Amherst in the News

An article in The Times of Apalachicola, Fla., profiles Dr. Alvan W. Chapman, an 1830 Amherst College graduate who “brought the study of botany out of New England to the expanding United States, especially to the then Territory of Florida.” Chapman’s former home and the Chapman Botanical Gardens are esteemed sites in Apalachicola today.

The article, written by Caty Greene, president of the Apalachicola Area Historical Society, surveys some of the writings about Chapman, which in turn shed light on his physical appearance, his personal and professional relationships, his involvement with the local community and his botanical fieldwork, which continued into his 80s. His popular book Flora of the Southern United States was first published in 1860, with further editions released decades later. 

The piece additionally describes how Chapman, who was originally from Southampton, Mass., and was also a physician, worked to inform and support the Union forces during the Civil War. 

Vaughn Cooper ’94, an evolutionary microbiologist at the University of Pittsburgh, spoke with The Washington Post’s Bob Costa on Oct. 19 about the Cooper Lab’s use of cutting-edge technology to track genetic changes in the coronavirus in order to trace and control the virus’s spread.

After gene sequencing, “we have a complete record of all 29,000 sort of nucleotides or letters in the RNA alphabet of the coronavirus genome. And then we can compare that sequence first with the original isolate that was sequenced in Wuhan, China, but we can also compare that sequence with literally every other sequence ever decoded on the planet,” Cooper explained. “And in the context of, say, contact tracing, what it allows you to do is determine whether the virus that you're looking at came from a close relative or perhaps came from sort of general community spread.”

The extensive interview also includes, among other details, Cooper’s commentary on the lack of coordination in the United States’ federal response to COVID-19; comparison of U.S. gene-sequencing progress to that in Australia and other nations; and explanation of the importance of gene sequencing in developing a vaccine and adjusting it in the future, as the virus evolves.  

“I feel like the college is taking the best precautions possible, but the bitter part is being barely able to do anything,” says Lucheyla Celestino ’23, one of several Amherst students quoted in a Daily Hampshire Gazette article that details the successes and struggles of the College’s pandemic plan.

The article, by Jacquelyn Voghel, also quotes communications from President Biddy Martin. It describes the geographical, social and recreational restrictions placed on students living and studying within Amherst’s “campus-centered bubble,” and how the students have generally been willing to comply with the rules in order to prevent COVID-19 from spreading within and around the College. The students interviewed express some boredom and grief, but also say they feel safe and appreciate being on campus with friends.

The piece briefly hints at possible adjustments and enhancements to campus life for the spring semester (though most of the restrictions will likely remain in place) and also compares and contrasts Amherst’s approach to those of Hampshire, Smith and Mount Holyoke Colleges and UMass Amherst.   

On Oct. 12, Indigenous Peoples’ Day, Associate Professor of American Studies Kiara Vigil appeared on public radio to discuss the importance of learning and teaching Native history.

Vigil, whose ancestry is Dakota, Apache, Irish and Mexican, spoke of her experiences as a child in the Boston area, learning about her Native heritage in ways that went beyond what little she was taught in school. “So I had to kind of do supplementary reading on my own. And that just continued throughout life,” she said. “And so it's not surprising to me that I found my way into being a teacher of history, a teacher of literature and culture.”

The professor also described teaching her Spring 2020 course “Native Futures”. Many of the students, she said, were Indigenous—from “Hawaii and Chumash country, Ojibwe and Lenape, Pottawatomie”—and “in almost every single text we've read, there was something that spoke to their community or their people.” Vigil also recalled how a white student from upstate New York was able to learn about her own hometown’s connections to Mohawk history, showing how “it's not just one person's history or story to inherit. It's all of ours.”   

In a piece for The Conversation, Austin Sarat, the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science, associate provost and associate dean of the faculty, cites parallels between tactics used by Vice President Mike Pence and Sen. Kamala Harris in the Oct. 7 debate to those used in the 1988 presidential race.

“Like that year’s Democratic presidential candidate, Michael Dukakis, who famously said that the campaign was about competence not ideology, Harris went after what she described as the Trump administration’s incompetence …” writes Sarat. In response, Pence “borrowed a strategy of George H.W. Bush’s 1988 campaign and insisted that Biden and Harris represent just another, out-of-the-mainstream iteration of the Democrats tax, spend and regulate agenda.”

Sarat additionally compares the way Pence blamed the Obama-Biden administration for the Islamic State Group’s 2013 capture and murder of U.S. humanitarian Kayla Mueller to “Bush’s use of the so called Willie Horton ad to discredit Dukakis.”

The Conversation article also includes debate commentary from Cynthia Young, associate professor of African American studies at Pennsylvania State University.

Manuela Lavinas Picq, Karl Loewenstein Fellow and visiting associate professor of political science, argues in The New York Times that evangelical Christian missionary initiatives in the Brazilian Amazon threaten Indigenous peoples, especially now that the missionaries have increased support from President Jair Bolsonaro and might carry the coronavirus with them.

In the opinion piece, part of the Times’ series “The Amazon Has Seen Our Future,” Lavinas Picq describes elements of the recent history of evangelical incursion into Indigenous territory and the effects of missionary involvement with the medical care and politics of Indigenous populations.

“For many years the Brazilian government tried to protect tribes that chose to live in isolation from these incursions. Now the government is essentially backing the missionaries,” she writes. “The major danger now is that Covid-19 may kill so many people that it could result in the decimation of entire ethnic and tribal groups.”

The Atlantic profiles Hugh Price ’63 H’98 as part of its series on “The Firsts”—the first children who enacted the racial desegregation of U.S. schools in the 1950s.

In the article, by Adam Harris, Price shares memories of growing up in a rigidly segregated Washington, D.C. (near pioneering civil rights lawyer Charles Hamilton Houston, class of 1915). Following the 1954 Supreme Court desegregation decision in Brown v. Board of Education, Price was among the first Black students to enroll at Taft Junior High, and later part of a small minority at Coolidge High, where, he says, the atmosphere was “not strained, but it wasn’t really open and accommodating.” School integration prompted backlash and boycotts by white families, and white flight from neighborhoods where Black families were moving in.

Upon taking an aptitude test in high school, “I was told—and I will never forget this—that I probably would get to go to college, but that I should not count on going to graduate school or professional school,” Price says. “That was my introduction to the fallacious and racist application of testing to hold kids back.” He went on to Amherst and then Yale Law School, served on the editorial board of The New York Times, and led the National Urban League from 1994 to 2003. 

An Oct. 2 New York Times article includes Amherst among its examples of the ways some colleges and universities around the country have been relatively successful in preventing the spread of COVID-19. It notes, “The success stories stand in relief against all that has not worked.”

“Being located in small towns, having minimal Greek life and aggressively enforcing social-distancing measures all help in suppressing the contagion, experts say. But one major thread connects the most successful campuses: testing. Extensively,” writes Times reporter Shawn Hubler. “Small colleges in New England—where the Broad Institute, a large academic laboratory affiliated with M.I.T. and Harvard, is supporting an ambitious regional testing and screening program—are showing particularly low rates of infection.” Amherst has partnered with the Broad Institute, as have Colby and Wesleyan, among other schools.

The article ends with quotes from Lily Popoli ’23, who points out a downside of Amherst’s stringent pandemic plan: the psychological and social toll of the restrictions placed on students.  

“The United States has seen a dramatic rise in the number of Chinese students studying on its campuses over the last 10 years,” writes Xiaofeng Wan, Amherst’s associate dean of admission and coordinator of international recruitment, in Inside Higher Ed. “However, this may soon take an unexpected turn.”

In the coming years, Wan explains, U.S. colleges and universities will likely see a steep drop in interest and enrollment by students from China. Whereas Chinese students constituted a third of all international students in the country in 2018-2019, many teenagers in China are now reconsidering their plans to study in the United States. Their families cite concerns about COVID-19; the xenophobic rhetoric and restrictive immigration policies of the Trump administration; and fears about anti-Asian racism among the American public. Chinese social media sites also spread misinformation about college admissions and Sino-U.S. relations.

“In the absence of national leadership in stopping the spread of the virus and embracing talents from abroad, higher education may need to take on more of the work,” Wan writes. “As the first point of contact, admission officers have a critical role in voicing our welcoming stance and our commitment in supporting international students directly.”

A MassLive article describes the evolution of the College’s Spanish program in recent years, with remarks from Professor Paul A. Schroeder Rodríguez and Professor Sara Brenneis, who chairs the department.

Traditionally, the article says, Spanish language instructors at Amherst and other U.S. schools have emphasized Iberian Spanish—the kind spoken in Spain—as more proper or pure than dialects spoken elsewhere. But Rodríguez, who sees the language as “a living organism that reflects richness and diversity,” has worked with Brenneis and other faculty members to broaden Amherst’s curriculum to include and celebrate Central American, South American and Caribbean versions of Spanish, and to link the language to cultures and identities.

In all its forms, “Spanish has become so visible, useful and important in our country,” says Brenneis. “I love hearing the different accents of the students.” Rodríguez mentions the course “Owning the Bilingual Self,” which focuses in part on students’ own experiences of speaking Spanish in their youth.

The MassLive piece addresses how COVID-19 has affected Spanish instruction at Amherst, and highlights how—both before the pandemic and in the foreseeable future—travel has been and will be an important component of the program. 

An article in the Des Moines Register highlights the collaboration between executive producer Romen Borsellino ’12 and actor Kal Penn on a new political comedy TV series aimed at young voters. Each of the six episodes of Kal Penn Approves This Message, airing on the Freeform network, “will tackle a big issue, from health care to education and the history of voting itself.”

Penn is perhaps best known as a star of the Harold & Kumar movie series, and was associate director of the White House Office of Public Engagement under President Barack Obama. Borsellino first met Penn at a 2007 Iowa caucus event at his high school.

"I think any way you can engage folks and build as big a tent as possible and get as many people off the sidelines as possible, we should take advantage of," Borsellino says, referring to the potential of the new TV series to fire up viewers about political issues. "And if that means using comedy and storytelling and things that will connect with our friends and neighbors, then let's do it."

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. 

“The world needs its Amhersts, but not only its Amhersts,” writes College President Biddy Martin in an op-ed for The Hechinger Report, advocating for state and federal support for public institutions of higher learning at a time when their funding is under particular threat as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Martin presents examples from her own life and family of the value of access to public postsecondary education. She discusses the mutual prejudices between the constituents of different kinds of schools: those who favor the Ivy League and other elite private institutions often overlook or underestimate the work done at large Midwestern universities, while those private schools are derided as snobbish, exclusive and inequitable. But Martin argues that both kinds of schools have value, and that investment in a variety of educational options is necessary for the good of students and society.

“I plead with readers not to yield to the belief that we should elevate any one kind [of education] by denigrating all others,” she writes. “The diversity of postsecondary education has long been a great strength; my family is a testament to the need and the value of institutions and apprenticeships that not only meet different needs but also cultivate different talents.”

This summer, a state-owned refinery began spilling oil into Venezuela’s Morrocoy National Park, and the country’s increasingly authoritarian government took control of the executive boards of several opposition parties. According to a recent New York Times op-ed by Professor Javier Corrales, “These catastrophes are two sides of the same coin.”

Corrales, the Dwight W. Morrow 1895 Professor of Political Science and chair of political science, describes how the South American nation’s political crisis, collapsing oil industry and environmental degradation all relate to one another—and how the rhetoric and policies of the United States may be contributing to these problems. He concludes, “Venezuela’s descent into authoritarianism has the same source as July’s oil spill: Venezuela is a petrostate that has lost interest in accountability.”

Corrales is currently teaching a course on “The Political Economy of Petro States: Venezuela Compared.” He is the author or co-author of multiple books about the politics of Venezuela and other parts of Latin America.

“On the face of it, the NBA and Amherst College have little in common. Except this: Both organizations have resumed in-person activities amidst COVID by forming a so-called ‘bubble,’” wrote Lee Clifford in Fortune magazine on Sept. 5.

Clifford’s article details many of the measures Amherst has been taking to prevent the spread of the virus, both within the boundaries of the campus itself—beyond which students are not allowed to venture—and between campus and the surrounding community. These precautions include, among others, frequent COVID testing, enhanced cleaning procedures, tents to allow classes and gatherings to be held outdoors, and a prohibition on visitors to dorms. There are also contingency plans to switch to an all-remote learning model, and even to evacuate campus if necessary.

The article notes the relative success of the College’s pandemic plan so far, but a commentator points out that Amherst is at an advantage in being a small school with a spacious campus, in contrast to larger universities such as Northwestern and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.