Well-educated elites are no strangers to white supremacy — The Washington Post

After the violence in Charlottesville, �ֲ���ý faculty lecturer Christopher Petrella ’06 saying that our conventional wisdom that “it’s impossible to be both a white supremacist and a well-educated white American” is “both dangerous and historically inaccurate.”

In fact, he says, white supremacy has “not gestated on the fringes of American politics” but “flourished as a social movement grounded in respectability politics and led by elites.”

Christopher Petrella ’06 makes a point during a meeting of the college’s Justice and Equity Reading Group on Sept. 13, 2017. Petrella, faculty lecturer and associate director of programs for the Office of Equity and Diversity, is the group organizer. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

Believing otherwise “allows middle-class and college-educated white Americans to escape responsibility for extirpating this stain on our society.”

Petrella, who is also an associate director of programs in the Office of Equity and Diversity at �ֲ���ý, is completing his first book, on the history of white supremacy in 20th-century New England.

Social activism thrives in Maine’s fine art world — Portland Monthly

For , art critic Dan Kany interviews several Maine “art agitators,” including �ֲ���ý Museum of Art Director Dan Mills, who “represent the range and reality of Maine artists who dare to disturb, incite, and stir social engagement.”

Mills, who co-curated the first exhibition of Saudi contemporary art in New England, Phantom Punch: Contemporary Art from Saudi Arabia in Lewiston, is also an artist whose work has been exhibited in leading galleries in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles.

Mills’ “large-scale paintings on maps….use nuanced visual systems to redirect and provoke deeper understanding of demographic and map-related data,” Kany says.

Mills says that art “is only one facet or tool” for social change. “Unless the art rises to being culturally embraced beyond the art world and covered in the media, its scope is limited.”

Dan Mills’ painting “Current Wars and Conflicts Killed by Continent, Book 02,” ink, watercolor, and gouache on atlas, 15 1/4 x 22 1/2 x 2 inches.

Retiring �ֲ���ý Dance Festival director Faure “put Maine on the map” — Portland Press Herald

Laura Faure, who retires Nov. 30 after directing the �ֲ���ý Dance Festival for 30 of its 35 years, is known as “a fierce advocate for choreographers and dance in its many forms,” said Aimee Petrin, executive and artistic director at Portland Ovations.

Faure, who was profiled by , said that the “life of a dancer is a tough life, and what we offer is support and a safe space.” She added, “We support artists through the arc of their career, and I am so proud of that.”

Retiring �ֲ���ý Dance Festival Director Laura Faure poses with noted South African dancer and choreographer Vincent Mantsoe during one of her visits to Africa. Mantsoe has taken part several times in the festival’s International Visiting Artists Program. (�ֲ���ý Dance Festival)

Keyes said that Faure “helped establish the festival as a destination for dancers and choreographers to refine, perfect and expand their skills, establish new work, and experiment with ideas and collaborations.”

“We have created an environment that didn’t exist in the dance world and that is based in the democratic and egalitarian model that is �ֲ���ý College,” Faure said.

Faure will be succeeded by Shoshona Currier, who began her work in August.

Shaw’s veterinary health tech firm secures $223 million investment — Portland Press Herald

Vets First Choice of Portland, founded by CEO Ben Shaw ’00, received a $223 million investment in July that will “accelerate the company’s growth and hiring, launch new services and begin a global expansion effort into Europe and Asia,” according to .

Father and son entrepreneurs David Shaw and Ben Shaw ’00 consult before their May 5 talk, “Adventures in Business and Social Entrepreneurship,” part of the spring’s “Purposeful Work: Voices in Entrepreneurship” series. David Shaw returned to �ֲ���ý at Commencement to receive an honorary degree. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

“The venture capital funding represents the largest sum invested at one time in a privately held Maine company in at least two decades, and possibly ever,” Anderson reported.

Vets First Choice offers e-commerce pharmaceutical services to veterinary clinics.

Also in July, Shaw was recognized by Ernst & Young as a .

Atomic physicists will soon make ultracold states of matter on the space station — Science

When NASA’s $70 million Cold Atom Laboratory arrives at the International Space Station in early 2018, it will carry out a select few research experiments, including one designed by Associate Professor of Physics Nathan Lundblad.

In its Sept. 8 story, Science reporter Adrian Cho described a few of the projects, , noting that the Cold Atom Laboratory will “take advantage of weightlessness to attain record-low temperatures and break ground for ambitious studies of quantum mechanics and gravity.”

Physics major Dan Paseltiner ’16 narrates this short film about the �ֲ���ý experiment that will be aboard the Cold Atom Laboratory.

Weightlessness, plus the lab’s near-absolute-zero temperature, will “produce a long-predicted state of matter called a Bose-Einstein condensate, in which the atoms shed their individual identities and crowd en masse into a single quantum wave.”

Cho said that Lundblad’s experiment hopes to create “hollow shells of BECs,” like bubbles, something “that gravity squashes on Earth.” If successful, the shells might allow researchers “to probe the wave nature of the BEC in a new way.”

The other experiments were designed by scientists from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the universities of Colorado, Michigan, Rochester, Virginia, and California at Berkeley.

Commentary on why parents shouldn’t be told the sex of their fetus — Journal of Medical Ethics

Professor of Sociology Emily Kane, the author of The Gender Trap: Parents and the Pitfalls of Raising Boys and Girls, joined a sociological discussion about the common practice of parents learning the sex of their unborn child.

In an article published last year in the Journal of Medical Ethics, Tamara Kayali Browne of the Australian National University argued that .

Disclosure of the sex, she said, invariably leads parents to anticipate a child’s gender. Since “the conflation of sex with gender is implicit” when the sex of a fetus is disclosed, “it may be more accurate to refer to [disclosure] as misinformation.”

Professor of Sociology Emily Kane delivers her Convocation address, “Summer Posts, Fall Possibilities,” on Sept. 5, 2017 (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

In , she said that while other experts can weigh in on the feasibility of withholding such information, she agrees with Browne that both child and society would benefit by postponing “the gendered anticipation” that prenatal sex information encourages.

Given what we now know about the vast difference between gender and sex, postponing might “chip away productively at the vast network of social processes that constrain children and conflate sex with gender.”

Harvard names new diversity dean — The Harvard Crimson

Harvard Dean of Students Katherine G. O’Dair announced the appointment of Roland Davis ’92 as associate dean for diversity and inclusion, on Aug. 31.

Roland Davis ’92 is the new associate dean for diversity and inclusion at Harvard.

Davis “brings to Harvard a deep and nuanced understanding of the social, cultural, and psychological factors that impact communities around the issues of diversity and inclusion,” she wrote.

Davis’ appointment, the Crimson said, “coincides with the implementation of…penalties on members of single-gender social organizations,” such as barring members of these groups from “campus leadership positions, athletic team captaincies, and certain prestigious fellowships.”

A former dean in Student Affairs at �ֲ���ý, Davis served as the college’s founding director of the Office of Intercultural Education from 2010 to 2012.

Building products that people want to use — The Silicon Review

In its review of the 10 fastest-growing software companies, , a software engineering firm co-founded by Ben Schippers ’04.

The Review said that in the “ocean” of apps that exists today, Schipper’s company “is generating its mark by building thoughtful products” that “people want to use.”

Ben Schippers ’04 is co-founder of the Brooklyn-based software engineering firm HappyFunCorp. (Phyllis Graber Jensen)

One of HappyFunCorp’s recent products was an app allowing onto TV-based platforms, including Apple TV.

Portland’s restaurant  boom reflects the “simplicity of living here, and honoring individual ingredients” — American Way Magazine

Portland, Maine, is home to 672 dining establishments, according to , “giving it a human-to-restaurant ratio of roughly 96-to-1,” which is lower than “almost every other city in America (San Francisco can make a similar claim).”

For insights on the boom, writer Alexandra Hall turned to award-winning restaurateur Andrew Taylor ’03, who said that it’s about the “simplicity of living here, and honoring individual ingredients.” He said, “People here are averse to big: big corporations, big restaurants.”

Taylor and Mike Wiley are chef/co-owners, with their manager, Arlin Smith, of Eventide Oyster Co., The Honey Paw, and Hugo’s. The pair won a , considered an Oscar of the food world.

James Beard winner Andrew Taylor ’03 poses at his restaurant Eventide with Matthew Moretti ’06, president of Bangs Island Mussels and Wild Ocean Aquaculture, on Sept. 26 2016. Bangs mussels are featured at Eventide and exemplify Taylor’s commitment to the local food economy. (Josh Kuckens/�ֲ���ý college).

Preparing for the football season and for what’s ahead after graduation — WMTV-TV

WMTV-TV sports anchor Travis Lee , a chemistry major from Cumberland Center, Maine, who plans to enter the medical field after graduation.

Over the summer, Rasch traveled to Haiti with International Medical Relief to “get involved in some sort of medical experience outside the U.S. in a culture that I’m not used to.”

Rasch says that football, specifically a lineman’s job to communicate with teammates during “drastically changing circumstances,” will help him down the road. “I am able to communicate with people in a large group and help get people on the same page.”

“Whatever I do for a living, I want to make sure that it has a good deal of purpose. That way I can dedicate myself fully to it.”

Family gives record-setting donation to liberal arts college — The Associated Press

The public launch of The �ֲ���ý Campaign and the surprise announcement of the $50 million gift from Michael ’80 and Alison Grott Bonney ’80 on May 16 garnered national media coverage.

The Associated Press story, “,” was picked up by many media outlets including ABC News, CNBC, Fox Business, Yahoo! Finance, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Seattle Times, Houston Chronicle, The Roanoke Times, The Washington Times, and US News & World Report.

In addition, original news stories appeared in , , and the .

McDreamy receives an honorary degree from �ֲ���ý College — The Boston Globe

Actor, philanthropist, and Lewiston native Patrick Dempsey, at �ֲ���ý to receive an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree last Sunday, caught the media’s attention, including , who writes the paper’s Names column.

“It was a homecoming of sorts for Dempsey,” wrote Shanahan.

Kate Berger ’17 (center) of Newton, Mass., and classmate Sadie James of Avon, Maine, take a selfie with actor and philanthropist Patrick Dempsey as graduates line up on Alumni Walk on Commencement morning. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

�ֲ���ý honored Dempsey for his efforts to create the Dempsey Center in Lewiston. In partnership with Central Maine Medical Center, the center provides education, wellness services, and other forms of support to anyone affected by cancer.

Dempsey’s honor, and quoted Cara Starnbach ’19 of Needham, Mass., who talked about Dempsey’s involvement with the annual Dempsey Challenge fundraiser each October.

“He always stays involved on an annual basis, and his successes are something celebrated in Lewiston,” said Starnbach.

Patrick Dempsey tweeted his degree: “Such an honor.”

Elizabeth Strout ’77

Elizabeth Strout’s follow-up to Lucy Barton is a master class on class — The New York Times

Myriad news outlets have glowingly reviewed Elizabeth Strout’s new novel, Anything Is Possible.

The novel “might look like a sequel” to Strout’s My Name Is Lucy Barton, says , but “it’s actually something far more complex, reaching across space…and through layers of memory.”

that the prose is “wrenchingly lovely. It almost always is with Strout,” adding that one reads a Strout novel “for the same reason you listen to a requiem: to experience the beauty in sadness.”

“confirms Strout as one of our most grace-filled, and graceful, writers.”

Her Pulitzer Prize-winning Olive Kitteridge mined the depths of regret, “of the pain that comes from knowing that many things, even most things, are not in fact possible,” the Globe notes.

Yet there’s also in Strout’s work “unbidden, shattering grace,” says the Globe, “what Flannery O’Connor called ‘the almost imperceptible intrusions of grace’ into human lives. In these moments, a deeper knowledge of self becomes possible; radical change — from selfishness to selflessness; from bitterness to love — becomes imaginable.”

Do good looks mean better job opportunities in China? — Radio Taiwan International

The Radio Taiwan International program Margaret Maurer-Fazio about on how attractiveness influences people’s chances for job interviews.

In China, job candidates must include photographs with job applications, which, of course, is “a fundamental difference” from U.S. practices, notes Maurer-Fazio, the Betty Doran Stangle Professor of Applied Economics at �ֲ���ý.

Maurer-Fazio collected stock photo portraits, tested them for attractiveness with Chinese audiences, and then worked with the �ֲ���ý Imaging Center to digitally alter some, making them less attractive.

The photos were paired with mock resumes and submitted to thousands of job openings in China.

The result? “Overall, an unattractive applicant had to put in about a third more applications to get the same number of callbacks,” Maurer-Fazio says.

Boston Cannons draft �ֲ���ý’ Charlie Fay — WCSH-TV

On May 28, the day he graduated from �ֲ���ý, men’s lacrosse standout Charlie Fay of Falmouth, Maine, was drafted by the Boston Cannons of Major League Lacrosse.

Charlie Fay ’17 of Falmouth, Maine, shown competing against Middlebury in May, has been drafted by the Boston Cannons of Major League Lacrosse. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

Fay was the fifth selection made by the Cannons and the 59th pick overall, making him �ֲ���ý’ first lacrosse player to be drafted by an MLL team, .

On Tuesday, the with the Cannons’ head coach about Fay’s selection.

Portland chefs Mike Wiley and Andrew Taylor win James Beard Award — Portland Press Herald

The James Beard Award represents “coveted recognition that chefs consider to be the Oscars of the food world,” .

Along with manager Arlin Smith, Mike Wiley and Andrew Taylor co-own three Portland restaurants, Eventide Oyster Co., The Honey Paw and Hugo’s. They won their award in the Northeast category.

Andrew Taylor ’03 poses with one of his restaurants’ seafood providers, Matt Moretti ’06, purveyor of Bangs Island Musssels. (Josh Kuckens/�ֲ���ý College)

Local agency adds golf, stresses tourism — Crain’s Cleveland

Sports agent Sam Duvall, who formed Topnotch Management in 2016 after he left Lagardère Tennis, where he was a vice president, wants to enter the golf tourism space, writes Kevin Kleps for Crains’s Cleveland.

Kleps explains that while Topnotch Management may appear to be “a boutique sports marketing agency” with a roster of “13 tennis players, including American star John Isner, and six up-and-coming golfers,” the firm is “really an events, tourism, and marketing company.”

That’s due to Duvall’s partnership with Vermont-based Grand Slam Tennis Tours, which brings “an average of 2,000 clients each year to prestigious tennis tournaments” where customers enjoy perks like “city tours, courtside seating, and meet-and-greet dinners.”

Grand Slam, Duvall tells Kleps, has tennis tourism “down to a science.” Now Topnotch wants to do the same with golf, as “Duvall believes golf tourism is more of an untapped market,” writes Kleps.

A Chinese church conundrum: Why did Bishop Ma recant? — National Catholic Register

Lecturer in Chinese Nathan Faries is quoted by the National Catholic Register its analysis of his 2012 criticism of the state-controlled Chinese Patriotic Catholic Association.

At his ordination in 2012, Auxiliary Bishop Taddeo Ma Daqin’s words and actions seemed to break ranks with the CPCA. He’s been under house arrest since then.

But in a recent blog post, the bishop praised the CPCA and said he regretted what happened in 2012.

While the “prevailing view among experts may be that Bishop Ma was punished for his defiance, and coerced into recanting,” Faries has a different narrative interpretation, writes Brian Fraga.

Author of The “Inscrutably Chinese” Church, Faries suggests that reports of the bishop’s actions and words in 2012 may have been exaggerated in the first place.

He tells Fraga that “Ma has never been as controversial a figure as some would like to imagine. He wants what is best for the Church. He wants unity and the greater glory of God. Those were the main themes of his [2012] address, not criticism of the government.”

‘Improving upon strengths rather than focusing on weaknesses’ — Maine Magazine

Maine Magazine defines its top 50 Mainers list as people who are “charting the state’s future” by “investing time, energy, and talents to advance the state they love.”

Their list includes Portland restaurateur Andrew Taylor ’03 and Lewiston youth-center founder Julia Sleeper ’08.

Tree Street Youth, an expanding organization that Sleeper co-founded as a �ֲ���ý student, now serves up to 150 children each day and offers a robust college-prep program.

Sleeper tells the magazine that “I do what I do to ensure our youth have as many opportunities to succeed as the future leaders of Maine.”

Taylor, along with Arlin Smith and Mike Wiley, co-owns a “block-long epicurean empire” on Middle Street in Portland — three restaurants that have “picked up numerous accolades,” the magazine notes, including a James Beard nomination as best chef in the Northeast for Taylor and Wiley in 2015 and 2016.

The trio’s restaurant group, employs more than 120 people, “a community of workers that [the owners] say is one of their proudest achievements,” the magazine reports.

Smith and his co-owners are involved in charitable work to fight hunger, “an issue that affects so many people in our community,” says Smith.

A surprising murder trial verdict raises questions about expert-witness opinions — Psychology Today

A story about the in Psychology Today looks at the case of convicted murderer Julian Kurita, who was defended at his 2012 trial by .

Kurita had a troubled psychiatric history, and Williams called upon a well-respected expert witness who supported an insanity defense. Yet the jury found Kurita guilty.

On the other side, William Barr, the prosecution’s go-to expert witness, testified as he usually does when called upon, saying that Kurita was sane and likely exaggerating or faking his symptoms.

But Barr’s specialty is physical brain injury; he’s “not really forensic in the sense of dealing with people who commit a crime,” Williams tells writer Mike Mariani. Yet, he’s ended up being “the darling of the New York County DA’s office.”

And can a “darling” be truly objective? Probably not, Mariani writes.

“In recent years…studies have demonstrated that even among the most presumably objective forensic experts, bias may hold sway.”

Indeed, expert-witness assessments “indicated a strong allegiance to whichever party they thought had retained them.”

How college buddies skipped the GMAT and launched Downeast Cider — Boston.com

A story at Boston.com about Downeast Cider, founded in 2011, includes a funny that explains why it’s not called “Three Idiots Cider” today.

The story also looks at the company’s expansion and how leaders Tyler Mosher ’11, Ross Brockman ’11, and Matt Brockman ’08 — each of whom were named to Forbes’ 30 under 30 list in 2014 — try to keep the brand and company culture feeling genuine and down-to-earth.

“New employees sometimes assume there’s some sort of Steve Jobs-type person thinking about every detail, and it’s really not like that,” Ross Brockman tells reporter Justine Hofherr. “None of us are geniuses.”

Re-writing the African story — AllAfrica

An essay in AllAfrica to “change the negative perception of Africa.”

Mushi, a �ֲ���ý economics major whose looked at three Tanzanian women and their experience with microfinance institutions, recalls for writer Anne Kidmose Jensen how his fellow �ֲ���ý students often bought into negative African stereotypes.

So, he created to tell other stories about African nations.

Desmond Mushi ’13 talks to Associate Professor of English Sanford Freedman at the 2013 Senior-Faculty Dinner. (Phyllis Graber Jensen/�ֲ���ý College)

While Africa is beset by “wars and poverty and corruption,” the continent “is also a place of stock markets, high-rises, and internet cafes, and this is a part that needs media attention,” Desmond says.

While his initial motivation for the website was to make American audiences more Africa-aware, Mushi sees stereotypes being embraced at home, too.

The media’s portrayal of Africa “has not only affected people in the U.S. and Western Europe, it has also affected Africans themselves.”

Mushi, who lives in Dar es Salaam, is a research assistant with the think tank Economic and Social Research Foundation.

10 months, 45 national parks, 11 rules — The New York Times

While on his 10-month road trip to 45 of the 47 national parks in the contiguous U.S., Jeremy Cronon ’13 says that he “adopted a series of daily practices — I called them my “roadtripology rules” — to force myself to be as deliberate as possible about the trip.”

He recently in The New York Times’ Travel section. Among them: Drive the speed limit. Use paper maps. And avoid interstates.

You might say “pshaw” to having rules on a roadtrip. But Cronon says that his rules “sought to enhance spontaneity by making sure I noticed it when it happened.”

College courses that ‘give us hope for the next generation’ — Elle

Melinda Plastas

Elle writer Natalie Matthews reports that today’s courses in women and gender studies tackle topics that are far more complex and inclusive than their 1970s forebears.

In that spirit, she offers a list of that “give us hope for the next generation.”

Checking in at No. 21 is “Tobacco: Gender Matters,” taught by �ֲ���ý’ Melinda Plastas, visiting associate professor of women and gender studies.

Plastas’ course teaches students to use “gender to examine the global history of tobacco production, consumption, and control” and to “consider the role of tobacco in shaping ideas about gender, race, ethnicity, sexuality, and class.”

The list also included the one-time �ֲ���ý course “Religion and the Monstrous Feminine,” offered in the 2016 winter semester.