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Book Talk: Migrants in the Crossfire of Love and Law

01-crossing-the-gulf-mahdavi-bookIn her new book, Crossing the Gulf: Love and Family in Migrant Lives, Associate Professor of Anthropology Pardis Mahdavi tells heartbreaking stories about migrants and trafficked mothers and their children in the Persian Gulf and talks to state officials, looking at how bonds of love get entangled with the law. Mahdavi talked to PCM’s Sneha Abraham about her book and the questions it poses about migration and families. This interview has been edited and condensed.

PCM: Talk about the relationship between family and migration.

MAHDAVI: Our concept of family has been reconceptualized and reconfigured in and through migration. People are separated from their blood-based kin; they’re forming new kinds of fictive kinship in the labor camps or abroad. Some people migrate out of a sense of familial duty, to honor their families. Sometimes they get stuck in situations which they feel they can’t get out of because of their family and familial obligations. Other people migrate to get away from their families, to get away from the watchful eyes of their families and communities. Families are not able to necessarily migrate together, and children are not able to migrate with their parents; they’re in a more tenuous relationship now than we would recognize when we look at migrants really just as laborers.

Laws complicate those relationships. Laws on migration, citizenship and human trafficking create a category of people caught in the crossfire of policies—and those people are often women and their children, and often they are trapped in situations of illegality.

PCM: Would you tease out the question of migration versus trafficking? That is something you’re exploring in your book.

MAHDAVI: I think it’s a real tension that needs to be teased out in the larger discourse. That’s the central question. What constitutes migration? What constitutes trafficking? It’s very difficult and that space is much more gray than we think. We’ve tended to assume that women in industries like the sex industry are all trafficked. We assume if there’s a woman involved, it’s the sex industry; if it’s a minor, it is trafficking; if it’s a male, if they’re in construction work, that’s migration. But that’s just not true. Trafficking really boils down to forced fraud or coercion within migration. It’s kind of a gray area, a much larger area than we think. The utility of the word “trafficking” really is questioned in the book. How useful is that word? The very definitions of migration and human trafficking are extremely politicized and depend on who you ask and when. Some people might strategically leverage the term, whereas other people strategically dodge it.

Some interpretations have positively elevated the importance of issues that migrants face; other people might say that the framework is used to demonize migrants or further restrict their movement.

PCM: What’s an example of a policy that affects these issues of migration and trafficking?

MAHDAVI: The United States Trafficking in Persons Report (TIP) is one policy, kind of a large one, to the extent that the report ranks all the countries into tiers and then makes recommendations based on their rankings. And sometimes the recommendations that the TIP report makes actually exacerbate the situation instead of making it better.

For instance, the United Arab Emirates is frequently ranked Tier 2, or Tier 2 Watchlist [countries that do not comply with minimum standards for protecting victims of trafficking but are making efforts], and the recommendation is that there should be more prosecutions and there should be more police. Now, the police in the U.A.E. are imported oftentimes, and from my interviews with migrant workers, it’s often the police who are raping sex workers and domestic workers. So you double up your cops, you double up your perpetrators of rape. So that is a policy that’s not helping anyone.

Other policies are more tethered to citizenship. They don’t have soil-based or birthright citizenship in the Gulf. Citizenship passes through the father in the U.A.E. and Kuwait. Citizenship also passes through the father in some of the sending countries, for instance, up until recently Nepal and India. So that means a domestic worker from India or Nepal, five years ago, who goes to the U.A.E., perhaps is raped by her employer or has a boyfriend and gets pregnant and has a baby, that woman is first incarcerated and then deported because as a guest worker she is contractually sterilized, and that baby is stateless because of citizenship laws that are incongruent.

There is a whole generation of people that have been born into this really problematic situation.

PCM: You write about “children of the Emir.” Who are they? 

MAHDAVI: So, “children of the Emir” is kind of the colloquial nomenclature given to a lot of the stateless children. They could be children of migrant workers, children who oftentimes were born in jail; maybe they were left in the Gulf when their mothers were deported. They may have been left there intentionally. It’s not clear, but they’re stateless children who were born in the Gulf. And some of them are growing up in orphanages; others are growing up in the palaces. There was a lot of tacit knowledge about these children and rumors that the Emir or members of the royal family are raising them. But nobody could find the kids. Nobody knew where they were or if it was actually true that they were being raised in the palaces or not. That was rumor until I conducted my research and I was able to confirm that by interviewing these children. And it is true that some are raised in various palaces, given a lot of opportunities, and treated very well.

So now many of them are adults, living and working in the Gulf but still stateless. Recently there’s been a slew of articles that have indicated that some of the Gulf countries, the U.A.E. and Kuwait included, are engaging in deals with the Comoros Islands where, in exchange for money to build roads and bridges, they are getting passports from the Comoros Islands. Initially it was thought that they would just get passports to give to these stateless individuals, but the individuals had to remain in the Gulf. However, a closer look at some of the contracts indicates that some of these stateless individuals who are being given Comoros citizenship actually will have to go to the Comoros Islands, which is a very disconcerting prospect for many stateless individuals in the Gulf. And for people who are from the Comoros Islands, they are now thinking, “Oh, our citizenship is for sale,” to stateless individuals who are suddenly told that they are citizens of a country they’ve never even heard of.

PCM:  You write about something you call “intimate mobility.” What is that?

MAHDAVI: Intimate mobility is kind of a trope that I’m putting forward in the book. Basically, it’s the idea that people do migrate in search of economic mobility and social mobility—which is obvious to a lot of people—but people also migrate in search of intimate mobility, or a way to mobilize their intimate selves. For example, they migrate to get away from their families in search of a way or space to explore their sexualities. Some form new intimate ties through migration. For others, their intimate subjectivities are challenged when one or more members of the family leave. My book is asking us to think about how intimacy can be both activated and challenged in migration.

PCM: What does it mean to mobilize one’s intimate self?

MAHDAVI: There was a young woman who migrated, who left India because her parents wanted her to get married in an arranged marriage. But she left because she saw herself as somebody who would not want to marry a man. She identifies as a lesbian, and so she migrated to Dubai so that she could explore that sexual side of herself. So that’s some of the intimate mobility I’m talking about.

On the flip side, I talk about intimate immobility and I talk about how people’s intimate lives, as in their intimate connections with their children back home or their partners back home, become immobilized when they are in the host country. Their intimate selves are immobilized because they can’t fully express their love for their children or for their partners. And also women who are guest workers or low-skilled workers legally cannot engage in sexual relations so they can’t as easily engage in a relationship.

Pardis Mahdavi is associate professor of anthropology, chair of the Pomona College Anthropology Department and director of the Pacific Basin Institute. Crossing the Gulf is her fourth book.

Flightless to the Bone

pcm-fall2016text39_page_07_image_0001Jeffrey Allen ’17 (center), a teaching assistant in Professor of Biology Nina Karnovsky’s Avian Ecology class, joins Ellie Harris ’18 (left) and Vanessa Machuca ’18, students in the class, to examine the skeleton of an ostrich, part of the vertebrate specimens collection housed in the Biology Department. “From one look at the breastbone you can tell that this bird can’t fly,” Karnovsky notes. “There is no keel for flight muscles—it is totally smooth—plus the wings are tiny. It dramatically shows adaptations for running—lots of area for attaching leg muscles. I use this in my Vertebrate Biology class as well. I have no idea where it came from or how long we have had it. I just love it.”

Critical Inquiries

You can always find some of Pomona’s most distinctive courses among the array of Critical Inquiry (ID1) classes offered each year to introduce first-year students to both the rigors and the pleasures of academic life at Pomona. An intellectual rite of passage, ID1 classes require new students to think, talk and write about some interesting, often cross-disciplinary topic. They also give Pomona faculty members an opportunity to create something new based on their own interests and passions. Here are a few of this year’s new offerings.

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By the Numbers: Trees

According to the tree database kept by Pomona’s Office of Facilities and Campus Services, the most common trees on campus, in order of frequency, are:

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1. Coast live oak (Quercus agrifolia)* 

 

 

 

 

pcm-fall2016text39_page_07_image_00072. California sycamore (Platanus racemosa)*

 

 

 

 

3. Crape myrtle (Lagerstroemia indica)pcm-fall2016text39_page_07_image_0008

 

 

 

 

pcm-fall2016text39_page_07_image_00094. Coast redwood (Sequoia sempervirens)*

 

 

 

 

5. California redbud (Cercis occidentalis)*pcm-fall2016text39_page_07_image_0010

 

 

 

 

pcm-fall2016text39_page_07_image_00116. Mesa oak (Quercus englemannii)*

 

 

 

 

7. Camphor tree (Cinnamomum camphora)pcm-fall2016text39_page_07_image_0012

 

 

 

 

pcm-fall2016text39_page_07_image_00138. Canary Island palm (Phoenix canariensis)

 

 

 

 

9. Red ironbark (Eucalyptus sideroxylon)pcm-fall2016text39_page_07_image_0014

 

 

 

 

pcm-fall2016text39_page_07_image_001510. Sweetshade Hymenosporum flavum)

 

 

 

*California native

A Chirping Start

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In late August, the Class of 2020 continued the Pomona tradition of “chirping through the gates” to begin their first semester at the College.

Bookmarks Fall 2016

collier-moabutahMoab, Utah by Day & Night
In his new book of landscape photography, Grant Collier ’96 shares the eerie beauty of earth and sky in the canyon country of eastern Utah. EXCERPT: “In my dreams, I occasionally find myself standing atop impossibly large arches or bizarre, almost whimsical pillars of stone. I will wander far too close to the edge, but I have little fear, as I am rapt in awe by the splendor of the scene. Only in the landscape around Moab do these dreams ever meld with reality. The scenery here is so otherworldly that it seems precariously balanced on the cusp of fantasy.”

 


kruse-walkingwithalzheimersWalking with Alzheimer’s:
A Thirty Year Journey
This book by physician Shelly Kruse ’76 is both a personal memoir of her mother’s progressing illness and a guidebook for families and caregivers. EXCERPT: “My mother drove everyone crazy. Her favorite activity was calling out, ‘Help me, help me, help me.’ She sounded sincere and in trouble and would continue however long it took for someone to arrive. After the nurse or myself came running to ask, ‘What’s wrong, Jo?’ she would smile sweetly and reply, ‘Nothing.’ Then a few minutes later, she would do the same thing again.”

 


_daglow-fogseller1The Fog Seller
This Sausalito-based, literary mystery from Don Daglow ’74, the creator of the Emmy Award–winning Neverwinter Nights, has won a number of awards. EXCERPT: “Liam the Fog Seller stands atop the round concrete bench in the Powell St. BART station, 50 feet below the streets of San Francisco. He wears a black satin top hat, a tuxedo with tails, baggy black pants, neon yellow T-shirt and a diaphanous pale blue scarf. “Ladies and Gentlemen!” he proclaims, drawing a glare from an old Chinese woman sitting nearby. “The trains that roll through this station will take you away from this place and time!”

 


mayer-rosasverybigjobRosa’s Very Big Job
With illustrations by Sarah Vonthron-Laver, this children’s book by Ellen Mayer ’74, about a spunky preschooler named Rosa who enlists her imaginative grandfather to lend a helping hand to her busy mom, is part of Mayer’s new series of “Small Talk Books,” which are designed to demonstrate practical techniques parents can use to facilitate language development in their children. Other titles in the series include Cake Day, with illustrations by Estelle Corke, and a pair of board-books titled Red Socks and A Fish to Feed, both illustrated by Ying-Hwa Hu.

 


fleming-legacyofthemoraltaleThe Legacy of the Moral Tale:
Children’s Literature and the English Novel, 1744–1859
Patrick Fleming ’05 traces the rise of the moral tale in children’s literature and its impact upon such authors as Charles Dickens and Maria Edgeworth. EXCERPT: “By the time he wrote Great Expectations, Dickens had changed his didactic narrative style. Unlike his earlier novels, Great Expectations does not take the form of an example illustrating a moral precept, rewarding the virtuous characters and punishing the villains. If Great Expectations is to succeed in its didactic goals, the experience of reading the novel must accomplish this task.”

 


ronald-alphabetfunAlphabet Fun:
Playing ‘Eye’
In her new children’s book, based on a game she plays with her grandchildren, Alice Ronald ’63 teaches imaginative observation using photographs of found alphabet letters in everyday objects. “When I was little,” she explains, “my father played a game with my brother and me. It was called Playing Eye. We looked for animal shapes in the clouds or slightly different colors and shapes in trees or flowers or rocks. Playing Eye trains young minds to observe and to use the artistic parts of their brains. I am continuing the Playing Eye game with my grandchildren.”

 


henning-preparingtoteachsocialstudiesPreparing to Teach Social Studies for Social Justice:
Becoming a Renegade
Nick Henning ’95 and co-authors Ruchi Agarwal-Rangnath and Alison Dover offer a guide to teaching justice-oriented social studies classes within the Common Core State Standards. EXCERPT: “Before the beginning of each school year, every teacher is faced with the important content-focused curricular question, “What will I teach?” Embedded within this question are the corollary questions, “What do I want to teach?” and “What am I supposed to teach?” For most justice-oriented teachers in accountability driven classrooms, the answers to these two questions often do not match…”

 


wogan-peakperformancePeak Performance:
How Denver’s Peak Academy Is Saving Millions of Dollars, Boosting Morale and Just Maybe Changing the World. (And How You Can Too!)
J.B. Wogan ’06 joins co-author Brian Elms, a founding member of Denver’s Peak Academy, to offer a guide to improving organizational performance. EXCERPT: “It’s the small innovations that can transform a process—and the small questions that can cause you to reexamine the way something’s always been done. When you’re looking for an opportunity to innovate, think small, and ask yourself this question: Is there anything you do just because it’s always been done that way?”

The Elements of a President (Redux)

The Elements of a President (Redux): As David Oxtoby nears the end of HIS 14-year tenure as Pomona’s ninth president, let us pause to rewind...

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Thirteen years ago, as David Oxtoby was preparing to become the ninth president of Pomona College, this magazine introduced him to the College family with an article titled “The Elements of a President.” The title arose from a reference to one of his favorite books, The Periodic Table.

Oxtoby Memories, Part 1


In my mind, he was a guy who thrived on opening new doors, and who didn’t shy away from difficult situations.

—Stewart Smith ’68
Former Chair of the Board of Trustees


He really believed in my potential, and he reminded me of that constantly.

—Shirley Ceja-Tinoco ’10

Read more Oxtoby memories.

In this autobiographical work, Italian chemist and Auschwitz survivor Primo Levi famously titled each chapter with an element that he had worked with as a chemist or that was related in some symbolic way to his life.

Asked which elements he would choose to describe his own life, Oxtoby—as a fellow chemist with a similarly figurative turn of mind—played along.

He started with hydrogen, the first and simplest element, symbolizing his formative years. Next came gallium, an element with some odd properties that interested him in his research on nucleation, as well as being named in honor of France, the country where he met his wife, Claire. Chlorine, bromine and iodine, all part of the halogen family, represented his three children. All, he said, were part of a single family and yet each was utterly distinctive in character. To symbolize his years of teaching and research in atmospheric chemistry, he chose carbon, the key element for life. Finally, for his arrival at Pomona, he selected element number 47 on the periodic table, silver.

So naturally, as Oxtoby’s tenure as Pomona president entered its final months, we went back to him to ask how he would revise or add to that list today to characterize his presidency. Once again, he played along, and the result is a metaphorical reflection on some of the key themes of his transformative tenure at Pomona.

elements1-silverSilver / The Liberal Arts

“This time, I would start with silver, element number 47, therefore the Pomona element. A noble metal, it is important both aesthetically in the arts and as a catalyst for new chemistry, and so, it could be a symbol not only of Pomona, but more broadly of the liberal arts.”

Oxtoby Memories, Part 2


David is not only a renowned scientist, but a powerful advocate for the arts.

—Louise Bryson
Trustee


I remember him telling us that our job was to do what was right, not what was popular.

—Lori Kido Lopez ’06

Read more Oxtoby memories.

Some aspects of a presidency are easily quantifiable—gifts raised, buildings built, programs launched. Others, though equally important, are harder to measure. David Oxtoby’s role as an international ambassador for the liberal arts falls into the latter category.

A chemist who had spent his entire career up to that point at large research universities, Oxtoby began his inaugural address with these words: “What is a liberal arts college today, in 2003?” He went on to make the case for an education that is broad, personal, and full of opportunities to follow one’s passions.

“Growing up as he did on the Bryn Mawr College campus with a father who was a prominent faculty member,” says longtime colleague Richard Fass, who served as Pomona’s vice president for planning until his retirement this year, “David developed and retained a firm belief in the values of a liberal arts education. He cares about the enterprise we’re all engaged with and believes deeply that there is no better way to develop educated and committed minds and hearts. David’s passion and commitment are infectious.”

That infectious passion was apparent as the years went by, and Oxtoby became a national spokesperson for the continuing importance of liberal arts colleges, writing and speaking about the future of the liberal arts and its response to such challenges as the growth of interdisciplinary study and globalization.

He even carried his message around the globe, traveling to India, Hong Kong and Singapore to offer support to local educators working to adapt the successful American liberal arts model to their own cultures while learning from them in exchange.

“Given the ongoing debate here at home about the value of a liberal arts education, it was good to be reminded that we’re all part of an international competition in which U.S. higher education is considered the gold standard, in large part because of its breadth and multiple pathways, including a vigorous liberal arts tradition,” he said in a letter to alumni.

While promoting the liberal arts tradition nationally and abroad, Oxtoby also focused throughout his presidency on reinforcing it here on our own campus. He worked with the faculty to restructure Pomona’s overly restrictive general education program to give students more freedom of choice. He led a campus-wide renewal of Pomona’s commitment to the arts, including the construction of a new Studio Art Hall that is now inspiring more students to explore the arts. In the final year of his presidency, he is continuing this work by spearheading the College’s ongoing initiative to provide the Pomona College Museum of Art with a new home suitable for a state-of-the-art teaching museum for the 21st century.

elements2-carbonCarbon / Sustainability

“Carbon now makes me think of sustainability, about CO2 and carbon taxes. We think a lot these days about bad carbon, carbon that’s implicated in global warming and climate change, but it’s also the central element of life.”

Oxtoby Memories, Part 3


I think President Oxtoby is probably one of the most outspoken leaders on college campuses when it comes to sustainability.

—Tom Erb ’18


I’ve always been inspired by his deep commitment to fighting climate change.

—Sen. Brian Schatz ’94
U.S. Senator from Hawaii

Read more Oxtoby memories.

As a noted atmospheric chemist who taught classes in environmental chemistry throughout his presidency, Oxtoby brought an expert perspective and a degree of credibility to the topic of sustainability that few of the nation’s college leaders could match. His record in promoting sustainability as a shared, campus-wide commitment began early in his presidency with his involvement in strengthening the still relatively new Environmental Analysis Program and preserving of the Organic Farm as an officially sanctioned part of the campus.

Completed the year after his arrival, the Richard C. Seaver Biology Laboratory became Pomona’s first building to earn a LEED certification (silver) from the U.S. Green Building Council. That, however, was only the start. Over the following 12 years, with a commitment by the Board of Trustees to sustainable construction of all new facilities, the College would complete four new academic buildings, two new residence halls, and a three-building staff complex, all LEED-certified at the gold or platinum level. Even the College’s new parking structure, in a category of buildings that doesn’t qualify for certification, was built to LEED gold standards.

In early 2014, when Oxtoby set an ambitious goal for the campus to reach net climate neutrality by 2030, he looked back at some of the progress that has been made: “We are working across campus in new and exciting ways to integrate sustainability into our culture. Some highlights of increased engagement include the establishment of the President’s Advisory Committee on Sustainability (PACS) to oversee campus sustainability effort and the launch of Sustainability Action Fellowships to fund student involvement in campus sustainability planning. New staff members are managing sustainability efforts and the Organic Farm, and our recent addition of an energy manager will help the College heat, cool and light buildings in more sustainable and efficient ways. Together, we are creating a greater level of consciousness about sustainability across the campus and showing how small and large choices add up to real results.”

elements3-halogensThe Halogens / Diversity

“Fluorine, chlorine, bromine and iodine are all members of the halogen family but they look different and have different properties. Now that strikes me as a wonderful symbol of diversity. We’re all a single family, the Pomona family; we have lots of things in common, but we’re all distinctive as well, and we value and celebrate both our commonalities and our differences.”

Numbers never tell the whole story, but sometimes they make for a good starting point. In 2003, the percentage of students of color in the Pomona student body stood at 27%. Today, 48% of Pomona students are students of color, making Pomona one of the most diverse liberal arts colleges in the nation. Over the same period, the College’s international student population has grown from 2% to 12.5%.

Oxtoby Memories, Part 4


I believe our students will reap the benefits of his leadership for decades to come.

—Ric Townes
Associate Dean of Students


What struck me about David when I first met him was his deep personal humility.

—Karen Sisson ’79
Vice President and Treasurer

Read more Oxtoby memories.

Behind those numbers were determined and sustained efforts to expand the College’s outreach. “It is not enough for us simply to wait for students from different backgrounds to apply,” Oxtoby said in 2006. “We must be proactive in identifying and encouraging them.”

Among other things, that meant building strong partnerships with such organizations as the Posse Foundation and Questbridge, which now serve as conduits for highly talented students from underprivileged backgrounds across the country. The College has also built its own program to help promising high school students from the College’s own backyard prepare themselves for success at top colleges. Today, the Pomona College Academy for Youth Success (PAYS) still holds a perfect record in gaining its graduates admission to four-year colleges and universities, including Pomona.

Internationally, the college not only stepped up recruiting in Asia; it also expanded its range into South America and Africa. By extending more financial aid to international students, the College also succeeded in broadening the demographics of international students to align with the College’s goal to make the college accessible to the most talented students from all backgrounds.

In 2008, under Oxtoby’s leadership, the College also made the commitment to treat all applicants who graduate from U.S. schools the same, whether or not they are documented, thereby enabling undocumented students to compete for admission and aid on a level playing field.

However, Oxtoby has also made clear that there is still a great deal of work to be done here on campus in building a more inclusive climate in which every member of this diverse community can feel equally welcome and invested. “I have several priorities I am focusing on in my last year as Pomona College president,” he wrote earlier this year. “Chief among these are advancing a culture of respect and building a more inclusive environment in the classroom and on campus. These goals are essential to the bold and scholarly work we do.”

elements4-siliconSilicon / Innovation

“Silicon is the namesake of Silicon Valley, but in truth, every valley is a kind of silicon valley, since silicon is the basic building block of every kind of rock. But when you separate it out, it becomes solar cells and semiconductors. It’s not a metal or a non-metal, but a bridging element—that’s the crucial aspect that allows it to expand our ability to do things and to innovate. So in a way, it symbolizes the future.”

Oxtoby Memories, Part 5


You could see in his eyes that he cared a lot about the Sontag Center.

—Fred Leichter
Founding Director of the Sontag Center for Collaborative Creativity


That’s David’s gift, to engage with things differently and to expand ideas.

—Kathleen Howe
Director of the Pomona College Museum of Art

Read more Oxtoby memories.

The central theme of the Daring Minds Campaign that was launched in 2010 and completed in 2015 was condensed into one five-word sentence at the start of Oxtoby’s address at the campaign launch: “The world needs daring minds.” Pomona, he said, must be a source for global citizens who possess not only the knowledge and understanding to give them mastery of their field, but also the creativity and intellectual daring necessary to use those resources to make a difference in the world.

Out of that campaign, which raised a total of more than $316 million and changed the face of the College in significant ways, came a series of initiatives designed to challenge students to create something new or to pit their knowledge and problem-solving skills against problems in the real world. For instance, Pomona’s new Studio Art Building provides a state-of-the-art facility for the creation of art in an inspiring and rigorous setting, while the new Intensive Summer Experience program expands opportunities for students to spend a summer in research or an internship and provides funding to ensure that all students, including those whose families depend upon their summer earnings, can afford to take part.

But perhaps the most inventive expression of Oxtoby’s focus on nurturing daring minds came at the close of the Daring Minds Campaign, with the creation of The Rick and Susan Sontag Center for Collaborative Creativity. Though housed at Pomona, this innovative new program—designed to give students a setting in which they can hone their creative ability by combining their knowledge, energy and creativity with those of other students and faculty to take on complex, real-world problems that require collaboration across disciplines and innovative thinking—also reflected Oxtoby’s longtime commitment to collaborating more closely with the other institutions of the Claremont consortium. Conceived from the beginning as a 5-college endeavor, today the Sontag Center brings together students from across the five undergraduate colleges of The Claremont Colleges to stretch their creative muscles in productive and instructive ways.

As Oxtoby wrote last year at the campaign’s close: “Our goal is much greater than the accumulation of knowledge—it is the creative use of knowledge and the discovery of new knowledge. We foster wide-vista thinking and doing. Pomona is a place where daring minds thrive both in and out of the classroom as they strive to make the world safer, healthier, more understandable, more beautiful, and more just.”

MORE:

36 Hours in the Life of a President

The Oxtoby Years

Oxtoby Scrapbook

Oxtoby Memories

Very early in David’s tenure, we were at a meeting, and David had to leave the meeting early, so he got up and proceeded to walk into a closet. Everyone in the room fell silent, and a few moments later, David emerged from the closet and said, “There are so many doors around here. I love it.” At which point he plunged at a dead run, which is the way he always moves, through the correct door and off into the rest of the College. And I remember everybody chuckled, but I was just sort of beaming ear to ear for having been involved in hiring him, because it kind of framed exactly why we hired him. That is, his amazing intellectual curiosity and energy. In my mind, he was a guy who thrived on opening new doors, and who didn’t shy away from difficult situations. And I think we’ve seen a great deal of that in such issues as sustainability and the art museum and diversity and creating an inviting and comfortable environment for everybody, his athletic leadership, summer internships, building the College beyond Claremont. Here’s somebody who’s always looking for new doors to open.

Stewart Smith ’68
Former Chair of the Board of Trustees

 

My second meeting with David was an argument, but a good argument. This was during the strategic planning process. I had been leading the task force about interdisciplinary studies, and we were meeting to discuss our report. First he wanted to take me to lunch, but I was suspicious because people take you to lunch to try to disarm you before they pounce. So I said, ‘No, no, no, no, let’s just have a meeting in your office.’ And sure enough, David opened by saying he had read the report, that it was well documented and well written, but that he strongly disagreed. And we had a wonderful kind of back and forth, because he had clearly read and thought about everything we had said. I think we continued to disagree, but I was impressed because it was clear he was engaging seriously with what we were saying on an intellectual level.

Cecilia Conrad
Former Dean of the Faculty

 

I was on the tennis team, and President Oxtoby would often come to weekend matches to cheer us on in his full Spandex bike gear. As I student, I appreciated the fact that he was out doing his weekend routine of getting some exercise, but he took some time out to come to the tennis courts and watch our match.

Elspeth Hilton Kim ’08

 

David Oxtoby was my academic advisor, so I got to work with him very closely. I think that he did not want me to shortchange myself in terms of what I could get out of a world-class education at Pomona. He really believed in my potential, and he reminded me of that constantly. What was so astonishing to me was the fact that every time we met, even though we only met twice a semester, he knew exactly what we had talked about in our previous conversation and he asked me about it.

Shirley Ceja-Tinoco ’10

 

I recall, in his inaugural address, one of the major themes David stressed was community partnerships. He felt they were very important. And I picked up on that early because that was a passion of mine, and I said to myself, ‘Bingo, I think I have a partner here.’ So we talked a lot about it over the years, and out of that came a plan to build up the Center for Community Partnerships and set it up in perpetuity. And that’s what happened. So, it’s a joint project we both, I think, are very proud of.

Ranney Draper ’60
Trustee Emeritus

 

David has had to deal with a lot of hard, hard issues. The issues change, but they don’t seem to get any easier. During the presidential search, someone asked me, ‘What are you looking for in a new president?’ And I said, ‘Well, it seems to me you need someone who has some ability to deal with these disparate issues and to work with these diverse students in a way that makes them all feel like they’re being supported or validated.’ And that’s David. He approaches these things with real concern and understanding for the student experience.

Jeanne Buckley ’65
Chair Emerita of the Board of Trustees

Read more Oxtoby memories, part 2

Path to the Paralympics

02-sports-path-to-the-paralympicsWhen Amy Watt ’20 got the call that she would be traveling to Rio de Janeiro in early September, her joy in making the U.S. Paralympic track and field team was tempered by worry about missing the first two weeks or so of her first semester at Pomona. She remembers calling Pomona-Pitzer Women’s Cross-Country and Track & Field Coach Kirk Reynolds with trepidation.

“I didn’t know who I should contact or what to do about missing some school,” recalls Watt.  “He just asked when I’d be gone, information about the events, and the dates for everything. He talked to several people and the dean; he took care of a lot of it for me and made it easier for me.”

Born without part of her left arm, Watt has been an athlete since discovering soccer in kindergarten. She continued playing the sport until she fell in love with track and field in junior high school. “I was encouraged by my mom and friends,” says Watt. “It was also a fun activity to do.”

Her path from there to the Paralympics involved a couple of chance encounters and an aha moment concerning the rules.

One day during track practice at Gunn High School in Palo Alto, when Watt was in the 10th grade, a Gunn alumnus who is an amputee recommended that she check out the 2014 U.S. Paralympics Track and Field National Championships, being held in nearby San Mateo.

There she happened onto an amputee friend who was competing in a 4×100-meter relay. By chance, the group needed one more person. Watt agreed to fill in and was immediately hooked.

“Never thought I could do Paralympic track and field until I saw some other arm amputees and realized I could also do it,” says Watt, who had always assumed that those competitions were meant for leg amputees. What she discovered was that the International Paralympic Committee (IPC) has a classification system that determines athletes’ eligibility and divides them into sport classes with athletes with similar impairments. The category in which she was eligible was one that seems perfect for a Pomona-bound athlete—IBC classification T47.

Soon she was competing at the international level, traveling to the Netherlands for the International Wheelchair and Amputee Sports Federation World Junior Games and then to Toronto for the Parapan American Games, where she took fourth place in the 100- and 200-meter events. Last year, as a high school senior, Watt traveled to Doha, Qatar, where she participated in the IPC World Champion­ships and came in fifth in the 400-meter dash and seventh in the long jump.

Between homework and world competitions, Watt had a tough decision to think about: college. Having decided she wanted to attend a Division III school, she got in touch with track and field coaches from her top choices.

When she visited Pomona, she was struck by the people she met and the tight community. “I liked that family feel before you get to campus. I liked having small classes; that’s something I really wanted in any school. I liked the general feeling on campus and could envision myself here being really happy. I met a lot of intelligent but humble people here.”

In Rio, Watt competed in three events—the long jump, in which she finished sixth; the 100 meters, in which she made it to the semifinals; and the 400 meters, in which she also finished sixth.

“Even though I didn’t perform as well as I had hoped in my events, the overall experience I had was incredible,” she says. “Now that I’m back, I’m catching up on a few assignments and other classwork that I missed, and all my professors have been understanding and supportive. I was touched that many of my classmates have congratulated me on my perfor­mance and watched some of my races.”

Although she’s not sure what she plans to major in, she is sure she’s going to continue track and field at Pomona.

“She is a remarkable jumper and sprinter who has had a successful high school career, and I know she can continue to improve her performance in all her events,” says Reynolds.

And though the next Paralympics won’t happen until her senior year is over, she can’t help thinking about it sometimes.

“Sometimes I still have a hard time grasping that I went and competed in the Paralympics,” she says. “It was such an unforgettable experience to be running with the best athletes in the world. I would love to go to Tokyo in 2020, but I’ll need to keep working hard to get better and perform well at trials.”

 

Archives: Portrait of the President as a Young Boy

03-from-the-archivesThis is not how most of us think of Pomona’s third and perhaps best known president, James A. Blaisdell, but like the rest of us, he was once a child, and unlike most of us, he had his likeness recorded at the age of about six in the form of a plaster bust.

Blaisdell would grow up to become a minister, theologian and president of Pomona College from 1910 to 1927. Today he is perhaps best remembered as the principal founder of The Claremont Colleges consortium and the author of the quotes on Pomona’s gates.

The bust, done in the classical style that was popular at the time (including clothing the boy as a child would have been clothed in Greek or Roman times), may have been intended to be cast in bronze, but no one knows whether this was ever done. Dating from around 1873, Blaisdell’s childhood likeness remained in the Blaisdell family until it was donated to the College this year by his great-granddaughter Susan Blaisdell Cornett.

ITEM: Sculpture
DATE: Early 1870s
DESCRIPTION: Plaster bust, 18” x 10.5” x 8”
ORIGIN: Gift from Susan Blaisdell Cornett

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.