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Brandeis University’s Independent Student Newspaper Since 1949 | Waltham, MA

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Pay student teachers, resist the fascist attack on education!

(9 hours ago)

Today, the United States faces a deep crisis in education. Literacy rates are declining, teachers are leaving the profession in droves, the Trump administration is preparing to abolish special education and public education itself is under political attack. According to the National Literacy Institute, 54% of American adults read below a sixth-grade level, and 64% of fourth graders are not proficient in reading. Instead of addressing these problems, state and federal governments are doing the exact opposite of what they should be doing: making it harder to become a teacher. Massachusetts does not pay its student teachers. 


What really is a microcredential?

(9 hours ago)

As Brandeis works towards what the administration is calling The Brandeis Plan to Reinvent the Liberal Arts, students have largely been left in the dark regarding the restructuring of their academic requirements, particularly surrounding “microcredentials.” On the website for The Plan, microcredentials are referred to as part of a “second transcript.” The website states, “The second transcript highlights independently assessed microcredentials earned through coursework, internships, research and co-curricular activities; high-impact experiences like study abroad; capstone projects and community engagement; and verifies how each skill was demonstrated and assessed.” 



Challenges in European Union Refugee Burden-Sharing

(10/28/25 10:00am)

Since 2011, more than 14 million Syrians have fled their homes. At the height of the Syrian refugee crisis in 2015, the EU neither provided adequate protection for asylum seekers nor distributed asylum burdens equally across Member States. Turkey accepted 2.5 million refugees — double the number of refugees accepted by the EU as a whole. Within the EU, Germany accounted for more than a third of all asylum applications submitted by Syrians. The EU’s failure to address the Syrian refugee crisis illuminated flaws in asylum policy. This article will explain how the EU’s burden-sharing initiatives have remained ineffective due to a free-rcombination of structural and policy-related pull factors, free-riding problems and implementation gaps caused by the EU’s prioritization of symbolic over effective cooperation. 






Many people like Artificial Intelligence, some people love it

(10/21/25 10:00am)

By now everyone has heard of Artificial Intelligence, but not of the unprecedented ways in which it’s being used. I’m not talking about AI being used to make art, businesses or to assist students with school work; I’m talking about misled people falling in love with AI chatbots. On the social media platform Reddit there is an online community of individuals that have romantic relationships with AI chatbots called r/MyBoyfriendIsAI, with approximately 28,000 members. It was founded on Aug. 1, 2024, and the community description reads as follows: 


A tribute to the humble fire alarm

(10/21/25 10:00am)

It seems like every few days, a fire alarm goes off somewhere on the Brandeis campus. Everyone leaves their rooms: the first-years rush out with an urgency that makes the firefighters proud, the seniors take their time. Perhaps this is your first time seeing all of your neighbors in the same place, or perhaps you live in Skyline Residence Hall and this is your third alarm of the week. It’s an inconvenience, to be sure, but the event of standing outside, partially dressed, with your neighbors all complaining in unison is perhaps one of the greatest experiences that living in a dorm has to offer.


Policing our press: in support of The Stanford Daily

(10/21/25 10:00am)

As of August 2025, Stanford University’s student newspaper, The Stanford Daily, filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration, challenging its campaign of censorship and retaliation against student journalists, particularly noncitizens, who share their truth. In Stanford Daily Publishing Corp. et al. v. Rubio et al. the plaintiff accused Secretary Marco Rubio and the administration of abusing two provisions of the Immigration and Nationality Act to censor lawfully-present noncitizens in the United States. Represented by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, the Daily’s case underscores a broader, more disturbing reality: for student journalists, the cost of free expression may now include surveillance, detention and deportation. 




Who decides now? Autonomy, identity and the ethics of dementia care

(09/30/25 10:00am)

This article addresses the question: How should caregivers ethically respond when a person with dementia expresses present preferences that conflict with their past values? In this article, I argue the claim that when caring for people with dementia, one should balance considerations from the past with more weight than considerations from the present. This view draws from the works of Ronald Dworkin and Agnieszka Jaworska. I side more with Dworkin. I claim that even if there is a possibility that people with dementia can form new values, the ability to have an integrated view of one’s life as a whole gives past values more weight than present. My argument for ethically caring for people with dementia follows three guidelines: uphold advance directives, maintain past valued commitments, and allow compromise when past values conflict with current comfort​​. 





The politics of influence

(09/16/25 10:00am)

At what point does an influencer become more than just an influencer? The word itself suggests persuasion through visibility — someone who can guide taste, spark conversations or capture attention. But in the political arena, “influencer” can take on a different weight. A political influencer is not simply shaping trends but helping frame how people see power, identity and society itself.