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AROUND THE QUADS
In Memoriam
Marvin Harris
'49, the celebrated and controversial anthropologist who taught
at Columbia from 1953–80, died on October 25, 2001. Born in
Brooklyn in 1927, Harris earned his Ph.D. from Columbia in 1953 and
spent the next 27 years as an anthropology professor here. He
chaired the department for three years. From the time he left
Columbia in 1980 until his retirement in 2000, Harris was Graduate
Research Professor of Anthropology at the University of Florida,
Gainesville.
Harris was a proponent of
the four-field approach to the discipline of anthropology, which
combines cultural anthropology, anthropological linguistics,
biological anthropology and archaeology. His influence spans all
four fields. Harris is known as the founder of cultural
materialism, a theoretical paradigm and research strategy that
attempts to explain cultural practices as a result of the ways in
which a culture solves the practical problems of survival. He
suggested that food taboos, warfare and witchcraft originate from a
society's ways of adapting to a means of subsistence. For example,
Harris proposed that the Hindus did not eat cows because they
needed them for other useful purposes, such as plowing fields and
providing milk. Because of his views, Smithsonian called him
"one of the most controversial anthropologists alive" in 1986.
The Washington Post described him in 1983 as "a storm center
in his field."
During his time at
Columbia, Harris had a tremendous influence on the anthropology
department. "When he was there, his impact was so powerful that
many people in the field related Columbia anthropology with Marvin
Harris," said Myron Cohen, professor of anthropology. Harris
recognized and attempted to explain "riddles of culture" in terms
of similarities as well as differences. "He was very much in favor
of demystifying what people thought about other cultures in the
world," said Allan Burns, chair of the Department of
Anthropology at the University of Florida. "He was responsible for
social science explanations that made sense and also were
profound."
During the course of his
career, Harris published 17 books that have been translated into 14
languages. In 1990, he delivered the Distinguished Lecture at the
annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association. He was
later elected as head of the association and served a one-year
term. "He was a man with a vision — a real vision," said
Cohen. "What was extraordinary about him, and perhaps infuriating
to some, was that he clung steadfastly to his beliefs." Harris is
survived by his wife, Madeline, and daughter, Susan.
Eric Barnouw, a
long-time Columbia professor and a noted scholar of the
broadcasting industry, died on July 19 at the age of 93 in Fair
Haven, Vt. Barnouw was on the Columbia faculty from 1946–73,
organizing the film division in the School of the Arts and serving
as its chair. He also was editor for the Columbia Center for Mass
Communication.
Barnouw's career was marked
by creativity, integrity, insight and a love of broadcasting. The
winner of the Peabody Award in 1944 for a documentary radio series
entitled "Winds at War," Barnouw is best-known for his three-volume
History of Broadcasting in the United States, and received a
Bancroft Prize in 1971 for the last volume of the series, The
Image Empire.
Journalist Lincoln
Diamant '43 described Barnouw as a preceptor and friend. He
wrote, "Associated in one way or another with Morningside
throughout his brilliant career in the field of broadcast
communications, Professor Barnouw, a writer of wisdom and
integrity, cut a wide swath through the areas of human fallibility
he encountered in the radio and television business. No wonder
The New York Times called his monumental History of
Broadcasting in the United States ‘quite simply, what
everybody who writes about television steals from.' "
Barnouw's death prompted
Diamant to relate the following tale:
"I
first met Professor Barnouw in the winter of 1941, when he was
appointed faculty adviser to the Columbia University Radio Club,
then preparing to launch a ‘wired wireless' narrowcast radio
station serving the Columbia campus. It was an era of distinctive
radio sign-ons and sign-offs. The newly minted CURC staff, not to
be outdone by chimes or sound effects, decided what the station
needed was the voice of a roaring lion. Eschewing commercial
pre-recorded animal noise disks (and with an eye toward New York
press coverage), a vote was taken to go on safari to the Bronx Zoo,
but first we confronted Professor Barnouw with our plans. His
response was worthy of Samuel Johnson. ‘Do you propose that I
accompany you to the Bronx?' he asked. ‘No,' we responded.
Our adviser looked enormously relieved. ‘Then you have my
permission to go.' And so we did.
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Linc
Diamant '43 (holding microphone) attempts to elicit a roar from
Bruno and Lady, to no avail, at the Bronx Zoo, March 24, 1952. The
photograph first appeared in the New York World
Telegram. |
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"CURC (progenitor of WKCR)
set up its microphones and recording equipment close to the cage of
Bruno and (pregnant) Lady. Captain Jack Aubrey (myself) climbed
into a lion's suit borrowed for the occasion, and we were off and
rolling. Two of New York's evening newspapers, corralled by
Eugine Serchinger '43, were sufficiently intrigued to assign
a photographer to cover our hijinks. But the CURC safari blanked
out. The two lions simply refused to roar. They merely stared at
the follow lion cavorting outside the cage. The play-by-play of
Len Koppett '44 proved to be all talk and no
action.
"CURC's recording engineer,
Martin L. Scheiner '44, remained bent over his acetate
recording, oblivious to anything other that what he could hear
through his headphones, which suddenly turned into a stifled gasp
from the crowd. It seems Lady had had enough. She slowly backed up
against the bard of her cage and fired a magnificent arc of urine
at least a dozen feet through the air, intuitively choosing the
engineer and his recording equipment as her primary target. Marty's
head and shoulders bore the full brunt of the attack.
"We
dutifully reported back the afternoon's failure to Professor
Barnouw, who seemed hugely amused by our escapade."
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Around the
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