Category: Uncategorized

On Liberalism

That EJ Dionne article continues to impress. Let me just excerpt 2 paragraphs that I found gripping:

And I must pause to praise the following sentence: “No one is more temperamentally conservative than a Manhattan leftist living in a rent-controlled apartment and holding tenure at a university; his or her way of life is inevitably bound to breed a sense of complacency that is incompatible with liberalism’s historical commitment to be open to the new.” Since many book reviews are written by Manhattan leftists living in rent-controlled apartments holding tenure at a university, that is indeed a brave thing to write.

Compared with Marxism, romantic forms of conservatism, and assertive varieties of nationalism, liberalism can seem terribly boring. For Wolfe, this is an asset, not a liability. While we all like poetic speeches, Wolfe is right to warn about the dangers of allowing poetry to define politics. “Let the passions reign in the museums and concert halls,” Wolfe writes. “In the halls of government, reason, however cold, is better than emotions, however heartfelt.” Is Wolfe channeling No Drama Obama?

I think the thing about liberalism being boring is spot-on. And Dionne/Wolfe counters this by asserting that the rationality of liberalism is what’s needed in the actual work of politics – the long and slow boring of hard boards.

That’s not really a good response, is it? For by confining liberalisms virtues to the political sphere, Dionne procludes (or conceives the lack of) a cultural liberalism, a lifestyle liberalism, the possibility for a liberal movement in the modern era. Without movement, it’s hard not to stagnate.

That’s why I might identify as a liberal if pressed, but at my core I consider myself a member of the progressive movement – something bigger than myself – and yes, somewhat romantic as well.

“Cursing the darkness only delays the dawn”

I’m reading a gangbusters book review by EJ Dionne. This passage really grabbed me:

the historian Michael Kazin has it right when he argues that American progressives have succeeded in improving the “common welfare” only when they “talked in populist ways–hopeful, expansive, even romantic.” Kazin cites the line popularized by Ralph Waldo Emerson, “March without the people, and you march into the night,” adding, “Cursing the darkness only delays the dawn.”

I think this is totally right. I think it’s time to take a more positive tone to my writing and action regarding Brandeis – emphasizing a great future we can reach, not cursing the “darkness” that exists right now.

A New Brandeis Study: Mental Health and Recession

Treatment of mental health conditions has long been the most underfunded aspect of the American health care system (the other contender is preventive care, but the Affordable Care Act has finally taken steps to address it).  People with mental health disorders are frequently denied not only the funding to seek appropriate treatment but also, all too often, recognition that they even suffer from a disorder to begin with.  Conditions that can be as debilitating as a physical disability are dismissed as existing ‘only in the sufferer’s head’, and schools are forced to deal with a myriad of separate conditions by cramming students into catch-all special needs classes that cannot provide the individual attention they require.

Therefore, it’s disheartening to hear of the double whammy that mental health patients have suffered as a result of the recession.  A new study from Brandeis’s Dominic Hodgkin reports that state and local mental health services have been substantially cut in the past few years; meanwhile, the difficulties of living in a recession economy have caused demand for mental health services to increase.  These effects have been seen on a global as well as national scale.

If all this seems self-evident (of course recessions lead to spending cuts!), then check out the press release for more details or read Hodgkin’s full study in the International Journal of Mental Health.  While the conclusions are grim, it’s always great to see Brandeis researchers contributing to understanding global issues, and I hope that Hodgkin can play a small role in finding a solution to the mental health crisis.

More Info on the Rose’s Future: Art for Auction, but Not for Sale (Yet)

Two days ago, I wrote about the exciting news that the Rose Art Museum was named one of 1,000 Great Places in Massachusetts.  That, however, will be cold comfort if the Museum is later disbanded or if its collection is devalued by the sale of some of its major works.  Unfortunately, the latest updates in the Rose saga show that such an outcome is still very possible.

The Boston Herald reports that Brandeis has just signed a contract with Sotheby’s, a famous auction house, to explore options for raising funds by leasing artwork from the Rose.  Does that mean we’ve finally dodged the bullet of selling off the collection it took us decades to acquire?

The vote by Reinharz and Brandeis trustees Jan. 26, 2009, to sell the art remains in force. Asked whether selling the art remains a possibility for the Waltham-based university, [Brandeis spokesman Andrew] Gully said: “Yes, because the vote remains. But the intent is clearly at this point to explore nonsale options. Clearly you wouldn’t be selling anything while we were exploring those options.”

Why are we still considering selling artwork?  Didn’t we hear in March that the University had already developed a plan to balance its operating budget by 2014?  Board of Trustees Chair Malcolm Sherman certainly seems to think so.  In a letter to the Herald published on July 19th, Sherman reaffirms the 2014 plan and assigns a different purpose to the potential art transactions:

Now we are exploring options we hope will allow the university to retain ownership of the Rose collection while generating funds for: financial aid; state-of-the-art academic, research and residential facilities; faculty compensation that long ensure excellence in teaching.

Sherman’s letter is disingenuous from the beginning.  He claims that the original Herald story “presents an unfair picture of the university’s fiscal situation”, then goes on to recite the exact same facts that the article mentioned.  The question that Sherman needs to answer is: Has the value of artwork from the Rose been calculated as part of our plan to balance our operating budget or relieve our structural deficit?  If the answer is yes, than Brandeis’s financial solvency is based on leases or sales in an uncertain market that may be illegal anyway.  Our financial future is much more shaky than the administration or Board of Trustees would have us believe, and it is really Sherman and Jehuda Reinharz who are guilty of stretching the truth, not only to the Herald but to the entire Brandeis community.  If the answer is no, then our continued attempts to seek profit from art prove that we’re just as poor caretakers as we’ve been accused of, and no rational art aficionado should have any reason to give us so much as a preschool watercolor painting ever again.

Art expert Raymond Liddell sure isn’t buying what Sherman and Gully are selling.  In his letter to the Herald from July 21st, the former museum administrator and university professor raises some tough questions:

The Rose Art Museum story gets curiouser and curiouser (“Thorny situation for Rose Museum,” July 11). It’s clear that Brandeis has not disavowed its decision to sell the Rose collection which has made it a pariah. It’s clear that Brandeis is trying to buy time and hoping the story will go away. It won’t. It’s not clear why Sotheby’s, whose primary business is selling art, is involved. It’s not clear what sort of museum Brandeis envisions for the future without a director. If it walks and talks like a duck . . .

Liddell has the credentials to know what he’s talking about (and not only because he borrows the language I used to describe Brandeis last week).  He clearly believes that Brandeis is already planning on selling artwork or even completely getting rid of the Rose, and I have to admit he makes a persuasive case.  The worst part for Brandeis is that the people who are suing us think so too:

“Lending art is something museum directors do, and Brandeis fired theirs,” said Jonathan Lee, chairman of the Rose Board of Overseers, who filed suit July 27, 2009, to block the initial sell-off plan. “So it seems a little wacky to have a sales agent do this for you. The kind of revenue expected for lending art is quite small.”

Meryl Rose, representing the Rose family in the lawsuit, said: “Well, it’s ridiculous. It’s just obfuscation so people will think they’re not selling art. But they haven’t taken that off the table.”

Maybe if we sell enough art, we’ll eventually be able to recoup our legal fees!

Last year, a report from a university committee prompted me to write the following:

“BRANDEIS IS NOT CLOSING THE ROSE AND SELLING ALL THE ARTWORK.” Words and italics from them, bold and caps from yours truly.  If you’re going to take anything from the interim report of the Future of the Rose Committee, make it that.  We’ve sat and listened as the Rose first was closed, then open for the semester, then for part of the summer, then the whole summer, then open indefinitely.  Finally, we have an absolutely definitive statement from a body that’s spent lots of time researching this very issue that the Rose is not going anywhere, and, in fact, that we’re bound by donor agreements to keep the Rose Art Museum open by that very name.

After hearing so much spin and backtracking over the course of just that one semester, I now realize I was naive to take any statement on the future of the Rose at face value.  I’d say that it’s time for the University to be completely forthright with us, with the donors, and with the public on the future of the Museum, but even if they did tell the full truth, how could we believe them?  We’ve spent such a long time with last week’s innuendo becoming next week’s policy that I’m not even sure it’s worth trying to ask for answers anymore.  My only advice those concerned about the Rose’s future is to visit the Museum and to do it as soon as possible.  You don’t know when your last chance will come.

Massachusetts Releases List of Greatest Places, and Brandeis Is Included!

After a year of accepting submissions, the Massachusetts’ legislature’s 1,000 Great Places Commission has released its report of the best locations in the state.  That’s not exactly an exclusive list considering that Massachusetts has only 351 cities and towns, but it’s still nice to see that one of these Great Places is found on our very own campus.  Condolances to all those who hoped to see Reitman Hall honored, because our winner is none other than the Rose Art Museum.

That’s right.  Brandeis’s Great Place is the very spot the Board of Trustees wanted to get rid of.  And how many frickin’ buildings does Carl Shapiro have to buy before he gets his own Great Place?

Waltham is actually very well represented on the list; in addition to the Rose, four other Waltham sites earned recognition.  They are:

  • Gore Place — The “Monticello of the North”, once home to former Massachusetts Governor Christopher Gore and currently hosting an active farm.
  • Charles River Museum of Industry and Innovation — Located in what were the engine and boiler rooms of Francis Cabot Lowell’s textile factory, which was named the fourth most important development to shape America by Life magazine in 1976.
  • The Robert Treat Paine Estate — Also known as Stonehurst, a house designed by famous architects Henry Hobson Richardson and Frederick Law Olmsted that serves as one of the earliest examples of modern architecture.
  • The Lyman Estate — Built in 1793 by a Boston merchant, now includes a greenhouse complex that contains exotic plants from around the world.

I’ve often heard that the typical Brandeis student doesn’t have much connection to the Waltham community (the awesome work of the Waltham Group and Clubs in Service program notwithstanding).  I know I don’t; I’ve hardly seen any of Waltham besides the BranVan route.  So I’m going to take this as an opportunity to get acquainted with some of the local history and culture.  Over the next semester, I want to arrange trips to see each of our five honorees (including a walk-through of the Rose), and I hope anyone who’s interested will join me.  Each site is open to the public (a condition of being named on the list), and each is less than three-and-a-half miles from the Brandeis campus — we’ll make them bike trips.

If anyone has any other great ideas for exploring Waltham, share them in the comments.  If you want to help plan these trips, or just want to know when they’re scheduled, send me an e-mail at athughes@brandeis.edu.

Frederick Lawrence’s Political Contribution History

Last winter, when Brandeis Trustee Meyer Koplow was nominated to serve as our next President, one of the major objections I heard to his candidacy was his ties to the Republican Party.  As Nathan Robinson wrote in the Hoot, Koplow’s record of political contributions includes several darlings of the right-wing, including the ultraconservative  Jim DeMint and my noxious home-state Senator Joe Lieberman.  I don’t know if these connections on their own should have disqualified Koplow from the Presidency (although it would have made it difficult for him to lead a student body that, according to Wikipedia, was ranked ninth-most liberal in the country by U.S. News and World Report); however, recalling that minor controversy made me curious as to what Frederick Lawrence’s contribution record looked like.

Searches for “Lawrence, Frederick” and “Lawrence, Fred” on OpenSecrets.org revealed three contributions from an individual by that name employed at Boston University during the period in which President-designate Lawrence worked there (1988-2005).  I think it’s safe to say that they’re all from the guy we’re looking for, particularly since one of them specifies the donor as a “Professor of Law”.  They are:

  • $250 on 7/27/92 to Bill Clinton (D)
  • $2,000 on 9/20/00 to DNC Services Corp (D)
  • $500 on 10/27/04 to DNC Services Corp (D)

It looks like Lawrence isn’t a major political donor, but he’s batting 1.000 for Team Blue so far.  It’s hard to read anything into his current six year period of inactivity; not only has he done that before, but I can think of plenty of reasons why the head of a law school in Washington, D.C. might want to remain publicly neutral on questions of politics.

I have to admit that I find it comforting to know that Lawrence’s sympathies appear to lean Democratic.  It supports my hope that he’ll pursue strong progressive policies for the University, and it could signify that the run of Democratic luminaries that Brandeis has brought to speak while I’ve been here (Bill Clinton, Carl Levin, Howard Dean etc.) will continue with institutional support.

Religion and the Presidency

In The Hoot’s recent article about the selection of Frederick Lawrence as the new University President, Chairman of the Board of Trustees Malcolm Sherman was asked about the impact of Lawrence’s religion on his confirmation:

Malcolm Sherman, Chairman of the Brandeis Board of Trustees said Lawrence’s Judaism was “a consideration” at a school that self-identifies as a sectarian university with Jewish roots but “it was not an absolute necessity.

“Certainly [Lawrence’s religion] made him attractive to the Committee and we are happy that he is Jewish, but that was not the only factor,” Sherman said.

These statements make me a bit skeptical.  Regardless of the fact that we’re a completely non-sectarian school, we are also one in which the majority population is Jewish, as were the first seven Presidents.  It makes sense that the eighth should be as well.  I understand some of the political reasons for why the board felt the need to make this statement – political correctness, desire to diversify/not scare non-Jews away from Brandeis, keep donors who might pull their money if a non-Jew became the President – but at the same time, the idea that religion is “not a necessity” could seem synonymous with “not necessary” or “irrelevant.”  It comes off like a non-denial denial, a sub-conscious shielding of the truth.  Lawrence is extremely qualified to take this position, and his religion certainly could not have been the only factor, but it was most likely a contributing factor nonetheless.

I’ve been wondering why there seems to be a need to shove this fact under the table, because I see it less in terms of religion and more in terms of the school’s culture.  Brandeis is both a secular school and a school with a large Jewish population, and both are usually primary reasons why students come to school here.  As someone who straddles the line between agnosticism and Reform Judaism, I don’t see these two facts as conflicting with one another, but as complementary aspects of our identity.  I don’t care about how the President’s faith, or how he worships, as much as how the cultural lessons and values derived from his religious beliefs, likely similar to those of a University started by Jews, might factor positively into his decisions.  I wouldn’t go so far as to claim that we can’t have any President except a Jewish one, but it doesn’t hurt to have someone who holds similar values gained from an upbringing in a cultural community, and in this case, a religious community.

As a parallel example, my parents encourage me to marry someone who is Jewish, and I’m sure that I’m not the only person within or outside of the Jewish community whose family wants them to marry someone similar to them.  For my parents, it has very little to do with religion, however, and has much more to do with having a few more things in common with your spouse, such as a cultural history and a similar set of values, life experiences, and ideals.

The beginning of a new Presidential term at Brandeis is like a marriage as well, and the Board of Trustees spent close to a year trying to find the perfect “suitor” to take the University forward.  If faced with a pool of equally matched candidates, wouldn’t a similar set of values, experiences, and beliefs be a selling point even if they come from within a religious community? It’s just one more reason that the pairing should work, and one more way in which Lawrence is uniquely suited for the task at hand.  It should not be the foundation of the hiring, the “absolute necessity,” but it’s an extra bonus to have someone whose background will help in making decisions which are in line with the Brandeis community’s ideals.  It might stem from a taboo subject like Religion, but that doesn’t mean that the reality of the situation should be shielded in order for the University to save face.

In Waltham for the summer? Like being athletic, or even political?

The Brandeis biking listserv, which is used by faculty, staff, students and community members alike, sent out an e-mail which lists a bunch of opportunities for free classes and events, both healthy and political! Please read if interested in this sort of thing:

Below is information about upcoming free bike commuter classes, and a bike maintenance class. Even as an experienced cyclist, I found the commuter class helpful. Writing to this bike listserv may be preaching to the choir, but if you have friends who are interested in learning more about bike commuting, please pass on the word. Also, Healthy Waltham sponsors a summer evening series of walk & talks with Waltham elected officials.

Thanks to the generous support of Adobe Systems, MassBike is offering a variety of summer education classes free of charge to the general public. The classes will be in Waltham, where Adobe is located.

Our first round of classes is listed below. These classes will be our Commuter Workshop and our Maintenance Workshop. The Commuter Workshop is a fast-paced, one hour workshop covers topics ranging from bike choice, gear choice, route planning, safety, rules of the road, how to look professional when you get to work, and other general tips and tricks. It is a great introduction to a variety of aspects of bicycling, and most people leave this class feeling much more confident about riding their bicycle. The Maintenance Workshop covers how to fix a flat, how to adjust your seat post, how to lube your chain, and a basic overview of bike parts and what they do. Presenters bring all tools/props needed to teach this class, so attendees will not need to bring anything other than themselves to this presentation (please do not bring a bicycle to be repaired). This class will teach you the absolute basics you will need in order to perform some of the most common bicycle upkeep tasks.

July
23rd Maintenance Workshop 6-7pm Waltham City Hall Basement of Govt Center

August
4th Commuter Workshop 6-7pm Waltham City Hall Basement of Govt Center
16th Commuter Workshop 6-7pm Waltham Public Library Lecture Hall.
23rd Maintenance Workshop 6-7pm Waltham Public Library Lecture Hall.
26th Commuter Workshop 6-7pm Waltham City Hall Basement of Govt Center

September
2nd Commuter Workshop 6-7pm Waltham Public Library Lecture Hall.
9th Commuter Workshop 6-7pm Waltham Public Library Lecture Hall.
16th Commuter Workshop 6-7pm Waltham City Hall Basement of Govt Center
29th Maintenance Workshop 6-7pm Waltham City Hall Basement of Govt Ctr

Each class is one hour long, and is limited to 30 students, these fill up
quickly so be sure to RSVP by emailing Shane@massbike.org. Specify how many people will be attending and the date of the class you wish to attend.

****
Walk & Talk With Elected Officials

What concerns you most about Waltham today?  What would make Waltham a better place for you to live in?  Join local elected officials and community members to walk & talk.
Join us on Mondays, 6:00 – 7:15 PM at Leary Field (Bacon St., across from
Plympton Elementary School).  Bring your water bottle, look for the folks with the orange bandanas, and start walking and talking!

The walks will be held on:
Monday, July 26
Monday, August 9
Monday, August 23

Brandeis Scientists Fighting the War Against Cancer

A recent study by a Brandeis biologist and two of his students sheds some light on what causes healthy cells to become cancerous.  Professor James Haber, who was inducted into the National Academy of Sciences last spring, worked with grad student Wade Hicks and 2009 graduate Minlee Kim to research the process of repairing DNA damage, which they hold responsible for the rapid levels of mutation that characterize cancer cells.

[C]ells that are showing the very earliest signs of cancer start to have errors in the DNA replication process. To fix this, the cells use a number of methods to repair the damage, one of which is known as gene conversion.

Gene conversion repairs the break in the DNA strand by using an almost identical sequence from elsewhere in the cell’s DNA, providing a template from which the original strand can be reconstructed. Although this was once thought to be a mostly error-free process, the new study actually suggests it leads to a far greater number – about 1,400 times the usual amount – of DNA mutations than would otherwise be expected. Once these mutations affect the various genes that provide the cell’s ability to control its own growth, the cell quickly becomes cancerous.

Thus, tumors form where there was once healthy tissue.  Understanding this process is the first step in determining how to correct it and slow the rate at which healthy cells become cancerous.  Congratulations to Dr. Haber and to Wade and Minlee for publishing this important study and for working to ease the pain and suffering of so many people.  As an undergraduate, I find it easy to forget that Brandeis is a research institution as well as a school.  It’s gratifying to remember that so much positive work is being done at our university.

Brandeis — Pariah of the Art World

The American Association of Museums has just entirely revamped their standards for accreditation.  Why did this national organization decide that sweeping changes were needed?

The announcement last year that Brandeis University planned to sell its noted, 6,000-piece collection of modern art stunned and angered museum officials around the world. The university said it needed money for its other operations. But to the art world, the plan represented a rejection of the idea that nonprofit institutions do not sell art from their museums except as a means to expand their collections.

As if you really had to ask…

Now, museums will need evidence of greater levels of commitment from their parent organizations to gain accreditation, particularly when it comes to withholding artwork from their pool of disposable assets.  This really puts into perspective what the Board of Trustees did: not just a major faux pas, but something so uniquely terrible in the art community that the rules have to be changed to account for it.

The New Media Meme: “Brandeis Hates Israel!!!”

Last Wednesday, Jonathan Mark of The Jewish Week published an article striking back at the perception that Israel is, even among Jews, losing the respect of the American people that it has enjoyed for so long.  While I try to avoid injecting myself into Israeli political debates as much as possible, I do find it interesting who Mark chooses as one of his bad guys — Brandeis University itself:

[New York Times columnist Nicholas] Kristof also brings up Peter Beinart’s recent article in The New York Review of Books “exploring the way young Jews in America feel much less identification with Israel than their elders did. Mr. Beinart noted that even the student senate at Brandeis University, which has strong Jewish ties, rejected a resolution commemorating the 60th anniversary of Israel.” Brandeis, of course, was also where a student group unsuccessfully tried to get the university to rescind a speaking invitation to Israel’s Ambassador Michael Oren.

As Bogart said in “Casablanca,” “I wouldn’t bring up Paris, if I were you. It’s bad salesmanship.” But since Kristof brings up Brandeis, let it be said — as Kristof did not — that while many young Jews at Brandeis did want to distance themselves from Israel, at 51 other universities in 30 different states, reported JTA (May 21), one student president after another was inviting Israel’s ambassador to speak at their campus.

The letter to Oren, said JTA, was initiated by Brandon Carroll at Virginia Tech and Wyatt Smith at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee, in response to disruptions Oren faced at the University of California-Irvine and the protests at Brandeis.

Such anti-Israel behavior “is absurd and offensive,” said the letter.  “Please be assured that these individuals do not remotely represent American college students or mainstream campus leaders.”

Basically, Mark says that although Jews at Brandeis might be moving away from support of Israel, pro-Israel sentiment is still prevalent elsewhere.

Last month, a friend of mine at Yale shocked me by saying out of the blue, “I hear your Student Union rejected a birthday resolution for Israel”.  Apparently, this relatively minor campus controversy somehow made a New York Times article three years later.  It’s very weird to hear something I was peripherally involved in used to prove a point on such a national scale, and it’s particularly disheartening to find it stripped of its context to say something that it shouldn’t.

Then again, I can’t blame Beinart, Kristof, or Mark for failing to grasp the nuances of Brandeis Union politics.  Their topics are far broader than our petty struggles; how can they be bothered to research the actual questions that were raised during the birthday resolution debate?  If I were in their place, I’d think that the resolution’s failure said much more about Brandeis’s waning support for Israel than it actually does.

It’s pretty obvious that anything related to Israel that happens at Brandeis will be viewed under a harsh microscope and analyzed as a metric of what young American Jews think about the Middle East conflict.  Therefore, should people on campus stop protesting events like the Oren speech for fear of sending the wrong message?

Of course not.  In both of the aforementioned cases, people weren’t actually protesting Israel or its policies.  They were protesting the intrusion of Israeli politics in inappropriate venues, namely the Union Senate and the commencement ceremony.  The real fault lies with those who injected Israel into these venues in the first place.  My friend Sahar is one of the most passionate Israeli citizens and supporters that I know, but he still drew the very real distinction between his patriotic sentiments and his opposition to Oren’s commencement appearance.  Unfortunately, his advocacy can now be misinterpreted as another blow against Israel from the very school that should be supporting it most fervently.  Shame on those who would force him into the false duality of choosing between his homeland and his principles.

The worst part is that those who try to make support for Israel a part of everyday campus are only hurting their own cause.  Jehuda Reinharz should be smart enough to know that appointing a divisive figure like Oren as a commencement speaker was bound to draw some level of controversy.  And he should be smart enough to know that Israel’s critics would wield that opposition as a cudgel to prove that Jews were abandoning Israel even at America’s foremost Jewish university.

There’s enough room at Brandeis for everyone to advocate and work for their own political causes, whatever they may be.  But when the line separating appropriate advocacy and invasion of campus life is crossed, everyone loses.  The media can’t be expected to get every detail of our campus life correct.  Let’s not make it easy for them to caricature us.

Professor Schwartz

I’m sure every student has faced the inevitable “Brandeis? Where is that?” after telling someone where you go to school.  For a college of our academic reputation, Brandeis doesn’t have a whole lot of name recognition, and I often find myself having to come up with a quick fact or two to introduce my school.  You all probably have your own ways of dealing with this (and they all involve the words “predominantly Jewish”), but one method I’ve found particularly effective is, “You know the book Tuesdays with Morrie?  Brandeis is where it happened.”

Though I never hear it mentioned on campus, our connection with the best-selling memoir in U.S. history might be our foremost claim to fame in the popular imagination.  I read the book in high school, but I didn’t make the Brandeis connection until after I had chosen to go there.  Now that I think about it, however, it’s pretty neat to have one of our former professors become the new model for the aging intellectual passing on his wisdom on his deathbed and reflecting on a life filled with simple pleasures.  Morrie Schwartz died in 1995; many of our current professors were probably his colleagues and friends.  It must have been surprising to see Professor Schwartz find such widespread fame posthumously, and it must be gratifying to them that his principles have touched millions of lives.

Admittedly, Tuesdays with Morrie is a little trite and cliched at times, and though it’s a pleasant read, it’s not exactly looked upon as a cornerstone of literature (like most mega-sellers aren’t).  It’s definitely not the kind of book that usually draws my attention.  I think I’m going to read it again though, and while I’m mainly interested in Mitch Albom’s Brandeis experience, I can’t help but think that we could all use a little wisdom from a fellow Brandeisian.

A Preview of the Lawrence Presidency

I’m really impressed with the all the buzz surrounding future Brandeis President Frederick Lawrence, both from his strong biography and academic record and from the glowing words of praise that everyone seems to have for him.  However, all the accolades in the world can’t predict what we’ll actually get once Lawrence takes office on January 1, 2011 (sidenote: I bet he’ll have an awesome New Year’s party.  Start angling for your invite now!).  While Lawrence seems to be as qualified as possible for the position, heading a top-tier university is a pretty singular job, and I don’t think we can be sure how he’ll fit in with the culture of the school until he actually gets here.

An article on Lawrence in the Jewish Week sheds light on what policies he’ll pursue when he finally takes the reigns before the spring semester starts.  Unfortunately, the story chooses to use the now-predictable “struggling Brandeis” framing (please, that’s SO 2009), but it gives us a chance to see how he’ll react to the most discussed (or at least most media-friendly) issues at the school.

Lawrence mentions that he’s planning a “listening tour” of the campus to introduce himself, a necessity to ensure a smooth transition.  He says that he’ll withhold announcing any cost-cutting or fund-raising measures until after the listening tour, which hopefully indicates a move away from the unilateral decision-making process that led to debacle after debacle after debacle in the past few years.  He adds that “one of his first priorities will be to increase the amount of financial aid available to undergraduates,” a great goal for offering a Brandeis education to as many as possible in tough financial times.

I also really like his commitment to the Four Pillars of Brandeis, of which he says “I look at the Four Pillars and I see my life”.  He indicates that he expects to be at Brandeis for a long time, and it’s cool that he intends to teach a class every semester.

His statements on the Oren controversy leave me a little disappointed.  Though he avoids tackling the question of how he would have handled the situation, he makes several comments framing it as a free speech issue, a position I think is disrespectful to those whose primary reason for protest was Oren’s presence at commencement rather than with Oren in general.  Has Lawrence actually looked into what students were saying?  Does he care?  Does this foreshadow more of the same administration-student disconnect that characterized the Reinharz years?

I definitely tend to give him the benefit of the doubt on these questions, and I realize that this is just one incident that, for better or worse, is now firmly behind us.  In fact, I’m excited at how strongly he comes out in favor of free speech in all instances, and I’m hopeful that he’ll pursue an open campus dialogue on all matters.  Realistically speaking, I can’t imagine anyone being selected by the Board of Trustees whom I’d rather see leading Brandeis, and I look forward to meeting Frederick Lawrence and welcoming him to our community.

Help Needed

Do you have free time this summer?

A small strike team of us are working on a secret project – and we need more staff.

If you’re interested in helping found a new cutting-edge organization based on kicking ass and powerboosting the social justice community, send us an email at secrets

More thoughts on Prez Fred

So – new president. Here’s what I think, from what I’ve read so far.

F-Lawrence knows what is truly important and interesting about Brandeis: Social Justice, Louis Brandeis being awesome, and us being a liberal arts school that happens to also be a research university.

He has the right resume and says the right things: He’s a civil rights lawyer, won a teaching award, is a blogger. He’s talking about outreach to students and good stuff like that.

It’s also interesting that he ties his story to Brandeis’ story

I’m most excited about an opportunity to sit down as a community and really discuss and decide what sort of place Brandeis should be in the future and what Social Justicde means to us as a school. We have a chance to really unite at Brandeis, and bring students, teachers, staff, and workers together for real.

Lawrence represents hope and change. So far, everything looks great. I hope that he takes this great opportunity to rally the Brandeis community together, not just the faculty and staff but the whole community. We have a stellar opportunity to visualize the Brandeis we want to be, and take the steps needed to get there, together.

I’ve downloaded all the papers of his I’ve seen on Jstor, and I haven’t read them yet. He’s still an unknown quantity. But he’s a civil rights lawyer and an admirer of Louis Brandeis! He talks about Brandeis’ commitment to Social Justice. That’s really cool; I just hope that he increases the trend of administration respecting students and their ideas, and that he fosters a new climate at Brandeis, a climate where both students and staff have the opportunity to learn about Social Justice and Social Action – not just what they mean but how to make it happen.

My main worry is the way he was chosen – in a secretive process where we had to fight hard just to have one non-voting student member on the search committee. Hopefully he can reverse this culture of Board of Trustees unapproachability and unaccountability to students.

Three  things Brandeis lacks. Hopefully Flawrence will bring them to Brandeis:
– Real community across students, staff, faculty, workers, grad students, etc.
– Administration respect for students
– Talking about how to *make* social justice happen not just what’s wrong with the world.

Should facebook allow an event which promotes violence against Jews?

Recently, a facebook event went up called Kill a Jew for getting Mein (Kampf(C wat I did thar!?)) accounts disabled. The page, which seems to be someone’s juvenile idea of a joke, is filled with anti-semitic comments and pictures of Hitler’s face. Although I believe few would take it seriously, and no specific plans are listed on the event wall, the event quite blatantly promotes violence against Jews.

In response another facebook event, ONE MILLION STRONG AGAINST KILL A JEW DAY, was created by facebook users who found the event to be offensive.  The latter page asks users to demand facebook take down the event by clicking on facebook’s “report event” option, under which a “direct call for violence” is one of the choices that can be selected.   

While I agree that the material is offensive, I searched “hate jews” under other facebook pages and found many similar groups and events. One of the most populat ones is called I Hate Israel and Jews, and has 243 members. However, I wasn’t invited to any groups or events against this page, which has been around for at least a month, whereas the Kill Jews event, which has a mere 52 members attending, already has an event demanding its removal.

(In addition, it is worth noting that the event against the Killing of Jews (the anti-anti-Semitic one) has a staggering 10, 374 confirmed guests.)

So, what is the difference between the event urging people to Kill Jews and the I Hate Jews and Israel? From a legal perspective they are both expressing a matter of opinion, people exercising their freedom of speech. However, the second one could be seen as “inciting violence”, encouraging people to take action against Jews…but is it really doing that? It’s all in the event’s title, but the page itself doesn’t contain information about plans to commit violence, so does it even live up to its hype? I personally don’t see it as dangerous, but I definitely understand why it would offend people and why it’s scary to have sites like that exist. I guess my question is whether there really is a difference between the Kill Jews event and the Hate Jews group. As of now, facebook has removed neither of them, but as more and more people report the sites as offensive and dangerous material, will another decision be made?

A Town Hall for Our New President

As has already been reported, Brandeis the Board of Trustees has selected our next President, Frederick M. Lawrence, dean of George Washington Law School. Reading just a little into his biography, he seems like a stand-up guy, working pretty effectively to uphold civil rights, particularly in the area of bias crimes. More importantly, he’s from Long Island, something which will undoubtedly connect him to most of the students on campus.

At the same time, as you may have guessed from the snarky cross-out in the previous graf, I’m still wary about decisions that are handed down to us from the Board of Trustees, especially when they have such a strong impact on the future of our community. Yes, I know, the selection process included ‘student input’ – a survey, an online forum, a town hall or two – but none of these constitute serious democratic involvement of the community. I’m not interested in beating dead horses, but the near-total lack of substantive power that students exercise within Brandeis administration is a cause for continuing concern.

This is why I believe we should start off on the good foot with President Lawrence (Freddy Law!) and have a serious town hall meeting early next semester, before his term begins. A small part of it – a very small part – should be allotted for him to introduce himself, to explain why he can best lead Brandeis and how he intends to do it. But the larger part, I hope, can be devoted to expression of student and staff concerns, issues, and desires for the future of our community. What I think would be especially great would be a presentation of a plan for accountability, for making sure that student concerns and demands are substantively addressed, and that individual administrators will find it in their best interests to act on student concerns.

What do people think?

NEW BRANDEIS PRESIDENT ANNOUNCED

In an email sent 10  minutes ago, Board of Trustees chair Malcolm Sherman announced that Frederick M. Lawrence of the George Washington University School of Law will be the next President of Brandeis University effective Jan 1, 2011. Below is Lawrence’s bio from GW, as well as the text of the email:

Frederick Lawrence came to GW Law as dean in August 2005. One of the nation’s leading civil rights experts, he is the author of, Punishing Hate: Bias Crimes Under American Law, which examines bias-motivated violence and how the United States deals with such crimes. He has written widely in the areas of civil rights crimes and free expression.

Dean Lawrence began his legal career in 1980 as clerk to Judge Amalya L. Kearse of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit. Later, he was named an assistant U.S. attorney for the southern district of New York, where he became chief of the office’s civil rights unit. In 1988, he joined the faculty of Boston University School of Law where he taught courses on civil procedure, criminal law, civil rights enforcement, and civil rights crimes. He also served as the school’s associate dean for academic affairs from 1996 to 1999. In 1996 he received Boston University’s Metcalf Award for Excellence in Teaching, the university’s highest teaching honor.

Dean Lawrence has been a senior visiting research fellow with the University College London Faculty of Law and has studied bias crimes law in the United Kingdom through a Ford Foundation grant. He has lectured nationally and internationally about bias crime law and testified before Congress in support of federal hate crimes legislation on several occasions – most recently in 2007 – and concerning Justice Department misconduct in Boston.

In 2004, he was a member of the American delegation to the meeting of the Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) on Enactment and Enforcement of Legislation to Combat Hate-Motivated Crimes and in 2009 he delivered the keynote address to the OSCE meeting on hate crime law enforcement. From 2003 to 2006, he served as chair of the National Legal Affairs Committee of the Anti-Defamation League. Dean Lawrence also has performed in Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center, and the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts with the New York Choral Society.

July 8, 2010

Members of the Brandeis Community,

It gives me great pleasure to announce that, at its meeting today, the board of trustees unanimously and enthusiastically elected Frederick M. Lawrence, dean and Robert Kramer Research Professor of Law at the George Washington University Law School, to succeed Jehuda Reinharz as the eighth president of Brandeis University starting Jan. 1, 2011.

President-elect Lawrence is widely recognized as one of our nation’s top civil rights experts. He has written eloquently about a broad range of important legal and constitutional issues and is the author of “Punishing Hate: Bias Crimes Under American Law.” Fred also has co-authored a number of Supreme Court amicus curiae briefs, including the brief on behalf of civil rights groups in Virginia v. Black (2003) concerning the constitutionality of Virginia’s cross-burning statutes. He has served as chair of the National Legal Affairs Committee of the Anti-Defamation League and is a trustee of Williams College, his alma mater. From 1988 to 2005, he was a member of the faculty and academic administration at Boston University School of Law, and in 1996 he received Boston University’s Metcalf Award for Excellence in Teaching, the highest of the university’s teaching awards.

Fred impressed the members of the board with his strong record of academic scholarship and administration, as well as personal ideals and professional accomplishments that reflect the values of Justice Louis Brandeis and the university’s commitment to social justice and social action. In his meetings with trustees, faculty, students and senior officers, Fred demonstrated a strong commitment to liberal arts education and a clear understanding of and appreciation for Brandeis’ unique character, its Jewish heritage and its mission, which he aptly characterized as a “research college and a teaching university.” The board also noted his record of effective fundraising, both in this country and abroad.

Fred has a warm and winning personal style and a long record of engaging effectively with faculty, students, alumni and members of the extended communities with which he has worked. He is an outstanding successor to President Jehuda Reinharz, and I know that all members of the Brandeis community join with me in welcoming Fred Lawrence to this very special university.

Sincerely,

Malcolm L. Sherman
Chair, Board of Trustees

To read the full announcement and a profile of Fred, watch video interviews, leave a welcome message and more, please visit http://www.brandeis.edu/new-president/

Aramark making baby steps

Just came across a pretty cool article about Aramark’s decision to pay a little extra for tomatoes grown in Florida in order to increase profits for the harvesters. In an attempt at non-partisanship, I’ll post the link and let you decide if it changes the way you look at our dining services provider.

“Food giant Aramark agrees to pay increase for tomato farmworkers”

And in an attempt at honesty, I’ll highlight a few dismal facts discussed in the article that reveal the agreement to be meager attempt at fair labor practices.

Continue reading “Aramark making baby steps”

Save the Brandeis Swimming and Diving Team

Okay, I have been meaning to do this for a while, and hope it is not too late now. I would like to start a serious campaign to keep the Brandeis swimming and diving team around. Last I heard from Brandeis S&DT members, the swim team was cut after the ’09-10 school year due to lack of funds, since the team has had to use Regis and Bentley Colleges’ pools to train. However, cutting the team would mean giving up a great tradition, and throwing members of the current swim team into the wind.

There is an online petition  started by Shawn Kerns in 2009 which requests that the administration not suspend the swimming and diving team, since the team has proven it can achieve success even without its own swimming pool. It currently has 1137 signatures, and I encourage you to sign onto it. Managment of the petition has since lapsed, but the petition can still be used to prove to the Brandeis administration how much we care.

However, there is further action we can take. As the petition states, there are over 500 alumni who were a part of the team, but we can contact alumni who were not active members of the S&DT team as well. Just like any academic program that is in danger of being cut, the swimming and diving team represents something to many of our students and alumni, and many people care about this cause, even those who participated in other activities while at Brandeis.

If anyone has any questions about the cause or information about the current status of the team I would greatly appreciate it. Suggestions are also welcome, since this is still in the early stages, although the deadline to save the team is fast approaching, since athletics start early at Brandeis.

Suggested Reading:

Lastly, if anyone can put me in touch with some members of the swim team that would be GREATLY appreciated since I don’t know any by name. Thanks!

A Tribute to Sen. Robert Byrd

Democratic Senator and President Pro Tempore Robert Byrd, the longest-serving member of Congress in history, died this morning.  He served 57 years, and holds many records, among them: holding the most Senate positions (Majority leader twice, minority leader, etc.), being elected for the most terms (9); casting the most votes in history (over 18,000).

As many news sources spread word of his death and memorialize him, two things seem to jump out: the first, his KKK involvement, which is what pushed him to get involved in politics in the first place, and the second, his ability to stay true to his state (West Virginia) and reflect the views of his consitutents.

As for the first, he became involved with the Ku Klux Klan when he was in his twenties, at which point their regional leaders encouraged him to run for the House. He stayed involved with the Klan for a short time, and then cut his ties. When asked later about his involvement, he said that it was “a sad mistake,” and his track record of voting for civil rights bills plus his vote for Supreme Court nominee Sotomayor convinced people that he had left his white supremacist roots behind, though to imagine someone in the Senate nowadays having that kind of background is very surprising. Is his past forgivable under the circumstances?

From “Robert Byrd’s Baffling Career: From Segregationist to Senate Sage” by Walter Shapiro

In his 2005 autobiography, Byrd referred to his two years as a Kleagle in the West Virginia Klan during World War II when he wrote, “It has emerged throughout my life to haunt and embarrass me and has taught me in a very graphic way what one major mistake can do to one’s life, career, and reputation.” But two years after Byrd left the KKK to work in a war-time Baltimore shipyard, he wrote to Mississippi’s Theodore Bilbo (one of the most virulent racists in the Senate) declaring, “Rather I should die a thousand times . . . than to see this beloved land of ours degraded by race mongrels.”

Two decades later, Byrd delivered a 14-hour address as the final gasp of the Southern Senate filibuster against the 1964 Civil Rights Act. But in addition to resorting to time-eating historical gambits like reading aloud the entire text of the Magna Carta, Byrd turned to the Bible to justify segregation. Dismissing the call of Jesus to love one’s neighbor, Byrd thundered, “But the scriptural admonition does not say that we may not choose our neighbor . . . It does not admonish that we shall not build a wall betwixt us and our neighbor.”

As to the second point, throughout his time in Congress he fought in the interests of coal miners and the companies that ran the mines, got the money to build major highways and other pieces of infrastructure to support WV’s economy, and all in all, seems to have stayed focused on his state rather than getting sidetracked by national or personal interests.

As Patricia Murphy writes in “Sen. Robert Byrd, Longest-Serving Member of Congress, Is Dead at 92,”

The Almanac of American Politics once wrote that Byrd came “closer to the kind of senator the Founding Fathers had in mind than any other.”

Lastly, a major achievement I read about in the above article, when he first entered the House he had neither a college nor a law degree. However, after taking night classes for 10 years at American University, he earned a law degree, presented to him by President Kennedy. And in 1994, Marshall University, located in West Virginia, awarded him an honorary college degree, when he was 77 years old. So, he truly was the quintessential “self-made man” which Americans are always calling for.

What do you think, will you remember Byrd fondly?

Elena Kagan and Louis Brandeis

Read all about it: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/27/AR2010062703527.html

Democratic senators are planning to put the right of citizens to challenge corporate power at the center of their critique of activist conservative judging, offering a case that has not been fully aired since the days of the great Progressive Era Justice Louis Brandeis.

It was Brandeis who warned against the “concentration of economic power” and observed that “so-called private corporations are sometimes able to dominate the state.”

Brandeis move to new e-mail service now official

Over the past few days, we’ve all been getting e-mails from Lindsay Barton regarding the move to Gmail. Beginning yesterday at 5:30 pm, students’ e-mails “migrated” from our former e-mail service Bmail to the new Gmail. See Barton’s e-mails after the jump.

Continue reading “Brandeis move to new e-mail service now official”

Archie Comics embraces diversity

Yesterday I was browsing through articles online when I stumbled upon a piece of news announcing that Archie Comics will introduce its first gay character this September!  Archie will also have his first interracial kiss, with Valerie from Josie and the Pussycats!

Archie Comics, which has been around since 1941, features a group of typical, all-American, “average” teenagers growing up somewhere in the midwest. Archie featured an all-caucasian cast until the 1970’s, when Chuck Clayton, and African American, was introduced. He is now a regular member of the group. His girlfriend Nancy Woods is also African-American, and the two have never been depicted dating outside of their race.

Frankie Valdez, who is Puerto Rican, and his girlfriend Maria Rodriguez, who is Hispanic, only dated each other, in the same vein of that of Chuck and Nancy. Ginger Lopez, a Spanish-American teen, was introduced in the early 2000’s, and Tomoko Yoshida, a Japanese exchange student came in the 2000’s. Raj Patel, who is of Indian descent and the newest minority character, entered the scene in 2007. Now, they will greet Kevin, the first openly-gay character to join the crew, in the upcoming September issue of Veronica, #202.

There exist some minor characters of diverse backgrounds as well, most notably Anita Chavita, who was brought in for a short period ib the 1990s, and who was African-American and paraplegic. According to an article on Wapedia,

“Rather than handling her disabilities naturally, Anita kept bringing them to the surface with comments like “my legs may not work, but at least my brain does”. Ultimately she was jettisoned due to lack of reader interest. However, she is worthy of note because she was a love interest for both Jughead Jones and Dilton Doiley, making her the first instance, in an Archie comic, of interracial romance.”

I’m glad for these additions, although it is always difficult for a series to introduce a minority without making the character into the “token black guy” or the equivalent. However, just think about the fact that kids all across the world read Archie, and hopefully they will embrace people of all different sexual orientations and ethnicities due to these additions!

Target apologizes for offensive material

Target came under fire recently, for a fashion decision.

Amongst memorabilia sold in honor of the 2010 World Cup, Target displayed a shirt with the Spanish flag—but used the wrong flag. The flag printed on the shirts was Spain’s former flag, from the times of Francisco Franco’s rule, and was the official flag from 1945 until 1977.

Franco, the Spanish military dictator, is remembered for the repressive regime he headed, leaving behind a legacy of violence and political oppression with his death in 1973.

The Spanish flag from that period is closely associated with the pain the nation suffered at his hands, and so many Target shoppers were outraged to see a T-shirt bearing this flag up for purchase recently.  In response to complaints, Target apologized and pulled the shirts from all stores, offering a full refund for any already purchased.

Why did Target print shirts with the old flag in the first place? Was it simply an oversight?

I must say, I don’t think Target did anything wrong by selling the shirts, and if people take offense to a national flag emblazoned on an item of clothing then they should not buy it, but the store has every right to sell it. Although my sense of freedom of speech is a bit disturbed by this, since Target voluntarily apologized and immediately stopped selling the shirts, I guess there’s no issue. Do you think Target had a moral obligation to do so?

Great News!

Dear everyone pining after dramatic unifying campus protests: It’s happening, just not here. The students in the University system of Puerto Rico endured police sieges, food and water shortages, and fights for months in a struggle against huge budget shortfalls. And they just won!

From StudentActivism.net:

The university’s board of trustees approved a settlement agreement a little before 10 pm last night.

The agreement reportedly extends tuition waivers, cancels a major new fee, and abandons a list of university privatization initiatives.

Not sure what they’ve won yet – but some sort of easing of fee and tuition hikes (and the planned privatization of the University System) will likely be part of it.

The students probably had good organization, but they also had a compelling cause they were willing to put their academics and bodies on the line for. For those who want similar mass movements on this and other campuses, for those who want a new Ford Hall occupation – is your cause strong enough? Are you organized?

Organizing For America: Petition for Environmental Reform

Anyone else enjoy receiving personalized e-mails from OFA telling them how they can personally help the president?

President Obama delivered his first address from the Oval Office tonight, telling citizens about the status of the BP Oil spill and the terrible impact it is having on the Gulf Coast.Following his speech, I received an e-mail from Organizing For America (OFA) requesting my support.So, having signed on to the president’s petition for environmental reform, I would like to pass this along.  (This being the e-mail OFA requests I forward to 5 friends):

Hi,

The oil spill disaster in the Gulf of Mexico is a tragedy — one we can only hope never happens again.But the solution is about more than just addressing this crisis.

As President Obama said, “An America run solely on fossil fuels should not be the vision we have for our children and our grandchildren.”

I added my name today to show I stand with President Obama for a clean-energy future.

Will you join me?

http://my.barackobama.com/CleanEnergy-auto

Thank you.

I support this cause, and lowering out fossil fuel dependency is surely a good thing. I can’t think of any objections to this Clean Energy petition, except perhaps that your name and state of residence can be made public once you submit them, can you?

On a sidenote, I admit that scripted e-mails make it very convenient for people to pass the message along, but do they really have as much impact as personalized ones asking for support?

Brandeis Considers More Options for Rose Art

In a recent e-mail to the Student Body, Daniel Acheampong, Student Union President ’10-’11, explains Brandeis’ openness to consider new options in the ongoing legal struggle over the sales of pieces from the Rose Art Museum. While Brandeis considers these other avenues, including loaning out works of art, it will suspend its efforts to sell the art. 

I just want to update you on recent news with the Rose Art Museum. In the midst of this critical economic period for our university, Brandeis will explore a range of alternatives to the sale of art from the Rose Art Museum in an effort to generate value from a portion of the collection while still maintaining ownership of the artwork. Many museums around the world have engaged in a similar type of collection-sharing that Brandeis is considering.

The initiative is in its initial stages as there are no details of a timetable, parties who might be interested, the art that might be included, or the potential revenue any agreement might generate. I will keep you updated on any information that I receive. I also encourage you to remain engaged and follow the subject matter. I hope the student body can be involved in whatever decision the university makes concerning this matter.

Here are multiple articles that you can read to get further information:

The Boston Globe
http://www.boston.com/ae/theater_arts/articles/2010/05/28/brandeis_may_loan_out_rose_art_for_a_fee/?page=1

The New York Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/28/arts/design/28arts-001.html?src=twr&scp=1&sq=brANDEIS&st=cse

BrandeisNOW
http://www.brandeis.edu/now/2010/may/artalternatives.html

The Justice
http://media.www.thejusticeonline.com/media/storage/paper573/news/2010/05/25/News/University.Considering.Alternative.Options.To.Selling.Art.From.Rose.Collection-3921009.shtml

I appreciate Brandeis’ perceived acceptance of the legal debacle it has found itself wrapped up in, and thus its willingness to consider other options and hold off on selling more of its collection. It’s long past time for this controversy to be settled, and by saying it is taking this option off the table, at least temporarily, Brandeis is going a long ways towards assuaging people’s fears as to the future of arts at the university. 

I also commend Acheampong on his e-mail, which asks the student body to stay involved in this ongiong issue, and expresses his wish that students “can be involved in whatever decision the university makes concerning this matter.” Although only time will tell if the University will live up to its promise of listening to students’ input, it is encouraging to hear the Student Union President advocating for activism on this important issue, which will affect all of us.

Pets on College Campuses

When new freshmen leave home to attend college for the first time, they tend to pack up anything and everything meaningful in their home. I know this from personal experience; when I came to Brandeis, I loaded my car with instruments, movies, clothing, books, posters, anything and everything that I thought I would need at any given time. In reality, however, I was actually packing anything which I thought would help ease the impending homesickness in an attempt to mold my new dorm room into a carbon copy of my house. Most, if not all, feel some feelings of separation when they are away from home, and a recent New York Times article discusses some of these emotions in the context of a new solution: It profiles Stephens College, in Columbia, Missouri, which is joining the ranks of colleges around the country who permit pets in their dorm rooms.

As the owner of three dogs, my first instinct is to say something like: This is the best thing ever!!!! At least a dozen colleges around the country, including locally at MIT (although they only allow cats), are changing their residential living policies to have explicit rules allowing pets. Some schools even take this to an extreme, including Eckerd College in South Florida which allows snakes as long as they are “less than six feet long and nonvenomous.” As extreme as this might seem to some, it still outlines the fact that having pets of any species in a dorm room is one more way to help a student adjust to their time away from home.

At the same time, however, there are obvious drawbacks. From a psychological perspective, having a pet around gives a new student an excuse to stay in their room and be antisocial, and as child and adolescent psychiatrist Dr. Harold S. Koplewicz notes, it could serve as a “Band-Aid” to cover up more serious emotional issues in students who are coping with more than nerves and the adjustment to a new location.

Then there are a long list of issues concerning cleanliness in the dorm, and personal responsibility on the part of the owner. It is difficult enough for a student to take between 4 and 5.5 classes per semester while maintaining a grade point average, holding down a job, and making time for a social life and involvement in a few clubs and extracurricular activities. The presence of another life for which to care in addition to your own may prove too challenging for some, causing a decrease in the aforementioned activities, or possibly worse, negligence of any kind toward a pet.

In the end, I would love to see Brandeis reexamine its community living policy and consider adopting pet rules in the hopes of allowing students to feel a closer connection to home. Personally, I think that there is an additional benefit to the community; animals can often inspire positive moods in most situations simply by being around, and seeing a larger pet presence on the walk to classes every day would hopefully maintain high spirits all over campus. Yet even though I support it, I’m realistic enough to know that were such a policy enacted, I would have to opt out due to a lack of time to properly care for a pet.

Something Legendary

Netroots Nation is the big convention for lefty online activists every year. It happens to be in Las Vegas this year, and it will be legendary. I need to be there. I need your help to get a scholarship to help pay for it.

The people who get the top three votes get to go.

Yesterday, I was in the top 3. Today I’m 5 votes behind, tied for 4th

The competition is neck-and-neck. Could you please take one minute and vote for me to go?
http://www.democracyforamerica.com/netroots_nation_scholarships/759-sahar-massachi

Why I need to go:
NN is awesome. I meet heroes of mine; learn from them by day, party with them by night. It’s the biggest event of the year for me. You’ve heard my stories of epic hanging out with the Brandeis Mafia, DFA people, Zack Exley – they all happened here. My plan this year: 1. go meet people, learn skills, and bring them back to Brandeis. 2. I’m graduating in a year. It’d be nice to, you know, have a career and this is the place to meet people who can help me find my dream job.

How you can help:
It’s very simple. Click the link (http://www.democracyforamerica.com/netroots_nation_scholarships/759-sahar-massachi) and vote for me. If I am in the top 3 vote-getters, I go. If not, the more votes I get the better my chances.

http://www.democracyforamerica.com/netroots_nation_scholarships/759-sahar-massachi

So, please? It means a super-lot to me and it only takes a few clicks to vote.

~Sahar

Did a dangerous reliance on illiquid assets cause Brandeis’ financial woes?

A think tank has released a report on the model of endowment investing that Brandeis, among other colleges, uses, and it cites us by name. We also get the best report so far on Brandeis’ infamously opaque endowment holdings.

What does the report teach us?

A lot of the report is concerned with models of endowment investment and worker compensation – important insights that I hope the administration looks at, but I’m going to let the Chronicle of Higher Education summarize:

The prevailing endowment investment approach among wealthy universities is “broken,” according the report, which attempts to detail the “cost of the corrosive influence of Wall Street culture on higher-education finance.” […]

Over the last 20 years, those universities and many others moved away from traditional endowment holdings in domestic stocks and bonds, placing more money into illiquid, riskier asset classes, such as private equity, hedge funds, real estate, timberland, oil, and other commodities.

“By giving academic credibility and capital to these risky investment strategies,” the report says, “endowments have been as much contributors to the financial crisis as they were victims of it.”

What else?

Remember when the administration told anyone who would listen that they were trying to sell off the Rose because Massachusetts law? Well, Massachusetts changed the law and Brandeis is still claiming it can sell off whatever it wants. The report points out:

Works of art are hardly liquid assets. They have to be auctioned or  privately sold, so the decision to sell them provides an indication of just how tight a liquidity squeeze Brandeis was in. At the time Brandeis officials repeatedly invoked legal restrictions against spending from endowment principal as a rationale for liquidating the Rose collection, though none mentioned the illiquidity of the endowment’s investments. […]

The case of Brandeis highlights how vulnerable a university’s nonprofit cultural and educational mission can be when constrained by the Endowment Model’s imperative of investment illiquidity.

I remember when I was on the Student Union’s newly-formed Committee on Endowment Ethics and Responsibility we kept getting stonewalled on endowment transparency. The line was that the University endowment was invested in assets so secret that the existence of the investment was not allowed to be known. I didn’t realize the extent of that reality:

what our endowment is made of
The levels of asset type go from liquid/known value (Type I) to illiquid assets (Type III). Note that Brandeis has a big heaping ton of Type III assets.
The endowment is secret, untouchable, and therefore we don’t have a say in how Brandeis votes with its shares of stock or invests or anything like that. Hopefully the new CEER will change that, but for now – opacity. We’ve seen how that turned out.
So, was it debt that created Brandeis financial woes? Or was it an over-reliance on liquid assets that couldn’t be cashed in when it mattered the most? Or both?
We don’t know – we can’t know. Over a year ago Jehuda told two Brandeis students that he would put the entire budget online. He still hasn’t done that, much less embraced endowment transparency.  What we can do is ask the administration to read the report. At the very least they can fix the problems it identifies.

Who Shall We Choose as NEXT Year’s Commencement Speaker?

So the class of 2010 has gone forth into the world, and the Michael Oren issue is now moot. But we should immediately begin discussing next year’s commencement. Supposedly the administration considers nominations for commencement speaker from the class. I suggest we take them up on this, and come up with a few speakers we’d like to see.

I’ve put together a list of living people I wouldn’t mind having give the address for my class. I think we should have a little chat about them. Submit your own suggestions!

–Germaine Greer
–Harold Koh
–Barbara Smith
–Eleanor Holmes Norton
–Robert Coover
–Dave Andrews
–Uri Gordon
–Ed Sanders
–Anthony Romero
–Gore Vidal
–bell hooks
–Cornel West
–John Barth
–Janet Biehl
–Duncan Kennedy
–Slavoj Žižek
–Angela Davis
–Nadine Strossen
–Pete Seeger
–Tariq Ali
–Mark Green
–George Galloway

Of course, if we think the selection of Michael Oren means that we should be as extremely politically controversial as possible, we could lobby for Bill Ayers, Bernadine Dohrn, and Noam Chomsky.

But my personal absolute favorites from the list are Germaine Greer and Cornel West. I definitely want someone colorful and fiery. Anyway, we really need to get on this, or else the administration will give us someone insipid like George Stephanopoulos or Wolf Blitzer. Or maybe they’ll stick their finger in our eye again and bring Alan Dershowitz.

Break!

With the passing of commencement, Innermost Parts is officially on break. What does this mean for you?

– We no longer strive to put up at least a post a day.
– We’re no longer bound by the news cycle.

Happily, this means we can branch out into new types of posts. I’m excited about the opportunities that time to think and no homework provide. I’m thinking of writing about:

  • Analysis of long-term trends at the University
  • What sort of Brandeis do we want to see, anyways?
  • Summaries of what’s happened so far while I’ve been here at Brandeis
  • Looking back at good old posts – have they stood the test of time? Plus relative newcomers can be exposed to the brilliance wisdom of people who have since depareted Brandeis/Innermost Parts
  • Bringing a social movement perspective to happenings at Brandeis
  • A look into inspirational figures:
    • There have been alumni/professors etc at Brandeis that are cool and you should know about!
    • I’m looking at a short biography of Malcolm Moos, regarded as a great and wise man (and gov’t official) as well as University President. He had a big hand in writing Eisenhower’s famous last address (the military industrial complex one) and then was famous for being President of the Univeristy of Minnesota during the sixties. Instead of antagonizing the activists at the school, he embraced them, and therefore great things happened under his tenure. I can write more about him and other great models for University decisionmakers.
    • One thing that I wish happened at Brandeis was more/any classes on, well, Louis Brandeis. I got Urofsky’s killer book, and if i have time I’d like to blog about interesting points made so that we can all learn more about our namesake.
  • Adam wrote an absolutely spot-on take on how the student union’s relationship with activists can either be poisonous or productive. I’d like to do some more thinking out loud about what a productive relationship would like like, and what exactly do we went
  • In general, there’s probably going to be more posts like this, with introspection, talking about Innermost Parts and activism at Brandeis, asking you for ideas, offering up positive ideas about what I’m for (as opposed to what I’m against) etc. I’ve done a lot of searching and a lot of thinking about Innermsot Parts, activism, student power, etc in the last year, but you guys haven’t seen most of it – I didn’t necessarily know whether you’d be interested in that sort of thing. Now that we’ve hit the summer I can be looser and vary my topics more.
  • I want to write more about activism – how to do it, theory, examples, great articles I’ve found on the subject, etc. A founding idea of Innermost Parts was to be (among other things) a teaching tool for students about how to get things done. We haven’t yet really fulfilled that goal and I’m excited to try.
  • Over the course of the last year I’ve met a bunch of Brandeis alumni, specifically alumni that have been activists on campus. If I have the time (I probably won’t) I’d like to interview them and get the story of what sort of stuff went on during their time at Brandeis, any messages they want to share with us, etc. If someone else wanted to take on this project I think it’d be really cool.
  • In general I want to be more introspective,  take a step back and talk about trends, big-picture, long-term stuff. That and also whatever crosses my mind.
  • I’m sure the others on Innermost Parts have their own plans for what they’ll write about that are different than mine, too, and I’m looking forward to reading that.

So, do any of these ideas excite you?
Anything you particularly want me to write about?
Anything that you yourself want to write about?

Enjoy the break.

Justice Archives Online!

Good news folks! Want to learn stuff about Brandeis dating back to 1949, a year after it was established? Want to see what students cared about back in the day?

Now, due to Brandeis’ involvement in the Open Content Alliance’s Digitization project, you can access the Justice archives, microfilm of the Justice newspaper from May 1949 to September 2004. (Yeah transparency!) You can also read web issues of the Justice from April 2002 to the present, which are updated each time an issue is published.

For more information, check out http://brandeis.libguides.com/content.php?pid=11478&sid=687507.

Anti-Oren Letter Slipped in with Graduation Programs

Commencement for the Class of 2010 occurred today at 10:30 at the Gosman Sports and Convocation Center.  (Congrats!) We’ve received word that students protesting the choice of Oren as commencement speaker snuck copies of this letter in with the graduation programs, articulating their reasons against Oren speaking. However, a volunteer and Brandeis student says that students helping out with the ceremony were told to go through each program and remove the material.

For more information on the Oren controversy, browse our InnermostParts archives for posts with the tag “Michael Oren,” dating back to this first post. Read the letter, signed “Concerned Student” below:

“The selection of Michael Oren as Brandeis commencement speaker is both inappropriate and offensive. In spite of programming and literature that describes the University as a non-partisan forum, the invitation of Ambassador Oren to a ceremony that celebrates the values of the institution stands as a pointedly partisan act that alienates a minority of students. The Brandeis administration’s invitation for Ambassador Oren to bestow wisdom as a ceremonial figurehead represents a political endorsement contrary to the values of a secular, non-denominational liberal arts university.

Were Ambassador Oren speaking at any other venue on campus, his visit would present the opportunity for a discussion in the spirit of academic integrity that the Brandeis community expects. When in 2007 President Carter spoke regarding his views on the Israel-Palestine conflict, Brandeis students invited Professor Alan Dershowitz to rebut his points. Last year, Justice Richard Goldstone was only allowed to speak at Brandeis on the condition that he share the stage with former Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations Dore Gold. Unfortunately, in our time at Brandeis, this standard of necessary dialogue regarding the Israel-Palestine conflict is only upheld for speakers critical of the state of Israel.

Regardless of Brandeis’ traditional relationship with the Jewish community, our university remains a non-sectarian institution built on academic excellence, inquiry, and dialogue. As a sitting ambassador, Michael Oren holds the political role of spokesperson and supporter of the Israeli government. Inviting Ambassador Oren to a venue which allows no formal discussion implicitly binds the Brandeis community in unqualified support of Oren’s political position and the government he represents. Brandeis’ traditional association with the Jewish community does not require a wholesale endorsement of either the current Israeli government or its policies.”