The Playboy honor roll

MEET 20 PROFESSORS

WHO ARE REINVENTING THE CLASSROOM. COLLEGE WILL NEVER BE THE SAME

ANTHONY AMSTERDAM

LEGAL LEGEND,

NEW YORK UNIVERSITY

SCHOOL OF LAW

As a wunderkind attorney in the 1970s, Amsterdam convinced the Supreme Court to suspend the death penalty. Today, as a sage law professor, he continues to advise about 30 ongoing capital punish­ment cases—with his students serving as co-counsel. "My teaching gives students an envi­ronment in which they can think reflectively about their involve­ment in my work and about how lawyering relates to life."

DAN ARCHER AND ADAM JOHNSON

GRAPHIC PIONEERS, STANFORD UNIVERSITY

Welcome to the new new journal­ism: graphic novels. Each year comic artist Archer and novelist Johnson, along with author Tom Kealey, task students with producing one full-length nonfiction narrative in comic form. Previous student work from their Stanford Graphic Novel Project has chronicled acid attacks on Cam­bodian women and environmental issues in Congo. Says Archer, "What we're seeing is a rise in what graphic art can do as a type of activism and as an educational tool."

ARTHURARON

LOVE DOCTOR,

STATE UNIVERSITY OF NEW

YORK, STONY BROOK

Here's what social psychologist Aron knows about love: It's as addictive as cocaine, it rekindles with the slightest thrill and it turns longtime partners into mirror images. For empirical evidence Aron ignores the heart and goes straight to the besotted brain, which he observes by MRI in his Interper­sonal Relationships Laboratory. "Love is such a powerful drive in human beings—in many ways it's even more powerful than our sex drive."

MARK-EVAN BLACKMAN

CLOTHESHORSE WHISPERER,

FASHION INSTITUTE

OF TECHNOLOGY

Although Blackman teaches style— menswear to be exact—it comes with plenty of substance. The collegiate Tim Gunn, he readies his nascent

I/I

SHOULD ALWAYS learn from the best. And so here they are—an assortment of the country's most brilliant college professors. From their lecture halls and laboratories they will be determining the next 100 years—everything from how we com­municate to how we power our homes to how we dress. And though they often work in areas we don't totally understand yet (the semantic web?), their discov­eries can quickly become ubiquitous [Guitar Herol). All the while, they spend each school day imparting their wisdom to the next generation of young minds, which they permanently shape. By design, the big brains assembled here come from every geographic coiner and every type of U.S. school (big and small, pub­lic and private, with reputations emerging and long established). The only real rule? No playboy contributors. (We didn't want to play favorites.) Still, trust us: The future is bright.

TQD MACHOVER MUSIC FUTURIST, MIT

If music makes the world a better place, what about the man who makes music better? To that end, Machover creates technological instruments with a broader range than their acoustic counterparts, composes science-fiction operas scored with robot choruses and writes computer programs that can turn anyone into a bud­ding musician. [Guitar Hero originated from his research group at the MIT Media Lab.) As he says, "Music has a wider definition than we give it credit for."

designers for the fashion industry by demanding flawless technical skills—there will be sewing!—and by submitting their work for unspar­ing critique by design directors at Patagonia, Nike and Louis Vuitton, among others. 'The kids study­ing menswear at FIT feel that not only are they in the Navy but that they're Navy Seals."

IAN BOGOST

INDIE GAMER,

GEORGIA INSTITUTE OF

TECHNOLOGY

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The deep thinker within a sup­posedly childish realm—video games—Bogost refuses to view his medium as mindless entertainment. And so his games—e.g., Killer Flu ("a game about how seasonal flus mutate and spread")—play more like wry documentaries than Grand Theff Auto. "The wonderful thing about working in a developing field such as video games is that I'm con­stantly coming up with ideas I'm sure haven't been fully explored yet."

WENDY DONIGER

KAMA SUTRIST, UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO

"What I find exciting," says religion professor Doniger, "is that out of all religions, Hinduism stresses its ideas to the furthest extremes of imagination." Those ideas include godly devotion, violence and of course sex. Most famously Doni-ger's translation of the Kama Sutra upended stereotypes of the ancient text as an archaic sex manual into something else—a woman-friendly, gay-accepting lifestyle guide to pleasure. "And everyone thought it was a picture book of people with legs behind their heads."

MAHMOUD ELSOHLY

MASTER OF MEDICINAL

MARIJUANA, UNIVERSITY OF MISSISSIPPI

Weed heals—for real! Just not by bong or bowl. From his federally licensed marijuana farm, ElSohly is developing a pot patch for can­cer patients who could use a hit of THC to dull pain or kick-start their appetites. "There's no ques­tion about the potential for the cannabis plant to produce medici­nal agents. But using it in this way doesn't involve smoking."

JAMES HENDLER

INTERNET VISIONARY, RENSSELAER POLYTECHNIC INSTITUTE

Web 2.0 doesn't have anything on Hendler. His vision of the Internet involves its intuitive understanding of our needs and the com­plete obliteration of our current expectations of search results. Let's call it Web 10.0. "Say you have an idea about how to lower crime in your town. You can test it out on Facebook, but that's talking to your friends. Instead, what if a simple web search for that idea immedi­ately connected you with a city in India that tried something similar and helped you com­municate with the person who started it?"

DAN KAMMEN

ENERGY TROUBLESHOOTER,

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA,

BERKELEY

To mend our energy woes, Kammen suggests

we look to the sky. He promises enough sun­light and wind exist there to power our lives without choking the atmosphere with car­bon emissions—particularly if we're equally bullish about energy efficiency. As Kam-men, who is also an advisor to the Obama administration, told Frontline last year, "Clean energy and renewable power are the next opportunities to reinvent our econ­omy and jump-start innovation."

GLENN LOURY

PUBLIC PROVOCATEUR, BROWN UNIVERSITY

Predicting Loury's opinions on matters of race—his grist as a noted, if contro­versial, public intellectual — is a near impossibility. An economist by trade and a freethinker by nature, he spent the 1980s on the conservative side of racial tempests only to move left in recent

years. But mostly he defies categoriza­tion. To wit: "When everybody was on the Obama trip, I was saying, 'Wait a minute!' I like to think I'm being proven right. Nothing against the president—he's a good man, and I'd vote for him again. But I didn't drink that Kool-Aid."

JOHN MUELLER

TERRORISM NAYSAYER, OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY

Let the terrorists win? Such a victory would be impossible, claims Mueller, a calm voice in the post-9/11 fear culture. Mainly he pro­vides perspective, pointing out that despite the tragedy of the Al Qaeda attacks, statis­tically speaking terrorism poses no greater physical threat than an errant lightning bolt. "The idea that terrorists present an existential threat to the country is ridicu­lous," he says. "In fact, every story about

POP QUIZ:

MATCH THE PUBLIC

FIGURE TO HIS OR HER

COLLEGE MAJOR

PUBLIC FIGURES

1. CHUCK LIDDELL

2. SPIKE LEE

3. JAREDFOGLE

4. ELISABETH

HASSELBECK

WILLFERRELL

BILLY GRAHAM

7. SUZE ORMAN

B. TOM DELAY 9.VERAWANG 10. YOUNG MC

MAJORS

A. COMMUNICATIONS B. ACCOUNTING

C. FINE ARTS

D. ANTHROPOLOGY

E. SOCIAL WORK

F. BIOLOGY

G. SPORTS INFORMATION H. ART HISTORY

I. ECONOMICS

J. INTERNATIONAL

BUSINESS

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CHARLES BAMFORTH

BREWMASTER

GENERAL,

UNIVERSITY OF

CALIFORNIA,

DAVIS

Bamforth is to the alchemy of hops, barley and yeast as Louis Pasteur was to hops, barley and yeast (or didn't you know of the Frenchman's Etudes sur la bierei). When not lording over the malting-and-brewing science program, Bam­forth gives heady lessons to industry behemoths and micros alike. Meanwhile, one of the most popular classes on campus is his Intro to Beer and Brewing, during which he offers a favorite mantra: "All beer is good beer."

WHAT'S IN A NUMBER?

IN THE CUTTHROAT WORLD OF ACADEMIA, TRACKING COL­LEGE RANKINGS HAS BECOME AN ANNUAL BLOOD SPORT. BUT WHAT DO THE NUMBERS REALLY SAY? WE LOOK AT THE 2010 RANKINGS ASSIGNED TO ONE RANDOMLY SELECTED COLLEGE, THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BERKELEY.

U.S. NEWS AND WORLD REPORT

Initiated in 1983, US. News'% Best Colleges is arguably the most estab­lished college-rankings report. Its formula gives most weight to "peer assessment," in which college officials are asked to rate schools other than their own. The practice has been criticized for stoking profes­sional rivalries rather than providing an insider critique. Other factors weighed include faculty-to-student ratio and per-student spending, meaning that public schools like Berkeley will generally compare unfavorably with private institutions.

FORBES

Pointing to the tendency of colleges to inflate their statistics, Forbes's list considers several third-party sources. Its gauge of student satisfac­tion is partially derived from RateMyProfessors.com, and its ratings of postgraduate success incorporate salary data from Payscale.com and alumni inclusion in Who's Who in America. Critics question the substance of these sources, but Forbes defends its methodology as "difficult to game." Reputed to be one of the nation's best public schools, Berkeley ranks surprisingly low here, several notches behind lesser-known institutions such as Kalamazoo College.

PRINCETON REVIEW

The Princeton Review declines to rank schools in one all-encompassing list. "We think such lists are not useful for the people they are supposed to serve," it states. Instead, the selections in The Best 371 Colleges, based primarily on "our own college knowledge" and independent college counselors, are listed alphabetically. Additional "ranking lists"— categorical judgments across 62 topics ranging from "Most Accessible Professors" to "Great Financial Aid"—are culled entirely from student-reported data. Touting its listings as the most reflective of undergrad experience, the company says, "We're just the messengers."

terrorism should mention that your chances of being killed by an international terrorist are one in 80,000."

P.Z. MYERS

IRASCIBLE INTELLIGENT-DESIGN CRITIC, UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA, MORRIS

Myers's scripture? The laws of biology. The self-professed "godless liberal biologist" pros­elytizes the tenets of his faith in evolution while gleefully knocking down the dogma of creationists on his popular blog (scienceblogs.com/pharyngula) and on Twitter (@pzmyers). "The first day of class I tell my students they should always ask a magi­cal question. And that question is 'How do you know that?' "

JENNIFER RICHESON

BIAS HUNTER,

NORTHWESTERN

UNIVERSITY

Bias and prejudice may be out of sight, but they are never out of mind. Via brain imaging and clever mental exercises, Richeson measures how white minds strain to achieve impeccable political correctness when in the presence of African Americans. "Peo­ple today generally understand that prejudice is a bad thing," the social psychologist has said. "But they still don't know how to converse or behave with people different from themselves."

ROBERT THOMAS

REFORM SCHOOLER,

UNIVERSITY OF MONTANA WESTERN

"College is often like war—long periods of boredom punctuated by short periods of terror caused by exams," Thomas jokes. War, of course, is hell, so Thomas has brought peace and prosperity to his tiny campus by overhauling its curriculum. His students now take classes in 18-day blocks that meet far from the typical university setting (e.g., Thomas teaches his geology courses at Yellowstone National Park-roughly a two-hour drive from Montana Western). "They're learning their discipline by actually doing it."

EUGENE VOLOKH

FREE-SPEECH PITBULL, UCLA SCHOOL OF LAW

When discussing the First Amend­ment, Volokh, a legal analyst, first offers a fact: Speech in the U.S. has never been freer. But there's a caveat: The push for /noffensive speech has begun to suppress that freedom. Though Volokh sees the virtue in antiharassment policies that sterilize workplace behavior ("If these policies ban unwanted touch­ing, it's about time"), he believes their vagueness is troublesome. "You can call overheard political statements harassment, but they're constitutionally protected speech."

BENJAMIN SHEPARD

STREET THEORIST, NEW YORK CITY COLLEGE OF TECHNOLOGY

Human-services professor Shepard doesn't just study the role of performance and play in social activism—he tests it out for him­self. Inspired by the far-out spectacle of the 1980s and 1990s queer scene, Shepard has donned feather boas over skintight silver lame pants during Critical Mass bike rides and marched in illegal nighttime parades supporting gay rights. "The point of activism," the former social worker says, "is to make the conver­sation of democracy an interesting one."

NALINI NADKARNI

SCIENCE POPUUST, VERGREEN STATE COLLEGE lends most days hanging from trees, ng the surrounding plants and animals. But once she climbs down, she strives to make what she's learned relatable. For guys, she helped create specially designed skateboard decks ("They're made of wood, which provides a link to trees"); for girls, she conceived of Tree-Top Barbie ("It's an alternate role model—one of strength and academic interests"); and for the spiritually inclined, she highlighted Bible passages about conservation ("I emphasize the universal spiritual symbolism of trees").