News & Events Amherst in the News

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. 

Laura Draucker, director of sustainability at Amherst College, is getting the Leader in Sustainability Award from the Amherst Area Chamber of Commerce, The Daily Hampshire Gazette reported.

The “A+ Award” is in recognition of her leading the creation of a climate action plan adopted by the college’s trustees in January that commits the College to carbon neutrality by 2030.

The awards will be presented at an Oct. 3 celebration at the Hadley Farms Meeting House in Hadley, Mass.

Autumn means harvest time at the Book & Plow Farm, and the Daily Hampshire Gazette spoke with Maida Ives, manager of farm operation and education, about the merging of the academic and agricultural years.

“It is peak vegetable and peak student season,” she told Noah Baustin, communications coordinator at CISA (Community Involved in Sustaining Agriculture), writing in the Gazette.

“Many farmers race to be the first to market with crops as they come into season. At Book & Plow, however, summer is the time to lay the foundation for when campus is flooded with students in the fall,” Baustin wrote.

“This is the moment when everything converges, and our brains split into two,” Ives said. “We’re continuing crop care, field prep, and cover cropping. But we’re also welcoming new students to the farm, hosting orientations, and even having pizza parties while the weather is good.”

“Each autumn, Ives hires on 25 Amherst College students to work on Book & Plow Farm. Many of these student employees have little to no experience with the type of physical labor required on a farm. Ives finds it rewarding to see how the students grow and learn from the work throughout the semester,” Baustin wrote.

“I have a lot of students express pride that they were able to do it. They feel themselves get stronger, more capable of doing the physical work, and more confident understanding the decision-making that happens on the farm,” Ives said.

News of the recent anonymous gift of more than 170 works of contemporary art to the Mead Art Museum hit the art world and beyond this week. Pieces in The Boston Globe, Artnews, Artforum, WBUR and more celebrated the acquisition, which includes works by established artists such as Mona Hatoum, David Hockney, Thomas Ruff, and Cindy Sherman, and number of pieces by a diverse roster of artists from across the United States and around the world such as Dario Escobar, Toba Khedoori, Robin Rhode, and Analia Saban.

“It can be rough out there for museums affiliated with small liberal arts colleges,” wrote The Observer. “No matter how much time and effort is sunk into establishing fantastic facilities and organizing stimulating exhibitions, it’s an unfortunate truth that way more capital and press attention is going to flow towards huge museums in major metropolitan areas. Sometimes, though, a windfall appears out of nowhere.”

“To be able to get that scope of work has a tremendous impact on us, and the quality as well,” David E. Little, director and chief curator of the Mead Art Museum, told The Boston Globe.

“He’s looking forward to the opportunities for students to interact with the works as research resources for projects, and he says he hopes to invite many of the living artists in the collection to speak on campus,” the Globe wrote. “With a student body around 45 percent composed of students of color, Amherst College should offer students access to artwork that speaks to them, Little believes. He hopes this gift will help make that goal a reality.”

UPDATE: WWLP-22News (Springfield, Mass.) recently devoted a piece to the gift.

“One thing that’s really important about this recent gift and about all of our acquisitions at the Mead is that we try to have our art be representative of today’s students,” Marketing and Public Programs Specialist Danielle Amodeo told 22News.

Author Min Jin Lee, who will join the College as a writer-in-residence starting in the 2019-2020 academic year, recently spoke with WBUR’s On Point about being an immigrant in America, and on its elite college campuses.

The piece cited three recent pieces on this theme, a New Yorker column, “Stonehenge,” a New York Times opinion piece, “Breaking My Own Silence,” and an interview she gave to The Guardian.

"I’m going to sound like an optimist here,” she told The Guardian. “We are having a dark moment in the American political climate regarding undocumented migrants and asylum seekers but, then again, the history of immigration in America has always been checkered.”

“In the United States we have two competing mythologies about immigration. On the one hand, we believe that different kinds of races make up an American person. On the other, a deep nativist strain keeps resurfacing. Nevertheless, there has also been strong resistance to nativism. Frederick Douglass, for instance, called the United States a 'composite nation' when he argued against the Chinese Exclusion Act [of 1882].”

Her three-year appointment to Amherst’s English department came about after her appearance at the College’s LitFest in March 2018.