Author: Sahar

Sonia Sotomayor and Affirmative Action

The New Yorker has an interview with William G. Bowen, the President of Princeton when Sonia Sotomayor joined as a freshman and an expert on affirmative action. His comments, I think, have some special resonance with our own Afffirmative-Action style debates at Brandeis and I think people would be well served to read the interview.

A snippet:

What would you say is the one misconception that you keep on encountering when you look at the current debate over affirmative action?

One lesson that I have derived from participating in this debate, for heaven knows how many years, is the simple-minded assumption that you either deserve to be there or you don’t. There isn’t just one index of merit, and the point of admissions is not to bestow gold stars on people who’ve done well before, to predict the future. It’s to choose students to invest in who are going to make the university better and are going to make society better. Those are bets on the future.

Continue reading “Sonia Sotomayor and Affirmative Action”

Wayne Saved; Brandeis’ loss is MIT’s gain

We at Innermost Parts would like to tender a huge congratulations to Professor Wayne Marshall.

The good Professor has been a valuable contribution to the Brandeis community, inspiring “countless students to branch out of their normal academic interests and into other areas of study. … his style of teaching has engaged students in ways most professors have never quite thought to have [sic] attempted.”

Regretfully, Brandeis University refused to “Save Wayne” and continue his employment at this august institution into the coming academic year. But all was not lost!

Innermost Parts is proud to commend the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for having the good fortune to recognize Wayne’s talent, brilliance, and superlative teaching style. He will be missed.

Still, I know several Brandeis Students are planning on going to his weekly gigs DJing in Cambridge next year. If nothing else, Wayne has made his presence felt on campus for the short time he’s been here.

The Higher Education Bubble

In a recent publication of The Chronicle of Higher Education, they ask Will Higher Education Be the Next Bubble to Burst?

Reading the Chronicle is interesting because you know that the administration is reading it, too, and you sometimes find ideas discussed on it that are later implemented. For example, this article talks about the Justice Brandeis Semester:

Two former college presidents, Charles Karelis of Colgate University and Stephen J. Trachtenberg of George Washington University, recently argued for the year-round university, noting that the two-semester format now in vogue places students in classrooms barely 60 percent of the year, or 30 weeks out of 52. They propose a 15-percent increase in productivity without adding buildings if students agree to study one summer and spend one semester abroad or in another site, like Washington or New York. Such a model may command attention if more education is offered without more tuition.

Furthermore, it talks about the rising costs of education, and how Universities are hurting themselves by raising tuition even more these days.

With tuitions, fees, and room and board at dozens of colleges now reaching $50,000 a year, the ability to sustain private higher education for all but the very well-heeled is questionable. According to the National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, over the past 25 years, average college tuition and fees have risen by 440 percent — more than four times the rate of inflation and almost twice the rate of medical care. Patrick M. Callan, the center’s president, has warned that low-income students will find college unaffordable.

Meanwhile, the middle class, which has paid for higher education in the past mainly by taking out loans, may now be precluded from doing so as the private student-loan market has all but dried up. In addition, endowment cushions that allowed colleges to engage in steep tuition discounting are gone. Declines in housing valuations are making it difficult for families to rely on home-equity loans for college financing. Even when the equity is there, parents are reluctant to further leverage themselves into a future where job security is uncertain.

Anyways, just an interesting link between our financial troubles and the wider world.

P.S. You may have noticed that Innermost Parts has stopped posting so much during the summer. That should be expected: It’s summer vacation, and we’re not even on campus. That said, you should check our RSS feed to keep up with us during the summer. Had an interesting summer experience? Going to a progressive conference? Let us know! Write about it.

Finally, we vote.

So, unknown to most of the Brandeis campus, voting has opened for the position of Senator for Racial Minorities.

So, vote, if you want.

Except (because no Union election can ever run smoothly) you can observe that no candidates are listed as officially running on the Union site. Once you get into the bigpulse voting software, however, Jean Souffrant is listed as an official candidate.

union-page

bigpulseObserve how the union has some confusion over who exactly is running for the position. Furthermore, there hasn’t been a student-wide email informing people about the election.

Not that this is a big deal. Unless there’s a write-in candidate to challenge Mr. Souffrant, the outcome of the election doesn’t seem to have changed.

Still. Why do union elections always suffer some sort of error?

Course Evaluations are due soon..

So it’s that time of year. The Provost’s office wants us to fill out our course evaluations, and will bribe us with the prospect of prizes if we do so.

Online course evaluations are underway and only 27% of students have completed all of their course evaluations. Last semester 70% of students completed all of their evaluations and we would really like to beat that this semester.

Please help us make that possible by logging onto Sage (https://sage.brandeis.edu/) and completing your evaluations before they close on May 1st at 9:00 a.m. — this Friday! (This deadline cannot be extended.)

As an added incentive, prizes will once again be raffled off to students who complete all of their evaluations. Raffle prizes include the following:
* $15.00 iTunes gift card (3 available)
* $25.00 Barnes and Noble gift card (6 available)
* iPod Shuffle, 4GB (1 available)
* iPod Touch,16GB 2nd generation (1 available)

You’re not eligible to win until you complete all of your course evaluations.

It’s a good cause and gets you free stuff (possibly) so why not?

Preliminary Elections Results

Hey, we don’t have the official email from Diana yet, but the election results are trickling in.

First off – Neda Eid has been elected as Justice to the Union Judiciary. So has Judah A. Marans, Matthew Kriegman, and Justin Pierre-Louis

Asa Bhuiyan and Rami R. Abdelghafar are the new Senators at Large, Nipun Marwaha and Mark A. Zager are the new Senators for 2012. Michael J. Weil has been elected to Senator for 2010.

Jenna Rubin and Jourdan Cohen are battling it out to be the 2nd Senator for Class of 2011. That other guy won the 1st spot. I forgot his name. Can you remind me? Michael Newborn won the Senatorship (of 2011) in the first round.

Continue reading “Preliminary Elections Results”

CARS meeting today, tomorrow

There’s a meeting today for students to respond to the CARS committee report. There’s another meeting tomorrow. Here’s the info:
April 22 5-6 p.m. Admissions Office in Bernstein Marcus (presentation room)
April 23 6-7 p.m. Admissions Office in Bernstein Marcus
April 27 5-6 p.m. Admissions Office in Bernstein Marcus

The UJ trial is happening at the same time today, but please show up at least tomorrow or something. Just a friendly reminder.

Are we about to test the Separation of Powers?

It’s possible that I’m overthinking this, but I think we might be about to be entangled into a separation-of-powers style showdown at the University.

According to the writ granting cert to the Union Judiciary trial today (on the constitutionality of a (Union) constitutionally mandated Racial Minorities Senator, henceforth RMS (in the Union Senate))*, the petitioners (aka the prosecution aka those arguing against the position of RMS) base at least part of their opposition to the RMS position on the Universityhandbook on Rights and Responsibilities.

Now, the UJ is in a bit of an odd position here. They explicitly granted cert** for an argument based partially on the Rights and Responsibilities. Yet, right now anything dealing with the Rights and Responsibilities is dealt through the Administration. If the court tries to “grab power”, as it were, by trying to claim jurisdiction over the student conduct process, I don’t think the Administration will be pleased. Likewise, if their gambit works, then perhaps the Union Judiciary will spend its future sessions ruling on student plagiarism, drug use, fire safety, parking violations, and all other activities covered by the Rights and Responsibilities handbook.

I think the UJ is already in a tricky spot by granting cert explicitly on the University Handbook, but if they base their ruling off it in any way, we might just see a showdown at high noon between the Deans of Student Life*** and the Union Judiciary.

Continue reading “Are we about to test the Separation of Powers?”

Why haven’t more students taken advantage of the CARS Process?

So the CARS Committee report came out. There are some unpopular proposals in there – cutting the AAAS, Classics, and American Studies Departments, and cutting the 4-year BA/MA Programs are the most dramatic.

People are quite upset. They really care about the future of academics at Brandeis. Then what explains the rather tepid response to the structures put in place to gather community ideas/opinion before the publication of the report? The discussion forums are mediocre in size and the second Budget Cut Town Hall had less than 100 students attend.

So, after we fought so hard for some structures of democratic process, why were they rather unused?

I don’t think there is any one true answer. It’s probably a combination of intimidating complexity, the lack of knowledge of what the committees were discussing the whole time, lack of an organized effort to get people to comment, a feeling of disempowerment, and many other factors.

Matthew Yglesias points out to a related phenomenon:

There was an assumption, at one time, that you could make government more democratic and accountable by, in essence, multiplying the number of elected officials.

In retrospect, I think this was based on flawed logic and faulty assumptions that forgot to account for the fact that people have a limited amount of time they’re realistically going to spend monitoring public officials. If you live in New York City you’re voting for the President of the United States, two United States Senators, one member of congress, the Governor, the state Attorney-General, the state Lieutenant Governor, the state Comptroller, a mayor, a District Attorney, a city Comptroller, a Borough President, and a city council member in addition to a variety of state and local judges. And that’s entirely typical for the United States. Add a school board member into the mix and the situation gets even more out of control.

The result of this sort of process is the absence of meaningful accountability rather than its presence. The result is that special interests—the people with strong self-interested motives to pay attention—wind up exerting wildly disproportionate influence.

Were all the CARS subcommittees, events, online forums, (as well as the established centers of power – Student Union, Administration, Faculty, etc) part of this phenomenom? Power is so widely dispersed that people don’t know where to start their scrutiny.

Again, though many factors likely contributed to this lack of democratic process, I think one big one was the closed nature of the CARS committees themselves. The General Population, for example, did not know that the CARS committee was looking for departments to cut, and therefore couldn’t provide any constructive criticism until after the fact. Even for less dramatic issues, it’s hard to participate in discussions and add your voice when you have no idea what the conversation currently is. I hope this problem is addressed in the future.

CARS Committee Report – First Steps

So you’ve read the CARS_Report.

Perhaps you have some thoughts on the matter? First off, write/submit them here: CARS committee report response

Here’s what else you can do, care of still-President Jason Gray:

In the midst of the financial situation that we face, we have an opportunity to be a part of the process of making significant change to our University.  The recommendations are not final.  As you read the report, note what you like and what you don’t, and then please sign up to attend one of the feedback forums to make your voice heard before the Provost makes final decisions.

Sign up at http://my.brandeis.edu//survsimp/one?survey%5fid=4589

The forums in the Admissions Office in Bernstein Marcus are at the following times:

Wednesday, April 22  5-6 p.m.
Thursday, April 23  6-7 p.m.
Monday, April 27  5-6 p.m.

Hope to see you there.

Even if you don’t have a specific question, please go to at least one meeting. It’s very important that enough people show up so that we can have an authentic discussion that includes broad swathes of the Brandeis community. If you usually don’t go to these sorts of things (or know people who don’t), you’re especially urged to come.

We fought hard to get these sorts of forums and opportunities for feedback. Time to actually use them.

Will Brandeis Get a Mystery Gift?

Colleges across the country are getting mysterious donations numbering in the millions of dollars from secret donors.

NPR:

A mystery is unfolding in the world of college fundraising: During the past few weeks, at least eight universities have received gifts totaling nearly $45 million, and the schools had to promise not to try to find out the giver’s identity.

Now, while I definitely wish that Brandeis would receive some anonymous angel donation, I appreciate that the money is going to colleges such as Norfolk State University, University of Iowa, University of Southern Mississippi, and so on.

I don’t have the time to round up smart people pithily making this point, but I think it’s pretty obvious that a 4 million dollar donation to a State University is significantly better for society than paying Harvard 4 million dollars to name a building after you. It’s great that schools who actually need the help the most are getting it.

Which reminds me:
An angel concerned about funding higher education where it needs help should consider the Washington Monthly College Rankings:

this guide asks not what colleges can do for you, but what colleges are doing for the country. It’s a guide for all Americans who are concerned about our institutions of higher learning. Are our colleges making good use of our tax dollars? Are they producing graduates who can keep our nation competitive in a changing world? Are they, in short, doing well by doing good? This is the guide that tells you.

The most recent rankings I could find are from 2007. In terms of the social benefit it produces, Brandeis is a measly 98

Anyways, kudos to these colleges. Hopefully Brandeis is next in receiving “miracle savior money.” We need it, after all.

Future of the Rose Town Hall

A message sent to the Brandeis community – reprinted here

Dear Members of the Brandeis Community,

As the chair of the Future of the Rose Committee I am writing to invite you to participate in a town hall meeting on Tuesday, April 21st, 2009, from 4:30 -6:00 p.m.. The meeting will take place in the Olin-Sang auditorium and is open to members of the Brandeis Community.

As the Committee gathers information and explores possible options for the future of the Rose, we would like to hear your ideas.   Please come having considered the following questions:

•    In your view, who are the principal constituencies of the Rose?  Who should be?

•    In your view, what are the priority activities at the Rose?  What should be?

•    Are there ways to continue to enhance the Rose’s interaction with our students and our curriculum?

•    Given any knowledge you may have of how other institutions of higher education successfully integrate their art museums into the life of those institutions, what suggestions do you have for Brandeis and the Rose?

If you are unable to attend the town hall meeting, we invite you to submit your ideas for the future of the Rose to the Committee via email at rosefuture@brandeis.edu, or through our online forum at http://my.brandeis.edu/bboard/q-and-a?topic_id=3213&topic=Future%20of%20the%20Rose.  (This is a private forum open to members of the Brandeis community only.  Simply login using your Brandeis username and password.)

We look forward to your input and thank you in advance for your willingness to share your ideas with us.

Regards,

Jerry Samet, Chair
The Future of the Rose Committee

Want to learn community organizing this summer?

An exciting opportunity to learn/practice community organizing, and get paid!

SOUL Summer School
June 15th to August 6th 2009
San Francisco Bay Area

SOUL Summer School is an intensive 8-week introduction to community organizing and social change, designed for young activists who have been involved with social justice organizing for at least one year. SOUL is dedicated to building the skills of young women, young people of color, working class, and queer people as the next generation of leaders in the social justice movement.

SOUL Summer School provides a structured time to work full-time to develop your grassroots organizing skills and your political analysis. SOUL Summer School has three components:

ORGANIZING INTERNSHIPS with local organizations that work within working class communities and communities of color, fighting alongside people for their rights. Through these internships, you’ll get on-the-ground experience with the work it takes to build community power.

ORGANIZING SKILLS TRAINING so you can learn the concrete tools you’ll need to organize for power in our communities. The trainings provide space to build the skills you will use in your internships. SOUL’s trainings will develop skills like outreach & recruitment, action planning, and facilitation.

POLITICAL EDUCATION to think more deeply about the current political and economic context, especially the issues impacting working-class communities of color.  We’ll also look at local and global fights to win justice for our people, to help develop a strategic vision for building our movement today.

The summer program is eight weeks long, starting on June 15th and ending with a closing celebration on August 6th. SOUL Summer School is a full-time commitment for the whole eight weeks. You will not have time for another job or for summer classes. You’ll spend at least 30 hours a week in your organizing internship and 10 hours in our political education & skills training sessions. SOUL provides need-based stipends— up to $2000— for your living costs during the summer. Applications for SOUL Summer School 2009 are due by April 17th. If you have any questions about SOUL Summer School, please email us at soul@schoolofunityandliberation.org or call 510. 451. 5466 x 300.

SOUL School Of Unity & Liberation
287 17th Street, Suite 225
Oakland, CA 94612
www.schoolofunityandliberation.org

Need-something.

I had a talk with Professor Hickey the other day. We talked about need-blindness and other similar considerations. He had an idea: what if Brandeis was 90% need-blind, or something like that? The gist of it is that Brandeis normally admits about, what, 750 or so students per year? (I honestly do not know the number). Why don’t we accept that number of students need-blind like usual, but for the extra one hundred or so students that we have to take on due to financial consideration, let’s be need aware.

There’s a certain honesty and elegance to the idea. We’re admitting these extra students because we need the money. So let’s be up front about it and take money into consideration when admitting them, but only for the extra amount of students we normally wouldn’t take anyways?

What do you think of the idea? Suggested reading – “Paying in Full as the Ticket Into Colleges”

Facing fallen endowments and needier students, many colleges are looking more favorably on wealthier applicants as they make their admissions decisions this year.

Institutions that have pledged to admit students regardless of need are finding ways to increase the number of those who pay the full cost in ways that allow the colleges to maintain the claim of being need-blind — taking more students from the transfer or waiting lists, for instance, or admitting more foreign students who pay full tuition.

[snip]

Brandeis University, which is need-blind except for international, wait-listed and transfer students, accepted 10 percent more international students than usual this year, and Gil Villanueva, the dean of admissions, said he expected that the university would take more wait-listed and transfer students, as well.

Why not just be honest?

The Justice today was a PR misstep

Let’s take a look at the front page of today’s The Justice, shall we?

Some selected articles:
Forum: “Not exactly need blind”
“Acceptance rate up 8 percent”
“Golf team raises funds to continue program”

Now, the Justice has a mission to report the facts as soon as they can, but can we all awknowledge that it was a possibly bad circumstance for this all to be printed on the newspapers on accepted students day? This is a situation where no one was at fault, I suppose. I mean, transparency and honesty is a good thing. Still.

PR Fail.

Help me change Brandeis – vote today

So, as you may know, I’m running for Junior Representative to the Board of Trustees. The first round of elections was on Thursday, and it ended in a runoff. Voting starts (and ends) today.

If you’ve been following my work at Innermost Parts, and think I would be a good face for the student body to the Board of Trustees, or if you like the projects I’ll pursue with that position, please vote for me now. Any current Brandeis undergraduate student (midyears to Seniors) can vote.

You can learn more about what I’m about and what I’m running on by checking out my elections website (here).

The quick synopsis:

Why Sahar Massachi?

What he’s done:
Disappointed by the lack of appropriate media outlets for student voices, Sahar founded InnermostParts.org in his first year. An authentic student voice focused on building the Brandeis community and serving as a modern “town square,” it has provided social justice-oriented content for the entire community – students, faculty, alumni, and staff. During the months prior to the presidential election, he served on the Brandeis Votes Union Task Force that facilitated the effort to register Brandeis students to vote through many diverse clubs. Currently, Sahar coordinates our endowment strategy with other colleges through the Committee on Endowment Ethics and Responsibility.

What he believes:
Brandeis has always been on the forefront of social change. Our first task was to use competition to force other Universities to end their bigoted admissions and hiring policies. Our task today is to empower each other to draw upon our undergraduate experiences to improve the world in which we live. A Brandeis graduate should have more than just a liberal arts education, we should have all the tools and knowledge that we need to be a citizen – in the most expansive sense of the term.

What he’ll do
“I pledge to use electronic or other means to contact the student body before all Board meetings, as well as to inform them of the happenings therein. I believe that if students are treated as partners, we will act like partners. We deserve to be approached as stakeholders who love Brandeis, and not as transients. We need to pro-actively build the Brandeis community and uphold Brandeis’ most cherished values, and I will bring that spirit and that orientation to the Board of Trustees. With your vote, I promise to be transformative and visionary, not just competent.”

Thanks for your support.

“Away With All Gods!”

A message from the Brandeis Humanists

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=66078575985

Brandeis Humanists is proud to present revolutionary Sunsara Taylor as part of her national speaking tour about the book “Away With All Gods! Unchaining the Mind and Radically Changing the World” by Bob Avakian, who is chairman of the United States Revolutionary Communist Party. Sunsara has given speeches across the country about topics such as the Iraq war, torture, assaults on women, gays and science, and the criminal treatment of Black people during Katrina and by police 24/7, and was also co-founder of “World Can’t Wait — Drive Out the Bush Regime.” She is now turning her energy to theocracy in America.

She has appeared on the O’Reilly Factor, been thrown out of one of Rick Warren’s talks at Ebenezer Baptist Church for getting up and yelling “Rick Warren is a Bigot! No ‘Common Ground’ for Bigot Rick Warren!”, and recently has been part of a Morality Without Gods series at New York University.

Please come, bring your friends, and get ready for some radical atheist discourse!

Thursday, April 2, 2009
Time: 7:00pm – 9:00pm
Location: Pollack Auditorium (next to Rose Art Museum)

Send a Good Dem to Congress Tonight!

(A message from the Democrats and DFA)

Progressive Democrat Scott Murphy is standing toe-to-toe with a powerful republican in a historically republican district. With your help tonight, Scott will be a member of US Congress TOMORROW!

Please join other campus progressives as we make GOTV calls to democrats in New York’s 20th Congressional District (upstate NY) reminding them when and where to vote!!!

We will be making calls from **Village TV Lounge between 5:00 and 7:00 PM**

In a close race like this, your help could make all the difference.

During the last Congressional cycle, DFA-Brandeis made calls that helped Joe Courtney of Connecticut win a Congressional seat by just an 83-vote margin. These races can be very close!

Please come a help tonight! It will be fun and you WILL make a difference!

Social Justice should be more than an empty phrase

I’m thinking a lot about the role of the University in society lately, and long-term Social Justice infrastructure, etc.

Brandeis talks a good game about Social Justice, but really neither defines it well or empowers its students to foster it. Even the committed activist clubs on campus are stuck in a paradigm of community service, instinctive protest, or the vague idea of “raising awareness”. We can do so much more than that.

Brandeis Alumni are among the best in the field in terms of community organizing or social entrepreneurship. I know of 6 non-profit ventures founded in the past 3 years here on campus. Furthermore, in the field of Online Organizing and New Media / Social Network utilization, Brandeis grads are outstanding. There is a raw talent here that needs to be trained and untapped.

On a societal level, youth are being used by the political sphere are warm bodies or an extra pair of hands. All “real” experience in creating change either takes place in summer internships or after college. That is a shame.

I often speak of the idea that Brandeis is not even a University, but rather a two-stage experiment in social entrepreneurship that uses the legal and institutional structure of University to interface with society. In the first stage, the Jewish community opposed discriminatory quotas in higher education by creating a new top-flight academy that would reject quotas and use competition to force other universities to follow suit. That mission has been successful. The second stage is a work in progress.

Now that we’ve eliminated University quotas, the Brandeis experiment can move on to a broader goal: training and equipping the next generation of social entrepreneurs and change agents.

Why Brandeis? Brandeis has the history, credibility, and resources to make this vision of “an academy for Social Justice” possible. Infused with the spirit of Tikkun Olam, Brandeis has a mandate to take this mission seriously. The University setting allows for a sustained, true, and thorough process of educating young leaders in the principles of leadership, values, and social action.

HopeFound aftermath

We described it as “a labor of love for Aaron Mitchell Finegold”,
He quotes Nathaniel Hawthorne: “generosity is the flower of justice”.
Jordan Rothman memorably referred to it as “the fifteen dollar booze event”

Whatever it was, the HopeFound fundraiser was a financial success. We raised $4000 for a homeless shelter, and looked mighty fine doing it.

Aaron had this to say:
Continue reading “HopeFound aftermath”

Liveblog snark edition

We’re liveblogging the trial now – snark edition.

Livebloggers – Alex Norris, Matt Kupfer, Jon Muchin, and myself. We’ll be blogging in the comments.

This is a project unaffiliated with the petitioners, defense, judges, or whatever. We’re just providing an alternative, hopefully more hilarious liveblog here.

Check out Emily Dunning’s liveblog below for the “official Innermost Parts take”.

—
OK, so the petitioners (UJ-speak for prosecution) keep bringing up this claim that Lev and Alex didn’t recuse themselves when they brought up the SMR, and that its wrong, since they happen to be members of DFA. This line of reasoning is wrong. Lev and Alex are the Senators of the class of 2011 and represent the entire class. They were elected on a platform of, in part, supporting such events, and their votes are public. The Ayers event is open to the entire campus, and it’s entirely appropriate for the Senators representing Twenty Five Percent of the student body to have a say in that event.

Asking Lev or Alex to recuse themselves in these sorts of votes is like asking Ted Kennedy to recuse himself on Universal Healthcare votes because he has cancer.

Jehuda still keeping secrets from Students, Faculty

There’s a lot to take away from this news article by Hannah Kirsch, Donation goes to Rose.

Most importantly, we see that Jehuda is still hiding information from Students and Faculty.

A donor has provided funds to help pay the Rose Art Museum’s operating budget for the remainder of this fiscal year, according to a Feb. 26 “frequently asked questions” briefing e-mail to Brandeis alumni sent by University President Jehuda Reinharz and forwarded to the Justice by several alumni.

…

Scott said that she heard of the donation news from an alumnus approached her at a conference, [sic] but she dismissed it as a rumor after she did not receive any official notification. “To my knowledge, no other faculty had been told about this,” she said.

This mad obsession with secrecy accomplishes nothing but make Jehuda look bad. And, like it or not, right now he’s the face of the University. Why does all big news come in the form of leaks to the Justice? Why are different people being told different things, and why the hell are people still confused over the Rose? What else don’t we know? Did Sheldon Adelson just buy the Heller School? At this point, anything is possible.

Secondly, we see that an anonymous donor gave a fair chunk of change to the Rose’s endowment. Great, but no amount money given to the Rose’s endowment will save it. Why? Because the Rose is financially healthy – by selling it, Jehuda is trying to cannabilize it, not cut off a loss.

Last, we see that we’re still locked in the paradigm of the benevolent mega-donor. This model is outmoded for the modern age. Brandeis should be much more friendly to targeted micro-donations from small donors than it is now. That was the secret to success of campaigning in recent times(Barack Obama, yes, but yes as well to hundreds of congressional Candidates, Hillary’s bounce back after NH, etc), as well as the foundation of support for Jewish Federations throughout history (up until the 20-year anomaly of the Jewish Mega-donor from the 1980’s-2000).

Would a business major change Brandeis’ character?

The Justice makes a fairly strong case:

Not only is business far from a liberal art, but also some think the establishment of a Business major would attract a different group of students than those Brandeis usually admits. Brandeis is absolutely thought of by its community as a liberal arts school; it’s heavily marketed as such to prospective students and is frequently described as such by students and professors. However, Brandeis’ liberal arts identity begs questioning.

…

What is problematic is a continuing rhetoric of “supporting the liberal arts” when the University’s recent actions indicate that the liberal arts have been on the back burner for some time. A Brandeis where ancient Greek, linguistics, music composition, the various Ph.D. candidates who won’t be admitted next year and the University’s legacy in the form of an irreplaceable collection of midcentury masterpieces are in danger of falling off the map is not a liberal arts school.

A main tenet of business is that one cannot do many things well. Brandeis cannot support the liberal arts to the level they deserve while maintaining world-class research facilities and initiatives like the Business major.

I don’t think that this will change any decisions but we should take a clear-eyed look at the consequences of our actions here.

What’s more interesting is that this is a fairly radical position, considering it came from The Justice. Opposing a likely decision made by the school? That’s a fairly big step for them.

I do hope that these concerns are taken into account when designing the Business Major. My take: it should teach social entrepreneurship, not capitalist entrepreneurship. That’s where the future is in any case.

Party in Pittsburgh – Let’s all go to NN this summer

There’s one progressive conference that we all have to go to this year: Netroots Nation.

One badass conference/party
One badass conference/party

Netroots Nation is a four-day conference for progressive activists, with a focus on the internet side of things. Tons of speakss, workshops, etc. So many cool people to meet. Such good parties at night.

It cost me about 500 dollars to go last year and it was so worth it.

This year we can all get in for fifty.

That’s right. Fifty dollars for a student registration. And if we register as a group, we get additional discounts.

August 13-16, in Pittsburgh. You in? Leave a comment or email me at

Netroots Nation 2009

The fourth annual gathering of the Netroots (formerly known as the YearlyKos Convention) will be held August 13-16 at the David L. Lawrence convention center in Pittsburgh, PA. Netroots Nation 2009 will include panels led by national and international experts; identity, issue and regional caucuses; prominent political, issue and policy-oriented speakers; a progressive film screening series; and the most concentrated gathering of progressive bloggers to date.

Students! We want you at Netroots Nation 2009

Time magazine calls 2008 “the year of the youth vote.” At Netroots Nation, we hope to make every year about successful youth organizing.

Because we aim to continually bring new voices into the progressive movement, for the first time ever, we are offering a special student rate for those enrolled at least half-time at a high school, community college, trade school or university.

For just $50, you can participate in four days of insightful panels, training sessions and networking opportunities at the grassroots event of the year–the annual Netroots Nation convention to be held in Pittsburgh August 13–16.

Radical exhibit, man.

From the archives:

Radical!

Materials Drawn from the Hall-Hoag Collection of Extremist Literature in the United States

Come take a look at newspapers, pamphlets, fliers, and broadsides from
some of the most divisive right- and left-wing organizations from the
postwar period. The approximately 5,000 publications in the Hall-Hoag
collection range from the late 1940s through 1983, and they represent an
effort to document the wide spectrum of political and religious dissent
literature from the post–World War II period through the Reagan Era.
Collected by Gordon Hall and Grace Hoag, this invaluable collection
includes subjects such as the Black Panther Party, the American Nazi
Party, the Weathermen, Three Mile Island, McCarthyism, and the Equal
Rights Amendment.

Drop in between 11:00 and 1:30 on March 5 and see the one-day exhibit,
curated by Katie Hargrave, graduate student in Cultural Production.

*Radical! Materials Drawn from the Hall-Hoag Collection of Extremist
Literature in the United States*
An LTS Show & Tell Event
Archives & Special Collections (Level 2 of Goldfarb Library)
Thursday, March 5th
Between 11:00 a.m. and 1:30 p.m.
All are welcome!

“Clean Coal” info event – hosted by SEA

Tomorrow:

SEA is hosting a panel discussion about the pros and cons about the future of CLEAN COAL — a major energy buzzword this political season. Want to learn more about this hot topic? Then please come out to:

Clean Coal: Solution to the Energy Crisis?
Wednesday, March 5th, 5pm
Geller Conference Room, Upper Sherman

World coal consumption is about 6.2 billion tons annually. Ninety percent of America’s electricity comes from coal. “Clean coal” is on the tip of every politician’s tongues– does the answer to our climate change crisis lie in this new technology? What could make burning coal “clean,” and is this an appropriate solution?

Come hear and participate in a discussion between Michael Brune, Director of the Rainforest Action Network, and Adam Zemel, Analyst at the Breakthrough Institute (and Brandeis student) about the future of clean coal.

Need some context? Check out:
http://ran.org/issues/energy/
or http://thebreakthrough.org/blog/adam-zemel/

Hope to see you there!

Involve Alumni too!

I saw the headline of a Hoot editorial: “Once a Student, Always a Stakeholder”, and I was kinda excited.

It’s only an accident of history that I get to be on the Brandeis campus during this inflection point in its history. But will I be any less attached to Brandeis the day after graduation? Will I not still believe in its ideals, and push for the fulfillment of its potential? Then why should my voice count any less?

There is a shameful lack of Alumni participation in Brandeis affairs. Alumni were once students. Like it or not, they are tied once to Brandeis’ success or failure through their degrees, and many times over through the heart. Not all alumni feel way, of course, but many do. These people are Brandeis citizens as much as I am, and deserve to have the same power to influence decisions as I do.

Ideally, Alumni should have just as much access as students do. They should have seats on CARS subcommittees and be able to access forums and propose ideas to the Board of Trustees. I thought the Hoot editorial was responding to that situation. Instead they wrote some vague tract on how students should be more involved, etc. Which is correct, but something else entirely.

Will changes to Mass Law save the Rose?

So the University is part of an effort to change Massachusetts Law so that it can draw more money out of its endowment. Currently the law doesn’t allow Brandeis (and other Universities) to draw the principal out of its endowment, only the interest. Brandeis is a young University, founded in 1948, so we have a lot of principal compared to interest, and are therefore badly hurt by the current law.

For a good primer and analysis of the current situation, check out Loki’s previous post on the subject or this Portfolio blog post.

Bernstein-Marcus (aka the Brandeis Administration) has presented the need to close the Rose as driven by Mass. Law that didn’t allow them to draw from the endowment. However, they’ve lately said that even if UPMIFA was passed (and they could draw from the principal of the endowment) they might still close the Rose.

In other words, Brandeis said that they were forced to close the Rose due to Mass Law, but refuses to say that they’ll save the Rose if that law were changed according to their needs.

Now that Brandeis is trying to change the law, Jehuda must put out a public statement saying that if the effort is successful, we’ll save the Rose. To do otherwise would be to say that a temporary dip in the endowment is worse than permanently closing an essential part of the Brandeis character.