CLASS OF 1992 | 2020 | ISSUE 3
Greetings and salutations from D.C. It’s Election Day minus 35 and I am just recovering from watching the first presidential debate. I’ve showered, taken a stiff drink and can now share with you some news of our classmates. Let’s hope this goes more smoothly.
I start with medical news, specifically infectious disease and specifically COVID-19. You thought you were going to escape? The good news is we have a classmate on the inside. Corey Casper, interim president and chief executive officer, Infectious Disease Research Institute, University of Washington, is principal investigator for a study of Celularity’s COVID-19 treatment using human placental hematopoietic stem cell derived cells. He was also recently named to the Scientific Advisory Board of Why We Vaccinate, Inc. to promote the use of vaccines and “dissemination of clear and factual information on the value of vaccines and immunization for our communities’ health and welfare” according to the organization’s website. He probably needs to catch up on his sleep. Just not yet.
On a perhaps related subject, Dan Partland’s documentary Unfit: The Psychology of Donald Trump was released August 28. It features on the record, for the record interviews with prominent doctors and mental health professionals on the psychology of the president as part of their ethical “duty to warn” the public of imminent danger.
Jonathan Soros launched Athletes Unlimited, a totally new sports league that totally reinvents how you view sports, creates balance in the force and re-invents how to build teams and how you score points—even how you pick the MVP. The summer softball season was a hit and the league is gearing up to add women’s volleyball next year. It’s a lot more fun than watching a Mets game. Or Phillies for that matter.
An excerpt of Jonathan Liebson’s essay on teaching during the pandemic ran in the fall alumni magazine. The full piece (“Teaching Moments in a Time of Diaspora”) can be found at magazine
.wesleyan.edu (in the Letters section). Jonathan currently lives in Brooklyn, New York, and teaches writing, literature, and culture at Eugene Lang College of The New School and at NYU’s School of Professional Studies. A list of other articles and recordings can be found on his website jonathanliebson.com.
It was nice to hear from Abigail Saguy who reports all is well from the left coast. She describes her recent promotion to department chair of the UCLA Sociology Department “an exciting new challenge” and sends news of a recent book release, Come Out, Come Out, Whoever You Are, published earlier this year. Her eldest daughter Claire is now a first-year student at UCLA, son Jonah is in eleventh grade (at least virtually), and husband Dotan has taken advantage of quarantine to create an online photography class.
Lee Schlesinger has departed from Boston after five years and returned to Chicago in June of 2019 to take a new role as vice president of portfolio management and education for Winesellers, Ltd., a national wine import company.
Elizabeth (Lisa) Liang’s film of her one-woman show, Alien Citizen: An Earth Odyssey, is being “taught” on college campuses in the United States, Mexico, and Canada. It’s now streamable at gumroad.com. Lisa also leads workshops that help people to tell their own hard-to-label stories: interculturalstorytelling.com. She and her husband Dan live in Los Angeles.
Lisa Laing (who writes under the pen name Lisa McLuckie) published her third novel, Love Me Not, in May.
Grant Brenner, CEO of Neighborhood Psychiatry, is focused on the recent pivot to telemedicine and has also launched a podcast called Doorknob Comments, about living well, hosted by two psychiatrists. He is working on a fourth book, Making Your Crazy Work for You, all the while raising a family in New York’s increasingly grungy East Village . . . while occasionally sleeping.
And last but certainly not least, my lovely and talented wife, Michele Greenstein, took a new position at the State Department as a senior advisor for peace and security. She is working on a congressionally mandated effort to establish the interagency Global Fragility strategy to stabilize conflict-affected areas and prevent violence globally. How do you like them apples?
Hope you are all safe and doing well.
Adam Berinsky | berinsky@mit.edu
Paul Coviello | coviellop01@alum.darden.edu