALL-AMERICA TEAM ◀ Midfielder James Greene ’25 spins off a check by a Michigan defender. The Statesmen scrimmaged the Wolverines in the Poole Family Sports Dome at the start of the spring season. ▼ A forward on the Herons, Parisi jukes an RIT defender.

PHOTOS BY KEV IN COLTON

Olivia Parisi ’22 was elected to the 2021–22 Academic All-America Division III Women’s Basketball first team by the College Sports Information Directors of America.

An economics major, Parisi is a Blackwell Scholar, a three-time Liberty League All-Academic selection and a two-time CoSIDA Academic All-District pick. She earned Dean's List recognition and was ranked second in the league this season in points per game. She is the fourth Heron basketball player and the 62nd studentathlete in HWS history to be named an Academic All-American.

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We WE the THE People PEOPLE ASSESSING JOHN HENRY HOBART’S EVOLVING VISION BY T HE RT. REV. R .

WILLIAM FRANKLIN, Assisting Bishop of Long Island and Dean Emeritus of the Berkeley Divinity School at Yale University

In the 15 years following the War of 1812, the population in the region between Utica, N.Y. and Buffalo increased 150 percent.

The religious emotionalism of the Evangelical Second Great Awakening was in vogue, and newcomers to Western New York were so enthralled that Episcopal leaders referred to the region as the Burnt Over District. In response, New York’s third Episcopal bishop, John Henry Hobart, canvassed the state, traveling by horse, stagecoach and canalboat to make his case to residents. Hobart had the energy of 10 men; horses dropped under his exertions. In fact, the bishop himself died in September 1830, only 54 years old, on a visit to the town of Auburn, along the same route he had taken while tending to two projects he considered most important to his role as bishop: the ill-fated conversion of Native Americans and the founding of a college.

COLLEC T ION OF T H E N E W YO R K HIS TO R ICAL S O CIETY

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esides Hobart’s work ethic, his hugely influential framework of ideals and values established him as the most important leader in the American Episcopal Church in the 19th century. He was committed to an American Anglicanism founded on the republican principles of both the American Revolution and the primitive Christian Church. He saw bishops as part of an apostolic succession that stretched from the disciples of Jesus to Hobart’s own time, and therefore essential to the Church’s leadership (hence the Episcopal Church). But he also advocated an American Church governed by “the people,” not by a monarch, with bishops elected by the clergy and laity of a state. On this basis he recruited parishioners from outside the pool of Manhattan elites, inviting congregants from all classes, races and regions of the state, so that by 1830 the Episcopal Church in New York had more members than any of its counterparts in the original 13 states. Hobart’s catholic view of the Church entailed expanding missionary activity among Native Americans and the white settlers of Western New York. He reached out to Black communities, consecrating the first Black church in New York State. In 1826, he ordained New York’s first Black priest.

And he founded a college in Geneva to educate young Christian farmers, businessmen, lawyers, doctors and local politicians, not just future priests and social elites, in a humane, curious and expansive humanistic understanding of the Christian faith.

This was, at least in part, intended to free students from the widespread, mounting influence of what he saw as an emotional, anti-scientific and evangelical interpretation of Christianity.

From our vantage point on this 200th anniversary, we can see that Hobart himself struggled to realize the values he preached.

There were contradictions between his “We the People” credo and his aversion to the Church’s participation in secular politics of any kind, which steered him away from early abolitionist crusades against slavery and toward complicity in Native American removal policies. And yet, as a fundamental ethos for both American religion and for higher education, the values inherent in Hobart’s radical commitment to “We the People” have profoundly shaped the evolution of the Episcopal Church and the college that bears his name.

There were contradictions [in Hobart’s vision]…which steered him away from early abolitionist crusades against slavery and toward complicity in Native American removal policies.

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A new church for a new nation

Bishop Hobart was born in Philadelphia in 1775, the son of a ship’s captain who came from New England Puritan stock, similar to the white settlers who would populate Western New York. The Hobarts were members of Christ Church in Philadelphia, the largest Anglican church in the Colonies, whose rector William White became the first Bishop of Pennsylvania and then the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church. White baptized, confirmed and ordained Hobart, and was his primary teacher and mentor.

But for Bishop White, Anglicanism could have easily disappeared in America. Before the American Revolution, the Anglican churches in the Colonies were part of the Church of England, an established state Church, which during the Revolution became the Church of the enemy. By the end of the war, there were less than 10,000 Episcopalians left in America. Anglicanism survived because William White laid out

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HO BART AND WI LL IAM SMIT H ARCHIVES

◀ A drawing of Geneva, ca. 1836.

Hobart saw the bustling village as a vital center to promote the growth of the Church.

the intellectual and structural foundation of a new Protestant Episcopal Church. He was its George Washington and its St. Peter.

In his short pamphlet, The Case of the Protestant Episcopal Church Considered, published in 1782 while the war with Britain still raged, White proposed a plan for a Church not based upon the sovereignty of a monarch but upon the sovereignty of “the people.”

Under this theory of church government, which incidentally would allow Anglicanism to survive in a republic, “the people” would rule by electing the bishops and by electing lay and clergy deputies to a General Convention, which would have ultimate authority over the Church.

If White was the St. Peter of this new Church, Hobart was the St. Paul. Like St. Paul, Hobart would become a traveling advocate of the new Episcopalianism, a type-A personality who crisscrossed New York from the Atlantic Ocean to the Great Lakes, planting churches in virtually every town, village and city. In 1801, Hobart became a minister and then rector of Trinity Church, Wall Street, then and now the wealthiest parish church in America. In 1811,

For sources and further reading, visit www2.hws.edu/hobart-bicentennial/#founding.

he was elected as a bishop of New York, and for the next 19 years he worked tirelessly to make New York State the model of the new American Anglicanism.

He faced a daunting task. The social and political upheaval of war with Britain — first the Revolution, then the War of 1812 — put the new Episcopal Church at a huge deficit, unprecedented in Christian history. Without schools, finances or prestige, the Church in the early 19th century was overshadowed by the Evangelical Movement, which had become the dominant form of Christianity in America, shaping the Baptists, Methodists and Presbyterians, along with other new denominations. The Evangelicals emphasized the necessity of a conversion experience, divine grace forcefully encountering the individual at one moment, provoking regeneration in faith and moral benevolence.

Evangelical denominations also encouraged parishioners to engage in secular national political life by voting and lobbying, for instance, to curtail certain sports and the sale of alcoholic beverages, and to support the abolition of chattel slavery.

To counter evangelical revivalism Hobart became the ultimate church planter. He quadrupled the number of Episcopal clergy in New York. He confirmed 15,000 new Episcopalians. He undertook campaign after campaign to instruct and reform, traversing the state, founding institutions, theological societies, Bible societies and a seminary. For 19 extraordinary years he devoted himself to advancing his vision of High Church theology, which promised Church members more freedom — freedom from an elaborate confessional creed and a strict code of social behavior; freedom from the pressure to show evidence of a conversion experience; freedom to exercise reason and include scientific insights in making religious and moral decisions. In his most famous work, An Apology for Apostolic Order and Its Advocates (1807), Hobart unveiled the motto of his High Church movement: “My banner is Evangelical Truth, and Apostolic Order.”

Missions to the West

With the construction of the Erie Canal, Hobart turned his attention to the western region of the state, with its Native American population and New England transplants. In October 1818, he visited the Oneida tribes and personally invited their chiefs, with their people, to join the Episcopal Church. Hobart commissioned a translation of The Book of Common Prayer into the Oneida language and in 1819 consecrated St. Peter’s Church, a chapel for a Native American congregation at the settlement of Oneida Castle. On that occasion he confirmed and welcomed 89

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▲ A monument to Hobart at Trinity Church in Manhattan, where he served as rector. The bishop is buried beneath the church’s chancel.

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Oneidas into the Church. He licensed Eleazar Williams, an Oneida candidate for holy orders, as a lay reader and catechist to officiate in the native language at St. Peter’s.

During Hobart’s missions to the Oneidas in 1818, he visited Geneva, which he believed would be a strategic location for influencing the whole of Western New York. The village was home to an academy, founded in 1798, which Hobart ventured to expand into a college — one which, with Episcopalians on its Board, would be friendly toward the Church. With support from Genevans, including local Episcopalian donors and a public subscription, funds were transferred from Geneva Academy and nearby Fairfield Academy to finance the proposed college. Hobart also secured grants for the endowment from Trinity Church in Manhattan, the New York Diocesan Convention, the Episcopal Society for the Promotion of Religion and Learning, and from wealthy Manhattan donors like the Startin family.

Geneva College, renamed Hobart College in the 1850s, was seen as part of the Church’s mission to the West. The Board was indeed made up of a majority of Episcopalians: its first president Jasper Adams was an Episcopal priest, and through the 19th century the bishops of Western New York and leading Buffalo and Rochester clergy were Trustees. But unlike the other Episcopal college in the state, Columbia College in Manhattan, Geneva was not to be under the control of the Episcopal Church. The new college was not to exclude any student on account of his particular tenets in religion, and Episcopal students were not to enjoy any particular privileges.

Hobart’s intent was not to expose undergraduates to any intense Episcopalian indoctrination but rather to shield young people from the narrow influence of other denominations. Ultimately, Hobart’s vision for the college was to educate future leaders of the West — people from all backgrounds, not merely clergy or social elites: farmers, merchants, manufacturers, mechanics, lawyers, physicians and politicians. (Nevertheless, the Episcopalian influence was evident; over the first 100 years, 24 percent of Hobart College graduates entered the ministry, including 15 alumni who became bishops of the Episcopal Church.)

Alongside the classical Latin and Greek course of Columbia College, Geneva established an English course, a curriculum obviously intended for the businessmen, farmers and engineers of

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PHOTOS BY KEVIN COLTON

Ultimately, Hobart’s vision for the college was to educate future leaders of the West — people from all backgrounds, not merely clergy or social elites: farmers, merchants, manufacturers, mechanics, lawyers, physicians and politicians.

the new country. And yet the curriculum reflected the High Church Christian humanism of Hobart, the belief that religion does not demand the sacrifice of the knowledge, pleasures and beauty of the world: theater, science, sports, friendship, social amusements — all go to building a new continent, a vibrant humanity and a responsible citizenry.

Contradictions and evolutions

Despite this relatively progressive influence at Geneva College, Hobart’s High Church Movement eschewed secular politics. His vision for the Church was modeled on the primitive small Christian communities of the first four centuries after Christ. Under this model, which pre-dated white supremacy, the Church was universal — for all people. And yet, wary of linking the Episcopal Church in the public mind to the state Church of England, Hobart maintained that the True Church had no business engaging in political issues: the Church is divine, the state is mortal, politics are therefore taboo. He believed the Church, as the body of Christ, could not be divided over what he felt to be a political issue. So while debates over slavery split the Presbyterians, the Methodists and the Baptists into separate denominations, Hobart avoided public discussion of the subject entirely.

To avoid a clash and potential division over the issue of race, he privately tutored Peter Williams, a Black lay reader, in preparation for holy orders, rather than encouraging his study at the General Theological Seminary. Meanwhile, in 1814, Hobart helped secure a grant from Trinity Church to found St. Philip’s, the first Black Church in New York State, in lower Manhattan. In 1819, Hobart consecrated St. Philip’s, though he wouldn’t permit the parish’s clergy or members to attend the Conventions of the Diocese of New York, whose meetings were racially segregated. In 1826, Hobart ordained Williams as the first Black priest in New York State, and while he allowed Williams to join the American Anti-Slavery Society, a mob ransacked St. Philip’s in 1834, blaming Williams’ abolitionist politics; Hobart’s successor as Bishop of New York forced Williams to resign from the Society.

And although Hobart made strenuous efforts to include Indigenous tribes in the Church, the bishop neither understood nor valued Native American institutions. His ardent support of missions to the Oneidas led to his cooperation in their relocation from New York to Wisconsin. The vast Church of the Holy Apostles in the town of Oneida, Wisc. was dedicated in Hobart’s memory, but according to a 2019 history of the Wisconsin Oneidas and the Episcopal Church, congregants there were later misled by Eleazar Williams, the deacon Hobart had assigned to the church, who began “ignoring the Oneidas’ best interests and collaborating with land speculators and the government for his own selfaggrandizement.”

Though flawed and unevenly applied, the Hobartian commitment to all the people can be seen in the trajectory of the Church and of the college he founded. By the mid-1830s, Geneva College had matriculated its first Native student, Abraham La Fort,

and first Black student, Isaiah De Grasse. In 1844, Peter Wilson, a member of the Cayuga Nation, became the first Native American to graduate from Geneva Medical College (or any medical college, most likely), and in 1849 Elizabeth Blackwell became the first woman in America to receive a medical degree. The founding of William Smith opened Hobart College’s faculty, facilities and administration to women (though the classes were separated by gender), and over the following century, the Colleges’ curriculum expanded to include early programs in women’s studies, African American studies and the nation’s first undergraduate major in queer studies, moving ever closer to the essence of Hobart’s vision.

Considering this trajectory, it is fitting that in this anniversary year the first Black Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, the Most Rev. Michael B. Curry ’75, D.D. ’20, is a graduate of Hobart College.

Bishop Hobart’s desire to combine the High Church and the Evangelical into one — “apostolic order and evangelical teaching” — is what we see today in the many expressions of the Church under this Presiding Bishop: the Michael Curry who preaches the royal wedding sermon is the Michael Curry who leads a handclapping revival.

Listen closely and you can hear a fuller embodiment of John Henry Hobart’s vision of “We the People” in Bishop Curry’s, which imagines “individuals, small gathered communities, and congregations whose way of life is the way of Jesus and his way of love, no longer centered on empire and establishment, no longer fixated on preserving institutions, no longer shoring up white supremacy or anything else that hurts or harms any child of God.” Hobart led the Church at a difficult time. The pre-Revolutionary era was not coming back, and he faced the anxiety and disillusion of Anglicans who were attracted by other faiths or none. Like Hobart, Bishop Curry leads at a difficult time for the Church and the country. In the post-Civil Rights era, he faces the anxiety and disillusion of a post-pandemic nation where many are skeptical of religion, scornful of authority, and fearful of those who do not look, think, worship or vote as they do. But in his calls for a “beloved community,” Bishop Curry advocates a climate, a mindset, an atmosphere in which all people experience dignity and abundance and see themselves and others as beloved children of God. In this work, he is manifesting the unfulfilled premises and promises of Hobart’s ministry.

R. William Franklin is the XI Bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Western New York (resigned) and he is currently Assisting Bishop of the Diocese of Long Island and a member of the Faculty of the Episcopal Divinity School at Union Theological Seminary in New York City. He is also Dean Emeritus of the Berkeley Divinity School at Yale University. He thanks Judy Stark and Denise Fillion for their input on this article.

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THEN

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“There is little similarity between the Hobart of today and the rude frontier institution from which it has emerged. Dramatic changes have occurred in enrollment, plant and curriculum. Yet the College we know today is in a real sense an ever-growing memorial to its past: a tribute inscribed physically in ivy-covered buildings, spiritually in cherished ideals and traditions.”

These observations ring as true today as they likely did when the late Anthony Bridwell ’49, L.H.D. ’82 This photo essay is informed by the work of Tricia McEldowney and recorded them in Twenty Generations of Hobart, a Brandon Moblo of the Hobart and William Smith Archives; John Marks, brief history of the institution published in 1954.

Becky Chapin and Historic Geneva; Ken DeBolt, Alex Kerai ’19, Doug The following pages revisit some of those dramatic Lippincott, Mary Warner ’21, Andrew changes and cherished traditions, the points of Wickenden ’09 and Catherine Williams. Photos by Kevin Colton and progress and continuity, and the remarkable eras and Adam Farid ’20, or sourced from the HWS Archives, except where noted. enduring principles that have shaped Hobart College these past 200 years.

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The Quad THE HEART OF CAMPUS. Matriculations, graduations, reunions. Military training, protests, classes in the spring sunshine.

Past and future presidents, Nobel winners, varsity football games. Flour Scraps, Folk Fest, slip-n-slides. Tears of frustration, tears of joy, handshakes, hugs, hallelujahs…the Quad has seen it all. (FYI, the Flour Scrap was an almost-food fight waged between early Hobart College freshmen and sophomores, who flung flour at one another on the Quad until an upperclassman referee declared a winner.)

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HIP HOBART, FOREVER!

“The star of Hobart is rising, and if the auspicious promises in the sky deceive not, will in the future know no setting.”

—The Echo, 1872

▼ POMP AND CIRCUMSTANCE. Members of the Hobart and William Smith community gather around the “Commencement Elm” during the Hobart College Centennial celebrations in 1922. That northwest corner near Williams Hall is where today’s Commencement processionals enter the Quad.

▲ BLANK CANVAS. The iconic Hobart Quadrangle wouldn’t really take shape until Coxe Hall was completed in 1900. Photographed from the roof of Geneva Hall ca. 1870–80, this westward view of Pulteney Street — and the plot that would later become the Quad — shows the limited campus development during the College’s hardscrabble first 50 years. Blackwell House and McCormick House can be seen on the hill in the distance.

▶ NEITHER SNOW, NOR WIND… Students brave the winter cold for Quad fun during Winter Fest, ca. 1980–81.

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HIP HOBART, FOREVER!

Roots & Anchors ▶ GENESIS. By the late 18th century, Geneva was a thriving community of 1,700 residents established just a mile from the original Seneca settlement Kanadesaga. The bustling village of Geneva was home to an academy, founded in 1796, that would one day become Hobart College. Thousands of graduates later, the city and the Colleges are connected in countless ways, through community-based coursework and Honors projects, service and internships, and in the lives of faculty, staff, students and alums who, in one way or another, consider it home.

▲ O BROTHER, WHERE ART THOU? Early campus social life was shaped by literary clubs like the Euglossian Society, founded by students in 1821. But those groups, which collected libraries and conducted debates, were “doomed by the rapid rise of the Greek letter fraternities,” as Warren Hunting Smith wrote in his history of the Colleges. Sigma Phi and Alpha Delta Phi began at Geneva in 1840, followed by Kappa Alpha (1844), Theta Delta Phi (1857) and Chi Phi (1860); by the early 1900s nearly all students were pledged.

Novelist, historian and Theta Delta Chi brother Bellamy Partridge, 1900, noted in his reminiscence of his college years, Salad Days (1951): “The college fraternity is no oneway street. It gives a man brotherhood, friends, close companionship, and numerous intangibles, but in return it makes definite demands such as good behavior, respect, loyalty, and an appreciable amount of scholarship.” Today, roughly 20 percent of the student body participates in the eight fraternities and one sorority now active: Kappa Alpha, Chi Phi, Kappa Sigma, Delta Chi, Phi Sigma Kappa, Sigma Chi, Theta Delta Chi, Alpha Phi Alpha and Theta Phi Alpha.

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◀ PRAYERS AND PRANKS. Hobart’s Episcopal origins structured student life for more than a century. Besides the College’s theological school, which operated from 1850 to 1920, the academic year was divided into three terms during those early years: Trinity, Epiphany and Easter. Mandatory chapel service began at 5:30 a.m. The hour would change, but attendance remained a graduation requirement until 1964, regardless of students’ spiritual affiliations. Eventually, The H Book notes, students could comply by attending services in Geneva or by passing two semesters of religion and philosophy. (Those who fell behind found themselves in the pews daily to graduate on time.)

But it wasn’t all staid religious study; sophomores sold seats to unsuspecting new arrivals, and livestock was found inside the chapel, presumably let in by some Hobart jokesters.

▶ MEAL PLANNING. Synonymous with campus dining since the 1950s, the main student commissary was officially named the Great Hall of Saga in 1997, when the Alumni Association presented the Hobart Medal of Excellence to the Saga Corporation’s founders, William F. Scandling ’49, LL.D. ’67, W. Price Laughlin ’49, LL.D. ’67 and Harry W. “Hunk” Anderson ’49, LL.D. ’67. The World War II vets had started managing campus dining operations during their junior year, marking the beginning of Saga, which would revolutionize food service nationwide, and a momentous era in HWS history. As the company expanded, Scandling managed operations from Geneva for more than a decade, growing closer to HWS, leading to his long tenure as a Trustee, including 10 years as Board Chair; as the years passed, he became the Colleges’ largest benefactor, supporting campus building projects, the endowment and scholarships.

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The Classroom & Beyond

▲ Participants in the NYC Behind the Scenes program, near Times Square, ca. 2019.

▲ VISIONARY EDUCATION. Teaching and learning at HWS have adapted to the needs of the era and the campus community. In many cases, the curriculum has augured the future of higher ed, with some of the nation’s earliest programs in women’s studies, gender and sexuality, Africana studies and Asian languages and cultures. The Colleges remain at the leading edge of global education (ranked consistently among the nation’s best), experiential learning (from “Two Cities” and the semester in D.C., to today’s guaranteed internship program), and research grounded in the local environment (see the work of the Finger Lakes Institute, or just about any science course). During that 200-year evolution, however, the purpose has remained constant. As former Dean Clarence Butler L.H.D. ’06 once said: “The role of the College is…not to implant in each of its students a vision, but to challenge, cultivate, stimulate what is already there, but perhaps not yet seen or felt.”

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▶ GENIUS AND EXPERIENCE. Early communiques and course schedules hint at the liberal arts and sciences of the future HWS. The “English Course” curriculum, as described in an 1824 pamphlet, was intended to educate students in “the practical business of life, by which the Agriculturist, the Merchant, and the Mechanic may receive a practical knowledge of what genius and experience have discovered.” This well-rounded approach endures today, as the pursuit of knowledge takes students, alongside faculty mentors, across campus and beyond — to Geneva, neighboring communities and around the world.

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◀ TEACHING STUDENTS “TO LIVE, NOT MERELY TO MAKE A LIVING. That is the aim of the Hobart curriculum” (The Echo, ca. 1950). Until the early 1970s, the Western Civilization courses were the academic centerpiece of that aim. Western Civ was designed, as the 1947 yearbook put it, “to develop in the student an intelligent and urgent sense of his responsibility for the moral and civic welfare of the community…[as well as] to furnish him with a breadth of basic education which will enable him to choose his future career wisely and… follow his chosen career with success.”

▲ Students (and possibly professors) in the reading room of the old library in the Middle Building, which once stood between Geneva and Trinity halls, ca. 1875–80. ▲ A Western Civ lecture in Coxe Auditorium, ca.

1949–50.

◀ Associate Professor of Art and Architecture Jeffrey Blankenship and students discussing a class project based in downtown Geneva, ca. 2016.

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Scientific Methods ▶ MEDICAL HISTORY. Dr. Peter Wilson, 1844, was the first Indigenous graduate of Geneva Medical College and likely the first Native American to earn a medical degree. A member of the Cayuga Nation, Wilson grew up and was educated at a Quaker school on the Buffalo Creek Reservation in Erie, N.Y. When he arrived at Geneva’s fledgling medical school in 1842, he was already a “skilled politician like his uncle Red Jacket,” writes Mary Hess, who taught at HWS from 2005 to 2011 and later at SUNY Oswego.

“Wilson was a powerful, passionate orator and also a translator for the U.S. government; just as significant, and his calling card in the white world, was his astonishing scientific versatility: physician, dentist, surgeon, as well as a lawyer and diplomat.”

Wilson was a signatory to the Buffalo Creek Treaty of 1838, which, as part of the U.S. government’s Indian removal policies, led to the migration of Seneca and Cayuga residents of Buffalo Creek to Oklahoma. Amid concerns over federal fraud, Wilson soon after began a 20-year lobbying effort to reverse and rectify the treaty, restore Native residents to the Cattaraugus and Allegheny reservations, and ensure they were compensated for the Buffalo and Tonawanda reservations.

As a physician and surgeon, Wilson practiced at Bellevue Hospital in New York City and on the battlefield during the Civil War. He eventually returned to the Cattaraugus reservation, where his last years “were likely difficult” due to a stroke, as Hess explains in the spring 2020 issue of The James Fenimore Cooper Society Journal. Despite Wilson’s renown as an orator, his death in 1872 “was briefly remarked upon in a Buffalo newspaper as the passing of an old chief.” Though he endured the “personal strain” of “negotiating two worlds” — including the “fraught endeavor” of the 1838 treaty — Hess concludes that Wilson’s life was one “of service, both to his patients and to his Cayuga and Seneca people.”

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▼ FIELDNOTES. For well over a century, scientific inquiry has taken students and faculty from campus classrooms into the surrounding environment — and sometimes farther afield. Studying invasive species, Professor of Biology Meghan Brown (center) has traveled to Italy, Guatemala, Australia and New Zealand, and back to Seneca Lake, bringing new data, techniques and perspectives on troublesome non-native plants and animals. In 2016, she led a team of interdisciplinary researchers in Cuba to investigate why the island nation has fewer invasive plant species compared to its Caribbean neighbors. Brown returns in December 2022 with Professor of Spanish and Hispanic Studies May Farnsworth to guide alums as they explore Cuba’s ecology.

▲ The National Museum of the American Indian Archives Center at the Smithsonian Institution holds a daguerreotype depicting Wilson, ca. 1852–55.

NATIONAL MUSEUM OF THE AMERICAN INDIAN ARCHIVES CENTER , SMITHSONIAN IN S T IT UT ION ( N MAI.AC. 4 05 ) . P H OTO BY N MAI P H OTO S E RVICE S .

▶ THE EYE OF THE STORM. Documenting severe weather on the horizon near Anton, Colo., during a 2017 geoscience field course with Professors Neil Laird and Nick Metz. The core faculty of the atmospheric sciences program, Laird and Metz regularly lead students on the hunt for supercell thunderstorms and tornados — that is, when they’re not compiling an unprecedented lake-effect snow database. Or mentoring students through the Northeast Partnership for Atmospheric & Related Sciences, which attracts undergrads from across the country to research weather and climate phenomena with HWS students and faculty. Over the past 20 years, these developments have distinguished the Colleges as a hub for atmospheric research and education. (Notable: Albert J. Myer, 1847, who organized and commanded the U.S. Army Signal Corps during the Civil War, is considered the father of the U.S. Weather Bureau, a precursor to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.)

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▲ OBSERVE AND REPORT. The first astronomy observatory on campus, built between 1869 and 1870, was located roughly where Gulick Hall now stands. Today, students and faculty explore the cosmos at the Richard S. Perkin Observatory near Houghton House.

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Crossroads ▲ William Smith, seated in the center, with the College’s Charter Class of 1912.

▲ OLD SCHOOL. The Class of 1872 was typical of Hobart classes through the early 20th century: very small, nearly all white and all male (with the notable exception of Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, 1849). Student enrollment wouldn’t total 100 until 1900. ▶ NEW ERA. Coordinate schools like Hobart and William Smith “pioneered a new kind of college curriculum that fit the changing needs of women during the Progressive Era,” as Emory University Vice Provost Paul Marthers wrote in his 2013 study of women’s colleges in American Educational History Journal. Today, as one of the few remaining coordinate institutions in the nation, the Colleges’ heritage offers a framework to understand and interrogate gender.

President Joyce P. Jacobsen wrote in 2020 that such heritage encourages “a healthy dialectic that causes HWS community members to reflect on gender and its intersectionality with other aspects of difference…. [We] can celebrate it as we also seek to expand its meaning.”

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◀ WILLIAM SMITH TO THE RESCUE. Dogged by financial challenges through the late 1800s and early 1900s, Hobart College may not have survived without William Smith’s gift to create a “coordinate” institution for women.

Anna Botsford Comstock L.H.D. ’30 — an accomplished author, educator and the Colleges’ first woman Trustee — argued for the coordinate model over a coeducational one on the basis that a sudden, full-fledged merger with a new women’s college would disturb Hobart’s identity and “alienate the alumni body.”

◀ Students celebrate their graduation from the HEOP summer institute, ca. 2013.

HWS became one of the first institutions in the nation to establish an academic access program when the Colleges signed on to New York State’s Higher Education Opportunity Program in 1969.

▲ French class, ca. 1942

▲ MODERNIZING. The first joint commencement coincided with Hobart’s Centennial in 1922, and the two Colleges became more closely linked over the following decades. Hastened along by the fiscal redundancy of teaching Hobart students and William Smith students separately, all classes were coed by 1938. On Commencement Day for many years, diplomas were issued by one College, then the other, but since 2016 seniors have voted to receive theirs in alphabetical order; each graduate chooses whether their diploma says Hobart College, William Smith College or Hobart and William Smith Colleges.

▶

◀ TRAVEL IN EXCELLENT COMPANY. At critical moments in institutional and national history, students, faculty, alums and friends have charted new paths to strengthen the campus’ intellectual outlook and cultural fabric. The galvanizing voices of the HWS community broaden and deepen the Colleges’ character — from admissions practices to the curriculum — ensuring that students can explore, collaborate and find their fullest sense of purpose and belonging.

Students and faculty gather on the deCordova Hall terrace outside the LGBTQ+ Resource Center, which opened in 2017 and seeks to affirm and support the identities of all LGBTQIA+ students, faculty and staff. The Resource Center develops and coordinates programming to promote education, social opportunities, wellness and support for all students at HWS, while fostering allies who engage the community at large with compassion and empathy.

HIP HOBART, FOREVER!

In Service ▼ TRAINING GROUNDS. From World War I through Vietnam, military training was a typical Hobart experience. In the spring of 1917, with students and faculty joining the war effort, the Student Army Training Corps was instituted, attracting nearly 200 enlistees who performed military drills two hours a day, five days a week. During World War II, to offset dropping enrollment and produce officers, the first group of Navy V-12 trainees arrived on campus July 1, 1943. From 1951 to 1964, the Air Force ROTC program was mandatory for all incoming students; amid growing faculty and student discontent, the program was shuttered in September of 1970, but as former director of alumni relations Ret. Lt. Col. John Norvell ’66, P’99, P’02 notes on his blog, Tales from Hobart and William Smith, the ROTC, like the V-12 program, “provided a valuable source of revenue to the cash-strapped Colleges.”

“This is the third day of the battle. How the scales will turn can hardly be told as yet. We hope for the best.

I never felt less like a fight than now.”

▲ Navy V-12 trainees in formation on the Quad, ca. 1944–45.

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▲ A LETTER HOME. Brig. General Edward Stuyvesant Bragg, 1844, for whom Ft. Bragg is named, was among at least 75 Hobart alums, students and non-graduates to serve in the Union Army during the Civil War. (At least five students and/or alums fought for the Confederacy.)

Another Civil War veteran, Sgt. Major Edward H.C. Taylor, 1861, who served with the Union Army’s 4th Regiment Michigan Infantry, documented his wartime experience in a collection of correspondence held by the HWS Archives.

Taylor’s letter, dated Dec. 13, 1862, reads: “My dear Mother: I have but a word to write. A battle is going on and our Div. is just going in. Our troops are in Fredericksburg [Va.] and are fighting in the streets. This is the third day of the battle.

How the scales will turn can hardly be told as yet. We have lost heavily and have a horrid position to gain. We hope for the best. I never felt less like a fight than now. I expect the Div. will take it tomorrow. Love to all. Edward.”

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▶ Anti-war demonstration, ca. 1968–69.

CALL OF DUTY. Approaching its Centennial, Hobart revised the curriculum to provide, as the 1920–21 catalog noted, a “thoroughly modern education in the arts and sciences, both as the needed introduction to professional or technical training and as an important preparation for civic life and duty.” Evident in the College’s earliest graduates, that dual sense of purpose extends through the Citizenship Course of the 1930s to today’s students and young alums, who carry forward the mantle of public duty — whether through elected office or military commissions, grassroots organizing or the annual Days of Service. ▼ As part of a 2019 Day of Service, students package meals in Bristol Field House in partnership with the international relief organization Rise Against Hunger.

◀ Students signing up for Big Brothers, Big Sisters, ca. 1996–97.

▲ HWS and the Geneva community at the April 1968 march in memory of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

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▲ STICKS IN THE MUD. The Hobart lacrosse team, ca. 1908. The intercollegiate sport began at Hobart 10 years prior, and early games were rough in every sense. The 1898 Echo recounts the inaugural competition: “The 12 Hobart men, indistinguishable from the Cornell team because of the mud, handled their sticks, with several exceptions, like shovels…All that afternoon, despite the driving rain and slippery mud, the first Hobart College lacrosse team ever to take the field held a powerful and more experienced Cornell team in check. Finally the game ended with Hobart the victor by a 2 to 1 score.”

Go ’Bart!

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▲ BACK-TO-BACK-TO-BACK… Hobart laxers celebrating in the midst of the legendary run of 10 consecutive NCAA Division III Championships under the tutelage of Coach Dave Urick. The Statesmen still hold the record for the most D-III national lacrosse championships, with 13 titles between 1980 and 1993.

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▲ VICTORY LAP. “Win or lose, the Hobart warriors and the Hobart rooters never said quits,” observed journalist Arch Merrill, 1920. The determination of the Statesmen and their fans has fueled success on the water, the ice, the court and the field. Since 1995, Hobart teams have won more than 40 conference championships, including two each for squash and tennis, three each for basketball and soccer, six for hockey, 11 for football and a staggering 15 consecutive Liberty League championships for rowing.

▲ UNDEFEATED. In 1954, the Statesmen were the only undefeated football team in the state, finishing the season 8–0. The Echo predicted they would “be looked upon in future years as one of the finest ever to display the Purple and Orange.” Nearly 70 years on, the ’54 squad is still the only Hobart football team to go unbeaten, though teams in the early ’70s and 2010s came close, reviving that high-scoring, steamrolling momentum.

▲ EXTRA INNINGS. Intercollegiate baseball was played at Hobart beginning in 1860, making it the College’s first athletics program.

After a nearly 30-year hiatus, the sport returns to varsity status this fall. The 1992 team — honored as a Team of Distinction in 2013 — posted a 25–12–1 overall record and earned the program’s first NCAA Championship bid.

▲ SMOOTH SAILING. The Hobart Navy, a.k.a. the Boating Club or the Hobart Aquatic Association, was founded in the late 1800s — a precursor to the HWS sailing team, which in 2005 won the ICSA National Championship for both Coed Dinghy and Team Race.

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Throughlines “These are the attitudes you may expect to find in Hobart and William Smith” — then, now and forever.

▶ SCHOOL SPIRIT. Members of the Class of 2019 are welcomed into the Alumni Association at the Hobart Launch. Like the William Smith Toast and the Matriculation ceremony, the Launch is one of many traditions past and present that bind alums, both to one another and to the Colleges. Such bonds reflect what Honorary Trustee Herbert J. Stern ’58, P’03, LL.D. ’74 once called “a spirit that can be felt even though it cannot be touched, a spirit that transcends generations and will abide with us as long as we are faithful to it.” ▲ ONWARD AND UPWARD. A human pyramid on the Quad, ca. 1968–69. At more than 20,000 and growing, today’s community of alums has seen the Colleges into maturity, each class in its own style, each leaving a foundation on which the next classes build.

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▲ UNIQUELY HWS. With a nod to the Colleges’ marketing materials of the era, the 1973 yearbook emphasizes that individuality “is the essence of Hobart and William Smith thinking. The Colleges think of you not as a member of a class or group; they think of you as an individual with unique talents and creeds. Hobart and William Smith will demand much of you, for they uphold the highest standards of teaching and learning. They encourage the development and expression of strong personal convictions. These are the attitudes you may expect to find in Hobart and William Smith” — then, now and forever.

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Thinking About the 4 6 / T H E P U LT EN EY STRE E T SURVE Y

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Gaze into the Milky Way from the shores of Seneca Lake. What glimpses of the future can be seen? As Hobart College turns 200, alums are looking forward. Drawing on their careers, life experiences and imaginations, they are envisioning what’s ahead: how to transform education, work and the economy for the better; how to improve our relationships with neighbors, technology and the natural world; how to process the opacities of history and the informational onslaught of the present; and how to create narratives that give our lives shape and meaning.

Future M E D I TAT I O N S FO R A B I C E N T E N N I A L B Y

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MEDITATIONS FOR A BICENTENNIAL

>> Abby Johnson ’84 INVESTING IN THE FUTURE Chairman and CEO of Fidelity Investments, Johnson reflects on innovation, the power of curiosity and the future of her 76-year-old family company, which manages more than $4 trillion in assets.

AS THE HEAD OF FIDELITY INVESTMENTS for nearly a decade, Abby Johnson ’84 has expanded the company’s historical focus on retirement and brokerage, implementing a bold and innovative strategy. Number six on Forbes’ 2021 “Power Women” list, she has led the Bostonbased mutual fund’s adaptations to major generational, demographic and economic disruptions. She has courted a diverse range of clients and guided Fidelity’s investments in cryptocurrency and other emerging assets, all while cultivating a culture where trust, inclusivity and innovation go hand in hand. Even as she acknowledges the importance of her family company’s roots, she is eager to identify and embrace the next opportunities of the digital age.

You lead a company that over the span of nearly a century has enhanced the lives of tens of millions of people. How do you consider that past as you’re planning for the future?

Fidelity began as a mutual fund company, and investment management will always be part of our company’s DNA, but we have evolved and grown into many businesses over the past 76 years.

Remembering and honoring our history is important.

But I don’t spend a lot of mental energy thinking about the past. I prefer to focus on the future. When I see too much anchoring in our past accomplishments, then it can lead to complacency and resistance to new ideas, which slows the pace of innovation.

I never lose sight of Fidelity’s entrepreneurial — and some would say contrarian — spirit, as well as our intense focus on delivering a great customer experience. This gives me and the managers at Fidelity a lot of freedom to innovate and find new areas of growth. As a result, I don’t feel constrained by Fidelity’s past. I feel pretty much the opposite. I feel empowered to try new things, to explore new products and services, and to expand into new areas.

Change can be scary, but it can also be exciting. There’s always going to be tension. I’d be worried if there wasn’t.

There’s the tension between the needs of the business today versus the business we want to create in the future.

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to the future needs of a digital business. Finally, there is the tension of how we interact with each other, with customers and with external stakeholders. The key is to use the tension to keep things moving forward.

HWS alums who work at Fidelity have remarked on the company’s family atmosphere. How do you foster that environment with so many employees?

One of my main responsibilities is to create a supportive environment where Fidelity leaders and associates are comfortable and confident asking uncomfortable questions about our business strategy, culture and customers. When people feel comfortable in being themselves and offering up ideas and suggestions, which we take seriously and respond to, then this creates an environment of confidence.

What I’ve found, both personally and professionally, is that everyone needs to feel confident that there is no intent to find someone or something to blame. This is really important. The point isn’t to try to identify the culprit for some past mistake or misstep. The objective is to brainstorm solutions to problems in a collaborative and productive way.

When you do this, it creates a culture of mutual respect and trust, which are the foundations of successful companies and also families.

You’re known for working to significantly increase the number of women at Fidelity and you’ve been a public champion for women in finance. Where is Fidelity in that effort and where do you think the industry is?

Women are a critical part of the future of financial services.

We want more women to consider our industry, and Fidelity in particular, for their careers. You don’t need to change who you are to have a great career in finance. ▶ As a student at Hobart and William Smith, Johnson worked summers at Fidelity, which her grandfather founded in 1946. After graduating with a degree in art history, she joined an analytics consulting firm in New York before earning her M.B.A. from Harvard. She returned to Fidelity as an analyst in 1988 and since then has risen through the company. In 2014, she was named CEO of Fidelity Investments, and in 2016, she became chairman.

PHOTO BY REUTERS/BRIAN SNYDER

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MEDITATIONS FOR A BICENTENNIAL

Supporting our associates in a way that allows them to bring their whole selves to work each and every day is one of the most important things we can do. This includes supporting women in the workplace. Years ago, Fidelity established its Women’s Leadership Employee Resource Group. The group’s goals are to provide development opportunities to members with a focus on “developing the whole you — professional, personal and financial.”

Along with the rest of the financial services industry, we need and want to do more to attract and retain women at all levels. People want to take action, but often don’t know where to start. It’s the same problem that has stalled this work for decades — sometimes it just feels too big to solve.

We have a concept called “Simple Starts” that prompts our employees to adjust the behaviors and businesses processes that make up their day-to-day work. By focusing on behaviors within your immediate control, rather than trying to shift an entire organization’s culture all at once, we have seen incremental changes that add up significantly over time.

At Fidelity, we believe that diversity is a business imperative. A company that has associates with diverse backgrounds and experiences is in the best position to thrive.

So, at its core, this is about finding the best talent to help Fidelity grow as a company and help customers achieve their financial dreams.

What have been the major disruptions in the finance industry, and what have those disruptions meant for Fidelity’s strategy and services?

Fintechs are accelerating the trend toward digital tools and apps, along with lower-fee products, particularly among younger customers and those new to investing. We know that young investors want tools that are easy to use and reflect the digital experiences in other parts of their life, so we have teams dedicated to creating more intuitive digital experiences across all of our platforms.

We are working to make investing more accessible to a broader range of investors. We were the first firm to offer zero minimums to open a retail brokerage account, zero investment minimums, zero commissions for online U.S. stock trades and zero expense ratio index mutual funds.

We listen to our customers and take their feedback into consideration when we’re improving our products. For example, we launched on Reddit in 2021 and through customer feedback, made improvements to our Fidelity flagship app. That improved experience passed one million users on the beta version of the app, and we’re continuing to make improvements and decisions as we hear from customers about what would make their experiences even better.

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“A company that has associates with diverse backgrounds and experiences is in the best position to thrive.”

Where do you see the next big source of disruption?

We face competitive disruption on multiple fronts. The challenges are in four basic areas.

First, we need to address the continual downward pressure on fees and revenues. But low fees and easy-to-use apps, by themselves, are not the goal. The goal is to provide easy-touse investment solutions at competitive prices.

Second, the need for speed across Fidelity’s businesses is critical. Gone are the days of large-scale, multiyear, overly complex projects. Instead, we have rapid, defined product development sprints where we seek customer feedback along the way, making adjustments and changing course in response.

The third imperative is regulatory change. We need to anticipate, prepare for and adapt the customer experience to the requirements of new regulatory regimes. But we don’t want to just comply with the new rules. We want to deliver an exceptional experience that helps customers plan and achieve their financial goals.

The fourth is demographics. Younger customers have different expectations and demands, both as customers and employees. In particular, Gen Z investors are more racially and culturally diverse than previous generations, and the financial education, digital support and investment options that we offer this group need to reflect their unique values and interests.

Fidelity took early leadership in supporting cryptocurrency.

What excites you most about the broader applications of blockchain? Where do you see the risks?

Fidelity has been working for years on a blockchain ecosystem, which started over eight years ago with mining bitcoin and a heavy focus on research. I believe blockchain technology and digital assets will represent a large part of the financial industry’s future.

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asset type and so its adoption as a store of value is not going to be linear. I anticipate that the day-to-day volatility may come down over time as the industry develops new products, which will lead to more ownership and participation by more market participants. One of the biggest risks right now is on the regulatory side, as it’s a new asset type and needs new regulations.

Fidelity holds regular scenario-planning exercises to prepare for novel challenges. What are their benefits and how might they help the company navigate, for instance, an event like the pandemic or the next Great Recession?

The economics of the financial industry continue to require faster speed to market. To bring winning solutions to scale as quickly as possible, we use the “scan, try, scale” process.

First, we scan the environment for new opportunities. Next, we identify new things to try. In this phase, it’s important to stress that it’s all right to fail if, in the process, you learn something about how to improve the customer experience.

Lastly, it’s critical to have the persistence to work through any complexities and scale the ideas that seem promising.

As part of this process, we have engaged in scenarioplanning exercises to stress-test our infrastructure, products and services. This helps us expand our thinking and look beyond just the next year or two. In fact, this type of scenario planning helped us start research on cryptocurrency, which eventually led to an internal experiment to mine bitcoin, and now we have a fast-growing digital assets custody business.

This type of thinking also led us to invest in remote working technology long before the pandemic hit. So, when we had to quickly move to working from home because of COVID-19, we were prepared.

Since the start of your career, you have exhibited a tireless work ethic. What drives you, where do you draw inspiration, and how do you recharge?

The value of staying curious is something I strongly believe in, whether that’s learning a new skill or recognizing something you think is interesting and learning more about that. I try to bring this mindset to work every day.

I also try to make sure I maintain a balance between being in front of employees and customers. Almost every time I visit a Fidelity location around the U.S., I do a town hall meeting with associates. I also attend as many of our client events as my schedule permits, so I can learn about what customers want and need. While the pandemic kept me away from visiting our associates in person, I found other ways to stay connected, including virtual meeting drop-ins and weekly and monthly video updates to our teams around the globe.

It was important to me to continue to be present for our associates as they navigated the challenges of our new remote way of working.

Spending time with my family and friends is very important to me. I also try to spend a lot of time outside doing activities — weather permitting, of course, which is always something we need to pay attention to in New England.

While the circumstances have been different over the past two years, the silver lining has been that it has forced many of us to find new ways to connect with people in a deliberate and intentional way.

As an Art History major, how has your liberal arts background influenced you?

When I think back on it, having a liberal arts degree gave me the interest and curiosity to try new things. It also showed me that you don’t need a finance degree to be successful in the financial services industry. My art history degree helped give me a broader perspective than I think I would have had with a more business-focused undergraduate degree.

What do you treasure most about your time at Hobart and William Smith?

College can be such an inspiring time of life. As you get older, your appreciation grows for how much you learned, the friends you made and the great times. The best part of my time at HWS was meeting and hanging out with so many fun, smart people. It was exciting to meet people who had different ways of looking at the world.

And the HWS campus was and is so beautiful. So, my lifelong love of being outdoors was reinforced by my time at Hobart and William Smith.

What advice would you give students trying to plan their futures?

I always give the same advice that I received growing up: Don’t get caught up trying to get a specific job or work in a particular industry. Instead, focus on obtaining new skills, more education, and seeking out new experiences. Find a job in an area that you find intellectually interesting and that can give you a sense of accomplishment and purpose. Especially when you are young, don’t be afraid to try new things. Don’t feel obligated to follow a career path in an area that you don’t like and are not passionate about.

Of course, you always need to be prepared to do the proverbial pivot if your personal circumstances change or something happens at your company. But in the meantime, try to find something that sparks your intellectual curiosity or your desire to contribute, and see where that leads you.

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MEDITATIONS FOR A BICENTENNIAL

>> Jamey Mulligan ’07 BLUEPRINTS FOR A GREEN FUTURE A senior scientist at Amazon and a judge for the XPRIZE for carbon removal, Mulligan takes the long view on climate change, technology and Earth’s future.

AS A SENIOR SCIENTIST AT AMAZON, Jamey Mulligan ’07 serves as the technical and strategy lead on the company’s carbon neutralization team. His work focuses on assessing a range of natural and technological measures for carbon removal and abatement, accounting for feasibility, lifecycle performance, cost, social impact and scalability, as well as implementing strategies to scale those measures. He was recently selected as one of 12 expert judges for the $100 million XPRIZE for carbon removal. Funded by Elon Musk and the Musk Foundation, the carbon removal iteration of the global science and technology competition is designed to fight climate change by rebalancing the Earth’s carbon cycle.

Broadly speaking, what’s the state of climate change policy and technology, and where is it headed?

We’re seeing an acceleration of progress across a much broader scope of the economy. Not long ago, the central focus was retiring coal plants and incremental gains in fuel economy, and even that could feel hopeless. We’re also seeing — and this is the key to the whole enterprise — a shift in the political economy around the climate agenda.

Wind and solar now have political traction and have come massively down the cost curve. You’re starting to see that same shift with electric vehicles; it’s a race now, with the major automakers trying to catch Tesla. This is the playbook we need to apply to other sectors as well, because even if we’re completely successful in the power and transportation sectors, we still have all kinds of other emissions to deal with — from agriculture to cement production — that for the most part have nothing to do with fossil fuels. We’re starting seeing an increased pace of technological innovation and investment across a much broader set of emissions and opportunities for carbon removal, which is really exciting. As these technologies begin to commercialize, we’ll see the same political economy dynamics start to take hold.

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The Paris Climate Accord projects that we need to cut global emissions by roughly 50 percent by 2030 to limit temperatures to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels (and stave off the worst effects of climate change). Is that doable? Are we on track?

We’re not on track by any measure. Atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases are already at dangerous levels, and we’re seeing the effects, so we need to get to net-zero emissions fast. And once we get there, the only way to return atmospheric concentrations to safe levels is through carbon removal, so we have to learn how to do that at scale. It is doable, technically and economically. The politics are the challenge — politics and the institutional challenges of turning big ships around quickly.

What will it take to get beyond those political and institutional hurdles?

Ultimately, people need to see economic opportunity. You get the big, entrenched industrial players to realize that if they’re not leading the pack, they’re at the end of the line; once they do, and there’s investment, then you start to have political interests and there’s a feedback loop through the policy arena. Just in the last few years, we’ve started to see real traction, at least in the U.S. government. Soon the feedback loops will kick in, with more companies investing and more policymakers supporting them, because these solutions are going to be built and employ people in their congressional districts. We’re on the path, just very early on.

▶ Mulligan previously held positions at the World Resources Institute, where he built and led the institute’s U.S. carbon removal practice, and at the White House Office of Management and Budget. He has played a role in several major climate initiatives, including the LEAF Coalition, Amazon’s Agroforestry and Restoration Accelerator, and the U.S. Climate Alliance Natural and Working Lands Initiative. After graduating from HWS with a B.A. in public policy, he went on to earn an M.S. in natural resources and environment and an M.A. in applied economics at the University of Michigan.

PHOTO BY BEN JENKINS

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MEDITATIONS FOR A BICENTENNIAL

You’re a judge for the XPRIZE Carbon Removal competition, sponsored by Elon Musk, that launched last year. The unprecedented $100 million prize is earmarked for the best solution to pull CO2 “directly from the atmosphere or oceans, and sequester it durably and sustainably.” What is the role of carbon removal in addressing climate change?

produce more food and sequester carbon at the same time, all while restoring land, enhancing biodiversity, feeding people and lifting them out of poverty. I wouldn’t say that every technology that we’ll need has been developed, or fully commercialized, but solutions are there — it’s not crazy to think about putting them all into place.

Carbon removal is a backstop: if you have too much water in the bathtub, the first thing you do is turn the water off, but you’re still going to have too much water in the bathtub, so you have to take some out. We have so many different options that will increase the removal of CO2 from the air and store it—some natural, some technological, some quasi-naturally engineered—but none of them are operating at scale. Global emissions are at 40 billion tons annually, so we have to build capacity for these technologies to be deployed at the gigaton scale. This is a new grand challenge within the grand challenge of stabilizing the climate, and it will increasingly get more attention and finance because it’s necessary.

Considering current reduction, mitigation and adaptation efforts, what does “the future” look like? What’s your sense of Earth’s habitability in, say, 50, 100 or 200 years?

What might these solutions look like, and what are the challenges in implementing them?

Imagine transformation of the world’s pasture from open field to integrated agroforestry systems that support livestock, crops and carbon-sequestering trees. Or large industrial facilities designed to chemically bind CO2 directly from the air. Or mining operations that move alkaline minerals to the ocean to bind CO2 and combat ocean acidification. Or offshore cultivation of kelp on massive floating platforms. There are literally hundreds of concepts for carbon removal, each with its own promise, challenges and constraints to scale. But if we’re going to mount a massive effort — and we have to mount many to stabilize the climate — let’s find opportunities for win-win-win solutions.

Agroforestry, for instance, has been around for many decades. Shade-loving crops like coffee and cocoa can be planted underneath larger shade trees and sequester quite a bit of carbon. In pastures, you can plant leguminous trees that will fix nitrogen into the soil and make the land more productive; at the same time, the trees’ leaves provide fodder and shade for grazing cows, improving meat production.

Time after time, you see that these systems are beneficial from a financial standpoint, from total yield standpoint, from a resiliency standpoint and from a carbon standpoint. That’s why Amazon is investing in these kinds of projects; we can help small farmers in places like the tropics implement these systems in a way that enables them to

We’ve already come a long way, and there’s clarity around what needs to be done and the urgency with which it needs to happen. Energy systems will evolve. We’ll see transformations in industry and in technology. From that standpoint, the future is going to be fascinating.

Even if we avert the worst effects though, we’re still locked in for a material set of impacts from climate change. No matter what we do, we’re going to continue to see natural disasters that upend people’s lives. We’re going to see slower burning issues that exacerbate food and water insecurity, issues that lead to migration of people across the world, that lead to conflict. And it will hit the most vulnerable the hardest, so hopefully we’ll see a strengthening of social safety nets and sustainable development investments to help manage that — both from an equity standpoint and from a stability and global security standpoint.

We have the blueprint, not only the technological and economic elements, but the political elements as well. We put that blueprint together for renewable energy and we can do the same for other technologies. It’s a massive challenge, but you have to be an optimist to work on these issues.

“Energy systems will evolve.

We’ll see transformations in industry and in technology.

From that standpoint, the future is going to be fascinating.”

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INNOVATION IN THE AFTERMATH

Looking back at stressful times in history — the plague, the Hundred Years’ War, the War of the Roses — you see that in the aftermath there’s often a bright period where people work together to achieve great things. We had a struggle with the pandemic but the future is bright, and I think you’re going to see a lot more healthcare innovation because of what we’ve learned.

Healthcare has typically lagged 20 years behind normal businesses in terms of technology, but now Silicon Valley is staring directly at the industry, looking for new ideas to make our institutions more resilient. Between COVID and recent ransomware attacks, there’s a realization that we need to catch up and embrace technology to be flexible enough for the future. With artificial intelligence platforms like the Opollo Ecosystem, we can fully harness available healthcare data to increase patient access to high-quality, low-cost healthcare.

(Think of it as Moneyball for surgery, where the competitive marketplace and the efficiencies gained from more accurate duration forecasts result in increased revenue growth and cost savings for healthcare facilities.)

Everyone agrees that we want higher-quality care at a lower cost — and because this is America, we want it immediately. Whether we like it or not, though, medicine is a business, and our healthcare system is very feudalistic, with massive hospital systems and insurance companies that can dictate prices. But by using technology to better forecast and plan, we can figure out innovative methods to reduce costs, administrative burden and staff burnout, and improve access and care. ▶ Dr. Ryan Young ’11, who earned his dual MD/MBA from the University of Buffalo in 2021, is the founder and CEO of Opollo Technologies, a healthcare AI company. Their cloud-based AI platform, the Opollo Ecosystem, consists of two components: Opollo™, an algorithm that learns from a wide range of healthcare data to yield more accurate surgery duration forecasts in minutes; and the Opollo Exchange, a marketplace for healthcare facilities to sell the resulting operating room vacancies to health insurance companies.

IN THE INFORMATION AGE

The future is fragile, and how it plays out depends in part on how each one of us responds to the information we receive — how we critically think about and organize it, and what actions we take based on what we know and share. Working with electronic records, I’m constantly aware of how easily they can be altered, corrupted or lost along the way if we aren’t careful. In that sense, libraries and archives serve even more important functions in the “internet age.” It is vital to learn how to identify trusted resources, and to trust the custodians of archival and library holdings. They teach us how to evaluate sources and filter information, so we can engage with the past, present and future in a critically-minded and responsible way. One of the most treasured gifts from my years at William Smith was deepening and applying my critical thinking skills — not so much so that I could be a better historian or archivist, but a better citizen of the world. ▶ Rachel Sutcliffe ’02 is an accessioning archivist in the Electronic Records Division of the National Archives and Records Administration, and an adjunct professor at the University of Maryland Global Campus. (The views expressed above are her own and not those of NARA or UMGC.)

THE HEART OF THE STORY

What would you build if you weren’t limited by gravity or space or time? If you had every tool to create something that no one’s imagined before, what would you create? We have amazing tools and technology, but to do something extraordinary, to imagine something no one’s imagined before, is incredibly hard. How do you begin to imagine this thing? That’s where storytelling — more importantly, story-finding — helps people tap into what they haven’t dreamed of yet. It starts with a conversation, which I think of as a mutual path of discovery.

Working in journalism, I learned over time to just stop and listen, to be deeply curious and ask questions for which I had no answer. It’s listening and curiosity and empathy and humility that enable us to create businesses of the future with the tools in front of us. We may worry about technology, that it’s moving too fast, that we can’t quite make sense of it or catch up to it, but I think it frees us to be more deeply human than we had time to be before. It lets us ask: “What

can I do, now that I have one less limitation?”

That’s the possibility at the intersection of technology, storytelling and business that’s so delightful: it’s not just about what I can build, but what I can build that’s good for humanity, that will honor humanity and make it better. ▶ Kristen Adams ’86 is Chief Storyteller and an associate vice president at Cognizant, a Fortune 500 IT services company. She is a former producer at CNBC and ABC.

WORKING AND LIVING BETTER

What I find interesting, in light of the pandemic, is the renewed reflection on the meaning and purpose of work and how we find satisfaction.

We’ve seen how virtual opportunities can engage folks who might have been harder to reach in person, as well as the risks of losing the friendships, opportunities for mentoring and social skills that develop in the workplace and classroom. If you’ve seen the movie, WALL-E, you may remember that image of people in their recliners, clicking their way through life. It feels like that’s one direction that we could go, where we’re hibernating in our homes with our screens, but I’m much more hopeful that we emerge with a renewed value for our connections, and that we use technology to push our thinking and help us work and live better.

We’re at a point now where the pace of change is so dramatic that everyone in the labor market needs to be positioned to keep learning.

Perhaps the one constant going forward will be the importance of human skills: effective communication, empathy, work ethic, individual ownership, responsibility, a willingness to adapt and work well with others — the things you learn in a liberal arts environment like Hobart and William Smith. The need for those skills isn’t going away; they’re just going to be applied in new environments, in combination with new technologies. ▶ Lisa Soricone ’85 is Senior Research Director at Jobs for the Future, a national nonprofit that drives change in the American workforce and education systems to achieve economic advancement for all. continued on p. 59>>

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MEDITATIONS FOR A BICENTENNIAL

>> Peter Luchetti ’77 MANAGING CHAOS Luchetti, a veteran infrastructure investor, previews the big challenges and changes on the horizon for California — and what the rest of the country can learn.

IN AUGUST OF 2020, the LNU Lightning Complex Fire burned more than 350,000 acres across six counties in northern California. Claiming six lives and destroying nearly 1,500 homes, apartments, businesses and other structures, it was one of the deadliest and most damaging fires in the state’s history. It’s also not an anomaly. Some of the state’s most destructive fires have occurred in that region within the past 10 years, scorching millions of acres and razing entire communities.

Peter Luchetti ’77 owns a generations-old family ranch in Lake County, north of San Francisco, that lost three employee homes and two 19th-century barns in the 2015 Valley Fire.

Luchetti, the founder of Table Rock Capital LLC, has spent most of his career in infrastructure investment. He says that the persistent threats to lives and livelihoods call for a new paradigm that embraces the chaotic nature of the near future.

Even with ample precautions, your family ranch suffered damage from the Valley Fire and the LNU Lightning Complex Fire. How did those events shape or change your sense of infrastructure priorities?

Once you’re the victim of a wildfire, you find out how people respond to them. If I call 911 during fire season and they have the resources, we could have 50 to 100 personnel on firetrucks, water tankers and bulldozers at the ranch within 20 minutes — and overhead, Blackhawk helicopters, a 747 airtanker, DC10 air tankers, all with the goal of putting the fires out in five acres or less. And they do it 90 percent of the time.

But during drawdown, when the fires are so large that first responders can no longer make it out, you call 911 and they tell you, “We’re fully deployed. You’re on your own.” During the Valley Fire, we were allowed to drive in to take care of our cattle; on the way, we had to push telephone poles and transformers off the road, chainsaw tree branches that were downed, and euthanize animals because they were injured or burned. During the LNU Lightning Complex Fire, it took seven days for firefighters to get to us; we had to go fight the fire ourselves in the meantime.

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▲ Embers blow off a burned tree during the LNU Lightning Complex Fire in August 2020. Wildfire resiliency is among the areas of focus for Luchetti and his infrastructure investment firm, Table Rock Capital.

Due to climate change, these large fires are occurring continuously from the beginning to the end of fire season.

As former chief of Cal Fire Bob Porter once said, every square foot of California can and probably will burn at some point. In that context, what’s important to understand about these catastrophes — whether you’re talking about a flood, hurricane, tornado or fire — is that the size, scope, magnitude and frequency of these events have eclipsed what we know the institutional response to be today.

PHOTO BY JUSTIN SULLIVAN/GETTY IMAGES

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“…if you’re trained in the liberal arts, you can appreciate these changes and the intensity of them, and take risks to do something good for humanity.” climate change has basically debunked the entire premise.

There’s just no way the response can be adequate. And that’s where the high-reliability organization model comes in. These are public organizations that are willing to overcome prior historical norms and values and embrace managed chaos to respond more realistically to these crises. Seeing the big picture and how the various pieces come together, being able to evolve and change and morph as our society and economy changes — that’s the basis of public policy.

Table Rock makes long-term investments in public infrastructure, like the $41 million, 30-year contract to improve the water and wastewater systems in Rialto, Calif.

What are the benefits of this long-term model, especially as it concerns adapting to and evolving with social, economic and environmental change?

Beyond wildfires, California is dealing with ongoing challenges at the crux of the environment and infrastructure, including drought-related water issues, coastal erosion and housing shortages. What lessons should other states and communities take from California’s experiences?

We need flexibility. Every first responder in the country is trained in NIMS (National Incident Management System) and ICS (Incident Command System), which are very rigid, almost linear structures. ICS starts with FEMA and Homeland Security and trickles down through the federal government to local governments to your local responders. It defines the way emergency response works across the United States, and it’s a beautiful system that’s served us well for a long time, but

We are what’s called a buy-and-hold investor, and we think that’s good for our partners and we think it’s good for us. When a city confronts difficulties in running their own infrastructure, they can outsource it to a group like Table Rock. We’re considered national experts in water-wastewater, and we run systems on behalf of communities like Rialto, a city of 103,000 people in Southern California, where we took over waterwastewater, billing, collections and customer service. These are essential services that people rely on every day, and when you take responsibility for something like that, it’s amazing how deeply involved you become in the culture and economics and ethos of the city.

We’re now in our tenth year of that 30-year contract.

Through a series of very curious questions and conversations with the city, we found that there’s enough biogas produced by the bio-digestion process at the wastewater treatment plant to HO BA RT A ND WI LLI A M SM ITH COL L EGE S / 57

MEDITATIONS FOR A BICENTENNIAL

account for about 70 percent of the energy needs of the waterwastewater system, which accounts for about 20 percent of the energy use of the city itself. There was about five acres of unutilized space at the wastewater treatment plant, so we proposed putting solar panels and a 2.5-megawatt battery there. Between that and an engine that uses the biogas from the biodigester process, we’d be accounting for 110 percent of the wastewater plant’s energy usage, allowing us to take the excess energy and sell it into the grid for a positive arbitrage. In the end, we’ll save about $1.5 million a year in operating expenses, we’ll have a carbon free plant and we’ll be making money for the city in the process.

You’ve been investing in infrastructure for more than 40 years. How did you get your start, and what role has liberal arts thinking played in your strategy?

I came to infrastructure through finance and banking.

I started my career on the trading floor and then ran derivative operations at Goldman Sachs in New York. Later, I took over the derivatives group at Bank of America and ran that globally for a number of years. In my early 40s, I was offered the opportunity to run global investments, providing advice and financing for large capitalization projects such as transportation, energy, communications, water, wastewater and social infrastructure.

Investing is a liberal arts process where, in reconciling these conversations and thinking about the impact of all the different issues at play, you’re constantly learning, constantly resetting, constantly starting over. What’s so fascinating — whether we’re talking about wastewater systems or methane detection satellites or managing wildfires — is that before you know it, you’ve got a foot in just about every discipline you could imagine.

When I got to Hobart College, I was a wild kid from California. I graduated high school as a junior and started college when I was 16 years old. Since then, everything that I’ve learned that could be described as “vocational” has become obsolete in a relatively short period of time. But if you’re trained in the liberal arts, you can appreciate these changes and the intensity of them, and take risks to do something good for humanity.

Looking ahead, where do you see the biggest opportunities and challenges related to infrastructure?

We’re going through a period of strong political reactions and polarization, but I’m optimistic that we can embrace the sort of creative destruction that goes on in American culture to accommodate a transformational economy and society.

With all its limitations and regulations, I believe in America as a capitalist system, in the freedom it offers to create things and deploy capital, but the change we have to be willing to embrace as a society is really large. The U.S. and China are the largest energy consumers in the world, and we can’t 58 / T H E P U LT EN EY STRE E T SURVE Y

>> ▲ Luchetti is the founder of Table Rock Capital LLC, an infrastructure fund that invests in transportation, energy, social infrastructure, water and waste, and communications. He played a central role in the formation of the Marin Energy Authority, the first Community Choice Aggregation enterprise in California, and currently serves on the Board of Directors of the Bay Area Council Economic Institute. From 1994 to 2004, he was Global Head of Project Finance for Bank of America where he managed a 140-person team working in 32 countries around a $5.5 billion portfolio of private debt and equity covering all infrastructure sectors.

Appointed by then-Governor Jerry Brown, Luchetti served for seven years on the Board of the California Infrastructure Bank, including a term as chair.

continue to run our economies using energy in the same way we have in the past. We don’t have to do it with a smaller GDP — we just have to do with a GDP that’s less carbon dependent. But to accomplish that, you have to be willing to change radically.

PHOTO BY ANTHONY CRUZ

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PROPHECY FOR THE PRESENT

The Jewish philosopher Martin Buber says a prophet’s major role is not to predict the future but to call people to act in the present. In general, Judaism is very present-focused: the challenge of the present moment is to maximize your positive impact on the world and on other people. In the Bible, the prophets are always calling out the corruption of the moment and calling on people to act morally, to work towards justice. In that sense, Israelite prophecy is one of the lasting contributions of Jewish culture to Western culture, because you often have a powerless person who has the gall and the courage to stand up to authority — the king, the people in power — and to call them to a higher value system.

As humans, we have a unique ability to project what the future might be based on our knowledge of the past and the present.

However, we live in the ongoing, split-second present moment; once the past is gone, it’s gone, and our future yet hasn’t come — it’s in the realm of possibility but not actuality. Buber and many Jewish philosophers talk about the prophet as pointing to the usable past and looking to a better future, meaning the prophet’s goal, and the real moral force of prophecy, is to assess the contemporary situation and see how it falls short of the ideal future. For Jews, the fulfillment of that future is the betterment of this world in which we live. The past is important because there are these formative events, like the Exodus and the giving of the Torah, and the future exists out there all the time but as a fully realized present; that is, the future is not some heavenly realm, not some other world, but this present historical, political, social world that we’re always working to make better. ▶ Steven Kepnes ’74 is Professor of World Religions and Jewish Studies, as well as Director of Chapel House and Director of the Fund for the Study of the Great Religions, at Colgate University. He is author and editor of several books, including The Future of Jewish Theology and most recently Cambridge Companion to Jewish Theology.

NEXT GENERATION MEMORY

The different tools we use to research and write give us access to different kinds of knowledge.

The creative research and writing practice that I call MemoryWorks grew out of the making

of my book, Accomplice to Memory, a 10-year project trying to trace the history of my father’s exodus from China to the U.S. in the midst of civil and world war. As the oldest daughter of an immigrant father, I had been trying to write a family history using the tools of the social sciences that I’d been trained in: interviewing, ethnography, the archives. But near the end of my father’s life, he shared with me a secret that he had been carrying his whole life in the U.S., and which undermined everything I thought I knew about him and our family history.

When my father revealed the secret to me, he was very elderly and had dementia. He had a fall not long after, and at that point I realized it would be impossible to know what really happened. I began to rethink the tools and methods of the social sciences, how they don’t allow us to access so much of human experience that goes underground.

Especially with immigrant experiences, where trauma and loss are concerned, the limitations of interviewing become obvious — you can’t just ask a question and extract an answer. There’s a story that needs to be told. So my work began shifting towards more artistic forms — fiction, memoir, photography. I realized that a creative, hybrid form was the only way for me, as a next generation writer, to make sense of the past, with all its secrets and intergenerational silences.

The past is not sitting there waiting for us to simply go back to retrieve it; it requires an active process of reconstructing out of fragments, out of absence. What I’m suggesting is that we can’t think about the future separately from this work of trying to trace the past out of the urgency of the present, especially at this moment of reckoning with both our national histories and our personal histories. Memory work is not a simple, straightforward narrative recounting of the past; it’s about how to write into the silences, excavate what’s been buried, and make something new out of the remains. ▶ Kimberly Chang ’83 is the founder of MemoryWorks, a “creative research and writing practice for the next generation,” and Associate Professor Emerita of Cultural Psychology and Creative Nonfiction at Hampshire College. The author of Accomplice to Memory (published under her Chinese name, Q .M. Zhang), which mixes memoir, historical fiction, and documentary photographs to explore the limits and possibilities of truth telling

PHOTOS COURTESY OF COLGATE UNIVERSITY; T. PRUTISTO; AND LINDSAY FRANCE/CORNELL UNIVERSITY UNIVERSITYRELATIONS.CORNELL.EDU/RESOURCES

across generations and geographies, Chang serves as Prose Editor for The Massachusetts Review. Learn more about MemoryWorks at qmzhang.com, and Accomplice to Memory at kaya.com/books/accomplice-to-memory.

SERVICE. LEARNING. ACTION.

Poverty, food insecurity, access to healthcare, education, water and housing, sustainability and climate change — the problems facing communities are persistent, but civic engagement and service learning doesn’t shy away from them; it puts them front and center with a sense of urgency and challenges students to ask: “How do I apply the knowledge and skills I am learning throughout my college journey to make a difference in the world right now?”

Two decades ago, service learning might have looked like a trend, but we’ve seen how experiences outside the classroom help students engage much more deeply in the concepts and theories they’re studying, because they can see them play out — they can literally test whether those theories make sense. So even though we’re working with difficult problems, the learning is deep and potentially transformative, for students and the communities they collaborate with. It opens up a space for questioning our assumptions about teaching, learning and research, about what it means not only for an individual to be a global citizen, but for a college or university to be a global citizen. It helps students — and faculty, administrators and staff engaging with communities — understand what it means to work across differences. Especially with today’s division and polarization, the benefit of civically engaged service learning is that it challenges us to work with, learn from and develop greater empathy for people who are different, so we can build mutually beneficial relationships with one another and with communities that are longlasting and sustained going forward. ▶ Richard Kiely ’86 is a senior fellow at Cornell University’s David M. Einhorn Center for Community Engagement and is co-author of the 2018 book Community-Based Global Learning: The Theory and Practice of Ethical Engagement at Home and Abroad.

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MEDITATIONS FOR A BICENTENNIAL

>> Kanchana Ruwanpura ’93 JUST FUTURES

>>

A professor and researcher, Ruwanpura reflects on economic growth in South Asia, the tenets of equitable development, and the takeaways for the rest of the globe.

SINCE 2019, Sri Lanka has endured a snowballing economic crisis. Inflation and inequality have been amplified by national debt, political strife and economic mismanagement, terrorism, the pandemic, and now the far-reaching consequences of war in Ukraine. In March 2022, Sri Lankan demonstrators took to the streets to denounce fuel, power and food shortages and call for the president’s resignation. While these challenges developed under specific national conditions, they highlight the international threats of economic stagnation, rising authoritarianism, ethno-nationalism and environmental destruction. These strands converge in the research of Kanchana Ruwanpura ’93, a professor of human geography at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden, whose newest book draws attention “to the collective agency of workers” in Sri Lanka’s garment industry. Ruwanpura, who was born in Sri Lanka, has spent her career studying how economic inequality interacts with social and political systems globally — and the people and communities impacted. She says the attempts to reclaim democracy in Sri Lanka, and other international movements for economic justice, suggest a promising if messy path to progress.

Your new book, Garments without Guilt?: Global Labour Justice and Ethical Codes in Sri Lankan Apparels, was published this spring by Cambridge University Press. What questions did you set out to explore, and what did your research reveal?

In a nutshell, I wanted to explore how the Sri Lankan garment industry mobilizes the concept of “garments without guilt,” what makes it an outlier in ethical sourcing and ethical manufacturing in the global garment industry, and how workers make sense of it.

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The success of the Sri Lankan garment industry is a capital-management-labor story. This dynamic means that Sri Lankan apparel, from the viewpoint of labor, does very well in several areas. Work conditions within factories are usually safe and hygienic, child labor is scarce, regular employment is provided and often workers choose to work.

Yet, there are sore points: lack of a living wage and the inability to freely associate and collectively bargain. To quote former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich, “If you can’t afford to pay your employees a living wage, you do not have a viable business model.” Put differently, Sri Lankan manufacturers need to look at their salary distribution from corporate owners to managers to workers — and reconsider how workers ought to be paid a living wage. It will certainly go some way towards alleviating Sri Lanka’s growing and relative income inequality.

This last point also has global resonance. The global garment industry has a plethora of voluntary governance codes to protect and champion worker rights across the supply chain and global production. Yet, the commitment to living wages in supplier countries is poor. I would go so far as to argue that if retailers are unable to guarantee living wages to workers far away, all other ethical codes are on fragile ground.

PHOTO BY JONATHAN MICHAELI

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◀ Alongside her teaching and research, Ruwanpura is a board member of the International Association for Feminist Economists, an editorial board member of the journal Feminist Economics and an editor at Gender, Place and Culture. She previously served as treasurer of the British Association of South Asian Studies. In addition to Garments without Guilt?, she is the author of Matrilineal Communities, Patriarchal Realities and coeditor of Handbook on Gender in Asia.

This spring, the World Bank predicted that growth in South Asia “will be slower than previously projected, due to the impacts of the war in Ukraine and persistent economic challenges.”

Considering these headwinds, what does development in the region look like long-term? What are the challenges of doing it equitably?

I suspect that these will be troubled times for the region, and maybe for the global South more generally. The ousting of Imran Khan in Pakistan, and Nepal expressing concerns about the sustainability of foreign reserves in the Central Bank, are potentially the tip of the iceberg. The World Bank’s announcements echo what many heterodox commentators have been underlining for a while; mainly that more and more countries in the global South are likely to find their debt is unsustainable and default. Sri Lanka may be the bellwether case, with the Central Bank declaring on April 12 that it is temporarily defaulting — the first time since Sri Lanka gained independence in 1948 from the British.

In Sri Lanka today, we have an authoritarian dynastic family at the helm; corruption, crony capitalism, militarization and economic policy mismanagement are all factors that explain current economic and political crisis. However, we also need to critically reflect on how an increasingly integrated global economy and open market policies have led authoritarian rulers to be omnipresent — from Sri Lanka and India to Turkey and even perhaps the U.K. There is a sliver of hope. For the first time in Sri Lanka’s recent history, people have united — after at least four decades of war, violence and bloodshed — recognizing that ethnic and religious schisms were created and aggravated by the political class to mask growing inequality and economic differentiation.

In Sri Lanka, public protests this spring and the first nationwide strike in 40 years come across to me as a reclaiming of the democratic deficit. To me, this is the silver lining. It will be a messy process, as politics and economics are, but people will keep claiming their political and economic rights. David Harvey talks about the current phase of neoliberalism as both authoritarian and anti-democratic; in Sri Lanka that phase is being pulled asunder. This is hope.

Where does the pandemic fit in to the story of Sri Lanka’s economic standing?

In Sri Lanka, the start of the pandemic was a positive story.

A tripartite agreement was reached to protect jobs while industrial workers were on furlough; the country was effectively

managing COVID-19 until early October 2020, when, likely because of corruption between a leading industrialist, the military and the state, community transmission began through a neglected outbreak at a factory setting. Ultimately, COVID-19 was a moment in which the flaws within the Sri Lankan apparel industry came to full view, including the poor housing conditions of workers, who are jammed into shared rooms in private boarding houses. Overcrowded and unregulated boarding rooms are all fertile ground for COVID to spread, and spread it did — rapidly amongst working class communities.

What long-term impediments — or opportunities to reimagine the economy — do you see in a post-COVID world?

I think it is premature to speak of post-COVID futures when much of the global South is still without vaccines; the WHO estimates that it will take another two to three years for everyone in the world to be vaccinated. The current phase is still living with COVID, although the war in Ukraine has overshadowed that reality.

How do we reimagine a future where war, soaring global prices, climate change and a pandemic are a daily feature? The pithy response would be to ask: how did we come to this? How do we tame and regulate capitalism to promote life-making activities, including the environment, which ironically is also essential for the global economy?

Feminist scholars past and present have underlined the need to redistribute wealth and resources to ensure that lifemaking and ecological protection are promoted. To redistribute wealth, we have to tax and, to paraphrase Adam Smith — often considered the father of economics — make those with the broadest shoulders pay their due.

Considering the global economy more broadly, what big changes do you see on the horizon, and what role can educators and researchers play in shaping that future for the better?

I think rising income inequalities and economic differentiation will get challenged globally — and politically, this may mean a pull to the radical right or to the left. It is this opening that, as researchers and educators, we should explore further. I think all of us in academia attempt to do this to varying degrees; in fact, it is because this was my experience as a William Smith student that I find myself as an educator and a researcher. Instead of ignorance and denial, if we adopt a reflective approach to our spaces of learning, educating and researching, then we are more able to acknowledge our possible complicity in structures that shape our unequal lives. Even as this moment seems bleak (and it is at one level), our constant attention to the ways in which we are complicit and have to compromise allows space to invest in a future that is more just — although the path to get there is likely to be both meaningful and messy.

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KEEPER’S HEART OLD FASHIONED

By Pip Hanson Beverage Director, O'Shaughnessy Distilling Co.

◀▲ SCENES FROM THE TWIN OAKS, 1973.

“They’re all pretty good kids, you know. That doesn’t excuse the hell-raising, but it helps put it into perspective.” This was Dominic “Dutch” Venuti’s take on the students who frequented the Twin Oaks during his tenure as owner. Dubbed the “unofficial president, dean, father—confessor and friend” of HWS by the Geneva Times, Venuti (left) ran the restaurant from 1960 to 1974, accumulating a large collection of business cards, postcards and letters from alums (above); he could tell stories about each of them. In 2018, members of the Classes of 1972 memorialized Venuti with a plaque on the site where the Oaks once stood, at what’s now the Hamilton Street entrance to campus.

Keeper’s Heart Whiskey is a bold new style of whiskey that brings together the best of Irish and American distilling traditions to create awardwinning whiskeys. Created by world-renowned Brian Nation — former Master Distiller of Jameson, Redbreast and Midleton — and CEO Mike Duggan ’92, Keeper’s Heart is a truly unique whiskey with big ambitions on the world whiskey stage. Its incredible versatility makes it perfect to enjoy neat, on the rocks or in a cocktail. (The orange peel in the old fashioned never fails to remind Duggan of Hobart.)

INGREDIENTS

2 oz Keeper’s Heart Whiskey ⅓ oz demerara syrup To make this: stir 1 oz demerara sugar and 1 oz water until sugar dissolves

4 dashes aromatic bitters TO MAKE

• Build the drink on an ice sphere in an old-fashioned glass and stir well to begin dilution.

• Garnish with an orange twist.

A Culinary Celebration Ringing in Hobart’s 200th with cocktails, confections and tasty creations from alums.

In honor of the Bicentennial, we asked alums in the food and beverage industry to share original recipes that evoke the Colleges’ heritage, community and school spirit. Cheers! continue reading >>

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BLACKWELL’S TONIC

By Thea Engst ’08

HWS is where I really began to find myself. It’s where I made some of the best and most formative friendships of my life — I grew to become who I was supposed to be because of their support. To represent the people who made the Colleges so important in my life, this cocktail is made with the school colors, purple for Hobart and green for William Smith. It is, like the people of HWS, is colorful and layered.

INGREDIENTS

1 ½ ounces white rum ½ ounce butterfly pea blossom tincture* 1 ounce orgeat ¾ ounce lime juice ½ ounce simple syrup ¼ ounce Velvet Falernum 1 barspoon sweet matcha powder TO MAKE

• In a shaker with ice, add everything but the butterfly pea blossom tincture.

• Shake and pour into a rocks glass, add crushed ice to fill.

• Top with butterfly pea blossom tincture, gently so that it floats.

Drink with a straw. *Butterfly pea flower tincture INGREDIENTS

2 Tablespoons butterfly pea flowers 4 ounces vodka TO MAKE

• Combine and allow to sit about five minutes, until it is the desired shade of purple.

• Strain out flowers.

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MAIN STREET SUB

By Vanessa Baek ’02

Blending flavor profiles from Latin America, South America and the typical New York City corner bodega, the Main Street sub is representative of my life and my experiences at HWS. My parents are Korean, I was born in Brazil and raised in New York, and my friends at HWS came from so many different backgrounds; we shared so many meals together at Saga, but even more cooking for one another. HWS also gave me the travel bug — after my first semester abroad in Madrid, I was hooked. Part of what I love about being in foreign countries and different domestic cities is getting to know the cultures through food, because food brings people together — and brings me back to my days at HWS. *Special house sauce Extra virgin olive oil, white vinegar, cilantro, garlic, sugar, salt (add ground ghost chili to make a spicy version)

TO MAKE, ASSEMBLE:

French roll, slightly toasted Mayo to taste Mustard to taste 2 slices provolone cheese 4–6 slices tomato ¼ red onion, thinly sliced 1 dill pickle, sliced A few cilantro leaves 1⁄2 avocado, sliced 4 ounces chipotle chicken, thinly sliced Handful of iceberg lettuce, finely chopped Special house sauce to taste*

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#HIPHOBARTFOREVER Did you make one of our celeberatory creations? If so, send us a pic or hashtag us if you post to social media.

RAISE A GLASS

Bicentennial-worthy elixirs available soon from HWS and partners. Use QR code for details.

KEEPER’S HEART WHISKEY — SPECIAL BICENTENNIAL BARREL SPICED APPLE CIDER SLUSHY, CONCORD GRAPE FOAM

From O’Shaughnessy Distilling Co.

Fall is my favorite season for desserts — I love apples, pears, grapes and warming spices like cinnamon, cardamom and nutmeg. I came up with this dessert as part of a fall menu and would describe it to the staff as “fall in a glass.” It is also “Geneva in a glass,” inspired by the apples (I always use Red Jacket Orchards apple cider) and the Concord grapes that surround HWS. The rum can be omitted for a nonalcoholic version, just add a little more sugar. Soy lecithin can be found at specialty stores and online.

O’Shaughnessy CEO Mike Duggan ’92 and his team collaborated with HWS to produce this special edition whiskey for the Bicentennial (see cocktail recipe on p. 63). Available exclusively at Pedulla’s Wine & Liquor in Geneva.

By Becky Flammino ’04

Spiced Apple Cider Slushy

Concord Grape Foam

INGREDIENTS

INGREDIENTS

1 quart apple cider (preferably Red Jacket Orchard)

1 pound Concord grapes

1 cinnamon stick 1⁄2 vanilla bean

2 Tablespoons sugar Pinch of salt Soy lecithin

1⁄2 teaspoon whole cloves 1⁄2 teaspoon fresh grated nutmeg 6 whole allspice 2 cardamom pods 1⁄4 cup sugar 1⁄4 cup dark rum

TO MAKE

• In a pot add all ingredients, bring to a boil.

• Turn off heat and let steep for 15 minutes.

TO MAKE

• Allow to cool slightly, in a blender or with an immersion blender blend until smooth and strain.

• In a pot add all the spices and gently crush.

• Return to blender, if cool blend until warm.

• Scrape vanilla bean, add seeds and pod to pot.

• For every cup of grape juice blend in 1 1⁄4 Tablespoons of soy lecithin.

• Add apple cider and sugar.

• Bring to a boil, turn off heat, and allow to steep for 20 minutes.

• Strain and cool.

• Process in ice cream machine.

• Stir in rum, freeze.

• Cool.

TO SERVE

Place apple cider slushy in glass.

With an immersion blender froth the grape foam and spoon on top.

BICENTENNIAL RESERVE + HIP HOBART! RIESLING From Ravines Wine Cellars The Finger Lakes winery owned by Lisa and Morten Hallgren P’19 produced a well-balanced red and a delicate, aromatic white. Available at Ravines tasting rooms on Seneca Lake and Hammondsport, N.Y., and online.

A B O UT O UR CRE ATO RS Mike Duggan ’92 is CEO of O’Shaughnessy Distilling Co., based in Minneapolis. • Thea Engst ’08 is coauthor of Drink Like a Bartender (with Lauren Vigdor), which Forbes named one of the “Best Booze Books of 2017,” and Nectar of the Gods (with Liv Albert), a recipe book inspired by Greek mythology, which was published in April. She also has recipes in The Unofficial Disney Parks Drink Recipe Book, which was on the New York Times bestseller list, and in the forthcoming Epcot edition. Her first solo project, Spirits of the Tarot, is scheduled for publication in 2023. • Vanessa Baek ’02 is the owner of The Heights Deli & Bottle Shop, which has locations in Lincoln Heights and Glassell Park in Los Angeles. • Becky Flammino '04 worked as a cook and pastry chef in New York City for more than a decade, most recently as executive pastry chef at JeanGeorges Vongerichten’s ABC restaurants. In 2022, she began a graduate program to prepare for a new career as a teacher.

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Gifts that Keep on Giving Bolstering the largest fundraising year in HWS history, recent support from alums and friends strengthens the endowment, underwrites faculty research and expands scholarship funding for students.

THE HEATON/FRANKS ENDOWED PROFESSORSHIP IN HUMAN RIGHTS AND GENOCIDE A gift from Dr. Edward Franks ’72 endows a permanent fund in memory of Professor of Religious Studies Richard “Doc” Heaton P’86, in recognition of the late professor’s contributions to awareness of human rights. In his retirement, Heaton guided Dr. Franks’ efforts to initiate the lecture series that became the Human Rights and Genocide Symposium, which Dr. Franks has underwritten since 1999. Established by Dr. Franks in honor of his mentor, the new endowed professorship cements the study of human rights, genocide and social justice as a permanent part of the Religious Studies curriculum. The fund also ensures that the Human Rights and Genocide Symposium remains a permanent component of campus life. As Dr. Franks explains: “This professorship is intended to formalize the Colleges’ commitment to social justice. It emphasizes the importance of these topics to students, graduates and future leaders from the Colleges as well as the wider community that the Colleges serve.”

▲ Roslyn Patel ’20 presenting her biochemistry project at the Senior Research Symposium in 2019.

THE JOHN H.M. HILL SCHOLARSHIP IN CHEMISTRY Chemist and professor John Hill taught at HWS for more than 30 years, shaping the scientific education of hundreds of students from 1961 until his death in 1996. In honor of his life and career, his wife Diane Hill recently committed to a $1 million gift to fund the John H.M. Hill Scholarship in Chemistry, which will support financial aid for HWS chemistry students. The gift was made through the Wheeler Society, established in 1989 to encourage thoughtful planned giving at the Colleges. It is named for Schuyler Skaats Wheeler Sc.D. 1888 — inventor, intellectual and entrepreneur — and his wife Amy Sutton Wheeler, whose bequest was realized nearly 100 years later with the renovation of Gulick Hall. This gift and the people who made it possible serve as the inspiration for today’s planned giving society at the Colleges.

AN INVESTMENT IN THE ENDOWMENT

▲ The curricular focus on human rights dovetails with The March: Bearing Witness, which since 2000 has taken students, faculty and friends from HWS and Nazareth College to important landmarks and historical sites central to understanding the Holocaust.

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Austin Hassett ’69 transferred to HWS with an associate degree, eager to expand his education and perspective of the world. The experience exceeded his imagination, proving so consequential that he wanted to preserve the opportunity for future generations. The result is his planned gift of at least $2 million to the Colleges’ permanent endowment.

Hassett—who graduated with a B.A. in economics, went

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on to earn an M.S. in accounting and finance at Syracuse University, and enjoyed a long career as a financial analyst and programmer on Wall Street — explains that his HWS education “gave me personal and economic success. I credit [the Colleges] with the highest aspiration of education, which is to teach people how to think, not what to think. It was glorious and fulfilled me in a way I didn’t really think was possible.”

RECOGNIZING LIFE-CHANGING SERVICE The Trustee Community Service Award was presented to Betsy Hacker Dexheimer ’57, GP ’18 for her decades of service in Western New York communities.

▲ Austin Hassett ’69 on Keuka Lake.

LEAVE A LASTING LEGACY Throughout the Colleges’ history, alums and friends have made a lasting impact on campus through planned gifts. Since 1989, those dedicated donors have been recognized as members of the Wheeler Society. Honor your HWS experience by becoming a member today. Contact Angela Tallo ’05, Director of Planned Giving and the Wheeler Society, at tallo@ hws.edu or (315) 781–3545.

P.S. For those classes celebrating their 50th Reunion this year, documenting your legacy will count toward your Class Gift!

myhwslegacy.org

Last fall, the Board of Trustees voted unanimously to honor Betsy Hacker Dexheimer ’57, GP ’18 for her longstanding service in the greater Buffalo-Rochester area, particularly her work and advocacy in service of women, children, seniors and low-income residents.

Dexheimer, who led a long career as a special education teacher in Batavia, N.Y., worked with migrant and low-income families for more than 50 years, founding a migrant childcare center and helping expand low-income housing. She was a member of the women’s advocacy group GLOW Women Rise, as well as the Advisory Council for the New York State Office for the Aging Livable Community Vision Team. She also served Meals on Wheels, delivered books to homebound residents for Richmond Memorial Library and volunteered at Crossroads Hospice Center. A longtime Planned Parenthood volunteer, she served the organization’s rape crisis division for more than a decade, making herself available 24/7 to support and advocate for women in need.

“Betsy has dedicated herself to making her community stronger, healthier and more caring, both in her career as an educator and in her tireless volunteer work with and on behalf of her neighbors,” says Craig Stine ’81, P’17, Chair of the Board of Trustees.

Trustee Allison Morrow ’76, chair of the Board’s honors committee, adds, “This well-deserved recognition from the Board underscores the life-changing impact that deep and sustained community engagement can have.”

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Supporting Tomorrow’s Doctors A new endowed scholarship supports pre-med students and honors family bonds.

B Y

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L E A R Y

Hobart and William Smith “is where it all began” for Susan Steinberg Lieberman ’60, P’86, P’88, P’98 and her husband, the late Dr. Robert C. Lieberman ’58, P’86, P’88, P’98.

Susan and Robert met at a social event soon after arriving on campus. They hit it off, started dating and one week after Susan graduated, the couple married.

During Robert’s 50th reunion in 2008, reminiscing about the special place in their lives that HWS occupied, the Liebermans found themselves moved to support the Colleges in a lasting and meaningful way — “to give back to Hobart and William Smith for all it has given to us,” Susan says.

That conversation spurred a plan that has now become a reality: the establishment of the Lieberman Family Endowed Scholarship Fund, which will support HWS students pursuing a premedical course of study.

The endowed fund commemorates the impact HWS had on Robert, who was a pre-med student and held a long career as a colorectal surgeon. Susan recalls the mentorship of biology professors T.T. Odell and Dick Ryan, who “were so influential in Robert’s decision to pursue being a doctor.”

In fact, Robert learned of his acceptance to New York Medical College when Odell, then chair of the Biology Department, walked to Robert’s dormitory during a snowstorm to deliver the news in person.

The gift is also a way to support an institution that has come to occupy a key place in the Lieberman family: three of Robert and Susan’s four children —

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Aaron Lieberman ’86, Miriam Doremus ’88 and Naomi Bush ’98 — are HWS graduates, as are Aaron’s wife, Jackie Gilbert-Lieberman ’89 and Miriam’s husband, John Doremus ’88.

“I can’t tell you how much the school means to us,” Susan says. “My husband and I loved Hobart and William Smith and always will.”

Assistant Vice President for Development Kelly Young P’16 says the Liebermans’ story “epitomizes the lifelong impact that HWS has on our graduates, both in their education and in the relationships they forge here. We are grateful and proud that they have chosen to give back and make those experiences possible for future generations.”

While Robert attended medical school, Susan continued her studies at HWS, earning a B.A. in psychology.

After medical school, Robert began an internship at Albany Medical Center, and Susan worked as a teacher until Aaron was born. For 40 years, they remained in Albany, where Robert established a private practice and eventually became president of the medical group that oversaw the practice. After Robert’s retirement, the couple lived on Long Island for several years. Susan returned to Albany after Robert passed away in 2014.

To this day, she wears a touching reminder of both her husband and the Colleges; Robert had his Hobart ring fashioned into a bracelet, a gift for her 25th birthday.

“It’s so beautiful,” Susan says. “I never take it off.”

▲ The yearbook photos above picture the late Dr. Robert C. Lieberman ’58, P’86, P’88, P’98 and Susan Steinberg Lieberman ’60, P’86, P’88, P’98 as students.

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Your Gift to the Annual Fund Matters Your gift supports every aspect of the HWS experience, from academics to guaranteed internships to experiential learning.

The Annual Fund helped Shayna Riggins ’22 find her career path through multiple internships.

During the academic year, an Annual Fund stipend supported Shayna’s professional development in advertising and media internships, which prepared her well for a competitive summer internship at ViacomCBS.

The Annual Fund prepared Matt Nusom ’23 to put ideas into action.

Encouraged by his professors and supported by the Annual Fund, Matt channeled his curiosity about innovation into a podcast, “Entrepreneurial Endeavors,” which shares stories of HWS alums who have launched companies.

The Annual Fund encouraged Alex Dwyer ’23 to explore the curriculum and help other students do the same.

With support from the Annual Fund, Alex immersed herself in geoscience and environmental studies coursework, which prepared her for research and peer mentorship — as well as a prestigious 2022–23 Goldwater Scholarship.

You can help more students with a gift to the Annual Fund for Hobart and William Smith today. Contact Dulcie Meyer P’20 at (315) 781–3082 or dmeyer@hws.edu | www.hws.edu/give HO BA RT A ND WI LLI A M SM ITH COL L EGE S / 6 9

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The Music Never Stopped B Y

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Awash in creative energy, Eric Andersen ’65, L.H.D. ’22 left Hobart in 1963 and hitchhiked to San Francisco “with my notebook and my guitar...to meet the Beats,” as he recalls in the 2021 documentary of his career, The Songpoet. Writers like Allen Ginsberg and Lawrence Ferlinghetti “taught me new ways to see and a new way to live. Their words have freed and inspired my own writing as intensely as any reality that surrounds me.” The following winter, Andersen moved east to Greenwich Village and began composing songs like “Thirsty Boots” and “Violets of Dawn,” which would cement him as a folk musician of the first order.

Drawing inspiration from an eclectic range of music, art and literature, he has transcended the folk scene and the “singer-songwriter” label. He has performed in concert with Bob Dylan, Elton John and The Doors, and was part of a trans-Canadian train tour with Janis Joplin, The Grateful Dead, Buddy Guy and The Band — all between writing and recording scores of original songs that have been covered by everyone from the Dead and Dylan to Johnny Cash. Early on, he taught Joni Mitchell her first open tunings, which became her signature style of playing.

Through thick and thin, Andersen’s prolific creative output has continued unabated, with dozens of albums to date alongside essays for National Geographic Traveler and The Rolling Stone Book of the Beats. As he told Rolling Stone last year, “My wife Inge says you’re put on Earth to finish the things you were supposed to finish. And I know with me, in my case, it’s music and writing. I know there are things that are not finished yet. So, you know, we hang in there...to accomplish the things we were planning to do.”

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FEEL LIKE COMIN’ HOME

BY ERIC ANDERSEN ’65, L.H.D. ’22

Can’t say this world’s been wrong to me Live and let live and let us all be So many faces gone away from me I ask, where do they all go?

I sailed the seas and I sailed the roads I’ve been afraid and I’ve been alone Been chained to the things of what I don’t know Now it’s time to let the river just flow Cause now I feel, I feel it’s time, I feel like…

Like I’m comin’ home Better find shelter you’re out on your own Get out of harm’s way get out of the road Some days you wonder why you ever were born Ya come in and go out alone I saw the apple of my eye She looked so young but she looked so wise She don’t back down or compromise She knows just where it’s all going But I sailed the seas and I sailed the roads I’ve been afraid and I’ve been alone ▲ Eric Andersen ’65, L.H.D. ’22 (right) rehearsing with Rob Stoner, Joan Baez and Bob Dylan in New York City, ca. 1975.

Been chained to the things of what I don’t know Now it’s time to let the river just flow Cause now I feel, I feel it’s time, I feel like…

Like I’m comin’ home Like I’m comin’ home

PHOTO BY FRED W. MCDARRAH/MUUS COLLECTION VIA GETTY IMAGES

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PA R A L L E L S legal minds, family bonds and optimistic visions across the generations

What interests you most about the law? LB: Being able to protect and defend my community. JBJ: Helping people solve difficult problems that they cannot solve alone.

Favorite political science course?

LB: Modern Political Theory.

JBJ: Native People’s Politics.

If you could share a meal with anyone, living or dead, who would they be?

LB: My grandparents. JBJ: Either of my parents and their parents.

LITZY BAUTISTA ’23 President of William Smith Congress and aspiring lawyer Former Intern for Brian Barnwell, New York City’s District 30 Representative Junior Board Member of the Boys & Girls Club of Geneva Major: Political Science and Latin American Studies Hometown: Los Angeles, Calif.

What’s the most interesting thing about you that’s not on your résumé?

LB: I’ve been trying to learn Zapoteco, an indigenous language spoken by the Zapotec people in Oaxaca, Mexico, which is my father’s first language.

JBJ: I underwent rites of passage as a teenager in my father’s ancestral village in Sierra Leone. Who I am as a man is a direct result of that experience.

What motivates you? LB: My younger siblings and parents. JBJ: Making my family proud of me.

Who is your hero? LB: My parents — their journey of moving to the U.S. and raising a family will always amaze me.

JBJ: I just welcomed my second son, and the difficulty that my wife endured during both postpartum periods is unbelievable. She is my hero.

If you could wake up tomorrow with a new skill, ability or quality, what would it be? LB: Being able to speak all languages! JBJ: Getting my newborn to sleep at night.

What are you most grateful for?

LB: The beauty the Earth provides.

JBJ: The life and good health of myself and my family.

What’s the best way to start the day?

LB: Going to the gym. JBJ: Some good music and karate exercises with my son.

What is something you will never do again? LB: Eat pickles. JBJ: Climb Mount Fuji.

Name two things that make you optimistic about the future.

LB: Technological advancement helping us be more eco-friendly, and social movements helping us reach racial equity. JBJ: The beauty I see in my kids’ faces, and my upcoming vacation. (Don’t judge me. Lockdown was long.)

JONIS BELU-JOHN ’04 General Counsel at a startup J.D. from Georgetown University Major: Political Science and French Former Student Trustee Hometown: Upper Marlboro, Md.