Seen & Heard
A selection of must reads about Dartmouth alumni making news around the world.
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Ted Tapper ’61
Key Witness
Tapper was working in Philadelphia in 2011 when he treated a 17-year-old patient for a gunshot wound. The patient, C.J. Rice, was later convicted of an attempted murder that took place just a few days after he’d seen the pediatrician. Tapper testified in court: “The amount of pain that I saw him with and the inability to stand and get onto and off the table in my office on the 20th of September makes me very dubious as to whether he could walk standing up straight, let alone run with any degree of speed, five days after I saw him.” Still, Rice was convicted and sent to prison.
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Herbert Chang ’18
Sphere of Influence
Chang, an assistant professor of quantitative social science at Dartmouth, was selected for the Forbes “30 Under 30” list in the science category. According to the magazine, “Chang's goal is to realize democratic values in our socio-technical infrastructure by studying social networks, politics, and how AI reshapes human relationships. His research on the network science of offshore wealth has helped pressure Russian oligarchs following the invasion of Ukraine—findings that the U.S Justice Department followed up on.”
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Phil Klay ’05
Ideology Versus Morality
Klay, an award-winning author and veteran of the Iraq War, was interviewed by David Marchese for the November 28, 2023 issue of the New York Times Magazine. The resulting story, titled “Finding a Moral Center in This Era of War,” featured quotes from Klay about the war in Ukraine, what motivates American soldiers, and how ideologies have blunted or warped people’s moral reasoning when it comes to the suffering of civilians in Palestine and Israel.
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Margaret Wilkerson Sexton ’04
Black and White
Sexton met her husband, Thomas Sexton ’04, when they were on a Dartmouth foreign study program in Trinidad. In a personal essay for The Guardian, she writes:
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Jared Duker Lichtman ’18
Beautiful Math
According to Quanta, Lichtman is among a “new generation of mathematicians pushing prime number barriers.” He and two other graduate students studying under Fields Medal winner James Maynard have each recently written papers advancing new understanding about how prime numbers are distributed. Lichtman’s paper was singled out for how it built upon Maynard’s previous work.
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Samantha Schnee ’92
Found in Translation
Schnee, who majored in English and earned an M.F.A. from The New School, co-founded Words Without Borders 20 years ago. The nonprofit literary magazine is dedicated to publishing the best stories from around the world translated into English. The New York Times highlighted Words Without Borders on November 2, the week of its anniversary celebrations, in an article noting that this is “a fraught time: Around the world, wars are raging.
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Julie Dunfey ’80
High Plains History
Dunfey, a former DAM board member, has been co-producing documentaries with Ken Burns for more than 30 years. Their latest series, “The American Buffalo,” lays out the history of the high plains mammal that plays an integral part in American history. Dunfey appeared on High Plains Public Radio on October 16, the date of the film’s premiere.
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Mercedes de Guardiola ’17
Green Mountain Blues
Eugenics policies were “designed to break apart entire families and to basically get rid of them over several generations, whether that be segregating them in an institution, whether that be sterilizing them, whether that be inflicting so much trauma that the family no longer comes together,” de Guardiola told VTDigger last week, in conversation about her book Vermont for the Vermonters: The History of Eugenics in the Green Mountain State. Published by the Vermont Historical Society, the book was originally written as part of de Guardiola’s undergraduate thesis.
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Rodrigo Vargas ’00
Artful Fermentation
Vargas founded Massachusetts-based American Vinegar Works in 2019, sure that there was an untapped market for premium, small batch vinegars. According to a recent profile in Fast Company, he was right. American Vinegar Works is currently producing 12,000 gallons of vinegar each year, 25 times more than it made in 2020. The company sells 16 varieties of vinegar and plans to launch more in coming months.
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