The Swarthmore College Alumni Magazine
As a lonely state-school grad in a family of smarties, I get to read alumni magazines from more prestigious places: Stanford, Columbia, Northwestern, Swarthmore. High-powered and hard-left is the typical formula, but the October 2009 edition of Swarthmore’s was such a jaw-dropper, I must share.
The cover, as you can see, is an artsy photographic depiction of a Jewish 2005 alum named Mark Hanis who, the magazine tells us, “stands up to genocide around the world.” He’s motivated, of course, by the memory of the Holocaust, and finds himself compelled to make noise about the ethnic killings in Darfur and the crimes committed by Charles Taylor in the civil wars in Liberia. The article oozes with adulation for the brave and selfless Hanis, who has “I refuse to be a bystander to genocide” marked on his hands for some super-sexy Annie Liebowitz-style shots. Tres chic!
Naturally, Hanis won’t be found addressing the genocide of the Palestinians, so “genocide around the world” isn’t quite accurate. But if that weren’t enough, Swarthmore grads are treated to a silly article in the back of the magazine by a Jewish professor named Malka Kramer Schaps about the joys of conversion to Orthodox Judaism, life in Israel and her wonderful Jewish self generally. It includes still more mentions of the Holocaust, the virtuosity of the Jews, and her search for intellectual honesty.