Blog Articles

Thesis Season

June 28, 2017 by April Xiaoyi Xu ’18 Comments Off

Cinderella and Its Politics illustration

DURING THE SPRING semester, as Pomona seniors made their way through their final classes and prepared to slip into their graduation gowns, most still had one big item left on their to-do lists: their senior thesis.

The senior thesis is a capstone project that may well be the longest paper students have ever written. Intimidating as the project may sound—it normally takes a full semester or, in some cases, an entire year to complete—the consensus among students is that it lies at the heart of Pomona’s liberal arts education, giving them an opportunity to connect knowledge from across disciplines and to delve into a specific topic in depth.

As a rising senior soon to embark on a similar journey and eager to know more, I interviewed seniors from a variety of majors to learn about their experiences and seek their advice. The 10 projects featured here—ranging from a novel about the politics of fairy tales to an ambitious endeavor to teach computers how to dance—offer just a taste of the diversity of inventive work students are producing in their final year at Pomona.

Cinderella and Its Politics
Bianca Kendall Cockrell ’17, politics major

After an angry fairy sends everyone in her castle into an enchanted sleep, Princess Alexis must go to America to retrieve the one item that will break the curse: an apple. She befriends Rumpelstiltskin and a vegetarian dragon and ends up in New York City, a place where democracy reigns supreme…

This may not sound much like a politics thesis, and indeed, Bianca Cockrell’s thesis is anything but conventional. Instead of writing a traditional academic paper, Cockrell wrote a novel about the politics of fairy tales, an idea that she got excited about when she took Professor Susan McWilliams’ Politics and Literature seminar in the spring of her junior year. Over the following summer, she continued her quest with a Summer Undergraduate Research Program (SURP) project titled “Once Upon a Regime,” for which she traveled around several European countries and visited fairy tale centers, museums and universities, where she sought insights from fairy tale scholars.

As part of her overall project, Cockrell also submitted two other papers—a political theory piece about revolutions and nation building in fairy tales, and a case-study analysis of modernism and the idea of America presented in early Disney princess films. She proudly calls her thesis “a three-pronged political-theory, creative-writing and historical-case study.”

Cockrell’s reasoning for using this unique format stemmed from a “practice what you preach” idea: “I wanted to see how using classic fairy tale characteristics like ambiguous characters and clichéd storylines contributes to the success of the story and the successful transmission of the ideas and values in the story.” Through this process, Cockrell was able to explore fascinating questions, such as whether Cinderella is a revolutionary, whether too much freedom is good or bad and the role of fairy tale as a democratic vehicle.

Uber, Lyft and the Environment
David Ari Wagner ’17, environmental analysis (EA) major

Uber and Lyft, the “unregulated taxis” that are putting traditional taxi companies out of business, are expanding quickly and changing the landscape of urban transportation. David Wagner’s thesis analyzes the environmental impacts of such companies, particularly in California, with respect to travel behavior, congestion and fuel efficiency. The literature on these topics is new, which Wagner says was one of the most challenging and exciting aspects of this project. His analysis suggests that in several major urban areas, fuel-efficient taxis are being replaced by less fuel-efficient Uber and Lyft vehicles.

Wagner selected the topic while interning at UC Davis’s Sustainable Transportation Energy Pathways program, which focuses on three revolutionary developments in transportation: shared, automated and electrified vehicles.” Like the EA major, Wagner’s project is interdisciplinary, utilizing economic, statistical and political analyses, all of which he believes are essential to an understanding of environmental issues. EA can be an emotional topic, he notes—which is why it is both hard and necessary to approach it rationally.

Wagner considers it a good idea to write a thesis as an extension of another project. He also suggests that students who are about to embark on this journey treat it as seriously as they would treat a job, eventually aiming to send the completed product to employers in hopes of making a real contribution.

Estimating the Unknown
Benjamin Yenji (Benji) Lu ’17, mathematics and philosophy major

Benji Lu is a math and philosophy double-major interested in going into law or doing data science and statistical research. For his thesis in mathematics, he developed a method of enhancing the predictive power of a commonly used machine-learning algorithm known as “random forests.” His research seeks to quantify the degree of confidence associated with random-forest predictions in order to make them more meaningful and actionable. To do so, he has been working to increase understanding of the statistical theory behind the algorithm itself.

Lu’s interest in integrating statistics with machine learning began his junior year, when he took a course on computational statistics with Professor Jo Hardin. His thesis grew out of a subsequent SURP project with Hardin, during which he also worked with an applied-mathematics research group at UCLA. Over the course of his SURP project, Lu met daily with Hardin, who encouraged him to write daily reports on what he had learned, what he had done and what he still did not understand. Once the academic year began, they met weekly to continue the project as his senior thesis.

Lu says he has enjoyed working with an expert in such a close setting and applying knowledge from his classes to research. For him, mathematical reasoning can be fun, creative and exciting, and it connects well with philosophy, the other half of his double major. Both subjects, he explains, involve rigorous, purely logical argumentation that can yield both elegant theory and practical results.

So You Think You Can Dance?
Huangjian (Sean) Zhu ’17, computer science (CS) major

Sean Zhu got the idea for his unique thesis a couple of years back while playing Dance Central, a game that scores the player’s dance moves using motion capture. A computer science major and a member of the Claremont Colleges Ballroom Dance Company, Zhu thought it would be cool to combine the two interests by teaching computers how to dance.

But how does a machine learn dance steps?

“The computer learns from past data,” Zhu explains. “In this case, the data would come from past dance movements.” Using Kinect, the same device that Dance Central employs, Zhu was able to generate and input dance-movement data to his program.

“Computer creativity is a rising field of research,” says Zhu. “We may tend to think that computers cannot be creative, as creativity is a capability that is typically thought to be exclusive to humans. This project challenged me to think about what creativity is and ways to approach this question.”

The Philosophy of Political Control
Matthew Daniel Dahl ’17, politics major

While studying in China during his junior year, Matt Dahl took a Classical Chinese class that exposed him to many original texts in the literary language of ancient China. That’s when the politics major, specializing in political theory, began to question the usual interpretation of the writings of China’s most famous philosopher.

While contemporary scholars assume that Confucius was most concerned with the cultivation of benevolence, Dahl challenges that conclusion through a close reading of the Analects. His thesis argues that the true message of the text concerns methods of political control and the maintenance of power. His contention is that Confucius supports rule by the so-called “gentlemen” not because they are benevolent but rather because they know how to be crafty in their speech. In fact, Dahl claims, “gentlemanliness” is not at all coincident with any of the traditional tenets of Confucian ethics.

Such a reading has been neglected, he suggests, because scholars have overlooked the possibility that Confucius wrote the Analects in the same esoteric manner that Plato wrote the Republic. By applying new interpretive procedures, Dahl believes he has revealed some of the original, radical political teachings that Confucius subtly sought to impart.

Exploring the Pilgrimage to the Holy Land
Ana Celia Núñez ’17, late antique medieval studies (LAMS) major

Ana Núñez’s yearlong thesis examines six early Latin Christian pilgrim itineraria—the ancient equivalent of road maps. Using sources in both English and Latin, Núñez w sought to understand the ways pilgrims experienced the Holy Land as a landscape of blurred temporal boundaries between the biblical past and the pilgrim’s own present.

She recalls that she first came across LAMS in her sophomore year of high school, when she was a prospective Pomona student and happened to attend Professor Ken Wolf’s Medieval Mediterranean class. Now, with her thesis completed and her Pomona diploma in hand, she is heading to the University of Cambridge for a master’s of philosophy in medieval history, after which she aims to return to the U.S. for a Ph.D. and a career in academia.

Núñez says she found the thesis experience memorable and rewarding, and she has one bit of advice for students yet to embark on the journey: “Trust yourself, and it will get done.”

The Screen, the Stage and Beyond
Jaya Jivika Rajani ’17, media studies and environmental analysis major

Napier Award recipient Jivika Rajani spent her senior year working on two nontraditional theses, each with a uniquely creative focus.

For her media studies thesis, she curated a multimedia experience dubbed MixBox, transforming a section of the Kallick Gallery at Pitzer College into a multimedia installation that guided participants through an interactive conversation with a stranger. The catch was that they were separated by an opaque curtain and would never see the person they had just gotten to know. Rajani then filmed debrief interviews in which her participants reflected upon the experience of making connections with strangers when they couldn’t rely on snap judgments based on appearance.

For her environmental analysis thesis, Rajani drew on her background in theatre to write a play rooted in identity politics and environmentalism. After reading other environmental plays and researching works written about the Indian diaspora, she developed her three main characters to represent different schools of environmental thought, from deep ecology to ecofeminism. As one of five winners of Pomona’s 10-Minute Play Festival, Rajani had an opportunity to direct and act in an extract of the play with some friends. She is also working on adapting her work for the screen.

Reflecting on the process, Rajani said that “juggling two theses at once was definitely hard, but I really enjoyed it because I was always working on something that I was genuinely passionate about and felt that I owned from start to finish. I also couldn’t have asked for better advisors—they’ve been very supportive of my plans to continue developing my work beyond Pomona, so I definitely see my projects as much more than just graduation requirements.”

Exploring the History of Labor and War
Jonathan Richard van Harmelen ’17, history and French major

Jonathan van Harmelen’s yearlong thesis on Japanese American history during World War II focuses on the relationship between labor and the war effort. His research began while he was interning at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, where he worked under Noriko Sanefuji on an exhibit titled “Righting a Wrong.” He has also worked with Professor Samuel Yamashita through a number of history seminars.

The project involved working with public historians, collecting oral histories of survivors, reviewing newspaper articles and statistics and making site visits. Though numerous historians have examined this subject, van Harmelen believes further understanding such forgotten narratives is now needed more than ever. He notes that “the subject of Japanese-American incarceration during World War II is one of the darkest chapters in United States history. While I am not Japanese-American, understanding this crucial subject is a step that all Americans should take, and is now very timely given our unstable political climate.”

For his semester-long French thesis, Van Harmelen focused on the Algerian War and memory as represented through Alain Resnais’ 1963 film Muriel.

An Environmental Perspective on Local Issues in Claremont
Frank Connor Lyles ’17, environmental analysis (EA) major

Frank Lyles, inspired by the thesis of a 2015 EA alumnus, focused on local climate change, groundwater and water-rights issues by reviewing planning documents in Claremont.

Lyles saw the thesis, accompanied by “lots of caffeine” and many a fun conversation, as an awesome educational opportunity and took an interdisciplinary approach, applying the skills he learned from his history, geology and statistics classes to complement his work in EA. He says he thoroughly enjoyed working with Professor Char Miller, who provides feedback on all EA majors’ papers, as well as with Professor W. Bowman Cutter from the Economics Department.

During his final semester at Pomona he took an econometrics class and decided to use what he was learning there to expand his thesis. Part of the challenge was tracking down relevant people and generating interest among stakeholders.

As a Pomona College Orientation Adventure (OA) leader, Lyles likes to think about how EA changes the way he views everything: He stops looking at mountains as just mountains and now understands them as dynamic things that are constantly changing.

Law, Public Policy and Technology
Jesse Solomon Lieberfeld ’17, philosophy, politics and economics (PPE) major

Jesse Lieberfeld’s yearlong, in-depth investigation focuses on the relationship between the Fourth Amendment and modern communications, especially how laws that were developed long before the emergence of modern technology should be interpreted today and in the future. As a PPE major, Lieberfeld approached his research question from both legal and philosophical perspectives, poring over a range of U.S. Supreme Court opinions, articles on privacy, law review papers and interviews.

One of the challenges with this thesis project, says Lieberfeld, was that “there is a gap between studies that focus on law and public policy and those focused on technology; many are experts in one of these fields, but not all.” Lieberfeld’s thesis attempts to bridge this gap.

In particular, Lieberfeld says he enjoyed the interdisciplinary nature of this project and is grateful for The Claremont Colleges, since the politics and philosophy departments at each school have different specialties. He says he also appreciates the fact that Pomona does not have too many core requirements, allowing him to take a lot of niche classes.

April Xiaoyi Xu ’18 is a junior majoring in politics and minoring in Spanish.

How to Understand the Mind of a Psychopath

June 28, 2017 by Mark Wood Comments Off

With Kailey Lawson ’17
Double Major: Philosophy and Cognitive Science

FOR THE PUBLIC, the term “psychopath” is almost interchangeable with “serial killer,” but Kailey Lawson ’17 believes most people with the personality disorder get a bad rap, and she wants to devote much of her future work in the field of cognitive science to understanding why they think and act the way they do.

“When I tell people that I study psychopaths, they say, ‘Oh my gosh! Why? Those are terrible people!’” she says. “But I think as we understand personality more, we understand that there’s a continuum. You’re not a good person or a bad person—there are all of these things that play together. And psychopathic traits are the same way—there’s a continuum and, you know, everyone falls somewhere on the spectrum.”

In fact, she notes, the traits that mark psychopathy are often present in prominent members of society. “There’s lots of research that high-powered individuals, like CEOs or surgeons, have many psychopathic personality traits. Do you want your surgeon to feel bad when they’re cutting into you? No, you don’t. You want them to be somewhat detached and have a steady hand and not be thinking ‘Oh no, I’m going to hurt him.’”

High-functioning individuals with psychopathic traits haven’t been studied very much, Lawson says, because of the stigma attached to the term. So, in her senior thesis in cognitive science, she tested people from across the spectrum. “I was looking at inhibition, because a core facet of psychopathic traits is disinhibition, a lack of stopping yourself or controlling yourself, even when you might know you should act otherwise.”

What she found was that people who scored higher on the index of psychopathic traits also demonstrated a real deficit in inhibition. “And so I think that illustrates that people with higher levels of psychopathic tendencies don’t have the same abilities that people with lower levels of them do, and they should be treated differently in the legal system, the same way that we would treat people with other cognitive deficits differently.”

And that starts, she believes, with trying to understand them instead of demonizing them.

From an early age, spurn fiction for nonfiction. Fall in love with true-crime books because of your interest in human motives. Aspire to be a criminal profiler until you learn that your image of a profiler is a TV fiction, not a real job.

In high school, follow your mother’s example and get involved in community service, volunteering at a food bank and local homeless shelter. Fall in love with the work partially because you find it fulfilling and have a deep interest in understanding the problems of the people you’re helping.

Know that you don’t want to follow in your brother Nick’s footsteps at Pomona College, but end up deciding it’s the best place for you anyway. And though you’ve always thought philosophy was abstract and boring, take a first-year seminar with Professor Julie Tannenbaum in medical ethics and discover that the field deals with intriguing real-world challenges.

Love your class in forensic psychology with Claremont McKenna College Professor Daniel Krauss so much that you end up as his research assistant. Major in both philosophy and cognitive science because you see them as two ways of understanding human behavior; then spend a summer with Harvard’s Mind/ Brain/Behavior program in Trento, Italy.

Inspired by a lecture by author/activist Bryan Stevenson on mass incarceration, follow his advice about getting “proximate” to the problem. Spend a summer working behind barbed wire at Patton State Hospital, a psychiatric facility in the California correctional system. While there, take an interest in psychopathy, which you come to believe is misunderstood.

As a senior, write two theses on the subject of psychopathy—an examination of the ethical theory of the blameworthiness of psychopaths for your philosophy major, and a study of inhibition deficits in high-functioning psychopaths for your “cog-sci” major.

Conclude that psychopathic traits should be treated as a mitigating factor in both moral and legal domains, and decide you want to study the subject further to be able to influence public policy. Gain admission to a top Ph.D. psychology program at UC Davis with a professor whose research offers opportunities to pursue your chosen work into the future.

Big Bridges Hall of Fame

June 28, 2017 by Mark Wood Comments Off

basement of Bridges Auditorium: a long, meandering hallway lined with photos and posters

In the basement of Bridges Auditorium is a long, meandering hallway lined with photos and posters, offering a history lesson about the amazing parade of celebrities who have passed through here since the facility was completed 87 years ago. Among them are international figures, from Winston Churchill and Eleanor Roosevelt to the Dalai Lama and Coretta Scott King; explorers like Admiral Richard Byrd and Amelia Earhart; authors like Sinclair Lewis and Thornton Wilder; poets such as Edna St. Vincent Millay, Carl Sandburg and Maya Angelou; comedians ranging from Bob Hope to Lewis Black; performers like Marcel Marceau and Edgar Bergen; such actors as Basil Rathbone and James Earl Jones; and great musicians from every era and musical style, including Vladimir Horowitz, Ray Charles, Andrés Segovia, Marian Anderson, Duke Ellington, Yehudi Menuhin, Dionne Warwick, Fiona Apple and Taylor Swift. The list, like the hallway, goes on and on.

Signed photo of singer Marian Anderson

Poster for polar explorer Admiral Richard E. Byrd

Poster for singer Ray Charles

Photo of Sir Winston Churchill

Photo of aviator Amelia Earhart

Photo of author Lewis Sinclair

Photo of poet Edna St. Vincent Millay

Stray Thoughts: “I Do Belong Here”

June 28, 2017 by Carla Guerrero ’06 Comments Off

FIFTEEN YEARS AGO this summer, I was nervously anticipating my big move to Pomona College. Even though I traveled less than three miles from my home in the city of Pomona to my dorm on Bonita Avenue, I had no idea what to expect. I was the first in my family to go to college, and my proud immigrant parents, who encouraged me along the way, could not guide me further. I was on my own, or so I thought.

My four years at Pomona were bumpy, at times rough. As an introverted, socially awkward, “first-gen” and low-income brown girl, I felt out of place and had a hard time adjusting. But my Pomona experience smoothed out, thanks to the amazing people I met—the faculty mentors, staff and friends who kindly, and at times more forcefully, asked me to stop leaving campus and stick around for the weekends.

The message they kept repeating was that I belonged here—but it took me a while to believe it.

Today, a lot has changed. I now work for the College as an associate director in the Office of Communications (I am on campus more now than when I was a student); I’m a proud member of the President’s Advisory Committee on Diversity (PACD); and I’m a very proud alumna. (If you read this magazine regularly, you know there’s a lot to be proud of in recent years.)

So this past year, when I was able to join my colleagues, the faculty and students in the hiring process for a new president, I did it with a sense of pride and commitment to the College.

When three candidates were brought to campus, there was one woman, our new president, G. Gabrielle Starr, who elicited such a strong and immediate reaction in the staff forum that one colleague—a young woman of color—stood up during the Q&A portion and said, “I love you.” Gentle laughter followed that comment, but I knew what she meant, and judging from the excited chatter in the room, others were feeling it too.

Later that day, PACD had the opportunity to meet with Starr and we heard about NYU’s Prison Education Project, which she helped launch. It was obvious in her trembling voice and the tears that filled her eyes how much the project, and the lives it touched, meant to her. In that short hour we had with her, I saw in her a champion and role model for our students and a leader for our campus.

It was no surprise then when Board Chair Sam Glick ’04 sent us an email in December announcing Pomona’s 10th president as G. Gabrielle Starr, that a palpable sense of excitement—perhaps even jubilation—was felt across campus. At least, that is how I felt.

This summer, as a new class of Sagehens (of which more than 50 percent are domestic students of color) nervously anticipates the big move to campus in late August, they not only enter a much more diverse campus than the one I knew in 2002, but they also enter at an exciting moment in Pomona’s history: our first woman and first African American president will lead the College.

Although the journey will have its bumps and twists, I know the amazing people who teach here, work here and study here will continue to help the College progress, grow and thrive under Starr’s new leadership. More importantly (and a bit selfishly), I believe having Starr lead my alma mater will give other young women of color that confidence to say loudly and boldly, “I do belong here.”

Carla Guerrero ’06 is a guest columnist for this issue.

Letter Box

June 28, 2017 by Staff Comments Off

Hidden Pomona

I WAS DISAPPOINTED to see one glaring omission in the item about the 1969 bombing in Carnegie in the spring 2017 issue of PCM. While there were no injuries from the bomb at Scripps, that was, sadly, not true at Pomona. That bomb did not simply explode in the mailbox—it was picked up by a young secretary in the Government Department, and it exploded in her hand. According to the Los Angeles Times, she was Mary Ann Keatley, 20, wife of a CMC student. She had her “left eye ripped open and her right one penetrated by a fragment.” She also lost two fingers on her right hand. While the crime was never solved, there was considerable speculation at the time that the Vietnam War may not have been the motivation. Interested alums can use the research skills learned at Pomona to delve into newspaper archives for more information about the bombing and the turmoil on campus at the time. Both were heavily covered in Southern California, and the bombing made national news.

—Diane Pyke ‘69
Port Charlotte, Fla.

Editor’s Note: Please keep in mind that the sidebar about the Carnegie bombing was a short excerpt from a much longer “Hidden Pomona” podcast. The full podcast covers these tragic facts in detail, and I highly recommend it for anyone interested in knowing more about that sad piece of Pomona history.

MY GRANDMOTHER, Katharine B. Hume, was 1904 class secretary. I have letters and class (1904) snapshots of Winston Dickson, Pomona College’s first Black student, who was mentioned in “Hidden Pomona” in the spring 2017 issue of PCM. He founded a law firm in Houston, Texas, that still exists. He never got back to a class reunion—it was too far.

—Katharine Holtom Jones ’61
Alpine, Calif.

Fact or Myth

The Men’s Glee Club of 1932

IN THE SPRING 2017 issue of PCM, in the section titled “Fact or Myth,” I saw the picture of the Pomona College Glee Club and read the story about them winning the National Championship in St. Louis. This was a long-standing story in my family about my father’s participation in the Glee Club. (I believe he is the third person from the left in the front row of the picture.) His name was Richard G. Henderson, and he was in the Class of 1934. I never knew my father because he died when I was 1 year old. After graduating from Pomona in 1934, he went on to St. Louis University Medical School and graduated from there in 1938. During World War II, he was at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Md, and was working on a vaccine for scrub typhus, a disease that the American troops were contracting in the Pacific theater. He, unfortunately, contracted the disease while working on the vaccine and died from the disease at the Naval Hospital in Bethesda in 1944.

I have read PCM for many years and really appreciate the excellent quality and informative nature of the magazine.

—William G. Henderson ’65
Denver, Colo.

I ENJOYED READING about “Hidden Pomona” in the spring issue of PCM. The story of the Men’s Glee Club of 1932 in “Fact or Myth” brought back memories to share. Several Glee Club members sent children to Pomona, including John Shelton ‘35, Louis Ronfeldt ’34, Leonard “Agee” Shelton ‘32 and Juan Matute ‘34. The tributes include John’s daughters Heidi ’61 and Lucy ’65 (a soprano), David Ronfeldt ’63, Agee’s children John ’63 and Jane ’65, and Juan’s children Juan Jr. ’63 and Gini ‘66.

Agee was a bass and later a trustee. His son, John, was my close friend from grade school on. Agee told us of the story of the National Championship competition in St. Louis. The Glee Club sang Pomona’s original song “Torchbearers” to win the title, so “Torchbearers” is still the reigning national champion song. Moreover, the judges were impressed that the Pomona Glee Club did not have a director present and yet sang extremely well.

Agee’s daughter, Jane Shelton Livingston, notes that while they were on the train to St. Louis, they sang and sang and sang to perfect their a cappella chops. She added that often-reigning Yale was the school to beat. Also, the Glee Club’s director, “Prof” Lyman, was the guiding force and beloved by all. It’s true he didn’t conduct the singers, but he certainly prepared them and inspired them.

Two more things: First, the 1932 championship was the 17th annual event, not the first. It was the first time in St. Louis, and the prior 16 events were held in New York. Second, the runners-up were (not necessarily in order) Penn State and New York University. Yale is not included in the “Final Three” choruses in the excerpt. It does not tell us who was second and who was third.

There is probably much more to the 1932 Glee Club story. I hope that additional people will write in.

—Robert Benson ‘63
Davis, Calif.

OUR FATHER, Juan Matute ’34, arrived at Pomona College a few years after he had come to Claremont from his birthplace in Guadalajara, Mexico. He had yet to master academic English. Imagine how thrilling it was for him to travel across the country with the Glee Club. It was an experience of his lifetime and one that he treasured throughout his life. We still have his scrapbook and the memorabilia he collected from the tour, including matchbooks, napkins and pictures.

He was the first musical director for the Mexican Players of Padua Hills. He also played piano, guitarron and bass. He not only was the musical director but, as well, acted and produced many of the plays and musical concerts there. He met his wife, Manuela ’35, at Padua Hills, where she was a singer, dancer, actress and waitress. Manuela sang in the Women’s Glee Club at Pomona.

When our father died in 1992, we played “Torchbearers” in honor of what Pomona College meant to him.

—Gini Matute-Bianchi ’66
Aptos, Calif.
and Juan Matute Jr. ’63
Claremont, Calif.

IN “FACT OR MYTH” from the spring 2017 issue, the writer has added a new myth, that of the flightless sage grouse. While it has a chunky body and does not migrate, it is decidedly not flightless. It can fly up to 50 m.p.h on short local flights of up to five or six miles. As a bird photographer, I have watched their leks during mating displays many times, and I can personally debunk this one before it goes any further.

—Mary Jane Gibson ‘68
Edmonds, Wash.

Cecil 1.0

THERE’S AN ARTICLE in the spring PCM about Cecil 3.0, where the writer mentions not knowing the origin of the first Cecil costume. I can help with that. The costume was made in the summer of 1980. Laura Stiteler ’82 was working in the athletics department and was assigned to (or maybe volunteered to) get a mascot costume for the fall.

I’m sure the budget was generous: The head was very sturdy and professional-looking, and the rest of the costume was far superior to Cecil 2.0. It was a high-end costume, made at the time that the San Diego Chicken was a celebrity. Laura and I had gone to the same San Diego high school, where I’d been the mascot. So toward the end of my freshman year, she asked if I’d be Cecil. I said yes, and I was Cecil for the next three school years, until I graduated.

Laura had ordered such a high-end costume that one part couldn’t take the kind of abuse I gave it. (I got beat up in it twice: once at a football game at Occidental, and once at a football game at CMC. Both times it was my fault; I provoked the other team’s fans.) The orange leather duck feet that it came with started falling apart, so Bob, the equipment manager in the gym, dyed some sweat socks orange and had somebody whip up some more resilient orange feet. I still have the original leather feet in a box somewhere.

The photo (above) is from an ad for the old Coop Store, and the other people in it are Aditya Eachempati ’83 and Liora Szold Houtzager ’83. When I graduated, Dave Peattie ’84 took over being Cecil, and when he graduated, it passed to Allison Sekuler ’86.

For the first year or two that I was Cecil, the dean of freshmen, Elizabeth Chadwick, called herself Cecily. She put out a newsletter authored by Cecily and had a pair of feathers, one blue and one white, that she kept in her office. When she left Pomona for her next job, she gave me the feathers and said now I’d be both Cecil and Cecily. So Cecil was both genders, or no gender, or something along those lines, way back in the 1980s.

Chirp.

—Dennis Rodkin ’83
Highland Park, Ill.

Marine Zoology

IN RESPONSE TO the short article in the spring PCM on the end of the marine zoology program 50 years ago, I took Marine Zoology and Ecology with Professor Willis Pequegnat the summer of ’51. (There was also an advanced course for pre-meds.) The boys slept on the roof under a big blue tent, but girls had to find accommodations in town, so not many girls took Marine Lab. I was lucky that my family home was in Corona del Mar, two blocks from the Marine Lab, and I even kept my summer job (cutting back on hours). Our textbooks were Animals Without Backbones and Between Pacific Tides. We had occasional field trips to local tidepools and a little outboard motorboat to travel in. It was a great experience! Why did it stop in ’67?

—Perdita Myers ’54
Idyllwild, Calif.

Wrenching News

PCM HAS ALWAYS been a good read—a welcoming and dreamy trip to my Pomona past—but also a reminder of Pomona’s vibrancy long after I scooted through the halls of Harwood. But it is wrenching trying to process the devastating news that one of my dear Pomona friends, Marylou Correia Sarkissian, was taken away from her children, family and friends in December.

Any of us who crossed paths with Marylou knew we were spending time with a capital “E” extrovert. Back in 1985, I was a sophomore transfer and had a lot of introvert in my DNA. It was probably a good thing that Marylou was my Harwood neighbor. She drew me out and introduced me to her friends. In a matter of weeks, I already felt like I had a home in the Sagehen roost. Marylou simply had that quality of making most anyone comfortable in her presence.

She’d often come by my room to announce we were going “somewhere” in her white Chevette. A fast-food joint. The gym. Just a cruise down Foothill Boulevard. It didn’t really matter where. We had a great time hanging out and just chatting about life.

Our last semester, Marylou and I both attended a job fair at a hotel near the Ontario airport. I wasn’t entirely sure of my next step post-Pomona, but Marylou was determined, focused and chock-full of résumés for the HR recruiters. I can’t be 100 percent sure—let’s call it 99 percent—but she left that job fair with more interviews lined up than any other attendee. Prestigious hospital and pharmaceutical firms. I can sadly admit, I was a touch jealous on our drive back to campus.

It’s kind of crazy how certain people leave such an impression on your life. Friendships from those formative years bake into your memory. Then one evening, an awful piece of news, and all those memories come flooding back. We are reminded of the special people we knew, and how much pain their families are going through with their loved ones taken away.

I wish Marylou’s children and family all of the possible strength they can muster. Words may not provide tremendous relief at this point in their lives. But they should know she touched a lot of lives in so many positive ways.

Until we may meet again, dear friend.

—Matt Gersuk ’88
Fair Oaks, Calif.

Which Side of History?

I HAVE LONG feared that the path of political correctness that Pomona College has chosen over these last several years would lead to a deterioration of my alma mater and the values it used to represent. The editorial titled “The Right Side of History” in the spring edition of PCM, which actually celebrates this decline, has confirmed my fear and provoked me to take pen in hand.

In March of 2004, a CMC professor named Kerri Dunn told Claremont police that her car had been vandalized and spray-painted with racist and anti-Semitic slurs. The Claremont Colleges immediately erupted in self-righteous indignation and a frenzy of predictable PC actions, including canceling classes; organizing rallies, demonstrations and sit-ins; wearing black shirts; and chanting slogans of “pro-diversity, anti-hate.” When the facts came out, the Claremont Police Department and the FBI determined that Dunn had vandalized her own car and spray-painted the epithets herself, thereby creating a campus-wide hoax.

A student reportedly said of the Dunn affair: “I’m not concerned whether it’s a hoax or not.” Really? Do facts and the historical record not matter anymore? Any historian who was trained, as I was, by mentors such as Vincent Learnihan, John Gleason, Jack Kemble and Margaret Gay Davies, would be horrified by such w anti-intellectual nonsense. Has Pomona College learned nothing since 2004?

I believe that the proper definition of a college is “a community of scholars in search of the truth.” I have difficulty understanding exactly what Pomona College has become, but it is certainly no longer a community that includes me or any other like-minded alums who care about history.

Editor Wood: You, sir, are actually on “The Wrong Side of History,” and you are taking my college down with you.

—Mark Shipley ‘66
Las Vegas, Nev.

IT WAS WITH interest and dismay that I read your column, “The Right Side of History,” in the spring 2017 issue of PCM. You note that “climate change is likely to top the list” of issues that “will seem so ethically obvious that people will wonder how on earth anyone could have gotten them wrong.” First, let me state my belief—and the belief of many others—that climate change is not settled science. The climate-change lobby has trampled on the scientific process in the myopic pursuit of its political and economic objectives and has shown little interest in contemplating the impact on its “research” of legitimate discrepancies in data and its mediocre adherence to the scientific process. The facts are far from conclusive, and the purported remedies even less so.

The more important issue, however, is the event that occurred on the CMC campus on the evening of Thursday, April 6—the intimidation of, and attack on, scholar Heather Mac Donald of the Manhattan Institute. Is it not part of the mission statement of Pomona College that, “through close ties among a diverse group of faculty, staff and classmates, Pomona students are inspired to engage in the probing inquiry and creative learning that enable them to identify and address their intellectual passions”?

That hardly seems to be the case any more, given the events of April 6 and the administration’s lack of response. I was unable to find any mention of the Mac Donald event on the College’s website, much less a forceful statement from President Oxtoby supporting Ms. Mac Donald’s rights, the students’ obligations to respect those rights and the College’s intention to punish the aggressors.

So if ever there was a moment for the Pomona community to determine which side of history it wanted to be on, this would surely be it.

—S. Matthew Katz ’98
Bronxville, NY

I OPENED AN Internet site that reprints news articles from around the country this morning. First on today’s list: “Geology professor accepting students into her course based on race and income.” Thinking as I called it up, “What dumb liberal college is getting its five minutes of fame while destroying our educational system?” I saw these words: “Pomona College.”

My school. My beloved Pomona College. Why am I dumfounded, after our reunion two years ago featured confusing signs regarding who could or couldn’t use every public bathroom on campus, and where the alma mater is no longer allowed to be sung, nor a beautiful song that won our Glee Club a national championship long ago? Political correctness over “liberal arts” education (in the outdated definition of those words). Professor McIntyre, what has happened to your department and your school since you retired?

Our culture is declining so fast, this kind of abuse of authority on campus is honored by school administrators almost everywhere, as is violent agitation against free speech by anyone not parroting liberal tenets. The only people allowed to be offended without reprisal are constitutionalists, who don’t carry billy clubs and fire sticks. I no longer contribute to the decline. Nor will I, while the mind-twisting continues.

—Patricia Yingling White, ’66
Colorado Springs, Colo.

Ocelots Where?

HMMM. MIGHT BE a gratuitous detail in the intro, p. 37, of the spring PCM that just arrived: ocelots in Uruguay? Hmmm. No more mention of this in the body of the fine article. But I live in Uruguay several months a year. Ocelots? Never heard of them there. Maybe my ignorance. I do vaguely remember an ocelot (I think) as the subject of a fascinating Kafka-like story by one of (neighboring) Argentina’s greatest 20th-century writers: Julio Cortázar. But in Uruguay? Hmmm.

—Bill Katra ‘68
La Crosse, Wis.

Wonderful Alchemy

I WAS RECENTLY back at Pomona for my 25th reunion. It is hard to say why Pomona friendships remain resilient after so many years—because this was a formative time in our lives? Because of the particular people Pomona attracts? Was it the institution itself that molded relationships in a certain way? Or was it simply a surfeit of sun? It’s a strange and wonderful alchemy.

I am grateful for all of your efforts with PCM. Whether I was in Myanmar or Laos (or Vietnam or India or Hong Kong before that), PCM has been a wonderful means of learning and staying connected. I always feel grateful for being part of the Pomona community after reading an issue.

—Chris Herink ’92
Clifton, Va.

Number 47

HERE’S ANOTHER STORY about the number 47. I will be going with my classmates to see the sun eclipse in August, and they have been kicking around the number 47 with a couple of professors from Pomona. What they have been talking about is far beyond me since my field was theology.

For five and a half years, I did business for the United Methodist Church in 47 languages. I would leave Los Angeles on the first of November, flying west, and hopefully arrive back in Nashville, Tenn., for Christmas. It included large groups like Cantonese and Mandarin and small groups like the Kuki and Meitei tribes in Burma. Some interesting travels and stories.

—Bob Wood ’65
Franklin, Ind.

Kudos

KEEP UP THE good work with PCM. You and your staff are doing an excellent job in my opinion. You have had a number of very good articles in recent issues.

—John H. Davis ’51
Carmel, Calif.

CORRECTION

In the story “The Magical Bridge” in the spring 2017 PCM, the name of Olenka Villarreal’s husband should have been listed as “Robert” instead of “Richard.” Our apologies to the Villarreal family for this uncorrected error.

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

Wig Winners for 2016

August 3, 2016 by Staff Comments Off

PCM-summer2016text58-web2_Page_17_Image_0003 Each spring, juniors and seniors recognize outstanding Pomona professors by selecting the recipients of the Wig Distinguished Professor Award, the highest honor bestowed on faculty. This year’s recipients are (left to right in the image above):

Pierre Englebert, H. Russell Smith Professor of International Relations and professor of politics, teaches courses like Advanced Questions in African Politics, Comparative Politics of Africa, and Political Economy of Development. He has been at Pomona since 1998, and this is his fourth Wig Award.

Sharon Goto, professor of psychology and Asian American studies, teaches courses including Asian American Psychology, Industrial/Organizational Psychology, and Psych Approaches: Study of People. She has been at Pomona since 1995, and this is her second Wig Award.

April Mayes ’94, associate professor of history, teaches courses on Afro-Latin American History, Gender & Nation: Modern Latin America, and U.S.-Latin American Relations, among others. She is a graduate of Pomona, and has taught here since 2006. This is her first Wig Award.

Kyla Tompkins, associate professor of English and gender & women’s studies, teaches 19th-Century U.S. Women Writers, Literatures of U.S. Imperialism and Advanced Feminist and Queer Theory, among other classes. She has been at Pomona College since 2004, and this is her first Wig Award.

Jonathan Hall, assistant professor of media studies, teaches courses that include Freud, Film, Fantasy; Japanese Film: Canon to Fringe; and Queer Visions/Queer Theory. He has been at Pomona since 2009, and this is his first Wig Award.

Johanna Hardin ’95, professor of mathematics, teaches courses that include Linear Models, Computational Statistics, and 9 out of 10 Seniors Recommend This Freshman Seminar: Statistics in the Real World. A graduate of Pomona, she has taught at Pomona since 2002. This is her first Wig Award.

Michelle Zemel, assistant professor of economics, teaches courses that include Economic Statistics, Advanced Topics in Banking, and Risk Management in Financial Institutions. She has been at Pomona since 2012, and this is her first Wig Award.

Nicole Weekes, professor of neuroscience, teaches The Human Brain: From Cells to Behavior (with Lab), Neuropsychology (with Lab), and Introduction to Psychological Science. She has been at Pomona since 1998, and this is her fourth Wig Award.

Bulletin Board

August 3, 2016 by Staff Comments Off

Sagehens Celebrate 4/7 with Good Deeds

President David Oxtoby poses with a group of student volunteers on 4/7 Day, 2016

On April 7, Pomona hosted the second annual Celebration of Sagehen Impact to honor and recognize the good work and good will of our community of “everyday Daring Minds.” Sagehens around the world flooded the Pomona Alumni Facebook group with thousands of likes, comments and posts about alumni service projects, while more than 500 students braved spring rain on campus to celebrate this special day of community spirit. 47 chirps to Sagehens near and far for bearing your added riches, and for another year of uplifting community support that is solidifying the 4/7 Celebration of Sagehen Impact as a proud, new Pomona tradition! To see a sampling of posts from alumni participants, visit facebook.com/groups/sagehens and search for #SagehenImpact.

Pomona Book Club

In April, Pomona’s new Alumni Learning & Career Programs team launched the Pomona College Book Club on Goodreads. The Book Club connects Pomona alumni, professors, students, parents and staff around a common love of reading. Become a member by visiting pomona.edu/bookclub to check out a summer reading list of recommendations from some of this year’s Wig Award–winning faculty and share your own favorite books.

Alumni Weekend and Alumni Award Winners

Julian Nava ’51 (center) with professors Tomás Summers Sandoval Jr. and Miguel Tinker Salas

Gretchen Berland ’86

John Edwards ’64

Pat Riggs ’71

Ed Krupp ’66

Alumni Weekend, April 28 through May 1, 2016, brought nearly 1,600 Sagehens home to Claremont for a weekend of fun and reconnection. In addition to cornerstone activities such as class dinners, guest speakers, the alumni vintner wine tasting and the parade of classes, guests of Alumni Weekend 2016 enjoyed tours of the new Studio Art Hall and Millikan Laboratory, tasted local craft beers with the Class of 2016, attended a Presidential Search Forum and engaged in discussion with executive staff in a town hall–style forum regarding current campus issues. Looking forward to your reunion year or just pining for some California sunshine among hundreds of Sagehen friends? Be sure to mark your calendars for the last weekend of April and return to campus for Alumni Weekend 2017!

Alumni Weekend 2016 was also an occasion for guests to hear from 2016 Blaisdell Distinguished Alumni Award winners Gretchen Berland ’86, Ed Krupp ’66, Julian Nava ’51 and to honor Blaisdell winner George C. Wolfe ’76, who could not attend the celebration. Alumni Distinguished Service Awards were presented to John Edwards ’64 and Pat Riggs ’71. Learn more about these annual awards and their deserving recipients at pomona.edu/alumni/services-info/awards.

(For more photos, see Last Look on page 64.)

Thanks to Onetta

47 hearty chirps to Onetta Brooks ’74 for a year of thoughtful leadership and dedicated service as Pomona’s 2015–16 President of the Alumni Association! Onetta proved a wonderful steward for the board’s evolution to a more action-oriented group, and exhibited her commitment to a thriving alumni community throughout the year during alumni events and 4/7 activities, organization of responses to the Title IX policy and engagement in conversations about

inclusivity. Many thanks, Onetta!

Travel-Study

Burgundy: The Cradle of the Crusades

May 29–June 10, 2017

Join John Sutton Miner Professor of History and Professor of Classics Ken Wolf on a walking tour of Burgundy. Burgundy, the east-central region of France so well-known for its food and wine, was also an incubator for two of the most distinctive features of the European Middle Ages: monasticism and crusade. This trip provides the perfect context for exploring “holy violence” in the Middle Ages and its implications for the 21st century.

Last Look

August 3, 2016 by Staff Comments Off

Alumni Weekend 2016

Here are a few photos from the 2016 Alumni Weekend, held in April. For information about the event, see the Alumni Bulletin Board.

—Photos by Carlos Puma

PCM-summer2016text58-web2_Page_34_Image_0001

Faith in the Law

August 3, 2016 by Agustin Gurza Comments Off

THE STORY WAS in the works for weeks. The Los Angeles Times was preparing a front-page profile of California’s first Muslim judge, Halim Dhanidina ’94. And the paper was carefully vetting its subject, checking his background as the son of Indian immigrants, interviewing former colleagues in the D.A.’s office, and watching him preside over criminal proceedings at the L.A. County Superior Court in Long Beach.

After three months, the judge remembers getting a call from the reporter with some bad news. Editors were considering killing the story. The reason: “We’re not finding anything controversial.”

In the end, the paper ran the article after all. As far as the judge was concerned, the only thing controversial was the headline, which he called “almost inflammatory.” It read: Faith Leads State’s First Islamic Judge to the Bench.

Though modified online, the printed headline played into the worst preconceptions about Muslims that Dhanidina had been battling since his student days at Pomona College. He thought the wording portrayed him as a zealot who would impose sharia law from the bench. Which is exactly what anti-Muslim critics warned against, at websites with names like Jihad Watch and Creeping Sharia. Some wondered whether a Muslim judge in “Caliph-ornia” could be impartial when sentencing “jihadis, honor killers and those who assault non-believers.”

“If you’re going to ask me about sharia law, you’re going to be misled, because I don’t know anything about it,” said the judge during an interview at his tidy courthouse office, decorated with cheerful artwork from his two children. “I’m an American that works in the American legal system. You can ask me anything about that and I’ll give you a better answer.”

Dhanidina, who holds a law degree from UCLA, has been answering questions about Islam and the law since that day in 2012 when Gov. Jerry Brown announced his ascension to the bench as a milestone for Muslims. Dhanidina, just 39 at the time, says his religion had never been a defining issue in his career until then. During his 14 years as a deputy district attorney in Los Angeles, prosecuting gang-related murder cases, many colleagues didn’t even know he was a Muslim.

Though he felt awkward at first, Dhanidina now embraces his high-profile role as a public figure from his community. Yes, he worries that carrying a religious banner may detract from his accomplishments. He wants to be recognized for his public work, not his private beliefs. Yet he believes the focus on his faith serves a purpose, because it makes him “a symbol of inclusion.”

“Part of the value of diversity is for people to know about it,” says the judge, who often speaks at schools and on professional panels. “The role of Muslims in American society right now is very tenuous. There are efforts to make Muslims feel they’re not welcome in the U.S., that they don’t belong here, that they should not be allowed to come, to stay, to participate in institutions.”

For fellow Muslims, seeing his success proves the opposite: “There is a place for you, too.”

The judge also believes that his public visibility can help change perceptions among non-Muslims, many of whom get their impressions about Islam from the media or the Internet. It’s easy to believe in stereotypes about a group, he notes, when you don’t personally know any of its members. “That’s why Muslims in the public eye need to be open,” he says, “because it helps to demystify this idea of what ‘these people’ are like.”

Of course, Dhanidina’s work as a judge is an open book. His court is open to the public; his rulings are public record. That helps dispel any suspicions that he may be somehow secretly imposing his personal ideology on the court.

“People think that if you’re a Muslim, you believe in chopping off heads and oppressing women,” he says. “But it’s very easy to say what a Muslim would be like as a judge if there aren’t any Muslim judges. Well, now there is one here in California. So if anybody wants to know what a Muslim would do as a judge in an American court, they would come to Department Eight of the Long Beach Superior Court and see for themselves.”

PRESIDING IN COURT one recent afternoon, Judge Dhanidina displayed a carefully studied judicial demeanor. He begins every day with a formal flag salute, “in respect of the rights we enjoy.” On the bench, he is disciplined, efficient and formal, almost courtly. With defendants, he is respectful and encouraging, telling one who presented a good probation report to “keep up the good work.” And throughout, he maintains perfect posture in a robe that looks tailored to his fit, six-foot-one frame.

His goal is to run a courtroom “with dignity and decorum,” he says, where justice prevails and everybody feels they are treated fairly. “They would never know they were in the Muslim guy’s court,” he adds, “unless somebody told them.”

Outside the hallowed halls, the judge lets his hair down. An easy smile softens the slightly severe look of his gray goatee, precisely manicured along the ridge of his chin. He is friendly and chatty with a group of students from his daughter’s elementary school, visiting on a field trip. “You were awesome in the musical,” he says to one. “Are you playing softball in the fall?” he asks another.

“I want the young people to feel I’m just a regular guy,” says the judge, because it sends a message that they can make it too.

In many ways, he is a regular guy. Softball coach, loyal Cubs fan, aficionado of Spanish rock, dad who drives his kids to school. But Dhanidina also is driven to excel, to be the best in whatever he does. He attributes his competitive streak to his immigrant parents, who always strived to succeed.

“When you meet Halim, or appear before him, what strikes you is not his faith, but that he’s such a smart, hardworking judge,” says Long Beach Supervising Judge Michael Vicencia. “So whatever kind of preconceived notions people may have had, the second they meet him all of that goes away because you’re so impressed by what a good judge he is.”

So far, nobody has formally complained about Dhanidina’s performance, says Vicencia, who fields complaints against judges in Long Beach. And nobody has raised concerns about his religion either.

At his swearing-in, Dhanidina assiduously sidestepped a potential public controversy, avoiding the brouhaha that erupted in Brooklyn last year when a fellow Muslim judge swore her oath on the Quran. Instead, he chose not to swear on any holy book, dismissing the issue as irrelevant.

For a judge with such an even temper, though, it’s surprising to hear Dhanidina admit that he is “certainly sensitive to slights.” When the governor’s office received hate mail in response to his appointment, he acknowledges matter-of-factly that “it hurt my feelings.”

Dhanidina, who won election to his first full term in 2014, doesn’t consider himself a victim who harbors grievances. But he has experienced his share of prejudice in the past. Like the dinner-party guest openly expressing anti-Muslim sentiments. Or the thoughtless coworker using the pejorative term “towelhead.”

Then there was the defense attorney who once tried to save a murderer from the death penalty with a thinly disguised appeal to religious prejudice. Dhanidina was the prosecutor at the time and had won convictions for the double homicide. In the penalty phase, the opposing lawyer argued that the jury should show mercy consistent with “our” Judeo-Christian values, not like those of the prosecutor who follows “different” traditions.

The strategy failed, but Dhanidina never forgave the judge in that 2008 case for not stepping in to stop it. “The argument itself didn’t hurt me,” he says, “but the fact that the judge did not officially stamp it as inappropriate, that stung more.” Later, when he faced the same lawyer again in a different case with a different judge, Dhanidina made a preemptive strike, asking the court to prohibit him from making the same offensive argument. The judge agreed, admonishing the defense lawyer, “If this is not an appeal to prejudice, explain to me what it is.”

“That was a very gratifying moment for me,” concludes Dhanidina, “because OK, somebody else has acknowledged that this isn’t right.”

IT’S OBVIOUS, SAYS DHANIDINA that animosity toward Muslims has worsened in the quarter century since he worked for better interfaith relations as a student at Pomona. The terrorist attacks of 911 and subsequent Middle East wars have stoked public fears about the perceived connection between Islam and violence. The judge blames both sides: the terrorists, for cloaking themselves in a distorted reading of Islam, and self-serving politicians, for exploiting the violence to scapegoat an entire religion.

“It’s baffling to Muslim people like myself, and millions around the world, who have never seen any kind of doctrinal link between violence and their religion,” he says. “We don’t understand how other people can make that connection.”

Less than a month after the interview, the issue of Islam and violence was back in the news in a shocking way. In the worst mass shooting in modern U.S. history, a gunman vowing allegiance to Islamic terrorist groups massacred 49 people at a nightclub in Orlando, Florida. Since many of the victims were gay, the case also refocused attention on the treatment of homosexuals in Islamic countries, including a handful where homosexuality is punishable by death.

The issue is not new to Dhanidina. Even fellow Muslims have asked him how he can reconcile legal issues such as gay marriage with traditional Islam. Asked another way, can a Muslim judge be fair to homosexuals?

Coincidentally, Dhanidina had already addressed that question in a controversial case watched closely by gay rights advocates. The case involved a police sting that led to charges against a 50-year-old man for lewd conduct and indecent exposure in a public park. In a blistering, 17-page ruling handed down in April, Dhanidina blasted the Long Beach Police Department and local prosecutors for what he called an “arbitrary enforcement of the law” that specifically targeted gay men. The judge found that police “harbored animus toward homosexuals” and that the prosecution was fueled by “the rhetoric of homophobia.”

“When I think of what values are important in a society, equality is right at the top,” the judge says. “That’s probably because I’ve never been in a majority. Of anything. Anywhere.”

DHANIDINA BELONGS TO the Ismaili religious community, a historically persecuted offshoot of the Shia branch of Islam, known for its modern, progressive views. “We don’t believe in the religious superiority of one group over another,” says Dhanidina, whose Thailand-born wife was raised Roman Catholic. “We believe that different religions are just different paths to the same place.”

His ethnic heritage traces to the Gujarati people of western India, an illustrious community that also includes independence leader Mahatma Gandhi, British actor Ben Kingsley, and Queen lead vocalist Freddie Mercury. His grandparents were born in Tanzania, part of the Indian diaspora in East Africa during British colonial rule. His parents, Lutaf and Mali, met at a Tanzanian teachers college. The couple came to the United States in the early 1960s when his father got a scholarship to Northwestern University. Eventually, most of the extended family came here too.

Born in 1972, Dhanidina was raised with his older brother in the Chicago suburb of Evanston, Illinois, where Northwestern is located. At home, language and food were a natural blend of Asian, African and Anglo-American influences. (“Growing up, I didn’t even know which word came from which language.”) He graduated from Evanston Township High School in 1990, still using the first name Al-Halim.

He arrived as a freshman at Pomona at the height of the First Gulf War, finding himself peppered with questions about Islam, “as if you were the spokesman for everybody.” At the time, he was one of literally a handful of Muslim students on all five Claremont campuses combined. “We still managed to find each other to start the Muslim Students Association,” he recalls. Initially, the group rallied around a campaign to keep dining halls open later during Ramadan, which requires fasting until after sunset. From that victory, the goals evolved, stressing education to combat stereotypes and promote better understanding.

Dhanidina, an aspiring diplomat who got a degree in international relations, knew he had come to the right school. Pomona’s diversity is what drew him here in the first place.

“I think I would not be the person I am today if I had not gone to Pomona,” says the judge, who still maintains strong friendships with a multicultural group of his freshman hall mates. “Everyone is encouraged to think big about the ways they want to make the world a better place. And I really bought into that.”

—Photos by Lori Shepler

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