Volume 41 - Issue 2

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ill Ayers? The New journal has never f such a man. We did, however, raise $15 million in September.

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THE NEW JOURNAL

Volume 41, Number 2 October 2008

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12 BUILDING BLOCKS

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New Haven models new development on an old urban ideal.

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·by Sarah Nutman

20 WHAT OB

OWES NEW HAVEN

The city's black leaders speak.

by Ben Lasman 34 MAPQUEST •

Where in the world of academia is geography?

byLauraZax

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9 THE NUCLEAR TESTAMENT The Yale Divinity School talks disarma anent. by Kate Selker 17 CONTINENTAL DRIFT As a legendary philosopher concludes his career, ·the Yale Philosophy Department contemplates its future. ' by Sophie Quinton

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4 POINTS OF DEPARTURE 7 PROFILE A Light Touch by Amy Fish •

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29 PERSONAL ESSAY Bare Market by Laura Bennett 31 THECRITICALANGLE StuckK by Haley Cohen 38 ENDNOTE The Book of Goldman by Dara Lind The New Journal is published five times during the academic year by The New Journal at Yale, Inc., P.O. Box 203432 Yale Station, New Haven, CT 06520. Office address: 305 Crown Street. All contents Copyright 2008 by The New Journal at Yale, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Reproduction either in whole or in part without written permission of the publisher and editor in chief is prohibited. While this magazine is • published by Yale College students, Yale University is not responsible for its contents. Seventy-five hundred copies of each issue are distributed free to members of the Yale and New Haven community. Subscriptions are available to those outside the area. Rates: One year, $18. Two years, $32. The New Journal is printed by Turley Publications, Palmer, MA; bookkeeping and billing services are provided by Colman Bookkeeping of New Haven. The New Journal encourages letters to the editor and comments on Yale and New Haven issues. Write to Editorials, 203432 Yale Station, New Haven, CT 06520. All letters for publication must include address and signature. We reserve the right to edit all letters for publication. •

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CAN'T HARDLY WASTE They amass: dented green beads one pea-hater culled from a plate of penne; French fries soggy with ketchup; the crisp curled edges of a cheese omelet. Every few hours, an army of leftovers retreats on gray trays into Yale kitchens, where the food residue, unseen and forgotten by those responsible for it, is · washed down the drain. Yale handles five hundred tons of biodegradable dining hall waste each year. Unlike pantry waste (expired bread or rotten tomatoes), preparation food waste (turkey trimmings), and serving waste (that tray of lasagna that sat out for hours), plate waste doesn'r usually end up in the dumpster. Instead, as food is scraped off plates, special pulpers, filters, or floating tanks the precise technology varies by college catch the residue, which is then pumped out by an independent disposal company hired by Yale. The remaining greasy mess is sent to the Water Pollution Control Authority, which treats the water before sending it on its way to Long Island Sound. This fall, a composting pilot program run by the Yale Recycling Office aimed to alter that time-honored journey. From the start of the fall term until October 10, leftover meals, peels, rinds, bones, wooden stirrers, napkins, and other biodegradable dining accessories from Commons and the Branford, Saybrook, and Twmbull dining halls were rerouted

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composting. "When it comes down to it, it's numbers." But it's also education. May recalls the day a woman attending a composting demonstration he hosted picked up a handful of compost aftermath and finally understood that the beautiful, rich soil she held in her hands came from food. That day, May says, "she got it." For now, the biggest hurdle to campus-wide composting is Yale's lack of local facilities and infrastructure to accommodate its food waste. In an attempt to fill part of this gap, the University is planning a trial with the Somat eCorrect Waste Reducer. The new system would take some time to set up (the machines, which are as big as compact cars, require a lot of space) and much capital investment (a single machine for average use will cost up to $16,000) but it would enable Yale to do one step of composting on its own. The Somat reduces the volume and weight of food by about 80 percent, with distilled water as a byproduct. The final product is thus dry not "yucky," according to May. Since it is not pure compost and probably cannot be directly used as fertilizer, no one has figured out what to do with the devolumized waste. Still, the reasoning goes, one hundred tons of food waste is at least better than five hundred. Most Yalies, however, never noticed the pilot program happening under their noses. As dining hall workers obligingly ran the show backstage, Yale diners were held no more responsible for their waste than before. Despite May's fond memories of those who "got it," the army of food waste marches on, untouched by its creators.

for compost collection. Composting addresses solid, untouched food that would otherwise be thrown out as well as the food, oil, and grease (affectionately acronymed FOG) that washes off plates. As lare as 1990, Yale sent both kinds of waste to local pig farmers, who happily fed it ' · to their hogs. One such farmer would tote a 55-gallon drum on top of his car to pick up liquid food slop from Commons. But both farmers and dining hall . · workers grew dissatisfied with the arrangements. Moreover, the pig farming industry was in decline, and with the advent of trichinosis, a disease circulated by infected meat, Connecticut forbade livestock from ingesting post-consumer food that hadn't been thermally treated. The last farmer who continued to pick up food from Yale eventually opted for Dunkin' Donuts instead: his pigs liked the doughnuts, and they were legal, far-· tening, and dry. Yale's current food waste isn't pretty. Under this fall's pilot program, about 1,500 pounds of decaying food waste from Commons alone waited for each thrice-weekly pick-up. . Dining hall workers say they didn't mind the new system. After all, rotting food was nothing new, even if it was going into a different place. Under the new program, the food waste Was sucked up by John?s Refuse and Recycling trucks and transported to New Milford, 65 miles from Yale, where it composted for sixty days before being transformed into fertilizer. Yale's leftover food thus became part of a process that changed food waste to pure organic topsoil. "The food was wonderful," says CJ May. "Now we're making it wonderful again." May is Yale's recycling coordinator, outspoken and energetic, with rolled-up sleeves and a grey ponytail. His cluttered office in the basement ofWelch Hall is decorated with shirts reading, "TALK TRASH TO ME." May shares a vision for Yale's trashy future in which he would take a pile of fertilizer made from the University's food waste and dump it in Beinecke Plaza with a sign informing students, "This is Where Your Food Went." He admits that "it's hard to get philosophical" about

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the "fundamentals" of our economy w.ere still strong, even if they weren't. Before . this fall, the greatest challenge the Bar Cars faced was the possibility of MetroNorth closing them down, which would J have happened in 2007 had not dozens l •.·'of brave commuters signed a petition to \\ \ save them. But as I rode the booze ex·. . · , press back to New Haven, it became ap" ·· parent that the already-endangered Bar Cars and the financial titans whom ·• • . --they water face dizzying problems ih ' · the months ahead . . -· : - . The first tip: The car was nearly empty; I was one of eight passengers. The second tip: There were no women. Before we left, an old lady stepped in briefly, laughed, and walked away. Another ordered a gin and tonic and scuttled off to the front of the train. From an anthropological LIQUOR RUN standpoint, any open social setting'-especially an alcoholic one-devoid of Social settings can often be used as ballgender diversity is probably unhealthy. park barometers for our nation's overall Things were not looking good. health. Judging from what I saw on MetPeople loosened their ties and broodro-North's Bar Car last week, America ed silently. No one knew anyone's name. may be in for a rough ride. "It's like being in a really shitty jungle The Bar Car is exactly that: a single club drinking beer out of plastic bottles," coach that sells copious amounts of al~ne man told me. The floor looked grimcohol to businessmen on their way Ier than usual, and the smell of disinfechome to their families in Connecticut. tants and old urine so charming in the Metro-North has nine of them, and tP,ey cargo-hold crowding of earlier days:run weekdays during the evening rush.: ·just seemed tired. They're a lot like regular cars, but in~tead; · - Gone were the shouts of frat-boysof seats they have a bar and cocktail!- gone-Wall-Street; instead, a man comstyle lounging arrangements. During' , plimented my copy of Blood Meridian. the commute, a few lonely people dot I grimaced I didn't come to the bar car the circular seating areas near the often~or literary companionship. faulty bathrooms, and everyone else . I noticed that the beer prices, long packs into the middle of the car, near the ·,_ ..~ admired for their consistency, had been bar. As is true for all the other Metro~ : . · --~lightly raised. I asked the bartender if North cars, the lights are fluorescent and - people were drinking more now that the the floor is dirty. There is also strange, economy was bad. She looked at me and jungle-themed bamboo wallpaper. shook her head, but I suspected a differThe first time. I rode the Bar Car, I ent story. disembarked inspired and more than a As the car slowly emptied, I thought little unsteady. It was this past summer, about my Bar Car frolic not so long ago. I was leaving New York, and all around Where were the drunken analysts, their me merry businessmen on their evening ties flung over their shoulders? Where ~ommutes home were getting riotously, were the puddles of Sam Adams on the Inexcusably drunk. Everyone called out floor, racing toward the back of the train? to people by their first names. I ordered We passed Westport and I was the only a Heineken, and another, and another. one left. I was getting nervous. We were 1he roorii was full of half-tied ties and hurtling into darkness, the Bar Car a market banter. The toilet overflowed. I seeming symbol for a state in decline. I Watched a balding man seduce a beauti-needed another beer. When I got up to ful woman. . the bar, my Stella was $3.50. I was a dolBut that was before Merrill, before Lelar short. hman, before September and bailouts,. iri the halcyon days of summe~ 2008. When -Jordan ]aelts. •

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Not yet weathered by the elements, the light lumber frame stood. A small band of students and a few professional builders, distinguished as much by their confidence on ladders as their yellow shirts, balanced atop the slats of the newly-raised roof. The whir of a single drill jarred me out of the idyllic scene, void of technology until the sound of the tool. This September Saturday had

drawn a crowd of local families, scraggly students, and sustainable building enthusiasts to see the raising of the Yale Farm's new pavilion. The event billed as a barn raising despite the fact that the open structure is more roof than barn signaled both a beginning and an end at the Farm. The following Friday, Josh Viertel, co-founder and co-director of the Yale Sustainable Food Project, left New Haven to become the president of Slow Food USA. The pavilion was his last nourishing contribution to the Yale community. Just eight years after Viertel's ·arrival at Yale, the Yale Farm and the Sustainable . . . Food Project have become an integral part of Yale's culture and educational philosophy. The farm is about more than just food production: "It's an educational _ facility," said Viertel. ''And to maximize education, we needed a space for educating on a rainy day, a place where our students can find shade, a structure that allows us to gather together for workshops, for community." They needed a "barn." Cpnstruction of the pavilion evolved from sustainable ethics, or the desire to minimize environmental impact and support local industries. To ensure that construction of this educational space was educational in practice, Viertel and his colleagues had students do it themselves. · A traditional barn raising might look something like this: Farmer Jebediah needs a barn, so he calls some buddies (sans phone, of course it is the 18th century), the whole community moseys on down, dears the ground, lays in the lumber and hardware, and, with a series of collective "heave-hos," lifts each beam into place. Now imagine that Jebediah is your roommate, invitations are sent via email, and the community treks up Science Hill. The "barn-raising" at the Yale Farm was as authentic as it could have been, given the century. Using ropes, a dozen screws, and that old-fashioned, can-do colonial spirit, the barn was raised entirely by hand. Brendan Matthews, the head of the Barn Raisers, a professional team of sure-footed, yellow-shirted experts who guided Yalies as they tripped over ropes and attempted not to hammer their fingers, attended his first barn-raising at 13. He was so moved by the communal construction of something tangible that he knew he wanted to build barns (or pavil-

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ions, as the case may sometimes be) for the rest of his life. Viertel felt a similar thrill at the September event. "This shows us what communities can accomplish," he said . "Something as elementary as picking up one of these support slabs is impossible for a single pair of hands. But together we built this." The barn is the most sustainable building on campus: With no insulation, electricity, or plumbing, its carbon footprint is negligible. It also may be the building which most belongs to Yale. What we think of as Yale architecture is not Yale's but rather imitation Cambridge and Oxford, complete with acid-aged stone. Lacking four walls and a floor, the pavilion does not pretend to be anything it is not (except, perhaps, a barn). Its lumber originated in the Yale Forest, where Forestry School students marked and, with the help of a team of undergrads, cut trees. Shaped and erected by Yale hands, the pavilion is a structure ofYale, by Yale, and for Yale. At the communal dinner after the raising, food and flowers stretched from the pavilion to the street. As the sky darkened, barn raisers and curious onlookers alike gathered under the new pavilion for a good old-fashioned contra dance. "The building held this incredible energy," reflected Viertel. "The barn just worked. And I realized, in that moment, that I could step out and all this will continue. It has its own energy now." Since that day, the traditional pine branch nailed to the barn's roof, a talisman for long life, has already started to break apart. When it finally detaches, the pavilion will stand as ifit has always been there, rooting us to Yale and Yale to the land.

-Elizabeth Deutsch

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Award-winning filmmaker teaches Yalies to let go.

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Film, says Laura Poitras, "takes over your whole world." Poitras is young-looking, with pretty, thick-lashed brown eyes. She gestures delicately with her long, pale fingers, speaking softly and lifting her voice to curl statements into questions: "I think we should just talk about ideas?" She is fond of saying "like" and "totally," and there is something girlish about the way she forms her l's lightly, with the very tip of her tongue. She is hardly the picture of a war-zone reporter. Yet she is now working on the second film of a planned trilogy about the aftermath of September 11. The first, the 2006 Iraq documentary My Country, My Country, launched her to national prominence with Oscar and Independent Spirit Award nominations. Despite her subject matter, Poitras insists, "I just think of myself as an artist .... Before this I wasn't. . running around going to war zones. I'm not, like, a war filmmaker." Until recently, she wasn't even a documentary filmmaker. Poitras started in the '80s as a chef in expensive French restaurants in San Francisco. As the work slowly sapped her love of cooking, she turned to another sort of craft, tak-

October 2008

ing classes in avant-garde film and eventually leaving the restaurant for her new love. She eventually drifted to cinema verite, recording "truth" without artificial devices like interviews or the filmmaker's visible presence. Her 2003 film Flag 'Wars was her first documentary, the globally acclaimed My Country, My Country her ·second. She is now working on the second installment of her 9/11 trilogy. Film has taken Poitras over, and she has rio plans to shake its hold.

Her mantra is simple. She asks offilms-her own and others' only one thing: want to be moved. " "That experience of filming, that's what I live for," she explains. "When you're really capturing something that's happening before you just in really human terms. Really surrendering, forgetting your ego and just being present and telling a story there's just nothing like it when it's happening." Surrendering: Poitras uses the word as if she had fallen into her success. As if she •

were watching a film instead of making one. Watching, of course, is how her love of movies developed: "Like, Mean Streets by Scorcese when I was 15. Everything about it a dark theater with popcorn and seeing and watching an image as a story unfolded in front of me it's one of the best experiences. It's still completely satisfying." Her cinematic taste ranges widely, from classic movies to the avant-garde genre in which she was trained. Her mantra is simple. She asks of films her own and others' only . "I want to b e moved" one th mg: . IN A CLOSET-SIZED ROOM in the Yale Digital Media Center for the Arts, seven students all female are engaged in a heated debate. The members of this year-long documentary film workshop, designed for Film Studies senior projects (although only two rn.embers of the class are in the major), are discussing their approach to a group documentary on the November 4 elections. As the conversation jumps from the significance ofNew Haven's homeless population to the Science Hill cupcake cart, Poitras listens intently, resting her chin on her hands. As a guest professor, Poitras has stepped into 7

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the shoes of documentary greats like D. A. Pennebaker, who traditionally teaches this class. But Poitras speaks unassurningly, like an eighth student, and the students interrupt her just as often as they interrupt each other. This is group brainstorm: relaxed and free of hierarchy.

'Just, like, surrender. And if it doesn't turn out, it's really okay?" The class laughs guiltily, caught in the act. Near the end of the class, once the group has agreed, mostly, on a plan of action for their election documentary, Poitras gently moves back into teaching mode. "Just, like, surrender. And if it doesn't turn out, it's really okay?" The class laughs guiltily, caught in the act. "Try to make it observational and not interject too ffi\lCh. Surrender to what· ever h appens. " She tells a story. To make My Country, My Country, which centers on the 2005 elections for the Iraqi Transitional Na-

tiona! Assembly, Poitras filmed in Iraq for eight months, mostly living with and shadowing a middle-class Baghdad physician and local activist named Dr. Riyadh. In the film, Dr. Riyadh runs for the Baghdad Provincial Council as a member of the Sunni-run Iraqi Islamic Party. When the Sunni leadership decides to boycott the elections, Dr. Riyadh still seems committed to voting. But on election day the climax of Poitras's workOr. Riyadh stays horne, sending his wife and children to vote alone. "So Dr. Riyadh the day of the election I had gotten permission to go to the polling center with him ... and t;hen he totally didn't go out, he didn't leave the house? And I was like, my film is ruined!" Everyone laughs. "The film is ruined, nothing happened, because my main character is chicken. And I called my producer and I was like, 'It's terrible. It's terrible, he didn't go out.' " Though some of the students begin their own conversation, Poitras continu.es in her usual quiet way. "But then after, I realized: It actually made the story more tragic. It's kind of like this surrender, like you have these ' certain expectations that things are going to be a certain way... but other things can happen that might be more interesting. So just go with it." The class chews on this. Then a girl ' asks, "How many minutes are we shooting for?" Poitras laughs. The girl adds, . 1y, " ... -1s •. h:>" contnte . . "Just relax," Poitras says. "Totally re, I ax. FoR PoiTRAS, ARTISTIC surrender opens the door to action. "There's a certain kind of magic that happens," she explains. "When you're filming something and there's some kind of dramatic moment happening, I'll climb buildings; I'm totally not shy. When I have a camera in my hand I sort of become another person." The camera is her superhero cape, but it brings her closer to, not farther from, reality. She wants her students to climb buildings, too, if not leap atop them in a single bound. She likes that the class is about "making things" instead of talking about them. The class jokes about persuading construction workers on Science Hill to lift a student or two in a crane, high above treetops, for a bird's-eye shot of the city. They are only half-kidding. Filmmaking requires "just jumping into

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the world," Poitras says, "stepping outside your comfort zone" into a reality that defies theory. She loves the play between what she expects to happen and what actually happens in front of her camera lens. Between documentary filmmaking as real-time movie watching not so different from Mean Streets at 15 and as a controlled artistic act. She made .My Country, My Country both to record history and to offer her own vision of the war in Iraq. It was a visceral urge, she explains, "like when you feel like you need to say something." Even when she wears her cape, she remains half-Clark, half-Superman. In perhaps her most superhuman feat, Poitras shot most of My Country, My Country in a language she couldn't understand. Filming subjects in Arabic without a translator, she worked by feel, using her instinct partly as a filmmaker, but mostly, she claims, as a human being. "I pretty much know, 'This moment is going to be good.' There's something about human drama that you can almost see in a clearer way when you don't know the language.'' Still, ~nee back in Amer- · ica, receiving the translation of her footage was "like Christmas. Or Ramadan, or whatever." In the last scene of My Country, My Country, after Dr. Riyadh hears that he has lost the election, he stands in the doorway of his living room speaking to his wife and daughters, who smile and crow, "B ravo, Bravo.'" "I kn ew It . was t h e last scene," Poitras recalls. "I thought it was a save-the-day kind of thing." To Poitras, the family seemed to be honoring their father for his heroic efforts to help his country. The eventual translation shocked her: Dr. Riyadh, the stubborn patriot, announces to his family that he wants to leave the country. His all-female audience responds: Bravo, Riyadh, you finally came to your senses! While filming the scene, Poitras says, "I didn't know it was sarcasm, so I completely misread the situation but it was still the end of the film." She was both right and wrong, in control and in surrender.

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The Yale Divinity School talks disarmament. By Kate Selker Standing in the Yale Divinity School common room, beneath the benevolent gaze of portraits of deans past, were a Navy officer, a United Nations diplomat, and a slew of clergy from around the country. They were mostly white, mostly male, and mostly middle-aged not the usual demographic to be discussing "vulnerability." But as the room filled with the melodies of choir practice from across the quad, the crowd spoke of an "anxious age." Though the only weapons on the premises were special YDS ballpoint pens poised to fill tender Moleskines and stern legal pads, the assembled were convinced they were not safe. Participants in the Divinity School's annual Sarah Smith Conference gathered on Prospect Street to talk about nuclear nonproliferation. Held in honor of YDS graduate and Methodist moral leader Sarah Smith, who died in 1999, October 2008

the conference was designed to focus on different issues of ethical and religious relevance; in recent years, it has centered ~ on homelessness and public faith. This year's topic, in line with Yale's push for global engagement and growing academic angst over nuclear policy, was ''Are We Safe Yet? Vulnerability and Security in an Anxious Age." The question drew a crowd of 112 from across the Northeast, as well as some from as far away as the UK, Canada, and Australia, for two packed September days to ponder how religion, Yale, and religion at Yale can possibly change the world. Playing a starring role at the conference was Sergio Duarte, the UN's High Representative for Disarmament Affairs, who gave the keynote address. "Disarmament, in short, represents the fusion of idealism and realism," he declared. "It is the right thing to do, and it works."

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Religious leaders, he explained, can extend their mission of "serving the human family" by joining in the push for total nuclear abolition. His idea is not a new one, dating back at leas_t as far as the 1980s, when the US Council of Catholic Bishops was one of the most vocal advocates of the Nuclear Freeze movement; calling for a moratorium on all nuclear production. And at Yale during the '60s and '70s, the University's spiritual community benefited from the energizing presence of its chaplain, Reverend William Sloane Coffin YDS '56. Coffin preached desegregation, anti-war action, and, after leaving Yale and relocating to Manhattan's Riverside Chapel, anti-nuclear activism. As Coffin well understood, · nuclear disarmament can take on a special urgency in the hands of the faithful. Tyler Wigg Stevenson YDS '04, who

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spoke at the conference, was an anti-nuclear activist for years before a religious conversion led him to locate new moral stakes in his cause. Now, he explains that America's nuclear arsenal sets the country "squarely in the face of the wrath and judgment of God." He currently works for Faithful Security, a coalition group that bridges faith communities to purStJ.e nuclear nonproliferation, and warns that the US government "seeks to elevate America above that which God has ordained any nation to be."

(CWe need all hands on deck~ " Schell says. c:And that very much. . . includes religious bodies. These are questions of cosmic~ spiritual importance and philosophical . zmportance. ~~

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Stevenson was one of the younger, and louder, conference participants. ''I'm sure someone here thinks I'm a zealot,"

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once a movie star, a prophet, a sage, and a best friend. "Bill said, 'I'm an old man, I'm dying, but come to my house and we'll talk about this,"' Lindner recalled. The ideas spawned during this intimate gathering eventually grew into this fall's conference as well as a nuclear-themed issue of Reflections to be published this • spnng. Lindner's magazine highlights a progressive strain of thought thriving on the Sterling Divinity Quadrangle. Articles titled "Jesus of Hollywood" and Scripture in the Digital Age" suggest that the Divinity School has not forgotten its forward-thinking heyday; recent issues ... have centered on how sex, immigration, foreign policy, and environmentalism interact with issues of faith. In a high-profile academic move, the Divinity School drew Tony Blair to New Haven to teach a course on "Faith and Globalization" with YDS Professor Miroslav Volf, who played a large role in organizing September's conference. Volf spoke at the beginning of the conference, noting the ways technology and the modern world have revolution-

he mused during a coffee break after his speech, though this doesn't prevent him from avidly expressing his views; "A country considering nuclear weapons," he explained, "needs only to look at North Korea on one hand, and Iraq on the other, and see the indisputable advantage of acquiring a nuclear weapon. Those trained in business might rightly call this an incentive and it will cause a catastrophe beyond imagining." A year after graduating from the Divinity School, Stevenson was one of a handful of spiritual leaders who, under Coffin's guidance, sparked the genesis of this year's conference. In the summer of 2005, Coffin invited roughly a dozen friends, colleagues, and scholars, Stevenson included, to his house in Vermont to discuss how the religious community could mobilize to eliminate the existence of nuclear weapons. The chap1ain died the next year. John Lindner, who now produces a YDS magazine called Reflections, was also present in Vermont. When Lindner speaks of Coffin, it is with a sense of veneration as though the reverend were at

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izcd what it means to be unsafe. Nuclear weapons, Volf insisted, threaten world security, and a more insecure world means a world further from the biblical ideal of Jerusalem, a "city that is utterly and completely secure, and can never be conquered or undone." Professor Jonathan Schell, a longtime advocate for nuclear disarmament who teaches a course in Yale's Political Science Department tided "Strategic, Political, and Moral Dilemmas of the Nuclear Age," lent rhe conference an overtly political presence. "We're overdue for a profound reconsideration of this issue," Schell noted. His comment applied not only to Yale, bur roan entire nation about to move on from the nuclear-friendly policies of the Bush administration and, perhaps, beginning to question the need for any country-including the United Stares-co possess nuclear weapons. The national conversation may, in fact, be changing. Last January, in a WaU Strut journal editorial penned by former policy heavyweights George Shultz, William Perry, Sam Nunn, and Henry Kissinger-hardJy a hippy activist himOctober 2008

self--called for a world without nuclear weapons. It was signed by almost all living former Secretaries of Defense, suggesting a rising ride for nuclear reform. "They could hardly be bigger chunks of establishmenr," Schell observes of the four authors, "and they're calling for the abolition of nuclear weapons." The Divinity School hopes that it can_ add fuel to the fire. As a university increasingly plugged in to global power dynamics, it wasn't long before Yale began to tackle what Schell calls "the mother of all global issues." That it was the Divinity School that assumed this task, Schell believes, is not surprising. "We need all hands on deck," he says. "And that very much .. .includes religious bodies. These are questions of cosmic, spiritual importance--and philosophical importance." When Robert Oppenheimer saw the first atomic explosion at the Trinity Test, he remembered a passage from the Bhagavad Gita: "If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the mighty one. Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds." Like

Oppenheimer, parnctpants in September's conference have come to see nuclear weapons as a spiritual as well as a political issue. The Divinity School is formulating a New Testament for a post-nuclear age.

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Kau &llur. a sophomort' in Davmport Colkgl', is an associau t'ditor ojTNJ. 11

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BUILDING BLOCKS New Haven models new development on an old urban ideal. By Sarah Nutman •

John DeStefano is a development man. Since his mayoral inauguration in 1993, his administration has directed billions of dollars, year after year, to rebuilding New Haven-gutting and renovating its schools, developing blighted neighborhoods through the Livable City Initiative, and revitalizing empty business districts like Orange Street and the Ninth Square. DeStefano sees his work as a march toward the future, but the future he envisions is very much like the New Haven of 90 years ago: a living, walking, and working urban environment with a dense and vigorous downtown, a population center that will lure outsiders into New Haven on Friday nights. At the core of his vision is the revival, through economic development and infrastructure improvement, of an urban middle class that vanished decades ago in many pockets of urban America.

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The latest step toward this future was taken on a crisp morning this September, when bulldozers and backhoes moved in to officially break ground on the site of the long-defunct Shartenberg's department store. In its place will rise a cutting-edge, 32-story housing and commercial complex. The top floors of this mixed-use building, the so-called 360 State Street project, will hold a collection of luxury rental apartments, while the ground floor will include twenty thousand square feet of retail space, including a grocery store. On the terrace will be a swimming pool, a rooftop garden, a fitness center, even a library. Nearly every aspect of the design from its recycled and local materials and Energy Star appliances to a fuel-cell generator that will produce clean, renewable power will be green enough to earn the building a coveted Gold LEED certification.

7he 360 State project represents the first large-scale development in New Haven since the ambitious urban renewal schemes ofthe 1950s and :J60s. "I designed [the project] wtth the intent to attract well-educated young professionals," says the project's developer and architect, Bruce Becker. He wants 360 State Street to become an urban hub serving "lots of little markets faculty and staff at Yale New-Haven Hospital, attorneys ~orking downtown, young professionals who commute out of the city by train, graduate students with the means, and retired people who want to be downtown." •

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The inclusion of affordable housing in this urban vision was crucial to the success of Becker's bid for the site. New H aven's Chief Economic Administrator Kelly Murphy emphasizes that the City is committed to "making sure that there is affordable housing downtown," and Becker stepped up to the challenge. "You won't be able to differentiate between the affordable houses and the marker rate and won't be able to distinguish tenants living in affordable housing," he predicts. The 360 Stare project encapsulates DeStefano's vision for New Haven's redevelopment. It is not only mixed-use, affordable, and green, but it also represents the first large-scale development in New Haven since the ambitious urban renewal schemes of the 1950s and '60s. This is the new wave of New Haven's transformation: Instead of demolishing blighted neighborhoods and delineating separate commercial and residential districts, as New Haven administrators did fifty years ago, DeStefano has launched a comprehensive effort to restore a sense of urbanism to downtown New Haven. And 360 State is only the beginning. Forthcoming development projects include extensive housing developments, an overhaul of Union Station, and downtown relocation of the Long Wharf Theater and Gateway Community College. Together, these projects could leave DeStefano's biggest mark yet.

supply is far too small to meet dem.rnd.

Stern characterizes the relationship between Yale and New Haven as (two peas in a pod, ifyou will two sides of a coin; their fortunes are Linked." The shortage in the cemer of town especially affects the middle and highincome bracket, says Robert Stern ARC '65. The dean of the Yale School of Architecture and a New Urbanism specialist, Stern is integral to the city's initiatives: In addition to Yale's new residential colleges, he will design two of the major downtown development projects, one at College Square and the other at the Veterans Memorial Coliseum site. Stern sees housing, especially high-end housing, as an integral parr of building a vibrant downtown community. He claims that if decent housing were available, "people

living in single family homes in Guilford, Hamden, or even on St. Ronan's would say, ' Let's get an apartment downtown with all of Yale's cultural opportunities, these restaurants, these shops, the theater at our fingertips.' " Such movement, he explains, " happens in many big citiesNew York and Chicago," but not in New Haven because there isn't anywhere for them to go. New housing, then, is an important step in New Haven's redevelopment. But housing alone will not a new city make. "You can't build a viable downtown on any single use," argues Stern. And you can't build a viable city on a single source of investment. Currently, the city's economy is institution-based, meaning that it depends on its many colleges and hospitals to fund development. One benefit, according to Murphy, is that "we don't have the high highs but we don't have the low lows ...Yale and Alberrus and Southern and Quinnipiac and Gateway and the hospitals are always investing, always building and are not going ro pick up and move somewhere else." This also means, however,

FOLLOWING A NATIONAL trend, New Haven's development is of the New Urbanist family. Born as a reaction to the urban sprawl of the 1980s, when cities like New Haven lost population to the suburbs and watched their downtown cores erode, this design movemem aims to re-create cities and neighborhoods with discernable centers to serve as civic hubs for residents. New Urbanists envision an urban home for people of different backgrounds and socioeconomic classes, dotted with businesses, schools, parks, and residential sections. Today, housing in New Haven is surprisingly scarce. Although the city's housing projects supply a fair amount of centra!Jy located, low-income living quaners, the market offers few downtown options co middle-class residents. "Our vacancy rate in residential rental is under two percent," Murphyexplainr--a number which means that the housing

October 2008

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Plans for development at College Square. Image: Centerplan Companies

that the city has become largely dependent on Yale's investment. The University recently sponsored the creation of an Economic Development Corporation and has been instrumental in redeveloping Broadway and mid-Chapel. Becker cites a "symbiotic relationship between Yale and New Haven," and Stern characterizes the relationship as "two peas in a pod, if you will, two sides of a coin; their fortunes are linked."

In the 1950s and '60s, Mayor Dick Lee and his administration 'aramatically plundered, sundered the urban

Luring consumers and commerce back into the city will entail, in part, weaning the city off of its reliance on Yale and building an enduring, non-Yale-based middle class. "It's dangerous to have essentially one financial backer," Becker explains. He believes an influx of non-

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Yale funds will transform the city, making it more like "Cambridge or Palo Alto. Stanford, Harvard, and M.I.T. play large roles but they're not the only game .tn town. Toward this end, the City expects its large development projects to generate more non-Yale jobs. According to DeStefano's Future Framework Plan, downtown development will generate over 30,000 jobs, both directly and indirectly. The former Coliseum site, according to Chuck Coursey, who handles public relations for its developer, Northland Investment Corporation, is likely to include Long Wharf Theater, relocated from its current home on Sargent Drive. Administrators hope the theater will bring retail, housing, and culture to the downtown area. Stern claims that Long Wharf will be more than just a cultural draw. "The nice thing about Long Wharf and this is true of Yale's strong drama school as well," he says, "is that it's not just actors but electricians, set builders, sound people who have to go to have lunch." Ideally, the theater will encourage a dynamic urban environment ))

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made up of interdependent businesses. The City hopes the project will recapture the commercial buzz of New Haven's industrial prime, when this area, situated between the New Haven Green and the city's port, was a mercantile hub. · THE FINAL ELEMENT of this reinvention, argues Douglas Rae, New Haven's former chief administrative officer and currently the RichardS. Ely Professor of Management at Yale, should be developing an improved transportation network to connect New Haven to the rest of the Northeast. "The reason that New Haven exists as a substantial city is tra.p.sport," he explains, alluding to the pre-automobile epicenter of rail lines and sea transport that connected New Haven to economic behemoths like New York and allowed the city to emerge as an industrial center. "We are the fringe of this gigantic mountain; we're a foothill ... and we should think of ourselves in that connection more than anything else," Rae continues. With the growth of its transportation infrastructure, New Haven would have the potential to become almost a THE NEW JOURNAL

reverse commuter dty. People could live in New Haven and contribute to its tax base while working in Stamford, Hartford, or New York. While the burden of improving transportation falls partly on the State, the City is trying to apply as much forward momentum of its own as possible. Murphy hopes that the impending demolition ¡ of the former Coliseum's massive parking lot will finally spur the construction of a second parking lot at Union Station. Eventually, the City hopes to comprehensively redesign the station, making it a retail as well as transportation hub. Administrators have proposed a threephase project that would not only provide parking but remake Union Station ala its D.C. and New York counterparts by attaching it to a large, mixed-use development complex. Murphy points out that since the project "finances itself," New Haven will be able to begin work on the site as soon as it reaches an agreement with the state. •

BY PIECING TOGETHER housing developments like 360 State, economic independence from Yale, and a revitalized transportation network, city developers hope to recapture early 20th-century New Haven in its heyday. Despite admitted flaws like tenement houses, for example in this now-antiquated urban plan, this city once tied residents to their urban environment in a very concrete manner. In 1909, Frank Rice was elected as New Haven mayor on a platform of redoing the city's sidewalks. Factories like Winchester and Sargent provided a steady supply of jobs while prominent community organizations constructed tight social networks. This New Haven was densely populated, home to the wealthy and the poor, descendants of Puritan settlers and immigrants newly arrived from Europe. New Haven's current leaders are particularly nostalgic for this urban setting, perhaps because the city strayed so far from it during the 1950s and '60s, when agents ofUrban Renewal razed entire neighborhoods to make way for highways and department stores. During this era, under the flag of Urban Renewal, Mayor Richard "Dick"-Lee and his administration pushed mass development to revitalize the city. But by building so quickly and on such a large scale, with so little regard for the communities they destroyed in their wake, October 2008

Rae recounts, they "dramatically-plundered, sundered the urban fabric." Worse still, the projects failed to create a strong mercantile sector that could compete with suburban alternatives. The large department stores Shartenberg's, Malley's, and Macy's did not foster a smaller business community, which meant that once these stores closed, they left an urban wasteland in which, Clark re.calls, "every other store was boarded up." Decades of slow and patient City Hall effort eventually drew tentative shopkeepers and residents back to downtown. Around 2003, the City first began to think about developing the abandoned department store sites in an effort to undo Lee's mistakes. But there is only so much that this downtown restoration can achieve for the rest of the city. "There are cases where you have spectacular downtown redevelopment like Baltimore, which has no favorable impact on the city at large," Rae warns. And the project comes with steep costs. The City is investing significant funds in the development projects via tax abatements and land grants. 360 State will only pay a fraction of assessed property taxes until 2014, and the land cost Beck-

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er a single dollar. City officials are none. theless quick to defend the deal. The site has been vacant for 42 years, according to Murphy, and although the City has giveri developers like Becker significant incentive¡s, the potential revenue lost is negated by the fact that he is building on a lot that for years has provided the City with no revenue whatsoever. Even when Becker is only paying a fraction of the taxes assessed on the site, this revenue will be more than the City received before. With Becker's development, Murphy says, the site will gross "close to two million dollars a year. They're going to be the biggest taxpayer." Rae predicts, however, that it "will be a long time before there's much positive. impact on the tax base," and with the City having recently laid off 35 people in a budget crunch, New Haven is in a poor position to be hemorrhaging money. These fiscal problems will almost certainly be compounded by the state of the national economy, and already, many of the city's ambitious plans have been put on hold. One must walk no farther than College Square to see the effects of the credit crunch on New Haven. This

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Scarpelli no's, like many small businesses, has been forced out of downtown New Haven to make way for large scale development.

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for College Wine and Liquor, all of them have left or will leave soon. Few small businesses, however, bemoan the changes to downtown. ''At the moment those business are happy about this," Clark says. Many of these stores actually testified on behalf of the developers and pressured aldermen to accept the proposals. The business owners who remain recognize that new housing units and the relocated Gateway Community College will bring thousands of people downtown who will need coffee, lunch, and clothing. This active interchange of residents, .businesses, and visitors is the urbanist city that John DeStefano hopes to recreatt~. A place, in Stern's words, where you "walk out of your apartment and walk down the street, see the shop that has just changed their window, bump into someone you know, walk into a bookstore and buy a book or not or a cup of coffee, or walk across the Green, whatever." Though DeStefano wants to restore the urban fabric of yesteryear, the fabric of New Haven has been torn so many times that his dream may be more of a mirage. But whether or not he can recapture the old New Haven, he can still if the economy allows create a New Haven where people want to be .

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Northland Associates' vision for a Long WharfTheater relocated to the site of the former Coliseum. .

block of College Street between Crown and George is barren, its previous small business owners evicted in order to make way for a new, large-scale project. But redevelopment has been stopped in its tracks and the storefronts sit, unnecessarily abandoned. In August, City officials cringed when the developer of a 225-room luxury ho~el slated for the site announced a financially-motivated delay of at least six months. But given the costs of the economic collapse on a national level, New Haven may have caught a bit of a break. "In terms of our development schedule, we happen to be in a good place," claims Murphy. The City hopes that two years from now, when the 360 State project wraps up, the market will have reversed. Becker is similarly optimistic. "One thousand people will be hired between now and when we open," he says. More importantly, since the City does not currently need to pursue financing for any future projects, administrators do not have to struggle to sell bonds in today's credit market. And, of course, Yale and other institutions around town will never

stop building buildi:ngs, hiring residents, and keeping the city's economy afloat.

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of businesses that the City hopes its development p]ans will attract may drastically differ both from the city's current smattering of chain stores and its mom-and-pop stores left over from the New Haven of yore. A few long-standing, successful independent stores were already evicted to make way for the stalled hotel project on College Street. Some, like Cooper's Dress Shop, had been there since the strip opened in 1961, as part of the supposed Urban Renewal mercantile district. Now, except

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CONTINENTAL DRIFT As a legendary philosopher concludes his career, the Yale Philosophy Department contemplates its future. By Sophie Quinton The 1980s and '90s were troubled times for Yale's once prominent philosophy department. Fierce infighting the result of both personal and academic quarrels resulted in the exodus of almost all of Yale's continental philosophy professors. Professor Karsten Harries PC '58 GRD '62 survived the strife, but most of his fellow continental experts in _French and German Enlightenment thought left the department and were replaced with scholars of analytic philosophy, which focuses on logic and language and includes the fields of metaphysics, semantics, and epistemology. Soon, Harries was the last major hold-out of the continental tradition, and since then he has continued to attract a broad range of non-philosophy majors with such popular courses as "The Philosophy of Architecture" and "Art, Love, and Beauty." A legend at Yale and beyond, Harries curOctober 2008

rently serves as the Philosophy Department's director of graduate studies and, throughout his tenure, has advised over 58 dissertations more, he claims, than any other living philosopher. But after fifty years at Yale, he has finally decided that it's time to retire. Harries recently announced that he will be teaching every one of his courses for the last time. Although it may take as long as five years for him to fulfill this pledge, his impending departure has left many of his colleagues, like Professor Seyla Benhabib GRD '77, asking: "What does the department do now?" ~~

quintessentially professorial tweed jackets, is looking forward to retirement. He sees it as an opportunity to marshal his thoughts into books. "It's a good occasion to pull all my notes," he said, and to arrange them · lfAruuES, WHO SPORTS

for publication. His Kierkegaard seminar notes are already headed for the press, and he hopes that notes from his Heidegger seminar will soon follow. But Harries also worries about the department he · is leaving behind. "The continental tradition is still underrepresented," he says. "There is virtually no one now. . . The philosophers I am talking to and [who] matter to me are not at Yale."

coThe continental tradition is still underrepresented. .. The philosophers I am talking to and [who} matter to me are not at Yale. - Karsten Harries n;,

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Harries and herself a bit of a continental expert who now teaches in Yale's political science department, is also concerned. "There are no [other] senior continental philosopher appointments," she explains. "They don't have anyone teaching German idealism, and that's just not right. That's so silly, given Yale's foundations in the department." Yale's continental scholars were, in fact, hugely prominent in the field during the 1960s, driving thought and shaping the University's reputation. When their differences with their analytic colleagues in the 1980s grew so intense that the department's hiring process ground to a standstill, many continental professors left, and few were replaced. If Harries' departure were to lead to a neglect of the European philosophic traditions, Benhabib believes it would be "a tragedy, . Philosophy major Geoff Shaw BR '1 0 took Harries' "Art, Love and Beauty'' last year and appreciated its continental approach. "It had Nietzsche, Schopenhauer and Kant, [who] certainly wouldn't be taught at the upper level," he remembers. In his experience, upper-level philosophy 18

convergence of science and philosophy, a trend that is partly responsible for the current emphasis on the analytic branch. It wasn't that the philosophy major was lacking, Earp insists, but that he was "getting excited about theories of mind" and wanted to pursue an empirical line of study. One concern Earp does have is that, compared to other major universities, Yale's Philosophy Department ranks rather low. According to Philosophical Gourmet, a popular online ranking of philosophy departments, Yale ranks 16th in the nation. Although this rank has been rising over the past ten years, it still falls short of schools like NYU, Rutgers, the University of .Plttsburgh, UCLA, Harvard, and Princeton. "There are some very good philosophers on our faculty," Earp acknowledges, "but I've yet to take a class in which we've actually read anything written by anyone who teaches at Yale."

courses "really only study the analytic stuff." And though ·he likes the analytic material, Shaw explains that the branch covers "language, logic, not what it's like to be alive. I learned about being a person in Karsten's class." To Shaw, it almost seems like the Yale Philosophy Department "has given up on the meaning of life. Its educational mission should be to teach people about living, yet it's focused on stuff people find uninteresting."

To Geo Shaw BR ~1 0~ it almost seems like the philosophy department cchas given up on the meaning oflife. " Shaw points out that potential philosophy majors interested in the history of intellectual thought often gravitate to majors like the Humanities and Ethics, Politics, and Economics in search of a broader definition of philosophic study. Brian Earp CC '09's defection from the philosophy major to cognitive science, on the other hand, reflects the increasing

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that the department ha.S recovered from the turmoil of the 1980s, is relieved that this period has passed. "We would have to go back

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to the early 1960s to have as happy a department [as we have now]," he says. He credits the new departmental chair, Michael Della Rocca, with alleviating tension and congratulates him on his latest faculty hires. New professors like Stephen Darwal and Thomas Pogge bring a focus on political science and psychology to their studies; "They have made this a more interesting place," Harries says. "We are broadening, building bridges." Professor Della Rocca agrees with Harries' positive assessment of the department. "It's in a really good position now," he says, although "it took a while for it to rebuild itself." Looking back on the '80s, Della Rocca finds the intra-departmental disagreements "sort of trivial. We've moved -beyond that totally." For those who mourn the dearth of continental philosophers at Yale, or even broad intellectual history courses, Della Rocca believes that the era of fierce divjsjons between phHosophic disciplines, like the era of departmental conflict, has passed. "The divisions between so-called 'analytical' and so-called 'continental' philosophy those divisions are meaningless now," he says. Della Rocca cites interdisciplinary initiatives as proof of a new era of collaboration. Pogge's appointment, for example, was made possible by the MacMillian Center for International and Area Studies, and Benhabib brought philosophy and ethics experts to campus during her tenure as director of the Ethics, Politics, and Economics · major. Directed Studies, the interdisciplinary freshman program that teaches the Western canon, links the philosophy department to other majors and focuses \argely on the continental tradition. •

department aims to replace Harries with another expert in 19th-century philosophy, the old definitions of philosophy which take Europe as their roots and the continental tradition as their backbonehave shifted. With this shift in focus has come a shift in preeminence. Instead of a select few Ivy-covered institutions dominating the philosophical field, there are now several; instead of one or two traditions dominating the discourse, there are now many, and they link disciplines and thinkers across the globe. Attracting a figure of Harries' stature will most certainly be difficult, and even if the department replaces him with an-

Connecticut Hall, home to the Yale Philosophy Department.

other continental expert, it will be losing the last of the old guard from its days as the unquestioned leader among philosophy departments worldwide. The Yale Philosophy Department has long been asking itself tough questions about the direction it wants to take, the academic role it wants to play but when Harries finishes teaching his last course for the last time, the department will finally have to answer them.

THOUGH THE PHILOSOPHY

October 2008

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TN Sophie Quinton is a sophomore in Trumbull College.

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234 Church Street, New Haven, CT 0651.0 203-784-3702 Jeanie Deloughery. VP-Branch Manager

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Shafiq Abdussabur remembers sitting on the shoulders of his mother, dressed in a little black jacket bedecked with protest buttons, staring out at an army of police in full riot gear. The year was 1970, and Ms. Abdussabur, her son, and twelve thousand other Black Panthers and their supporters had converged on the New Haven Green to protest the trial of Panther leader Bobby Seale and several of his compatriots for murder. In the following month, before the case ended in a mistrial, activists would pelt the security cordon with trash and rocks, two bombs would go off in the Yale Hockey rink, the National Guard would shoot tear gas into the defenseless mob, and 23-yearold Hillary Rodham, then a student at the Yale Law School, would volunteer for the ACLU to prevent civil rights violations during the legal proceedings against Seale. Within days of the clash between demonstrators and police, a collection of prominent black leaders and Yale administrators were working in tandem to defuse tensions on the Green. Despite outcry from some of the University's more .

conservative academics and alumni, the student body, in solidarity with colleges across the country, went on strike by re:fusing to attend clas~es from May 1 until the end of the semester. Seale's trial deadlocked, with the jury voting 11 to 1 for . acquittal.

Abdussabur once again sees the potent mixture. o hope and conflict he saw that spring · in 1970, when the New Left and Black Power movements stood side by side, however uneasily. For most, the Seale trial has faded to a footnote in the history of Yale and New Haven or a better-forgotten cultural battle of the '60s. But for Abdussabur, now 42 and one of New Haven's most outspoken black advocates, the trial remains a fundamental point of reference, a cultural moment that simultaneously

hopeful glimmer of post-racial idealism. "In the '60s, a group of leaders came out who could relate to all kinds of people of different creeds and colors in the name of equal rights and opportunities," Abdussabur says. "People like Martin Luther King and Malcolm X were black leaders with a universal message." Now, with the prospect of Barack Obama's victory in November, Abdussabur sees the same potent mixture of hope and conflict he saw that spring in 1970, when the New Left and Black Power movements stood side by side, however uneasily. "Black people are looking for Malcolm in Barack, others for Martin," Abdussabur suggests in his au-thoritative and resonant tone. "Many white people are looking for Bobby [Kennedy]. In the life of Barack Obama, there is a little bit of all of that, and everyone is claiming their piece."

IN LIGHT OF THEIR CITY's Own tortured racial histor}r. from a pronounced period of white flight after World War II, to the chaos of the Seale Trial, to the eventual election of John C. Daniels, New ~--~~~~~•,'•~~~~-;_o_s_~_~__s_ca_r_r_in_g__r_a_c_ial___c_o_n_A_ic_t__a_n_d__a_____________________________________

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Haven's first black mayor, in 1989 New Haven's black leaders see Obama both as a black politician and as its antithesis: a post-racial candidate. "He's lived that life, he's had that experience African Americans share," says Abdussabur, who works as a police officer and has launched initiatives to decrease gun violence, winning City Hall's Man Of The Year award in 2006. ''As president, he will have a responsibility to every man and woman in this country." But, Abdussabur concedes, "When I go into the voting booth in November, sure, I love Obama a little bit more for being black, I trust him a little bit more for being black." Abdussabur believes that Obama's campaign promises a new sense of possibility for the next generation of Mrican Americans, a sense he lacked during his own elementary-school years. "One day in class," he recalls, "the teacher asked which one of us wanted to be President, and I was the only black kid who raised his hand. Had it been a different question, who can be President, I'm not sure I would have done the same thing. But now, after Barack's run, everyone in that class can raise his or her hand, even the girls."

spent much of his career bridgip.g the gap between his own ideology and background and the very diverse demands of his constituents. A black Muslim, Shah ·believes his religion and race are essential spiritual and historical guides that inform his views, but that they are not the end of the story. Shah has come to see Obama much as he sees himself. as someone who has worked ·to transcend the interests of a single racial or ethnic group. "Since he's the first African-American candidate, I'm celebrating that," the alderman says. "But it's because his politics and motives are on point that I support his run." "Above all," Shah explains, "Barack's message is, 'You can make it if you try.' A lot of people in New Haven say that there's a problem with our youth. There isn't. They're broke; they come from bad neighborhoods. You give these kids an incentive, show them that they can make it, and that will have an effect." Shah believes that Obama's success could mark a sea change in the nation's attitude toward the political promise of black Americans. "To see an Mrican American reach this level," explains the alderman, "to me means that America

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has .reached a level of understanding that racial context is not the issue. Instead, it's the issue of what we need as a country." Shah sums up the situation in terms of his faith. "Islam is a religion of peace: anything that will bririg about positive change is blessed. We hope that it means Obama will be in the White House. But at the end of this election, there will need to be a taqueed, a unity, to make America a blessed country." For Shah, the issue of Obama's race is crucial not because it represents a specific victory for the African-American community, but because it communicates a desire for the nation's people-to draw closer as a whole, to reach taqueed together. ON FEBRUARY 2, Barack Obama clinched New Haven's Democratic primary over Hillary Clinton by a two-to-one margin, culling roughly twelve thousand votes to the New York senator's six thousand. Before an ecstatic victory crowd at Hula Hanks, Mayor and Barack-backer John DeStefano declared, "New Haven is going to be why Barack Obama wins the state of Connecticut." Indeed, the Illinois senator had scored . a mere four percentage points above

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Congresswoman Rosa DeLaura endorsed Senator Barack Obama last February.

"The black community has written Barack a check. That check is for outreach andthe amount is for change. And I believe when Obama wins in Novembe1; African Americans will see that check cashed. n -.Shajiq Abdussabur Yusuf Shah, an Mrican-American New Haven alderman, sees Obama differently. His vision of Obama matches the campaign's portrait of a figure who transcends race. "Barack Obama owes the ·black community nothing," he says pointedly. Shah's belief is rooted in his - own route to political prominence, a route very different from Abdussabur's. While Abdussabu r's formative experience was the racially charged Seale trial, Shah has October 2008

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Clinton across the state's eight counties, securing 26 to her 22 delegates and losing by significant margins in Windham and New London. For New Haveners at the celebration, this disparity became a point of hometown pride. "They're saying Connecticut is too close to call," declared the city's Democratic Party Chairwoman Susie Voigt, "but there's one city in Connecticut where it's not too close to call. New Haven votes for a progressive Democratic outlook." The rallying cry for local Democrats had gone out months earlier, with a series of prescient and well-publicized endorsements for Obama by four New Haven aldermen: Ward 1 's Rachel Plattus, Ward 2's Gina Calder, Ward 15's Joey Rodriguez, and Ward 22's Greg Morehead. Together, the team set about, in Rodriguez's words, "educating" ambivalent voters about Obama's positions on education, the economy, and the war in Iraq. The push payed off. By February, DeStefano, State Representative Rosa DeLauro, and numerous other aldermen had pledged their support. By the time ballots closed on the 2nd, all but three ofNew Haven's

October 2008

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thirty wards had sided with Obama. Coinciding with this landslide were · record numbers in voter registration and turnout, specifically amongst the · city's African Americans. Morehead and Calder, both influential advocates for the New Haven black community, may have galvanized the minority population on primary daY: Both aldermen's wards, the predominately black Dixwell and Dwight neighborhoods, posted five-toone sweeps for Obama. "Race plays a factor," conceded Rodriguez, himself a key force in garne.r ing Hispanic support for the senator. "There are more expectations for Obama in black communities. This is a historic moment, and Obama is the first truly credible African-American presidential candidate we have seen." . If, as DeStefano said, New Haven was the reason Obama won the state of Connecticut, then the voices of local blacks played no small part in winning New . Haven for Obama. This would mean that Obama, attempting to win an election by transcending race, won the Connecticut primary largely because New Haven's black community rose to sup-

port him. "PosT-RACIAL POLITICS is a lie. It sounds good but it is not real," writes Gary Holder-Winfield, New Haven's Democratic nominee for state representative and a rising black leader in the city, in an email. He deems talk of race-transcending unity, like Shah's hope for taqueed, sophistry. Like Abdussabur, Holder-Winfield speaks in historical terms. "When did we get past race anyway?" he asks. "Certainly it wasn't the sixties because the civil rights movement proper was still going on then. Not the seventies just look at the activities of the Panthers or attempts to desegregate in Boston or the results of people wanting to marry between races in Virginia and on and on. . . So, when did we get past race to be in a post-racial period?" Before America can begin to discuss the possibility of declaring itself absolved of its racial legacy, Holder-Winfield contends, it must first acknowledge and ~en reconcile the damages of that history. "If Barack Obama represents anything, he represents either the best example of •

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Having only become active in the Obama bid since last spring, when, as leader of the Connecticut Federation of Black Clubs, he was contacted by the campaign to unify Mrican-American communities across the state, HolderWinfield holds up his own political background as proof of the necessity of door-to-door campaigning and face-toface conversations. Moving at an early age from the Bronx to Westbury, Connecticut, Holder-Winfield had planned on pursuing a career in physics before a return visit to his Connecticut hometown convinced him to change paths. "Westbury used to be a place people moved to in order to get away from violence and crime. When I came back for my high school reunion, I saw a lot of kids getting involved in drugs and gangs. I wanted to find a solution, so I started getting active in local politics." In order to effect change on a community level, Holder-Winfield believes, it is necessary for politicians to cross cultural divides that their constituents are reluctant to bridge on their own. Making a rural representative feel that she and her supporters have a stake in urban issues arising in the state legislature is a necessary step in generating visibility of minority issues within the larger electorate. To Holder-Winfield, this kind of intercommunity dialogue will be necessary not only to ensure an Obama victory in November, but also to enfranchise black citizens who feel that their voices and concerns go unheard in the national caucus. "When Black people hear the president and other national figures speak about America, speak about 'we' and 'us,' we are not sure that Blacks are included in that narrative," Holder-Winfield explains. "Truth be told many of us are sure we are not. " Like Abdussabur, Holder-Winfield believes that Obama owes Mrican Americans specific representation With a black man in the White House, he explains, there will inevitably be more pressure from minorities for the president to advocate on behalf of underrepresented and underprivileged sectors of American society. "We are going to expect that an Obama who has based his campaign on 'change that you can believe in' means just that," Holder-Winfield declares. "We are going to expect that as president Obama is as adept at speaking to Blacks as he was as a candidate at speaking to •

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Gary Holder-Winfield at DeLauro's endorsement ofObama. •

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wearing the mask that I have ever seen or he is fundamentally different from other politicians, in that he truly believes that we can be more than we have been, that we can get past race, that America can be America for the first time." •

On October 6, Holder-Winfield walked into the common room ofYale's Branford College flanked by student m embers of the Yale Democrats. Slightly short, slightly pudgy, he doesn't cut an intimidating figure, but he speaks with a self-assurance and calm that inspires instant trust and approachability. The man is his mantra all politics are identity politics in practice. "If I can sit down at a table with you and talk with you for half an hour," he tells the thirty or so assembled students, "you're going to vote for me." It's an approach Holder-Winfield wishes the Democrats would learn to embrace. "I truly believe that part of the reason Democrats are stunned at our losses is a lack of an understanding of the power of identity politics ... Obama must find a way to connect with the vast •

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majority by developing a narrative that speakS across identities while at the same time being able to · tailor that narrative to specific audiences without appearing to do so." Obama's relatability problem, Holder-Winfield continues in his email, is amplified by Obama's inherent dissimilarities to the American majority. "Barack Obama is Black, even if he is half White, and his skin color is, in our country, a natural disconnect. The good news to me is that this disconnect can be overcome. The problem is whether we are dealing with a disconnect or ingrained racism, which is a gap that will not be bridged."

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hope that it means Obama will be in the White House. But at the end ofthis election:~ there will need to be a taqueed:J a uni~ to make America a blessed country. -YusufShah :J:J

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Whites. Does he owe us a revolution? No. But he does owe us representation." Abdussabur registers a similar sentiment, explaining, "The black community has written Barack a check. That check is for outreach and the amount is for change. And I believe when Obama wins in November, Mrican Americans will see that check cashed." '

ON TuESDAY, OcTOBER 7, the eve of the second Presidential debate, the New Haven Democratic campaign office officially opened. Within the cramped oneroom space at 900 Chapel Street, phone banks were set up, voter-registration forms handed out, and a huge macaroniand-sandwich buffet consumed by local Democratic leaders and a selection of mostly-white students and mostly-black Elm City residents. A dry-erase board with sign-ups for canvassing trips to New Hampshire was nearly filled. A little girl walked from person to person handing, out "Obama/Biden '08" buttons. Susie Voigt, walking with a cane, took the microphone to thank volunteers for their long hours and devotion to the candidate. Many of the volunteers had joined the cause in the past few weeks, though one woman had been working with the campaign since late 2006. "It's a great time to be a Democrat," the chairwoman intoned. "We're making history in rooms like this."

ccWhen did we get past race anyway?" -Gary Holder- Winfield Later, Congresswoman Rosa DeLaura delivered a fist-pumping ultimatum to the crowd: "This is the first time in a while that people believe that there can be a new politics. There is no choice but winning on November 4." A father sitting in the back row of the audience cradled his baby daughter and whispered into her ear, "Yes, we can." Indeed, since February, New Haven has shown that, yes, it can join together to rally behind a candidate, to attract previously disenchanted voters, to -play a decisive role in achieving an Obama victory in November. But to view this or any other city's support of America's first black presidential nominee as somehow of one mind or motivated out of a colOctober 2008

lective racial consciousness is not only myopic: It is dangerous. New Haven's black leaders, although nearly unanimous in their support for Obama, nevertheless approach him with vastly diverse expectations and reservations. To claim that Obama is black America's choice for '08 not only undermines the promise of post-racial politics but ideologically shortchanges minority leaders who have combated racism their entire lives. Abdussabur, Shah, and Holder-Winfield may fall within the same census demographic, but to halt analysis at a racial category is to deny the possibility of discussing race in a meaningful way. After November 4, the question for not only New Haven but the country at large must not be which groups voted for whom, but why individuals went to the polls and why one candidate appealed to them over another. Even when we • see consensus tn a community, we must understand that such consensus is imperfect, varied, and composed of disparate needs and desires for change. Then, and only then, can this country begin to speak of itself as post-racial. After the speeches, the modest crowd dispersed into the chill autumn night, talking of the debate to come, carpooling plans to a rally in Hartford, the successes and failures of that night's phone drive. Parents walked home with their kids while others made their way to debate parties sponsored by the headquarters. ·Whatever the candidacy of Barack Obama means to these volunteers, representatives, politicians, and citizens, both white and black, they have united in New Haven's own microcosmic taqu'eed, at least for the moment, to get him elected. '

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Fine Indian Cuisine "Atreat for the senses" - Hartford Courant "Amid elegance, a variety of Indian dishes" -New York Times 148 York Street, New Haven CT 06511

TN Ben Lasman, a junior in Berkeley College, . is production manager ofTN].

(203) 776-8644 www.zaroka.com

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BARE MARKET Exploring East Street's Catwalk Club. By Laura Bennett Come a little closer, baby pull your barstool over, lean in, inhale the haze of cigarettes and perfume so thick it'll make your throat burn and Phoenix will tell you everything you want to know. She'll tell you about her parents, who hate her job of course but stand by her because stripping is just a temporary thing and they support her no matter what because that's just the way they are, y'know. She'll tell you about what she really wants to do, which is become a police officer, after maybe another month of this bullshit so she can pay her way through college. She'll tell you about her tattoos-dark, angular stars blooming on her shoulder blades which are a tribute to her family. And if you hang around long enough, she'll tell you about her three-year-old son, Junior, who thinks she's a waitress, although he doesn't really understand much of anything yet. October 2008

Phoenix is 21 but her low, serrated voice makes her sound older. She is wearing fishnets and a dog collar necklace. with spikes. There is a wad of bills tucked into her underwear string. Her heels are so dizzyingly high that I can't stop staring at them. My scuffed flip-flops look really unsexy in comparison. Phoenix smiles and stands, her legs unfolding endlessly. "This is a tiny bit of fame, a tiny bit of celebrity," she says. "It makes you feel good about yourself, to be watched, to be admired, adored by others." Meanwhile, I can feel the eyes on me: .W..,hat's ... up with this chick? Ayyyee she's from Yaaale. Girl, look at her squirm. At East Street's Catwalk Club, which opened in 1996, the electric pulse of hiphop and pop and rock is in the air till 5 a.m. and chandeliers throw spangled shadows on the walls. The pole reflects constellations of colored lights. At the

bar, the off-duty girls cross their legs and sip Red Bull, casting sultry looks through thick black lashes. "My favorite part of this place is the naked women," says Toni, a construction worker who comes to Catwalk at least once a week. His least favorite part, he tells me, is leaving.

'Myfavorite part ofthis place is the naked women, " says Tom, a cons-truction worker who comes to Catwalk at least once a week. His least -avorite part, he tells me, is leaving. "You get all different kinds of people in here," says Mark Rhatigan, the manager. 29

The older businessmen come in early, watch hungrily from the outskirts of the room, eyes big and glazed behind their glasses. The college kids come in .real late, . after 2 a.m. Sometimes they get a little too aggressive with the girls, but Mark, a former bouncer, doesn't let that fly. Mark was in the army for five years. He is round-shouldered with a greased coif and huge pees that strain . against a tight black shirt. He looks like he could break your face without even trying. "It's the worst when a guy tries to touch you," says Valentina, who is 27 and has a big, brassy voice. Her hair is a crunchy orange cloud. She used to workas.a com-· puter teacher but got laid off. "I went to school for almost three years, I'm certified at Microsoft, and I work in a strip club," she says. "I mean that showwws you something, baby girl. Come onnn." Running her tongue over her teeth, she adds, "The economy sucks."

cit makes you feel good about yourself to be watched, to be admired, adored by others. "

I know you want me, its easy to see. Their eyes are saying what the hell are you doing out here, with your tape recorder and your button-down top and your stupid half-smile? Walk in walk out, cap your pen and all that's left of us is the cigarette smoke in your hair. Phoenix says, we're all just trying to find our place. It's hard. Money is money. And she laughs loud, too loud, and one heel catches on the edge of the carpet. She leans on the pool table and stares at me. Her makeup looks clownish under the bright lamps. But onstage, where the music pounds and the light melts blue, she is smooth, so smooth, and when her eyes catch you, baby, you can't stop watching.

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In the corner o the room, I am perched on the edge o a big velvet chair, feeling small and clumsy. I could never pull of those heels. I don't have the swagger. Or the legs. •

Serenity is 19 and skinny and about my height five-foot-three except for the heels. Her eyes are thickly lined and winged at the edges, Cleopatra-style. She wears a black corset and huge hoop ear- . rings and has a dented pack ofNewports tucked into her garter. There's no hourly wage for exotic dancers; they earn whatever customers decide to give them. Still, the pay is solid, Serenity says. She's made two thousand dollars in a good week. But she can't stand the slow nights. When one or two guys saunter in, sit at the bar, sip drinks, and pay no mind to the girls.. She's grinding up and down that pole for 15 minutes and basically dancing for no reason. Nothing pisses her off more than being ignored. Later, I watch her walk from the bar to the stage. She is slow, slinking, like a cat. Her small hips sway fiercely. The music starts up, low and sassy. Dontcha wish your girlfriend was hot like me. Serenity steps onto the platform and caresses the pole. When she bends over, a college boy in the front row leans forward, snaps the string of her underwear, and slips in a bill. She swivels towards him, her long legs opening slowly like a

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fan. He is hypnotized, and she locks eyes with him and won't look away. Dontcha wish your girlfriend was a freak like me. In the corner of the room, I am perched on the edge of a big velvet chair, feeling small and clumsy. I could never pull off those heels. I don't have the swagger. Or the legs. The way she owns every inch of that stage, works every inch of the pole. My neck is itching and all I want to do is be out in the cold, quiet night. Jesus, I feel dumb in this prissy sweater, these neat, hemmed jeans.

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A website cures bad habits sometimes. By Haley Cohen Goethe once proclaimed, "What is not started today is never finished tomorrow." Well, duh. Goethe may have been a decent writer, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say that at Yale, procrastination is a way of life. To paraphrase Freud, it probably all started in our childhoods. When I was nine I tried to read the Encyclopedia Britannica but lost motivation after the entry for "Anabaena" ("a genus of nitrogen-fixing blue-green algae with beadlike or barrel-like cells and interspersed enlarged spores"). Or maybe there simply wasn't enough time, since, at the sarr1e age, I'd resolved to write a novel. But between learning long division and watching Power Rangers, I soon put the Pulitzer plans on the back burner. My problem, according to a few Yale professors-cum-entrepreneurs, was that I didn't incur external repercussions. Perhaps if I had been taunted because I didn't know what an anabantidae was (for the record, it's a farr1ily of fish) or had my fingers chopped off because I didn't write a novel" I would have had a little more success. Such is the theory behind Stidd(, an online service that aims to help users accomplish their goals by binding them to "commitment contracts." The brainchild of Yale Economics Professor Dean Kar•

October 2008

lan, Yale Law School Professor Ian Ayres, and Yale School of Management student Jordan Goldberg '1 0, StickK is based on two well-known assumptions of behavioral economics: First, incentives motivate people, and second, people don't always do what they claim they intend to do. The leap from theory to web site was simple enough, according to Karlan. "A lot of research suggests that commitment contracts can really make a difference and I wanted to see this in practice," he explains. His subjects first pick a goal from the following categories: lose weight, exercise, run a marathon, vote, quit smoking, and everything else. While the majority of StickK users commit to losing weight or exercising (40 and 25 percent, respectively), 30 percent create custom goals that run the gamut from "learn to use chopsticks" to "stop masturbating." Maybe the strangest custom goal Goldberg's seen? ''Adopt a baby from a thirdworld country." After committing to a goal, users stake money on it. Pledge amounts vary; Stick.K's largest stake on record was $10,000, from someone who wanted to lose weight. Though such a risk might seem absurd, statistics show that those who pledge money are 40 percent more

likely to succeed in their goal than those who don't. If they do fail, however, users must forfeit their money to a randomly selected charity, a friend, or an "anticharity." •

StickK is based on two wellknown assumptions of behavioral economics: First, incentives motivate people, and second people don't always do what they claim they intend to do.

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There are two designated "anti-charities" on each ideological side of five controversial issues abortion, the environment, gay marriage, gun control, and politics. Users are instructed to choose the organization most contrary to their beliefs to provide extra incentive to stay on task. According to Goldberg, StickK's CEO, those who select anti-charities are 15 percent more likely to reach their goal than those who opt to donate money to charities or friends. The linchpin of this system is a referee, an individual who monitors the success of commitment contracts. Users can select anyone to be their referees friends, 31

foes, family members, or even bosses. Each time a user submits a progress report, his or her referee receives an email asking for confirmation of the report. The less daring SticK user can even eschew monetary stakes and rely solely on a referee for motivation.

bucks barista. On the second day, when speaking like an aridroid got tiring, I stopped talking altogether. "Haley, you're not going to mistakenly say 'like' if you ask for the salt," my referee said as I vigorously pointed at the saltshaker at dinner. Maybe that was so, but I felt I couldn't be too safe. When I wasn't eating or in class, I hid in my room so I didn't have to talk to people . . When I felt myself losing motivation, I pictured my money winging toward Texas and meditated on tny favorite Bushism: "Our enemies never stop . thinking of ways to harm our country . and our people, and neither do we." Then I got too comfortable. I was walking out of my architecture lecture _ with a friend, discussing the sketchbook assignment for that week "I just don't understand what we're supposed to draw," she complained. "Well, what Professor Purves said to do was, like, SHIT!" Even though I had failed, I couldn't bear the thought that Bush had gotten the better of me. I ·signed up for another week with the same setup ($9.99 to Bush's library if I failed) but a slightly altered goal. Instead of trying to completely avoid using "like" in its. incorrect forms, I aimed to say it fewer than twenty times a day, monitoring myself with a tally counter I'd rush ordered online. I figured physically holding the counter would remind me to avoid my nemesis. I was wrong. I failed again on the very first day, clocking in with a whopping 68 "likes." It would just slip out when I least expected it. In the Bookstore: ''I'm looking for this book about, like Damn it!" CLICK. In section: "I think what Kafka is trying to express is that, like, FUCK oh, sorry." CLICK. On the phone with my mom: "So for Jared's birthday I was thinking we could, like, SHIT." CLICK. Now I not only sounded like a Valley girl, but a Valley girl with Tourette's. •

MY INTEREST IN STICKK was initially a clinical one. While I did acknowledge a margin for improvement, I was more or less happy with .myself and remained content to continue treating sushi as a finger-food and exercising only when I felt like it. Then I talked to my 15-yearold brother Jared on the phone. "Hey, Jare, how you doing?" I began. "Pretty good. Got lotsa work What about you?" "Well, I'm writing an article on this web site that basically, like, helps people to achieve their goals." "You say 'like' a lot," Jared said. "Yeah, I know. But I'm not, like, half as bad as some of my friends.'' "You just said it again. Like, like, like. Hi my name is, like, Haley, and I really like saying the word 'like."' "Bye, Jared," I said. As unpleasant as it was to admit, Jared was right. For someone not from the San . · Fernando Valley, I was using the word "like" far too frequently. Suddenly motivated to wean myself off my tic, I made a commitment on StickK. "I commit to avoid using the word 'like' as a filler," I typed in the custom goal box. I knew that my goal was a lofty one, but I was determined to succeed. To maximize my chances of success, I staked $9.99 to the George W Bush Presidential Library, my anti-charity of choice. I then guilt-tripped a friend. into registering as my referee and seven others into signing up on Stidd( as my supporters, which meant that they'd receive emails about my progress without having to directly report on it. Since I was working on a deadline, I signed up for only one week, the shortest contract available. This meant there would be just one reporting period. It would be success or failure. If I let slip even one little "like," it was over. In hindsight, that was, like, so deluded. •

I MANAGED TO AVOID the L-word for all of a day by speaking like a robot. "I'll. Have. An. Iced. Coffee. Please." "Okay, R2-D2," smirked the Star32

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SncKK, IT TURNS OUT, is not a magic wand that generates motivation out of thin air as its behavioral-economics foundation would suggest, it works best with adequate incentives. I thought that I had set up both of my commitment conuacts properly: I had a goal, a referee to keep me on point, and money pledged to an organization that I abhorred for ex•

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tra incentive. How had I still failed? The answer may have to do with our natural response to negative incentives. Alan Kazdin, a Yale clinical psychologist who specializes in behavioral interventions, explains, "When people are in danger of losing money, especially to an organization that is contrary to their values, a likely side effect is that they will try to escape from it."

It would be success or ailure. li I let slip even one little ulike," it was over. In hindsight, that was, like, so deluded. For me, that avoidance manifested it.:. self in the humble amount of money I had pledged. $9.99, though not a negligible amount, was by no means enough to keep my mind on my commitment contract. While I suspected this when I chose the amount, I wasn't willing to risk losing more money. Caroline Savello CC '09 ran (or, more accurately, did not run at all) into a similar problem when she committed to exercise five times a week for one month. "I only pledged $5 a week, which I knew from the beginning wouldn't be enough to keep me motivated to choose going to the gym over sitting on my couch watching TY," she remembers. "I begrudgingly forfeited the money but definitely felt tempted to lie." There is currently no way for the StickK administration to ensure that its users are telling the truth about whether they succeeded or not . "We operate on an honor code. We trust our users," Goldberg says. But perhaps StickK gives us too much credit. Out of the $650~000 that has been staked on the site since its" launch, only $50,000 has been forfeited. Maybe StickK really has helped its users successfully accomplish their goals, but I suspected foul play. Anna Parks CC '09, who also used StickK for exercise purposes, was so traumatized by tf:te prospect of her money finding its way to the coffers of an anti-gay-marriage organization that she "fudged" her report. "To me, the shame of lying was better than sending my money to them," Parks THE NEW JOURNAL

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confesses. She didn't have a referee and admits that even if she had, "I would have convinced them to lie for me." Xan White PC '09, like Savello and Parks, registered on StickK with the intention of pledging to jog regularly. But suspecting that, like Parks, he would lie to prevent his money from going to his anti-charity of choice, he decided against · making a contract at all. "I think StickK could be a great motivating tool if people found legitimate referees," White concludes. "Just having friends and family monitor you doesn't work because you can usually persuade them to lie for you." IF WE WERE SELF-MOTIVATED enough to run five times ·a week or adopt a Malawian baby a la Madonna, we wouldn't need StickK to begin with. In theory, external motivators should help cultivate internal motivation. But the abundance of loopholes available to StickK users eliminates any real stakes the program could claim. Users can pledge an inconsequential amount of money that they won't be afraid to lose, or they can lie. Stick.K's fatal flaw is that it assumes that we are more motivated and moral than we actually are. "Extrinsic motivators aren't really effective for me," Parks admits. "I need to want to do something for myself." The source of my failure was not a lack of commitment, but rather pledging too linle money and attempting to subvert a subconscious habit. Next time, though, I am eager to give StickK a real shot, with higher stakes and a more stringent referee. "Hey, Jare," I say a few weeks later. "Hi. Mom told me about your little failure. Didn't think you'd be able to do . " It. "Thanks." "A. r: " n.uynme, t h at's w h at I'm h ere ror. "Actually, for once, I have another purpose for you. Over winter break, I'm going to make another commitment contract and you're going to be my referee. " "Your what?" "My referee. You just call me out when I say 'like."' "Said it." "Bye, Jared."

TN Haley Cohen is a sophomore in Davenport College. October 2008

i ms 1 co n certs, ta s, con eren ces bridging disciplines * bringing people together •

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ourna and invites its readers to upcoming events, including:

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for information about these and many other WHC events see .yale.edu/whc The Whi

Humanities Center, 53 Wall Street, New Haven

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UEST Where in the world of academia is geography? ByLauraZax

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You don't have to know much about topography to imagine that fighting for geography education is an uphill battle. Study after study has desensitized the public to American students' geographic illiteracy, showing that two-thirds of Americans aged 18 to 24 cannot identify Iraq on a map; that six months after Hurricane Katrina, 33 percent of Americans in that age range failed to locate Louisiana; that nine in ten high school graduates in the United States do not know where Mghanistan is. These figures are just a few of many similar statistics that are both alarming and, to students who . have been educated in geographicallyignorant America, entirely expected . . Yale is not exempt from this flaw in , the American educational system. The University, which hasn't had a geography department since 1967 and employs no geographers at the undergraduate level, offers a bleak landscape for study of the . discipline. In this respect, the University reflects the Ivy League norm. Though most, if not all, Ivies incorporate geographic methodology mapping and spatial thinking in programs such as economics, area studies, urban planning, and geophysics, only Dartmouth has a •

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department of geography. This hasn't always been the case. In the 17th and 18th centuries, when seven of the eight Ivies were born, "the study of the globes," as geography was then · known, was integrated into the founding curricula of all of them. At the turn of the 19th century, elite universities began to move away from the goal of forming well-filled minds in favor of forming well-made minds. As the focus on mastering specific knowledge waned, so too did the study of geography, which at that time was restricted to plotting and memorizing maps of the celestial and terrestrial spheres. Geography began to be seen not as a college discipline but as a grade-school subject. By 1830, only the University of Pennsylvania still offered a geography curriculum. •

The near disappearance o geography from the Ivy League could be seen as just another case o Ivory ·Tower elitism. Later in that century, however, the work of an introverted English naturalist

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put Ivy League geography back on the map. Charles Darwin's theory of evolution reignited interest in geography, this · time as a study of "man-land" relationsnips. For a little under a century, geography thrived in many different forms throughout the Ivy League. Physical ge.o graphy, a sub-discipline closely ·related to geology, was the strength of Harvard's department; at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School, scholars studied human use of natural resources, pioneering the sub-field of economiC geography; and Yale led the area of human geography. By 1920, however, what Richard Wdght, a professor of geography • • at Dartmouth, calls "the heyday of Ivy League Geography" had passed. Geography's most recent fall was in many ways a victim of coincidence In just a few years, the discipline lost many of its all-stars to death, illness, and retirement. While geography programs at each of the schools waxed and waned throughout the 20th century, only Dartmouth's survived into the 21st. Elsewhere on the globe, geography remains an incredibly popular field some argue that the discipline is • especially relevant for former colonizing and colonized peoples. Even within the •

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as "sticking thumbtacks on a map to indicate places you've visited," explaining her much more nuanced approach to the discipline: "The most basic definition of geography for me is how humans interact with their environment. The underlying themes are space and place how place impacts humans and how humans impact place." Wright, the Dartmouth geography professor, offers an equally passionate defense of conceptual geography. "I want to emphasize that we theorize about these things," he says. "It's not a matter of collecting information about places or thinking about map projections. We theorize how scale works."

c1 want to emphasize that we theorize about these things. It's not a matter o collecting information about places or thinking about map projections. "We theorize how scale works. '' · -Riohard Wright •

United States, geography thrives at many Midwestern state schools. But for most of the Ivy League, geography is little more than a memory.

Geography's most recent fall was in many ways the result of coincidence: in just a few years, the discipline had lost many ofits all-stars to death, illness, and retirement. The discipline's struggle to regain its footing at the Ivies can perhaps be mapped to a struggle over the definition of the field. What in the world is geography, anyway? Despite the deplorable state of American students' knowledge of the schoolhouse globe, the notion that mere fact-based mapping constitutes geography has proved the field's biggest obstacle since academia did away with factgathering. It is all too easy to overlook the discipline's theoretical component, focusing instead on its applications the

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Today's theorizing revolves largely around shifting borders. In the age of globalization, geography is more relevant than it has been since the age of exploration. Many scholars believe that the boundaries separating today's countries from one another whether they be artificially or naturally drawn are no longer the most useful way to think about humans' relationships with each other and with the earth. "People are kind of taking it as faith that globalization abolishes distance," says Saussy, but geography complicates that assumption. Geographers are interested in the nuanced boundaries that separate people, in more than just physical features like the Berlin Wall or the Atlantic Ocean. "If you're a Haitian peasant, it's very hard for you to get to Miami, but if you are a professional in Beijing you can very easily, by sending a resume across seas, find yourself in New Haven," Saussy explains. "The potency of geography- is that it's kind of a corrective to certain illusions about globalization." That's not to say that modern geography has done away with mapping. "Yes, we draw maps. And we're pretty good

data collection side of geography. In this way, the near disappearance of geography from the Ivy League could be seen as just · another case oflvoryTower elitism. Critics with a disdain for the vocational question the discipline's intellectual merit. Their claims are not entirely unfounded. At Central Connecticut State University, a sub-discipline called the geography of tourism has become increasingly popular. "A lot of our students are different from Yale students in that they are thinking of college as job training," says Cynthia Pope, a CCSU geographer who is teaching a medical geography course at the Yale Medical School a vocational institution. And, of course, it is the conceptual, not the vocational, that impresses academia. "You find this in every field," explains Haun Saussy, a professor of literature at Yale, who is currently teaching a humanities course called "Mental Geography." "We talk about the theory of translation though we don't reward people for doing translations. Translating becomes a technical thing." Pope objects to the view of geography •

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at it," Wright says. "But a lot of people think of a map as an outcome, and for me, it's a starting position." A map is to the geography student what textual evidence is to the English major: a tool used to prove a larger thesis. "Maps have important rhetorical potential. You can be very persuasive about a particular line of inquiry by using maps in different ways. They can be manipulated," Wright explains. Paradoxically, one of the most respected faces of 21st-century geography is also one of the most technical. Global Imaging Systems (GIS), a form ofdigital mapping, is one of today's most cuttingedge areas of geography. GIS draws heavily upon satellite imagery, creating visuals of places and spaces for such varied applications as tracking polar bears for wildlife conservationists and spending patterns for marketing firms. If anything has made geography more accessible and appealing in the 21st century, it is GIS, to which procrastinators across the globe became addicted when Google Earth put the world at their fingertips. The rise of GIS exemplifies the reemergence of geography in a new form that fuses its technical and conceptual strains. Avoiding the word "geography," Harvard opened a "Geospatial Library" in 2002, an online database that was crucial to the foundation of the university's Center for Geographic Analysis. That same year, scholars at Brown created a program called "Spatial Structures in the Social Sciences." S4, as the program has been futuristically nicknamed, was designed to promote spatial analysis by bringing Global Imaging Systems and GIS experts to campus to offer their expertise as spatial consultants to Brown's existing departments and to train graduate and undergraduate students in GIS. Yet none of these programs are fullfledged departments.

"7he potency ofgeography is that it's kind of a corrective to certain illusions about globalization. " -Haun Saussy At Dartmouth, meanwhile, the plainly named Department of Geography is remarkably successful. "We've got a October 2008

pretty good reputation," Wright says. This is an understatement: Last year, . the department graduated a record high of 47 students out of a class of 1,1 00, while the historic average hovers around thirty. Geography ranks in the top ten most popular undergraduate majors at Dartmouth. . While any discussion about the formation of a geography department at Yale is, at best, on the backburner, the University is beginning to see geography as a hot topic. At the beginning of the fall semester, Yale's American Studies program began a search for a cultural geographer to fill an assistant professorship. "We were asking ourselves, 'Where are the areas of real excitement? Where are people really pushing the boundaries? Where are people doing work that will serve our department's [needs] and not duplicate what we already have?"' says Matthew Frye Jacobson, chair of the American Studies Department. "Geography carried the day." The theme of this fall's Franke Lecture Series in the Humanities--distinct from Saussy's course is "Mental Geography: Mapping, Cognition, Appropriation, Inscription." Its array of lecturers a geographer; a professor of psychology and education, and an anthropologist points to another underlying facet of geography that has hindered its fight for its own department: It is, at heart, an interdisciplinary study. Yet geography's interdisciplinary nature is also one of the qualities that put it - at the cutting-edge of academia. "The interdisciplinary discipline is on the rise," says Pope, whose work studying women and HIV in Latin America requires literacy in such disparate fields as epidemiology, gender studies, and area studies. Julie Newman, director ofYale's Office of Sustainability, is an advocate for interdisciplinary studies on campus. Addressing the "new challenges" of the modern world, Newman argues, will "require educational systems that allow beyond allow, encourage cross disciplinary ways of thinking." Many schools, however, accustomed to the lines between academic fields lines that geography jumps are reluctant to support as interdisciplinary a department as geography. "There's a lot of lip service paid toward them, without much structure," Pope explains. Priorities boil down to dollars. "There are a lot of interdisciplinary programs, but they're not their own proper departments, so

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many times they don't have their own funding if any funding." Some would say this is a good thing. Critics claim that the most useful aspects of the study of geography -have been absorbed by other disciplines, rendering the need for a distinct department obsolete. "[Geography was] kind of swallowed up as area studies," says Yale's Jacobson. Symbolically, the former home of Harvard's influential geography departme.Q:t is, today, its East Asian Studies Department. At Yale, the interdisciplinary Ethnicity, Race, and Migration major applies a geographic spatial awareness to discussions of identity but is only offered as a second major. •

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were asking ourselves, cWhere are the areas o real excitement? Where are people really pushing the boundaries?'" says Matthew Frye jacobson, chair ofthe American · Studies Department. ("(Geography carried the day. "

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Still, proponents of geography defend the field's right to its own department. "We are the only discipline that pays primary attention to scale, location, and space. No other discipline really does what we do. And it really does matter," Wright pleads. There's certainly evidence to support his claim. After all, geography is always becoming. No longer a discipline about drawing boundaries, geography is a discipline about pushing them. • •

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TN Laura Zax is a junior in Silliman College.

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ByDaraLind

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And so it came to pass iri . the city of Manhattan that a plague fell upon the largest of the houses of investment banking, such that they turned to dust or became deformed. The plague struck first the house of the brothers Lehman, and destroyed it. Then came it to the house of Merrill Lynch, called Merrill, and did. not destroy it, but made it weak; and the elders of that house sought relief from the plague, and they placed themselves and all of their house under the mark of the house of Bank of America. And the houses of Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley transformed themselves and were no more called "investment banks," but were called "bank holding companies," and so they did change themselves and were not destroyed. And word of the plague spread quickly throughout the land of New England, but most quickly through the settlements of Eli, and made them annoyed. For it was then of the season when each year the most prosperous houses in the great cities would send men and women laden with gifts to sojourn to the settlements of Eli and the other tribes of Ivy. And these were called the recruiters. And the houses of investment banking were known for their generosity in sending many recruiters, and adopting many tribesmen of Eli, though few understood the trade upon joining the house. But upon hearing of the plague it was said among the people of Eli that the

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banks would take none but those who had already worked a season with them. And lo, those chosen did not. accept the offer at first, but waited to see the effects of the plague. Such was the caution of Eli in those days. And those who had worked within the house of Lehman, which had been destroyed, allowed themselves only a few days for mourning, and after returned to their carousing. And they said . among each other, Hey, we still have options, for so they thought. Such was the uncertain hubris of Eli in those days. And it was the custom among the tribe of Eli to gather all the recruiters together for a single day, and each house was given its own stall as in the marketplace: the bankers and the consultants, the hedge funds and the makers of technology. Thus the eldest generation of the tribesmen of Ell could walk among the stalls, collecting gifts of pens and water bottles and ping-pong balls, each with the mark of the house that brought them. And this gathering was called the Career Fair. But in these days a wariness set upon the settlements of Eli, and at the Career Fair few sought out the stalls of the investment bankers, though many were richly laid. For they clamored instead at the stalls of the Boston Consulting Group and its brethren; and this was indeed wise, for the commotion of the plague had made work for the consultants.

And word of the plague spread quickly throughout . the land of New England, but most quickly through the settlements o Eli:~ and made them annoyed. And many came to the stalls of the hedge funds, whose recruiters called among the clamor of the Fair, Everyone else is freaking out, whereas we understand money. We beat the market. And this was pleasing to Eli, and many who knew nothing of markets sat among the hedge funds, and took the gifts they offered. But while many stopped at other stalls, none abandoned the bankers entirely, for they did not see that the plague of the house of Lehman was not yet past, but spreading. One said, Just think about what's going to happen to the real economy. His prophecy was private and unheeded. Yet, lo, in the weeks after the Career Fair signs of plague began to spread outward throughout the land. And fear grew among the tribesmen of Eli. • •

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TN Dara Lind is a senior in Branford College.

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