American
Magazine of American University
Winter/December 2008
Portrait of WCL’s
Jamin Raskin by
Richard Avedon
Story p. 12
Picturing Democracy
American
Magazine of American University
Volume 59 No. 3
12
picturing democracy
14
women in politics: not yet enough
16
20
How WCL’s Jamin Raskin ended up among the
Portraits of Power at the Corcoran Gallery of Art.
Women’s political gains come in fits and starts, but
AU is training young women to break through the
marble ceiling.
1934–2009: spa at the center
of change
SPA celebrates 75 years. From FDR’s New Deal to
LBJ’s Great Society to Barack Obama’s historic
election, the school has been at the center of change.
report to congress: tackling
marine debris
AU biologist Kiho Kim dives into the world of
public policy to untangle wildlife-killing debris.
• • •
departments
3
On the Quad
8
Athletics
23 Alumni News
26 Class Notables
33 Report of Gifts
The Pentagon Memorial in Arlington,
Virginia, was dedicated on September
11, 2008, to the 184 people who lost
their lives there on 9/11.
Photo by Jeff Watts
www.american.edu/magazine
On the cover: Jamin B. Raskin, Professor of Constitutional
Law at American University, Democratic National Convention,
Boston, Massachusetts, July 29, 2004. Photograph by Richard
Avedon, ©2008 The Richard Avedon Foundation
Donors Make a
Difference
Art, media, and law are all passions for Betsy
Betsy Ashton, CAS/BA ’66
Finley Ashton, CAS/BA ’66. A media professional whose on-air career spanned two
decades, including reporting for Washington, D.C., stations WWDC and WMAL
radio, WTTG and WJLA-TV, as well as WCBS-TV and CBS News in New York
City, Ashton now works as a painter in Manhattan specializing in
figures and commissioned portraits. Her philanthropic activities
have included serving on the board of WNET-TV Public
Television in New York City, as president of the D.C. and NYC
chapters of the Society of Professional Journalists, and as guest
lecturer at AU’s School of Communication.
Ashton has chosen to say thank you for the scholarship
opportunities AU made possible by including provisions in her
charitable estate plan to fund the Betsy Finley Ashton Endowed
Scholarship for incoming freshmen. In the early 1960s as Betsy
considered her options for college she had the advantage of
a promising high school record but the challenge of a family
unwilling to support her studies. “I will forever be grateful to
American University for welcoming and helping me. I take great
pride, knowing one day my support will help an enthusiastic
student with an uncertain future study toward an AU degree,” Ashton shares.
AU is deeply grateful to be the beneficiary of Ashton’s benevolence, and we
salute the philanthropic example she sets for the greater community of AU alumni,
parents, and friends.
For information on the benefits you, loved ones, and American University can receive
through charitable estate planning, contact Seth Speyer, director of Planned Giving, at
202-885-5914, speyer@american.edu, or visit www.american.edu/planned giving.
Congress has passed temporary legislation creating opportunities in 2008 and
2009 for individuals to make tax efficient donations to charity directly from
qualifying retirement accounts. Please contact Seth Speyer in AU’s Planned
Giving Office to learn if you qualify.
American
American, the official magazine of American
University, is written and designed by the University Publications office within University
Communications and Marketing. Personal
views on subjects of public interest expressed
in the magazine do not necessarily reflect official policies of the university.
Executive Director, Communications
and Marketing
Teresa Flannery
Director, University Publications
Kevin Grasty
Executive Editor
Linda McHugh
Managing Editor
Catherine Bahl
Copy Editing
Suzanne Bechamps
Staff Writers
Sally Acharya, Adrienne Frank, Mike Unger
Art Director/Designer
Wendy Beckerman
Contributing Designers
Maria Jackson, Natalie Taylor
Contributing Designer and Web Specialist
Evangeline Montoya-A. Reed
Photographer
Jeff Watts
Report of Gifts
Theresa Choi
Brooke Sabin, editor
Class Notes
Melissa Reichley, editor; Tony Romm
Josephine Sanchez, editorial assistants
UP09-002
American is published three times a year by American
University. With a circulation of about 90,000,
American is sent to alumni and other constituents of
the university community. Copyright © 2008.
American University is an equal opportunity and affirmative action university and employer. American University
does not discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion,
national origin, sex, age, marital status, personal appearance,
sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, family
responsibilities, political affiliation, disability, source of
income, place of residence or business, or certain veteran status in its programs and activities. For information, contact
the Dean of Students (DOS@american.edu), Director of
Policy & Regulatory Affairs (employeerelations@american.
edu) or Dean of Academic Affairs, (academicaffairs@american.
edu), or at American University, 4400 Massachusetts Ave.,
N.W., Washington, D.C. 20016, 202-885-1000.
www.american.edu/magazine
Send address changes to:
Alumni Programs
American University
4400 Massachusetts Ave NW
Washington, D.C.
20016-8002
or
e-mail: alumupdate@american.edu
 american
from the
editor
Picturing Democracy
C
ivility Week is set aside each fall for the AU community to make
some resolutions. We begin the new academic year by taking time
to remember the importance of civil discourse and vowing to weave
civility into all aspects of our lives on campus and beyond.
It was during Civility Week, when I was thinking about these things,
that I had a delightfully unexpected experience that I’d like to share. One
September day, I ran out to the Friendship Heights post office on Wisconsin
Avenue to mail a package. Joining a long line, I found myself behind a tall,
handsome, eccentrically dressed woman of perhaps 80. She started to talk
with a 50-something gentleman in preppy attire who seemed reluctant to
have a conversation with a stranger.
But instead of giving curt answers, he let himself be drawn into what became a marvelous chat about books recently enjoyed. When he was called to
the counter, he closed the conversation reluctantly, with a warm “thank you.”
Turning to me, the lady said, “what a lovely gentleman,” and proceeded to
ask what I’d recommend from my recent reading. So I, too, became part of
the conversation.
I savor that modest but memorable encounter. How simple it was for one
person to turn a long wait into a pleasant interaction. Yet it depended on the
willingness of others to engage—even if, at the start, we weren’t quite feeling
like it. It is somehow fitting that this moment came at a time that marked
both the start of the semester and the race for the White House, an intense
time when students and faculty had ample opportunity to refuse to talk with
those who weren’t part of their circles.
Yet on AU’s campus, civility ruled. And just as I was enriched by the
simple conversation about books at the post office, the people of our campus
community listened to each other, learned about different ideas, and ended
up all the richer for it.
Linda McHugh
Executive Editor
Send letters to the editor,
lmchugh@american.edu
on the quad
New Alumni Leader Welcomed
Vice President Thomas Minar
F
Thomas Minar
or Thomas Minar, AU’s new vice president of development and alumni
affairs, philanthropy comes from passion, and giving comes from the
heart.
“If you build people’s sense of passion for what you’re doing in your
philanthropic organization, eventually they’ll give. It’s a natural, it’s sort of
organic,” he says. “That’s not to say we can’t do marketing; we have to ask,
but it still comes from the heart.
“There’s a lot of passion here. We have to find the connection—find
ways to motivate AU constituents to come into the community and then to
have passion.”
A political scientist by training, Minar comes to AU from Chicago’s
Roosevelt University, where he served as vice president for institutional
advancement, and as special assistant to the president.
He’s struck by the similarities between his new professional home and
Roosevelt, which was founded in 1945 to educate people who were denied
access to an education because of skin color and religion. Minar explains that
certain parts of AU “were founded to provide for a particular need, and the university has been called upon by the public sector to meet some of those needs.”
The Pomona College graduate, who now sits on its Board of Governors,
has spent his entire life in academe. Minar holds a doctorate in political
science from Northwestern University and a master’s from the Kellogg
Graduate School of Management at Northwestern, and comes from an
academic family.
“This is the kind of culture that I function in,” he says. “I believe that
education is the opportunity for people to improve themselves and the world
around us. Steps I’ve taken in my own training, career, and personal life are
all rooted in my belief and understanding of, and love for a life in higher
education.”
In his new position, Minar will oversee all of the university’s alumni
relations programs and fund-raising efforts, including the $200 million
AnewAU campaign. In 2008, AU president Neil Kerwin announced that the
campaign had reached 85 percent of its goal—more than $170 million.
“We hope that the economy doesn’t change our ability to close sooner
rather than later. And we will celebrate when we do close it,” says Minar.
“The community needs to celebrate its own success in doing something that
it set out to do.” n
winter 2008 
on the
capital presence
quad
A Year for the Ages
T
he day after Barack Obama’s historic victory, a panel
of experts convened by School of Public Affairs professor James
Thurber gathered on campus to dissect the election. Kiki McLean,
communications director to Senator Joseph Lieberman’s 2000 vice presidential campaign,
pointed to the endorsement Obama received from Senator Ted Kennedy on January 28 as
perhaps the key moment in the race.
Kennedy passed the baton from his legendary family to the man many see as the
next great Democratic progressive leader that cold winter day at Bender Arena, kicking off a year for the ages at AU. From the first primary in New Hampshire to election
night itself, students, faculty, and staff lived in the belly of the political beast.
On a surprisingly warm early
January day, students in the School of
Communication class Special Topics in News
Media: Covering the 2008 Presidential
Election scoured the
“This is our Granite State covering
Super Bowl,” said John McCain and
Bill DeBaun, director Hillary Clinton’s
of the Kennedy victories. Three weeks
later, they were back on
Political Union.
campus crammed into
Bender Arena as the world watched Kennedy
and his niece Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg
throw their support behind Obama.
A Beatles-like buzz engulfed campus that
day, as people lined Massachusetts Avenue
hoping to be one of the lucky 3,500 to make
it inside and catch a glimpse of political
royalty from generations past and present.
From left: Senators Ted Kennedy and Barack Obama
and Caroline Schlossberg at Bender. Hopefuls line up
to see Kennedy endorse Obama.
November 4 felt special
from the start. Throughout the day, 147 students
As the fall semester began, classes began taking
After the grueling primary season ended
and the field was whittled to two, the nation’s focus
turned to the party conventions—and the AU community was there. In Denver, Washington College of
Law professor and Maryland state senator Jamin Raskin
served as an Obama delegate, and SPA and SOC major
Kristian Hoysradt worked as a staff assistant to the
National Conference of Democratic Mayors. In St. Paul,
freshman Michael Monrroy spent the week reporting
from the floor of the Xcel Center. The Sterling, Va.-native
earned his ticket to the GOP convention by winning
Crash the Party ’08, a national
contest sponsored by Voto
Latino and Si TV, an Englishlanguage network geared
toward young Latinos. He was
joined in Minnesota by Bernie
Schultz, special assistant to the
vice president in the Office of
Campus Life, who worked as a
member of the floor operating team, directing traffic and
keeping order.
Those who couldn’t make it
to the conventions weren’t left in
the dark. Students blogged from
both sites for politics@theEagle,
the student newspaper’s new
online political forum.
From top: WCL professor Jamin Raskin
flanked by fellow Marylanders, Rep.
Elijah Cummings and Gov. Martin
O’Malley. Bernie Schultz works the
floor at the GOP convention.
a closer look at the contest. SOC professors Dotty Lynch
and Lynne Perri joined their Election ’08: Politics, Polls,
and the Youth Vote and Visual Media classes to create a
poll of young voters. Working with the Gallup organization,
the poll was released by USA Today.
SOC professor Leonard Steinhorn’s honors course,
Presidential Campaign 2008: Inside the War Room and
the News Room, was the centerpiece of Washington’s Fox-5
TV’s Campaign U project. Reporter Tom Fitzgerald followed
the class throughout the entire semester, filing reports and
hosting online chats during weekly live webcasts of the class
discussion. The Thursday before the election, the students
predicted a resounding 326-212 electoral college victory for
Obama.
Below: D.C.’s Fox-5 films SOC professor Lenny Steinhorn’s class for
its Campaign U project. Jim Norman, USA Today’s head of polling,
speaks in professors Dotty Lynch’s and Lynne Perri’s classes, which
created a poll for the newspaper.
Freshman Michael Monrroy reported from St. Paul for SiTV.
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 american
fanned out across Washington to volunteer as part of the
Center for Democracy and Election Management’s
College Student Poll Workers program. By the time
their work was done, many had convened at the Mary
Graydon Center to watch the returns. When CNN’s
Wolf Blitzer called the race for Barack Obama, almost all
of the hundreds gathered went into overdrive.
The crowd broke into alternating chants of
“Obama!” and “Yes we can!” ZDF German TV anchor
Claus Kleber, who led his network’s live broadcast from
campus all evening, rushed into the tavern, crew in tow,
to capture the moment for tens of thousands of online
and TV viewers in Germany and across Europe.
The building doors flew open and in flowed
a steady stream of students coming to
celebrate with their classmates and
friends. Some were shirtless, some
were screaming, some were hugging, some were crying. Within 25
minutes, the crowd thinned a bit as
students rushed out to celebrate in
the streets of Washington.
David Loudon, a sophomore from
Worcester, Mass., was wearing a red
Obama T-shirt.
“Election day is like Christmas for D.C.,”
he said. —MU
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winter 2008 
on the
on the
quad
in print
Alumni Books
Engaging America
P
rofessor Akbar Ahmed and five students are
traveling across America on a yearlong
voyage to learn how Muslims fit into contemporary American society, and how the ideals of
pluralism, openness, and cultural integration hold
up in post-9/11 America.
They’ll visit more than 30 towns and cities
between September 2008 and September 2009,
blogging as they go.
Already, they’ve made an impact. In October,
they posted a story to their
blog about Somali workers who lost their jobs
at a meat-packing plant
over the right to pray
during Ramadan. A week
later, stories on it appeared in USA Today, the
Wall Street Journal and
the New York Times, and
CNN posted their report
as an i-Report.
Late October found the
travelers in Boston, where
they spoke with Noam
Chomsky about one of
the key topics they’re
exploring: American
identity. Then it
was off to Palmyra,
New York, birthplace of the
Church of Latter Day Saints,
and across
the country to
Salt Lake City
to explore the
Mormon faith.
Ahmed,
a former high commissioner of Pakistan to Great
Britain, is regularly interviewed on CNN, CBC, and
the BBC and has appeared on the Oprah Winfrey
Show and Nightline. He holds the Ibn Khaldun Chair
of Islamic Studies at the School of International
Service.
The journey is chronicled in the blog,
http://journeyintoamerica.wordpress.com/.
Their i-Report can be found at
http://www.ireport.com/docs/DOC-116276
n Dana Thomas, SOC/BA ’88,
digs up the dark side of luxury
brands in Deluxe, How Luxury Lost
its Luster (Penguin Books). But she
also dishes up lavish descriptions
of crafting Hermes bags, the secrets
that put Chanel No. 5 in a class all
its own, and how the very wealthy
still indulge themselves in luxury
unavailable to most of us. A fascinating exploration of capitalism,
globalism, culture, and class.
n Addie Boswell, CAS/BA ’00,
tells the story of a girl, a baton,
and a rainstorm in the children’s
book The Rain Stomper (Marshall
Cavendish Children). On the first
day of spring Jasmin is dressed in
her red suit and twirls her baton;
ready for the
big parade. But
the sky opens,
the thunder
booms, and
the rain comes.
Undaunted
Jasmin goes
outside, shakes
her baton, and begins to stomp on
the rain, aided by the neighborhood
children. Gradually the sky lightens,
the rain ends. Jasmin and her “parade
of puddle splashers outstomped the
rain.”
n Paul Wylie, WCL/JD ’65,
chronicles the life of The Irish
General: Thomas Francis Meagher
(Oklahoma University Press) and
his meteoric rise from an exiled
Irish revolutionary to brigadier
general and leader of the famous
Irish Brigade during the Civil War.
In his book Wylie
traces Meagher’s
military career
through the Seven
Days Battles,
Antietam, Fredericksburg, and
Chancellorsville.
He also recounts
Meagher’s final
years as acting governor of Montana
Territory and examines the mystery
surrounding his death.
n PK and TK Find Their Names
(Tate Publishing) is the first in a
series of children’s books by
Richard Hurley, SPA/MSHR ’87.
Two orphans set out on a quest—to
find a family and to discover their
names. On the first day of their
journey they spend the day with a
circus where the brother and sister
decide that their names will be TK
and PK. After helping a clown find
his lost circus dog and seeing the
circus as guests of the clown, the
children continue on their journey
to find parents.
You heard it here: KPU at
T
40
1
The roster reads like a who’s who of the past four decades of world history. Buzz
Aldrin and Benazir Bhutto. The Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu. From Strom
Thurmond to Colin Powell, George McGovern to Mikhail Gorbachev, Newt
Gingrich to Joe Biden, the Kennedy Political Union has brought AU students
face-to-face with the people who shaped the end of the twentieth century and
have begun crafting the twenty-first.
As the student-run organization celebrates its 40th anniversary this semester,
it has entrenched itself as one of Washington’s most important collegiate institutions. Sponsoring about 20 events each academic year, KPU brings the biggest
names from around the globe to campus to examine the triumphs and failures
they’ve celebrated and endured in the highest levels of the professional world.
Created in 1968 to establish a stronger link between AU and the halls of power
downtown, KPU was named for the Kennedy family to acknowledge their service
to the U.S. government and
to society. Theodore (Ted)
brings the most compelling and relevant
Sorensen, an aide to both
speakers available to AU, from all sides of the aisle
President John F. Kennedy
“
quad
2
3
KPU
and Robert Kennedy, was the
to speak about all sides of issues, for not only the
inaugural speaker.
education, but entertainment and enlightenment of
Bill DeBaun ’09, current KPU
the American University community.
director, said that today’s organization
—Bill DeBaun ’09
has evolved from a casual format—
“When speakers first came, they would
be interviewed by three or four students on a stage”—to a formal lecture followed
by a question and answer session.
Over four decades, A-list speakers, such as Madeleine Albright, Bob Woodward,
Oliver Stone, and Antonin Scalia, have addressed audiences. Two Kennedys, Sen.
Edward Kennedy and Robert F. Kennedy Jr., have also have delivered speeches.
“If you speak with a lot of alumni, one of their memories from being on
campus is hearing some kind of speaker. I would venture . . . nine times out
of 10, that speaker was brought here by KPU. In a very real sense we fulfill the
original mission of putting American University students in contact with power
5
players in Washington,” said DeBaun n —mu
”
4
KPU speakers, from top, 1. Benazir Bhutto, 2. Shirley Chisholm, 3. Joe Biden,
4. Mikhail Gorbachev, 5. Charlton Heston, 6. Desmond Tutu, and 7. Lech Walesa
6
7
 american
winter 2008 
on the
athletics
Television and Radio Deals Bring Athletic
Department Increased Exposure
E
“
We’ll have player profiles, behind-thescenes segments. It’s not just going to be
talking Xs and Os. This is designed to give
fans and alumni an inside look into the
entire department.
”
—David Bierwirth
Eagles fever is in—and on—the air.
Landmark new partnerships with
Comcast SportsNet, now the “Official
Sports Network of the American Eagles,”
and WTOP–Bonneville International will
bring unprecedented television and radio
exposure to the AU athletic department
in the coming months.
Eye on the Eagles, a magazine-style
television broadcast, will air on Comcast SportsNet, comcastsportsnet.com,
through mid-March. The show, available
all season through Comcast’s On Demand feature, is hosted by local sportscaster Al Koken, SPA/BA ’74, and will
focus on the men’s basketball team and
AU’s athletic department.
“We’ll have player profiles, behindthe-scenes segments,” says David
Bierwirth, associate athletic director for
development and special events. “It’s not
just going to be talking Xs and Os. This
is designed to give fans and alumni an
inside look into the department.”
The shows are scheduled to air at 4:30
p.m. on December 23, January 20, February 17, March 3, and March 17, and
will be repeated at various times throughout those weeks.
n addition, AU will air all of its home
men’s basketball games on Federal
News Radio AM 1500. Play-by-play
veteran Dan Laing will call the games and
cohost a weekly live-to-tape coach’s show
with Jeff Jones that will air Saturdays at
noon.
“We don’t want to do the typical
coach’s show where two people are sitting
there just going back and forth,” Jones
said. “It’s a positive for our program, and
it definitely will be nice to get the word
out not just about AU basketball, but the
entire AU community.”
The timing of these agreements, coming
on the heels of the men’s basketball team’s
magical run to the NCAA Tournament last
season, is vital.
“These deals are great for our department because they provide exposure for our
programs and allow us to highlight all of
the wonderful things that our coaches and
students are doing,” Athletic Director Keith
Gill said. “These partnerships will create a
unique platform for the university and allow
us an additional avenue to communicate
all of the outstanding things going on at
American University.” n
—MU
I
quad
Running Man
Time to push the pace.
More speed; that’s what was racing through Andrew Dumm’s mind halfway through
the 33rd annual Marine Corps Marathon in Washington, D.C. As the 23-year-old SIS grad
student ran through a lonely, spectatorless stretch near Hains Point, he made a decision to
accelerate.
“I wanted to thin the group out and bring one or two guys along with me, but they didn’t
respond,” he said two days after the first marathon of his life. “I found myself in the lead,
and once the race was mine, it was mine to lose.”
Two hours and twenty-two minutes after Dumm started the October 28 race, he still
hadn’t lost it. He crossed the finish line before any of the other 18,000-plus participants, becoming the first male Marine Corps champ since 1987 to triumph in his inaugural marathon.
Among those trailing Dumm were his older brother, Brian, who finished fifth, and his
father, Ken, who in his seventh Marine Corps turned in a personal best time. Andrew’s plan
was to run with Brian and not concern himself with winning, but that blueprint fell apart after
he separated from his brother about six miles in.
At Hains Point, 13 miles from both the start and finish, things got much
more serious.
“If you talk to the other runners, anybody who goes out on his own
early on is running a lonely race,” said race director Rick Nealis. “I’m sure
the pack was saying rookie mistake, he’s gonna tire, he’s gonna fade, and
we’re gonna catch him.”
No one ever did. Dumm crossed the finish line in
Virginia near the Iwo Jima memorial one minute and ten
seconds ahead of his closest competitor. n
—MU
Coach Jeff Jones and
Joel Oxley,WTOP Radio
senior regional VP
 american
winter 2008 
on the
quad
Borscht and oxtails
for a good cause
WCL HISTORY MOVES TO THE WEB
W
hat’s cooking at AU?
Well, for starters, there’s
borscht from Russia, rice
with peanut sauce from Mali, shish kebab from Lebanon, and oxtail soup
from the Caribbean. Just like mother makes at home.
Tales of Taste: Family Recipes from Around the World is a taste of
AU that helps feed a good cause, since sales of the compilation of favorite
recipes from the AU community will also help international students.
Proceeds support emergency needs of students who aren’t just far from
their families’ kitchens, they’re also far from family help if they run into a
financial crisis. Natural disasters, civil war, the devaluation of their country’s
currency, or the death of a parent can leave students short of cash when
they need it most.
The fund lends students in good academic standing small amounts of
money to help them through temporary hardships.
Every recipe has a story, and the stories are rich with the flavor of the AU
community.
The cookbook is $20. To purchase a copy, contact Senem Bakar at
202-885-3352. n
Shopping the Katzen
Art lovers: the Katzen Museum
Store is open for business.
Shoppers can find handmade
trinkets or one-of-a-kind
treasures, including books,
jewelry, and pottery, all by local
artists; proceeds benefit the AU
Museum.
Hours: Tuesday through Sunday,
11 a.m. to 4 p.m. n
CORRECTION: In the summer 2008 American magazine story “$1 Million Endowment Expands
Programming at Osher Lifelong Learning Institute,” OLLI executive director Anne Wallace was quoted as
saying the institute could apply for a second $1 million endowment after reaching 750 members. OLLI will
not be eligible to apply for a second $1 million endowment until OLLI reaches 1,000 members.
 american
A new digital archive, 3,300 pages strong,
makes it possible to travel back in time for
a glimpse into life at the first law school
founded by and for women.
AU’s digitized history now includes
the Washington College of Law Historical
Collection from a time when women
voting was a radical notion.
The law school was founded in 1896
by two suffragette lawyers, Ellen Spencer
Mussey and Emma Gillett. Both had been
turned down for admission at other law
schools before entering the law through
back doors—Mussey by studying
privately with
her lawyer
husband,
and Gillett
through
Howard University’s law
school, where
her push to break barriers met
with sympathy.
Much of the collection relates to
Mussey, who figures prominently in the
scrapbooks, a handsome middle-aged lady
in a big Edwardian hat who also happened
to be “the only woman dean of a law
school in the world,” according to a 1904
clipping.
AU’s growing digital archive includes:
n 15,389 text files in the Drew Pearson’s
Washington Merry-Go-Round Collection
n over 2,000 issues of historical Eagle
student newspapers
n 68 recordings in the John R. Hickman
Collection of vintage radio programs
n over 300 images in the historical photo
collection
quotables
“In journalism, the business is to develop a method that will
increase the amount of information available to the public
. . . It’s my guess that we know 60 to 70 percent of what’s
going on in government, but the 30 to 40 percent is the
most important.”
—Journalist Bob Woodward, October 22, Washington Semester Class
“We came back from North Korea energized, much the wiser from the event, and
quite stupefied that without any intention on our part we had been thrown into a
situation where we made a very real contribution to peace.”
On the New York
Philharmonic’s
historic performance
in Pyongyang, North
Korea­>>
—New York Philharmonic conductor Lorin Maazel, October 5
“Crossing the DMZ was something I will never forget, but
the concert itself was even more memorable. The beautiful
music was no surprise, what was a surprise was seeing on stage
the American flag, hearing the American national anthem
. . . [and] the standing ovation the North Koreans gave the
Americans.”
—Former secretary of defense William Perry, October 7
“When I write I really try to . . . allow the characters to take me
where in my ordinary life I would be very reluctant to go . . .
It is such a wonderful way to understand how other human beings experience life.”
—Israeli novelist David Grossman, October 29, Visiting Writers Series
Hundreds at AU hear a call to Sierra Leone's diaspora to
return home after years of strife—
“I am here to appeal to you that Sierra Leone needs you
more than America does . . . to build a new Sierra Leone.”
—President of Sierra Leone Ernest Bai Koroma, September 28
winter 2008 
Cover Story
Picturing
Democracy:
Jamin Raskin, a Portrait of Power at the Corcoran
By Mike Unger • Photo by Jeff Watts
H
Richard Avedon: Portraits of Power
Through January 25
Corcoran Gallery of Art
Washington, D.C.
Call 202-747-3462 and press 6# for
a recording of Raskin discussing his
photo.
 american
WCL professor and Maryland state senator
Jamin Raskin at the Corcoran
is right hand clutches a book, pen
jammed in the middle, along with two
journals. Wearing a dark dress shirt and
striped tie, Washington College of Law
professor Jamin Raskin stares into the
camera, a look of indignation peering out from his tired
but always intense eyes.
Snapped well past midnight in the bowels of the Boston
arena that hosted the 2004 Democratic National Convention, the image was one of the last captured by iconic
fashion photographer and portraitist Richard Avedon
(1923–2004).
Like many of the photos featured in the remarkable
exhibit, Richard Avedon: Portraits of Power, at the Corcoran
Gallery of Art through January 25, the picture stands in
stark contrast to the way its subject sees himself.
“It’s pretty ferocious,” Raskin says. “When I first saw it, I
didn’t even recognize myself. But my wife assured me that it
really was me, and that she had seen that side of me. He certainly saw an intensity in me that I have to acknowledge is
there. He definitely was attuned to people’s self-presentation,
and he used that to uncover what it was that people didn’t
want to show. He took pictures of people’s feelings.”
Raskin’s portrait is one of more than 200 at the Corcoran
exhibit, which brings together a half century of Avedon’s
political portraits of the country’s power elite. Avedon took
it for his series Democracy, which ran unfinished in the New
Yorker on November 1, 2004, a month after his death.
“Unlike a lot of people, Avedon did not see that
election as contentious,” said Paul Roth, the Corcoran’s
senior curator of photography and media arts. “He
believed it was animated, and he saw the debate in a
good way. He wanted to explore the state of the union
through people who represented different aspects of the
political debate.”
In Raskin, director of WCL’s Law and Government
Program, Avedon found one of the nation’s preeminent
constitutional scholars.
“I wrote a book, Overruling Democracy, that came out in
2003,” Raskin said. “The subject was the Bush vs. Gore decision in the Supreme Court, and conservative judicial activism.
Someone gave him my book, so he called me up and asked me
whether he could take my picture. I said, ‘Of course.’”
Avedon’s staff summoned Raskin to the makeshift studio in
the then-Fleet Center at about 1:30 a.m. on July 29. His session
was immediately after that of a young U.S. senatorial candidate
from Illinois whose keynote address stole the show that year in
Massachusetts: Barack Obama.
“When I got there it was the middle of the night, but Avedon was completely energetic,” Raskin recalls. “I kept trying to
smile, and he kept asking me questions about my thinking on
the Rehnquist court and judicial activism while he was snapping. I got the sense that he wanted to take a picture of how I
felt about the Supreme Court and what had been taking place
in the country. He captured it pretty well.”
Twenty minutes after Raskin arrived, his shoot was over.
When the series ran in the New Yorker, Raskin’s portrait appeared diagonally from a photo of Bill and Melinda Gates
(Julian Bond, chairman of the NAACP and distinguished adjunct
professor in residence at AU’s School of Public Affairs, is also
among the 49 photos featured in the collection). At the Corcoran, Roth chose to place Raskin’s photo at the very end, next
to a portrait of actor Sean Penn with the word “think” written
across his knuckles.
“I wanted something that would draw your eye in a very
purposeful way,” Roth said. “Jamie Raskin was a very good
match with Sean Penn because of their hands. Raskin’s hand is
extended almost as if he is beckoning you.
“In my way of thinking, it’s emblematic visually of citizen
involvement,” he said. “Most people probably don’t know who
Jamie Raskin is, but it’s clear he’s a serious person. The subtext
of Avedon’s intent is this idea that in a democracy, everyone
can be involved. Raskin’s photo invites you to think about your
own relationship to politics and power. It seems to suggest that
anyone can find one’s self in political debates.” n
winter 2008 
The Women and Politics Institute
(WPI) is connecting influential
women across Washington, from
K Street to Capitol Hill and training
students to join their ranks. The
institute’s black book includes:
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Gillian Martin Sorensen
Hearst newspaper columnist
and author; spoke at WPI’s
seminar on women, politics,
and the media
million more women
elections
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winter 2008 
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female governors
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female U.S. representatives
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71
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Betsy Markey
SPA/MPA ’83, Congresswoman
elect (D), Fourth District, Colorado
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WPI hosted book signing and discussion of her
book, American Heroines: The Spirited Women Who
Shaped Our Country
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Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas)
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Sarah Simmons
SPA/BA ’95, SPA/MA ’97; campaign strategist
for Senator John McCain; named one of
Campaign & Election’s Rising Stars of 2007
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 american
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former first lady of Canada; WPI distinguished
scholar in residence (The Politics of Reproductive
Technologies and Genetics; The Politics of Equal
Rights for Women)
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Maureen McTeer
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female U.S. senators
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16
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Pamela Iorio
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SPA/BA ’81; mayor of
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Betsy Fischer
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Tampa, Florida
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SPA/BA ’92, SOC/MA ’96;
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executive producer, Meet
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the
Press
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Photo by Bachrach
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contributing editor,
Newsweek;
commentator on the
McLaughlin Group;
WPI journalist in
residence
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Eleanor Clift
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Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.)
Speaker of the House; spoke at WPI’s
premiere of the PBS documentary
If Women Ruled the World
Left, centrist, right. Wherever you are on the political continuum, you’re not likely to
forget election 2008.
“The implications for the future of women’s political leadership are immense,” notes
Lucy Gettman, a graduate certificate student in AU’s Women and Politics Institute.
“Millions of girls and young women will think about their options differently because
they saw viable woman candidates for president and vice president.”
This year, New York Democratic senator Hillary Clinton won more than 18
million votes in her presidential bid, while Alaska governor Sarah Palin picked up the
Republican nomination for vice president. They also threw phrases like “hockey mom”
and “first husband” into the national dialogue, sparking important conversations about
gender and politics—and whether one woman can be good for all women.
“We’re a very visually oriented society. It’s all about the television image,” offers
Barbara Palmer, interim Women and Politics Institute director. “The visual of a woman
running, whether it’s for vice president or president, affects us in ways that we’re not
even aware of.”
Case in point, Norah O’Donnell, MSNBC chief Washington correspondent, told
an AU crowd in September that “there is a real interest in the country to see different
people in politics, which [showed] itself in this support for Sarah Palin. Across the
board, whether it’s business, journalism, or politics, women are still not at the top
echelons of power. There is still an inequality, but it’s changing slowly.”
Gettman notes that “one of anything is never enough. One woman can’t carry the
entire burden or mantle for an entire group. Our challenge is to think not only about the
White House, but achieving parity in the Congress and all other law-making bodies.”
Karen O’Connor founded AU’s Women and Politics Institute with precisely that
goal. Since 2001, the institute has helped train hundreds of future woman leaders
who will literally change the face of politics. With Capitol Hill as their classroom,
students learn from and work with successful female journalists, military and business
leaders, scholars, and politicians on both sides of the aisle.
And while election 2008 was energizing, Palmer says it doesn’t change the institute’s
mission. “The integration of women into our political system has not been a nice, neat,
steady march of progress. There are fits and starts along the way; it’s never going to be
like, ‘Ta da! We did it, we’ve arrived.’
“There’s still a lot of work to be done.” n
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Nan Aron
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founder and president,
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Donna Brazile
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Alliance
for
Justice;
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Democratic political
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civil rights activist; WPI
strategist and author;
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lecturer
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WPI lecturer
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U.S. Army’s first female threestar general; WPI lecturer
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Lieutenant General
Claudia Kennedy (Ret.)
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Sarah Brewer
SPA/MA ’01, SPA/PhD ’03;
senior evaluation officer in
Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs,
Department of State
the number of
congressional seats
women gain every
election year
years since women got
the right to vote
—Jeannette Rankin
first woman elected to
Congress in 1916
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88
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“We’re half
the people;
we should be half
the Congress.”
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governor of Michigan; WPI speaker,
"Women and the Courage to
Lead in the Company of Men"
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Governor Jennifer Granholm
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former assistant commissioner
for women’s health at the Food
and Drug Administration; taught
course on political theories behind
reproductive rights
Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-Calif.)
Kogod/MBA ’84
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author of the Equal Rights
Amendment; earned three
degrees from AU: bachelor of
laws from WCL in 1922, master
of laws in 1927, and a PhD in
law in 1928
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will be 50 percent female
(at the current rate)
Alice Paul
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the year by which the
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woman to run for president
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2156 House of Representatives
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is never enough
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female (at the current rate)
founder, WPI; Jonathan N. Helfat
Distinguished Professor of Political Science
1–2
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Susan Wood
the year by which the
assistant director, WPI;
political and communications
strategist and media trainer

1872 Woodhull became the first
2076 Senate will be 50 percent
Julia Piscitelli
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interim director, WPI; coauthor of
Breaking the Political Glass Ceiling:
Women and Congressional Elections
president, Women Under Forty
Political Action Committee;
vice president, Stones' Phones,
campaign consulting firm;
graduate, WPI certificate program
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the year Victoria Clafin
Barbara Palmer
Jessica Grounds
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Karen O’Connor
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BY ADRIENNE FRANK
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Womenone
inofPolitics
anything is
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associate director of Peace Corps; lectured
about women’s leadership and community
service at WPI event
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Helen Thomas
8.8 than men voted in 2004
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met with students in Karen O’Connor’s
honors course, Documenting the ERA
senior advisor at the United Nations
Foundation; lectured on the Millennium
Development goals at WPI event
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Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Rosie Mauk
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19
34 SCHOOL OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS
20
BORN IN ERA OF CHALLENGES0
9
“American [University] is
yet young. But you have
a great future—a great
opportunity for initiative,
for constructive thinking,
for practical idealism, and
for national service.”
— President Franklin D. Roosevelt
BY SALLY ACHARYA
The School of Public Affairs was born in response to a national crisis.
Seventy-five years later, the school that began with classes held in old
row houses near the White House has grown into one of the top schools
of public affairs in the nation. Its story is, in many ways, the story of
Washington, D.C.
Practical idealism
T
he capital city in 1934 was on a
roller-coaster ride of anxiety and
optimism. A quarter of Americans
were out of work, and some were so
desperate they were selling apples near the
Capitol. But at the White House a new
president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, had
promised “a New Deal” for Americans.
No one knew if the plan would work.
It was changing the scope of American
government and would need to be implemented by leaders who did their jobs well.
As Roosevelt put his signature on the
New Deal legislation, a program was being born at 19th and F that would train
many of the people who were part of this
untested, pioneering plan.
1934
 american
It had been launched by a small but
forward-thinking university whose main
campus was in the pastoral setting of
Tenleytown, past the end of the trolley
line. But AU’s graduate students came to
class downtown, and the program was in
large part the brainchild of one of them—
with the blessing, as it happened, of the
president of the United States.
Arthur Flemming, MA ’28, had
graduated just in time to put his degree in
political science to use as a reporter, covering a Washington filled with breadlines,
protest marches, and Hoover policies that
weren’t working.
When Roosevelt was elected, Flemming
believed his alma mater could be part of
the new president’s vision. Not yet 30
1940
years old, the alumnus won AU the grant
that started it all: $4,000 from the Rockefeller Foundation, about the price at the
time of a midsized house.
At the beginning it wasn’t called SPA.
It wasn’t even a full school; it was simply
a program to train federal workers in the
techniques they’d need to make the New
Deal a success. But it was in the right
place, at the right time, and had the support of the right people.
One was Roosevelt himself. He was
impressed by the undertaking, as he made
clear when he spoke at the event that
launched the program.
“Among the universities,” he told the
gathered students and faculty, “American is
yet young. But you have a great future—a
great opportunity for initiative, for constructive thinking, for practical idealism,
and for national service.” Roosevelt promised that this new initiative would have the
“hearty cooperation” of all branches of his
administration.
It had more than cooperation. It had
a flood of applications from hundreds
of federal employees competing for the
80 slots in the first semester. Only a few
1945
months earlier, Roosevelt had signed the
orders founding the first crop of New Deal
agencies, and SPA’s first students were getting those fledgling agencies underway.
“The New Deal brought modern
federal government to Washington,
D.C.,” says SPA professor Jim Thurber.
“Agencies really were born and expanded
as a result of the market failure, and
that brought a lot of people here, which
brought a great demand for education.
Many had come into the government
with English majors and just started
working. So they went back to school,
many times at night.”
Two hundred students packed the
converted parlors in the row houses for
the second semester, eager to learn the latest ideas and take them back to their New
Deal jobs. By 1937, more than 1,000
federal employees were studying at SPA,
and undergraduates were clambering for
the classes as well. The school answered
by launching an undergraduate program.
It would grow with the city. “Once
the size of Washington expanded, it never
contracted,” Thurber says, and that was
true of AU as well.
1950
Small and specialized before World
War II, the program was inundated after
the war’s end by combat veterans in their
20s who knew what they wanted: to
continue serving their country in peacetime. “AU was a pretty small place before
World War II. It really expands greatly
with the returning servicemen,” says SPA
dean William LeoGrande. And at AU, “a
lot of them did go into public affairs.”
Still in a small town
T
he Washington for which these
students were preparing was a
different place than the Washington of today. John F. Kennedy quipped
that it was “a city of northern charm and
southern efficiency.”
When Howard McCurdy arrived as
a young professor in the 1960s, “It was
still a small town. There was a horse farm
inside the Beltway on River Road. Politics
was very personal and informal, and that
was reflected in the school.”
Faculty still shuttled back and forth
on the bus from the graduate classes near
the White House to undergraduate classes
scattered around campus. The Metro
didn’t exist yet; neither did the Ward
Circle Building, now SPA’s home.
SPA’s students were passionate about
politics, but more vague in their goals.
The era of the “policy wonk,” McCurdy
notes, had not yet arrived. Washington was
a city of politicians and federal employees, but not yet a city of policy experts,
consultants, and think tanks.
“Politics was an old boy’s network,
and there weren’t many girls in it. It
was very informal. If you wanted to get
something done in this city, you picked
up a phone and called up [Sen.] Warren
Magnuson [D-Wash.]. He used to sit
there at his desk and say, ‘I want a dam,’
and he’d get one. It wasn’t really studied.
People kind of got what they needed.
“The style was more informal and
jovial. That was true on Capitol Hill and
true on campus,” he says. “A lot of the
students who came here wanted to go
into it, or at least brush alongside it on
the way to law school.”
Some brushed alongside the nation’s
leaders right at SPA, where they might be
sitting in the next chairs. Many graduate
1960
winter 2008 
students, going to class downtown as they
did until the late 1960s, were much like
those in the New Deal era: policy makers
learning on the job.
McCurdy tells of the fellow professor
who once asked his class, “How many of
you have experience in budgets?”
Many hands went up, so the professor asked one of the students at random
where he’d dealt with budgets.
“Well,” said the student, “I’m the assistant
secretary for budget and finance at HEW.”
He had risen almost to the top of
the Department of Health, Education
and Welfare, a cabinet-level government
agency, without studying budgeting
formally. “The situation was almost the
reverse of today,” McCurdy says. “You
got a job, learned how to get things done,
and then you got educated.”
“The New Deal brought modern
federal government to Washington,
D.C. Agencies really were born
and expanded as a result of the
market failure, and that
brought a lot of people here . . .”
— SPA professor Jim Thurber
Time of turmoil
B
ut Washington was about to
change, and so would SPA. If
the school was born from the
crisis of the 1930s, it would come of
age in the tumult of the 1960s.
1965
 american
The era began in a wave of idealism.
“Kids were thinking about the Peace
Corps, getting involved in the war on
poverty, the public health service,” McCurdy recalls. “They didn’t view it as being bureaucrats chained to a desk. There
was a real attraction to public service, to
working for the government as a place
where you could really get something
done.”
“Part of what went on in the ’60s,”
LeoGrande says, “particularly with
Johnson and the Great Society, was an
expansion of people’s sense of what government ought to do in terms of taking
responsibility for a variety of social and
economic problems and trying to solve
them. There was more faith than now in
the ability of government to solve those
problems.”
Then as now, students interned on
Capitol Hill, working with lawmakers
during a time that saw the birth of
Medicare and Medicaid, federal education funding, the National Endowment
for the Arts, environmental legislation,
and a long list of acts and programs
to address racial injustice and poverty.
Ultimately many SPA alumni would
find careers in agencies, nonprofits, and
institutions that had their roots in this
expanded sense of what government
should be trying to do.
But first, attention turned to something else: the Vietnam War. Protesting
in Washington was something that AU
students could do as often as they liked,
by going downtown or just stepping out-
1970
side and waiting for policy makers to pass
on their evening commutes. They took
full advantage of the opportunity. “They
used to go out and block the evening rush
hour. It was our way of ending the war,”
McCurdy recalls wryly.
One of SPA’s students at the time was
future AU president Neil Kerwin. But
for all their street rallies and signs, he
doesn’t recall the students of his generation as profoundly different from the AU
students of today.
“The students I interacted with then
were all very engaged about the war,
but that’s not to say it was necessarily a
more involved or activist student body
than today. It really wasn’t. The current
student body strikes me as every bit as
active, as engaged in world affairs, in
social justice—and to be frank, a bit
more cosmopolitan, more worldly, and
more sophisticated in how to accomplish
things,” he says. “But the issues were
more narrowly focused then, because of
the turmoil related to the war.”
And tumultuous it was. The turmoil
affected everyone, even those who weren’t
inclined to protest. Graduate students
now came to class on main campus, in
the new Ward Circle Building, which
meant they sometimes had to run a
gamut of protesting undergraduates to get
to campus. Tear gas even wafted into the
classrooms.
Once the sting of tear gas made it so
hard to hold class that the students called
it a night and headed for their cars. They
were promptly charged by riot police
1980
who, says McCurdy, “thought this was a
new wave to take over the circle.”
In fact, the students were police
officers enrolled in a professional training
program in the Department of Justice,
Law and Society. They had almost been
arrested by their own colleagues.
Professional class
T
he next four decades would find
less drama on campus, but many
changes in the scope of government and nature of Washington.
“The practice of politics has changed
dramatically,” Kerwin says. “It’s highly
professional. Congress still performs the
same constitutional roles, but it’s organized differently. The practice of advocacy
for interests has grown immensely more
sophisticated. And we’ve seen an explosion in the role of government agencies
that write far more important laws today
than Congress does.”
SPA’s Center for Congressional and
Presidential Studies has taken on precisely
that issue with its scholarship and teaching, its Campaign Management Institute
and its Public Affairs and Advocacy
Institute. When Thurber began the center
in 1983, it was unique in the United
States. Many of SPA’s students with an
interest in politics had always volunteered
on campaigns, but as politics professionalized, SPA was on the cutting edge with
its own systematic approach to teaching
the business of politics, and with the high
visibility of its panels and forums where
leaders engage in dialogue with each
other and the AU community.
“My joke is that every student body
president is watching C-Span over Christmas and they see our Campaign Management Institute and they want to come
here,” Thurber says. “I’m not kidding.
They do say that.”
Another center that places SPA
squarely in the midst of political power is
the Women and Politics Institute. Most
of Washington’s most prominent women
have links with the institute, from Sen.
Hillary Clinton to Rep. Nancy Pelosi
to dozens of others. Targeted academic
programs on women, policy, and political
leadership are helping to foster the next
generation of women leaders.
The intensity of SPA’s engagement
is possible because of its Washington
location, but that in itself wouldn’t be
enough, LeoGrande notes. It’s really the
culture of the school itself. “We attract
the same kind of faculty member as
student—people who are engaged in
public affairs writ large.”
75 years of impact
S
eventy-five years after SPA was
founded to help the government
meet the challenges of the Depression, “the accumulated weight and impact
of the scholarship it has produced is
extraordinarily impressive,” Kerwin says.
But perhaps its greatest impact has
come from the tens of thousands of students
who have passed through its doors, many
1990
of whom have gone on to become leaders
in Washington, across the nation, and
around the world.
Year after year, SPA ranks among the
country’s top schools of public affairs. It’s
come a long way since classes were held
in converted parlors downtown.
Yet there are parallels. “We now find
ourselves at another point in history
where we have to turn to government to
solve a profoundly dangerous set of problems,” Kerwin says. As it looks toward
its next quarter century, SPA is poised to
participate in a time of new challenges. “I
see a robust role for government over the
next 25 years,” Kerwin says, “and there
is going to be a robust role for preparing
people for public service.”
Once again, the nation is looking for
people of high caliber to make the right
decisions in difficult times. For the people
of SPA, that’s a challenge they’re prepared
to take. n
Photo credits:
Pages 16-17, clockwise from top left: Bonus
Veterans (B.E.F.) at the Capitol and Streetcar,
Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs
Division, Theodor Horydczak Collection;
Lyndon Johnson Signs Civil Rights Act, White
House Press Office, Wikimedia
Commons; Jeff Watts; AU Archives
Above: Protestors, AU Archives; Equal Rights
March and Peace Protestor, AU Talon, 1979
and 1987; AU Poll Workers, courtesy of Alison
Prevost, CDEM; Jeff Watts
2009
winter 2008 
Report to Congress:
Tackling
Marine Debris
by Sally Acharya
T
his is a ghost story that starts with a fishing
net. The story will have ghostbusters, too,
but they enter later.
First comes the net. It’s not a small net, but a gill
net thousands of feet long, anchored to the sea floor
awaiting a commercial fishing boat to scoop it up with
its catch. Somehow, though, it gets loose from its
moorings. It begins to drift in the ocean, fishing without stopping, a huge and nearly invisible curtain
snaring much of what swims into its path. It entangles
sea turtles, traps seals, snags fish who act as bait to lure
other fish, who are trapped in their turn.
belly. Bottle caps and plastic bags can Right now, Kim notes, if seamen on
be mistaken by marine life for jellya freighter spot a ghost net in the ocean
fish or other edibles, with lethal results.
and haul it onboard like good global
“Plastic can lacerate intestines. Animals
citizens, they could be fined for transcan choke, or their intestines can be blocked
porting equipment for which they’re not
up so they can’t eat any more,” Kim says.
licensed.
He’s led AU students to do what they can,
If a ship carries garbage to port
in practical ways, to stop trash on the shorerather than spilling it into the waves, it’s
Perhaps it hooks on a coral reef where it line from washing into the seas. Students
often stuck with no way to dispose
rakes against the fragile coral, abrading cleaning the water’s edge this fall at a seemof it, because ports often have no
and killing parts of the reef, clipping off ingly pristine Georgetown park were startled
garbage facilities.
chunks, reducing it to rubble. Perhaps it at what they found.
If commercial fishermen don’t
goes on forever.
Freshmen combing the riverbank emerged
flinch at dumping old gear in the
Fortunately, that’s not the end of the with bags stuffed with bait containers, beer botsea, they suffer no retribution,
story. Science has its ghostbusters, and
tles, a tennis ball, a shoe, a lost Barbie, and yard
because the gear isn’t required to be
they’re in pursuit of these derelict nets
after yard of fishing line. “You’d think fisherman
labeled and can’t be traced to repeat
known as ghost nets, along with the
would care more,” lamented Caitlin Langfitt,
offenders.
wildlife-killing garbage dumped at sea
an environmental studies freshman who fishes
Kim and his colleagues recomby freighters and fishing fleets.
with her father in Ohio.
mended a series of changes to
The ghostbusters are people like The cleanup removed a risk to wildpolicies and regulations that could
marine biologist and AU environmental life, and the data will be useful to
bring the goal of zero discharge
science professor Kiho Kim, who goes science. But the debris problem, particcloser to reality. And that could make
after marine debris as a member of the ularly in the ocean, is too big to elimia real impact in saving the seas from
Ocean Studies Board of the National nate with weekend actions. That’s
the specter of wildlife-killing debris.
Research Council. Their weapons are why Kim and his colleagues have
Back at the riverside park where
data, meetings, long hours analyzing spent almost two years examining the
the AU students picked up trash,
research, and ultimately, a national situation and, in the end, proposing
Washington angler Oscar Vasquez
report and testimony to Congress on specific solutions.
had a thought that, in its way, enthe changes needed in marine policy
The National Research Council is, in
capsulated the ethic that Kim and
and regulations.
essence, the research arm of the federal
the Ocean Studies Board are trying to
The sight of marine debris is famil- government. Its Ocean Studies Board inmake into an oceanwide policy.
iar to Kim, who spots it whenever he cludes experts in a variety of areas, such as
Things won’t change until there
dives around the coral reefs that are the lawyers who looked at regulations, along
are more people like the AU students,
focus of his research. “Every time I go with some leading marine biologists—
Vasquez said. “People should just be
diving, I come back up with a pocket full including Kim.
honest and think about their responsiof weights and lines,” he says. “After a Their report called for the United States bility.”
week of working, you could set up your and the international maritime commu- It’s a solution that turns everyone into
own tackle shop.”
nity to adopt a goal of zero discharge of ghostbusters. And it works whether the
Some of it washes into the sea from waste, in part by doing something that threat is as small as a plastic bottle cap that
land. A plastic bottle chucked into a would seem obvious, but turns out to be could choke a turtle or as vast as a thousandclump of water weeds by a Georgetown a challenge: encouraging rather than penal- foot ghost net haunting the seas. n
fisherman can end up in a sea turtle’s izing responsible behavior.
P
The debris problem, particularly in the ocean, is too big to eliminate with weekend actions, which is why Kim
and his colleagues spent almost two
 american
years examining the situation and proposing specific solutions.
winter 2008 
Class
n tables
SO YOU CAN CATCH UP WITH PEOPLE YOU KNEW AT AU
Ronald Boots Nissenbaum,
Kogod/BS ’68
here are Eagles basketball fans—and then there’s Boots
Nissenbaum.
The men’s team’s run to its first-ever NCAA Tournament berth last season thrilled the entire AU community, but it
just may have been a wee bit more special for Boots, who’s been
a diehard fan since the moment he first stepped on campus 44
years ago.
“I’m getting a little bit choked up talking about it now,”
he says, recalling AU’s hard-fought, first-round loss last March
to the University of Tennessee. “We were all sitting around
the morning before the game saying if we can keep it under
30 so we’re not embarrassed, we’ll be happy. Then the game
started and our kids had ice water in their veins. They weren’t
intimidated; the coaching staff had them well prepared. There
probably wasn’t one kid on AU who Tennessee would have
recruited. It was very proud for all of us there. It was just a
marvelous experience.”
In 1964 when Boots—his grandfather’s nickname passed on
to him—decided at the last minute to scrap his plans to attend
NYU and instead followed a buddy south to AU, he had no way
of knowing he was in for a lifetime of basketball obsession.
“I went to all the home games—there was no question,” he
says. “My roommate and I used to go to some away games. We’d
go to Philly, we even flew to Pittsburgh to see AU get decimated
T
 american
by Duquesne. I think we flew round-trip from Washington to
Pittsburgh for $20.”
After graduating, Boots returned to Philadelphia, where he
lives today and runs Humphrys Textile Products, one of the oldest canvas and industrial fabric product companies in the United
States. Coaching T-ball games and other pesky adult responsibilities limited his basketball game attendance while his three
children were growing up, but in the mid-1990s he jumped right
back into the deep end, supporting the program financially and
driving down to Washington for every home game and hitting
quite a few on the road as well.
“I said, if I’m going to comment on the program and contribute to the program, then I have to know what I’m talking
about, so nobody can tell me, ‘Boots, you don’t know what the
hell you’re talking about,’” he says. “I can go, ‘I saw 18 games this
year, how many did you see?’”
Through the years Boots has recruited a loyal crew of friends
to attend the games with him. Game days at Bender Arena, he,
his buddy Marc Goldstein, CAS/BA ’70, and a host of others
can be seen sitting courtside, often critiquing the referees’ performance.
“There are maybe a dozen of us who go regularly, and we
meet before the games,” he says. “If someone doesn’t show up,
we want to know why. It’s the way I stay connected to my friends
and the school. We play a good brand of basketball. Last year
wasn’t the best AU team, but it was a team that had heart and
didn’t fold when they were under pressure. To finally get over the
hump after 44 years, I didn’t know how I was going to react. I
always pictured that I would run around the court, ripping off
my shirt and dancing, but I just sat there with my wife, crying. I
couldn’t believe it.”
—mike unger
Angie Reese-Hawkins, SOC/BA ’79
he YMCA is in a bit of everything Angie
Reese-Hawkins does. As president and CEO of
the YMCA of Metropolitan Washington, she is busy
developing new and needed programs, expanding and enriching
existing services, and working to secure the lasting impact of the
YMCA, where she has worked for 28 years. Her personal connection to the Y runs deep. Reese-Hawkins remembers coming into
her own at her local YMCA. “I was an extremely shy child,” she
says. “At the YMCA I found a fun and nurturing environment,
and I truly blossomed there.”
In 1986, after a stint in retail sales management, she made
a career move by joining the Washington Y staff and has never
looked back. “Once I became a part of the YMCA movement, I
knew I had found a career with meaning and purpose,” she says.
T
Nissenbaum won the 2008 Alumni Achievement Award, given to alumni
who inspire the world around them through service to the community or a
philanthropic mission.
She was right.
Every day, the building is abuzz with the
sounds of a neighborhood at work: students
and tutors exchanging
questions and answers;
athletic courts alive with
the squeak of sneakers;
children at play laughing. These, says ReeseHawkins, are the best
parts of the job. “The
rewards of this line of
work are far too numerous to count. Whether
it is a single mother who
raised healthy and happy
kids with the help of the Angie Reese-Hawkins
Y, or a senior citizen who
regained strength after a
heart attack, the success stories have always kept me going.”
Nearly 30 years after first heading through those doors, ReeseHawkins is as committed as ever. This fall she was awarded AU’s
2008 Cyrus Ansary Medal for her significant contributions to
the D.C. community. It’s personal recognition she is unaccustomed to receiving. “The YMCA’s staff members, volunteers, and
participants work together to make so many wonderful things
happen in the community,” she says. “ Everything we accomplish
is truly a collective effort.”
Managing the programming and expansion of the large,
beloved institution—home to programs that link the community
with services that range from wellness initiatives to literacy—
presents unique challenges. But a belief in the community, and
the role the YMCA plays in sustaining and developing the links
people make with their neighbors and friends, has made a strong
impression on its director. Reese-Hawkins says, “being president
and CEO of the YMCA has been a positive and life-changing
experience for me, and my connection to the Y is infinite and
strong.” She also notes her appreciation for her alma mater, “AU
helped me develop a pattern of achievement that prepared me
to contribute in very specific ways to this organization and to
society.”
—josephine sanchez
“Once I became a part of the YMCA movement,
I knew I had found a career with meaning
and purpose.”
winter 2008 
Non-Profit Org.
U.S. Postage PAID
Permit No. 451
Dulles, V.A.
Washington, DC 20016-8002
Address Service Requested
American Magazine
winter/december 2008
Andrew Dumm, SIS, wins 33rd annual Marine Corps Marathon in Washington, D.C. Story, p. 9