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Amid what some experts are calling epidemic levels of opioid abuse in New England, researchers at the Heller School for Social Policy and Management have joined forces with several state governors to search for a solution.
Welcome to summer. The weather is hotter, the drinks colder and you have a lot more free time. In pop culture land, this means blockbuster movie franchises, music festivals and often mediocre television.
On May 13, baseball utility player Kyle Brenner ’15 and infielder Tom McCarthy ’15 were named to the All-University Athletic Association second team for their outstanding seasons this year in conference play.
For the first time in 20 years, a member of the men’s tennis team will be competing at the NCAA Division III Tournament.
The second-seeded softball squad ended its season on May 10, losing 7-4 to the first-seeded Worcester Polytechnic Institute in the elimination round of the Eastern College Athletic Conference tournament. The Judges had just come off a 3-0 loss to the number three seed Smith College earlier in the day. With the losses, the Judges finish their season sporting a 21-18 overall record.
Women’s volleyball coach Michelle Kim was promoted to assistant athletic director on May 1, a move announced by Assistant Vice President for Health and Wellness and Director of Athletics and Recreation Sheryl Sousa ’90 in a press release by Brandeis Athletics later the same day.
The men’s and women’s track and field teams closed their seasons with strong performances at various meets over the past week and a half, with two competitors earning a bid to next weekend’s NCAA Championships and a third falling just short of a bid.
Controversial honorees are a boon
History is subjective—we learn what we do about our country’s past because someone else, some nebulous authoritative force, decided it was worth recording and knowing. Who gets to make these highly political decisions about our collective national memory? Part of the answer is found in the work of historians like Alan Taylor Ph.D. ’86, who devote their lives to bringing light to what actually might have happened in our nation’s history.
Last March, the University announced its hiring of two new professors, as well as a Florence Levy Kay fellow, as part of a cluster-hire initiative to improve studies on the African Diaspora. Prof. Jasmine Johnson joined the African and Afro-American Studies department and Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies program, while Prof. Gregory Childs joined the History department. Additionally, Prof. Derron Wallace (ED) was appointed to the Florence Levy Kay Fellowship as part of his postdoctoral studies. This board commends the recent hires, which signify Brandeis’ commitment to interdisciplinary and comprehensive learning in this critical field of study, as well as the University’s taking of a proactive role in a growing field.
In my high school, everyone loved to hate English 11 and Advanced Placement United States History. By “loved to hate,” I mean that people made extreme efforts to go out of their way to complain about those classes. In fact, people often spent more time complaining about the workload from the classes than they did actually doing the work. I was convinced that APUSH and English 11 were the worst classes I could possible take, a year before I was even eligible to take them.
The Candy Crush Saga mobile app, in which players match colored candies with one another, is simple enough for a preschooler to play. Inconceivably, the app has been recently valued at $7.6 billion according to a March 12 New York Times article. Why is a mind-numbingly boring task so addictive to the human brain?
Marcus Book Store is the oldest black-owned book store in the nation. Owned by Raye and Julian Richardson, the store’s name pays homage to Marcus Garvey, a charismatic proponent of the Pan-Africanism movement. Located in San Francisco’s Fillmore District, a historically black neighborhood, the book store has long been an inspiration for civic engagement groups pursuing racial equality. The bookstore also has been home to one of Brandeis’ newest professors.
The University announced on May 13 in a BrandeisNOW article that nine Brandeis undergraduates, graduates and recent alumni have been awarded grants from the Fulbright U.S. Student Program. The article also acknowledged that a Brandeis student was named a Goldwater Scholar and yet another was selected as the University’s second-ever Gates Cambridge Scholar.
A portion of the graduating class, as well as a few members of the junior class, were inducted in to the Phi Beta Kappa society on Saturday as part of the Mu chapter of Massachusetts. Approximately 10 percent of the graduating class and one percent of the class of 2015 receive this honor each year, recognizing their outstanding academic achievements.
Rachel Hughes ’15 was elected the next editor in chief of the Justice at a staff-wide meeting on April 30. The editorial board met immediately afterward and confirmed the vote.
Students filled Chapel's Field on Sunday armed with beach towels and sunglasses for Springfest 2014 despite the rainy weather. The excited chatter that had been circulating campus since the lineup was announced in late March culminated in cheering and singing that echoed around campus.
The Archon from 1983 notes that pop singer-songwriter, Livingston Taylor, performed for a crowd of around 200 students at Cholmondeley's that same year. A longtime Brandeis favorite, Taylor has performed on campus numerous times since the '80s and in 2009 even hosted Brandeis' Folk Fest.
Can you believe that it's the last day of class, Brandeis? It's been a whirlwind year for all celebrity news and this week's pop culture headlines only add to the excitement. So, take a break from all of your finals woes and catch up on some of this week's celebrity gossip! Last Sunday, actors Olivia Wilde, 30, and Jason Sudeikis, 36, welcomed their first child, a son named Otis Alexander. Wilde took to Twitter the following Wednesday to write, "Ladies and gentlemen, Otis Alexander Sudeikis has LEFT the building (I'm the building)." Wilde started dating Saturday Night Live alum Sudeikis back in late 2011, months after her divorce from her first husband, Italian filmmaker Tao Ruspoli, was finalized. Wilde and Sudeikis became engaged back in January 2013 and have never been shy about their relationship. In October 2012, the actress famously boasted that she and Sudeikis "have sex like Kenyan marathon runners" while speaking at an event hosted by Glamour that featured a series of comedic monologues by women in Hollywood. Since baby Otis' birth, paparazzi have caught proud Papa Sudeikis happily showing off photos of his son to his co-stars (including Glee actress Dianna Agron) while on the Boston set of their upcoming film Tumbledown. Another celebrity couple welcomed a new addition to their family. Last Tuesday, actress Drew Barrymore gave birth to Frankie, her second daughter with her husband, art adviser Will Kopelman. Frankie joins 19-month-old big sister, Olive. Barrymore, 38, married Kopelman, 36, back in June 2012. Earlier this month, Barrymore had a star-studded baby shower-Reese Witherspoon, Cameron Diaz and Gwyneth Paltrow all attended. Who knows-considering Barrymore herself was born into a family of actors, perhaps Olive and Frankie will eventually follow in their mother's footsteps. Our last piece of news might come as a shock. George Clooney is engaged. Yes, that's right; the actor, a notorious bachelor, finally popped the big question to his girlfriend Amal Alamuddin. People Magazine confirmed the news Sunday night. Clooney, 52, and Alamuddin, 36, a British attorney, were first photographed together this past October. Just last Thursday, the couple was seen having dinner in Malibu, Calif. with model Cindy Crawford and her husband Rande Gerber. Reportedly, Alamuddin had an eye-catching ring on her left hand that night. Still, there hasn't been confirmation about the exact date Clooney proposed. Clooney was married to actress Talia Balsam from 1989 to 1993. Since then, he has dated a number of women including actress Ren?(c)e Zellweger, Italian television personality Elisabetta Canalis and former WWE wrestler Stacy Keibler. In a famous 1995 interview with Barbara Walters, he had even asserted he wouldn't get married again. Apparently, he's had a change of heart. That's your pop culture round-up for this week. Hopefully, you can recover from this earth-shattering revelation that George Clooney is ready to break his bachelor ways and get on with studying for your finals. *
Diversity is an important value to the Brandeis community, but it is usually discussed in terms of opposing parties: scientists versus humanists, Democrats versus Republicans, Reform versus Reconstructionist versus Conservative versus Orthodox. The lines of division are drawn, and people join a clearly delineated camp. We become blinded, however, by this love of neat categories and fail to sufficiently consider diversity internal to these camps. Are there scientists who appreciate fine literature? Republicans who are in favor of gay marriage? What about traditional Jews who choose to marry someone of another faith? Individuals with each of those beliefs exist. They are a minority in their movements, trying to fit their complicated set of values into an uncomplicated set of categories. They create what I will call "internal diversity." I decided to explore this phenomenon in my senior thesis for the Sociology department, choosing to focus on Orthodox Judaism, the denomination of Judaism that adheres most closely to traditional Jewish law. Specifically, I analyzed the integration of Orthodox Jews in college who are less stringent in following Jewish law. How does a traditional religious community, committed to following Jewish law, handle this internal diversity of religious practice? I found that the answer, simply put, is "quietly." In interviews that I conducted with Orthodox students, they largely refrained from passing judgment on less observant peers. A couple of students contrasted themselves from the larger Orthodox campus community as a whole, which they thought was not very open to diversity, and described themselves as completely refraining from any critique of another's religious practice. Many expressed sadness when they noticed a community member becoming less religious, often from eating non-Kosher food, inconsistently observing the Jewish Sabbath, or adopting dress that does not follow religious standards of modesty. The students I interviewed also told me, however, that they were careful to avoid communicating those feelings to the less religious student lest they embarrass or offend. Instead, they preferred to use language of being in "different places" religiously from less observant peers, which seemed to acknowledge the diversity, and tacitly accept it but avoid approving of it. A sincere eschewal of judgment about other's religious practices is a virtue in this community. I don't believe that this passive form of tolerance, however, will be sufficient to maintain the community's status quo into the future. Although the Orthodox community at Brandeis is host to individuals with various stringencies of practice, the toleration toward these various stringencies is facilitated by a largely common ideal of Orthodox practice: a uniform understanding of what Orthodox students should be striving for in their Judaism. Students are in "different places" when it comes to meeting that ideal. Orthodox Judaism is currently developing a more vocal left wing that brings new interpretations of traditional Jewish texts to the table. As this left wing slowly becomes more prominent on college campuses, the Orthodox campus community will have to grapple with a very real ideological diversity in its midst. The community's common ideal of Orthodox practice will have competition from these new interpretations. This challenge of managing diversity itself strikes me as a paradox of community; emphasizing the specific values of a community can be alienating to moderates by suggesting that deviation from those values is unacceptable, while emphasizing inclusion dilutes the centrality of those values. Many communities, including the Orthodox community at Brandeis, find themselves working to uphold their own values while simultaneously handling the diversity, both practical and intellectual, that exists among its members. Orthodox Jewish college students are a case study for the larger point of recognizing internal diversity. In college organizations, where students are still trying to figure out their own values, emphasizing the values of the community too strongly over inclusion is alienating. This is, obviously, not to say that values should be completely disregarded. Rather, a balance must be struck that allows the organization to be actively inclusive rather than merely tolerating, a passive form of inclusion. Values are often articulated in an organization's constitution or bylaws, where they can be referenced to ensure the consistency in the organization's identity. There is little risk of forgetting what they are. It is important to provide room for students who do not neatly fit into polarized camps, whether those camps be Democrats against Republicans or pro-life against pro-choice. These camps are often so loud and firmly established that it prevents a cohesive minority movement from forming. However, these minority students can often see the perspective of both sides and thus may be the ones who help foster dialogue between camps in the future. *