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We Must Remember

(02/06/18 11:00am)

There is a famous expression which goes, “Those who don’t learn about history are bound to repeat it.” Today, 73 years later, it is important not to  forget the atrocities that occurred during the Holocaust. With many of the survivors already having passed and the remaining survivors continuing to get older, remembering the events of the time becomes a task for a new generation. This is why the United Nations General Assembly established International Holocaust Remembrance Day, on Jan. 27. Coinciding with this day, Brandeis University had an Internation Holocaust Remembrance Panel of members from the Women’s Studies Research Center, to share the unique experiences of their relatives who remember the Holocaust in the most vivid way possible — they lived through it.


Criticize Grammys for lack of diverse award recipients

(01/30/18 11:00am)

On Jan. 28, the 60th annual Grammy Awards, held in New York City, continued the long and storied tradition of honoring the complete mediocrity that the Recording Academy strives for. Once again, the Grammys chose to elevate bland and predictable pop acts over cutting-edge hip-hop and rap artists. Bruno Mars’ milquetoast pop retread “24 Karat Magic” bested far more worthy contenders like Kendrick Lamar’s “DAMN.” and Childish Gambino’s “Awaken, My Love!” for album of the year, repeating the annual cycle of hip-hop being kept out of the top spot by any means necessary. Once again, the Grammys have marked themselves as the laughingstock of the award season, hopelessly out of touch with anything close to the cultural zeitgeist and seemingly clueless to music’s current form. Disturbingly, the Recording Academy seems to care less about artistic integrity or creativity and more about ensuring a basic standard of whiteness and complacency is maintained in its top honors. If the album of the year winner isn’t an accessible and inoffensive white pop album, it’s an oddball album from white industry veterans the Academy should have honored years ago, like Daft Punk’s “Random Access Memories” or Beck’s “Morning Phase.” The last album of the year that can be charitably described as anything close to a daring pick is Outkast’s 2004 LP “Speakerboxx/The Love Below,” a legitimately forward-thinking album that only won because of the runaway success of its lone traditional stab at pop songwriting, the smash hit single “Hey Ya.” Since then, no hip-hop album has ever won album of the year, despite the wealth of fantastic works in the genre and its meteoric rise as the dominant form of popular music. No matter the pick, the logic behind it is always the same. The Grammys are only capable of looking backward, clinging dearly to musical artifacts and outdated preconceptions. Mars’ “24 Karat Magic” is a hollow replica of classic R&B albums like Stevie Wonder’s “Songs in the Key of Life” and Janet Jackson’s “Control”, containing all their flair but none of their punch or immediacy. Traditionalist pop and rock acts always manage to find their way into the top spot, cultural relevance or critical acclaim be damned. Any remotely daring album put out by a Black artist is to be cast aside by the Grammys, regardless of artistic merit.  


Urge Congress to pass legislation to support Dreamers in the US

(01/30/18 11:00am)

There is a reason that fewer than 10 percent of Americans support Congress, as found in an Aug. 3, 2017 Quinnipiac University poll. They view the institution I visit nearly every day as ineffective, weak and lacking American interests. This summarizes the view by many as of late January, when the spineless Congress chose to vote to fund the deportation of 800,000 young Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals recipients such as myself who, since Sept. 5, have been unable to see their futures beyond six months. This lack of principle is not partisan, which is why GOP members such as Reps. Carlos Curbelo ,R-Fla., and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen ,R-Fla., and Democrats like Sen. Elizabeth Warren ,D-Mass., and Sen. Kamala Harris ,D-Calif., all voted against the ineffective short-term management of congressional funding, better known as  “CRs.” Americans also view this institution as ineffective, because since 2001 they have failed to pass any solution for Dreamers, even though more than 80 percent of American constituents urgently want this to be solved, according to a Jan. 20 CBS News article.


Commend University for appointing new Muslim Chaplain

(01/30/18 11:00am)

Muhammad Xhemali has joined the University’s Multifaith Chaplaincy as the new Muslim chaplain, Director of Religious and Spiritual Life Rabbi Elisabeth Stern and Chief Diversity Officer Mark Brimhall-Vargas wrote in an email to the University community. This board applauds the University on its appointment of Xhemali to the position, which marks a step toward a more inclusive Brandeis.


And the Oscar winners might be...

(01/30/18 11:00am)

I think Stephen Colbert said it best on The Late Show on Jan. 23, the night after the 90th annual Oscar nominations were announced: “There are no controversies over lack of diversity. …With no big Oscar snubs, who are we mad at?” While I don’t believe diversity is an indicator of quality, there are very few exceptions to this year’s nominees that I take issue with. It happens to be that the Oscars got most everything right this year. This growing inclusion is more a commentary on the industry than on the quality of the films released in 2017. 


Who doesn’t love a good ‘Quickie’?

(01/30/18 11:00am)

Anyone who has seen theater at Brandeis knows the hard work that theater students put into their performances, with several hours of rehearsal culminating in an elaborate performance. At the beginning of the spring semester, however, students perform plays that have only been rehearsed two or three times — and while they are very impressive, they have the unique element of being performed in under 10 minutes.


For Us by Us: The Untold Stories of People of Color on Campus

(01/30/18 11:00am)

Judiana Moise ’20 was born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti and moved to New York when she was 12. After spending a year in New York, she moved to Rhode Island. In an interview with the Justice, Moise said, “I moved to Mount Vernon and I believe it was right next to the Bronx. I don’t remember exactly, but I just know I was in the ’hood. One park and a lot of tall buildings. New York is different; there’s more of your people. Everyone looks the same, everybody’s Black. Later on you look further in and then you’re like ‘Oh he’s Haitian, oh he’s Jamaican.’ It felt like home but then I moved to Rhode Island and it was tough. I was in North Providence first, which was super white and the middle school was also really white. It was bad. I was crying every day. I was also tall and shy, so I just stayed quiet. Then I moved to Pawtucket, which is where I live now. Everything was a shock. I wanted to go back to Haiti for a long time, but I haven’t been to Haiti since then.”


Hamilton Morris on high (quality) filmmaking

(01/30/18 11:00am)

Psychedelics enthusiasts huddled into the Wasserman Cinematheque at the Brandeis International Business School last Thursday night. The atmosphere did not feel intimate, but rather quite distant, and the entire room smelled heavily of marijuana. The speaker for the event was journalist and filmmaker Hamilton Morris, who shared season two, episode six of his show, “Hamilton’s Pharmacopeia on Vice.” The episode was titled, “A Clandestine Chemist’s Tale.” In his show he explores the history and process of making various psychedelic drugs, from mushrooms to hallucinogenic frog venom. The show has a huge following; even a viewer not interested in partaking in such experiences can find the documentary-style episodes to be actually quite intriguing.


Margot Robbie shines as Tonya Harding

(01/30/18 11:00am)

The biopic is a Hollywood hallmark, and like all hallmarks, it is rife with clichés: the lovable protagonist with whom you side, the uplifting ending and the agreeable supporting characters. A biopic lacking these elements is hard to find, and those without them are rarely successful. But “I, Tonya,” Craig Gillespie’s unorthodox portrayal of the life of American figure skater Tonya Harding, is a biopic that leaves all the typical boxes unchecked, making for a deliciously dark comedy.


Criticize the glorification of suicide in US television

(01/23/18 11:00am)

On the first day of 2018, popular YouTube blogger Logan Paul uploaded a video showing close-up footage of a deceased man in Aokigahara, in Japan. In a Jan. 19 interview with Seventeen Magazine, actor Dylan Minnette revealed that season two of popular Netflix series “13 Reasons Why” will delve deeper into the life of the character whose suicide is the focus of the show. The very next day, Paramount Studios dropped the red band trailer for their TV anthology remake of cult classic film “Heathers,” which features teenagers finding posthumous adoration when their murders are staged as suicides.


Students attend Women’s March in Cambridge

(01/23/18 11:00am)

On Jan. 21, 2017, just one day after President Donald Trump’s inauguration, Susannah Miller ’19 marched with hundreds of thousands of people through the streets of Boston with signs touting slogans about various issues, ranging from women’s rights to climate change. Packed into Boston Common with the other marchers, she eagerly listened to the speakers campaigning for change and defending human rights. 



Urge more conservatives to speak on climate change

(01/23/18 11:00am)

Bridging the partisan divide on global warming seems next to impossible at first glance — and understandably so. Global warming clearly ranks low on the U.S. government’s priority list, and the lack of any serious climate-related proposals from a Republican-controlled Congress speaks volumes. It is no secret that the U.S. has alienated the rest of the world by failing to act, and much of this is due to the bizarre politics surrounding climate change. 






2017 holds many underrated albums

(01/16/18 11:00am)

Review  — Plenty of our favorite artists released instantly iconic albums in 2017. From Jay-Z’s “44:44” to Taylor Swift’s “Reputation,” we were blessed with new music. Most “Best of 2017” pieces released from music websites and blogs across the internet praise the big and obvious choices: Kendrick Lamar, Sza and Tyler the Creator. While those albums were certainly defining sounds of the past year, here are three underrated albums released in 2017 which deserve some attention and hype as well.



Sequels and remakes dominate 2017 cinema

(12/06/17 11:00am)

The saying “history repeats itself” has never been more prevalent than in the year 2017.  I am not talking about how our current government slightly resembles 1939 (except we have the blessing of checks and balances — thanks, Founding Fathers). This year has been filled with the revival of television shows, sequels, remakes of movies and the comeback of various popular artists. One would think that 2017 was a revival of a culture that harkens back to the glory days of the early 2000s. Let’s begin our journey through 2017 by discussing the reboots in television.