Comment

Issue: Fall 2019

Letters

Support for Steel
Your picture and comment on U.S. Steel’s Braddock plant is not just (“Justice for All,” summer 2019). A few clarifications: The plant has 900 well-paying jobs. USS is in full compliance with all current environmental
standards. USS is investing over $1.3 billion to modernize this complex, making it globally competitive. This investment will include a large cogeneration plant, which will further reduce emissions by over 50%, setting a new standard for industrial facilities. This is the best form of “climate justice.” Steel is a backbone of our economy and should be supported.
—Joe Turner ’59, Senior Advisor for Primary Energy, Oak Brook, Ill.

A Dual Mission
A letter in the last issue of Williams Magazine (“Other Missions?” summer 2019) wondered why our society should spend resources on space exploration instead of on solving problems on Earth. In my career working on our nation’s commercial and science spacecraft, I helped design observation satellites that monitor agriculture, land use and human trafficking; climate science spacecraft to help track global changes in storm intensity; and, yes, the NASA planetary probes that are the only means for scientists to compare how different geological and climatic processes might affect a planet. I am happy to provide these capabilities to everyone solving problems on Earth, and, indeed, I wonder if we can afford not to explore space if we want to improve our situation here. Fortunately, it’s a false
choice: We can do both. —Joseph Shoer ’06, Denver, Colo.

Quoted

“This is such a complete text. It shows the life of a teenager before the war, after the war breaks, until she has to move to the ghetto and is executed. It’s absolutely remarkable.”
—Alexandra Garbarini, Professor of History, in a Sept. 24, 2019, New York Times article about a recently discovered journal by a Jewish teen during WWII, described as a counterpart to Anne Frank’s diary

“Given the low interest rates and low inflation that have persisted since the end of the Great Recession, the Federal Reserve does not have much room to stimulate the economy with traditional monetary policy tools should the economy fall into recession.” —Kenneth Kuttner, Robert F. White Class of 1952 Professor of Economics, in a Sept. 17, 2019, article for Econofact.com about how the Fed might respond if the economy enters a recession

“[Toni] Morrison recognized transformative politics survive longer when embedded in art, and traces of resistance run below the cinematic black beauty of Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am. But one has to sift through literary accolades to find the spirit of rebellion curated by Morrison’s editing and embodied in so much of her work. We can only hope that viewers are astute enough to perceive their relevance in a democracy that is falling to pieces, one that has just lost a guiding light.” —Joy James, Ebenezer Fitch Professor of Humanities, in an Aug. 7, 2019, Boston Review piece on the documentary Toni Morrison: The Pieces I Am, released just weeks before Morrison’s Aug. 5 death

“ The contrast between FDR’s background and approach with that of Trump couldn’t be starker.Just contrast Trump’s
‘America First’ vision versus the internationalism of FDR and those who surrounded him.” —Susan Dunn, Massachusetts Professor of Humanities, commenting in an Globe and Mail opinion piece about how President Donald Trump has positioned himself as an outsider at gatherings of world leaders

Kudos

Williams Magazine received a 2019 Honorable Mention for Magazine Excellence from the University & College Designers Association and won a 2019 Silver Excel Award for Design Excellence from the Association for Media and Publishing.