Articles Written By: emae2021@pomona.edu

New Knowledge

August 3, 2016 by Staff Comments Off

BIOLOGY: Assistant Professor of Biology Wallace Meyer

Fireproof Ants

Even a fire won’t keep a good ant down, according to research at the Robert J. Bernard Biological Field Station (BFS) on the effects of fire on ants. But which plants grow back after fire and drought does affect ant communities.

For her senior thesis, Tessa Adams ’16 was interested in determining if the ant community changed as a result of the September 2013 brush fire that charred 17 acres at the field station and The Claremont Colleges North Campus Properties. Expectations were that the effects of fire would be significant, but it turns out ants are a hardy, fireproof lot. Results show that there was minimal immediate and no lasting impact on the species from the fire, says Assistant Professor of Biology Wallace Meyer, director of Bernard Field Station, a preserve maintained by The Claremont Colleges that protects the rare native ecosystem of California sage scrub.

“It seems like ant assemblages can withstand a fire. And it makes sense—they are this super-organism. … Fast-moving hot fires affect the surface; meanwhile the ants are down below,” says Meyer. Plus, “fire is a natural component of the ecosystem.”

However, Meyer says, following a fire, areas of land can potentially convert from native flora—in the case of BFS, California sage scrub—to nonnative grasslands, which do affect whether ants return. (Rest assured, 22 species of ants are still making their home at BFS.) Drought, too, affects whether sage scrub or nonnative grasses grow back and which species of ants make their home in each type of habitat. In fact, Meyer says, drought—while not as manifestly dramatic—is actually a larger stressor than fire.

Meyer believes this research is significant because the effects of fire on anything other than plants and mammals are largely unknown. For purposes of conservation and biodiversity management, it is important to understand these effects, since fire is going to become more common, especially in light of global climate change. Adams’ research findings will be used in conservation management plans not only at BFS, but by managers throughout Southern California.

What are the implications for conservation management? First, as long as native plant communities recover, no action is required, says Meyer. Second, which types of plants grow back favors certain ant species. Third, effects of extreme drought correlated with climate changes are real and felt, making long-term management difficult.

Thanks to her high school AP Environmental Science class, Adams came to Pomona knowing she wanted to do ecology research. She says when she stepped foot into BFS, she was awestruck by the California sage scrub habitat.

Adams’ awe quickly turned into action. Adams started working on arthropod research at BFS as a volunteer her first year at Pomona and continued through the years, setting up research sites, collecting pitfall traps, sorting specimens that were collected—and she started seeing a wide range of arthropods at the station.

“After taking Professor Meyer’s Fire Ecology in Southern California class last spring, I became interested in how fire can shape an ecosystem, and I realized that there is little research on the effect of fire on arthropods. I decided to focus my thesis on the effect of fire on ants because the lifestyle of ants, which live in colonies, has the potential to be greatly affected by fire,” says Adams.

She conducted her research by pitfall trapping. She buried a test tube in the ground, with the lip of it level with the surface of the ground. The tube was filled about halfway with a preservation solution—either ethanol or propylene glycol. As the insects ran along the ground, they fell into the trap, and the collected specimens served as a survey of the insects present in an area.

But why choose ants? Adams points to the creatures as providing crucial ecosystem services that make them important to study because of their broad impact on other organisms and their value in helping to determine ways to conserve the environment they inhabit.

So in other words, remember the old proverb: Go to the ant … consider her ways.

—Sneha Abraham

CHEMISTRY: Professor Roberto Garza-López

Molecular Origami

Pomona College Chemistry Professor Roberto Garza-López and his research colleagues have developed a new model that studies how protein molecules fold and unfold—work that has more than a few national institutes interested in the implications for understanding the development of diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease, Huntington’s disease, Type II diabetes and certain types of cancer.

The research, published in the Journal of Inorganic Biochemistry, looks at the protein called Cytochrome c, focusing on the questions of what happens to this protein’s molecules when they don’t fold properly and how this improper unfolding is linked to cancers and other diseases.

Why does a protein fold and unfold in the first place? Long protein molecules start straight, explains Garza-López, but in order to interact with other molecules, they have to fold. “And they have to fold into a very specific shape,” he says. “If they don’t fold properly, then that’s where negative things occur, especially disease. In the paper we published, we are looking at the opposite effect: we’re looking at the protein that is already folded to see how it unfolds.”

The Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) are providing funding for further research and are interested in what the team’s findings reveal about the early development of diseases. Garza-López is working with Caltech Professor Harry B. Gray and DePaul University Professor John J. Kozak.

In order to visualize the protein molecule’s many folds, students working in Garza-López’s lab create 3-D structures of some of the proteins, like Cytochrome c (pictured here). “Students are very good with computers, at visualizing molecules and doing calculations, but they’re also very good at visualizing what those calculations are doing to those molecules.”

Sabari Kumar ’17, a chemistry major who is working in Garza-López’s lab, was acknowledged in the published paper and is now studying the folding and unfolding of proteins related to disease by performing molecular dynamics simulations.

The research by Garza-López , Gray and Kozak continues, and they’re already finished with another manuscript looking at another protein called Intelectin-1, a protein of the intestines and lungs that is able to distinguish between human cells and the cells of bacterial invaders. “This could underpin new strategies to fight infections,” says Garza-López. He adds: “Proteins are very complex. We start with a simple model and we do a lot with that model and try to understand new things about it. That’s how science works.”

—Carla Guerrero

New Faces

August 3, 2016 by Mark Wood Comments Off

Pomona Welcomes New Academic Dean

Audrey Bilger

Pomona’s new vice president for academic affairs and dean of the college, Audrey Bilger, took up her duties on July 1. She came to Pomona from the nearby campus of Claremont McKenna College, where she had been professor of literature and founding faculty director of the Center for Writing & Public Discourse.

“I am thrilled to welcome Audrey to Pomona, where her experience in college governance, knowledge of faculty challenges and aspirations, passion for liberal arts education and her familiarity with The Claremont Colleges will be strong assets,” said Pomona College President David Oxtoby.

In her new position, Bilger will serve as the chief academic officer and play a leading role in shaping and sustaining the intellectual life of the Pomona community.

“As a longtime member of the Claremont Consortium, I am familiar with Pomona’s strengths and history,” said Bilger. “I look forward to becoming even better acquainted with the community and to working with faculty, students, staff and other stakeholders to continue to foster the ideals of a liberal arts education in an inclusive environment.”

At Claremont McKenna, Bilger served as chair of the Department of Literature and as coordinator of gender studies. She also served on major committees, including the Board of Trustees Academic Affairs Committee, President’s Advisory Committee on Diversity, curriculum committee, WASC reaccreditation and the appointments, promotion and tenure committee. Among other significant contributions, she chaired of the working group on academic resources for international, first-generation, low-income and underrepresented minority students.

In 2014–15 she held an American Council on Education (ACE) Fellowship at the University of California, Riverside (UCR), with a placement in the Office of the Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost, where she worked closely with UCR’s leadership team. She was involved in major projects during her fellowship, including budget redesign, organizational excellence and a master planning study. She also participated in a working group charged with establishing a collaborative leadership model for faculty, staff and students.

Bilger has authored numerous scholarly articles and books, including Here Come the Brides! Reflections on Lesbian Love and Marriage, which was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award, and Laughing Feminism: Subversive Comedy in Frances Burney, Maria Edgeworth, and Jane Austen.

She is a member of the Ms. Magazine Committee of Scholars and serves on the editorial boards of Pickering and Chatto’s Gender and Genre series and the Frances Burney Journal. Her work has appeared in Ms., the Paris Review, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Los Angeles Times and the Los Angeles Review of Books.

She received her doctoral and master of arts degrees in English at the University of Virginia and her undergraduate degree in philosophy at Oklahoma State University.

Bilger is married to Cheryl Pawelski, a Grammy Award–winning producer and cofounder of the Omnivore Entertainment Group, who serves on the National Board of Trustees for the Recording Academy.

New Faces on the Board

Three new faces and two familiar ones joined the ranks of Pomona’s Board of Trustees this summer. Elected for the first time were Kiki Ramos Gindler ’83, Osman Kibar ’92 and Jeff Parks ’02. Jennifer Doudna ’85 rejoined the Board after a four-year hiatus, and ex-officio member Christina Wire ’87 was elected to the Board in her own right.

Jennifer Doudna ’85 is a professor of molecular and cell biology and chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley, where she holds the Li Ka Shing Chancellor’s Chair in Biomedical and Health Sciences and is a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator. As a co-inventor of CRISPR-Cas9, a process that revolutionized gene editing, she has received numerous honors, including the 2014 Breakthrough Prize and both the Gairdner Award and election to the Royal Society in 2016. A chemistry major, she earned her Ph.D. from Harvard University.

Kiki Ramos Gindler ’83 earned her juris doctor degree from Harvard Law School and specialized in corporate and entertainment law. Today she devotes time to writing, civic affairs and support for the arts. The first Latina president of the Board of Directors for Center Theatre Group in Los Angeles, she serves on the boards of the Los Angeles Opera and the Music Center and is a member of the Blue Ribbon and the National Council for the American Theatre. A philosophy major, she has chaired Pomona reunion committees and hosted several alumni events.

Osman Kibar ’92 is founder/CEO of Samumed, LLC, a firm developing drugs for degenerative diseases, regenerative medicine and oncology. Featured on the cover of Forbes Magazine’s “Global Game Changers” issue, Kibar is an entrepreneur and inventor, has founded or co-founded numerous successful companies, and has authored or coauthored many publications and patents. An economics major, he pursued a 3-2 program that also earned him a B.S. in electrical engineering from Caltech. His M.S and Ph.D. in optoelectronics and biophotonics are from UC San Diego.

Jeff Parks ’02 is a founding partner of Riverwood Capital Management, a globally focused private equity firm that invests in high-growth businesses in the technology and services industries, across a variety of geographic regions and company organizations. He serves on the board of directors of several prominent technology companies, including Nutanix, Spredfast and LogRhythm. A double major in mathematics and economics at Pomona, he completed his studies in three years, so he identifies with both the Class of 2002 and the Class of 2003.

Since joining Google in 2007, Christina Wire ’87 has led a variety of groups across sales, marketing, operations, and corporate philanthropy. Today, she is the director of sales and business operations for Google Fiber. She has also held leadership roles at Intel, Stanford University, and the U.S. Department of State, where she began her career. She holds master’s degrees from Columbia University and Northwestern’s Kellogg Graduate School of Management. As National Chair of the Annual Fund, she was an ex-officio member of the Board from 2014 to 2016.

Milestones: Commencement 2016

August 3, 2016 by Staff Comments Off

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“You’re sitting here at the edge of opportunity. You have so much power and so much reach—much more reach than any generation before you. You have the same tools that we had—you can work hard, you can vote, you can speak out—but you have a whole set of new tools at your fingertips, literally, and that can help make the world not only better, but a little closer to the 9-year-old’s ideal.”

—Deborah Bial

Founder and president of the Posse Foundation,

speaking to the Class of 2016 at Commencement

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Backstage: Return of the Oaks

August 3, 2016 by Carla Guerrero ’06 Comments Off

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The mesa oak, with its bluish-green leaves and majestic stature, was almost completely wiped out from the landscape of Claremont and surrounding areas more than a century ago. Now Pomona’s bringing this endangered native tree back to campus, thanks to the work of veteran groundskeeper Kevin Quanstrom.

Since 2006, crews have planted about 30 mesa oak trees, also known as the Engelmann or Pasadena oak, in and around the College. Quanstrom, assistant director of grounds and housekeeping, says adding the mesa to the campus’ much larger number—in the hundreds—of coast live oaks helps diversify and strengthen Pomona’s tree population.

More than the bluish leaf color sets the mesa oaks apart: These trees are less susceptible to sudden oak death caused by pests and disease brought on by the ongoing drought, which took its toll on some of the older coast live oak trees that once lined Bonita Avenue. Quanstrom and his team had to remove those damaged trees when the roadway was rebuilt a few years ago, replacing them with the mesa.

“It’s important to understand native plants and to put native plants where you can,” says Quanstrom, who has worked at Pomona since 2004. “When going from nonnative to native plants, you’re always going to save water because native plants tend to be dormant in the summertime. People should care—these trees were part of the ecosystem before we got here, and once the trees are more established, they will help save water.”

With new developments across campus, Quanstrom took advantage of the opportunities to lay down the mesa oak around the Studio Art Hall and Sontag Greek Theatre, along Columbia Avenue and on the east side of Oldenborg Center.

Quanstrom has extensive experience with native habitat restoration, and although the tree is not readily found at local nurseries or big-name home improvement stores, he tracked down a grower in Riverside who could provide them.

Though always outnumbered by the more prolific coast live oaks, mesa oaks were most plentiful up to the mid-19th century, thriving in an area running from Pasadena as far south as Baja California. Then numbers dwindled as a result of logging. “It was very popular for lumber because it’s a very straight oak tree,” says Quanstrom.

At the same time, settlers began to fill the area and citrus trees replaced native vegetation, says Environmental Analysis Professor Char Miller, who notes that the mesa was a key timber used to shore up the new houses and buildings.

“My bet is that some of the College’s earliest buildings may have contained lumber milled from this local tree. The mesa oak largely disappeared from its historic sites by the early 20th century, and its loss is one of the reasons my wife and I planted one in our backyard, a small reclaiming of this area’s environmental past.”

Back on campus, the oak plantings are part of a larger effort to introduce drought-tolerant plants, but Miller finds the return of the majestic trees to be a particular point of pride. “This restoration project is a marker of the College’s sustainability commitments and our willingness to invest in making the grounds less thirsty, more resilient,” he says.

Archives: The Cain Mystery

August 3, 2016 by Mark Wood Comments Off

PCM-summer2016text58-web2_Page_14_Image_0001 ITEM: Class cane
DATE: 1926
DESCRIPTION: Tapering hardwood walking cane 35 inches long, with a 5-inch curved handle.
ORIGIN: Unknown

The tradition of college canes seems to have been fairly common in the United States during the 19th century and the early part of the 20th. At Amherst College, for instance, freshmen had to wear a beanie, but as sophomores, they could wear a class top hat and carry a class cane. At Dartmouth College, the eagerness of first-year students to gain these status symbols led to a yearly competition called the Cane Rush, eventually banned for the violence it provoked. Today few remnants of that tradition survive. At Dartmouth, during Commencement, graduating seniors still carry canes topped with carvings related to their senior society—such as a griffin or a phoenix. And at Amherst, the tradition had a brief revival in 2003, when the College awarded specially designed class canes to all of its graduating seniors.
At Pomona there are only a few tantalizing references to the cane tradition. For instance, a description of campus activities in 1911 says: “If freshmen won both the Pole Rush and the subsequent freshman-sophomore football game, they got to carry around canes for a few weeks. If the sophomores won, they got to punish the freshmen by making them wear something embarrassing and smacking them with paddles if they refused.”
The cane pictured here is from the Class of 1926, as evidenced by the inlaid metal strip embossed with the totem pole design that was the symbol of that class, also to be found in the pages of that year’s Metate yearbook. Beyond that we know nothing. It was discovered in a closet of the Alumni Relations Office in Seaver House, its provenance and history unknown. If you have information to share about this cane or about the class cane tradition at Pomona, we invite you to contact us.

If you have an item from Pomona’s history that you would like to see preserved in the Pomona College Archives, please call 909-621-8138.

Stray Thoughts: Faith and Spirituality

August 3, 2016 by Mark Wood Comments Off

PCM-summer2016text58-web2_Page_09_Image_0003 Pomona’s original seal, emblazoned with the words “Our Tribute to Christian Civilization,” adorned every Pomona diploma for almost a century. Appropriate in 1887 for a church-founded college where theology was part of the curriculum, it slowly became an anachronism, as the College cut ties with the church and drew students from many traditions. Steve Glass ’57 still laughs good-naturedly about receiving a diploma imprinted with that motto just before going to Bridges Hall of Music to be married in a traditional Jewish ceremony.

Over the years, as American culture grew steadily more secular, American colleges—once places for reinforcing inherited belief systems—became, instead, places for questioning them. I was reminded of this fact as I prepared for this issue, when a couple of students declined to take part because their parents weren’t yet aware of their evolving beliefs.

Just in the past decade, according to a study by the Pew Research Center, the portion of the “millennial” generation with no religious affiliation has grown from a quarter to more than a third. Pomona students may be slightly ahead of that curve, judging by the Princeton Review’s rather eclectic rankings, in which Pomona seems to be perennially listed in the top 10 for “least religious students.” (Last year, we were number nine.)

But another study, conducted at UCLA in the early 2000s, found that while religious affiliation typically declines during those college years, “spirituality”—defined as “an active quest for answers to life’s ‘big questions,’ a global worldview that transcends ethnocentrism and egocentrism, a sense of caring and compassion for others coupled with a lifestyle that includes service to others”—actually increases.

That’s one of the reasons why institutions across the country are beefing up offices that provide spiritual counseling and promote religious expression or community service. Here at The Claremont Colleges, for example, the Office of Chaplains recently appointed a new Muslim chaplain, who joins Catholic, Protestant and Jewish chaplains at the McAlister Center to support the needs of individual students and groups spanning a wide spectrum of beliefs.

Since 1914, Pomona’s gates have welcomed students who are “eager, thoughtful and reverent” and encouraged them to “bear their added riches in trust” for humankind. Today we may understand those words a bit differently than when they were first carved. We may speak about reverence for truth instead of reverence for a particular deity. We may discuss the ethic of helping others without framing it in a religious context. But Pomona students continue to keep the faith in their own individual ways.

—MW

Letter Box

August 3, 2016 by Staff Comments Off

Dying With Dignity

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I read your “Before I Die” article with interest, as I am sure most of us from the Class of 1962 did. It is called current events. However, I suggest that there is one important part of the death process that was not included in the story.

Twenty years ago Oregon passed the nation’s first Death With Dignity Act. Two years later an attempt to repeal it was soundly defeated. My wife and I voted in favor of the act both times, little suspecting that we would use it later. Since then, Washington, Vermont, California and Montana have passed virtually identical laws, and quite a few other states are considering such a law now. The law is nothing at all like the “death panels” that Gov. Palin carried on about for a long time.

In our case, my wife had colon cancer surgery and then breast cancer surgery within one year. Initially the doctors believed that the surgeries were successful. The colon cancer never returned, but the breast cancer came back three years later. After four more surgeries during the next six years, four rounds of radiology treatments (15 each) and close to 100 chemotherapy treatments, her body began to stop functioning. She did not want to get to a point that she would be a “vegetable” (her term) in a care facility, and the family could recognize that life, as any normal person would like to live it, was about over. She was bedridden and had stopped eating or processing food.

A two-week process is required, with certifications from two doctors that the patient’s life will likely end within six months. The doctors referred us to Compassion & Choices, a fabulous group of volunteers nationwide who are leading the effort to expand legislation in other states, and who provide volunteers to help with the process. My wife took the medicine and passed away in less than an hour. She was satisfied with the process, as were all of the family, and friends when told about it later.

C&C can provide much more specific information on the subject. But with the law now in effect in CA, and with so many Pomona alums living in California, I believe it is important that information about Death With Dignity should be included in the otherwise very interesting article you wrote this quarter.

—James A. (Jim) Johnson ’62

Portland, Ore.

Face to Face

PCM-summer2016text58-web2_Page_10_Image_0002 We loved the latest Pomona College Magazine “Face to Face” feature. We wanted to share our relationship to last a lifetime.

In the summer of 1963, we each received a letter from Dean of Women Ina T. Nider informing us that we had been assigned to one another as freshman roommates. It was apparently a successful pairing. We were suite-mates sophomore year and roommates again our senior year. Linda was a religion major, active in Chapel Committee and the Claremont Committee to End the War in Vietnam. Lesley was a biochemistry major and spent most of her time in the chemistry lab.

After graduation, Lesley went on to obtain a Ph.D. in molecular biology at the University of Wisconsin, did two postdoctoral fellowships at UC Berkeley and then worked for 32 years at the Oregon Health and Science University in Portland, starting as an assistant professor and serving her last 20 years as provost. She has served as president of Pacific University in Forest Grove, Ore., since 2009.

Linda worked in a garment factory in San Diego, then obtained her teaching credential and taught for 36 years in inner-city Los Angeles, the last 28 years at Manual Arts High School, retiring in 2009. Finding that unsatisfactory, she went back to school, obtained a master’s in history at Cal State Los Angeles and is now an adjunct instructor at East Los Angeles College.

Through the years, we have shared annual trips to Disneyland with our kids, weddings, divorces, an untimely funeral and innumerable photographs of adorable grandchildren. We currently see each other a couple of times a year, chat regularly on Facebook and compete daily in cutthroat games of Words With Friends.

Thanks, Ina T.

—Linda Baughn ’67

Los Angeles, Calif.

and Lesley Moore Hallick ’67

Forest Grove, Ore.

You do, indeed, publish a beautiful magazine! I usually start at the back, to see if any of my classmates are in the Class Notes. Then I page through the entire thing.

However, this month your “Face to Face” feature grabbed my attention right away, so I read all of these stories first thing. That was a clever and time-consuming project for you, I would think. Loved it! The only face I knew was that of Bob Herman ’51. As I remember, he has led our class tours of the campus on Alumni Weekends. A terrific storyteller! My husband, DeForrest ’61 and I met at Pomona, so the married couples who met there were of special interest. We’ve been married 52 years.

One of the many things I like about the magazine is how you include stories from the school’s past, along with what is currently happening on campus. Of course, I love to read what the graduates have done recently. I’m always interested in the books they’ve published. I appreciate your including very short articles as well as longer ones in just the right mix. Some college magazines are so dense with material that there is no hope of reading everything.

DeForrest and I spent a bit of time studying Jeff Hing’s gorgeous double-page photo of the campus. The snow-covered mountains with the clouds spilling over them were spectacular.

I’ve finished reading the “Letter Box.” So, what to read next … the story on Cuba, since some of my friends are traveling there? The article about the celebrity photographer? Maybe about that “youngster” Peggy Arnold, who graduated three years after I did.

My grandniece is a Pomona student at the moment, so I feel that your magazine is keeping me in touch with her there. I’m looking forward to my 55th reunion next year. How I love returning to that beautiful place, full of so many memories.

—Bonnie Bennett Home ’62

San Jose, Calif.

As a friend of Pomona College, I have enjoyed reading Pomona College Magazine for many years. The latest issue moves me to send this appreciation of the continuing quality of the publication under your most competent custodianship. I especially liked the piece about relationships. This reminder of how important and durable they can be during one’s collegiate interlude is nicely done. Thanks to you, your staff and contributors.

—Gilbert Pattison Joynt

Seattle, Wash.

Pomona Lifeline

Since my retirement in 2006, the Pomona College Magazine has become my cherished lifeline to the College and the Pomona family and community that was my home for so many years—and I miss so keenly. Each issue offers delight and fascination for me, as you offer marvelous features about the extraordinary individuals within our diverse community whose creative lives have so enriched our world. As such, the magazine is a beacon of hope for me in a world so darkened by forces of bitter divisiveness and destruction. Our Pomona students, faculty, administration, staff and alumni all have voices within your magazine, and I read every word to learn more about their lives and accomplishments and to celebrate them.

May I say, too, as an English teacher forever enamored with fine writing, that the quality of writing in every article is superb. I especially enjoy your “Stray Thoughts,” always a personal and engaging reflection on issues at hand from your marvelously unique and candid point of view.

Your layout and design are glorious indeed. You offer visual as well as verbal pleasures.

With every best wish for the flourishing of the Pomona College Magazine—and for your ongoing delight in your devoted and inspired efforts for us all.

—Martha Andresen Wilder

Professor Emerita of English

Claremont, Calif.

Note Correction

In the Class of ’59 Notes in PCM Spring 2016, there are three entries: Epps, Lathrop Wells and myself. Two of us were botany majors (there were, in total, three botany majors in 1959. How’s that for keeping the Pomona College connection? I think botany was unique because of the three-day field trip fall and spring to all of the vegetation zones of the West over a three-quarter-year span. These field trips formed a cohesion to the department and College, just as student research with faculty does today. Both Betsy and I had keys to the botany building—master keys at that—and this was a bonding element also. But somehow, my note in Class Notes ended short of the complete sentence. I intended for it to say: “I am rich in experiences, but in retirement short on pension. Pomona and Harvard shaped my life, and I will be eternally grateful for the expanding opportunities and challenges I took from them.” I appreciate the correction. We are downsizing and I found 60-year-old 8-page magazines—a far cry from now.

—Garrison Wilkes ’59

Hingham, Mass.

Alumni, parents and friends are invited to email letters to pcm@pomona.edu or “snail-mail” them to Pomona College Magazine, 550 North College Ave., Claremont, CA 91711. Letters may be edited for length, style and clarity.

The Full Elon

August 3, 2016 by Sneha Abraham Comments Off

In his New York Times bestseller Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future, Ashlee Vance ’00, veteran tech journalist and TV host of Bloomberg’s Hello World, reports on the daring business titan’s life and the rise of his innovative companies in finance, the auto industry, aerospace and energy. With exclusive, unprecedented access to Musk, his family and friends, Vance interviewed nearly 300 people for a book hailed as “masterful,” a “riveting portrait,” and “the definitive account of a man whom so far we’ve seen mostly through caricature.” Vance talked to PCM’s Sneha Abraham about the journey of the book and about Musk—a man both lauded and lambasted.

This interview has been edited and condensed.

PCM: Why write about Elon Musk?

Vance: When I started out and I was at The New York Times and places like that, Elon was just never really on my radar. I sort of felt like he was this guy who used to run around Silicon Valley promising all these wonderful things and never really delivering on them. I kind of pegged him as your run-of-the-mill techno-utopian guy. In 2012 everything started to change for me because SpaceX got to the International Space Station and Tesla came out with the Model S, which not just people in Silicon Valley but people in Detroit and around the world hailed as one of the best cars ever made. And SolarCity, his third company, filed to go public. That all happened in the span of just a couple of months.

I just thought, “Wow. This guy who’s been promising all of this stuff for all these years has just delivered in this huge way.” So I set out to do a cover story on him for Businessweek, and that’s when it really became obvious to me that this is the book that I wanted to do.

I visited the Tesla factory, which is spectacular, and then the SpaceX factory, which is really what hooked me in. It was right in the middle of Los Angeles, and I thought they’d kind of be cobbling together this one rocket, but they were mass producing rockets in this gleaming white factory, with thousands of people running around, and there was just this unreal energy to the place.

And then I interviewed Elon for the story, and he struck me as so much more interesting than I had ever really given him credit for. He has this amazing life story, this kind of self-made man from South Africa, who had a very difficult upbringing and all these trials and tribulations along the way. And then he was just way more authentic and down-to-earth when I interviewed him than I expected, and I thought, “Man, this guy has lived an incredible life and would make a great story.”

PCM: How did this book take off?

Vance: So after the interview for Businessweek, I sent him an email and asked, “Hey, have you ever thought about cooperating with a book about you?” And he said, “Look, a lot of people have asked me, and I’ve had to turn them down, and I just don’t think it’s the right time.” And I said OK, and then I went and I sold the book anyway in New York. I thought if I sold the book, it would sort of force his hand, and he would end up cooperating. So then, after I sold the book, we had a big hour-long meeting at Tesla’s headquarters in Palo Alto. And Elon came in and I gave him the whole spiel on why I w wanted to do the book and why it was a good idea for him to do interviews and all that.

And two days after that meeting he sent me an email, and he said, “Look, I can’t do this.” And I think he thought I would give up on the project—and I did think about it.

I went out for this eight-mile run after that and was really distraught. I had already sold the book. I kind of rolled the dice and lost. And I just was out there running and I thought, “Well, what would Elon do in the same situation? He would just keep going.” So I decided to keep going, and then I spent the next 18 months interviewing. I interviewed about 200 people and it was all his friends, his family, his ex-girlfriends, his ex-employees.

PCM: So he didn’t send out a “Don’t talk to Ashlee” memo?

Vance: Yeah, that was a weird thing. I didn’t know how things would play out after he said no. I kind of thought he would tell people not to talk to me, but no, the opposite happened. A lot of people that I reached out to would, of course, write to him or call him and say, “Hey, this guy wants to talk to me,” and he gave approval to everyone. Nobody turned me down. And so that encouraged me because I thought, “He’s not making life as miserable for me as he could, and so I’ll keep pushing forward.” And then after those 18 months that’s when he called me at home one day, and then we had dinner shortly after that.

In the phone call he said, “Look, I might cooperate, but I want control of the book and everything.” So I was thinking, “Oh man, I’ve come this far and now there’s this thing that I just cannot agree to.” And so I was still sort of dreading that, and so then I got to the dinner and I had this huge speech. I had spent time rehearsing all these reasons that it made sense for him to cooperate and why I had to do it like a proper journalist and not give him control. And I got about five minutes into the speech, and then he just said, “OK, fine. Let’s do it.” My reaction then—I had to hold it all inside—but I was screaming on the inside. So much work had gone into it, this huge gamble and just this intense amount of pressure. It just felt like, “My God, this is all going to be worth it.” And I knew the book would be so much better with him participating in it.

PCM: How did your perception of him change as these interviews over the next year were happening? Because you write that you came in thinking he was just another big shot sort of megalomaniac.

Vance: My impressions had already started to change a bit after I did the cover story. I was always really impressed with how open he was. He never came in with any handlers or anything; it was always just me and him. So initially, for the first three interviews, it was frustrating because he was basically repeating a lot of things that he always talks about, and I felt like I wasn’t getting anywhere. And then it was around the fourth interview where he really started to open up, and I felt like I was seeing a side of Elon that no journalist had ever seen before. We could talk about anything, and he never dodged questions or tried to deflect me. I felt like he gave me these really rich answers about his philosophies of life, and about all these moments in the history of the company, and I got this much deeper insight. We would sort of trade off-the-record information back and forth.

Even when I was first starting the book, he had accomplished these amazing things, but it was unclear how sustainable these companies were. If you really could make them enduring and still pull off all this lofty stuff. Half the people still thought that he was crazy.

And over time, as I learned more and more about the companies and Elon, I just came away, not in a fanboy sense, but to sort of witness this guy firsthand and his resolve and how relentless he is, whether it’s him telling a story or it’s meeting the thousands of engineers around him. I just came away thinking, “Man, this guy. It may take him longer than he says—things might be more expensive sometimes than what he says—but this guy is absolutely going to accomplish what he sets his mind to.” In that sense, he’s unlike any exec I’ve ever interviewed. There are obviously very driven, intelligent people. But to me, what became obvious is—this is not a job for him; it’s a life’s calling. He is sort of playing on a different field, and a lot of people around him are as well. My big takeaway is that he was just more capable than I had even imagined.

I’d say the other thing I’ve learned over time is just that Elon really is a hard dude. You would hear more and more stories about what he expects from employees or the demands he puts on people, and then I started to feel that personally. It was a very rocky, back-and-forth thing that we had. Where he really didn’t want to be participating in this but was doing it and wanted to exert control, and I wouldn’t let him. So, yes, actually I felt all this stuff personally, and I feel like that gave me a taste for the full Elon.

PCM: How did he react to the book?

Vance: Well, it kind of went in stages. He got the book and then he was going through it and he was emailing me all of the time, like every couple of pages. So that was kind of an interesting experience, but most of that was sort of harmless. He plucked out a couple of things that he disagreed with, and then at the very end of a couple of days of him reading it, he came back and said it was 95 percent accurate, which for Elon was hilarious, not only that he gave me a score, but also that it was that high. He said it was well done. A couple of weeks passed, and then the media finally got their copies of the book, and a couple of the early stories focused on what a tough boss he is, and he got really upset that that’s sort of the direction that the press was taking at the beginning. So then there was big blowback. He was really unhappy that he was kind of getting portrayed that way, and so our relationship has not been the same since.

PCM: How does he come across, and how would you describe his personality?

Vance: The most basic thing is just he’s the most intense, driven individual I’ve ever met and one of the most capable human beings in the sense that he’s in all of these different industries. He’s doing technical stuff, marketing, design, day-to-day operations of the companies. It’s this incredible thing. As a person, there are different flavors of Elon. There’s the guy that you sit down with at dinner, and he’s not immediately charming and charismatic. He’s more like an engineer. He’s very serious and takes a little while to warm up. But then, even that guy, you warm him up and then he’s obviously very bright, he’s funny. He has an amazing sense of humor that I think most people miss. And he’s amazing to talk to. It was the thing I would look forward to most every month. So there’s that side to him—this surprisingly down-to-earth, intense, intelligent, funny guy. And then there’s the other side to him, too. For the employees, he’s super-demanding. He sets these incredibly lofty goals. He expects everybody to meet them. He can be really hard on people in meetings and in that sense comes off as unempathetic to his people and can come off as kind of callous and cold. And then, I think, for his friends there’s a very different side. I think he’s got a small circle of really close friends. And I think for them, he’s a much more fun-loving guy who is a lot of fun to be around.

PCM: Where do you think his faith in himself comes from? Because you write about how he had this awful childhood, and reading about that, one would guess he wouldn’t turn out to be the way that he is. Where does that sense of self-confidence that he can accomplish anything come from?

Vance: I think that his difficult childhood in a lot of ways hardened him and taught him to be willing to take risks. It’s a similar story you see with lots of these guys. If you leave the country where you’re born—say you go to Canada with zero in your pocket, and you’re off on your own at this young age—there are few things later on that are going to be harder than that. In a sense, running a business and taking a risk and all of that pales in comparison to what you’ve already been through. He talks about it a lot. He learned to just sort of suffer. So things like long hours or a business collapsing or all this pressure, he deals with that really well. I think that self-confidence thing definitely seems like it was learned over time, because at Zip2 and PayPal you see this guy who is not a very sure-handed manager. He’s really upsetting his employees. He’s having fights with other board members. And I think it was during that process where he sort of learns to become who he is today, and his self-confidence grows almost out of necessity.

He’s very logical, I think, and so part of it is just if he sees something he wants to do, and he thinks it’s the right thing to do, he’s decided that he’s going to do it. It’s this very binary thing. He’s just like, “This makes sense to me. I’m going to pursue it with all my energy.” I think he’s just wired a little bit different than most people.

PCM: So, he wants to turn humans into space colonizers. What do you think it reveals about his personality that his goals are so high?

Vance: I think it’s oddly that logical side of him. I don’t know. I guess you could think back to Columbus or Magellan or somebody, these really adventurous, flamboyant explorers. I think his original impetus for this is much more clinical and logical. “There should be a backup plan for the human species, and there isn’t a very good one, and I’m going to go build it.” And he does have this weird form of empathy, where he genuinely cares deeply, not about individual people as much but more about the human species. He would break down in tears when he was talking about the colony. It comes from this very logical, software-programmer place that you should back up your files and your work.

PCM: Do you think he has an equal today?

Vance: No. People always want to compare him to Steve Jobs or Edison or whatever. It’s sort of hard. It’s difficult because he’s a work in progress, and we don’t know where some of his stuff is going to end. But even just the face value of what he’s accomplished so far, you cannot find another human being that’s changed industries as diverse as finance, aerospace, automotive and energy. I think on that level he has no equal today or really ever.

I think clearly he has to get an affordable electric car out that is good and that people want and that they sell a lot of, in order for him to be considered a success with Tesla. I think SpaceX has to really get this reusable rocket technology done. He’s got to get to Mars in order for that to be considered a huge, forever-world-altering success. For SolarCity, it has to be proven that that’s a really sustainable business. There are a lot of people that argue that they’re not going to be profitable going forward. And so yeah, there are all of these question marks about exactly where he ends up in the pantheon of inventors and businesspeople.

As far as equals today, Larry Page and Jeff Bezos come to mind. I feel like those three guys are all in this camp of people who are willing to spend money on big, long-term things that are far afield from apps and things like that. They’re all working on these big computer services but also these crazy machines, and really bringing science fiction to life. So, in that sense, I think they’re sort of in similar camps. But I think Elon’s probably taken bigger risks so far and arguably been more successful with these other businesses.

ELON MUSK: TESLA, SPACEX, AND THE QUEST FOR A FANTASTIC FUTURE

BY ASHLEE VANCE ’00

ECCO, 2015

400 PAGES | $28.99

Daring, Feetfirst

August 3, 2016 by Stefan Castellanos ’11 Comments Off

To enter Los Angeles County from the southeast, follow Pacific Coast Highway through Seal Beach and onto a bridge spanning Los Cerritos Wetlands and the San Gabriel River. Off to your left, the marshy expanse turns to ocean. On your right, factory smokestacks stand against a hazy mountain range. The four-lane road narrows as it rises over the swamp. Go about a quarter mile until you reach a stoplight, where the road levels and widens again. You’re in Long Beach now. There’s a Whole Foods on the left if you’d like a snack.

Crossing this kind of imaginary line on a ho-hum stretch of highway is hardly noteworthy for drivers. Likewise for cyclists, able to coast up the easy incline in their own lane. But since I’m on foot, my experience is more visceral. I toe the rightmost white line of the bike lane and feel the surprising definition of the paint underfoot. I hurdle a semicircle of fibrous black rubber, being careful not to land in a puddle of shattered window glass. Still, I’m thankful to be on the road, rather than slogging through the mud as I did several days before. As for that imaginary line, it still isn’t real, just like that tall can of coconut water isn’t really a glass of champagne. Sure tastes like sweet, small victory though. Cheers to staying alive and feeling it, too.

At a table outside the Whole Foods, four cyclists who blew right past me on the bridge sit eating fruit and potato chips.

“How long have you been running, man?”

“Since Mexico. Only 30 more miles till L.A.”

“Damn, dude! That’s wild. I’ve never even thought of going that far.”

“Ha, to be honest, I hadn’t either. Just went for it.”

The trip had come together quickly, almost foolishly so. I remember waiting to board an afternoon flight to San Diego while I took stock of my personal effects: a small CamelBak, an outdated guidebook, a four-year-old iPhone with a faulty battery, a sore left knee. Less than two weeks prior, I’d volunteered to travel the 150 miles from the Mexican border to downtown Los Angeles on foot, by myself, blazing the trail for others to make the journey this August. It would be called El Camino del Inmigrante—the Way of the Immigrant—a display of solidarity and a rallying cry for policy reform, an initiative proposed by my father.

A few months before, my father and I had completed the Camino de Santiago together, walking 500 miles from the Pyrenees to the Atlantic across northern Spain. And as it so often does, emerging from such a crucible subconsciously compelled us to apply the principles of pilgrimage to our own lives, framing our goals and pursuits as a journey necessary for self-actualization. For me, the rite marked a return to running and a renewed will to explore. For my dad, it provided a means of mobilizing other activists and allies, using an inherently spiritual framework as a forum for discussing worldly issues. CEO of the Christian Community Development Association and longtime crusader for immigration reform, he’s lived the past 25 years of his life in La Villita, a Mexican community on Chicago’s West Side, feeling the struggle of the undocumented American on a personal level while giving voice to it on a national one. He is just the man for this mission. As for me—restless, a little reckless and perpetually in search of purpose—I make the perfect scout. Vamos.

The real thing will be a 10-day affair, with dozens of walkers, plus nightly events and fellowship. (They will also be skipping the dangerous parts, for the record.) For this scouting trip, I’m giving myself only five days, on account of professional obligations back home.

Now, standing in International Friendship Park—as far southwest as you can go on U.S. soil—I slap the wrought-iron border fence as if to start a stopwatch and take off, hoping the dirt trails will prove a safer alternative to the sidewalk-less streets. Before long I’m high-stepping through the muddy chaparral down dead-end paths, dodging boulder-sized tumbleweeds. There are helicopters patrolling overhead, trying (I imagine) to catch me runnin’ dirty. But it isn’t just the danger or the adrenaline that gets my mind running wild. Rather, it begins with the diagnostic scan any runner naturally takes of his or her own body over those first few moments or first few miles, identifying any sensations—good, bad or otherwise—and weighing them against the reality of the distance ahead. For me, it’s a hyper-awareness that can’t help but radiate outward, connecting me to the street or the buildings or passersby.

Perhaps this is why so many people claim to do their best thinking on the move. Besides simply getting the blood flowing, the movement plants a tiny seed of symbiosis, sprouting into curiosity, empathy and compassion.

I make it out of the dirt-road labyrinth and up the Silver Strand to Coronado. Into San Diego via ferry and on to La Jolla, where I sleep in a van with a minimalist friend from college. Past Torrey Pines Golf Course, merging onto the sidewalks of Highway 101, I shuffle through Del Mar, then Encinitas, then Carlsbad, straight into an ice bath in the tub of an Oceanside motel. Two days, 60 miles down. Not fully awake yet, I find myself staring down the end of an automatic rifle. One does not simply jog into Camp Pendleton, it seems. The chunky-necked marine lowers the barrel and points it toward the bus I have to take to the other side of the base. I hop out in San Clemente and continue on to Laguna Beach, fear-sprinting the last few miles on the shoulder of the narrow highway. I watch the sunset on a rock and go out on the town for some beers, at least one for each of today’s brushes with death. The fourth day is heavenly by comparison, past Newport, Huntington and Seal Beach on a long, leisurely stroll. And then, the bridge.

Back in L.A. County, mind as sharp as I can ever remember, I’m now headed in a clear direction. It’s exactly the opposite of how I left five years prior. Lining up alphabetically to take part in commencement exercises, I could see the banners strung upright from the lampposts along Stover Walk. They were beaded with water from the drizzling rain, the 2-D portraits of my outstanding friends and classmates taking on a slick, watery shine. They were the faces of Campaign Pomona: Daring Minds, celebrating an attribute supposedly shared by all of us receiving diplomas that day. It was an unsettling sight, because my own mind felt as blunt as a butter knife. I was in a fog, stuck in the mud, wondering how I would make myself useful—let alone successful—outside of Claremont.

To say that the opposite of rumination is motion—literally moving forward—seems strangely metaphorical. “Moving on” in a psychological or emotional sense somehow seems far more practical, even though this act of personal progress is itself a metaphor derived from corporeal movement. “Walk it off” is sound advice after being plunked by a fastball, but it’s hardly a tonic for indecision or identity crisis. Those are situations you reason and educate your way out of, carefully weighing the possible outcomes before starting down a path in earnest. It’s not called “Campaign Pomona: Daring Bodies,” mind you.

But as I returned home to Chicago as a new graduate, confused and neurotic, something strange began to happen. I started walking and running long distances, sometimes for exercise, sometimes because I was too broke for bus fare, but mostly because I didn’t know what else to do. And the more I moved from point to point—across the neighborhood, across the city, across finish lines—the more connected it all seemed to be. Not just this house to that house or this train station to that office building, but this community to that one, this reality to one a world apart. After an interdisciplinary education from a liberal arts college, this was my graduate course in Applied Everything. Each discrete skill was plotted on a map, and now I was learning to connect these disciplines to forge a purposeful path, one that had now led me back to where this meandering journey began.

I say goodbye to my new cyclist friends at the Whole Foods and jog the last few miles into Cambodia Town, Long Beach, where I stay for the night. Up and out of there at the crack of dawn, my fifth and final day seems almost ceremonial, just an easy 20-mile trot up the L.A. River bike path, through Skid Row and straight to the Westin Bonaventure downtown, the host hotel for the annual CCDA conference and the end point of the Camino. I slap the side of the building as if to turn off the stopwatch and call my dad. It’s done and dusted—a clear, walkable line from the wrought-iron fence to a shiny marble bench there at the valet stand. I take a seat and stare down at my shoes. They’re still caked with dried mud from the border field.

To claim that I suddenly understand the struggle of the immigrant because I ran a long way up a scenic trail would be ridiculous. I don’t; I never will. If anything, an affinity for recreational pain is proof that I’ve suffered—truly suffered—very little in my lifetime. But to reduce physical effort to mere sport may be just as misguided. I’ve seen aimless tours of a city open the mind to life’s beautiful web of alleyways and back roads. I’ve seen a cross-country trek take a father-son relationship from small talk to real talk. And I’ve felt a boldness of body spark an audacity of mind. So to say that this journey has made me a more engaged and empathetic individual, and that it may yet play a tiny role in some big change—well, that doesn’t sound ridiculous at all.

The following day I return home. There’s a letter from Pomona in my mailbox, announcing the conclusion of the historically successful Daring Minds campaign. And upon seeing it, instead of that undeserving, stuck-in-the-mud feeling from five years back, I feel proud, knowing that there was something daring in me all along. The only difference was, I had to dare feetfirst and work my way up.

No Más

August 3, 2016 by Alexander Gelfand Comments Off

MOST DOCTORS HAVE war stories from their days as medical students: their first encounter with a cadaver; their first rotation in the emergency room. Few, however, compare with Karen Benker’s.

As a student at the University of Southern California’s School of Medicine from 1967 to 1971, Benker did rotations at what was then the L.A. County Hospital (now LAC+USC Medical Center), a large public teaching hospital in the predominantly Mexican-American neighborhood of Boyle Heights. She became especially familiar with the obstetrics ward in the Women’s Hospital unit, where she worked as an obstetric technician, delivering babies on the night shift.

It was an eye-opening experience.

On her very first day on the ward, Benker heard a senior physician declare how “wonderful” it was that the obstetrics department had just received “a big federal grant to cut the birthrate of the black and Mexican population.” Soon after, she would discover that many African- and Mexican-American patients were in fact bullied into being surgically sterilized.

“You want this?” she recalls hearing one resident ask a laboring woman as he held a syringe full of painkilling medicine in front of her, a sterilization consent form at the ready. “Sign!”

“It was barbaric,” says Benker, who is now an associate professor of health policy and management and associate dean for community public health affairs at SUNY Downstate College of Medicine in Brooklyn, New York.

In 1975, a small team of lawyers filed a class action civil rights lawsuit in federal district court against the hospital and state and federal officials on behalf of 10 Mexican-American women who claimed that they were coerced into undergoing a sterilization procedure known as tubal ligation. The lawyers argued that sterilizing their clients without their informed consent violated their right to bear children—a right guaranteed under the Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade.

Once largely forgotten, the story of Madrigal v. Quilligan came to national prominence again in 2015 thanks to the release of No Más Bebés (“No More Babies”), a documentary film by Academy Award–nominated director Renee Tajima-Peña that explores the events surrounding the case. And the details of what transpired remain as disquieting today as they were when Karen Benker first witnessed them nearly 50 years ago.

Some of the women of Madrigal were sterilized without their knowledge while under general anesthetic, only to discover months or years later that they could no longer bear children. Others were falsely assured that the procedure was medically necessary or easily reversible; most were pressured into giving consent while they were in active labor, their minds fogged by painkillers. Several were accused by nurses of “burdening the taxpayers” with their offspring, or harassed by doctors who insisted that their poverty and immigration status would make it difficult for them to raise any more children.

Although a resident at the hospital leaked evidence crucial to the case, Benker was the only hospital employee who testified in court on behalf of the plaintiffs; the rest either agreed with what had gone on or feared retribution. “She’s a great heroine in my eyes,” says Virginia Espinosa, the historian who produced No Más Bebés. “She would not be silent.”

Although the judge found in favor of the defendants, the publicity generated by Madrigal helped draw attention to a pattern of coerced sterilization among minority and low-income women throughout the United States. (Other affected groups included African-Americans in the South, Native Americans under the care of the Indian Health Service, and working-class women in Puerto Rico.) The case ultimately helped drive changes to sterilization laws and consent protocols across the country, and expanded the conversation around reproductive rights to include not only abortion and birth control, but also the right to procreate.

As a result, says Benker, the women of Madrigal lost their case, but they won the battle.

Seated at a long oval conference table in the SUNY Downstate building, the surrounding neighborhood of East Flatbush visible through the window behind her, Benker—thoughtful, easygoing, and quick to smile—does not look like a firebrand.

Appearances can be deceiving.

Growing up in the hamlet of Quaker Hill, Connecticut, Benker always dreamt of becoming a doctor. As an undergraduate, she was already riding the bus to USC to serve as a guinea pig in the School of Medicine’s earliest experiments with case-based learning—a model of medical training that has students meet immediately with patients, rather than spending their first two years memorizing material from textbooks. She was, she says, fairly naïve, her politics moderately conservative.

But the sixties were tumultuous times, and Benker, who speaks of the high school friends she lost in Vietnam and describes the Watts riots that raged across South Central Los Angeles in 1965 as “earth-shattering,” remembers them as an era when many in her generation became increasingly aware of the injustices perpetrated within and by American society.

The experiences that she and her fellow students shared at L.A. County Hospital could only have hastened the process. For most, she says, their encounters with patients represented their first exposure to an impoverished black and Hispanic population, and “a first understanding of what it’s like to be a 40-year-old mother with seven kids who has to work 12 hours a day.”

If time and place contributed to the awakening of Benker’s social conscience, they also conspired to provide her with a singular opportunity to act on it.

In 1909, California became one of the first states to pass a law sanctioning the nonconsensual sterilization of the feebleminded and the unfit, thereby propelling it to the forefront of the American eugenics movement. According to historian Alexandra Minna Stern, by the time California repealed its sterilization law in 1979 in response to Madrigal, the state was responsible for one-third of the more than 60,000 nonconsensual sterilizations carried out nationwide in state-run hospitals and homes.

Even after eugenics lost its luster after WWII, many in California and elsewhere continued to embrace sterilization as a tool for combating overpopulation by limiting reproduction among welfare mothers, immigrants, and others regarded as representing a burden on society. In 1968, when Benker was in her second year of medical school, the Stanford biologist Paul R. Ehrlich published The Population Bomb, which predicted that out-of-control population growth would lead to mass starvation. By that same year, approximately one-third of all women of childbearing age in Puerto Rico had been coercively sterilized under a population-control program funded by the American government.

There were other factors at play, as well. The very notion of informed consent was still in its infancy: The National Research Act, which requires that doctors obtain informed consent from human research subjects, was passed only in 1974, following the revelation that hundreds of black men had been intentionally deprived of medical treatment as part of the Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male. What’s more, the late 1960s saw a massive influx of federal funding for birth control and family-planning services, much of it pumped into public teaching hospitals like L.A. County, where residents often felt pressured by their superiors to perform a certain number of surgeries every day. And while not all hospital employees harbored racial and ethnic prejudices, some clearly did: In her deposition for Madrigal, Benker described how physicians in the Women’s Hospital referred to Chicana patients as “beans.”

Add it all up, and you have what the sociologist Elana Gutierrez has called a “perfect storm” of circumstances leading to coercive sterilization. With its high proportion of African-American and Mexican-American patients and its factory-like atmosphere—Benker recalls the labor room as a small space crammed with women crying out in pain as nurses and doctors rushed about to free up beds—the obstetrics ward at L.A. County may have been especially conducive to such abuse.

“It was a good environment for people to do the wrong thing,” she says.

It was also, for Benker, a crucible of sorts; she would devote the rest of her career to public health, advocating on behalf of immigrants, children, and other vulnerable groups.

After graduating from USC, Benker did an internship at Lincoln Hospital in the South Bronx, an area whose large Puerto Rican population still bore the scars of the territory’s mass sterilization program. While there, she helped establish the Committee to End Sterilization Abuse, or CESA (“stop” in Spanish), which convinced the New York City Council to pass a law requiring that a woman give consent no less than 30 days before being sterilized. Then she heard about Madrigal.

Antonia Hernández, the young Latina lawyer who served as co-counsel for the plaintiffs, came to New York to discuss the case and slept on the floor of Benker’s studio apartment. Benker, in turn, flew to Los Angeles to help raise funds for the suit. In 1978 she gave her testimony in federal court, a lone doctor speaking out against what she had witnessed seven years earlier.

Back in New York, Benker served as director of programs for homeless families at the New York City Department of Health; conducted research for the Legal Aid Society on the health outcomes of homeless pregnant women, which led to reforms in the services provided to such women; and investigated the conditions of children living in foster care. After coming to SUNY Downstate in the early 1990s to work with HIV patients, she became director of the school’s first Community Health Center and developed its Master of Public Health Program.

When Espinosa began researching Madrigal in 1994, Benker readily agreed to participate—just as she did when Espinosa and Tajima-Peña decided to make No Más Bebés. “Bringing the facts to a wider popular audience was thrilling to me,” she says. “It meant a new generation of people could learn about this very disturbing aspect of medical and social injustice.”

These days, Benker focuses on policy issues surrounding mental illness and spends most of her time teaching—or as she puts it, trying to develop a healthcare workforce that won’t make the mistakes of the past. Mistakes that she has seen firsthand and has spent a lifetime trying to make right.

“It’s a great way to get up in the morning,” she says.

And with that, the heroine of Madrigal pushes back her chair, rises to her feet, and prepares to set an exam for her students—young men and women, many hailing from working-class immigrant families, whom she is training to take up a battle that she has waged for nearly half a century, and of which she has clearly yet to tire.

—Photos by Casey Kelbaugh

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