College of the Liberal Arts Electronic Magazine, Issue 10

Issue 10, 12/18/02

Contents:

Transatlantic Slave Trade

Alumna Embarks on Spirited Career

Homicide Class

Polygraph Machines

Alumni Society Salutes Emeritus Board Members

Unsubscribe

Penn State

College of the Liberal Arts

Alumni Relations and Development

Fall College Marshal Interested in Ancient Civilization

The letters look like variations of upside down “v’s.” Josh Gieske, who will graduate from Penn State this December, explains the writings. “I just came

from an exam in my ancient Greek class. We had to translate several passages from Plato’s Apology from Greek to English.”
    Gieske finds this exercise more intriguing than difficult. After all, he has a multiple major in religious studies and classics and ancient Mediterranean studies and a double minor in history and Greek. In addition, he’s part of the Schreyer’s Honors College and has been on the Dean’s list every semester. His academic accomplishments are part of the reason he’s been selected to represent the College of the Liberal Arts in the fall commencement, but his involvement in Penn State programs also makes him an outstanding representative.
   In the summers of 2000 and 2001, he participated in archaeological digs in Israel and Greece and aspires to continue to explore archaeology as opportunities arise. Furthermore, under the guidance of Baruch Halpern, Chaiken Family Chair in Jewish Studies and professor of ancient history and religious studies, Gieske has completed a thesis, that focuses on methodologies of divination in the ancient world. In layman’ s terms, this means that he studied how people in ancient times struggled to understand the world through dream interpretation and the reading of animal organs.
   But perhaps the activity that affected him most was his role as an OPP (Operations) Captain for THON, a yearly dance marathon held to raise money for children with cancer. “I was blown away by the energy and excitement surrounding the event.” This year, Gieske’s schedule doesn’t allow him to participate as actively in the experience. “I’m really going to miss that.”
   One of Gieske’s reasons for his double major stems from his intense interest in earlier civilizations. “I like to escape into the world of ancient Greece. Anything related to those years—history, language, society—fascinates me. I would love to have lived during that time.”
   Gieske explains his time at Penn State. “Even before I applied, I knew I wanted to go here.” Gieske says. “I liked the flexibility in changing majors and loved the campus and the countryside. Once here, I discovered I could form close mentoring relationships with a number of well-known professors.” He also found the classes to be challenging, ultimately realizing that “there are more questions I want answered. My classes at Penn State have made me see that the world is more complex than I imagined.”

Richards Center Joins with U.N. to Research Era of Transatlantic Slave Trade

The Transatlantic Slave Trade—the forced migration of approximately 12 million people, and the death of many more in war and captivity, over the course of 400 years—changed the face of the world, creating the Western Hemisphere we know today with its legacy of racial problems. Six out of every seven persons who crossed the Atlantic to take up life in the Americas in the 300 years before the American Revolution were African slaves.
   The College’s George and Ann Richards Civil War Era Center is leading the University’s efforts as one of five institutions involved with the United Nations Educational, Social, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in a multi-national collaboration devoted to research on and better teaching about the Transatlantic Slave Trade. The project, “Breaking the Silence: The Transatlantic Slave Trade Education Project,” links more than 200 public schools in twenty-one countries around the Atlantic Rim to promote better teaching of the slave trade, abolition, African culture, the endurance of slavery and racism, and to foster the search for reconciliation around this chapter of American and world history.
   “Tragic as is this narrative, the peopling of the Americas offers more than a story of cruelty and despair,” says the Richards Center Director William Blair, associate professor of history. “It is a story of the first international campaign for human rights—a humanitarian movement that highlights the extraordinary acts of ordinary men and women of all ethnicities and creeds who shared a common commitment to freedom.
   “Slavery and emancipation lay at the heart of America’s Civil War and the topic represents an essential thrust of the research and teaching emphasis of the center. Penn State is extremely well-situated to participate in the national conversation on slavery’s history and ongoing effects,” Blair adds. “As importantly, Penn State has a number of fine scholars spread throughout various departments—within and beyond the College of the Liberal Arts—who specialize in slavery and freedom struggles from antiquity to the present. This project allows us to capitalize on this important resource within the University, which can contribute to a better understanding of the creation of race and—with hard work over an extended time—find ways to encourage its unmaking.”
   In collaboration with the Regional Humanities Center at Tulane University, New Orleans; the Gilder-Lehrman Centre at Yale University; the Low Country Atlantic World Program, College of Charleston, South Carolina; and the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center in Cincinnati, Ohio; the Richards Center’s goal is to create the foundations for broadening the understanding of future generations of the history and impact of the Transatlantic Slave Trade.
   Nationally, the goals of “Breaking the Silence” are to increase the breadth and depth of teaching at public middle and high schools about the Transatlantic Slave Trade and the struggles for emancipation, and, in so doing, address the legacy of racism in the United States. Each member university or research center partners with a local school system in developing and testing curriculum which, once developed, will be made available to the 200 linked schools involved with the project. At Penn State, the Richards Center is coupled with the State College Area school district in a partnership that already has resulted in a teacher workshop at Yale University last summer and a number of projects begun among students in the district.
   At the same time, the Richards Center is collaborating with other entities within Penn State’s College of the Liberal Arts: the Rock Ethics Institute and the Africana Research Center, on developing means of expanding “Breaking the Silence” both locally and nationally. The centers together are planning:
   —summer teachers’ institutes, modeled on the highly successful seminars that the Richards Center has held for the last few years for public school teachers;
   —a meeting of scholars from around the Atlantic rim to be held in 2005 to reassess the state of scholarship in this important area of study and suggest a research agenda;
   —an exhibit, “Contemporary Artists’ Visions of Slavery” at the Palmer Museum of Art on Penn State’s University Park Campus;
   —development of university-level curricula for use at Penn State, its World Campus, and at other universities;
   —support for collaborative research projects addressing the issues of the project;
   —long-running brown-bag series, lectures, seminars, and symposia.
   Currently, the three research entities at Penn State are sponsoring “Breaking the Silence: Slavery and Freedom Struggles,” a speaker series that will continue through 2005. The next speaker event in the series, Barbara Fields of Columbia University, will occur on March 20. Also scheduled is Troy Duster, professor at the Institute for the History of the Production of Knowledge and Department of Sociology at New York University, who will speak at University Park in April.

Alumna Jane Nichols Embarks on Spirited Career

   Thanks to publicists involved with agriculture in Idaho and Maine, few know that Long Island’s largest single export is the potato. But Jane Nichols ’66 English knew, and knew that those local potatoes could become quite a story. In 1997, putting aside a career as a product developer in Manhattan, she started work with her partner Steve Abramson to launch Peconika Vodka.
   “I was used to developing new products,” she says. Among her past successes are Vaseline Intensive Care and the Rave line of hair care products. “Liquor was really outside my bailiwick.”
   Nichols is quick to point out that the Peconika story is not just about distilling vodka. Reflecting trends toward local produce and community-based cuisine, Peconika is a vodka tied very much to its region. First, its name combines Peconic Bay, in the Hamptons, with vodka, reflecting the mix of European tradition with local products. It is also the first vodka from New York state, and the only blended vodka of both potatoes (all from long island’s famous fields) and select grain which, according to libation experts, gives Peconika a distinct taste and character—so distinct that Peconika’s Web site devotes pages to list accolades and acclaim.
   In fact, in the 2001 San Francisco World Spirits Championship, Peconika won top honors over such European standards as Stolichnaya, Skyy, Ketel One, and Belvedere.
   But the taste owes as much to Nichols’ career as it does to the high quality spuds that go into it. Through work in cosmetics product development, Nichols knew to consult the research scientists at International Flavors and Fragrances, Inc., a group known for their highly distinguished and sensitive palates. They tasted the various blends Nichols and Abramson considered using for their vodka. “We wanted those expert palates and noses to find a taste they all loved,” Nichols says.
   With the Hamptons being home-away-from-home for so many trendsetters, Peconika’s reputation has taken off quickly. Rudolph Giuliani served Peconika during special events at Gracie Mansion while he was in office, and it was the vodka pour at the U.S. Open Tennis Championships in 2001, as well as the premium pour at Belmont, Aqueduct, and Saratoga Racetracks.
   But how did an English major originally from the Mt. Washington neighborhoods of Pittsburgh end up a distiller on Long Island? Nichols says she took a number of advertising and public relations courses while she earned her English degree. She left Penn State and landed in advertising in New York, and one of her early accounts was Clairol. After a short period as the beauty editor for Glamour magazine, Nichols joined Chesebrough-Pond’s, Inc., where she eventually earned a position as vice-president.
   Abramson and Nichols own Water Mill Brands, which markets Peconika. It is actually Nichols’ second venture with Abramson, to whom she refers to her partner in work and life. Before that, the two launched Trumatch, a color-matching process for the printing and design industry. While it’s a decidedly niche product, Nichols says that Peconika is niche as well. “A high-end vodka with local ingredients and limited distribution is necessarily niche.”
   Both products however, reflect Nichols’ interest in and talent for products. “If it can be sold in stores or on-line, I am interested in developing the product pieces.” Thus, once Trumatch got off the ground, the two found themselves looking for another venture. She says, laughing, “We like to tell people that color management led us to drink.”
   After years of creating stories for other people’s products, and after a successful foray into technical products, Nichols realized that her love of the Hamptons’ local produce and seaside lifestyle might translate into a product. After eighteen months of research and a lot of work, Peconika hit the market in 2000 and began turning heads, and palates, to the story of Long Island potatoes and an American upstart.
   Nichols is very pleased that the hard work has translated into so much acclaim. Of course, once again, past experience helped, especially Abramson’s experience running a color lithography plant. Peconika’s frosted bottle sports vertical ribbing and a window through which people can view a full color painting of a potato field. Steve Romm, the artist, is also a Hamptons product. Thus, in addition to culinary and taste awards, Peconika won an award for its packaging at the 2001 San Francisco World Spirits Competition, and was recently heralded in I.D. (International Design) Magazine as one of the world’s best liquor bottles.
   While Peconika is still only distributed in New York state and parts of Pennsylvania, the company is working to increase distribution on the east coast. But Nichols says to keep an eye out at festivals, galas, and in cutting edge restaurants. “We’re not everywhere, yet,” she says, “but we are in a lot of places where people want to be.”

Beckerman’s Homicide Class

   Anthropologists strive to understand human behavior better by exploring the nature of humans from physiological, genetic, cultural, and psychological perspectives. Associate Professor of Anthropology Stephen Beckerman’s new fall class does just this by examining the topic of homicide from an anthropological perspective.
   What are the causes for crimes such as infanticide, parricide, or spousal murders? Is there a way one can link violent behavior to a Darwinian perspective? What can statistical analysis of killing reveal about our culture? For instance, does the higher ratio of male to female murder tell us something about inherent sex differences or the social construction of gender roles? These questions (among others) are addressed in Anthropology 83S, Freshman Seminar on Homicide.
   Beckerman explains the link between the topic and anthropology. “Anthropologists have been finding that people may kill in order to advance their own fitness. For instance, someone might be driven to murder if he or she perceives the victim as in some way threatening his or her opportunities to get genes into descending generations.”
   The subject creates immediate interest among students, which then allows Beckerman to encourage analytical thinking and reasoning. “They’re fascinated with the topic of homicide. By taking this subject as the central focus, I then try to get them to deal in statistical correlates and research to determine links between murder and the study of human behavior.”
   The overall goal of the course is to introduce first-year students to college-level skills through reading, critical appraisal, discussion, and research. As Beckerman’s syllabus states, “Even more than a course on a particular subject, this is a course meant to create full-fledged university-level students. I want to give them the tools to think critically (and not just from the standpoint of an anthropologist), and to write effectively so they’re prepared for later classes and term papers.”

Back to top

Psychologist Helps Determine Utility of the Polygraph Machine

   Public opinion provides the polygraph almost mystical abilities: it can detect lies. But Kevin Murphy, professor of psychology, points out that the polygraph machine really only maps physiological behavior. “Its machinery detects breathing patterns, changes in heart rate, skin conductance or resistance—the physiological reactions to charged questions. The problem is that it cannot determine the reason behind the reactions.”
   In the eighty-five years since the polygraph was invented, it has attracted controversy, plots on how to foil it, lawsuits, and scientific investigation. But earlier this year, the polygraph machine underwent perhaps its most rigorous and focused investigation to date when the National Academy of Sciences sponsored a committee to review the scientific evidence on the polygraph. Murphy was one of several psychologists, physiologists, engineers, and lawyers invited to study the science behind the machine, its subsequent uses and successes, and to make recommendations based on the findings. In October, Polygraph and Lie Detection, a report of the National Research Council, was published, determining that the polygraph was insufficiently effective for use as a security screening device.
   “The most recent polygraph controversy is the Wen Ho Lee case,” Murphy says. (Wen Ho Lee, a former Los Alamos nuclear weapons scientist who had traveled to China in the mid-1980s, was alleged to have stolen secret information and given it to the Chinese.) “There was a concern of high-level leaks, and the government used the polygraph and other investigative tools to look into security screening for high level employees.”
   The meat of the controversy centered around the failure of the polygraph to determine, conclusively, who would be a leak and who would not. Murphy’s role as an industrial/organizational psychologist was to consider the human resources ramifications of security screening.
   Murphy says the committee looked at the science behind the polygraph for over two years. “And the committee was sensitive to balancing two very different concerns: whether the polygraph does what we think it does, and the very serious security issues that cannot be waved away,” he says. “If the polygraph is not good for use in security screening, what should we use? In the end, the biggest single set of discussions we had was on what recommendations to make and what the implications would be.”
   Murphy says the basic science behind the polygraph has always been weak. “No one has a clear idea of why it works or does not,” he says. “In well-controlled, well-executed situations, it does better than chance and worse than perfection. There are circumstances under which you can detect who is being deceptive and who is not, at a respectable rate, but nobody knows whether these lab results hold up in the field.
   “But many people think the polygraph works for reasons which have nothing to do with the machine itself.” Murphy says the polygraph is part of an elaborate interrogation procedure, a procedure which can be intimidating to people regardless of their intent to deceive. “A lot of the payoff for the polygraph is really in terms of its utility rather than its validity,” he says. “People admit to some things that would give you nightmares, simply because they are being interrogated, and they think the machine can tell if they are lying.”
   For security screening, Murphy says one person in a hundred or a thousand might commit non-trivial security breaches. “If you leave a computer on while you go to the bathroom, it’s not big deal, but it is a security breach. The real concern is serious violators. We know there are a lot of scientists and not a lot of violators.” Given that the polygraph is only accurate 78 to 95 percent of the time (according to a variety of sources), the committee concluded it is nowhere near accurate enough for high-level security screening.
   It also does not work because security screening is essentially work of prediction. The polygraph’s most effective use is to establish whether or not someone is being deceptive about something that has already occurred, and about which the interrogator can ask very specific questions. If an operator asks a subject a specific question, the subject gives an answer, and the interrogator, based on the machine readings, has to guess whether the statement is true or not. Thus, the broader the question and the more ambiguous it is, the more chance there is for subjectivity, and the less valid the machine’s readings become.
   “Screening always involves broader questions,” Murphy says. “Therefore, it is very difficult to determine whether someone will be a security risk.”
   “Thousands of people are not FBI agents at least in part as a result of the polygraph exam,” Murphy says. “Some made admissions, some were stressed. Many would not have been hired anyway, but if you get to the polygraph exam, you would have looked good on a lot of other areas. Sometimes it might have been very good that they didn’t get an FBI job, other times we may have missed out.”
   Thus, the costs of losing talent, plus the potential of missing risks, constituted more risk than the committee could allow. Unfortunately, as Murphy says, other screening techniques available now are not any better. He says, simply, “There are no short term solutions in sight.”

Alumni Society Salutes Emeritus Board Members

   Homecoming 2002 attracted a special group of Liberal Arts alumni to campus. Dean Susan Welch and Penn State Alumni Association Executive Director Diane Ryan inducted twenty-four former members of the College’s alumni society board into the Sparks Society at a special program held in conjunction with the semi-annual meeting of the College’s alumni society board at the Hintz Family Alumni Center on October 18. Formed to recognize and reconnect former board members, the Sparks Society is named for Edwin Earle Sparks, professor of history and president of Penn State from 1908–1919. Sparks is also the namesake for the building that houses the College’s administrative center.
   The Liberal Arts Alumni Society, established in 1972 as a constituent body of the Penn State Alumni Association, is a resource to the dean, faculty, and students to further the interests of the College and Liberal Arts as a whole. Sixty-nine alumni have served the Society as members of the board of directors since its formation. Society goals have consistently been to connect students with alumni for career development, sponsor social and educational events for its members, and honor a select few of the many distinguished Liberal Arts alumni through its awards and recognition program.
   Sparks Society members met with the Dean and current alumni board members to design ways to enhance the board’s work through involvement of Sparks Society members, to build on and benefit from their years of experience.
   Inaugural member of the Sparks Society are: Nancy Ballard, Charles Blunt, Barbara Brown, Denise Colecchi, Mike Conti, Lisa Davidson, William Donovan, Lurene Frantz, Chester Gnatt, Arnold Hoffman, Bill Jaffe, Paul Kirvan, Bonnie Marshall, Leslie Montz, Howard Moore, Herb Nurick, Sue Paterno, Jim Quinn, Elaine Rhodes, LJ Ruth, Sula Tyler, Bill Welch, and Jack Winter.

Do You Know?

In the last issue of LAzine, we ran a lead story on Dr. Lee Ann Newsom, one of two MacArthur Fellows in the College. We asked if anyone knew who the name of the other MacArthur Fellow. The correct answer, which we received from Susan Hunter, is Dr. Alan Walker. She will receive a prize from the editors of LAzine.

For this issue, we would like to ask a question based on our story on the polygraph machine: who invented the polygraph machine?

We will give the answer in the next issue of LAzine.