We Should Be Friends

For the past 20 years, Aaron Karo W’01 and Matt Ritter L’05 have been part of a unique friendship tradition called “Man of the Year” with their childhood buddies. Now, the fellow comedians and writers have launched a podcast of the same name to encourage other men to create, maintain, and grow their own friendships.

Admissions in Transition

From test-optional applications, to questions about ChatGPT, to the Supreme Court’s new limitations on considering race and ethnicity, college admissions are in flux. Admissions Dean Whitney Soule dissects the current state of play and how prospective applicants can navigate it.

The Chip Zien Show

His acclaimed starring turn in Harmony was cut short by the harsh economics of Broadway musicals, but the theater, film, and TV stalwart is still looking ahead after seven decades in the spotlight.

Chasing Justice

As a young federal civil rights prosecutor, Jared Fishman C’99 investigated the police killing of a Black New Orleans resident in the chaotic aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Now, after writing a book on what he calls “one of the most egregious cases of police misconduct in recent American history,” he’s tackling criminal justice reform on a broader scale.

In the Balance

Four alumni authors consider, then dismantle, the myths that govern how we choose our careers and that keep us stuck in unhealthy patterns from childhood to retirement.

Risk and Reward

Rajiv Shah M’02 GrW’05 heads the Rockefeller Foundation and has worked for the Gates Foundation and in government on critical issues in public health and international development. In his new book, Big Bets, he shows how embracing smart criticism—from Bill Gates, for one—and never settling for merely incremental change can pay off.

Fake Simple

Amanda Shulman C’15 has earned national acclaim with Her Place Supper Club, where she’s also bending stubborn industry standards around life balance and labor compensation. It all began with a jolt to Penn’s off-campus social scene.

“A Place I Could Be Myself”

The Penn Women’s Center celebrates five decades of providing advocacy, advising, refuge, counseling, company, and tea. From its origins in the struggle against campus sexual violence, the center has evolved to tackle a range of concerns, from wellness to combating racism. The latest debate: Is its name, meant to be welcoming, too restrictive or exclusionary at a time when gender itself is contested?

Another Realm

New photographs by Arthur Drooker C’76 explore the elusive moments before dusk when “vivid colors paint the sky with magic and mystery.”

Time Stretcher

From swinging standards to avant garde nonconformism, Penn music professor, jazz drummer, and shapeshifting composer Tyshawn Sorey has won acclaim for “awesomely confounding” music whose “vulnerable virtuosity” can “open different portals in your depth of feeling and imagination.”

The PZ Project

From picture books to The Poet X, Penn Libraries are expanding and diversifying their holdings of books for young readers.

American Science’s Promoter-in-Chief

The great-grandson of a famous founder (of the nation and this University) and “boyhood’s friend” of the president of the Confederacy, educational reformer and onetime Penn professor Alexander Dallas Bache made his own reputation by championing the professionalization of American science in the mid-1800s.

Mann in the Middle

Michael E. Mann has been a central figure in the battle for the environment since the “hockey stick” graph made him a target for climate change deniers 25 years ago. Now on Penn’s faculty and heading the Center for Science, Sustainability, and the Media, he’s fending off a new generation of “inactivists” comprised of climate change deflectors on the right and doomists on the left to get out the message that it’s still within our power to save the planet.

Ode to Ira

To mark the Netter Center’s 30th anniversary, founding director Ira Harkavy C’70 Gr’79 trumpets the past and the future of Penn’s strategies to revitalize West Philadelphia—and alumni return to campus to tout Harkavy as an inspiration in the field of university–community engagement.

Basketball In His Blood

Thirty years after starting the basketball juggernaut AND1, Seth Berger C’89 WG’93 continues to live and breathe hoops—as a father of three (plus a guardian to five Nigerian brothers), a venture capitalist affiliated with the Philadelphia 76ers, and the longtime head coach of a suburban Philadelphia boarding school team that his AND1 cofounder calls the “Duke of high school basketball.”

The Olden Bough

Humans have revered ancient trees for about as long as we’ve chopped down forests. What does that fraught relationship reveal about our past? And can it illuminate a path toward a more hopeful future?

A Life’s Calling

For Liz Theoharis C’98, activism has been a way of life—from assisting her parents with their justice work, to community service as a Penn undergrad, to cochairing the recent revival of Martin Luther King Jr.’s Poor People’s Campaign of 1968. The Presbyterian minister, social justice leader, and biblical scholar is committed to reframing the narrative around poverty and the poor while pushing for lasting policy changes.

Rich History, New Visions

At Penn Live Arts, the legendary Negro Ensemble Company is creating new work that explores this country’s racial tensions and challenges. A February world premiere, Mecca is Burning, brought together five playwrights to imagine how four Black families in Harlem might navigate a white-supremacist revolution.
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