When news broke that there was controversy surrounding the new Mandel Center for the Humanities, I cannot hide the fact that I was delighted. It must be admitted that, in general, we contentious Brandeisians have more fun with bad news than good news: Someone opposing us gives us something to oppose, and we can revel together in our oppression. That the University was building a new center for the humanities was surely too good to be true; there had to be something suspicious going on. It was at least somewhat suspect that the building was already halfway up, and yet no one had any idea who was moving there. You can imagine my frustration, then, when I read last week's issue of the Justice and learned a committee of humanities professors had banded together to advise the provost regarding how to fill the building. Everyone in the article seemed optimistic; undoubtedly, something was horribly wrong.

Everyone I talked to, though, confirmed the optimism I encountered in the article. Prof. Govind Sreenivasan (HIST) said he thinks "it's wonderful that a humanities building is being built at Brandeis." He went on to explain that "the academy seems to be currently pervaded by a near-exclusive preoccupation with subjects regarded as immediately and instrumentally 'useful.'As a commitment to and acknowledgment of the value of broader and more humanistic ways of thinking, the Mandel Center should be a source of pride for the entire Brandeis community." The faculty did not just approve of an administration; it was supportive of it and actually encouraged it.

I had a similarly difficult time finding students who were upset by or skeptical of this plan. At worst, they were indifferent-one student I spoke to lost interest when I said I wasn't sure if the building was going to have a new café. Some, like Aimée Birnbaum '10, were openly ecstatic. As a Classical Studies major, she was particularly happy, since her department is currently "scattered throughout [the] Rabb [Graduate Center] and could really use a single building to call home." More generally, Birnbaum said, "You have no idea how happy and, quite frankly, relieved I am that the humanities are finally being given the same consideration that the sciences have been for years." As far as I could tell, students and faculty alike were delighted.

While reading that same article more closely, I thought I finally found the fatal flaw that would undermine this uncomfortable feeling of good will: The provost wanted to put Environmental Studies in the center. Aha, I thought: Here at last was the Trojan horse, a way they could sneak the sciences up the hill and into yet another shiny new building at the expense of humanities departments. When I spoke with Prof. Steven Dowden (GRALL), a leading member on the committee formed to advise the provost, he pointed out that Environmental Studies is currently, and somewhat uncomfortably, housed within American Studies and is focused more on policy and culture than on science. Like many of the departments possibly moving to Mandel, it doesn't currently have a natural home.

This news story seems to go against the conception that our university was betraying its liberal arts roots and becoming the Brandeis Technical Institute-a fear that I, for one, held, and one that can be detected within the above remarks of the professor and the student. As someone who cares very much about the University, its image and the role of the humanities and liberal arts within it, it's hard to believe there could be much good news these days. The administration is willing to listen to input from the most important source-the humanities faculty-and to implement this important decision based on that input. Pending some last-minute intrigue or shady back-door shenanigans, the University is making a good-faith effort to improve the status of the humanities. We should accept the good news, applaud the administration and the faculty for working together, thank the Mandels for their original donation and hope for things to return to normal-horribly normal-any week now.