Caretaking and creativity, welcoming “demographic winter,” words over speech, and more.
Motherhood and Art, a Fascinating Dyad
Molly Petrilla C’06’s article “The Art of Mothering” [Nov|Dec 2024] is wonderful! As the husband of an artist and the father of a daughter who is an artist and designer, I appreciate her insight in writing about motherhood and art, a fascinating dyad! The main subject of the story, The Mother Artist author Catherine Ricketts C’09, is a formidable lady in a mode familiar to me. My wife had a work-life balancing creativity, mothering two children, and practicing medicine. Though a gentle lady dedicated to her profession and her creative passions, she could be a fierce mom in guiding our kids through childhood, protecting them, and ensuring they were on the right path.
Fathers also practice parenting while balancing creative efforts and work life, but we are spared the misogyny that women sometimes face. In my retirement from the practice of pediatrics, I have become a caregiver again, not parenting kids but caring for my wife who has Alzheimer’s. Solo caregiving is the toughest gig—after loving family and friends, writing sustains me. I have written two books of poetry and been published in 20 multi-author poetry and prose anthologies while caregiving. Other creative endeavors besides art, including writing, may coexist with parenting!
Mark Tochen C’66, Camas, WA

More Like Spring
Penn economics professor Jesus Fernandez-Villaverde may be right in that the global fertility rate may already be at or below replacement level, as described in Andrew Carr’s article, “Demographic Winter Is Coming” [“Gazetteer,” Nov|Dec 2024], but his assertion that this shift represents a fast approaching dark future for humanity is completely baseless.
In an October 30 opinion piece from Inter Press Service, titled “The World’s Demographic Sky Is Not Collapsing,” Joseph Chamie, demographer and former director of the United Nations Population Division and author of numerous publications on population issues, stated that even with below replacement fertility, the United Nations projects population levels to continue growing, likely peaking at 10.3 billion in about 60 years. After reaching that level, the world’s population is expected to decline slowly to 10.2 billion by the close of the 21st century.
So 75 years from now, and long after practically every reader of this magazine will be alive, barring any catastrophic event, the planet will still have two billion more people than it has today, hardly a collapse.
Furthermore, a peer reviewed study published last year in Humanities and Social Sciences Communications and featured on Nature.com examined the impact to countries currently undergoing population declines. Every country except one experienced positive economic trends of reduced unemployment, higher than average wage growth, and increasing real GDP per capita.
Why? Because declining populations put less demand on limited resources, easing prices and making life affordable. It has the added benefit of restoring the environment, lessening the destruction of habitat and reducing emissions of all kinds of pollutants, including climate-changing greenhouse gases.
This anticipated gradual decline of human population should be a much desired and long-overdue salutary relief for people and the planet and recharacterized by economists as a Demographic Spring.
Terry Spahr C’88, Hanover, NH
Look at the Big Picture
I feel an urge to comment upon the article “Demographic Winter Is Coming” because, like many other articles, it suggests that an abruptly declining world population is undesirable. I understand the potential economic and social problems that a significant decline in the birthrate will cause; however, let’s look at the big picture. Mankind in a very short time has caused a rapid major loss of insects, birds, amphibians, and mammals. We are causing a mass extinction of species. We have despoiled the oceans, ravaged the land, ruined the climate, decimated habitat, polluted fresh water, caused desertification, and damaged our biosphere nearly beyond repair. If several generations of humans struggle due to declining birthrates, it will be a small price to pay to save the planet.
Beverley Spears GAr’70, Santa Fe, NM
Right Sizing Our World Population
Writer Andrew Carr raises important points about short-term consequences of a shrinking population in “Demographic Winter Is Coming.” In contrast, longer-term thinking takes into account the shrinking amount of habitable land that will likely become available for human survival as climate change progresses. Melting arctic ice will raise sea levels, flooding coastlines and submerging islands throughout the world. Wildfires will reduce housing sites. Droughts will reduce agricultural acreage.
Gradually declining populations could theoretically match gradually declining earth resources, as people migrate to occupy the remaining optimal geography. The alternative may be episodic death tolls on a massive scale.
Jacqueline Crawley CW’71, Chevy Chase, MD
The Answer for Long-Term Survival
This earth, the only place where humans can live, is destroyed by an overpopulation of humans. There is already a dearth of the essentials of survival: clean water and food. Wars are fought for these essentials and many people are killed, but that does not help the problem.
Producing fewer children than are necessary to replace the population is the answer for long-term survival of our species. This road will be bumpy, but if pursued, in a few hundred years, when half or even a quarter of the present eight billion total population is reached, a recovery of the forests, lakes, clean air, etc., may be achieved. This future generation of humans will hopefully have a healthier and altogether better life.
Evamarie Malsch GM’70, Philadelphia
Challenge the Legacy View
We have been in an expanding population “summer” for far too long. From a natural resources perspective, the human population is pushing this planet to the brink. As it is, we can’t seem to keep up with affordable housing or human rights for the existing population.
It was actually quite telling that the article predicting “Demographic Winter” was nearly adjacent to an article about how climate change is impacting our insurance system, “Denial of Coverage” [“Expert Opinion,” Nov|Dec 2024]. The “demographic winter” may also resolve that issue.
Perhaps it is time to challenge the legacy view that economic sustainability and prosperity requires population growth. We don’t need more policies to try and increase population—we need policies to change mindsets and economic models.
Stephen Golden EAS’93, Rancho Mirage, CA
Is Population Decline a Problem?
I am not a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, but our daughter is. Hence, we receive the Pennsylvania Gazette. I read it regularly, with care. I find it to be excellent and one of several college magazines I read to educate myself and to keep in touch with the world of the young in college. I am a retired attorney.
Your recent piece, “Demographic Winter Is Coming,” was of course well written, highlighted population trends, and included items for consideration. What it did not do is raise the fundamental question of whether declining or stagnant populations are really a problem or should always be viewed as a problem without solution. I think it important that we pay attention to the perceived problems that are asserted to result from stagnant populations and first, address how real and likely are those problems and, second, whether there are alternative solutions to the problems.
My belief is that the problems are overstated, possibly inaccurately stated. I also believe there are no inherent reasons why a world with a stagnant population cannot work well, particularly if the issues asserted, for example insufficiencies in the workforce and excessive costs of the elderly, receive attention. I doubt we will ever have an insufficient number of people to undertake the tasks that a well functioning society requires.
As to the costs of the elderly, those are being addressed. In truth, many communities in the United States realize that the biggest cost burden is not the elderly, but the young. While medical costs are much higher for the elderly than the young, schools are far more expensive than a senior center. As wealth increases, the elderly present a financial benefit, not a burden, to society.
It takes little to no imagination to realize that larger populations generate much that is unpleasant, in truth more than unpleasant but, rather, making many aspects of life unenjoyable. You also have those proponents of population growth who include in their analysis an overpopulation scenario that requires rather bizarre solutions. All know that Elon Musk (the father of 11 children) views a universe where people will relocate to Mars to escape a world that has become unsustainable and unlivable due to population growth.
I hope that any analysis that suggests the need for more people be balanced with analyses that address the alternative.
Don Bergman, parent, Westport, CT
Real Problems, But Regulation Isn’t the Answer
I read the article “Denial of Coverage” [“Expert Opinion,” Nov|Dec 2024] with great interest, since it addresses a subject in which I possess some expertise. The problems which Katherine Hempstead C’85 Gr’94 described are real and intensifying, but are not, in my opinion, likely to be resolved by federal regulatory usurpation of the property-casualty insurance industry nor by increased taxpayer subsidies to perceived victims. The situation we find ourselves in is largely, I believe, the result of not permitting market pricing mechanisms from doing their job of allocating finite resources.
Hempstead’s article focuses solely on the issues impacting the pricing and availability of homeowners’ coverage. Such personal-lines coverages operate in a highly regulated environment where prices generally must be actuarially justified and preapproved by state regulators before being implemented, and this usually occurs with significant delays. In the commercial-lines property-casualty sector, prices and coverage forms are typically established with much greater freedom (especially in the so-called non-admitted market) and the ability to obtain desirable insurance is much less of a problem. That being said, I’m not naive enough to believe that state politicians will easily abandon their prerogatives and let the competitive market perform its magic.
Norman L. Rosenthal W’73 G’76 Gr’78, Philadelphia
The Mirror Is a Tricky Thing
How close to the bone did Nick Lyons strike in his “Self-Portrait” at 92 [“Alumni Voices,” Nov|Dec 2024]? Most of our journey is behind us, but still we ponder the road ahead in this skin so weathered, eyes somewhat dimmed, gait more hesitant, balance not-so-sure, decision-making not-so-quick, and future expectations not-so-ambitious. Surely a look in the mirror is a status check on where we are. But looking in the mirror is a tricky thing: we see some of what we want to see—of what used to be—and not exactly what is. I have a suggestion to add more depth to this self-accounting. Have someone take your photograph, or—better yet—take a selfie. You will immediately see a different person than the one in the mirror. The asymmetry of the one beside the other is remarkable, and the two persons look strangely different, if not strangers to each other. More wrinkles are apparent on the person in the photo. The smile—the teeth!—are not those we still see in the mirror of our present selves—not the keen wit or intelligence! The reason should be self-evident: The photo represents now in a flat two dimensions—what is, a representation of the sum of what has gone before. The mirror still reflects in our mind’s eye aspects of the person we see ourselves to be now or were in the past.
It may be a challenge to live with that, but we can do it. There is still more road ahead—whose length we may not know—but it is best faced with determination to look and move forward.
Jeff Schoenwald Gr’73, Thousand Oaks, CA
We Could Talk About Anything
I respond to “The Campus Controversy Complex” [Salvo,” Nov|Dec 2024] by Stanford University professor Adrian Daub G’04 Gr’08. According to him, free speech is alive and well in the US academy. This is great news, except that it is far from true. Perhaps better than being forced to listen to the Bible in 1891, but untrue according to repeated surveys and statements from actual students and study of college speech codes and treatment of speakers viewed as unacceptable.
An excellent measure is the annual survey and ranking of 251 colleges and universities conducted by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. Penn usually ranks below the middlebut waslast in 2023. Penn was beaten out for last in the latest rankings by Harvard, Columbia, and NYU. We are proudly ranked #248!
We now have (yet another) bias watchdog administrative department, and a belated realization that it’s not Penn’s place to take a stand on most public issues [“Gazetteer,” Nov|Dec 2024]. Where is the concern about allowing issues to be discussed and questioned? We could talk about anything when I was there.
Richard A. Furniss ME’60 WG’62, Litchfield, CT
Little Understanding
“The Campus Controversy Complex” is an astonishingly weak defense of Penn’s current ranking near the bottom of all US universities with respect to free speech and diversity of thought. There appears to be little understanding of how we are perceived throughout the country and essentially no remorse.
Two other articles in the same edition don’t provide much comfort on the issues involved. The article on Amy Wax [“Gazetteer,” Nov|Dec 2024] seems to conclude that she has been punished for incorrect words with no obvious indication that Penn cares whether the words are accurate or not (I have no idea whether Black Penn Law students are rarely in the upper half of their class, but it seems like it would matter).
Another article announces a new Office of Religious and Ethnic Inclusion [“Gazetteer,” Nov|Dec 2024]. This is not an unimportant concern, but the overriding issue is free speech and diversity of thought, which seems to be completely missing. If Penn were a more open community, there would be far better discourse and fewer eruptions of prejudice.
Tom Hardy WG’65, Mongomery, OH
Interpreting “It Depends”
In “The Campus Controversy Complex,” Adrian Daub states that the answer of the presidents of Harvard, Penn, and MIT to the congressional panel’s question whether calls for genocide of Jews would violate their school’s code—“it depends”—is correct. I agree with Dr. Daub’s assessment, but not in the way he intended it—“it depends” is correct because it applies to Jews and no other group. If at UCLA, instead of erecting a “Jew Exclusion Zone,” hooligans had erected a “Queer Exclusion Zone,” would UCLA have issued a statement that “as repugnant as it may seem, the organizers of the Queer Free Zone are exercising their freedom of expression”? Or would UCLA demolish the Queer Free Zone within five minutes? I think Daub and every reader of the Gazette knows the answer.
Marc E. Jacobson G’85 Gr’86, Brooklyn, NY
Mealy-Mouthed Efforts of Appeasement
Congratulations to the University for creating a false narrative by the creation of this committee [the Office of Religious and Ethnic Inclusion] by equating Islamophobia with Antisemitism.
It would be informative to know how many complaints were made complaining about treatment by Muslim students similar to those by Jewish students who endured numerous and continuous threats and acts of violence after the October 7 massacre of Jews in Israel.
This is another cowardly example of the Administration’s equivocation in confronting the stark reality of Jewish hatred on the Penn campus.
No wonder many members of Congress and elsewhere believe as I do regarding Penn’s mealy-mouthed efforts of appeasement when it comes to protecting Jewish students.
Gerald L. Sobol W’59, New York
An Abomination
The new University of Pennsylvania policy on public statements [“Gazetteer,” Nov|Dec 2024] runs contrary to the very notion of freedom of speech.
And for the law school of which I am a graduate to have acceded to this new policy is, with all due respect, an abomination! I did not go to law school to be told that the University of Pennsylvania is now quieting down its public statements on this or that issue! Famed consumer rights advocate Ralph Nader was the Commencement speaker my graduation year. What would he have done had he been told that what he had to say may not have been within the University of Pennsylvania’s remit?
And then there is a strange use of the word “remit” in “the University will issue messages on local and world events rarely, and only when those events lie within our operational remit.” But remit is not an American term. It is British and means, according to Merriam-Webster, “an area of responsibility or authority”! Yet another unnecessary import (pun intended).
Merriam-Webster defines “university” as “an institution of higher learning providing facilities for teaching and research and authorized to grant academic degrees.” But a university that now limits freedom of speech is clearly and abundantly adverse to the ancient theme of freedom of speech and thus every other freedom as well!
No, a thousand million billion zillion times No, there can never ever be a situation or time when freedom of speech, which means freedom of thought, is to be restricted or limited within some remit or other!
Stephen Francis Schoeman L’67, Westfield, NJ
As stated in the article, Penn’s new policy on public statements applies to the president, provost, and other leaders “communicating in official capacities, where their statements may imply institutional positions,” and would not cover Commencement speakers, for example. For a different aspect of the encroachment of Britishisms in the US, see “Expert Opinion” in this issue.—Ed.
Asheville Will Return Stronger
As a resident of “greater” Asheville, I was surprised to see Dennis Drabelle’s insightful article about Hurricane Helene [“Elsewhere,” Nov|Dec 2024]. There is a lot more to the story.
I too moved to this area to avoid the vicissitudes of catastrophic weather. Alas, nothing can be taken for granted. Drabelle did not fully convey the extent of the devastation. Although I am not a veteran, I have worked as a psychiatrist for 10 years within the VA system treating our veterans with PTSD.
Walking the area after the storm was perhaps one of the closest experiences I have had to seeing the detritus on a battlefield after combat. Downed trees, blocked and washed-out roads, damaged homes, and mudslides were ubiquitous. What was most striking however, was the randomness of the destruction. Houses on one side of the street were untouched, while others were destroyed. It defied comprehension.
Despite internet silos, this crisis has brought our neighbors together. Community support and volunteerism has been a beacon of hope. I am confident that grandeur of the Blue Ridge Mountains and Asheville will return stronger than ever.
Dr. Justin O. Schechter C’77, Old Fort, NC
The Course We Are On
In response to “(Re)introducing In Principle and Practice” [Gazetteer, Sep|Oct 2024]: Inefficient government and debt are shimmering specks in the course of the universe. Climate change will be forever if continued on its current trajectory.
Kathryn T. Van Sciver C’76, Indianapolis
Disheartened
My time at Penn was one of turmoil since it was the height of the war in Viet Nam. There were many protests, and I participated in them.
The University at that time was tolerant of the protests and supported free speech. I am disheartened to read about the University’s tactics against recent protestors of the war against Palestinians [“Gazetteer,” Sep|Oct 2024].
This is not the University I remember. My Penn was tolerant of free speech and protest. It appears that the University today is suppressing freedom of speech with strong-arm police tactics.
I would like to request that the University return to a policy of supporting free speech and stop these gestapo tactics.
Mark Spohr EE’70, Tahoe City, CA