 |
||
 |
|
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
The Yale Alumni Magazine is owned and operated by Yale Alumni Publications, Inc., a nonprofit corporation independent of Yale University. The content of the magazine and its website is the responsibility of the editors and does not necessarily reflect the views of Yale or its officers. |
|
|
David R. Gergen '63 "Everyone who has worked in government, a corporation, a professional group, or a nonprofit knows that leadership matters," writes David Gergen, who has had ample opportunity over the last 30 years to watch leaders in action. In addition to serving as an editor at U.S. News and World Report, a political commentator, a professor at Duke and Harvard, and a fellow of the Yale Corporation, Gergen has worked at the White House with presidents Nixon (chief speechwriter), Ford (head of communications), Reagan (director of communications, the press office, and the speechwriting staff), and Clinton (special counselor), as well as with George Bush's election team and with Jimmy Carter after he left office. And in this wide-ranging book, a seasoned operative provides a perspective that voters will find useful in assessing the candidates and that prospective office seekers will ignore at their peril. "Leaders, some believe, are born, not made. It certainly appears that many of the best of the past century -- Churchill, the Roosevelts, Gandhi, Mandela, Golda Meir, Martin Luther King Jr. -- had leadership in their bones," notes Gergen. "But each of them gained enormously by studying and drawing upon the experiences of others." In these chronicles of the inner workings of four presidencies, the author presents plenty of valuable lessons. It is not, to be sure, a "tell all" expose; Gergen is fair (perhaps, too fair), respectful, and evenhanded in assessing the strengths and weaknesses of the leaders he has served. As a result, readers can see what went right, as well as what went wrong. Reagan, for example, is seen as a Franklin Roosevelt in style, but not in substance, and while the "Great Communicator" could buoy a despondent nation with his oratory, scandals like Iran-Contra snapped the public trust his words had built. Ford, who passed Gergen's basic test of presidential fitness -- "the country and the presidency were in better shape than he had found them 30 months earlier" -- failed another crucial test: the challenge of the first 100 days of an administration when the president must "define who he is and what he is seeking to achieve through his leadership." And then there are Nixon and Clinton, both of whose stories are "the stuff of Shakespeare." They may have been among the smartest men ever to hold the presidency, and they will probably be judged well by history for their achievements in office. Yet both were crippled by their respective character flaws. The importance of
personal integrity is the first of seven critical traits that Gergen extracts from the experiences of the presidents he has served. "A
leader must achieve self-mastery. Or, as Heraclitus put it more
succinctly, 'Character is destiny.' The inner soul of a president
flows into every aspect of his leadership," Gergen notes. In addition,
a president must have a clear sense of purpose, a capacity to persuade,
the ability to work within the system, the ability to "hit the ground
running," strong and prudent advisers, and the capacity to inspire
others to carry on the mission. Having these doesn't guarantee a
successful administration, Gergen says, but in judging a candidate,
they're a good place to start.
Maya Lin '81, '87MArch "I do not think you can find a reason for everything you make," writes Maya Lin, who garnered fame early in her career by designing the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., while she was still a Yale undergraduate. And though many artists are among the worst people to ask to explain the sources of their creativity, Lin is remarkably eloquent at describing how she develops her sculpture and architecture. Boundaries is an intimate and visually stunning look at the interface between an artist and her art. This "visual and verbal sketchbook," as Lin terms it, discusses the "what" and the "why" of such well known pieces as the Vietnam Veterans Memorial; the Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery, Alabama; the Women's Table at Yale; the Wave Field at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor; and a number of buildings, from the Langston Hughes Library in Tennessee to private homes. "I create places in which to think, without trying to dictate what to think," Lin explains, adding that the goal of her art is to engender "a private conversation with each person, no matter how public each work is and no matter how many people are present." A key aspect of this approach is the incorporation of text in many of the pieces -- the names of the soldiers killed in Vietnam or murdered during the struggle for civil rights, as well as a timeline that chronicles the growth in the number of women at Yale. "This act of reading, which is inherently a private act, is made more intimate by my deliberate choice of a smaller-scale text that one reads like a book, rather than a billboard," says Lin. The fact that the artist must also write proposals to support funding and approval of her more public works no doubt accounts for her ability to explain her art. "I begin by imagining an artwork verbally," she says. "I try to describe in writing what the project is, what it is trying to do." Lin also provides intriguing details about her own upbringing. "My father was a ceramicist and my mother a poet, and both chose to pursue the arts in education," she writes. "This profoundly influenced my choice to create works that teach, and involve me in a research/educational path every time I start a new project." The artist is a persistent researcher -- "perhaps I just miss school" -- and plunges into new subject
matter, from civil rights to quantum physics, before a design takes
shape. There are tales of the "proverbial sketch on a napkin," and
she reveals that when the idea for the Vietnam memorial first came
to her in a Yale dining hall, she did a hasty model in mashed potatoes.
She describes the painful politics involved in getting public artwork
built, as well as her struggle to reconcile her Eastern and Western
backgrounds and turn her feel for the native landscape into art
and architecture. "Sometimes I feel the only way I truly relate
to people is through my art," says Lin, who, though she is formally
through with what she calls "the monument business," certainly struck
a chord that continues to resonate with the public.
Catherine Bush '83 "Lux was coming. Already she was somewhere in the wide expanse of London. My awareness of her presence unsettled me vaguely. Sometimes, before she flew in to visit, I dreamed strange dreams. Like a breeze, she stirred up things." So begins Catherine Bush's mesmerizing novel about love, responsibility, and war, and when protagonist Arcadia Hearne's sister Lux arrives for a visit, the result is definitely stirring. Arcadia is a serious student of conflict -- she's a researcher at a think tank -- but unlike reporters or soldiers, she is a theorist who has tried to keep all traces of real battles at arm's length. However, Lux, a gutsy host of a world music video program who supplements her work by running clandestine "errands" for a human rights organization, is about to shatter the carefully crafted peace of her sister's existence when she enlists her help in delivering money and a false passport to an Ethiopian refugee. In agreeing to move beyond being an observer, Arcadia opens herself up to the fact that she is also a refugee: from her parents, her native Canada, and the moral consequences of causing that most ancient of conflicts when she became the object of a duel between two pistol-wielding lovers. "What does it mean to dream more
of the city left behind than the one inhabited? To run toward the
thing you think you've fled?" Arcadia asks, in pondering the rules
of engagement in a morally ambiguous world. As the story unfolds
in gripping and luscious prose that speaks of "desire like sparks
of light in a mirror, the scent of sausages, baked beans, burning
bread, [and] the lurid lime green of the canals," she attempts to
come to terms with the past and commit to a more engaged future.
Jan Albers '88PhD "The perfect Vermont village seems frozen in time," writes historian Jan Albers. In fact, she goes on, "frozen in time" seems an apt metaphor for a state that to many people defines the essence of New England: the green hills, the church steeple, the verdant town common, the fall colors. But any such notion of permanence is illusory, and in this handsomely illustrated examination of the history of Vermont from its inception (when it was on the equator) to the present, Albers paints a portrait of a constantly changing landscape. Mountains rise and fall, glaciers build and recede, and the land itself is never steady as the tectonic plate that carries Vermont journeys slowly around the globe. Imprinted on these geological changes are those wrought by the people who have called the area home for at least the last 10,000 years, and it is the effect of the human "hands on the land" that is the author's primary concern. "All people transform nature in order to live," Albers writes. "A history of the landscape is the story of how different cultures saw fit to alter the earth to meet their needs, express their beliefs, and satisfy their whims." Nature has never been
passive, and neither have humans and their communities. By showing
how Vermonters have wrought a transformation from "timeless" maple
trees to the Maple Tree Mall, Albers has written a valuable primer
to help people, wherever they reside, understand their impact on
the landscape and, hopefully, make enlightened land-use decisions. Jim Kaplan '66 Drew Leder '76,'86PhD David J. Leffell
'77, MD Ann Marie Plane
'85 James Prosek '97 Ron Rosenbaum
'68
Christine Andreae
'67MAT Jonathan H. Adler
'91, editor May Berenbaum
'75BS Boris Berman,
Professor of Piano Burkhard
Bilger '86 Martin Boroson
'82, '88MBA, and Christopher Gilvan-Cartwright T. Berry
Brazelton, MD, and Stanley I. Greenspan, '66MD Peter Brooks,
the Tripp Professor of Humanities, and Alex Woloch, editors Terry Burnham
and Jay Phelan '87MES Anne Curzan '91
and Lisa Damour '92 David Damrosch
'75 Elizabeth B. Davis
'75PhD Philip E. Devine
'66 Ande Diaz
'84 Val Dusek
'63 Robin Jaffee
Frank, Associate Curator of American Paintings and Sculpture John G.
Gager '59 Nadine George
'93, Assistant Professor of Theater Studies and African American
Studies Peter H.
Gleick '78BS Karla Goldman
'82 Cheryl Hader '85 David Hays '56DRA Chris Hoffman
'59 Karen Katz '71MFA Ann Kjellberg
'84, editor Jonathan
Lear '70 Helen Lillie '41DRA Margaret
A. Murray '83PhD Sherwin
B. Nuland '56MD Tom Perrotta '83 Jesse Reklaw '98MS William Rieder
'65 Arthur Rosenfeld
'79 Robert Simmons
'73 Tierney C. Taylor
'75 Harlow Giles Unger
'53 Jason Waldrop
'76 Elga Wasserman
'76JD Alexander Welsh,
the Emily Sanford Professor of English |
||
|
|||
|