hen I arrived at Vassar in 2017, my first meetings with faculty were inspiring. It seemed every scholar had a new and creative idea for engaging more broadly in pressing global, regional, and local challenges—demonstrating how liberal arts thinking could meet the moment. Several faculty members also pitched ideas for “centers” like a Center on Decolonization, a Center on Climate Sustainability, a Center on Philosophy and Law, and the list went on. Each of the ideas had merit. Still, I had worked in a university with many centers, and knew firsthand the balkanization that can emerge from well-intentioned centers—each ultimately needing an administrator, a set of policies and practices, space, and of course a budget. My experience also suggested that centers too often became silos, reinscribing the exact disciplinary divides they had been created to overcome.

At Vassar, we looked for a different organizational structure that could house our collective aspiration to be outwardly facing, to tackle real-life issues, and to engage deeply with the larger community in all its permutations. The Vassar Institute for the Liberal Arts, coming into being this October, will embody this vision. It is a convening place, a set of programs and events, and a gathering spot for new ideas, serendipitous conversations, and unexpected connections. The signature programs scheduled for this year cut across the sciences, social sciences, arts, and humanities in true liberal arts fashion. There is something for everyone with titles as follows: Eco-Visions: Finding Your Place in Environmentalism; The Entrepreneurial Mind and the Liberal Arts; Transgressing Borders: Reimagining Education and the Role of Learning and Community; Belonging and Beyond: Using Future Histories to Reimagine Teaching and Learning; Promoting Partnerships to Advance Educational Justice in Poughkeepsie; and Soundscapes and the Anthropocene. Read more about these programs on page 18.

Thanks to the generous support of donors, the Institute has been about seven years in the making. In that time, Vassar and the world experienced the global challenge of COVID, which delayed construction as well as taught us that the future of Vassar, its students, and its alums are intertwined with the world beyond our campus. Purposefully located on the property just east of Alumnae House, the Institute will bridge the campus and the wider community. The Heartwood hotel, The Salt Line restaurant, the Vassar Institute, as well as The Dede Thompson Bartlett Center for Admission and Career Education will form a new, more open connection to the Arlington and Poughkeepsie community. These buildings, their programming, and their posture of gracious hospitality exemplify the theme of “Vassar in the World” at a time when Vassar’s voice underscoring freedom of thought, openness, and sustained dialogue has never been more important.

In addition to hosting astounding events that will animate the campus and beyond, the Institute will allow us to shape and be shaped by the larger world—to show what it means to foster dialogue and creativity and to have our ways of thinking challenged by visitors, guests, and participants of all kinds. The core of higher education is to live always in pursuit of great understanding, and the Institute will provide a vehicle by which we may show the courage, humility, and motivation to remain curious, open, and ready to learn. These commitments are what we have in common, what we can celebrate together, and how we can sustain the value of higher education even in these deeply contested times in which our common ground can seem shaky. I hope you will participate in some of these programs and enjoy a taste of what is timeless at Vassar—the love of learning.

World-class. Transformational. Game-changing. Those were just a few of the adjectives used to describe The Dede Thompson Bartlett Center for Admission and Career Education at a groundbreaking ceremony on June 12 adjacent to the construction site at the north end of Vassar’s campus. The $27.5 million state-of-the-art building, designed by award-winning architect Maryann Thompson P’17, is scheduled to open in late fall 2025.

Speaking to a crowd of more than 150 members of the Vassar community and local government and business officials, alum Dede Thompson Bartlett ’65, who launched the project with a $10 million donation, called the new Admission and Career Education Center “a dream come true.”

Wielding the same shovel College founder Matthew Vassar used for the groundbreaking of Main Building in 1861, President Elizabeth H. Bradley joined Bartlett, Bartlett’s spouse Jim, Trustee Chair Anthony Friscia ’78, and Thompson in turning over a mound of soil at the site.

Bradley lauded Bartlett, who was an executive at two Fortune 25 companies, as a “pioneer [who] has broken glass ceilings and excelled in corporate systems formerly only available to men.” A longtime supporter of career education programs at Vassar and New York University, where she received her master’s degree, Bartlett has funded hundreds of internships for students in mathematics, computer science, economics, and engineering.

Bartlett said she wanted to help “create a world-class facility built on the astounding work” the College had been doing in career education. “This center will house a dynamic career education program that will give our students the skills to meet the existential challenges of the coming decades,” Bartlett said.

The building will also provide expanded facilities for the Office of Admission, Bartlett added, serving as a welcoming space for visitors to campus. “I cannot wait to see the faces of prospective students and their parents as they walk through this building and see the possibilities Vassar offers,” she said.

Thompson, the architect, said one of her main goals in designing the building was to ensure that it served as a gateway linking the campus to the community. “The courtyards and open space open their arms to the community,” she said, “and this openness also reflects the Vassar education. Dede told me, ‘I want a building that’s full of light,’ and that’s what it is.”

At a luncheon at the Alumnae House following the groundbreaking ceremony, College administrators expressed their gratitude to the Bartletts. “With this new home we have the opportunity to showcase how we prepare our students and graduates with not only a world-class education but also the skills to be successful and essential in our rapidly changing world,” said Stacy Bingham, Associate Dean of the College for Career Education.

Sonya Smith, Dean of Admission and Student Financial Services, said she and her staff had been planning for their new facilities almost since she arrived at Vassar in 2019. “This evolved into a fantastic one-two punch of a facility for Admission and Career Education together,” Smith said. “It kicks off another great chapter in Vassar history and gives a new front door—a gorgeous, state-of-the-art one—that we open to our guests from around the world.”

President Bradley closed the celebration by asking everyone to raise their champagne glasses and toast the Bartlett Center. “Our future will be full of change,” she said, “but we are fully equipped for it, thanks to the vision of Dede Bartlett. Here’s to the future!”—Larry Hertz

board game that reimagines the classic strategy game Mancala. An app that helps people with common interests find each other and meet up. A blueprint for college students wishing to launch their own in-dorm nail salons. A high-protein ice cream bar for athletes. An app that enables friends to trade restaurant reviews. Another app that helps users get up in the morning. And finally, a freshwater fishing rod that addresses the design flaws found in others on the market.

Those were the products presented to judges at Vassar’s first-ever Entrepreneur Pitch Competition, held on campus Spring Semester in the College Center and hosted by the Vassar Innovation and Entrepreneurship (VIE) Program. The top prize of $2,500 was awarded to Lissus Murataj ’27 for his “RinRod” fishing pole. Cher Mei ’26’s “Cher Studio” beauty salon won the $1,000 second-place prize, and the “Lunch Box” restaurant review app designed by Tanish Pradhan Wong Ah Sui ’26 received the $500 third prize.

The competition had a Shark Tank format: Each participant was given 10 minutes to make a pitch, then fielded questions and comments from the four judges. In addition, those who attended the event were given stacks of fake cash which they “invested” in projects they liked after chatting with the participants. Cher Mei’s project attracted the most “cash,” making her concept the audience choice for the “Most Invested” award.

Murataj drew high praise from judges for “RinRod.” He designed a mechanism for feeding the line from the reel through the hollow fiberglass rod that made it much less likely to become tangled. He prototyped the rod in Vassar’s Innovation Lab and secured a patent earlier this year. “Everything about this product addresses the problems I had fishing as a kid,” he told the judges.

Ellen Rudnick ’72, Senior Advisor on Entrepreneurship at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, provided the cash prizes for the event and watched it on Zoom. She was impressed with Murataj’s pitch. “You have to be able to tell your story in order to raise money, and he did a great job,” Rudnick said.—Larry Hertz

For decades following the College’s founding, the large room beneath what is now the Jeh Vincent Johnson ALANA Center served as a coal bin. Thirty years ago, that space was transformed by then-architecture instructor Jeh Johnson into a “black box” theater for countless students who have been autonomously performing there ever since.

The Susan Stein Shiva Theater has also been a space for professional actors, playwrights, and other theater professionals to spend the time that enabled them to create such works as John Patrick Shanley’s Pulitzer- and Tony Award-winning play Doubt and Lin Manuel-Miranda’s Hamilton as part of Vassar and New York Stage and Film’s Powerhouse Theater program.

On May 4, members of the Vassar community and students who put on some of those plays this year gathered inside the theater to celebrate the conversion of this former coal bin into a transformational creative space. “For 30 years, this has been a place of passion and laughter and tears,” said Sandro Lorenzo ’24, who co-directed Jason Robert Brown’s The Last Five Years with Grace Adams Ward ’24 in the theater earlier this year. “Here’s to 30 more.”

Lorenzo and Ward were jovial hosts of the event, which featured musical performances from student actors in three of the plays that were produced in the Shiva this year. President Elizabeth Bradley paid tribute to Susan Stein Shiva ’57, the alum who had endowed the theater in 1997 to ensure its permanent survival. Bradley said attending the student-produced shows there has been one of her favorite activities since she came to Vassar in 2017. “We are here to celebrate 30 years of incredible performances like the ones we just saw,” Bradley said. “And it is the Shiva family that has been responsible for re-making this space, including some renovations in 2017.”

Susan Stein Shiva’s daughter, Vassar Trustee and documentary filmmaker Alexandra Shiva ’95, told those gathered at the celebration that the metaphor comparing the fuel that had once powered Vassar and the theater that has fueled the passions of so many over the past 30 years was an apt one. “I know my mother would be incredibly proud to know how valuable this space is for all of you, a place run completely by students,” she said.

Jennifer McDermott ’95, who established and managed the space through its first year as the student-run Coal Bin Theater, offered special thanks to former Director of Campus Activities Ray Parker for supporting students in producing their plays. Vassar’s current Associate Director of Campus Activities, Edward Cheetham, said Parker deserved credit for letting students make all of the key decisions about the performances. “To my knowledge, it’s one of the few totally student-run theaters on any college campus in the country,” Cheetham said.

Abby Bettencourt ’24, this year’s Shiva Theater manager, closed the event by expressing thanks. “I’m so grateful to have this space,” she concluded. “Thanks for celebrating with us, and here’s to 30 more years.” —Larry Hertz

This article was amended from the original to clarify Jennifer McDermott’s role in the development of the theater.

Anyone who despairs of ever seeing an America that can overcome its crippling polarization, political and otherwise, should spend some time with Kimberly Williams Brown. Williams Brown, an Associate Professor of Education and the College’s new Director of Engaged Pluralism (EP), believes it is indeed possible to create a community where people are not so divided that they cease to see, hear, and listen to each other. In fact, says Williams Brown, a liberal arts campus like Vassar is the ideal place in which to develop the skills to do exactly that.

“Engaged Pluralism is the way that people who have multiple perspectives, viewpoints, ways of seeing the world come to exist together in a place—and beyond just merely existing, begin to figure out how we live together,” said Williams Brown, who was appointed to a three-year term as EP Director by President Elizabeth Bradley in June.

“This is a truly critical moment for this important role, and we are so fortunate to have Professor Williams Brown to direct Engaged Pluralism,” Bradley said. “She has a clear vision and deep expertise. I look forward to supporting, collaborating, and learning from Professor Williams Brown and the Engaged Pluralism efforts.”

Williams Brown succeeds Professor of Religion Jonathon Kahn, whose term recently ended. EP began as a five-year, grant-funded College initiative in 2017; Bradley made it a permanent part of the College last year with a dedicated staff.

“I think EP is necessary for Vassar because, as a liberal arts institution, we welcome a diversity of thought, a diversity of people,” said Williams Brown. “Engaged Pluralism begins to address the intentional coming together of folks across their differences to create spaces where everybody can feel like, ‘I belong here. I can be here. What I think matters.’”

This is not something that just happens automatically, explained Williams Brown, given the power dynamics inherent in any interaction as well as the various forms of inequity that are baked into our society. It takes time, trust, and processes to make it happen. But when people feel comfortable sharing their perspectives and experiences, said Williams Brown, problem-solving on any number of issues can take on a whole new dimension: “Those differences actually help you get to the core of the issue in a different way than you might by thinking about it with like-minded people.”

The new EP Director’s faith in the ability of people who have even wildly different points of view to work together for the common good is not simple idealism but rather reflects her deep experience in effecting this type of interaction. Williams Brown, who earned a PhD in cultural foundations of education from Syracuse University, has co-authored two books and several articles about a methodological approach to thinking about difference called Intergroup Dialogue that was developed in the late 1980s and early ’90s. “A part of the communication strategy that is embedded in the Intergroup Dialogue model is that you really listen to people, you really pay attention to what it is that they’re saying.”

Williams Brown plans to find ways of integrating this methodology and other techniques into the EP program, which she believes has already had a positive impact through its Working Groups and Igniter Pitches. “My vision for EP,” she elaborated, “is to socialize the tools of restorative practices, Intergroup Dialogue, conflict mediation, inclusive pedagogies, and storytelling to realize the goal of a campus that feels and looks inclusive to students, staff, administrators, and faculty.” She acknowledges that a redoubled effort on the EP front comes not a moment too soon, as the new academic year will open in the midst of a highly divisive election season with the war in Gaza yet to be resolved. But Williams Brown believes she is the right person for this complex job. “It feels serendipitous that I was asked at this very moment when I think folks need direction, they need new tools, they need new ways of engaging with each other,” she said. —Kimberly Schaye

I’m sure I’m not the only friend of Amitava Kumar’s to ask themselves, when confronted with one of life’s struggles, “What would Ami do?” The response might run something like: risk something on the page; sign the petition; go for that second martini; embrace the unknown; slow down; observe the world around you. When I met up with Kumar to chat about his novel My Beloved Life, the answer to WWAD? was easy. Order the spiciest thing on the menu.

He’d recommended a Szechuan spot near the New York Public Library, where Kumar is a fellow at its Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center. As we talked shop and shared gossip, he insisted I try some of his entrée. And did I get enough of the dumplings? More green tea?

This is as it should be. Readers of any of his fourteen books have encountered his generosity, attentiveness, and comic spirit. My Beloved Life, published this spring by Knopf, spans nearly a century and follows Jadunath Kunwar and his daughter Jugnu. Its wide scope is subsumed into numinous moments of “ordinary” life across Patna, Delhi, Berkeley, and Atlanta.

One of its epigraphs comes from John Berger: “Never again will a single story to be told as though it were the only one.” I asked Kumar why he chose it. “There is the main character or the main action occupying the stage,” he noted. “But there is always another story waiting in the wings, and my job as a writer is to usher the other story, or stories, onto the stage. History with a capital ‘H’ swallows all those small players who participate in it.” He shared a few lines from Brecht’s poem “A Worker Reads History”: “Young Alexander conquered India. / He alone? / Caesar beat the Gauls. / Was there not even a cook in his army?”

Kumar has taught at Vassar for nearly 20 years, and, as the Helen D. Lockwood Chair of English, his courses range from creative writing to journalism to literature. Fittingly, My Beloved Life contains a bookshelf’s worth of allusions. There’s Babel, Chekhov, Maugham, and Baldwin. (The New Yorker’s James Wood, in his praise for the novel, invokes Naipaul, too.) Kumar says he drew inspiration from Denis Johnson’s Train Dreams and Annie Ernaux’s A Man’s Place; the latter informed Jugnu’s first-person narration: “I liked the intimacy of her voice and also its directness.”

My Beloved Life delivers storytelling pleasures in abundance, in a tone urgent and timeless, poetic and precise. It deepens his long-standing inquiry into literature’s purpose and function, and, of course, what constitutes a meaningful existence. Jadu shares a birthplace with George Orwell, in the Indian state of Bihar. I like to think of Kumar as Orwell’s literary descendant. Both writers are prolific and protean, engaging in poetry, memoir, fiction, and journalism; both share a commitment to social justice and political activism. (I thought often of that syllabus staple “Politics and the English Language” while reading Kumar’s crisp, clear prose.)

Teaching is central to his practice. “[I] invite students to step into a zone of freedom and take risks. Ask them to be creative, and they very often come back with spectacularly inventive work. I find myself so incredibly moved and inspired.” He recommends habit and ritual: “I remember with great excitement the first time I came up with my mantra for students: ‘Write every day and walk every day.’ Each person in my Senior Comp class had to commit to writing 150 words each day and engage in ten minutes of mindful walking. I wanted to hold myself to the same challenge. It worked. At the end of the year, I had a book manuscript and so did some of the students.”

As we finished the Chinese food—sinuses cleared from the spices, eyes watering from laughter—I asked Kumar how he was commemorating the end of his NYPL fellowship. No time, he replied. He was off to India to cover their national elections. —Ryan Chapman

Vassar Trustee Sharon Davidson Chang ’84, P’19 has been named Chair of the Board, succeeding Anthony Friscia ’78, P’15, who is stepping down after 15 years of service, the last six as Chair. And while she acknowledges she will have “huge shoes to fill” replacing Friscia as leader of the board, Chang says she’s looking forward to helping to forge the future of the College she has loved for more than 40 years.

“I didn’t aspire to this role,” she said. But after Friscia and College President Elizabeth H. Bradley approached her last fall and asked her to consider becoming board chair, Chang decided to accept the challenge. “I was humbled and honored to be asked and it took me some time to decide—I have a demanding day job,” she said. (She is a Partner and Non-Scripted Talent Agent at William Morris Endeavor.) “But I’m also extremely passionate about Vassar and its future.”

Chang said she ultimately decided to accept the position because of what she termed as Vassar’s stellar leadership. “A significant part of my decision came down to my experience with President Bradley,” she said. “I began as a trustee the same year she became president, and I’ve seen how things have evolved since then. She’s a brilliant strategist and masterful communicator who understands how to execute a plan and get things done. She has a strong senior team, and I have a strong, collaborative board—what a gift!”

Friscia said he and Chang had spent a lot of time together since Chang was named Vice Chair of the board last fall. “Sharon and I have had numerous one-on-ones when I shared information with her and she asked lots of questions, so she has a good sense of the nuances of the job and how our committees work,” he said. “But I’ve tried not to give her too much advice. William Plapinger ’74 [Friscia’s predecessor as Chair] was a great mentor but didn’t tell me what to do. I’ve tried to do the same thing. I’m sure Sharon will do things a little differently, and that’s a good thing. She fully knows the way things work. I want to leave it to her and give her room to take the board in a new direction.”

Two other trustees who left the board this year said they revered Friscia’s leadership skills but were confident the board and the College were in good hands with Chang as the new Chair. “Tony was a great leader; he had great analytical and people skills,” said Robert Tanenbaum P’12, who served on the board for 12 years. “He was a thoughtful guy who never shot from the hip. We were lucky in these challenging times to have someone who devoted himself to the job so skillfully.”

Mark Ordan ’79, who stepped down after serving on the board for 20 years, agreed. “I credit Tony and Betsy for guiding us through some challenging times,” he said. “Tony had a softspoken wisdom, a sense of humor, and common sense that truly benefited the College.”

Ordan said he did have one misgiving as he left his seat on the board. “We are lucky to have someone like Sharon to step into this new role,” he said. “If I have any regrets about leaving, it’s that I would love to serve on a board that Sharon is chairing.”

Chang said she is confident that she and the board are equipped for the challenges the College will face in the months and years ahead. “There are exciting things happening on campus—the construction of The Dede Thompson Bartlett Center for Admission and Career Education, the upcoming launch of the Institute for the Liberal Arts, and the ongoing capital campaign,” she said. “At the same time, these are consequential, complex times for higher education, given the fraught political and global environment, along with student unrest. But we are inspired to support our phenomenal students, distinguished faculty, and Vassar community as we stay focused on the strategic goals of the College.” —Larry Hertz

The Vassar Institute for the Liberal Arts, scheduled to open in the fall, will host a series of symposiums during the 2024–25 academic year that address multifaceted issues of local, national, and global concern, The College awarded grants to members of the Vassar community for Signature Programs on a wide variety of topics. Located adjacent to the campus, the Vassar Institute will open in October. The Heartwood hotel and The Salt Line restaurant, which share the facility, are already welcoming guests.

Robert Brigham, Institute Director and Shirley Ecker Boskey Professor of History and International Relations, said a major goal of the Institute is to “serve as Vassar’s public classroom and to highlight the great work our faculty and others on campus are doing in a way that engages a broader audience. Through the Institute, Vassar aims to play a critical convening role in continuing to elevate ideas, perspectives, and ways of working and living that model how our world can become a more just, humane, and democratic place.”

Wesley Dixon, Institute Program Director and Deputy to the President and Secretary of the Board of Trustees, said the proposals selected for Institute Signature Programs were among more than 16 proposals submitted to the College for consideration.

“These Signature Programs best exemplify the spirit of the Institute,” Dixon said. “Our faculty and others are collaborating with partners across the campus, in the local community, and around the country to engage in meaningful dialogue about some of the most pressing issues of our time.” In addition to the six funded programs, a number of other events at the Institute will be scheduled throughout the year, Dixon said.

The proposals were chosen by the Institute for the Liberal Arts Committee, composed of faculty, students, and administrators. Committee member Elizabeth Hoffman, Director of Parent and Family Giving in the Office of Advancement, said the proposals submitted “were everything we hoped they’d be. They were so detailed and thoughtful, and they tackle big and important subjects.”

Institute Director Professor Bob Brigham said he was impressed with the scope and vision of the Signature proposals. “We had many more deserving ideas than we could fund,” Brigham said. “That’s a good sign for the vitality of the Institute and our community.”—Larry Hertz

Eco-Visions: Finding Your Place in Environmentalism aims to provide participants with opportunities to see how environmental action can take shape in all aspects of life and highlight how legal innovations might be underused tools to aid and contribute to climate justice.

Convened by: Keri VanCamp, Director of the Preserve at Vassar; Jennifer Rubbo, Director of the Vassar Environmental Cooperative; Kenneth Foster, Director of Sustainability; Arpitha Kodiveri, Assistant Professor of Political Science; and Ethan Skuches, Vassar-Kenauk Conservation Fellow.

The Entrepreneurial Mind and the Liberal Arts seeks to disrupt traditional models of entrepreneurship by engaging the values of the liberal arts to inspire new approaches to how individuals can mobilize vision into action and real-world problem-solving.

Convened by: Julián Aguilar, Academic Computing Consultant in the Office of the Vice President for Technology and Human Resources.

Transgressing Borders: Reimagining Education and the Role of Learning and Community is a multiday workshop and festival aimed at reimagining how institutions of higher education and local community members work together in a generative way. The event aims to reshape how we think about “town-gown” dynamics and explore opportunities for shared learning and development.

Convened by: Elizabeth Cannon, Director of Vassar’s Office of Community-Engaged Learning.

Belonging and Beyond: Using Future Histories to Reimagine Teaching and Learning offers educators and students an opportunity to use “future imagining” methodologies to generate radically inclusive and exciting teaching and learning spaces in higher education.

Convened by: Candice Lowe Swift, Associate Professor of Anthropology, Africana Studies, and International Studies, and Eréndira Rueda, Associate Professor of Sociology and Director of Latin American and Latinx Studies.

Promoting Partnerships to Advance Educational Justice in Poughkeepsie is a multiday workshop. It will explore the social, political, and historical factors contributing to educational inequities within the City and Town of Poughkeepsie and how youth and their families experience these inequities both in school and through interactions with criminal justice systems. Participants will develop real-life avenues for coordination between programs and services that support at-risk youth and help them complete their secondary education.

Convened by: Molly Shanley, Professor Emerita of Political Science; Taneisha Means, Associate Professor of Political Science on the Class of 1951 Chair; Erin McCloskey, Professor of Education; and Andy Borum, Assistant Professor of Mathematics and Statistics.

Soundscapes and the Anthropocene will explore how humans influence natural sound environments and how sound environments in turn influence us by drawing on a broad range of disciplines including ecology, animal behavior, sensory neuroscience, human psychology, sociology, music, the arts, and architecture.

Convened by: Megan D. Gall, Associate Professor of Biology and Director of Neuroscience and Behavior, and Justin Patch, Associate Professor and Chair of Music.

As the teaching portion of Vassar’s Spring Semester drew to a close on May 1, members of the faculty gathered in Thompson Library to celebrate another aspect of their work—the scholarly journals, books, and other presentations they have authored over the past several years.

As slides describing the work of 53 faculty members scrolled on a large screen, Dean of Faculty William Hoynes led a champagne toast to those assembled in the Class of 1951 Reading Room. “Our faculty are a remarkable group of scholars and artists, writers and performers, scientists and humanists,” Hoynes said. “So many of you are engaged in wonderfully innovative scholarly and creative work, but outside of your specific networks, many on campus are not aware of all of this great work.”

The range of faculty projects were impressive. Among those in attendance were Associate Professor and Chair of Music Justin Patch and Professor of Anthropology Thomas Porcello, who co-authored a textbook titled Re-Making Sound: An Experiential Approach to Sound Studies, which examines six different types of sound and provides exercises to explore each one.

Another example was Professor of History Nancy Bisaha, who recently published a book titled From Christians to Europeans: Pope Pius II and the Concept of the Modern Western Identity. Bisaha said Pope Pius II, who led the Catholic Church from 1458 to 1464, was one of the first to frame the countries of Europe as a distinct part of the world.

President Elizabeth H. Bradley told those assembled that one of her favorite parts of her job has been reading the books and articles members of the faculty have published. “It’s important to have the time and space to use our intellect, and I get a liberal arts degree every year reading your work,” she said.—Larry Hertz

Dr. Alyssa Pabalan ’10 remembers that filling out the FAFSA application every year was not a fun process. But, being aware of Vassar’s need-blind policy, there wasn’t too much to worry about. She was able to keep the weight off her shoulders while focusing on her studies and life at Vassar.

Now an emergency medicine physician based in Chicago, she’s a consistent donor to the Vassar Fund as well as campus sustainability efforts. She credits Vassar with her development as a person, setting her on the path to a successful career, and for connecting her to lifelong friends.

“For me, financial aid is a way for a wider range of students to get a great education and have, hopefully, as great an experience as I did,” Pabalan said. “It’s a way to make a world-class education possible for people from a diverse array of backgrounds. Being a student is hard nowadays, with all the stresses, struggles, and current events.

“I want to give back to an institution that gave me so much,” she continued. “That’s what really prompted me to give back, so that it can continue to provide such a wonderful education but also help nurture the future in the same way it did for me.”

In 1997, Thailand was hit with a financial crisis; the baht (Thai currency) was severely devalued. For Vivek Mahapatra ’05, whose brother was already in college in the U.S., this meant rethinking his entire college strategy.

“Our parents’ savings were essentially wiped out,” Mahapatra said. “If I wanted to pursue higher education abroad, I had to start working in high school and ultimately work towards a scholarship.”

He remembers receiving an email from Vassar’s financial aid office before his acceptance package reached him in Thailand.

“I see this email and immediately think ‘Oh my God, I got the financial aid package. Holy cow, I will go to school in the U.S.—it’s possible!’” Mahapatra recalls. “Vassar absolutely changed my life. Financial aid blows doors wide open. Money is one of those things that, unfortunately, creates a lot of tension in the world. So taking money off the table and looking at somebody just on their merits, it’s something that I feel very strongly about.”

While at Vassar, Mahapatra was very involved on campus, where he received the Student Leader of the Year Award, having served as class president, co-president of the South Asian Students Alliance, Davison House president, a chairperson for the Tsunami Task Force that raised $10,000 toward relief efforts, and a member of the Vassar and Dutchess Community College National Model United Nations team. Now Vice President of GTM Salesforce AI, Mahapatra, previously a member of Vassar’s Board of Trustees, remains heavily involved with the College, as a member of the Nominating Committee, as a mentor in both the Sophomore Career Connections Program and the Vassar Innovation and Entrepreneurship (VIE) Program—and as a consistent donor to financial aid and the Vassar Fund.

“Once I graduated and got a job, I said to myself, ‘As long as I work, as long as I live, I will give back—whether it’s $100 or $1,000 or time, every single month I will give back,’” Mahapatra said. “I think education is the great equalizer. When I think about giving back, I think about what it means to open doors for people and what types of doors they want open. There are a lot of different people with a lot of needs, values, and so on. Giving back to Vassar, for me, means participating and staying engaged and connected. It’s also staying connected with what the future of the world looks like, the future of the workforce. By staying connected with students, I am constantly learning too. And, if I can give people an opportunity to learn from me, that’s a very deep-rooted thing to do.”

The children of Washington State University faculty members and chemists, Dr. Carolyn Koehler ’70, Dr. Jane Koehler ’75, and Kristin Koehler Ferguson ’77 were told, “If you want to go [to a college] that’s more expensive than we can afford, you’re going to have to get a scholarship.”

Carolyn, the eldest Koehler sister, wanted to be a classically trained archaeologist. She searched all over for a program, eventually finding Vassar, thanks to an alum who was one of her sisters’ godmothers. Knowing very little about the College, she applied, interviewed, and spoke with an alum. After graduating, Carolyn, now retired, became an archaeologist and taught archaeology of the Greek world and ancient Greek for 35 years at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.

“Something I liked about the Vassar application process is it didn’t matter how much money you had, everybody paid the same amount for housing,” Carolyn said. “That made a difference. It wasn’t a deciding factor, but the sense I got from that alumna and everything was that Vassar was a wonderful place for me.”

Jane was so excited about Vassar after attending Carolyn’s graduation that she applied to the College Early Decision. She worked on campus with a professor of microbiology. She found comradery in Lathrop House, where her entire wing—with the exception of one person—had scholarships.

“We were—and still are—very close,” Jane said. “No one ever looked down on us because we had financial aid at all.”

After Vassar, Jane received her MA in microbiology from UC Berkeley and her MD from George Washington University. She trained in infectious diseases at University of California at San Francisco and went on to become a Professor at UCSF and an expert on Bartonella bacteria. Though she retired in 2017, she continues her research in infectious diseases.

For Kristin the financial aid process was automatic. On campus, she worked in the library, then did research for history professors. As a graduate student, she received an international MBA at the University of South Carolina, the top-ranked post-graduate international business school in the U.S., according to US News. Kristin, now retired, worked in international marketing and sales before heading her own property management company for 20 years.

Inspired by all they were able to experience and achieve while at Vassar, the sisters recently came together to create the Koehler Sisters Endowed Scholarship Fund.

“We absolutely could not have gone to Vassar without financial aid,” Carolyn said. “It meant everything. It made my career possible. It gave me all those friendships. It opened things up culturally. That’s what we benefited from. Everyone should have that chance.”

“There were any number of things we could donate toward, but it had to be helping people have an experience we had,” Jane added. “It made our lives completely different. The fact I could get a scholarship, go somewhere I had never been, and meet students who, likewise, had scholarships was huge.”

“For me, it really opened the doors to the world,” Kristin said. “To come from little Coleman, WA, to be introduced to the northeast and learn there—that was very different. It served as a launchpad to head on to Europe and my international career. It wouldn’t have been possible if we hadn’t had that scholarship.”

Financial aid helps to bring unique and talented individuals like Pabalan, Mahapatra, and the Koehler sisters to Vassar, providing the opportunity to reach their potential, as it will continue to do for the generations of students to come.—Heather Mattioli

Haley Schoenegge ’27 made Vassar history on May 25, becoming the first Brewer to win a national track and field title in their first year. Schoenegge led wire-to-wire and breezed to a nine-second victory in the 1,500-meter run at the NCAA Division III Track and Field Championships in Myrtle Beach, SC. Three hours later, she finished fourth in the 5,000-meter run, earning her second All-American designation of the day.

But as she reflected on her accomplishments, Schoenegge said the journey to the national championship with Coach James McCowan ’99 and her teammates was even more satisfying than the event itself. “I just love the whole team aspect of the experience,” she said in a Zoom call from her Prospect, KY, home during her summer break. “Cheering for others’ success is more rewarding for me than my own accomplishments. It’s an amazing group of people on this team.”

Schoenegge said she had a hunch that she’d fit right in on the Vassar cross country and track teams when she first began looking at colleges during her senior year in high school. She said she’d never heard of Vassar until her college advisor suggested it might be a good fit for her, so she checked out the website and navigated to the Athletics page. She found a photo that included not only members of the team and Coach McCowan, but also McCowan’s dog, Stella. “I thought to myself, ‘Well, that’s kind of awesome—a dog in a team photo. Maybe Vassar is the right kind of place,’” Schoenegge said.

A visit to the Vassar campus later that year clinched Schoenegge’s decision. “The culture is all about team and community,” she said. “I clicked with everyone right away.”

Schoenegge experienced immediate success with the cross-country team in the fall of 2023, leading the squad to its first-ever Liberty League championship. Typically, she doesn’t have any pictures of her running that race. The photo that hangs on her dorm room wall is one of a post-race group hug with her teammates.

Coach McCowan, an All-American runner himself, said he had learned over the course of Schoenegge’s first year at Vassar not to be surprised by anything she accomplished. In fact, by the time he and Schoenegge arrived in Myrtle Beach, he had a pretty good hunch she’d win the 1,500. “My goal was to give Haley the space to succeed, and that meant having fun and not putting too much weight on the outcome,” he said. “But I trusted her to do what it would take to win.

“Good athletes always make the coach look like a genius,” McCowan continued, “but at Vassar, you want them to want to be part of something larger than themselves. Haley is happy in that culture.”

Hailey Brigger ’24 and Owen Fauth ’24 won top honors at the annual Athletic Awards Ceremony this May in the Chapel. Brigger, a forward and midfielder on the field hockey team, and Fauth, a forward and midfielder on the men’s soccer team, were presented with the Matthew Vassar Outstanding Career awards during the two-hour event.

Brigger, a biochemistry major from San Diego, CA, was named a Second Team All-American this year and was selected to the All-Liberty League First Team and the National Field Hockey Coaches All-Region First Team three years in a row. She ranks in the top-10 all-time in goals, assists, and points for Vassar and was part of the 2021 Liberty League Conference Championship team.

Field hockey Head Coach Anne Fowler described Brigger as a fierce competitor who demands the best for herself in all areas of her life. “As one of only a handful of All-Americans in Vassar field hockey history—and a future doctor—Hailey is a great example of all you can achieve at Vassar,” Fowler said.

Brigger called the award “the culmination of my entire team’s skill and support, and I feel honored to have played with every one of them.”

Fauth, a mathematics major from Keene, NH, earned Third Team All-American honors last season and was named to the All-Liberty League First Team for the past two seasons. Head Soccer Coach Jonathan Hood said Fauth was eminently deserving of the award. “Owen had a tremendous career here at Vassar,” Hood said. “While he was one of the most decorated players in program history, his commitment, work ethic, and passion for the team was contagious and helped make those around him better.  As a two-year captain, the example he set will have a lasting impact on the men’s soccer program.”

Haley Schoenegge ’27 and Vaughn Ramsey ’24 won the Betty Richey Performer of the Year awards. Schoenegge won the NCAA Division III championship in the 1,500-meter run and finished fourth in the 5,000-meter run, earning All-American honors in each event. A resident of Prospect, KY, Schoenegge has not declared a major. She set school records in the mile run, the 1,500-meter run, the 3,000-meter run, and the 5,000-meter run and earned Second Team All-American honors in the mile run at the NCAA Indoor Track and Field Championships.

Ramsey, a mathematics major from Denver, CO, was a member of the NCAA Division III men’s volleyball team that finished second in the national championship tournament. He led the team in kills and earned Second Team All-United Volleyball Conference honors. He was also named to the American Volleyball Coaches Association North Region Team for the first time.

Other award winners were:

Rookie of the Year: Holland Kaplan ’27 (women’s volleyball) and Lucas Jauregui ’27 (men’s swimming and diving);

Frances D. Fergusson Coaches Award: Kate Nelkirk ’24 (field hockey) and Jon Bradbury ’24 (men’s lacrosse);

Scholar-Athlete Award: Grace Skakel ’24 (women’s rugby) and Benjamin Lee ’24 (men’s fencing);

Iron Brewer Award: Sierra McDermed ’26 (women’s basketball) and Solomon Hess ’24 (men’s lacrosse);

Student Worker of the Year Award: Eli Feay ’24, a member of the Facilities and Game Operations staff.

Marina Hrytsenko ’23 spent the second semester of her junior year in London in an academic and social justice program run by Boston University and co-sponsored by Vassar. Three days before her 21st birthday in February 2022, she was visiting her family in Ukraine when she began to hear talk about an imminent Russian invasion. She dismissed the concerns, but back in London, on the evening of her birthday, she received a call from her boyfriend who told her Russian President Vladimir Putin had issued a statement ordering the skies closed to civilian aircraft near the Ukraine border. The next morning, she awoke to 40 missed calls. The shelling and bombing had begun in her family’s hometown of Kharkiv, and a text from her boyfriend read: “I can’t reach you. Your parents are alive.”

Hrytsenko tried to call everyone in her family, but no one replied. “I didn’t know then, but my dad [a lieutenant colonel in the Ukraine Air Force] was already fighting, my grandparents’ town was getting occupied, and my mom and sister were hiding in a shelter,” she said. “All I could do was go to protests, but I mostly felt numb.”

In the fall, Hrytsenko returned to Vassar for her senior year, but she had already resolved to move back to Ukraine to help in the fight. And a few months after she graduated, she secured a position as a foreign policy advisor to a leader of the Ukraine Parliament, Oleksandra Ustinova. The work has been challenging and demanding, but Hrytsenko has experienced some tangible successes. She was part of an eight-member delegation of Ukrainian officials who visited Washington, DC, in May to lobby for permission to use U.S. weapons to strike at targets inside Russia. Two weeks later, President Biden issued that permission.

How has this 23-year-old managed to rise to such an important position in Ukraine’s fight for its freedom? Hrytsenko had secured internships in Ukraine during each Vassar break. Because the United States is one of Ukraine’s closest allies, government leaders there were looking for people who were familiar with U.S. culture and politics, Hrytsenko explained, so there was a place for a Vassar international studies major in the Ukraine government. “Not many people get this chance so early in life, but people felt I could use my education at a time when the United States was such a key ally,” she said.

Hrytsenko’s principal duties involve facilitating communication among members of the Ukraine Parliament, representatives of foreign governments, business leaders, and the general public. “Topics I currently focus on are primarily related to the questions of military support and arms control, as my MP is the chairwoman of special commission on arms control,” she said. “I interact most often with officials in the United States but also work with the governments of Canada and the European Union. We are working right now on the training of F-16 pilots.”

When she was a junior in high school, she applied for a program called Ukraine Global Scholars, run by Ukrainians who are familiar with U.S. colleges. She used the program to prepare for the college admission process. Later that year, Hrytsenko was awarded a full scholarship to Vassar.

“My liberal arts background has equipped me to conduct meaningful research and learn how to discuss any issue,” she noted. “It has given me the ability to adjust to new circumstances really quickly, and that’s what my work is about every day.”

One of Hrytsenko’s senior thesis advisors was Robert K. Brigham, Shirley Ecker Boskey Professor of History and International Relations. She hopes that what she learned in his course on negotiating conflicts and how peace treaties are written will be useful when the war with Russia ends. Until that day comes, Hrytsenko says she is proud to be working alongside her fellow Ukrainians as they attempt to repel the Russian invasion.—Larry Hertz

When Alice Belgray ’59, née Bunzl, came to Vassar, she was planning to study math, but found herself gravitating toward the rich musical education at the College. At 87, Belgray still has a passion for music and also children’s literature.

Belgray sings in the Brearley Singers choir—as she has for 28 years. The Brearley Singers celebrated their 30th anniversary in May, performing for a sold-out crowd at the Church of St. Paul and St. Andrew in New York City. “We just sang Brahms’s ‘German Requiem,’” Belgray said. “I last sang it at Vassar in 1958. Singing in this chorus has been an exhilarating experience for me.”

The Brearley Singers originated in the Brearley School, one of Belgray’s alma maters and where she sent her daughters, Laura and Marian. The all-girls school emphasized literature, words, and the values of women. Belgray carried those teachings with her to Vassar—the alma mater of her mother, Margaret Tanzer Bunzl, class of 1927—where she sang in the choir.

“Senior year, Pete Seeger came to Vassar,” Belgray recalled. “It was during the McCarthy Era and he wasn’t allowed on campus, but he performed at Alumnae House. That was an inspiring experience because he was one of my idols. It gave me a different worldview and a love of folk music. I grew up as a very privileged white person in New York going to a high-powered private school and then Vassar. Vassar expanded my view of the world.”

That expanded perspective led to her first foray into politics. Vassar is where she joined her first protest march in favor of the Hungarian Revolution in 1956—much to the chagrin of her father.

After graduation, Belgray attended the University of Michigan, where she earned a PhD in musicology. She began teaching music but found it wasn’t for her. In her 20s, she became involved in politics, working as a legislative assistant in Albany, but experienced sexual harassment in the workplace. This was around the time that writer and activist Betty Friedan published The Feminine Mystique, and that impacted Belgray greatly—she refused to be a victim. Later, she worked for the New York Civil Liberties Union and helped to write legislative memoranda.

“I worked on the Equal Rights Amendment for New York, which we passed,” Belgray said. “So my political life has been a sub-level career. It’s something I’ve been involved in all these years.”

In 1967, she married David Belgray, a psychoanalyst who passed away in 2018. “He was the love of my life, and I spent 51 incredible years with him,” Belgray said.

Following her career in politics, she worked for recording companies, including Vanguard Records, but in the 1980s, after attending a seminar for women seeking a career change, Belgray found her calling: children’s book publishing. In her 40s, she began as an intern for a small children’s book publishing company and took classes on children’s literature. She went on to work for Clarion Books and the Jewish Publication Society (JPS) where she was the editor of children’s books.

She eventually joined the Children’s Book Committee at Bank Street College of Education, which produces book lists to help parents, teachers, and librarians find books children will find compelling. Now, as a member of the committee, Belgray helps to evaluate 6,000 published books annually and is involved in compiling a comprehensive, annotated list of 600 of the best titles. She was the chair of the committee for 15 years, and, while she stepped down from that role in 2011, she remains an active member.

“I’ve been on both sides as a publisher and reviewer,” Belgray said. “I love working with children’s books.”

Belgray has been quite active at her alma mater. She has attended Reunions where she’s met a lot of friends, and she was once the president of her class. She has been a consistent donor to the Vassar Fund since the 1980s out of loyalty to an institution she said has contributed to her personal growth.

“I’m quite lucky all around,” Belgray said. “A wonderful family, an active life. I have been very fortunate.”—Heather Mattioli

As a Vassar senior in 1984, Stephanie Hyacinth helped solicit the senior class gift from Jewett House and then never stopped serving the College for 40 years running. By the AAVC’s count, Hyacinth has taken on 44 volunteer positions—assuming perhaps her biggest role as Co-Chair of the College’s current Fearlessly Consequential campaign.

Dr. Amy Pullman ’71, who headed the AAVC’s Alumnae/i Recognition Committee, said Hyacinth was an easy choice for the Outstanding Service to Vassar Award, which is presented to an alum in recognition of their extraordinary commitment, leadership, and service in promoting the goals and highest interests of Vassar College and the AAVC. “Stephanie is so well respected and loved by the Vassar community that her choice for this award was unanimous on the first round of voting by the committee,” said Pullman.

At the June 1 award ceremony for Hyacinth, President Elizabeth Bradley looked up from her prepared remarks and said to Hyacinth, “What have you not done here? And you’ve done it for four decades!” Noting that Hyacinth also has a day job as Interim Vice President of External Relations at Macaulay Honors College at the City University of New York (CUNY), Bradley said, “We are all lucky that she is so generous about bringing these professional skills to what we do.”

Bradley was followed by AAVC President Monica Vachher ’77, who said, “Stephanie’s passion is infectious: She has that rare ability to entice other volunteers to be all in—and, ultimately, to have just as much fun as she’s having.”

When Hyacinth took the podium, it was to loud whoops and cheers. She opened by saying, “I volunteer for Vassar because Vassar deserves my support.” She described how, as “a skinny, nerdy kid from Brooklyn,” she had felt cared for at Vassar and was now returning that care. “I am passionate about Vassar—and I adore Vassar people because Vassar people are doers; they are not on the sidelines,” she said. “They are smart, funny, strong, fair, creative, curious, quirky, dedicated, and always operating from a place of possibility and optimism. Who would not want to be a part of that?”—Kimberly Schaye

David Ambroz, a lawyer and Amazon executive, is a leading child welfare advocate recognized by President Obama as a “Champion of Change.” His deep commitment to children in need comes from a very personal place, as he spent 11 years of his own childhood unhoused and then several years in foster care—the subject of his recent memoir, A Place Called Home (Legacy Lit, 2022). Ambroz co-founded the multimedia public awareness campaign FosterMore.org, as well as the pioneering National Foster Youth Advisory Council; served on the American Bar Association’s Commission on Youth at Risk; served as the President of the Los Angeles City Planning Commission four times; and has been part of countless policies and laws to improve the lives of children experiencing poverty.

As an against-all-odds success story, Ambroz works tirelessly to better the odds for others. His unflagging efforts have now earned him the Spirit of Vassar Award, which goes to an alum who has “demonstrated extraordinary and distinguished leadership, contribution, and commitment to serving a community in which they effect positive, transformative societal change.”

Said awards committee chair Pullman, “David exemplifies the expression ‘giving back.’ He has devoted his life to helping solve homelessness, and he has never forgotten how his full scholarship to Vassar changed his life.”

Ambroz said he felt “humbled” by his selection for the award, which will be presented at Convocation this fall, and promised “to live up to the Spirit of Vassar, and all that it gave me.

“My liberal arts education has been the key to my everything,” he explained. “I learned to think, to research, to apply, to listen, and to take action. All that was embedded into a deep commitment to progress, to the democratic project, and to my communities of origin.”

Carolyn Merchant is Distinguished Professor at the Graduate School at the University of California, Berkeley, where she specializes in environmental history, philosophy, and ethics. Her many books include The Death of Nature: Women, Ecology, and the Scientific Revolution, originally published in 1980 and reissued in 1990 and 2020. On the occasion of the book’s 40th anniversary, science historian Paula Findlen wrote, “Few books in the history of science have had such a broad and diffuse impact, and few have been generative of so many other fields.” Her current work and lasting impact on the exploration of the relationship between humans and nature have now earned her the AAVC’s Distinguished Achievement Award, presented to an alum who has reached the highest level in their professional field.

“Carolyn is a distinguished historian, philosopher, environmentalist, and feminist who was decades ahead of her time when she drew a groundbreaking connection between the increasingly mechanistic worldview of science and the exploitation of women and the environment,” said Pullman.

“I am highly honored and thrilled that my outstanding alma mater had selected me for this amazing award,” said Merchant. “I loved the education I got in the classes at Vassar. We were taught to ‘go to the sources’ and analyze them for ourselves. We learned to volunteer to speak in class, to think for ourselves, and to say what we believed the texts stated and meant. My Vassar education gave me the confidence to believe in myself, to investigate new subjects, and to trust my own approach to ideas and subjects.

“The fact that Vassar was an all-woman school at the time I attended it played a major role in my intellectual development,” Merchant noted. “I built confidence in my own ideas by contributing something to each classroom discussion.”

Actor, singer, and composer Ethan Slater is a versatile performer who has accomplished a lot in his first decade out of Vassar. He originated the role of SpongeBob SquarePants on Broadway, for which he received a Tony Award nomination and won the Drama Desk, Outer Critics Circle, Theatre World, and Broadway Beacon Awards. More recently, he starred as Lee Harvey Oswald in the musical Assassins and in the Broadway revival of Monty Python’s Spamalot. He will soon appear in the film adaptation of Wicked alongside Tony Award-winner Cynthia Erivo and pop star Ariana Grande.

“Ethan’s acting career started just one year after he graduated from Vassar and has hurtled on like a freight train, culminating in his role in the film adaptation of Wicked,” noted Pullman.

Slater said he felt “honored and grateful” to receive the Young Alumnae/i Achievement Award, which recognizes the exceptional personal and professional achievements of an alum who has graduated within the past 10 years. “Vassar was the place where I learned so much about myself, about what I do for a living, about a life in the arts,” he said. “Even 10 years out, it is hard to identify the most formative parts of an experience. But for me, I think the biggest advantage of my liberal arts education was learning how to learn in different ways. Running from a class on international politics, to Sources of World Drama, to Econ 101, to a seminar called Virtually Mediated Social Worlds, meant that I was constantly engaging with different styles of teaching, different disciplines, and surrounded by people passionate about vastly different things. So, I could apply what I learned in a class and I could hone in on what really made me excited.”

Jannette Swanson and Stacy Bingham, shown left to right, are Vassar’s dynamic duo of career education. As Associate Dean of the College for Career Education and Director of External Engagement, respectively, Bingham and Swanson give their all to make sure students and alums alike have every opportunity to fulfill their career aspirations—putting on close to 200 events each year, of which a significant portion are focused on connecting students with alums. A centerpiece of these efforts is Sophomore Career Connections, an annual networking and educational event involving hundreds of current students, alums, and parents that celebrated its 10th anniversary this year.

“Stacy and Jannette have turned the Center for Career Education into an invaluable resource for students and alums, revitalizing the role that networking plays in their careers,” noted Pullman. “They have helped turn Sophomore Career Connections into a blockbuster event.”

Bingham said that she was honored by the recognition from the AAVC and looked forward to creating even more opportunities for students and grads. “I have long said that the Vassar network, which is deep, wide, and brimming with goodwill, is our very best career resource,” she said. “There is no better inspiration for life beyond Vassar than those who have paved the way, and I continue to be struck by just how generous this community is with one another!”

Swanson said she was “deeply honored and humbled” by the award. “The work I get to do is pretty effortless, as our alums are always eager to help our students, but a real joy I find in my work is when our alums also establish meaningful connections with one another at these events,” she said. “In my eyes, this recognition is a testament to the vibrant Vassar community, a community that I am grateful I get to work with daily.”—Kimberly Schaye

Between 1945 and 1991, he says, the American relationship with the Middle East was largely successful in ensuring the free flow of energy resources and helping to mature Israeli security and ensuring American predominance. “There were setbacks, and there were moral costs of this, but by what policymakers set out to do they were successful,” he adds. “Then you contrast that in a post-1991 period based on what policymakers tried to do. The return on investment is less than zero. How did we get there? That’s something I try to answer in the book.”

Cook’s fascination with Middle East politics, policy, and power struggles began early when he was a pre-teen in Long Island. The travel bug struck his parents, and, he says, “I loved all those vacations we all took together, and visiting family in the UK when I was nine. That really got me curious about the world.”

At 12, when he was asked to name his favorite TV show, he would say “the nightly news.” When his friends got the newspaper, they all flipped to the sports section first, but Cook beelined it for the front page.

And in the seventh grade, his parents let him stay up late to watch Ted Koppel’s Nightline series on the 444-day-long Iran hostage crisis, during which Iranian militants held 52 Americans captive.

When it came time to consider colleges, Cook remembers visiting the Vassar campus to gauge if it felt like the next scholarly home for his interests in international studies. Cook’s mom said to him, “Yes, we’ll meet professors and learn about the school, but take time to look around and see if Vassar is the right fit for you, if you’re surrounded by your people.”

He did just that on an impressively beautiful afternoon, and when he surveyed the campus, he saw “interesting students, and a bunch of guys playing cricket, of all things, and right away I turned to my mom and said, ‘Write the check. I’m going to Vassar.’”

In his sophomore year, he was especially struck by a course led by visiting professor Hamideh Sedghi that analyzed Iranian politics and foreign policy. “It was a fascinating course, and it was truly one of the best courses I took, and that’s what I began to think of the intellectual environment at Vassar. Everyone seemed so engaged.”

After graduating in 1990, he earned a master’s in international affairs at John Hopkins. His political science PhD from the University of Pennsylvania in 2003 led to his first published book, a sign of his interests to come: Ruling But Not Governing: The Military and Political Development in Egypt, Algeria, and Turkey (Johns Hopkins Press, 2007) is admittedly a “heavily theoretical book that I tried to revise to make it as accessible as possible,” he says. His fascination with the Arab Spring in Egypt inspired him to write his 2017 book False Dawn: Protest, Democracy, and Violence in the New Middle East (Oxford University Press). And just like his parents, he was able to travel overseas to learn more about other cultures, from Turkey to Egypt to Israel.

What he reveals in the book is a stark truth about the Arab Spring’s failure: “In Egypt, Libya, and Tunisia, you don’t have social revolutions. You have changes of leadership. The regime never falters so the protesters never overthrow the political system,” Cook notes.

At the CFR, his consistent obligation is to spread his ideas on Middle East policy and the relationship the U.S. cultivates with partners in the region. He writes regularly for Foreign Policy magazine and for the CFR website. He can’t picture doing anything else right now.

Cook admits, “I get out of bed every day and feel blessed with the fact I can pursue my intellectual interests, and do my best to offer the best way forward for the United States in a very critical part of the world.”

Up next for Cook is a project, yet to be fully shaped, about India’s rise and influence. “When we think about great powers, we think United States, China, Russia,” Cook says. “India is often an afterthought. It shouldn’t be.”—David Silverberg

usicals based on real-life events, if done well, can be compelling. This Broadway season brought us Suffs, nominated for six Tonys, which illuminates the final years in the campaign to obtain a federal amendment guaranteeing female suffrage. The production focuses on the movement leaders—Carrie Chapman Catt, Alice Paul, Lucy Burns (class of 1902), Ida B. Wells, Mary Church Terrell, Inez Milholland (class of 1909), Ruth Wenclawska, and Doris Stevens, whose hard work and determination ultimately led to the ratification of the 19th Amendment in 1920.

The musical stands out for a stellar, all-female cast, wonderful songs, imaginative sets, and striking costumes, making for a fun evening at the theater. Catt comes off as a forceful personality, with oratorical skills and confidence in her very strategic approach to pushing suffrage over the victory line. Alice Paul is young, energetic, determined, and unafraid to oppose Catt and her go-slower approach to the campaign, a conflict that ultimately led Alice Paul and Lucy Burns to break away from Catt’s National American Woman Suffrage Association (NAWSA) to form the National Woman’s Party. We see Milholland’s passionate commitment to suffrage and other social justice movements, and her sense of the theatrical. President Woodrow Wilson, portrayed satirically, is both patronizing and prevaricating in his approach to the suffragists.

The story of those last years before the passage of the 19th Amendment is one of many twists and turns. Suffs captures important moments in that history—the drama of the 1913 parade, which took place in Washington, DC, on the day before Woodrow Wilson’s inauguration, the picketing of the White House during Wilson’s second term, and the subsequent jailing and force-feeding of the picketers.

The musical certainly reflects some of the current scholarship on the suffrage campaign. For example, the play depicts Catt’s personal, decades-long partnership with Mollie Garrett Hay. By highlighting the activism of Polish immigrant Wenclawska, Suffs shows that the suffrage movement was not only composed of elitist, white women, but was, in the words of historian Robyn Muncy (“Gender, Race, Class, and the Vote from the 19th Amendment to COVID 19,” Kalmanovitz Institute for Labor and the Working Poor), a cross-class, cross-race coalition. The musical does a good job on the issue of race, underscoring the persistent efforts of African American women to claim their full rights as citizens by demanding the vote.

Suffs calls attention to two great Black activists, Ida B. Wells and Mary Church Terrell, who worked on behalf of social justice and confronted the racism of many white suffragists. One highlight is the push by Black women to be included in the massive suffrage parade held the day before Wilson’s inauguration. In particular, the women of Howard University, led by Terrell, wished to march as a college/alumnae delegation alongside the other college groups, and Wells demanded that she be able to march as part of the official Illinois suffrage delegation, rather than in a separate Black group.

The play focuses on Alice Paul’s resistance to their demands for fear of alienating white southern women. Nevertheless, Terrell’s determination, and the help of her ally—a very persistent Milholland—paid off. The Howard group proudly marched as part of the larger collegiate delegation. The always resolute Wells took her place in the larger Illinois delegation. And, as historian Alison Parker writes in Unceasing Militant: The Life of Mary Church Terrell (The University of North Carolina Press, 2020), because of widespread pushback against the effort to segregate the march, many African American women marched with their state delegations or as members of various occupations.

Suffs also highlights the tensions between the generations in the movement, with older women, such as NAWSA’s Catt, emphasizing more moderate tactics in pushing for suffrage, and the younger Paul, Burns, and others adopting a more militant approach. These divisions by age were not always so neat; the older Harriot Stanton Blatch (class of 1878) often allied herself with Paul. Terrell, also an elder, joined the younger women in picketing the White House during WWI, where they denounced Wilson for his refusal to endorse women’s suffrage, a move firmly opposed by Catt and NAWSA. Nevertheless, the narrative points to an important, age-old tendency of younger activists to be impatient with the tactics and approaches of their elders. This is brought home at the end of the play, when a young Black feminist of the 1970s confronts Paul, now an elder, on her unwillingness to push for African American women’s voting rights. Paul’s response, that she had to prioritize the one goal—to pass the 19th Amendment—is reminiscent of the kind of things Catt said some 50 years earlier to the younger Paul, who had pushed against NAWSA’s go-slower approach.

Providing an entertaining look at a complicated history in the space of an evening entails altering and simplifying some of the facts. Vassar alums might be disappointed to see no acknowledgment of how the Vassar experience influenced two of the most important leaders. There is much discussion of Paul’s coming to political consciousness at Swarthmore College, but no mention of Milholland’s college years. Long before she became famous for leading suffrage parades on horseback, Milholland made national news as a Vassar junior, when she responded to the College ban on campus suffrage activities by organizing a student suffrage rally in the adjacent cemetery, featuring speeches by well-known feminist Charlotte Perkins Gilman, alum Blatch, and labor organizer Rose Schneiderman. Lucy Burns is featured in the musical as a good friend and political partner to Paul. The show refers, several times, to their friendship developed at Swarthmore, though they were not in college together. Rather, Burns attended Vassar, where she befriended suffragist and social justice advocate Crystal Eastman, class of 1903, who became important to her growing political consciousness.

Nevertheless, Suffs leaves the audience with some historical truths that can be inspiring. We see that setbacks during the intensive campaign for suffrage were recurrent. But the passage of the 19th Amendment shows how perseverance can pay off. Today, we know that the march to truly inclusive social justice can stall and even move backward. As the cast sings at the end of the production, “progress is possible but not guaranteed.”

Hello everyone!

The past few months were all-Vassar-all-the-time, and what a time it was! April was a month of celebrations. We began with the Alumnae House Centennial, which was such a fabulous event, replete with a capella singers, tap dancers, jugglers, a brass band, a gorgeous poem written for the occasion by Kimberly Nguyen ’19, and over 400 people in attendance. It was an immensely joyous and festive evening that will long be remembered. Later that month we celebrated the 40th anniversary of the AAAVC at their Triennial, which was the best-attended Triennial yet, with many alums returning to campus for the first time. We kicked off the weekend with a dinner honoring Pamela Harris ’92, the recipient of the AAVC Spirit of Vassar award for her lifelong commitment to racial, economic, and gender justice. There were many other moments of celebration, panel discussions, and an extremely moving tribute and remembrance of the extraordinary Dr. June Jackson Christmas, Class of 1945-4, and one of the first openly Black graduates of Vassar.

May and June brought not just a campus bedecked with blossoms and shimmering new foliage and grass, but Commencement and Reunion, both of which were beautiful and fun. At Commencement, we welcomed almost 600 graduates to the AAVC, and celebrated them with their families at a champagne reception in the Bridge Building. And at Reunion, we greeted nearly 1,700 alums, family, and friends from 44 states and 20 countries! The AAVC Board serenaded the class of 1974 with James Brown’s “I Feel Good” as they celebrated their landmark 50th Reunion in their inimitable style. We also celebrated Stephanie Hyacinth ’84, the recipient of the AAVC’s Award for Outstanding Service to Vassar. The terrific events and panels with alums and faculty were greatly enjoyed, as were the dinners and parties held across campus under beautiful skies for the entire weekend.

It was lovely to see many of you at one or more of these events, and I hope you will continue to connect with Vassar and honor everything it has brought to your lives. Wishing you a wonderful rest of summer!

Be well,

Monica Vachher ’77
AAVC President
aavcpresident@vassar.edu