colloquy - · pdf filesee-yan lin,mpa ’70, phd ’77, economics, ... john...

A L U M N I Q U A R T E R L YColloquyThe GRADUATE SCHOOL of ARTS AND SCIENCES • HARVARD UNIVERSITY

Saving Gunung Palung:A RainforestMarriage

Human Subjects Research:A Brief History

Lewis Lockwood on the Politics of the Ninth Symphony

New GSAA Council Members

Alumni Books

FALL 2003

Margot N. Gilladministrative dean

Paula Szocikdirector of publications and alumni relations

Susan Lumenelloeditor

Susan Gilberteditorial assistant

James Clyde Sellman, PhD ’93, historycopy editor

plus design inc.design

Champagne/Lafayette Communications Inc.printing

GRADUATE SCHOOL ALUMNI ASSOCIATION (GSAA)COUNCIL

Naomi André, PhD ’96, musicReinier Beeuwkes III, COL ’62, PhD ’70, division of

medical sciencesLisette Cooper, PhD ’87, geological sciencesA. Barr Dolan, AM ’74, applied sciencesRichard Ekman, AB ’66, PhD ’72, history of American

civilizationJohn C.C. Fan, SM ’67, PhD ’72, applied sciencesDonald Farrar, AB ’54, PhD ’61, economicsCharles Field, PhD ’71, urban planningNeil Fishman, SM ’92, applied sciencesKenneth Froewiss, AB ’67, PhD ’77, economicsWerner Gundersheimer, PhD ’63, history, GSA ’66Homer Hagedorn, PhD ’55, historyR. Stanton Hales, PhD ’70, mathematicsDavid Harnett, PhD ’70, history, ex officioKaren J. Hladik, PhD ’84, business economicsMary Lee Ingbar, SB ’46, PhD ’53, economics,

MPH ’56Ishier Jacobson, SM ’47, applied sciences, LLB ’51Andrew Jameson, PhD ’58, historyDaniel R. Johnson, AM ’82, East Asian history,

AM ’84, business economicsGopal Kadagathur, PhD ’69, applied sciencesAlan Kantrow, AB ’69, PhD ’79, history of

American civilizationRobert E. Knight, PhD ’68, economicsFelipe Larraín, PhD ’85, economicsJill Levenson, PhD ’67, English and American

literature and languageSee-Yan Lin, MPA ’70, PhD ’77, economics, chairBarbara Luna, PhD ’75, applied sciencesSuzanne Folds McCullagh, PhD ’81, fine artsIvan Momtchiloff, AM ’58, applied sciencesJohn J. Moon, AB ‘89, PhD ’94, business economicsSandra O. Moose, PhD ’68, economicsF. Robert Naka, SD ’51, applied sciencesMaury Peiperl, MBA ‘86, PhD ‘94, organizational behaviorM. Lee Pelton, PhD ’84, English and American

literature and languageNancy Ramage, PhD ’69, classical archaeologyJohn E. Rielly, PhD ’61, governmentAllen Sangines-Krause, PhD ’87, economicsCharles Schilke, AM ’82, historySidney Spielvogel, AM ’46, economics, MBA ’49Dennis Vaccaro, PhD ’78, division of medical sciencesDonald van Deventer, PhD ’77, economicsGustavus Zimmerman, PhD ’80, physics

The GRADUATE SCHOOL of ARTS AND SCIENCES • HARVARD UNIVERSITY

On DevelopmentThe English Language Program introducesincoming international students to life atHarvard and the American classroom.

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Saving Gunung Palung:A RainforestMarriageThe hopes and fears of husband-and-wife teamHarvard anthropologist Cheryl Knott and biologist(and wildlife photographer) Tim Laman, trying tosave a Borneo rainforest.

Alumni BooksProgressives branch out, colonial-era justice isdelivered (or not), the American President evokedon film, the diplomacy of Lyndon Johnson, andmore from recently published books by GSASalumni.

Understanding the Politics of the NinthSymphonyAn excerpt from the new book on Beethoven byProfessor Emeritus Lewis Lockwood:What political, social, and personal factors influencedthe writing of this masterpiece, and how has theartist’s intention been subverted and revised over the centuries?

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ColloquyA L U M N I Q U A R T E R L Y

Human Subjects Research:A Brief HistoryHow do researchers—and their human subjects—ensure that experiments are being conductedethically? Research guidelines are a relatively newphenomenon; we take a brief look at how theyoriginated and how they affect research at Harvard today.

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ON THE COVER:

One of the 2,500 or so wild orangutans living in Gunung Palung National Park in Borneo. Photo by Tim Laman.

from the dean

Colloquy Fall 2003 1

HARVARD ALUMNI ASSOCIATION APPOINTED DIRECTORS

Lisette Cooper • Donald van Deventer

GSAA COUNCIL EX OFFICIO

Lawrence H. SummersPhD ’82, economicspresident of Harvard UniversityWilliam C. KirbyPhD ’81, historydean of the Faculty of Arts and SciencesPeter T. Ellison PhD ’83, biological anthropologydean of the Graduate School of Arts and SciencesMargot N. Gill administrative dean of the Graduate School of Arts and SciencesMichael Shinagel PhD ’64, English and American literature and languagedean of Continuing Education and University ExtensionThomas M. Reardonvice president for Alumni Affairs and DevelopmentJohn P. Reardon Jr.AB ’60executive director of the Harvard Alumni Association

The GSAA is the alumni association of HarvardUniversity’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.Governed by its Council, the GSAA representsand advances the interests of alumni of theGraduate School by sponsoring alumni events andby publishing Colloquy four times each year.

Graduate School Alumni AssociationByerly Hall 3008 Garden StreetCambridge, MA 02138-3654phone: (617) 495-5591 • fax: (617) [email protected] • www.gsas.harvard.edu

COLLOQUY ON THE WEB

The current issue of Colloquy, as well as recentback issues, are available on the Web at www.gsas.harvard.edu/colloquy.

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Colloquy welcomes your letters. Write to:Colloquy, Harvard University Graduate School ofArts and Sciences, Byerly Hall 300, 8 GardenStreet, Cambridge, MA 02138-3654; or [email protected].

MOVING?

Please send your Colloquy mailing label and yournew address to Alumni Records, 124 Mt. AuburnStreet, Fourth Floor, Cambridge, MA 02138-3654.

8Printed on Recycled Paper

This November, GSAS

will sponsor its first-

ever alumni event in

Europe. This event, a

symposium of Harvard

faculty who will look at “The Modern Art

Museum in a Global Context,” will be held in

London as part of the University-wide

“Harvard in Europe” series.

The GSAS event will help expand and con-

solidate Harvard’s role as a global leader in

higher education. It will also enable many of

our alumni living overseas to reconnect with

one another and enjoy an afternoon of “con-

tinuing education.”

With approximately 2,000 GSAS alumni

residing in Europe, we have been eager to

sponsor such an event. Now that it’s upon us,

we are already planning similar gatherings in

other countries where GSAS alumni live and

work.

And GSAS alumni are indeed everywhere.

In addition to the 2,000 or so in Europe—and

more than 30,000 in North America—about

1,300 alumni reside in Asia; over 200 in the

Middle East; nearly 200 in Central and South

America; over 150 in the Australia/Oceania

region; and nearly 100 in Africa.

We have begun to see this international

presence reflected in the composition of our

Alumni Association Council: Chair See-Yan

Lin (PhD ’77, economics) is from Malaysia, and

Council members include Felipe Larraín (PhD

’85, economics) of Chile, Jill Levenson (PhD

’67, English and American literature and lan-

guage) of Canada, and Maury Peiperl (PhD ’94,

organizational behavior) and Allen Sangines-

Krause (PhD ’87, economics) of England.

These individuals see themselves—rightful-

ly so—as ambassadors of GSAS to the world

beyond Cambridge. They keep us connected

to the various nations our students—current

and prospective—call home, and to the places

where so many of our alumni live and work.

In addition, other Council members regularly

travel outside the United States and meet

with local GSAS alumni on behalf of our

Global Outreach Committee.

These dedicated alumni are a testament to

GSAS’s role in nurturing the world’s intellec-

tual capital and in promoting the internation-

al exchange of ideas.To do this well, however,

we need the input of our alumni living abroad.

I ask you to take a moment to write to let us

know how GSAS can better serve you—and

how you would like to see GSAS better serve

our students.

One issue on many people’s minds is the

USA Patriot Act, which went into effect in

January 2003. Part of its mandate is a closer

scrutiny of international student visa applica-

tions.

I’m pleased to report that we saw far fewer

visa denials than we had anticipated, coming

into this academic year. We have worked

closely with the US State Department to

ensure that our academic visitors would be

accorded the proper consideration.

We are as enthusiastic as ever about work-

ing with the brightest young scholars from

every part of the globe, and we will continue

to offer them the greatest research and schol-

arly opportunities available.

I look forward to meeting some of you in

London shortly, and to hearing from others of

you in the near future.

Bringing Together Our Global Community

Peter T. Ellison, GSAS dean,PhD ’83, biological anthropology

Harvard University GSAS 2

science in the field

“They come in and cut an area, it getsdried out, and then it’s vulnerable to fire,”Knott says. “Once it burns, and they con-vert it to rice fields, then it’s going to betotally gone. We’re at a point now wherethere’s been a lot of logging, but it’s been inpockets. If it was to stop now, [the forest]could … regenerate. It would take a while,but it would be okay.”

Whether that can happen depends uponstricter controls being placed on the illegalloggers. Unfortunately, the most extensivelogging is being done in the lowland forestand the peat swamp, the areas where mostorangutans live. Some can survive in thelogged areas, but it is unclear whether thepopulations are large enough to be viable.

AN UPHILL BATTLE

Local corruption throws a major wrenchinto the battle for the rainforest. “We’vehad very little power to do much about it,and it’s very frustrating,” Laman says.“But the scale of corruption is so great,and the powers that are involved are sostrong that, as scientists, we feel we haveso little influence. We can only try to arguethe case with Indonesian scientific agenciesand parks departments. Changing thewhole culture of corruption is … reallygoing to be long-term.”

“Since the fall of [President] Suharto,there has been a lot of decentralization. Alot more control has been given to theprovinces,” Knott says. “So, even thoughthe national government wants to stop it… it’s difficult because some of the localgovernment officials—the police, the mili-tary—are involved in illegal logging.”

The loggers who were arrested back inthe winter of this year are still awaitingtrial, according to Knott. “They have to be

Theirs is a story grounded in sci-ence. He’s a biologist, she’s ananthropologist, and they started

their lives together while doing field-work in, and helping to save, a 24,000-acre Indonesian rainforest park and itsinhabitants.

Cheryl Knott, an assistant professorof anthropology who earned her PhD in1999, and husband Tim Laman, a sci-entific associate of the Museum ofComparative Zoology and wildlife pho-tographer who earned his doctorate inorganismic and evolutionary biology in1994, met as students at the GraduateSchool of Arts and Sciences in the early1990s.

A decade later, Knott and Laman areproud parents of three-year-old Russelland his sister-to-be (due in December)—and they’re still working in the rain-forest, studying the animal and plantlife unique to the Indonesian island ofBorneo and one of its largest nationalparks, Gunung Palung (pronounced:goo-noong paw-loong). Knott hasmade a career studying orangutans,who only live in the wild in the jungles

of Indonesia and Malaysia; Laman did hisPhD work on strangler fig trees and hasstudied a variety of creatures in the park asa field scientist for Harvard and a wildlifephotographer for National Geographic.

But Gunung Palung and the 5,000-acreCabang Panti research site within it isthreatened, Knott says. Illegal logging hasdegraded large areas of the park and hasnow invaded the study site’s trail system,putting into doubt the survival of the2,500 or so orangutans that live there.According to a recent census taken byKnott’s team, that’s about ten percent ofthe world’s orangutan population; theother approximately 23,000 orangutansreside in national parks and reserves else-where on the islands of Borneo andSumatra.

From January to February of this year,Knott, Laman, and their colleagues askedIndonesian officials for more protection ofthe site. They wanted to help governmentofficials “realize the importance of thisarea and its uniqueness,” Laman says.“Consequently there was a big patrol—thenational police force went in and clearedthe place out. Hopefully, our efforts hadsomething to do with that.”

Illegal logging involves a substantialportion of the village population aroundGunung Palung. “Something like two-thirds of the households in the area areinvolved in illegal logging [around thenational park],” Knott says. “That’s thou-sands of people.”

The good news is that the park’s forestshave not been clear-cut. The damage hasbeen “selective,” according to Knott. Thebiggest and best trees are cut, those sure tobring the best prices on the market, andsmaller trees are taken later. Still, consider-able damage is being done to the habitat.

Saving Gunung Palung: A Rainforest Marriage

By Susan Lumenello

A match made at GSAS:Tim Laman, PhD ’94,and Cheryl Knott, PhD ’99, in the rainforestcanopy of the Gunung Palung National Park.

All photos in this story by Tim Laman.


tried locally,” she says. “Whether or notthat’s going to happen, we’re waiting tosee.”

Unfortunately, the rules of evidence arefoggy to say the least, Knott says.“According to the local police, if you findsomeone with a chainsaw in a nationalpark, you can’t arrest them for illegal log-ging because someone else will say, ‘Howcan you prove he was there doing illegallogging?’” she says. “If you have a pictureof him cutting down a tree in the park,that’s not good enough evidence because,‘That picture could have been taken some-place else.’ And … a policeman or rangersaying, ‘I saw this person cutting down atree in a national park,’ isn’t consideredvalid testimony.”

Orangutan poaching for food and forthe illegal pet trade, which has steadilyincreased in recent years, is also threaten-ing the ape population.

“Most people [on Borneo] are Muslim,so they don’t eat orangutans,” Knott says.“But some of the Dyak people, the localindigenous people of that area, do eatorangutans. So some of the illegal loggerswill kill to sell the meat to the Dyaks. Andthey’ll kill mothers for their babies for theillegal pet trade.”

Three years ago, Knott’s team set up atransit center for rescued baby orangutans.She estimates that they’ve brought in about25 infants who had been kidnapped.

“When they’re infants, they want tocling to you like they’re little babies. Butonce they’re six-year-olds, what do you dowith them? They’re super strong. They

bite. So people don’t want them, they dis-card or abuse them, and we find them incages,” Knott says.

The kidnappings are made even moredisturbing when one realizes that for everykidnapped orangutan baby, a motherorangutan was killed. And since femaleorangutans only reproduce about onceevery eight years, the death of even one hasa major negative impact on this diminish-ing species.

A DISTINCTIVE SPECIES

Orangutans are particularly susceptible toextinction. “They give birth so rarely;they’re not fast reproducers,” Knott says.“But they do seem to have quite high sur-vivorship—their babies are not dying veryoften from natural causes.”

Studying orangutans is very time-inten-sive compared to many other animals.There are two reasons for this. One,orangutans have the longest intervalbetween births of any primate, includinghumans. Two, they’re solitary creatures.After mating, mother and baby go in onedirection while the now lone male goes inanother. This seemingly anti-social lifestylehas to do with the scarcity and wide dis-persal of the orangutans’ food supply.They must travel, literally, far and wide tosecure food that is irregularly available.

Knott has charted the lives of females,males, and juveniles to learn more aboutorangutan reproduction and the environ-

A L U M N I N O T E S

C O N T I N U E D O N P A G E 5

ASTRONOMYMichael Zeilik, PhD ’75, professor ofphysics and astronomy at the Universityof New Mexico, is the 2003 recipient ofthe Excellence in Introductory CollegePhysics Teaching Award by the AmericanAssociation of Physics Teachers (AAPT).As recipient, Professor Zeilik presenteda lecture at the AAPT summer meeting.He received the Astronomy EducationPrize from the American AstronomicalSociety in 2002.

COMPARATIVE LITERATUREEllen Peel, GSA ’76, announces thepublication of her book Politics,Persuasion, and Pragmatism: A Rhetoric ofFeminist Utopian Fiction (Ohio State,2002). She is a literature professor in theDepartments of Comparative and WorldLiterature and of English at San FranciscoState University.

ENGLISH AND AMERICAN LITERATURE AND LANGUAGEHeather Dubrow, PhD ’72,Tighe-Evansand John Bascom Professor at theUniversity of Wisconsin at Madison,writes that she has been awarded aNational Endowment for the HumanitiesFellowship and a Guggenheim Fellowshipfor a new book that reexamines theworkings of the early modern(Renaissance) lyric.

GOVERNMENTAndrew Rudalevige, PhD ’00, receivedthe American Political Science Associa-tion’s Richard E. Neustadt Award for thebest book on the presidency published in2002, Managing the President’s Program:Presidential Leadership and Legislative Poli-cy Formulation (Princeton). He is an assis-tant professor of political science atDickinson College.

HISTORYMary Beth Norton, PhD ’69, writesthat her most recent book, In the Devil’sSnare:The Salem Witchcraft Crisis of 1692(Knopf), received the Ambassador BookAward by the English-Speaking Union asthe best book in American studies for2002.

MATHEMATICSSolomon W. Golomb, PhD ’57,University Professor and Andrew andErna Viterbi Chair in Communications atthe University of Southern California,reports on a busy 2003. In April,Professor Golomb was elected to theNational Academy of Sciences. In May, hereceived a Distinguished Alumnus Awardfrom his (undergraduate) alma mater,Johns Hopkins University and waselected a fellow of the AmericanAcademy of Arts and Sciences. "I hadbeen elected a fellow of the AmericanThe scene after illegal loggers have degraded a section of the park.

continued on page 8


Walk into the lobby of WilliamJames Hall, which houses thepsychology department, and

you will find a sign reading, “SubjectsWanted.” The sign directs you to bulletinboards cluttered with various invitationsto participate in psychological researchprojects in exchange for nominal mone-tary rewards. “Judge People for $$,” one reads. “Participants Wanted forPsychology Experiment on Memory”reads another.

Seems harmless enough.Yet history has taught us that research

concerning human subjects is as perilousas it is essential. Without such research,the advancement of knowledge in medi-cine, psychology, and sociology would besluggish, if not altogether impossible.Without it, treatments for cancer, thera-pies for psychological illnesses, andadvances in social understanding wouldbe nonexistent.

Yet it is also true that without suchresearch, thousands would have beenspared atrocities and death at the handsof Nazi doctors during World War II, andhundreds of African-American men in theUnited States could have been cured ofsyphilis. The list goes on.

This tension between the methods usedto advance scientific knowledge and thedamage these methods may inflict onindividuals has spurred the developmentof ethical standards concerning humanresearch subjects. And it was in reactionto science’s most flagrant offenses thatsuch codes of ethics were conceived.

INSTITUTIONAL REVIEW

Dean Gallant is assistant dean forresearch policy and administration andexecutive officer of the Faculty of Artsand Sciences Standing Committee on theUse of Human Subjects in Research.“There were a number of cases in the1950s and ’60s where the abuse of humanresearch subjects led to the institution offederal regulations to protect these sub-jects,” he says. Among these was a studyof immune-compromised patients byresearchers who injected cancer cells into“an unwitting group of elderly people.Largely as a result of studies like this, fed-eral requirements were instituted to estab-lish committees such as ours.”

The Committee on the Use of HumanSubjects in Research is one of three suchinstitutional review boards (IRBs) atHarvard (the other two are within theMedical School and School of PublicHealth). IRBs approve all research pro-posals involving human subjects thatwould be conducted at the University, andthey are also mandated to educate andinform researchers about the ethical com-plexities involved in human subjectresearch.

IRBs also offer guidance for graduatestudent researchers. “There is a generalonline program offered to all researchersusing human subjects—required whenNIH funds are involved,” Gallant says.Harvard’s three IRBs, under the auspicesof the Provost, have just been awarded agrant by the NIH to expand and enhance

this online program, he says, includingdeveloping separate modules for differentdisciplines. In-depth instruction for GSASstudents in the ethics of human subjectsresearch is also integrated by departmentsinto students’ research training curricu-lum, Gallant adds.

At the core of the standards adopted byHarvard and other research institutions isthe Nuremberg Code. It was establishedduring the 1946 trial of 20 physicianswho, “in the name of science,” performedexperimental procedures on concentra-tion camp prisoners.

The Nuremberg Code laid out ten con-ditions to define the practice of ethicalresearch. Among these was a mandate forthe consent of subjects and for the wor-thiness of the research being considered.

Elements of the Nuremberg Codeappeared in the code of standards setseven years later by the NationalInstitutes of Health (NIH). The NIHguidelines were established in response toallegations that American doctors wereperforming unethical research on humansubjects at hospitals and universities—as,for example, in the notorious Tuskegeeand Willowbrook studies.

The Tuskegee Syphilis Study (1932–72)was a federally funded research project inwhich 400 African-American men withsyphilis were deceived into participatingin a study of that disease. During thecourse of the study, penicillin was discov-ered. Although the drug became widelyused as an effective treatment for syphilis,it was withheld from the subjects of the

By Janine Brunell Looker

HUMAN SUBJECTS/HUMANE RESEARCH: THEN AND NOW

on academe

A L U M N I N O T E S


Tuskegee study until the research wasstopped. (President Clinton issued an offi-cial apology to the surviving study victimsin 1997.) In the Willowbrook Study, whichtook place in the mid-1960s, childrenadmitted to New York’s WillowbrookState School as “mentally defective per-sons” were deliberately infected with hep-atitis in order to study the progression ofthat disease.

These experiments were exposed in theNew England Journal of Medicine andother publications. “Together these revela-tions—and others like them—exposed aresearch culture in which the interests of subjects had been fundamentally disregarded in the name of science,” wrote Allan Brandt, Amalie Moses KassProfessor of the History of Medicine anddirector of the Division of Medical Ethics,

in “Bioethics: Then and Now” (HarvardHealth Policy Review, Spring 2002).

In reaction to these research abuses, theNational Commission for the Protection ofHuman Subjects of Biomedical andBehavioral Research was formed and, in1979, published “The Belmont Report:Ethical Principles and Guidelines for the Protection of Human Subjects ofResearch.” The human subjects regula-tions laid out in this report are revisitedregularly.

Following these regulations closely isJane Calhoun, an IRB research officer for

continued on page 10

Harvard’s Standing Committee on the Useof Human Subjects. Calhoun, Gallant, andother committee members review as manyas 700 proposals each year.

“We do a certain amount of advising—most of the proposals we review requireonly that,” she says. “Occasionally we runacross a proposal that causes concern.”

A CASE IN POINT

One proposal, submitted by Jill Hooley,professor of psychology, involved playingtapes of critical statements made by theirmothers to subjects suffering—or recover-ing—from depression. Hooley studies whypsychiatric patients relapse. “I am interest-ed in family factors that might be associat-ed with patients who do poorly or, con-versely, who do well when they are recov-

ering from an episode of illness,” she says.“Research literature has taught us that

certain kinds of family variables seem to bequite predictive of patients doing wellwhen they are in the recovery process andthat certain of these variables seem to bepredictive of relapse,” Hooley adds. “Oneof these variables is criticism from a closefamily member. This finding has actuallytriggered the development of a number offamily-based interventions to help patientswith these disorders and to reduce rates ofrelapse.”

Association for the Advancement ofScience some 15 years earlier; so I amnow a ‘fellow of the AAAS’ twice over,"he writes. Also in May, days before his71st birthday, Professor Golombattended meetings in Haifa as a memberof the Technion-Israel Institute ofTechnology’s Board of Governors andAcademic Advisory Committee.

MUSICCamilla Cai, AM ’65, recently wasnamed Kenyon College’s second JamesD. and Cornelia W. Ireland Professor ofMusic. Professor Cai, who joined thecollege’s faculty in 1986, specializes in themusicology of Germany and Scandinavia.She is the co-author of Ole Bull: Norway’sRomantic Musician and CosmopolitanPatriot (Wisconsin, 1993) and books andchapters on Brahms, Mendelssohn, andSchumann, among other composers.

PHYSICSJohn Mansfield, PhD ’70, reports thatPresident Bush reappointed him for asecond term as member of the DefenseNuclear Facilities Safety Board inWashington. The Board oversees theDepartment of Energy’s nuclearweapons and cleanup activities at sitesaround the country.

REGIONAL STUDIES—USSRHarvey Fireside, AM ’55, writes: "Mybook, The 'Mississippi Burning' Civil RightsMurder Conspiracy Trial (Enslow, 2002),was awarded the Carter G. WoodsonBook Prize for "the most distinguishedsocial science book depicting ethnicity"for young readers, by the NationalCouncil for the Social Studies.The bookwas also among the finalists for theNAACP Image Award as the bestchildren’s book" for 2002.

IN MEMORIAMStanley Heck, AM ’38, Romancelanguages and literatures, died July 3,2003, in Lincoln, Mass. He had been aresident of Lincoln since 1940 and had alifelong interest in the arts, includinginvolvement in the Lincoln Players andthe Boston Symphony Orchestra. Hewas a past president of the board of theDeCordova Museum. Memorial gifts maybe sent to the Make-a-Wish Foundationof Massachusetts, 295 DevonshireStreet, Boston, MA 02110.

TO SHARE YOUR NEWSPlease submit Alumni Notes to: Colloquy,Harvard University Graduate School ofArts and Sciences, Byerly Hall 300,8 Garden Street, Cambridge, MA 02138-3654; or e-mail your news to [email protected]. Please include yourtelephone number or e-mail address.Alumni Notes are subject to editing forlength and clarity.

C O N T I N U E D F R O M P A G E 3

A hallway in the lobby of William James Hall, where dozens of flyers are posted by faculty and graduatestudent researchers seeking human subjects for research projects.

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In 1998 at the Winter Olympics inNagano, Japan, Seiji Ozawaappeared in what may have been the

largest electronic simulation of a concerthall ever imagined. He conducted sixchoirs that were located in New York,Berlin, Cape Town, Sydney, Beijing, andNagano (six cities on five continents) ina televised simulcast in which all of themsang the “Ode to Joy,” the principaltheme of the finale of the Ninth Sym-phony, electronically synchronized toovercome time differences. Remarkableas this achievement was, it had a back-ground.

The “Ode” has been sung at everyOlympic Games since 1956. By the1990s it had become a common practicein Japan for massed choral groups andorchestras to come together in Decem-ber of each year to give performances ofDaiku—“The Big Nine.”

The newly achieved world status ofthe “Ode to Joy” melody is only one ofthe most visible ways in which theBeethoven legend that was created in the19th century has been reshaped andenlarged many times over in the 20th.The very name Beethoven has attainedcult status beyond that of almost anyother classical composer; the cult hasspread through many levels of high,middle, and popular culture in music,art, television, and film. The Beethovenimage, now all too commercially viable,is itself the subject of a sizable literature.And no work has been more fertile increating and maintaining this imagethan the Ninth Symphony.

THE POLITICAL BACKGROUNDOF THE NINTH

In 1815, during the Congress of Vienna,perpetual spying was the order of the day,and police informers were everywhere.Artists such as Beethoven who wereknown for their republican views were sus-pect, and the Conversation Books (Editor’snote: After his hearing became severelydiminished, Beethoven used “conversationbooks” to communicate with peoplethrough written questions and remarks)reflect the atmosphere of suspicion thatruled the city. An 1820 entry that wasprobably made in a café says, “anothertime—just now the spy Haensl (Editor’snote: Lockwood notes that this is probablythe spy Peter Hensler) is here.” This situa-tion, combined with Austria’s difficult eco-nomic recovery, Beethoven’s personalfinancial reverses, and the disappearanceor death of many of his traditional aristo-cratic supporters, fueled his habitual anxiety. When Dr. Karl von Bursy, recom-mended by his old friend Amenda, visitedhim in June 1816, Beethoven ranted loud-ly about the state of things in Vienna:

[V]enom and rancor raged in him.He defies everything and is dissatis-fied with everything, blasphemingagainst Austria and especially Vien-na. … Everyone is a scoundrel.There is nobody one can trust. Whatis not down in black and white is notobserved by anyone, not even by theman with whom you have made anagreement.

In the mind of the general public thereare actually two “Ninth Symphonies.”One is the “Ode to Joy” itself, as choralanthem; that is, just the melody, not theelaborate and complex movement fromwhich it comes. The other is the symphonyas a complete work, a large-scale four-movement cycle in which the enormousfinale brings solo and choral voices intothe symphonic genre for the first time. Seenas a whole, the movement plan of the workforms a progressive sequence in which thethree earlier movements balance eachother but also prepare the finale and give itmuch of its structural and aesthetic mean-ing. Beethoven’s setting of the first stropheof Schiller’s poem, beginning “Freude,schöner Götterfunken” (“Joy, beautifulspark of divinity”) is the admitted center-piece of its finale, but it is matched in sig-nificance by a second, contrasting sectionin a radically different style that sets thefirst chorus of the “Ode,” “Seid umschlun-gen, Millionen” (“Be embraced, you mil-lions”). The theme and text of “Freude,schöner Götterfunken” is eventually com-bined contrapuntally with that of “Seidumschlungen, Millionen” to form the greatclimax of the movement. The “Seidumschlungen” theme has no chance what-ever of being selected as a singable anthemby amateur choral groups because it ismelodically difficult and harmonicallyobscure, and is of a totally different typeand character. In other words, it is animportant feature of the modern history ofthe Ninth Symphony that at popular levelsit is barely known as a symphony at all but is represented only by its most famous melody.

the humanities

Professor Emeritus LewisLockwood: Of all Beethoven’sworks, the Ninth Symphony has had the broadest impact.

The Ninth Symphony:The Personal and the Political

In his new book, Beethoven: The Music and the Life (Norton), Lewis Lockwood setsout, among other biographical endeavors, to put the music of the world’s most famouscomposer into its historical—and personal—contexts. Lockwood, Fanny PeabodyProfessor of Music Emeritus at Harvard, is also the author of Beethoven: Studies in theCreative Process (Harvard, 1992) and was previously an editor of the journalBeethoven Forum. An excerpt from Beethoven follows. —Susan Lumenello

By Lewis Lockwood

Tom

Kat

es

Reprinted with permission from W.W. Norton & Company. Copyright

2003 by Lewis Lockwood.

In a Conversation Book of 1820,[Beethoven’s acquaintance Anton] Schindlerwrote (in a passage not regarded as a lateraddition):

Before the French Revolution therewas a great freedom of thought andpolitics. The revolution made thegovernment and the nobility distrustthe common people, which has ledto the current repression. … Theregimes, as they are now constituted,are not in tune with the needs of thetime; eventually they will have tochange or become more easy-going,that is, become a little different.

It is against such a background that wecan take the measure of Beethoven’s deci-sion in 1821–24 to return to his old idea ofsetting Schiller’s “Ode to Joy” and to pres-ent it, not as a solo song to be heard in theprivate salons of music lovers but as ananthem that could be performed on thegrandest possible scale in the concert hall,the most public of settings. His furtherplan, to make that melody the climax of agreat symphony, distantly recalls Haydn’suse of his famous patriotic hymn, “Gotterhalte Franz den Kaiser,” as a slow move-ment with variations in his C Major Quar-tet Opus 76 No. 3, composed in 1797 justa few months after he had written theanthem itself. Beethoven, in this new sym-phony that would have Schiller’s “Ode” ascenterpiece, meant to leave to posterity apublic monument of his liberal beliefs. Hisdecision to fashion a great work thatwould convey the poet’s utopian vision ofhuman brotherhood is a statement of sup-port for the principles of democracy at atime when direct political action on behalfof such principles was difficult and danger-ous. It enabled him to realize in his waywhat Shelley meant when he called poetsthe “unacknowledged legislators of theworld.”

CHANGING VIEWS OF THENINTH

The Ninth Symphony, of all Beethoven’sworks, has had the broadest impact andthe widest range of interpretations. FromBeethoven’s time to ours, generations ofcommentators, musicians, artists, and crit-ics have stepped forward to give voice totheir interpretations, many of them focus-ing only on the “Ode” rather than on thesymphony as a whole. Very few haveexplored what may seem to some critics in


Schumann’s friend Henriette Voigt andportrayed by Schumann as an enthusiasticcommon listener, as saying about theNinth as a monumental experience, “I amthe blind man who is standing before theStrasbourg Cathedral, who hears its bellsbut cannot see the entrance.”

Worship of Beethoven, above all thesymphonies, was rampant in the more con-servative 19th-century centers of Americanmusical culture. The Ninth, which hadreceived its first London performance in1825, was given its American premiere in New York in 1846 by the recentlyfounded New York Philharmonic Society.In Boston, Brahmins and transcendental-ists alike acclaimed Beethoven as a godlikefigure (said Margaret Fuller, “the mind islarge that can contain a Beethoven”). Amajor purpose in founding the BostonSymphony Orchestra in the 1880s, in addi-tion to rivaling New York, was to makepossible the performance of Beethoven’ssymphonies, with the Ninth as the cap-stone of the great tradition. Though otherWestern musical traditions, especially inthe earlier twentieth century, were lessenthralled with the Beethoven symphonies,especially the Ninth, as these works reced-ed further into the past, still the power ofmass media and the message of brother-hood in the finale continued to make theNinth a natural symbol at great politicalevents celebrating freedom, as at the con-cert led by Leonard Bernstein on December25, 1989, celebrating the tearing down of

our time the historicizing and anachronis-tic question of what it was, or could havebeen, that Beethoven himself intended thiswork to mean and to express.

The interpretive trend began effectivelywith Wagner, whose entire career was con-ditioned by his fascination with the Ninth:in his early years he copied the entire score,arranged it for piano, performed it manytimes, restored some passages, and claimedit as the starting point of his lifetime aes-thetic mission to equal and surpassBeethoven by reshaping opera along sym-phonic lines into music-drama. AsBeethoven transformed the symphony andspoke to the world by combining instru-mental music with words, Wagner wouldreshape culture, especially German culture,by means of music-drama based on nation-al myths.

In My Life, Wagner writes that he wasimpelled by the “mystical influence ofBeethoven’s Ninth Symphony to plumb the deepest recesses of music.” On another front, every German composer of symphonies after Beethoven, fromMendelssohn and Schumann to Brahms,Bruckner, and Mahler, understood that theNinth had come to be a central bulwark ofmusical experience that each would haveto confront in carving out a personal pathas a symphonist. In fact each composeralso confronted the Ninth in individualworks, whether by the choice of key orscale, by the use of solo and choral voices,or by thematic content. Schumann, forexample, who worshipped Beethoven likea god, quotes Karl Voigt, the husband of continued on page 12

The “Ode to Joy” from the Ninth Symphony being sung at Berlin’s Brandenburg Gate for the worldwideopening of the 1998 Winter Olympics.

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this ‘big’ stage for a fairly brief period.They can’t sustain it; they shrink. And thesmaller males do reproduce, so they’re notreally sub-adults.”

Knott described what happened to oneof the big males in her study over a year’stime. “He went through this period of real-ly intensive mating, but then the cheekpads started to diminish. His whole bodysize and his demeanor totally changed. Hestopped producing these long calls theymake. He stopped mating,” Knott says.

“If a male can only maintain this ‘prime’form for a brief period, then the smallermales should wait until conditions arevariable, both nutritionally and possiblysocially, before they develop,” she adds.“This may be why you see this delayeddevelopment in some males.” Knott also isinvestigating whether these “past-primes”may revert back to being prime males.

In terms of nutrition, reproduction isdirectly related to the orangutans’ abilityto get adequate calories. During Knott’sPhD work, she discovered that hormonallevels in females are lowest during periodswhen fruit—orangutans’ main foodsource—is least available. Levels rise whenfruit production and consumptionincrease, which is when matings and con-ceptions occur more often. During periodswhen fruit is scarce, orangutans’ (whoweigh from around 100 to more than 200pounds) caloric intake can be less than1,500 calories per day.

The discovery that large males can’t

retain their prime condition forever, asthey do in zoos, may also be related tonutrition. “They can’t seem to maintain[being a ‘prime male’] for very long—it isvery expensive, energetically,” Knott says.“There are a lot of questions we haven’tanswered yet. You really want to studyapes over a lifespan … to see what’s reallyhappening—to see the birth interval, to seewhat really controls reproduction, tounderstand juvenile development.”

Knott and her team are also using GISand GPS (satellite) monitoring to studyorangutan travel patterns over large areas.“An individual, especially a male, willcome in our area, then disappear, and we’llsee him maybe a year later,” Knott says. “Iwant to start long-term overnight follows.Right now we follow them maybe a couplehours out of the study trail system. Thenthey get too far away, and we have to letthem go. We want to camp in the forestand keep following them, really track themto see how far they’re traveling. That’s alsoimportant for conservation too—to seehow big of an area they use.”

EXPANDING THE ACADEMIC DOMAIN

Although Knott is a biological anthropolo-gist (one of her advisors was GSAS DeanPeter T. Ellison), she has come to realizethat she and her husband Laman, a fieldbiologist, can no longer conduct scientificresearch without being involved in conser-vation. It’s become a critical part of theirscientific work.

“Almost every field biologist I knowusually has some kind of conservationcomponent to their work. We can nolonger go into these areas and just do ourown thing with no one bothering us,” shesays. “Local people expect us to be muchmore accountable, to explain what we’redoing there, explain how it benefits them.So it’s interesting. You can no longer justdo the pure research.”

Laman, who worked as a research assis-tant studying interactions among plantsand animals in the Gunung PalungNational Park even before he became aHarvard graduate student, remembers howit used to be.

“I first went there over 15 years ago,”he says. “Even the park was surrounded byall these [relatively] undisturbed forests. Itwas a huge wilderness area. You felt likeyou were going into the middle of

mental and evolutionary factors that affectit—not only for the sake of orangutans butalso for furthering knowledge of humanevolution.

She recently discovered a “really inter-esting phenomenon” that could affect thetiming of male development in orangutans.Among orangutans, there are two “types”of males: a big male with large cheek padsand a smaller one without cheek pads.“Both are reproductively mature, but theirbehavior is quite different,” she says.

To find out what makes them different,Knott is investigating a combination ofnutritional and social factors that maydetermine when males develop. Scientists,she says, do not know yet whether “allmales eventually develop [into big males] ifthey live long enough, and whether thereare some that are 50 years old and neverdeveloped.”

The phenomenon of the “two types” isextremely rare among mammals, Knottsays. “There have been times in zoos wherethey remove the big males and the smallermales develop,” she says. “So zoos havethought it was some kind of suppression.The problem is, in the wild these guys aresolitary—they don’t run into each other. Sothey’re probably not having a suppressiveeffect.

“I’ve looked at testosterone levels in themales, and [it’s much higher in] the bigmales than the smaller males,” she contin-ues. “But the interesting thing is that we’vediscovered these big males will only stay in

Saving Gunung Palungcontinued from page 3

A baby orangutan looks into Tim Laman’s camera as it makes its way with its mother through thecanopy of Gunung Palung National Park.


nowhere. I guess I imagined it was alwaysgoing to be like that. But in the last 15years there’s been an incredible amount ofdevelopment in Indonesia. In areas aroundthe park, the population’s been going up as[people] are moving in from Java. They’rejust cutting down the forests and convert-ing [the land] to agriculture.”

In 1997, Knott and her team estab-lished the Gunung Palung OrangutanConservation Project to help preserve thepark and its unique species of animals,bird, and plant life—and to make it possi-ble for academic work to continue. Theproject sponsors a staff of about ten fieldassistants and local people and conductsawareness campaigns in the region andenvironmental education in its school sys-tems. They also have a billboard cam-paign, a weekly radio program, and regu-lar public meetings that can attract hun-dreds of people.

“There’ll be a village moderator, aranger, field assistants. Often they can bekind of contentious because you mighthave illegal loggers come in, so we talkabout what we’re doing,” Knott says.“[People] wonder, ‘What are theresearchers doing up there?’”

The project also hosts field trips for highschool students. “Most of these kids live inthe local villages, but they’ve never seen awild orangutan, and they’ve never been tothe rain forest even though they live a fewminutes from [it],” Knott says. “They stayfor about three days and take data, learnabout what we do, practice beingresearchers.”

Knowing that many of these people areinvolved in illegal logging and the illegalpet trade, educating area parents and otheradults is another challenge the Harvardgroup has taken on. Some villagers do rec-

ognize the value of medicines found inrainforests, Knott says. They also see thatmuch of the world’s oxygen is generated inrainforests and that without them globalrain patterns will be disrupted. The biolog-ical diversity argument can also have animpact. But, she says, “those argumentsdon’t always resonate at the village level,especially among the people doing the log-ging, most of whom are farmers.”

One argument that does resonate is pro-tection of the Gunung Palung watershed.“We explain that the water they’re gettingcomes down from the mountain and that ifyou destroy the rainforest, you’re going todestroy your water source,” Knott says.

Knott’s group has also developed a“pride campaign” to encourage locals tovalue the wildlife that is uniquelyIndonesian.

“Orangutans are only found in Borneoand Sumatra. Proboscis monkeys are onlyin Borneo,” she says. Local children par-ticipate in art-related programs like playsand coloring contests. But even these,Knott explains, are “mostly targeting parents.”

In one coloring contest, children madepictures of orangutans for a billboard.“When a billboard was revealed showingwhat orangutans really looked like, every-one was shocked to see that they wereorange. They didn’t even know,” she says.“These kids live right there [by the forest],but they have less knowledge of what anorangutan is than a kid in Somerville does.There’s no environmental education.”

But the logging of the habitat is what’skilling the park and the orangutans. Inaddition to the awareness and educationcampaigns, Knott’s group also targets theirefforts towards the local people who areillegally logging. “Sometimes you go and continued on next page

A “prime” male orangutan (left) in Knott’s study, compared with a “past-prime” male, sans colossalcheekpads and aggressive attitude.

find out that [one of the loggers] is so-and-so’s little brother who works for me,” shesays. “These are local people, who say[they’re] just looking for food, which issort of true, but sort of not…”

The money the loggers make is, even byvillage standards, not great, compared towhat is being taken away. “Basically, theforest is being cut down for peanuts—thelocal people are not making much moneyoff of this,” Knott says. “A rich business-man will support a team to do some illegallogging. He’ll give them money up front,so they’re constantly in debt to this person.These local guys are being exploited by themiddlemen.”

The logging itself is also extremely dan-gerous. Trees are felled and local menstand astride the trunks. Holding chainsawblades between their bare feet, they walkbackwards and cut the tree into sections.The “milled” wood is dragged out of theforest on wooden sleds.

A TENUOUS FUTURE

Once the forest is gone, the orangutanswill die. Knott and Laman try to be hope-ful that it won’t reach that point. But it’sclearly painful for them, knowing that it’spossible their long-time study site mayvanish along with the park and theiropportunities for studying wildlife in itsnatural habitat.

“It doesn’t do any good to say, ‘Oh,we’re saving some of the Amazon, so wedon’t need to save Borneo,’” Laman says.“It’s a different rainforest. Every single dif-ferent region of the world—whether it’sAfrican rainforest, South American rain-forest, or Southeast Asian rainforest—hasa totally different species composition ofplants and animals. In Borneo, you’ve gotorangutans and hornbills; in SouthAmerica, you’ve got sloths and macawsand jaguars. They’re all rainforests, butthey’re all very different rainforests. So youwant to save all of these places, or at leastparts of them.”

Gunung Palung still harbors a multitudeof amazing wildlife. “If we can get theseareas protected for future generations, thisis the time to do it, not ten years fromnow—ten years from now it’s going to betoo late,” Laman says.

“There’ve been some good signs recent-ly with the national government taking


Because she was going to be workingwith human subjects, Hooley soughtapproval from the Committee on the Useof Human Subjects.

“Professor Hooley first ran a pilot studywith only six healthy women with no his-tory of depression,” recounts Calhoun.“Next she tried the same procedure withwomen who had recovered from anepisode of depression. Only then did sheapply to do the study with depressedwomen. Thus, she and the committee [onthe Use of Human Subjects] had quite a bitof information to go on in evaluating pos-sible risks to the women. At that point, thecommittee asked for a number of changesand additions. For instance, only womenwho had previously told their mothers oftheir depression could participate and nofreshmen could participate. ProfessorHooley was asked to provide volunteers a

some action,” Knott adds. “But [the studysite is] in danger of being shut down. Thereare only about three orangutan researchsites in the world now.” Others have beenclosed, either because there is too little for-est left, or because the presence of loggersmakes it impossible—and dangerous—towork.

Congress has helped by passing theGreat Ape Conservation Act, signed intolaw in 2000. It provides about $5 million ayear to support the conservation and pro-tection of great apes by giving grants tolocal wildlife management authorities andother organizations involved in the effortto protect the animals and their habitat.Knott’s organization in Gunung Palung hasreceived support from this fund, and sheurges people to contact their Congressmember about continuing or even increas-ing support.

Consumers can also buy “environmen-tally certified wood,” which lets themknow that the wood they’re buying did notcome from rainforests. Woods like Asianmahogany and lauan (used in inexpensiveplywood) are among the many types foundin Indonesian rainforests.

“A lot of the public outcry does helppressure the Indonesian officials at thenational level to take action,” Knott says.The Gunung Palung Orangutan Conserva-tion Project put up a petition on its Web-site and received about 8,000 signaturesworldwide to stop illegal logging in thepark.

“I think things like that do have animpact,” Knott says. “[It] could pressureour leaders to pressure other national gov-ernments as a condition of internationalaid, for example, to protect forests, toshow they’re really doing something.

“The orangutan may be the first greatape to go extinct in the wild,” Knott says.“Their trajectory for extinction is greaterthan for chimps or gorillas—they’re themost threatened. You figure 80 percent oforangutan habitat has been lost in the last20 years. It’s just totally shocking that thegreat apes could become extinct.”

For more information on the Gunung Palung Nation-al Park, go to www.fas.harvard.edu/~gporang.

Knott and Laman’s fieldwork is good,important, even noble, but it’s definitely noteasy.

“You wake up usually at around 3:30a.m.,” says Knott. “You need to get to thenest when the orangutan wakes up,[around] 5 a.m.That involves getting therein the dark, so maybe you have to travel foran hour in the forest in the dark, then youfollow them all day till they make a nest atnight.You’re on the ground, watching themup in the trees. Some days they don’t govery far, and it’s really easy. But other days… we’re on the side of a mountain.You’realso often carrying all your gear. So, it’s chal-lenging. You’re running after them, and inthe swamp area you might be up to yourknees in water. When you’re looking forthem it’s better if you can walk fast. It’s def-initely physical, but it’s not grueling.”

Orangutans are arboreal creatures—they live in treetops, in what is called therainforest canopy. So Laman spends muchof his time harnessed to a 200-feet tall tree(higher than the Peabody Museum, to rein-

Saving Gunung Palungcontinued from previous page

troduce an earlier marker) with 30 poundsof equipment in a backpack, watching thewildlife. It’s not hard to see why he wouldbring back amazing photographs, along withbiological data—few people have the stam-ina or academic background for this kind ofwork.

Occasionally, big males will come downto the ground and chase people, thoughKnott and Laman have never been chased.There are other dangers, though.

“I’ve been pretty lucky,” Knott says.“Butthere’s malaria, Dengue fever, giardia. I hadone student who was hit by a tree branchand it opened her scalp up. She had to besewn up. Someone broke [a] foot oncejumping in the river.There are various acci-dents and diseases that you can take medi-cine for—although not for Dengue fever.But if you have enough DEET (an insectrepellant) on, you can protect yourself frommosquitoes.”

As Laman dryly says, “There’s definitelyan adventure component.”

Life in the Field

more extensive explanation of the imagingprocess that would be used; to explain tothe mothers as well as the daughters thatthe daughters might become upset whileparticipating and what would be done tohelp them.”

This example, Calhoun says, demon-strates the collaboration between an inves-tigator and the IRB, which “provided ideasabout some additional measures that couldfurther minimize the risk that anyonewould be upset or harmed by the experi-ence of participating as a research subject.”

Hooley’s research—which was approvedby the IRB—involves playing taped mes-sages both of criticism and praise to hersubjects while watching brain activity withthe help of MRI (magnetic resonanceimaging). The goal is to determine if the

Human Subjects / Humane Researchcontinued from page 5

continued on next page

brain behaves differently in response tocriticism or praise in subjects with no his-tory of depression than it does in subjectsdiagnosed with the illness.

Hooley has found that, among emotion-ally healthy participants, certain areas ofthe prefrontal cortex of the brain becomeengaged to process criticism. However,with subjects who have recovered fromdepression, she says, “that area almostseems to be going off-line. There is adecrease in blood flow to the dorsolateralprefrontal cortex in the recovereddepressed, while there is an increase ofblood flow to that area in the emotionallyhealthy [subjects].”

The research follows an original proto-col. Her subjects are asked to speak withtheir mothers about the research and invitethem to participate. They are not told whatsorts of remarks will be expressed by theirmothers, although subjects are aware thatsome remarks may be positive and somemay be negative. “Especially harsh criti-cism,” is not used, Hooley notes.

“We try to calibrate the intensity of thecritical remarks to ensure that subjects willnot be exposed to anything too upsettingor out of the ordinary,” she adds.

“We also make sure that mothers arecriticizing things about their children thattheir children already know about. Inother words, we try to ensure that this isnot the first time the participant will haveheard his or her mother complain aboutthat particular aspect of his or her behav-ior,” she says. Participating mothers areaware they are being taped and that thesetapes will be played to their children.

Hooley points out that “positive conse-quences” emerged from her study’s efforts


to conduct research “with the utmostrespect for the participants.” In particular,she says, no subjects “were distressed byour procedures” and most said “theyfound their participation in the study bothfascinating and enjoyable. Many were alsoquite moved to hear the praising commentsfrom their mothers. In no case was anyfriction between mothers and daughterscaused by our procedures.”

OUT OF BALANCE?

According to a September 2000 article,“Don’t Talk to the Humans: TheCrackdown on Social Science Research,”in Lingua Franca (the now-defunct maga-zine of academic life), between 1998 and2000, the NIH suspended or shut downresearch programs at eight different insti-tutions across the country for violationsranging from inadequate record-keeping to“a failure to review projects that shouldhave been vetted.”

These actions have led to an increasedvigilance by IRBs and have spawned adebate questioning the usefulness of theseregulations. Are these ethical codes effec-tive, or do they perhaps deter the ethicalresearcher by setting up an intellectualroadblock?

“The issue is boiling over for a varietyof reasons,” says Nicholas Christakis, pro-fessor of medical sociology at HarvardMedical School. “It is definitely the casethat there is more and more scrutiny com-ing from IRBs. I support the ethical con-duct of human research and I support thereview of that research, but I think thatwhat has happened is that there has been aloss of perspective about what the realrisks in human research are.”

“There is a balance between the IRB’sjob and the furthering of science andknowledge,” Jill Hooley says. “The paper-work we have to give to subjects is gettingmore and more detailed. I know some par-ticipants look at this and say, ‘What areyou doing here? I thought you were justgiving me questionnaires?’ So how can webest incorporate good principles of lookingafter human subjects and still do theresearch that we want to do?

“My view as a scientist is that I don’twant to do research that I wouldn’t be aparticipant in myself,” Hooley says.“That’s my yardstick.”

For more information about Harvard

IRBs, including the official FAS policystatement on ethical research, and links tosome research reports and federal guide-lines mentioned in this article, please go towww.fas.harvard.edu/~research/humsub.html.

Janine Brunell Looker is a freelance writer living in Newburyport,Massachusetts.

Human Subjects / Humane Researchcontinued from previous page

Psychology Professor Jill Hooley studies brainactivity of human subjects suffering from clinicaldepression.

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Help Graduate StudentsLaunch their Careers

GSAS and the Office of Career Services(OCS) invite you to help us assist gradu-ate students interested in academic andnon-academic career opportunities.Whether exploring options during theirstudies or looking for jobs at graduation,GSAS students can benefit from youradvice and support.

Here are some ways to volunteer:

☛ Register to be a career adviser throughThe Professional Connection, theonline networking database

☛ Advertise your internships and employment positions through OCS’sMonsterTrak job-listing service

☛ Be a panelist for GSAS and OCSCareer Options Day

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☛ Organize career-related events for students and alumni through your localHarvard Club

☛ Participate as an employer in OCS’son-campus recruiting program

… Or share your own ideas with OCS.Toget involved, contact Robin Mount, PhD,director of GSAS Career Services andassociate director of OCS, at 54 DunsterStreet, Cambridge, MA 02138; (617) 496-8957; e-mail: [email protected].

the infamous Berlin Wall. At this concertBernstein substituted the word “Freiheit”(“freedom”) for Schiller’s “Freude” (“joy”).

As an example of the way in which theNinth has been used by political regimes ofevery stripe, including the most loathsome,consider the Nazis between 1933 and1945. After making certain that Beethovenhimself had no suspicious racial or nation-al tinge of the non-Germanic in his back-ground (the clear evidence of his Flemishancestry was denied in a series of articles),the masters of the Nazi propaganda andcultural machinery promoted his works,especially his more powerful and publicones, as the essence of Germanic andAryan strength. To quote a passage froman article by a Nazi “race expert”:

Nordic are, above all, the heroicaspects of his works, which oftenrise to titanic greatness. It is signifi-cant that today, in a time of nationalrenovation, Beethoven’s works areplayed more often than any others,that one hears his works at almostall events of heroic tenor. [Editor’snote: From a 1934 article byWalther Rauschenberger in “Volk undRasse.”]

Among others in Germany who knewbetter but shamelessly sold out to the Naziregime was the musicologist Arnold Scher-ing, who in 1934 associated Beethovenwith Hitler as a “Führer-type.” It was easyenough for musical propagandists to har-ness the Third and Fifth Symphonies asemblems of the Third Reich, but the Ninthat first gave them some trouble, since itsmessage of human brotherhood couldhardly be squared with the doctrine ofAryan racial superiority. The Nazi-taintedmusicologist Hans Joachim Moser figuredout that Schiller’s and Beethoven’s “kiss tothe whole world” could not really mean“every Tom, Dick, and Harry, as it was toooften misunderstood back in Germany’sred years,” but must refer to “the simpleidea of a humanity conceived in as Germana way as possible.” With foresight thatnow seems ironic, the “Ode to Joy” wasperformed in 1936 at the Olympics inBerlin and was announced not as a symbolof international brotherhood but as a“proclamation of the Nazi Volksgemein-schaft [“people’s culture”].” With equalprudence, the Ninth was performed fre-quently at concerts in Germany but waskept out of concerts for those living in


occupied territories, especially in EasternEurope, obviously to prevent their gettingits message. In April 1942 WilhelmFurtwängler conducted the Ninth at a celebration for Hitler’s birthday.

More recently, as other intellectual andsocial ideologies have competed for domi-nation, the Ninth has been reinterpreted inother ways. [Critic Theodor] Adornoregarded its optimism as awkward andold-fashioned, out of phase with theinwardness of Beethoven’s other lateworks, above all the last quartets, owing tothe naked directness of its finale and itsobvious bid for popular acceptance. Sincethe late quartets, more than any otherBeethoven works, stood as essentialobjects of artistic value for Adorno—above all the late quartets as mediatedthrough their importance to the music ofArnold Schoenberg—it is not surprisingthat the Ninth Symphony disappointedhim. Although in certain of his writingsAdorno had sensitive things to say aboutthe first movement and slow movement, hewas blind to the ways in which the Ninthbrought aspects of Beethoven’s earlier sym-phonic style forward into his late period,and so for him the Ninth (by which hereally means the finale above all) “fallsoutside the late style altogether.”

On another front, and with great éclat,a feminist critic has denounced the firstmovement as an example of “horrifyinglyviolent” masculine rage, and a feministpoet reviled the entire work as a “sexualmessage” written by a man “in terror ofimpotence or infertility, not knowing thedifference.” [Editor’s note: In his notes,Lockwood identifies the critic as Susan

The Ninth Symphonycontinued from page 7

McClary, a GSAS alumna, writing in Fem-inine Endings: Music, Gender, and Sexual-ity, and the poet as Adrienne Rich in “TheNinth Symphony of Beethoven Understoodat Last as a Sexual Message.”] The list ofpolitical interpretations is long and willinevitably lengthen in time. One critic, run-ning a substantial risk in using encomia,wrote that a “great work such as the NinthSymphony cannot be protected from thosewho would abuse its immense power.” Infact, against the strong, totally committedforms of ideological interpretation in thecurrent phase of ascendant “cultural stud-ies,” in which modern political and socialcontent is read into every work of art orliterature, there is no recourse or finalcourt of appeal; to a convinced ideologue,objections are simply the product of anopposed ideology and cannot possess anyspecial claim to “truth,” a word that cannow be used in some critical circles onlywith quotation marks.

Accordingly, those looking for groundto stand on outside ideology may be ableto do so only by recommitting themselvesto analysis, which concerns itself exclusive-ly with the structural, or recommitting tohistory, that is, to understanding the Ninthnot as a disembodied art product out oftime and space, but as the work of an artistliving in a particular period and context,who carried out a project that had person-al meanings that we can reconstruct fromthe accumulated debris that has coveredhis tracks since then. Our job would thenbe not only to try to understand the workin the context of its origins but to makethat understanding, as nearly as possibleand with minimal distortion and loss ofcontent, meaningful in the present. This isthe essential direction of this discussion,offered with the hope that by perceivingwhat Beethoven wanted us to understand,as an engaged artist caught up in the con-flicts of his own time, we can gain a littlerespite from the regressive cycles of strongideological claims and counterclaims, cov-ering our ears as best we can to the howlsfrom outside telling us that we are simplydifferent kinds of ideologues. It is not thatthe potential meanings of such a work areremotely exhausted by those we canuncover in its origins; it is, rather, thatsome knowledge of its origins can helpinform and solidify a broad range of otherhypotheses and viewpoints that can other-wise lapse into postmodern solipsism.

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BIOLOGIST COLLIER HONOREDFOR WORK IN INFECTIOUSDISEASES RESEARCH

John Collier, PhD ’64, cellular and develop-mental biology, won the annual Bristol-

Myers Squibb Award for DistinguishedAchievement in Infec-tious Diseases Researchin July 2003. Collier,Maude and LillianPresley Professor ofMicrobiology and Molec-ular Genetics atHarvard Medical School,was recognized for“contributions to ourunderstanding of the

molecular mechanisms by which bacteriacause disease,” according to a HarvardMedical School statement.

Collier, a Harvard faculty member since1984, is an authority on anthrax and otherbiological toxins; he has also shown howimmunotoxins may fight cancer. The awardbrings a $50,000 cash prize and a commemo-rative medallion.

2003 EUSA LIFETIMECONTRIBUTION AWARD TOHOFFMANN

The European Union Studies Association(EUSA) awarded its 2003 Lifetime

Contribution Award in EU Studies to StanleyHoffmann, Paul andCatherine ButtenwieserUniversity Professor inHarvard’s governmentdepartment.

“Without Hoffmann’swisdom and science,Europeans and Ameri-cans would not knowand understand eachother nearly as well asthey now do,” said Mar-

tin A. Schain, EUSA chair, in a statement. Hoff-mann’s most recent book is World Disorders:Troubled Peace in the Post–Cold War Era (Row-man & Littlefield, 1998).

PEN USA LITERARY AWARDRECOGNIZES ALUMNUS ELLSBERG

The book Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam andthe Pentagon Papers (Viking, 2002) by

Daniel Ellsberg, AB ’52, PhD ’63, economics,won the PEN USA prizefor creative nonfiction inJuly 2003. PEN USA hon-ors “outstanding workspublished or produced bywriters living in the west-ern United States.” In thebook, Ellsberg recountshis transformation froman early-1960s ColdWarrior government

analyst to the anti-war activist who leaked thePentagon Papers to the New York Times in 1971.

RADCLIFFE FELLOWSANNOUNCED

The Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Studywill sponsor 56 fellows for 2003–04,

selected from more than 700 applicants.Among the new fellows is Caroline Elkins,PhD ’01, history, and assistant professor ofhistory at Harvard. Professor Elkins will writea book on the Mau Mau crisis, the 1950s anti-colonial rebellion in Kenya.

Katharine Park, PhD ’81, history of science,Samuel Zemurray Jr. and Doris ZemurrayStone Radcliffe Professor of the History ofScience and of Women's Studies at Harvard,will complete her book Visible Women: Gender,Generation, and the Origins of Human Dissection.

Harvard Professor of Government JenniferHochschild will write on Madison’s vision ofAmerica and how identity politics informedthat vision. Susan Moller Okin, PhD ’75, gov-ernment, Marta Sutton Weeks Professor ofEthics in Society in the Stanford UniversityDepartment of Political Science, will studyhow “neglect of gender in economic develop-ment … has distorted and retarded the pro-motion of women’s human rights in recentdecades.”

GSAS ALUMNUS ABIZAID INCHARGE IN IRAQ

Lt. Gen. John Abizaid,AM ’81, Middle East

studies, took over USCentral Command inIraq in July 2003. Hisdecorations include theDistinguished ServiceMedal, the Legion ofMerit with five Oak LeafClusters, and the BronzeStar. He is a graduate of

West Point and commanded divisions in toursin Bosnia, Kosovo, and the Persian Gulf War.

HARVARD CHEMIST WINS KYOTOPRIZE

In June 2003, George Whitesides, Mallinck-rodt Professor of Chemistry, was named a

winner of the 19th Annual Kyoto Prize. Theprizes, sponsored by theInamori Foundation,honor “the pursuit ofpeace and betterment ofsociety through a bal-ance of technology andhumanity.”

Whitesides is a pio-neer in the field of bioengineering and isengaged in the emergingfield of nanotechnology.

Laureates will receive a diploma, a Kyoto PrizeMedal, and approximately $400,000 at a cere-mony to be held in Japan in November 2003.

PRIESTLEY MEDAL TOCHEMISTRY’S COREY

E.J. Corey, Sheldon Emery Professor ofChemistry, will receive the 2004 Priestley

Medal for Distinguished Service to Chemistry,the highest honor presented by the AmericanChemical Society. Corey, who has been on theHarvard faculty since 1959, won the NobelPrize in Chemistry in 1990.

He is best known for developing theprocess of retrosynthetic analysis, used tomanufacture synthetic cellular “targets” foruse in chemical and biological research.Corey’s later work has focused on creatinganti-cancer compounds and on the use ofcomputers in organic chemistry.

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Changing the World:AmericanProgressives in War andRevolution, 1914–1924

By Alan Dawley, PhD ’71, historyPrinceton University Press, 2003, 409 pp.

World War I and anexpanding Americanempire, particularlyin Latin America,compelled 20th-cen-tury progressives tobroaden their reformefforts from thedomestic arena to theinternational stage,

writes Dawley. A professor of history atthe College of New Jersey, Dawley is alsothe author of Class and Community: TheIndustrial Revolution in Lynn (Harvard,1976), winner of the Bancroft Prize; andStruggles for Justice: Social Responsibilityand the Liberal State (Belknap, 1991).

Faith-Based Diplomacy:TrumpingRealpolitik

Edited by Douglas Johnston, MPA ’67,PhD ’82, governmentOxford University Press, 2003, 296 pp.

The terrorist attacksof September 11,2001, showed reli-gious extremism takento violent and wide-spread ends. Theattacks also showedwhy considerationsof faith should bepart of any Western

foreign policy equation, writes Johnston.He and his fellow contributors proposeways politicians and activists can channelthe “enthusiasm of faith” into governmen-tal peacemaking efforts. Johnston is alsoco-editor of Religion, the Missing Dimen-sion of Statecraft (Oxford, 1994) and is thefounding president of the InternationalCenter for Religion and Diplomacy inWashington, DC.

Hunting Down the Monk: PoemsBy Adrie Kusserow, MTS ’90, PhD ’96,anthropologyBoa Editions, 2002, 104 pp.

Most of these poemsaddress a Westerner’ssearch for spiritualsatisfaction in thereligions of the East;others explore, withmoving clarity, thedeeply felt experi-ences of childhood,loss, and the death of

a parent. The author is professor ofanthropology at St. Michael’s College.

Nationalizing the Russian Empire:The Campaign Against EnemyAliens During World War I

By Eric Lohr, PhD ’99, historyHarvard University Press, 2003, 237 pp.

During times of war,nationalism tends toescalate. Lohr tellsthe grim story of howRussia’s nationalismmanifested itself dur-ing World War I withthe wholesale depor-tations of Jewish,Muslim, German-

born, and other “enemy” citizens. Thisforced emigration of about one millionpeople directly contributed to the tensionsthat erupted in the 1917 upheaval, writesLohr. The author is assistant professor ofhistory at Harvard and co-editor of TheMilitary and Society in Russia, 1450–1917(Brill, 2002).

Gambling Life: Dealing inContingency in a Greek City

By Thomas M. Malaby, AB ’90, PhD ’98,anthropologyUniversity of Illinois Press, 2003, 157 pp.

In this highly readable ethnography, Mala-by shows how gambling—with its culturegrounded in an acceptance of risk andreliance on luck and hope—has permeated

The Hanging of EphraimWheeler:A Story of Rape, Incest,and Justice in Early America

By Irene Quenzler Brown, PhD ’69, history, and Richard D. Brown, PhD’65, historyHarvard University Press, 2003, 388 pp.

The Browns delivera novelistic accountof the pathetic circumstances sur-rounding the trialand execution of afailed Massachu-setts farmer. Alongthe way they offerinsights into evolv-

ing American attitudes toward race andinterracial marriage, crime and punish-ment, and the justice system. RichardBrown, co-author of Massachusetts: AConcise History (Massachusetts, 2000)and other books on colonial Americanhistory, is Board of Trustees Distin-guished Professor of History at the University of Connecticut, where IreneBrown is associate professor of familystudies.

Christ’s Passion, Our Passions:Reflections on the Seven LastWords from the Cross

By Margaret Bullitt-Jonas, PhD ’84,comparative literatureCowley Publications, 2003, 104 pp.

These sermons by Bullitt-Jonas, a priest-associate at All Saints’ Episcopal Churchin Brookline, Mass., are meditations onthe last “words” (in fact, the last sevensentences) Christ spoke as he was dying.Included are suggestions for prayerfulapproaches to each sentence in the questfor a more vital spiritual life. The authorof Holy Hunger: A Memoir of Desire(Vintage, 2000), Bullitt-Jonas served forseveral years as a chaplain to the Houseof Bishops of the Episcopal Church.

ALUMNI BOOKS


the economy andsocial life of onesmall community onthe island of Crete.The author is assis-tant professor ofanthropology at theUniversity of Wis-consin at Milwaukeeand has published in

Anthropological Quarterly, Social Analy-sis, and other journals.

Helen Hunt Jackson:A Literary Life

By Kate Phillips, PhD ’97, history ofAmerican civilizationUniversity of California Press, 2003, 380 pp.

Phillips, author ofthe acclaimed novelWhite Rabbit (Hough-ton Mifflin, 1996),turns to literaryscholarship in thisaccount of the life of Helen Hunt Jack-son, the subject ofPhillips’s doctoral

dissertation. Jackson—best known for hernovel Ramona, a plea for racial justice inthe American West, and for her work onbehalf of Native American rights—is pre-sented here as emblematic of the trials andtriumphs of late-19th-century intellectualwomen.

Hollywood’s White House:TheAmerican Presidency in Film andHistory

Edited by Peter C. Rollins, AB ’63, PhD’72, history of American civilizationUniversity Press of Kentucky, 2003, 464 pp.

On-screen AmericanPresidents, writeseditor Rollins, haveserved as “our representative men,”reflecting society’sshifting views of themen in the OvalOffice, from DarrylZanuck’s worshipful

Wilson (1944) to Oliver Stone’s psy-chodrama Nixon (1995). Rollins, RegentsProfessor of English at Oklahoma State

University, is co-editor of Hollywood asHistorian: American Film in a CulturalContext (Kentucky, 1983) and editor ofthe journal Film & History.

Lyndon Johnson and Europe: In theShadow of Vietnam

By Thomas Alan Schwartz, PhD ’85, historyHarvard University Press, 2003, 339 pp.

To many, LyndonJohnson was the clas-sic “ugly American,”a perception basedlargely on his diplo-matic performanceduring the VietnamWar. Schwartz, anassociate professor ofhistory at Vanderbilt

University, sets out to correct that percep-tion with this “more dispassionate assess-ment” of Johnson’s foreign policy. He citesJohnson’s efforts toward nuclear non-pro-liferation and his early pursuit of détentewith the Soviets as just two examples ofLBJ’s previously unheralded diplomaticsuccesses. Schwartz is also the author ofAmerica’s Germany: John J. McCloy andthe Federal Republic of Germany(Harvard, 1991).

Averting “The Final Failure”: JohnF. Kennedy and the Secret CubanMissile Crisis Meetings

By Sheldon M. Stern, PhD ’70, historyStanford University Press, 2003, 449 pp.

Since their declassifi-cation in 1997, thetapes of PresidentKennedy’s Execu-tive Committee meet-ings have been poredover by numeroushistorians, includingHarvard’s Ernest R.May, co-author of

The Kennedy Tapes: Inside the WhiteHouse During the Cuban Missile Crisis(Belknap, 1997), and considered the “offi-cial” transcription. The Ex Comm, as itwas known, comprised the President,Attorney General Robert Kennedy,Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, and

a handful of others in the President’sinner circle, who navigated the 13 daysknown as the Cuban Missile Crisis.Where previous books have presentedmore or less straight transcriptions,Stern has created a narrative version thatbrings the human element to the ExComm meetings. Stern also presents anextensive appendix in which he outlinesmore than 100 differences with the offi-cial transcripts he found in listening tothe tapes. In some cases, Stern presentsnew versions of historic conversationsand moments in the crisis. Sheldon Sternwas the historian at the Kennedy Presi-dential Library from 1977 to 1999.

House by House, Block by Block:The Rebirth of America's InnerCities

By Alexander von Hoffman, PhD ’86,historyOxford University Press, 2003, 320 pp.

Von Hoffman, a senior research fellowat Harvard’s Joint Center for HousingStudies, describes how grassroots groupsand small businesses—aided mightily byvarious tax incentives and governmentsubsidies—combined to revitalize theSouth Bronx, South Central Los Angeles,and other downtrodden neighborhoodsin Boston, Chicago, and Atlanta. VonHoffman is also the author of LocalAttachments: The Making of anAmerican Urban Neighborhood (JohnsHopkins, 1994) and has written for theBoston Globe, Atlantic Monthly, andother publications.

Authors: GSAS alumni who have published a new book within the past year and would like it to be considered for inclusion in AlumniBooks should send a copy to: Colloquy,Harvard Graduate School of Arts andSciences, Byerly Hall 300, 8 GardenStreet, Cambridge, MA 02138-3654.


In July 2003, three GSAS alumni were namedto serve on the Graduate School Alumni

Association (GSAA) Council, a 40-memberboard focusing on such issues as graduatescholarship, financial aid, student life, globaloutreach, and alumni careers. Council mem-bers serve three-year terms.

R. STANTON HALESR. Stanton Hales, PhD ’70, mathematics, ispresident of The College of Wooster in Ohio.

From 1990 to 1995, hewas vice president foracademic affairs andprofessor of mathemat-ical sciences. Prior to his appointment atWooster, Hales wasassociate dean of theCollege and professor ofmathematics at PomonaCollege, where he

received the Rudolph J. Wig DistinguishedProfessorship Award. He has served as con-sultant to the Federal Home Loan Bank Boardand the California Savings and LoanCommission.

SUZANNE FOLDS MCCULLAGHSuzanne Folds McCullagh, PhD ’81, fine arts, isAnne Vogt Fuller and Marion Titus Searle

Curator of Earlier Printsand Drawings at the ArtInstitute of Chicago. Shehas been a member ofthe curatorial staff ofthat department since1975. Her specialty is in French and ItalianRenaissance and Baroqueprints and drawings.Author of numerousarticles and exhibition

catalogues, including Italian Drawings Before1600 in The Art Institute of Chicago (1979), ascholarly collection catalogue of over 700drawings. She is active as a director of theHarvard Club of Chicago and also serves on the board of the College of the Atlantic, among other educational and civicinstitutions.

The Ninth Symphonycontinued from page 12

ALLEN SANGINES-KRAUSEAllen Sangines-Krause, PhD ’87, economics,is a managing director and co-head of

the General IndustrialsGroups with GoldmanSachs International inLondon. He taught grad-uate and undergraduatecourses at the InstitutoTecnológico Autónomode México and has beena guest lecturer at theSaid Business School,Oxford University.

A FOND FAREWELLWe say farewell to the following GSAS alum-ni who have concluded their terms as Councilmembers: John Armstrong, AB ’56, PhD ’61,applied sciences; Michael A. Cooper, PhD ’91,English and American literature and language;Gerard Fergerson, PhD ’94, history of science;Richard Nenneman, AB ’51, AM ’53, govern-ment; and Wallace P. Wormley, PhD ’76, psy-chology. We thank them for their years ofservice to the Graduate School.

For a complete list of GSAA Council mem-bers, go to www.gsas.harvard.edu/alumni/members.html.

Paula Szocik is director of alumni relations and publications at the

Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.

Suzanne FoldsMcCullagh

R. Stanton Hales

Allen Sangines-Krause

Alumni Hales, McCullagh, and Sangines-Krause Join GSAA CouncilBy Paula Szocik

Among recent interpretations that doexhibit interest in the historical context ofthe work is one that sees the Ninth in thecontext of “political Romanticism,” a termthat refers to a putative synthesis of Schil-lerian optimism about humanity’s aspira-tions to freedom and joy, and to thepost-Enlightenment Romantic aesthetics of writers such as E.T.A. Hoffmann. Thisview perceives a steady progression throughseveral of Beethoven’s major works, whichare seen first and foremost as vehicles ofpolitical philosophical thought, emergingin the Eroica as a musical translation of the“universal history,” that is, the idea of the“education … of humanity from aninstinctual harmony with nature to a stateof rational, civilized freedom.” SincePrometheus was manifestly devoted toshowing the triumph of education and civ-ilization over the state of nature, the paral-lel fits to some degree. Certainly it isplausible that in the Eroica “we behold thefiercest rays of the French Revolutionrefracted through the cooling ether of Ger-man idealism.” The progression is not pre-sented as a steady one, in which the Ninthwas simply the end product of a consecu-tive series of enlightened statements abouthuman progress and brotherhood. Quitethe contrary: by the time of the Ninth, themanifest abandonment of Enlightenmentideals by all post-1789 regimes from the1790s to the 1820s—first the Terror andits adversaries, then Napoleon and hisadversaries, then the newly victoriousautocratic governments—led to politicalstasis and retrenchment. The light hadfailed.

But the situation was more drastic thanthis viewpoint proposes. The Ninth, in myview, was written to revive a lost idealism.It was a strong political statement made ata time when the practical possibilities ofrealizing Schiller’s ideals of universalbrotherhood had been virtually extin-guished by the post-Napoleonic regimes.Beethoven’s decision to complete the workwas thus intended to right the balance, tosend a message of hope to the future, andto proclaim that message to the world.

FOR THE FUTURE…It’s easy to include the

Graduate School of Arts andSciences in your estate plan and to provide support for a fellowship, a specific program,

or a favorite department.We’ll be glad to send you recommended language.

Contact: Anne T. Melvin or Grant H.Whitney

Office of Gift Planning 124 Mt. Auburn St.

Cambridge, MA 02138 617-496-3205 (phone)

617-495-0521 (fax)[email protected]


on development

Completing the Translation:The GSAS EnglishLanguage ProgramBy Marnie Hammar

When was the last time you debated themerits of idealism versus materialism?

In a foreign language? The 14 students in KarlReynolds’s class in the English LanguageProgram (ELP) did just that.

Every August since 2000, a select numberof international students participate in theEnglish Language Program before beginningtheir graduate work. Designed largely for stu-dents with little prior exposure to the UnitedStates, this four-week program combines cul-tural acclimation with language skills.

For 2003, the program welcomed 48 stu-dents from 14 countries and and 19 academ-ic departments.They were immersed in rigor-ous study for most of August, with class andother activities six hours a day, five and a halfdays a week, and homework in the eveningsand on weekends.

“This program is really intensive,” saysReynolds, instructor for the Harvard Institutefor English Language Programs and one offour ELP instructors. “This isn’t summercamp—it’s a glimpse into the lives they willlead in September.”

FOCUS

The program comprises four main areas: writ-ing, reading, speaking, and listening. Studentsread assignments, write essays, critique oneanother’s writing, and lead or participate indiscussion groups. They also give formal pre-sentations in groups and individually.

On the day the class debated idealism andmaterialism, a student led her classmates in arousing discussion of William James. At theconclusion, Reynolds critiqued the leader, theclass, and their interaction. He also offeredspeaking tips, emphasizing correct pronuncia-tion of words that arose in the discussion andexplaining some of the idiosyncrasies of theEnglish language.

“The ELP class [is] a safe place. Studentsaren’t self-conscious about being correctedbecause they are all in the same situation.They learn to trust each other very quickly,”says Reynolds.

Says Dadi Darmani, an ELP participant fromIndonesia: “Not only is this program essentialfor improving my language proficiency, it alsogives me a good glimpse of Harvard andCambridge. I think it is very significant in pro-viding me a smooth transition to my academ-ic career.”

To acquaint ELP students with theAmerican teaching style, Harvard facultyoccasionally give guest lectures. “TheAmerican lecture style is interactive, withmore questioning, debate, and discussion than[that of] many other countries,” saysReynolds.“This can be uncomfortable for stu-dents who might be accustomed only to lec-tures.”

Field trips to destinations such as theMuseum of Science help acclimate students toAmerican culture beyond Harvard. The finalweek of the program is spent at the DerekBok Center for Teaching and Learning, wherestudents give practice lectures and receivecritiques from classmates and guest students.

At the end of the four weeks, Reynoldssays he sees a dramatic change in the pro-gram’s participants. “They come so far,” hesays. “They have so much more confidence intheir speaking and writing abilities. They areready to focus on what they came here for.”

Students also build a community that lastswell into their academic careers, Reynoldsadds.

“They leave the program knowing thatthey can go to their fellow participants forsupport in the struggles they will undoubt-edly encounter [during] their first year,” hesays.“It’s a lasting community.”

SUPPORT

The Graduate School funds all aspects ofthe English Language Program, from tuition,books, and supplies, to housing and meals,and a major portion of that funding isalumni contributions to the GraduateSchool Fund (GSAS’s annual giving fund).

The continued success of ELP dependson the ability of GSAS to fund these fourweeks for every eligible student. TheseFund contributions are essential to thefuture of this most important program.

“All new students, whether they areinternational or not, go through a period ofadjustment,” says Reynolds.

“It’s even more challenging for interna-tional students because they are trying tosimultaneously understand a new cultureand new concepts in their classes.The ELPhelps them to feel comfortable inCambridge and in the classroom beforethey start getting graded. It’s a good headstart.”

To learn more about supporting the EnglishLanguage Program or the Graduate SchoolFund, please contact Jennifer Campoli at 1-800-VERITAS or at [email protected].

Marnie Hammar is associate director of communications at the

University Development Office.

Talking things over: ELP Students (from left) SongChen, Geng Li, and instructor Anna Feliksik listento what fellow student Rina Anno (far right) hasto say.

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ColloquyA L U M N I Q U A R T E R L Y

Nonprofit OrganizationUS Postage

PAIDBoston, MA

Permit No. 1636

The GRADUATE SCHOOL of ARTS AND SCIENCES

HARVARD UNIVERSITY

Byerly Hall 300 ◆ 8 Garden StreetCambridge, Massachusetts 02138-3654

ALUMNI ASSOCIATION

Alu

mniFaculty Talks

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 28, 2003CHICAGO, ILEdward L. Keenan (AB ’57, PhD ’66, Middle East stud-ies), Andrew W. Mellon Professor of History and director of the Dumbarton Oaks Research Libraryand Collection, will speak on “Surfing, Browsing,Serendipity, and the Organization of Knowledge in theElectronic Age: The Intimate Revelations of an AgingHumanist.”

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 14, 2003LONDON, ENGLAND, UK“GSAS Symposium on the Arts”: K. Michael Hays, EliotNoyes Professor of Architectural Theory, and NeilLevine, Emmet Blakeney Gleason Professor in theHistory of Art and Architecture, will speak on “TheModern Art Museum in a Global Context.” In con-junction with the Harvard Alumni Association (HAA)“Harvard in Europe” Global Series. Sponsored byHAA in partnership with the Harvard Clubs ofEurope; hosted by the Harvard Club of the UnitedKingdom. For more information on this event, go towww.haa.harvard.edu/globalseries.

MONDAY, NOVEMBER 17, 2003NEW YORK, NYMarc D. Hauser, professor of psychology, will speak on“The Evolution of a Universal Moral Grammar.”Professor Hauser is director of Harvard’s PrimateCognitive Neuroscience Laboratory, co-director ofthe Mind, Brain, and Behavior Program, and author ofWild Minds: What Animals Really Think (Henry Holt,2000), among other books.

MONDAY, JANUARY 12, 2004WASHINGTON, DCJohn Dowling (AB ’57, PhD ’61, molecular and cellularbiology), Harvard College Professor and Gordon andLlura Gund Professor of Neuroscience, and JudithDowling (AM ’89, regional studies–East Asia) will speakon “The Art of Seeing,” how artists have long under-stood the ways the brain processes visual information.Professor Dowling is the author of Creating Mind: Howthe Brain Works (Norton, 1998), among other works.

TUESDAY, JANUARY 20, 2004SANTA BARBARA, CARobert Kirshner (AB ’70), Clowes Professor ofScience, will speak on “The Extravagant Universe.” Heis the author of, most recently, The Extravagant Universe:Exploding Stars, Dark Energy, and the Accelerating Cosmos(Princeton, 2002).

FRIDAY,APRIL 9, 2004SARASOTA, FLMaria Tatar, professor of Germanic languages and liter-atures and Harvard College Professor, will speak on“Scenes of Storytelling: Fairy Tales and their CulturalEffects.” She is the author of The Annotated Classic FairyTales (Norton, 2002) and Off With Their Heads: FairyTales and the Culture of Childhood (Princeton, 1992).

Call (617) 495-5591 or e-mail [email protected] more information on any of the above events.

colloquy - · pdf filesee-yan lin,mpa ’70, phd ’77, economics, ... john...

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