Eugene M. Lang Visiting Professor for Issues of Social Change Theodore Gup.

Artist Helen Lom ’69, P’06. (p. 4).

Labyrinths of Thought. p.42 Illustration by Carles Garcia O’Dowd

to look at world building, we start with exploring long-existing and just-emerging research into AI technology. Ethics has been the domain of philosophers, but for Benjamin Kuipers ’70, the rise of AI has forced computer scientists to confront such questions, too. Kuipers, Emeritus Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Michigan, has been involved in AI research for more than 50 years (p.22). Nicholas Rhinehart ’12, an assistant professor at the University of Toronto, leads the Learning, Embodied Autonomy, and Forecasting lab. “We want robots to combine learning to forecast the future with reward learning, so they can plan ahead, do what people actually want, and get better with experience,” says Rhinehart (p.26).

In “A Lasting Legacy” (p.30), we celebrate a couple’s generosity and investment in the future as we learn what inspired Roy ’70 and Linda Shanker to make a $42 million commitment to the College and how they hope to inspire others to support Swarthmore’s future.

Continuing the theme of world building, we talk with Rosemarie Ewing-James ’80 (p.34), whose career in the foster care system helped abused and neglected children find homes full of love and support. All the things they need to become solid citizens, she says.

Learning how feeling trapped often leads world leaders into war is the research subject of Dominic Tierney, the Claude C. Smith ’14 Professor of Political Science. As war edges closer, he says, leaders often think they have no control (p.28).

Storytellers can help us not only escape the weight of the world, but explore the history of conflict within it. “Those stories have always been in our blood,” says Charley Parlapanides ’99, who has a new Netflix hit based on Greek mythology (p.36). “But the challenge is making them feel fresh.”

World building also demands vigilance. “Investigative reporting is deeply patriotic,” says Ted Gup, veteran journalist and author. As Lang Visiting Professor for Issues of Social Change at Swarthmore, he’s teaching a timely new course on investigative reporting (p.84).

We hope these stories — and those of all the devoted researcher, artist, teacher, gourd constructing, DJing, mosquito hunting, chess playing, lichen loving alumni building better worlds in this issue — draw you closer to your own vibrant Swarthmore.

Ginny Steel’s letter in the Spring+Summer 2025 Bulletin criticizing the magazine’s binding really resonated with me. The Bulletin’s format is terrible! For years I have grudgingly made time and space to open this monstrosity to the Class Notes pages, and then tossed the rest of it. Regardless of the quality of the contents, it’s just too much of a hassle to wrangle this ungainly thing into submission. It makes the College stand out in my mind, and not in a good way: self-centered and slightly patronizing. Not something I’d use as a selling point to a prospective student.

—KENNETH I BOWMAN ’72, Altadena, Calif.

I was disappointed and frustrated by the one-sided item “A Spring Protest & Concern for Campus Safety.” The brief and unsigned piece, which quotes President Smith but no students, faculty, or alumni, resembles a press release from the President’s office rather than journalism. Given the intense controversy, national media coverage, and alumni concern about student protests against genocide in Gaza, such a perfunctory piece is irresponsible and suggests an additional effort to silence student protesters. Parroting College administrators, the article justifies the arrests by stating there were “no signs that protesters were willing to engage in conversation that would bring the encampment to an end.” However, student journalists Ella Walker and Daniel Perrin wrote in The Phoenix (5/7/25): “Protesters at the encampment…consistently indicated…that they had not received any communication from the college outside of letters notifying them of interim suspensions. At time of publication, the college has yet to provide documentation of its attempts to contact protesters to The Phoenix.” I am horrified by the crackdown on free speech at an institution with a proud history of social justice. As a Philadelphia teacher, I can no longer encourage first-gen or undocumented students to apply to an institution that invites police officers to break up campus protests and suspends first-generation, low-income students for participating. I call on Swarthmore to drop all charges against student protesters, and I call on the Bulletin to provide responsible coverage of student protests.

—ALEX VOLIN AVELIN ’96, Philadelphia

“Tango ­— Lost at Midnight” is an ink on paper drawing by Helen Lom ’69, P’06.

At the time, one could not major or even earn credits in the fine arts. And for a child of refugee parents, becoming an “artist” was not considered a “real” profession.

Rebecca Sharpless ’90
Shackled: 92 Refugees Imprisoned on ICE Air
University of California Press

In December 2017, U.S. immigration authorities shackled and abused 92 African refugees for two days while attempting to deport them by plane to Somalia. When national media broke the story, government officials lied about what happened. Shackled tells the story of this harrowing failed deportation, the resulting class-action litigation, and two men’s search for safety in the U.S. over the course of three years.

“I’m so happy that Swarthmore exposed me to all kinds of people because it made me a better teacher,” says Kat Loveless ’00.

She fell in love with the language during her Swarthmore study-abroad year in Spain.

“I got to study Spanish literature and poetry, and we did an entire class on magical realism,” says Loveless.

She became enamored of the writing of Gabriel García Márquez, Federico García Lorca, and Ernesto “Che” Guevara.

For more than four decades, Ewing-James has been improving the lives of children and their families with a tireless energy that her retirement has failed to quell. Overseeing Forestdale’s foster care and adoption programs, Ewing-James helped ensure abused and neglected children found foster homes full of love and attention, care, and support.

“All the things they need to become solid citizens,” she says.

When Ewing-James joined Forestdale in 1996, only one or two of the agency’s foster children would go on to college each year. Nationwide, only 3-4% of fostered children get a four-year college degree.

“I thought I would go into business or Wall Street,” says Charley Parlapanides ’99, co-writer of Netflix’s Blood of Zeus. “But I always loved movies.”

by Tomas Weber

“I thought I would go into business or Wall Street,” says Charley Parlapanides ’99, co-writer of Netflix’s Blood of Zeus. “But I always loved movies.”

n Greek, his family name means “sons of storytellers.” But as a kid growing up at the Jersey shore, Charley Parlapanides ’99 figured it was safer to leave the storytelling to someone else.

“Our family was the classic immigrant cliché. My parents worked hard to get us all educated, and I always felt I should do something practical that can make money. I thought I would go into business or Wall Street,” says Parlapanides. “But I always loved movies.”

Today, Parlapanides is the co-writer of Netflix’s Blood of Zeus, the smash-hit anime series with a fresh spin on ancient Greek mythology, now in its third season. But it took a while for Parlapanides to embrace his destiny as a storyteller.

At Swarthmore, he majored in economics. By his senior year, though, the pull of the movie business had become hard to resist. His parents, it turned out, were supportive. “They said, ‘Listen, you have one life. Go chase your dreams.’”

After graduation, Parlapanides moved back home and took up his old high school job at a fish market. His friends from college, he says, were interviewing at Goldman Sachs — but he was gutting cod. He used the money to pay for the bus ride to New York City, where he had secured an unpaid internship with a producer.

he sciences and the humanities have not enjoyed the merriest of relationships in the modern era, but it didn’t used to be that way. Aristotle’s lectures on poetics and the natural sciences defined thought on the disciplines for centuries. As recently as a couple hundred years ago, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was emboldened to write on optics and color theory. Soon after that point, though, the accumulation of knowledge in the sciences made it a prohibitive endeavor for part-timers. In the other direction, the ambiguity that is often part and parcel of literature and the arts can be irksome for those studying hard sciences.

Enter Jorge Luis Borges. The Argentinian (1899-1986) was one of the most enigmatic writers of the 20th century. His stories — brief, compressed masterpieces of imagination and wonder — are full of riddles and paradoxes.

Borges is the ideal fiction writer to inspire fruitful conversations across disciplines, says Luciano Martínez, professor of Spanish, who recently concluded a three-year term as chair of the Arts and Humanities Division, and is a Fulbright U.S. Scholar in Taiwan for the 2025–26 academic year.

Peter B. Meyer ’65 (not driving the car) has been involved in the world of racing for nearly 50 years, traveling across the country and abroad as a flagger since 1979. Flaggers play an essential role in keeping drivers safe during races by monitoring the track for possible disruptions and communicating via flags.

eter B. Meyer ’65 does not seem like the type of person who would be drawn to working the corner at a motorsports track: He grew up in Manhattan in a family that knew next to nothing about cars and has spent much of his career studying the economics of environmental protection.

But Meyer has been involved in the world of racing for nearly 50 years, traveling across the country and abroad, and it all began on a snowy day in Summit Point, W. Va., in 1979.

“I was teaching at Penn State at the time and our neighbors across the street, who were really into racing and flagging, recruited my wife, initially,” he says. “I was pressed into service and ended up at a racetrack in 20- degree weather with 20-mile-an-hour winds blowing snow. I’ve been going back ever since.”

“The class meals provided an excellent opportunity to sit and spend quality time catching up with my classmates,” Ray Thomas ’75 said of Alumni Weekend. Ray and his wife Deloris founded Joseph Business School, which they run together.

Scientists have been trying to control tuberculosis since at least the 18th century. Helen Tomlinson Gibson ’41, was one of those scientists in the modern era. She worked with Max Lurie at the Henry Phipps Institute at the University of Pennsylvania in the early 1940s. Together they showed that ultraviolet (UV) light, a type of electromagnetic radiation with wavelengths shorter than visible light but longer than X-rays, could decrease the spread of tuberculosis from infected rabbits to susceptible rabbits. UV light is still used in hospitals to disinfect surfaces and decrease transmission of airborne bacterial diseases.

Tomlinson Gibson was a sports star at the College at a time when few female students had that distinction. She served as captain of the Garnet field hockey, women’s tennis, and women’s basketball teams, excelling in each sport.

Her marquee sport was field hockey; she was a second team All-American in 1940, an All Mid-Atlantic Region performer in 1939 and 1940, and a member of the All-Philadelphia Team in 1939. Following graduation, she played for the U.S. national field hockey team for several years. On the tennis court, Tomlinson was a two-time captain and finished unbeaten during the 1941 season. On the basketball court, she was a two-time captain and the squad’s leading scorer during her junior and senior seasons. Two of her four daughters, Barbara Gibson ’71 and Jeanne Gibson ’78, graduated from Swarthmore with Biology degrees and as varsity athletes.

What appealed to you about this opportunity?

When I was in high school in Ohio, Swarthmore was actually my first-choice college. I flew in for an interview, and when the interviewer looked over my file, he suggested I was wasting my time. I don’t take rejection well, and half a century later I finally found a way to get in. But more seriously, Swarthmore represents something special. I’ve never felt more privileged than being here. The College has a kind of intellectual integrity and humility that sets it apart. Its students are gifted, but they’re also willing to listen, to wrestle with ideas, to grow. To me, that’s at the core of the institution.

What does your investigative journalism course entail?

I’ve taught investigative reporting before, but this course is different. America itself is in a different situation, so this is not a generic investigative journalism class. We’ll be focusing on civil liberties under attack and the threats to democratic institutions. It’s a course designed to be responsive to the times in which we live. That means students will be grappling with very real, fraught issues. Investigative reporting is the hardest form of journalism, in my opinion. That’s also why I’ve brought in Vernon Loeb, a journalist of enormous experience and talent, to help mentor the students. We work in teams to support one another when the going gets tough.

How do you view journalism at this moment in American history?

At 74, I’ve lived through a few cycles and periods. But this period is truly different. We are in uncharted waters.