March 2000

Table of Contents

Campus News:

Dean Pamela Daniels to Speak at Commencement
Bioethicist Peter Singer Addresses Full House
Four Faculty Members Earn Tenure
Professor Writes, Speaks on Trinidad's History
Reflections on Wellesley
Introducing: Pi Sigma Alpha

Regular Features:

Colleagues in the News
Bricks, Mortar and Physical Plants
About the Illuminator

Dean Pamela Daniels to Speak at Commencement

Dean Pamela Daniels '59 speaks with a student during last year's Ruhlman Conference. She will be the speaker at Wellesley's 122nd Commencement May 26.

Dean Pamela Daniels will address the Class of 2000 -- the class she helped steward through three of its four years at Wellesley -- at the College's 122nd Commencement exercises May 26. "It is a great honor and a great responsibility. It is something to live up to," Daniels said of giving the address. "I am looking forward to it very much." Daniels herself graduated from Wellesley in 1959, receiving her degree with honors in political science. She was a Durant Scholar and had been elected Phi Beta Kappa. After a year of study and travel in India and Southeast Asia, Daniels went on to earn an M.A. in political science from Harvard University in 1963. From 1962-70, she was a teaching fellow at Harvard, first in the Government Department and then in Erik Erikson's undergraduate social science course on The Human Life Cycle. Before becoming a Class Dean in 1981, Daniels was a Research Associate at the Center for Research on Women for five years; in 1979-80, she was a Lecturer in the Department of Psychology. In 1983 and '84, she taught a course on the life cycle in the Writing Program. She is co-editor of a feminist anthology of personal essays on work and women's identity titled Working It Out (Pantheon, 1977) and co-authored a book on family and career timing patterns, Sooner or Later: The Timing of Parenthood in Adult Lives (Norton, 1982). Daniels will be retiring after graduation after 24 years of service to the College. She said that with her retirement will come "a long-deferred sabbatical -- wide open time to read and travel, to embark on new adventures with old friends."

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Bioethicist Peter Singer Addresses Full House

Controversial bioethicist Peter Singer addressed a full crowd in Jewett Auditorium March 9 on the topic "Choosing Between Lives: Ethical Issues about Humans and Animals." Singer was invited to campus by Adrienne Asch, the Henry R. Luce Professor in Biology, Ethics, and the Politics of Human Reproduction, as part of the Luce Lecture Series. The pair had debated in October at Princeton, where Singer is the DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at the University Center for Human Values, on two main issues: when, if ever, it would be appropriate to kill a disabled infant, and the relative worth of living with a profound disability. Their on-going debate has been covered extensively in the media including The New York Times and National Public Radio. Singer first became well-known internationally after the publication of Animal Liberation, followed by a series of other books including Democracy and Disobedience, Practical Ethics, and Ethics into Action. Outside of academic life, Singer is an influential member of Animal Rights International, an organization founded by the late Henry Spira, and of The Great Ape Project, an international effort to obtain basic rights for chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans.

Princeton Bioethicist Peter Singer

During his 45 minute talk at Wellesley, Singer outlined a case in Florida in which a baby was born without a brain, a condition called anencephaly. There was no doubt the baby was going to die; it was only a question of when. In Singer's view, withholding medical treatment from the child and letting 'nature take its course' toward a slow death represented one of the only cases in which humans treat animals better than they treat members of their own species. He explained that "animals who are in pain with no hope of recovery are quickly and mercifully put to death."

What makes the case even more noteworthy, according to Singer, is that the mother, knowing that her child was going to die, wanted "some good to come from the tragedy" by allowing the child's healthy heart to be transplanted into a newborn whose heart was faulty. To perform the operation, however, doctors could not wait until after the child died of natural causes. The Florida courts ruled that to willfully end the child's life constituted murder and, as such, ruled that the transplant operation could not be performed.

Singer contrasted what had happened in Florida with a case in Pittsburgh at the same time in which a healthy baboon was killed and its liver transplanted into a human. What Singer finds appalling is that the baboon was healthy and highly functioning, yet its life had no legal protection; whereas a baby who had no chance to be a sentient being was protected. This is an ethical area in which Singer did not claim to have all the answers, but challenged his audience not to be afraid to ask the questions rather than to pretend these issues aren't being faced already by the medical community and the patients they treat.

It was on this point of choosing who lives and who dies that many in the audience chose to focus during the more than 75 minutes of question and answer that followed Singer's talk. In one of the evening's most touching moments, a man who uses a wheelchair said that when he was born, no one knew that one day he would live independently, hold a job and have an active and engaged intellectual life. He pushed Singer on the point of whether he believed it would have been right for his parents to have ended his life.

Singer reiterated his belief that parents should not be forced to bring up disabled children if they do not think they are prepared to handle it. Many in the audience clearly disagreed with the way in which Singer justified euthanasia for disabled newborns, including Assistant Professor Tom Burke, Political Science.

"I'm not sure Singer has adequately taken into account the broader ramifications of his approach to reproductive issues. He thinks we should tell parents that they are free to kill their newborns if they believe that a 'substitute child' would have a greater chance of success and happiness in life. He calculates that everyone will be better off this way.

"But what kind of society will that approach to childbearing create? We already have a prejudice against people with disabilities, those who don't live up to our mental and physical ideals. I suspect that if Singer's theories were to gain acceptance, that prejudice would only grow. More generally, I fear a society in which people think they have a right to, as my colleague Adrienne Asch puts it, 'designer babies' made to the parents' exacting specifications. That turns reproduction into another form of shopping.

"But remember this: As Singer pointed out, we are already to a great extent in his world. Already many abortions are performed because the parents find out the fetus has a genetic disability or because the fetus is of the wrong sex. As our sophistication about the genetic code grows, our ability to pick and choose will grow with it -- and in a culture where freedom of choice is valued above all, I suspect our response to this will be to throw up our hands and let individual parents decide. So the problems Singer is raising are our problems. He is not so far from the mainstream on these issues as people suggest -- he's just willing to be intellectually honest about what he believes," Burke concluded.

During the question and answer period, Alison McIntyre, Caspersen Associate Professor of Philosophy, posed a hypothetical case in which a woman's husband was in a coma after a car accident. The doctors predicted that he would emerge from the coma, and with about four years of expensive rehabilitation would regain most of his mental and physical abilities. The couple both adhered to all of Singer's views: they had genetically auditioned all their children, had killed a disabled newborn child so that they could replace it with a healthy one, and had always donated a large percentage of their income to charity. Would Singer object, McIntyre asked, if the woman decided to have her husband euthanized and to replace him with another, while also donating the money that would have been spent on his rehabilitation to Oxfam? Most people would not view their family members as replaceable, McIntyre observed, but people who had fully embraced Singer's position might see things very differently.

Singer commented that it sounded like a bad marriage, but that he wouldn't object. Contacted afterward, McIntyre commented that Singer often supposed that family members would have ties of affection and sentiment which would bind them together, but that his philosophical views counted preferences based on these ties only as "extrinsic factors" that had no direct moral justification.

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Four Faculty Members Earn Tenure

All four faculty tenure recommendations brought forward by the Committee on Faculty Appointments (CFA) were approved by the Board of Trustees at its January meeting. The tenure appointments for (left to right) Katharine Moon, Political Science; Elizabeth Varon, History; Salem Mekuria, Art; and Yoshihisa Matsusaka, History; are effective Sept. 1, 2000. Dean of the College Lee Cuba, who presented the CFA recommendations, noted that the four exemplify excellence in teaching, scholarship, and service. "We have every reason to believe they will continue to be innovative in teaching," Cuba said. Yoshihisa Matsusaka, Assistant Professor of History, is a specialist in the history of modern Japan and has been a member of the Wellesley faculty since 1993. He teaches courses in Japanese civilization, World War II, the history of Japan's international relations, the history of Asian immigrants in the United States and Canada, and upper-level seminars. His forthcoming book, The Making of Japanese Manchuria, 1904-1932 (Harvard, 2000), explores the history of Japan's subjugation of Northeast China, from the establishment of the South Manchuria Railway Company to the founding of Manchoukuo. His current research deals with the politics of national defense in Japan from the 1880s to the early 1930s.

In the personal statement accompanying his application, Matsusaka wrote:

"One category of service ... of special meaning to me, has been my role as a reader for the Board of Admissions ... As an historian with an eye and imagination trained to reconstruct narratives from fragmentary pieces of evidence, I feel I have come to know the applicants and the communities from which they hail. Learning about experiences very distant from my own life in terms of gender, generation and ethnicity, I have gained a deeper understanding of that part of the world that seeks admission to Wellesley."
Salem Mekuria, Assistant Professor of Art, is an independent producer, writer, and director who has worked with NOVA, public television's science documentary series, and with numerous international film productions focusing on issues of African women and development.

Her film credits include: "Ye Wonz Maibel" (Deluge), 1997, a personal essay on history, conflict, loss and reconciliation that is told through a first person narrative and explores the momentous events which took place in Ethiopia between 1974 and 1991; "SIDET: Forced Exile," 1991, a film documentary profiling three Ethiopian/Eritrean refugee women in the Sudan; "As I Remember It," 1991, a video portrait of the Harlem Renaissance writer Dorothy West; and "Our Place in the Sun," 1988, an Emmy-nominated portrait of the Black community on Martha's Vineyard.

Mekuria has been at Wellesley since 1993 and teaches courses in all levels of video production. In her personal statement, she wrote:

"All of my films are about opening up history and memory to visual investigation, and in the process intepreting, challenging, complicating, inscribing and re-inscribing the stories, histories and identities of individuals and communities in African and the African Diaspora. Exile, outsiderness, and difference are themes that run through my films. They are conditions which I experience daily and through which I filter the stories. My growth as a filmmaker and scholar is motivated by the need to distill and clarify effective ways of communicating these stories."

Katharine Moon, Assistant Professor of Political Science, came to Wellesley in 1993 and has taught courses in International Relations and East Asian Politics, with an emphasis on gender, women, and social movements.

Moon is the author of Sex Among Allies: Military Prostitution in U.S.-Korea Relations (Columbia University, 1997) and articles on gender and militarism, women's human rights, migration movements, and foreign policy analy-sis. She has worked as a consultant for the Depart-ment of State, Office of International Women's Issues, and works with non-governmental organizations that advocate women's rights and welfare around U.S. military bases in Asia. In her personal statement, Moon wrote:

"I relish the freedom to help students access different ways of learning and interpreting life. It may not be conventional to begin with selections from Homer's Iliad and "Rambo" films in a political science course on war and peace, but I find that it helps open up our senses and engages students in intellectual 'cross-ventilation.' It is a thrilling day when students in my World Politics class begin to make their own connections between Kenzaburo Oe's reflections of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and J. Harris' classic case study in foreign policy, Hiroshima."

Elizabeth R. Varon, Assistant Professor of History, specializes in U.S. women's history, the Civil War, and the American South and has been a member of the Wellesley faculty since 1993. She is author of We Mean to be Counted: White Women and Politics in Antebellum Virginia (University of North Carolina Press, 1998), which argues that slaveholding white southern women were active participants in partisan and sectional politics. She is currently under contract for two new book projects, True to the Flag: Elizabeth Van Lew, Spy for the Union Civil War Richmond (forthcoming, Oxford University Press, 2004) and The Roots of the Civil War (forthcoming, University of North Carolina Press, 2009).

In describing her teaching and research at Wellesley, Varon wrote:

"The most surprising discovery I have made here is that the very advances that have liberated modern women from the burdens of the past can be, to young women, sources of anxiety. Never has there been a generation of young women with such a sense of entitlement or unfettered expectations as the rising one, and yet the vast array of opportunities and choices available is daunting and disorienting. In such a brave new world, students yearn for role models, and I have tried to be one. I have shared with students how I chose my path, and what my professional journey has been like. But most of all I have urged them to see their time at Wellesley not merely as the means to an end, but as a gift to be treasured -- to make them understand that there is no more exquisite pleasure in life than learning, no more sacred trust that teaching, no greater privilege than the chance to cross a college green, sun shining, bells pealing, mind racing, heart full. All things possible."

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Professor Writes, Speaks on Trinidad's History

At the dawn of the 21st century, Selwyn Cudjoe (left), Africana Studies, was encouraging his fellow Trinidadians to become more familiar with their country's history. "One cannot get very far if one does not learn from the wisdom of the ages," says Cudjoe. He delivered this message in his keynote address at Port of Spain's first "Michel Maxwell Philip Day," a celebration to honor the city's first black mayor, an accomplished lawyer and public servant, and writer of the first novel in the English-speaking Caribbean. "At the time of his death in 1888, Philip was the Solicitor-General of Trinidad and working to democratize the society," notes Cudjoe. "He was at the peak of his powers and certainly one of the outstanding Caribbean persons of his time. It is only fitting that we honor him for what he has done - albeit more than 100 years after his death - and find ways to tell his story so that others might profit by his example." Cudjoe is editor of Michel Maxwell Philip: A Trinidad Patriot of the 19th Century, a collection of writings, largely by Philip's contemporaries, about the man's life and many accomplishments. Lauren Zykorie '00 assisted Cudjoe with the book, which was published last year.

Conference to Honor Trinidad Leader to be held at Wellesley April 7-9
Eric E. Williams and the Pan Africanist Movement

Selwyn R. Cudjoe, Africana Studies, is coordinating a conference that will examine the career and contributions of Dr. Eric Eustace Williams, deceased, who was one of Trinidad and Tobago's Heads of Government for a quarter of a century and its first Prime Minister. Marcellus Andrews, Economics, will be among the scholars from around the country who will be participating in the conference that is being sponsored by: Africana Sudies, Wellesley College; W.E.B. DuBois Institute for Afro-African Research at Harvard University; and Afro-African Studies Program, Brown University. For more information, contact (781) 283-2563.

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Introducing: Pi Sigma Alpha

Political Science faculty join in the induction ceremony for members of Wellesley's newest honor society Pi Sigma Alpha (from left to right):

Front Row -- Jennifer Park '00, Christine E. Norland '00, Eleftheria S. Keans '00, Rachel McGraw '00, Olga Leslie '00, Laura Green '00, Luiza C. Nanu '00, and Jennifer Myles '00.

Second Row -- Kimberly A. Haddad '00, Elizabeth J. Kellogg '00, Laura G. McGinty '00, Kate E. Marshall '00, and Alyssa J. England '00.

Back Row -- Helen H. Cheung '00, Laura Murray '00, Tracy A. Prout '00, Karen Chang '00, Ayse Kaya '00, Professor Craig Murphy, Sarah C. Ashe '00, Maya Baratz '00, Professor Wilbur Rich, Professor Christopher Candland, Professor Lois Wasserspring, Professor Edward Stettner, Professor Thomas Burke, Cheng Ting Ni '00, Professor Roxanne Euben, and Professor William Joseph.

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Reflections on Wellesley

To provide an opportunity for further discussion after last month's Wilson Lecture by civil rights attorney and law professor Lani Guinier, students, faculty, and staff were invited to dinner discussions held in Beebe immediately following the lecture. A handful of faculty members and several dozen students enjoyed an evening of conversation as they considered Guinier's new vision of power and its possible application to the Wellesley College community. The following is an account of one dinner discussion, hosted by Marianella Belliard-Acosta, Spanish.

When Marisa Van Saanen '01 asked her "canary" question on what strategies Professor Lani Guinier would offer to working class "canaries" (students) at Wellesley, she raised the issue of social class, which was not a focus point in Guinier's suggestive lecture, "Rethinking Race, Gender and Power." Van Saanen's question addressed Wellesley's responsibility to recognize and respond to the presence of lower income students. Guinier provided the best possible answer that time permitted.

Thanks to the arranged dinner for faculty and students to discuss the lecture, we were able to analyze the critical elements raised by the luminous Professor Guinier more thoroughly. Departing from Van Saanen's question, we engaged in a provocative and insightful discussion, adding to the equation the class element. We examined Guinier's metaphor of the canary and the mines as it pertains to Wellesley College. Guinier persuasively argued for the reconstitution of the mine instead of the persistence on the empowering of individual canaries. As a women's college, is Wellesley contributing to the reinvention of the "mine" or is it merely strengthening the canaries to "survive" the structure of the mine?

Through an extraordinarily intellectual discussion, our group deconstructed the canary metaphor and realized that when applied to Wellesley space, we find inside both miners and canaries. For although all may be canaries, some also are miners. In a women's college where a collective identity is constructed around gender, distinctions of race, class, and sexuality, among others, are not always acknowledged.

Having the dinner discussions after the lecture not only provided an opportunity for faculty and students to interact, but most importantly, it provided a forum to further examine the issues presented in the lecture and its applications to Wellesley. This practice should be continued in the future.

Out of the original group of eight or nine students, we have become a weekly discussion group who gather over dinner to debate and ponder these and other timely issues. Members of our group are Ashley Benner '02, Jana Kiser '00, Laura Murray '00, Marisa Van Saanen '01 and Mary Ellen Wiggins '00, all of whom contributed to the writing of this piece.

Reflections on Wellesley is a year-long seriesof events in anticipation of the College's 125th anniversary. For more information, contact Susan Pinto at spinto@wellesley.edu.

Colleagues in the News-

Compiled by Shanna Yetman '02

Marjorie Agosin, Spanish, was a featured guest on the radio show "Common Ground" on Feb. 13. She discussed her childhood in Chile and her new book, The Alphabet in My Hands.

In January, six members of the Art Department were invited by the Shanghai Fine Art College at Shanghai University to participate in an exhibition and conversation about art education. Wellesley College was represented by Judy Black, Carlos Dorrien, Bunny Harvey, Qing-min Meng, Naomi Ribner, and Elaine Spatz-Rabinowitz.

Tom Hansen, German, discussed his love for Choucroute (sauerkraut) in a Feb. 16 article in The Boston Globe. Hansen learned how to make Choucroute Garnie A L'Alsacienne when he was in a graduate student and still prepares it today as a favorite party dish.

 

Researchers in tuberculosis joined students, faculty and staff in the Chemistry Department on Jan. 21 for a special seminar in recognition of Dr. Raymond G. Wilkinson (left, center), a pioneering medicinal chemist and discoverer of the front-line anti-tuberculosis drug ethambutol. Wilkinson was honored by the tuberculosis research community and presented with a plaque by Michael Hearn (right), Chemistry. Wilkinson, who made his discovery some forty years ago, is credited with saving countless lives. The drug has been particularly effective against stubborn or resistant forms of the disease. The seminar included a research talk by Dr. Clifton E. Barry, III, (left) Chief of the Tuberculosis Research Section of the National Institutes of Health. Barry's cutting-edge effort is said by many researchers to carry on the work begun by Wilkinson. Globally, tuberculosis infects some eight million people annually and is responsible for three million deaths each year.

 

In early January, Joseph Joyce, Economics, moderated a panel for the American Economic Association and assessed the International Monetary Fund (IMF). His assessment was timely given the impending resignation of the IMF's Managing Director Michel Camdessus. One important issue Joyce and his colleague, Graham Bird of Stanford University, discussed was that of the recidivism rate and how to reduce it.

Kirsten Kenny, Office of Residential Life, recently finished an internship with the Conservation Law Foundation. While there, she worked in the development office on membership and major donor related issues as well as providing the foundation with general research.

Philip Levine, Economics, was quoted in a Jan. 23 article in The Minneapolis Star Tribune that discussed the issue of Social Security as it pertains to women. Levine found quirks in the way Social Security defines eligibility for married women, many of whom leave the workforce before the required 10 years of Social Security taxes, and therefore do not qualify for social security benefits.

At the College Art Association Annual Conference in New York City in February, Heping Liu, Art, presented a paper in an international panel on landscape and ecology titled "The Mundane Foreground: In Search of Economic and Ecological Origin of Song Monumental Landscape."

On Feb. 20, The Jewish Theatre of New England presented a production titled "The Memoirs of Glukel of Hameln." After the performance Fran Malino, Jewish Studies and History, led a discussion that delved into Jewish women making meaning of their own lives and the lives of other Jewish women.

Susan McGee Bailey, Wellesley Centers for Women, was the keynote speaker at a national symposium on girls' issues held at Mills College in January. The participants examined how girls are faring in the classroom, in sports, and in the fields of science and technology.

Last month, Geeta Patel, Women's Studies, discussed "Time Tallies Up: Millennium Stories" at Bates College. Patel examined how assumptions about the significance and measurement of time reveal cultural bias.

Pianist Lois Shapiro, Music, performed at UC Davis last month and will be returning there for an encore performance in April. Her February performances included Thea Musgrave's "Songs for a Winter's Evening."

Corrine Taylor, Economics, recently received the American Education Finance Association's Jean Flanigan Outstanding Dissertation Award for her work, "A Reexamination of the Relationship between Student Outcomes and School Expenditures." She was honored at the AEFA's annual conference in Austin, Texas.

Richard Vabulas, Maintenance Services, was one of 11 staff members to exhibit artwork in the recent underground studios iv show in Jewett Art Center Gallery. Vabulas, who specializes in carpentry on campus, hand carves furniture from specially selected fine grain woods. In the foreground of the above photo are three birdseye maple and purple heartwood tables with intricate inlay patterns that he calls "the three sisters." He is currently teaching an after-hours furniture making class that is open to faculty, staff, and students alike. He hopes to teach additional woodworking classes at Wellesley in the future.

In January, Ann Valenchik, Economics, opened the 54th Annual Hamilton Hall Lecture Series in Salem, Mass., with a discussion titled "The Big Economic Questions for the 21st Century." The series will continue with talks on democracy and development in South America as well as other issues of global importance.

David Ward, Italian, reviewed Carlo Rosselli: Socialist Heretic and Antifascist Exile by Stanislao Pugliese in the Feb. 13 Philadelphia Inquirer. Ward provided a brief background on Rosselli and the anti-fascist movement in Italy, and concluded that Americans have waited far too long for a book-length study on such a charismatic character.

 

Bricks, Mortar & Physical Plants

by Pam Gentile & Patrick Willoughby
Physical Plant Administration

Harris Courtyard project well underway

Rendering of the Harris Courtyard, named in memory of Jane Freund Harris '41, in the center of Green Hall that is slated for completion by Commencement.

The task of reclaiming Green Hall courtyard space from parking lot to a pedestrian-friendly landscaped area is well underway. All parking has been eliminated permanently with the temporary exception of construction vehicles. Parking spaces for those with special needs have been designated as close to Green Hall as possible.

One of the project's highest priorities is the installation of a proper and ADA compliant ramp to Green Hall to replace the former plywood ramp. The first phase will be to install a brick ramp at approximately a 4.2 percent grade. The ramp will be heated during the winter months so that ice and snow will not accumulate.

The renovations will be completed before Commencement and, as shown in the rendering above, will include full landscaping, new walkways, seating areas and plantings.

Building projects update

May is rapidly approaching, and with it, the renovations to Pendleton Hall East, beginning May 18. Faculty and staff already are busy planning for the move out of the building and into their temporary offices in Margaret Clapp Library. The asbestos abatement process began early this month. The general contractor, Richard White Sons, has already begun work in the basement of the building and will finish some exterior utility work during spring break.

The new recreation room on the ground floor of Tower Court is near completion. The new space, adjacent the Tower Court West dining room, will have comfortable lounge furnishings, updated lighting and new carpeting.

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About The Wellesley College Illuminator

Editor-in-Chief: Mary Ann Hill, mhill@wellesley.edu
Managing Editor: Betsy Lawson, elawson@wellesley.edu

The Illuminator is the published monthly during the academic year by Wellesley College's Office for Public Information, a division of Resources and Public Affairs, 230 Green Hall, 106 Central Street, Wellesley, MA 02481. Issues are published the first week of every month during the academic year, except for combined issues in September/October and January/February. Special Family Editions are also published.

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