News & Events Amherst in the News

The Conversation – In a widely shared article, Barba, an assistant professor of religion at Amherst, describes the history and beliefs of an often overlooked population that plays “an increasingly important role in national politics: Pentecostals, evangelicals’ theological cousins.”

“Though Pentecostals are diverse, all share an emphasis on the Holy Spirit, or God’s presence in their lives,” writes Barba. “Yet this also leads to disagreement within the movement about what they believe the Holy Spirit empowers them to do in the real world, especially in activism and politics.”

The professor traces the history of the Pentecostal movement (which takes its name from an event in the Bible’s Book of Acts) back to Los Angeles in the early 1900s, and cites statistics suggesting that, today, “about 4.5% of U.S. adults are members of Pentecostal denominations.” 

“African American and Latino Pentecostals have a long history of grassroots political mobilization on issues like labor and immigration,” Barba writes, but “[s]ince the 1980s, white Pentecostals and evangelicals have played a key role in carrying the religious right’s agenda forward.”

Press-Republican — An article highlights Brammer’s experience as a double major in English and art at Amherst, and their recent solo exhibition at the Upper Jay Art Center in their hometown of Upper Jay, N.Y.

“It was exciting to be there because of the relationships I was able to form with professors because of the small class size. The community was small enough that it had a real community feel,” Brammer says of their time at Amherst. “I ended up working with wet medium most of the time, watercolor and ink. But I had the opportunity to take classes in a bunch of different disciplines, so I took printmaking and sculpture.” A photo shows Brammer at work on their Spring 2022 senior thesis show.

The article, written by Robin Caudell, mentions Brammer’s linocut series Preserve, included in the recent UJAC show, and an earlier acrylic self-portrait the artist painted and displayed at the center. “Next,” writes Caudell, “Brammer embarks on a long road trip out west to be present in nature, write, read and create.”

TheCinemaholic.com provides an update on the career of Scott, a fashion model, actor, computer programmer and advocate who appears in the new Hulu documentary series Victoria’s Secret: Angels and Demons. 

The article touches upon Scott’s young life in New Jersey, her early interests in programming and the entertainment industry, and her “dual degree” (in theater and dance and computer science) from Amherst College. “[S]he only pursued modeling upon graduating college,” writes Kriti Mehrotra. “She eventually became the first Black woman to sign a Calvin Klein exclusive contract, propelling her into fame and prestigious jobs, just for her experience with Victoria’s Secret to be much different.” Mehrotra quotes Scott’s comments from the Hulu docuseries about how Victoria’s Secret, as a company, was “not racially diverse” and not empowering to women.

The article lists highlights from Scott’s work in modeling, software development, and acting in TV and film, noting that she has also written a screenplay and spoken publicly about the importance of diversity in tech fields.

Scott made headlines, and was profiled in Amherst magazine, in late 2013 and 2014 for succeeding in both computer science and the beauty industry—thereby defying stereotypes about coders and models alike.

24HTech.Asia shares facts about Lee, who recently ranked sixth on Forbes’ list of “America’s Richest Self-Made Women”: “The 64-year-old businesswoman is the president and CEO of SHI International, an IT provider that focuses on designing cloud, data centre and end-user computing strategies—which earned a record US$12.3 billion in revenue in 2021 alone.”

The 24HTech article draws heavily from a Winter 2016 Amherst magazine feature about Lee, written by Rand Richards Cooper ’80. It notes her double major in biology and economics, as well as her 2014 honorary Amherst doctorate and her status as a life trustee of the College. Lee was also the first Korean woman to earn an MBA from Harvard Business School.

The article explores how Lee’s family and her Buddhist faith have contributed to her success. It quotes her description of her father, internationally influential economist Daniel Kie-Hong Lee ’50 (Amherst’s first Korean graduate), as “a man of the world who believed in the power of education.”

In an essay for Insider, Harmon explains his decision to leave the prestigious NBC Page Program in order to focus on creating social media videos. His Rhythms of Comedy series, in which he drums along to clips of stand-up comedy, has garnered hundreds of millions of views.

The essay, as told to Charissa Cheong, starts with Harmon’s excitement at being hired into the Page Program, a well-known gateway into a television career. “For a year, I got to walk around 30 Rockefeller Plaza, working on TV sets for the Today show and The Tonight Show,” Harmon says. But starting in March 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic forced him to work remotely from his childhood home, where he began making drumming videos. “I was blowing up on social media and making lots of money from ad revenue and brand deals, so I decided to quit and pursue content creation full-time.” By late 2020, he was invited to perform on The Tonight Show.

Though he acknowledges some difficulties in his social media career, Harmon calls it “a more efficient way of accomplishing my goals,” adding, “I can make and say whatever I want on TikTok, too, whereas in more traditional media, some of my jokes and personality would be edited out.” To his mind, “TikTok and YouTube are the new television.”

Harmon’s Rhythms of Comedy series is also highlighted in a Winter 2022 Amherst magazine article by Robyn Bahr ’10.

An Amherst Bulletin article highlights a musical cabaret that will be staged at the Northampton Community Arts Trust building Aug. 13–15. My Evil Twin’s composer and lyricist is Eric Sawyer, Amherst’s Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Music, and its director is Associate Professor of Theater and Dance Ron Bashford ’88.

The show, written by UMass theater instructor Harley Erdman, stars identical twin singers Jim and John Demler and tells the true story of their lives. “Using humor and some more poignant moments, the production looks at the special bonds identical twins can have—as well as the intense sibling rivalries those relationships can bring—as the Demlers, now in their mid-60s, revisit their high school years, their work to become professional singers, and the reckoning both must face when their plans don’t work out exactly as imagined,” writes reporter Steve Pfarrer.

Erdman and Sawyer first got to know the twins while working on an original opera called The Scarlet Professor. Before that, the two professors had also collaborated to produce The Garden of Martyrs.

“A lot of people in [the financial industry] continue to think that wealth is just something that you put on a balance sheet, but there is [a] much deeper, more humanistic meaning,” Chloe McKenzie '14 said in a recent profile by Ozy about her financial consulting work and BlackFem, the nonprofit she founded to teach financial literacy to disadvantaged students.

“I want people to think critically about the narratives we tell ourselves about money,” she said, “because who is the person making those rules?”

“BlackFem offers a multifaceted curriculum for pre-K to sixth grade: In the classroom, lessons about wealth are taught five days a week, using games, discussion and simulation as teaching tools. A summer academy helps BlackFem-affiliated teachers become certified wealth educators, better trained to integrate financial literacy curricula into their classrooms. And parent-focused workshops map what’s being taught to students, which allows the learning to continue at home,” Ozy reported.

“Her message to the students she meets is blunt: ‘Listen, because you come from a certain area or because you look the way that you look, you’re going to be exploited. Here’s how — and here’s how you can respond. Now go practice.’”

Jenine Shepherd ’20, the subject of a Spring 2019 Amherst Magazine article, was recently quoted by Caribbean Life concerning efforts to better encourage young educated professionals from her native Jamaica to give back to their birthplace.

“Jamaica is in the top 20 countries for the highest immigration rate of educated people,” said Shepherd, speaking at the 8th Biennial Jamaica Diaspora Conference, held mid-June in Kingston.

Jamaica’s “brain drain” means a financial loss for the country, she told conference attendees. “The government is missing out on valuable revenue they could have gained from taxes, or other investments made in the country,” she said.

“Shepherd, who received the Prime Minister’s Award for Nation Building, and is in the process of expanding her company to the USA and the Netherlands where she will build schools for refugees and inner-city children with the support of their heads of government and the UN, noted that Jamaica needs [young diaspora professionals] to make a contribution,” the publication reported.

She proposed that the Global Jamaica Youth Council back a Jamaica Youth Network initiative, a “transformative arm of the council” dedicated to better connecting Jamaicans with each other in the diaspora. 

“She has been working closely with the US Embassy, consulates and the ministry to ensure that the voices of approximately 800,000 Jamaicans residing in the USA are heard on issues of cultural estrangement how they can get involved in policy making,” Caribbean Life added.

Ken Danford ’88, who walked away from a potential career as a school administrator to found a nontraditional learning center for teens, has a new book out, and the Greenfield Recorder’s Richie Davis spoke with him about it.

Danford taught public school in Maryland and eventually grew disillusioned with his career path while teaching in Amherst. He dropped out of a UMass doctoral program in school administration, to launch North Star (originally called Pathfinder) with Joshua Hornick in 1996, as a resource for teens who want to pursue their own interests without school.

His new book, Learning is Natural; School is Optional, discusses his motivations behind starting North Star as an alternative to more traditional middle and high schools. The Sunderland-based program enrolls about 60 teens each year for classes, one-on-one tutorials, and self-directed activities and volunteer experiences.

“North Star, Danford is quick to point out, isn’t a school,” Davis writes. “Attitudes among parents have changed since North Star was created, he says, and it’s now easier to explain it as ‘a clubhouse to help you home school’”.

“It’s still a misunderstood movement, but more people have somehow been touched in their neighborhood or extended families with the idea that someone’s being homeschooled, so it’s a little less of an uphill climb right now. And that doesn’t have to mean getting the curriculum at home. It can mean doing alternative stuff,” Danford said.

The center, which recently ended its fourth year in its fourth location, has helped 800 students from within a 40-minute radius. A number of similar centers throughout the country belong to a network following the North Star model.

The New Yorker followed Andrew Hacker '51, whose latest book argues against mandatory algebra education, as he defended his assertions at the National Museum of Mathematics.

Travis Bristol '03, a former high school English teacher and now a research and policy fellow at Stanford, argues in The Washington Post that public schools should focus more on recruiting and retaining teachers of color. Many other publications, including Amherst magazine, have covered Bristol's research.

Yale Daily News – Johnson recently received the Wilbur Cross Medal from the Yale University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, where he earned his Ph.D. in 1989. In this profile, he talks about his education, his paleontological discoveries, the climate crisis and his work as Sant Director of the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History.

“The rewarding thing is that I feel every day that I’m doing a job that really matters to people and to the future,” Johnson is quoted as saying. A lifelong “museum-loving kid” and now a participant in the United Nations’ Framework Convention on Climate Change, he believes that museums such as the Smithsonian play an important role in preserving the planet’s history and communicating with the public so that solutions to environmental crises might be found.

Johnson, who majored in geology and fine arts at Amherst, also spoke about his career and worldview last year in episode 10 of the College’s Bicentennial podcast.

Forbes — Hayes, who has served as chief financial officer of CMS Energy Corp. since 2017 and as an Amherst trustee since 2021, has earned a spot on the magazine’s “second annual list of 50 executives who are likely to lead some of America’s top companies.”

“We surveyed top recruiters, executive coaches, consultants and the Forbes newsroom to create this year’s list of 50 leaders who look poised to step into large-company CEO jobs,” write Diane Brady and Jena McGregor. “What unites the executives on this list is that their accomplishments and talent are being noticed by those who have built their careers and reputations on finding and working with the CEOs of tomorrow.”

Hayes’ citation on the list (which is alphabetized by last name) describes him as “a strategic leader who’s adept at doing deals, managing multiple stakeholders and driving growth. Recruiters say he's shown leadership during previous roles at publicly traded companies such as ITC and Exelon, as well as earlier in his career at firms like Lazard and Banc of America Securities.”

Harvard Business School Senior Lecturer Brian Trelstad appears on a recent episode of the school’s Cold Call podcast to discuss Haggerty’s nonprofit Community Solutions and its Built For Zero movement, which works to end homelessness in communities nationwide.

Speaking with podcast host Brian Kenney, Trelstad outlines what makes Haggerty “an exceptional social entrepreneur” from whom the business world can learn important lessons. The two men talk about Haggerty’s earlier career and leadership style, and consider the approach, challenges and successes of Community Solutions, which last year received $100 million from the MacArthur Foundation’s 100&Change competition to continue its work. Also mentioned on the episode is Jake Maguire ’07, director of communications for Community Solutions.

Though Haggerty herself does not appear on the Cold Call podcast, she does speak with President Biddy Martin about her mission on the April 27 episode of Amherst’s Bicentennial podcast.

Attorney Andrew Nussbaum ’85, chair of Amherst’s board of trustees, appeared on WBUR’s Morning Edition to share his memories of serving as a law clerk for Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who died on Sept. 18. He clerked for Ginsburg while she was on the U.S. Court of Appeals in the early 1990s.

Nussbaum said Ginsburg was a “quiet and somewhat reserved person,” though she was “incredibly warm” and thoughtful toward him and his family throughout their friendship. She was, he said, both an excellent editor of legal prose and “a brilliant writer of thank-you notes.” He commented on her background as a daughter of immigrants and the obstacles she had to overcome early in her career. He also discussed the progressive judge’s friendship with conservative SCOTUS Justice Antonin Scalia, for whom Nussbaum also later clerked, thanks to a recommendation from Ginsburg.

An Amherst trustee since 2010 and board chair since 2018, Nussbaum today is a partner in the law firm of Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz.