Department News, Fall 2015

Message from the Chair
Department Spotlights
Department Announcements
Alumni Updates/Class Notes
Donor Recognition

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Message from the Chair

 

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Department Spotlight

 

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Department Announcements

Faculty Kudos

Dane Kennedy completed the tenth and final year of the International Seminar on Decolonization.  Over the past decade, the summer seminar sponsored by National History Center brought 150 junior faculty from dozens of countries to D.C. Professor Kennedy’s reflections on the seminar and its impact will appear in the upcoming issue of the AHA’s Perspectives in History.  Since his appointment as the NHC director in April 2014, Professor Kennedy‘s  Congressional Briefing Program has sponsored programs on Capitol Hill about tax reform in historical perspective; the conflict between Ukraine and Russia; Ebola and the African health crisis; and immigrant entrepreneurship.

Tyler Anbinder curated “The Civil War and the Making of Modern Washington,” one of the inaugural shows at the new George Washington University Museum.

Hope Harrison’s essay, “Five myths about the Berlin Wall,” appeared in the Outlook section of The Washington Post on October 30, 2014.

Outgoing chair Bill Becker finished a three-year stint as a consultant to the Museum of American History’s new “American Enterprise” display, which explores U.S. business history.

Edward Berkowitz was interviewed by The New York Times and NPR's “Marketplace” in connection with the 80th anniversary of the Social Security Act and the 50th anniversary of Medicare. As part of the celebration of Medicare's anniversary, he directed a series of oral interviews with health policy leaders for the National Academy of Social Insurance and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. His article, “Martha Derthick and the Art of Policy History: A Scholarly Appreciation,” also appeared in the April issue of The Forum: A Journal of Applied Research in Contemporary Politics.

Shira Robinson’s book, Citizen Strangers: Palestinians and the Birth of Israel’s Liberal Settler State (Stanford University Press, 2013), was named one of the "Top 25 Academic Titles of the Year” by Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries in December 2014. Over the past year she gave talks about her book at Princeton, New York University, the University of Pennsylvania, Yale University and Sarah Lawrence College, where she gave the annual lecture sponsored by the Christian A. Johnson Endeavor Foundation.

Andrew Zimmerman visited Boonville, Mo., this summer to research a famous 19th-century conjuror and root doctor who said he had been shot out of a cannon from Africa to the United States and who helped end slavery in the town during the Civil War. Professor Zimmerman’s article, “From the Rhine to the Mississippi: Property, Democracy, and Socialism in the American Civil War,” appeared with the Journal of the Civil War Era in March.

David Silverman presented a talk this August on the “The Sitka Tlingit and the Pacific Northwest Gun Frontier” at Sealaska, an indigenous-run business and cultural corporation in Juneau, Alaska. He was delighted to connect with a GW (and History Department) alum from the 1970s in attendance! In other news, Professor Silverman’s co-edited, Anglicizing Americans: Empire, Revolution, Republic, which includes his chapter, “Racial Walls: Race and the Emergence of American White Nationalism,” appeared with the University of Pennsylvania Press this spring. He spent 2014-2015 as a Barra Sabbatical Fellow at the McNeil Center for Early American Studies at the University of Pennsylvania working on his new book, Thundersticks: Firearms and the Transformation of Native America, forthcoming from Harvard University Press.

Shawn McHale gave the keynote address, entitled "Barbarian States and Cosmopolitan Public Spheres in the Colonial World" at the Cambridge University conference, Print Media in the Colonial World, in April. 

Leo Ribuffo’s essay “The Forebears of Trumpism,” a reflection on the continuities and changes in U.S. politics represented by Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, appeared in September on the History News Network website. Professor Ribuffo also spoke at a panel sponsored by the American Society of Church History entitled, “Studying American Religion, Politics, and Foreign Policy All at the Same Time: Where Do We Go from Here?” at the American Historical Association meeting in January in New York.

As historian for the Society of Former Special Agents of the FBI, Ray Batvinis has started an initiative to collect 200 oral histories from FBI personnel who were serving in the key field offices impacted by the 9/11 attack. They plan to complete the project by next September, and to donate the recordings and transcripts to the Library of Congress. This June, Professor Batvinis, who co-founded the Paris-based think tank, Cercle K2, spoke before 700 guests at the Ecole Militaire on the development of the FBI and its counterintelligence and intelligence work during WWII.  

With support from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton (where she will be in residence this year) Ilana Feldman is writing a book on Palestinian refugee experiences with humanitarian assistance over the more than 65 years of their displacement. Tentatively titled Life Lived in Relief: Palestinian Experiences with Humanitarianism, the book gives close attention to the experiences of both providers and recipients of aid, exploring the complex world constituted through humanitarian action.

Erin Chapman won a fellowship this spring from GW's Global Women's Institute for her new book project, Making Freedom Real: Gender and Emancipation in the African American Imaginary, 1865-1965. The book will investigate the thoughts of five exemplary black feminists and argue that the prevailing definition of freedom in patriarchal terms functioned at odds with black feminist critique. Her essay, “Rape Fantasies and Other Assaults: Black Women's Sexuality and Racial Redemption on Film,” appeared in Black Female Sexualities, a new volume published earlier this year by Rutgers University Press.

Theo Christov won a Kluge Fellowship from the Library of Congress. He will spend 2015-2016 working on his new book about the emergence of international law alongside the creation of states since the 19th century.

Two faculty members published this year in the flagship Journal of Asian Studies. Benjamin Hopkins’ article, “The Frontier Crimes Regulation and Frontier Governmentality,” appeared in March, and Jisoo Kim’s article, “Women’s Legal Voice: Language, Power and Gender Performativity in Late Choson Korea,” appeared in in August. Professor Hopkins also won a Woodrow Wilson Center Fellowship for AY 2014-2015.

William Burns’ new book, The Scientific Revolution in Global Perspective, was published by Oxford University Press in February.

Edward McCord’s new book, Military Force and Elite Power in the Formation of Modern China, was published by Routledge Press in late 2014. This April he acted as a tour study leader for a three-week program on Imperial China and the Yangzi River, organized by Smithsonian Journeys.

Dane Kennedy’s chapter, “Imperial Parasitism: British Explorers and African Empires,” appeared late last year in Echoes of Empire: Memory, Identity and Colonial Legacies, an edited volume published by I.B. Tauris, as did his article “The Means and Ends of Empire,” in Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. In January he published “The Imperial History Wars” in the Journal of British Studies.

Jenna Weissman Joselit published two articles this spring: "Jewish Geography" in the Jewish Review of Books, and "Madame Chaja" in Commentary.

Mary Jo Binker and Diane Lobb-Boyce co-published “The Indomitable Sara Delano Roosevelt: Mother of Franklin D. Roosevelt,” in the Fall/Winter issue of the Journal of White House History.

Current Students

Our doctoral students received numerous outside research grants to pursue their research and deepen their language skills. Recipients include Lauren Angel and Martin Margolis (Cosmos Scholar Award); Charles Kraus and Xingfei Yin (Predissertation Travel Grants from the Henry Luce Foundation/ACLS Program in China Studies); Katharine White (German Academic Exchange Service-DAAD, German Historical Institute); Bob Isaacson (American Academy for Jewish Research); Ben Young (Kathryn Davis Fellowship at the Middlebury Language Schools); and Linsday Beach (The Archie K. Davis Fellowship to Promote Research and Publication in North Carolina's History and Culture).

Robert Isaacson published two peer-review essays: “Antisemitism and Catholic Colonial Algeria in the Time of Dreyfus: Recovering the Conspiratorial World of La Croix de l’Algerie et de la Tunisie, 1899,” in Essays in History; and "Three Visions of Conflict: The Six Day War and the French Press, 1967," in The Graduate. Earlier this year he was awarded the Marjorie M. and Lancelot Farrar Memorial Award from the Society of French Historical Studies "for work on outstanding dissertation projects in progress."

Charles Kraus published three peer-review essays: “American Orientalism in Korea,” in the Journal of American-East Asian Relations; “Bridging East Asia’s Revolutions: The Overseas Chinese in North Korea, 1945-1950," in The Journal of Northeast Asian History and “To Die On the Steppe: Sino-Soviet-American Relations and the Cold War in Chinese Central Asia, 1944-1952,” in Cold War History. His co-edited volume, Sino-European Relations during the Cold War and the Rise of a Multipolar World, appeared with the Woodrow Wilson Center in 2015.

Ryan Musto was invited to speak at the United Nations about his research on nuclear weapon free zones as part of a "Symposium on the Nonproliferation Treaty: Nuclear Disarmament, Nonproliferation, and Energy, Fresh Ideas for the Future," co-sponsored by Harvard University, the Monterrey Institute and the United Nations Office for Disarmament Affairs.

Alexa Price published "Mount Vernon Fisheries," in the Digital Encyclopedia of George Washington.

Milorad Lazic reviewed Roosevelt’s Lost Alliances: How Personal Politics Helped Start the Cold War by Frank Costigliola for the Madison Historical Review.

Ben Young published two peer-review articles: “The Struggle for Legitimacy: North Korean-African Relations, 1965-1992,” for the British Association for Korean Studies Papers and “Juche in the USA: The Black Panther Party’s Relations with North Korea, 1969-1971,” for The Asia-Pacific Journal. He also wrote several short pieces for NKNews.org, a website focused on North Korea: "North Korea's Unlikely Alliance with German Environmentalists," (June 12, 2015); “North Korean diplomats and the illegal ivory trade,” (October 28, 2014); “Funding a DPRK diplomatic deficit: cigarettes, alcohol, and hashish,” and “North Korea’s 42 ton black-market alcohol imports in Pakistan,” (September 5, 2014).

Caitlyn Borghi, BA '15, won the prestigious Gilder Lehrman Scholar Award, covering an all-expense paid trip to New York to participate in a week of seminars and archival visits with leading U.S. historians.

Congratulations to the recipients of our 2014-2015 Graduate Student Awards. Katherine White won the Charles Herber Teaching Prize. Bianca Wythe and Selam Kedane shared the Elmer Louis Kayser Prize for Best Thesis by a Graduate Student in a Master’s Program, and Robert Isaacson and Nathan Wuertenberg shared the Howard M. Sachar Prize for Best Research Paper by a Graduate Student.  

Congratulations to the recipients of our 2014-2015 Undergraduate Student Awards. Emma Bilski and Franklyn Lyons won the Jesse Fant Evans Prize for Excellence in Contemporary History. Kathryn Harris received the Gardiner G. Hubbard Memorial Prize for Excellence in American History. Connor Woods and Caitlyn Borghi won the Thomas F. Walsh Prize for the Best Essay in Irish History. The department also awarded Deixler/Swain Prizes for the Best Undergraduate Theses to Kerry Lanzo, Benjamin Joel Staton, Taylor Soja, Rachel McBrayer, Aria Mildice, Edward Rickford, Catriona Schwartz, Jordan Stephen, Kara Yenkevich and Sarah Maserang for their Honors and Senior Theses.

The department also awarded Special Honors to the following undergraduate senior majors: Emma Bilski, Kathryn Harris, Madeleine Herr, Kerry Lanzo, Franklyn Lyons, Eric Ossola, John Pierce, Catriona Schwartz, Taylor Soja, Ashley Somawang and Adrian Szycowski.

 

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Alumni Updates/Class Notes

Robert H. Alden, AA ’62, BA ’65, MA ’68, had an illustrious career for almost half a century as a reporter and editor for The Washington Post. He retired in 2000. Mr. Alden lectured to GW journalism classes and recruited a number of graduates to work at the Post. He received GW’s Distinguished Alumni Achievement Award in 2005.

David Amram, BA ’52, was just awarded an honorary Doctorate of the Arts from Brooklyn College. He is composing new symphonic music, guest conducting orchestras, playing jazz and folk festivals and writing his fourth book  David Amram: The Next 80 Years. Love to all classmates.

Elliott Ashkenazi, PhD ’83, has retired as a business/legal historian and has been living in Kentucky for several years.

Bruce Bauman, BA ’75, is the author of two novels: And The Word Was (2005) and Broken Sleep (2015). He has published numerous short stories and articles and is the senior editor of Black Clock Magazine. www.Brucebauman.net

Steven Bernstein, BA ’77, has an MA in history/archives administration from Duquesne University, and is the author of two books: The Confederacy's Last Northern Offensive: Jubal Early, the Army of the Valley, and the Raid on Washington; and A Guide to the Papers of Paul Dembling. He has worked as an archivist, technical writer and database developer; and has for some years worked as an educator for the Prince William County Public schools.

Thomas DeLay, BA ’12, is currently teaching seventh grade social studies at KIPP Believe College Prep in New Orleans, La. KIPP Believe is one of the highest-performing middle schools in the city, and KBCP was the second highest-performing school on the iLEAP exam in New Orleans.

Daniel Demers, BA ’70, pioneered the exploration and exploitation of the Library of Congress' digital newspaper archives.  During the past year, he has had 12  stories published in such diverse periodicals as Canadian Naval Journal, Undersea Warfare Magazine and Palate Press.

Jennifer G. Eckel (Gay), BA ’83, never got over her case of "Potomac Fever" and lives in Alexandria, Va., with husband Bill (GW ’81). She is a law librarian with the law firm of Sutherland, Asbill & Brennan.

Roisin Ford (Wisneski), BA ’05, lives in Brooklyn, N.Y., and is an officer at the International Rescue Committee. She is married to 2005 Columbian School of Arts and Sciences graduate Nick Ford.

Daniel Friedman, BA ’92, is the director of development and advancement at the Hudson River Museum in Yonkers, N.Y.

Stefanie Garry, BA ’07, is currently stationed in Mexico City at the Subregional Headquarters of the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, one of the United Nation's regional bodies dedicated to social and economic development and research.

Brian Goldberg, BA ’05, is an agent at Worldwide Production Agency (WPA) focusing in television and living in Los Angeles, Calif.

Josh Gonzalez, BA ’07, runs a successful financial services practice in Northern Virginia which generates millions of dollars in revenue every year.

Justin Guido, BA ’07, graduated law school and currently works as a prosecutor in Miami-Dade. He has conducted approximately 20 jury trials, wrote an appeal and continues to litigate on a daily basis.

Jared Hall, MA ’10, will start as an instructor in history at the Hotchkiss School in Lakeville, Conn., this fall.

Felix Harcourt, PhD ’14, is a visiting lecturer at Georgia State University. His first book, The Most Picturesque Element: American Culture and the Ku Klux Klan, will be published by Chicago University Press in 2017.

Andrew Harrison, BA ’88, is a historian/archivist for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation in Princeton, N.J.

Jeff Hartgen, MA ’97, is a principal at MultiState Associates, a full service state and local government relations firm in Old Town Alexandria.

Andrew Hartman, PhD ’06, published his second book, A War for the Soul of America: A History of the Culture Wars, by the University of Chicago Press and has been reviewed widely in such venues as The Wall Street Journal, The New Republic and the LA Review of Books.

Vicki Higman (Anderson), MA ’78, is associate general counsel at a company that insures educational institutions.  In her free time, she continues to devour military and diplomatic histories.  She fondly remembers the lectures of Peter Hill and Rod Davison.

Scott Holtz, BA ’06, lives in West Palm Beach, Fla., and is president and managing shareholder of Prestia Holtz P.A., a criminal defense and civil trial law firm.

Candice Shy Hooper’s, MA ’12, first book, Lincoln's Generals' Wives: Four Women who Influenced the Civil War - For Better and for Worse, will be published in May 2016  by the Kent State University Press

Shawn Hoyer, BA ’99, is a SVP with Bank of America Merrill Lynch, leading growth technology banking efforts in the Mid-Atlantic region.  Based in Washington, D.C., his focus is to create more valuable companies by raising capital, both debt and equity.

Keith Kenny, MA ’80, retired from intelligence to a chalet in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Her “re-mission” is writing science fiction based on cultures, technology and social issues projects into the future. She says “names/places/times are changed to protect the guilty.”

Benjamin Klubes, BA ’87, has been a co-managing partner at BuckleySandler LLP, a 160 lawyer financial services and enforcement/litigation law firm based in Washington, D.C., for past six years.  He is a father of two children Sophia (12) and Josh (11) with wife Risa Bender.

Ted Kowalsky, MA ’03, after GW worked for the U.S. Department of the Treasury and then attended the London School of Economics.  Now, he mainly oversees Treasury's BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill Trust Fund, part of his $40 billion portfolio of economic, and environmental and renewable energy programs.

Lura Lee (Wallauer), MA ’99, worked as a historical consultant for the recent ABC hit TV show Astronaut Wives Club.  She currently resides in Tampa, Fla.

Mary Lou Lesser, BA ’67, is a retired librarian living in Alexandria, Va. She still has vivid memories of her excellent GW history professors: Lois Schwerer, Howard Sachar and Peter Hill. Their lectures were stimulating and fascinating.

George Blaine Lotz, BA ’65, after graduation, with ROTC commission, served 26 years in the United States Air Force, retiring as a colonel, followed by a civil service career.  In retirement in Hilton Head Island, S,C., he is active in Democratic Party politics, World Affairs Council and Habitat for Humanity.

Michael Mattarock, BA ’12, accepted a new position with Gartner Consulting this past spring where he continue to build upon his business leadership experience. He has also had the opportunity to co-author a Spanish service-learning course at GW focused on the history of El Salvador.

Jerrilyn Matthews, BA ’66, attended University of Michigan and completed MAT at Oakland University. She worked in social services for over 30 years and is now retired and presently living in the Saratoga Springs, N.Y., area. She is married with two sons and two grandchildren. Jerrilyn is involved in several nonprofits as a volunteer.

Christel McDonald, BA ’86, said the tools of research in history became her lifelong companion in getting to the roots of global intra-state conflicts in order to search for resolutions through multi-track diplomacy applied by non-governmental organizations.

Saman Moazami, BA ’08, graduated from the GW School of Medicine in 2012. He is currently a fourth-year resident in urology at Montefiore Medical Center/Albert Einstein College of Medicine in Bronx, N.Y.

Richard Murphy, BA ’01, JD ’07, serves as an Army social work officer working in prevention and treatment of domestic violence and child abuse at Tripler Army Medical Center in Honolulu, Hawaii. He has twice switched career fields within the Army, first from military police to law in 2007, then from law to social work in 2013.

Mark Plotkin, BA ’69, is a contributor to the BBC on American politics. In addition he writes a weekly column for TheHill.com and a weekly column for The Georgetowner.

Joseph Pollak, BA ’05, currently lives in Ann Arbor, Mich., with Robin Pollak, MBA ’11, their 1-year-old son. Joseph is an admissions officer for the University of Michigan Law School.

Karen Reap (Scott), BA ’64, spent her career on Capitol Hill, as a senior Pentagon official, and as a consultant working military manpower management issues. She credits her GW history training with fine tuning the research and writing skills that were critical to her career success.

Clifford Rees, BA ’74, after retiring as an attorney for the State of New Mexico in 2005, now serves part-time as the practice director for the Western Region of the Network for Public Health Law and as a legislative analyst for the State Senate Majority Whip.

Carlene Reinhart (Turman), BA ’50, MA ’70, EdD ’76, has an EdD in education.  She has worked for the government, for Xerox, had her own management consulting business and is very happily retired.

James Rudin, BA ’55, is the American Jewish Committee's senior interreligious adviser and visiting professor at Saint Leo University. His new book, Pillar of Fire, has been nominated for the National Jewish Book Award.

Philip Runfola, BA ’64, graduated from GW 51 years ago and retired from the CIA 19 years ago.  He is retired and living in Central Florida.  His main pursuits are golf, playing cards (poker, euchre and pinochle).  He enjoys riverboat cruises.

Tom Sepanski, BA ’86, is owner and president of Spire Creative Group with offices in N.Y. and L.A. They are a creative marketing and graphics company, creating offering memoranda for real estate investment sales offices, marketing office towers and all real estate asset classes.

Dominique Spencer (DeAngelo), BA ’11, after researching in Egypt as a Fulbrighter and working for the Fulbright Program at AMIDEAST for two years, just moved to New York City to begin her MA in international educational development at Teachers College, Columbia University.

Charles Szlenker, BA ’73, recently retired from the practice of law and resides in Arlington County, Va.

Jennifer Thibodeau, BA ’12, is still living in D.C., working with DoD Acquisitions and teaching yoga in her free time! She is looking forward to getting her MA in history in the next few years.

Abbie Weiser, BA ’02, is the assistant head of Special Collections at the University of Texas at El Paso Library.  In addition to her BA from GW, she has a MSIS from the University of Texas at Austin and a MA in history from the University of Texas at El Paso.

Richard Wilson, BA ’61, recently celebrated his 77th birthday. He was treated for prostate cancer and has been declared a survivor. 

 

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Donor Recognition

THANK YOU FOR YOUR SUPPORT!

The Department of History would like to gratefully acknowledge the following generous donors who made a gift to the school from July 1, 2014 – June 30, 2015.

BlackRock
The Boston Foundation
Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund
The Kislak Family Foundation, Inc.
Emerson Baker*
Scott J. Borow, BA ’05 
Leonard Braitman*
Thomas E. Brinkman, Jr., BA ’79 
Adrienne R. Brusselars, BA ’97 
Amos J. Buhai, BA ’02 
Jacqueline A. Burns, BA ’09 
Peter Lee Collins, MA ’81 
Katherine R. Connors, BA ’10 
Sean S. Corcoran, BA ’96 
Benjamin S. Davis, BA ’09 
Bert Howard Deixler, BA ’73 
Anne G. Dempsey, BA ’15 
Gina Louise DeNapoli, BA ’13 
Ronald J. Denham, BA ’67
John P. Egan, MD ’09 
Juan S. Fernandez, BA ’13 
Christina Elizabeth Firpo, BA ’00 
Ilana R. Goldfus, BA ’10 
Mary F. Goldwag, BA ’66, MA ’80 
Mariusz Robert Grabek, BA ’99 
Courtney E. Griffin, BA ’08
Kathleen M. Guy, BA ’15
Katherine C. Hardwick, BA ’11
Richard Perry Harland, MPhil ’78
Allen K. Harris, Esq., BA ’65 
Kathryn P. Harris, BA ’15 
Charles J. Herber*
Joan Herber*
Carol Kammen, BA ’59 
Woong Joe Kang, MA ’63, PhD ’81 
Miriam Annette Keil, BA ’09 
Joseph W. Kirschbaum, PhD ’08 
Benjamin B. Klubes, Esq., BA ’87 
Anne C. Larrick, AA ’52, BA ’53 
Benjamin F. Larrick, AA ’49, BS ’51 
Katelyn M. Levalley, BA ’14 
Rick Levin*
Kaitlin Marissa Lewis, BA ’13 
Thaddeus A. Lindner, AA ’50, BA ’51 
Joel A. Lipkin, BA ’74 
Cynthia J. Little, BA ’67 
Christel G. McDonald, BA ’86 
Suzanne M. Noel, MPhil ’83 
Elizabeth B. O'Donoghue*
Linda Levy Peck*
Lynn R. Perkins*
Alyxandria C. Peterson, BA ’15
Robin K. Pokorski, BA ’14
Karen J. Reap, BA ’64
Danielle DuBois Reeves, BA ’04
Matthew H. Reeves, BA ’04 
David S. Rosen, AA ’49, BA ’51 
Lois Green Schwoerer, HON ’02 
Barbara G. Selzer, BA ’75 
Derek S. Shashek, BA ’14 
Daniel I. Sherman, BA ’01 
Darina B. Sherwood*
John D. Sherwood, MPhil ’93, PhD ’95 
Martina Xiomara Spain, BA ’13 
JC Stiassni, BA ’14 
Robert A. Tanen, MA ’06 
Keith W. Taylor, BA ’68 
Dina S. Towbin, MA ’83 
Holly Melinda Turton, BA ’72 
Daniel Jameson Waters, BA ’12 
Michael W. Weeks*
Kimberly Weiner*
Raymond R. White, BA ’08, MS ’13  
Rosa D. Wiener, AA ’54, BA ’56 
James C. Wigren, MA ’85 
Tyler L. Woods, BA ’14 
Sandra Yin, MA ’94 
Timothy Zubizarreta, BA ’14 

* Friend
** Parent
+ Faculty/Staff
~ Student