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It’s that time of year again when we send off the sweet sounds of summer. Summer 2017’s soundtrack was full of experimental and enticing album drops; this was possibly the best selection the season has ever brought. As September comes to a close, here is a recap of what I listened to these past few months.
SHADES OF BLUE: Yage Wang’s ’17 watercolor of a seascape is a dreamy presentation of the aesthetic possibilities of watercolor.
LOOKING THROUGH A WINDOW: Students gaze at paintings made by Brandeis students and others while on the Brandeis in Siena program.
Last Thursday, Sept. 14th, Bozhanka Vitanova, the Program Director for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, opened up a startup mixer and pitch session to anyone at Brandeis interested in sharing their entrepreneurial ideas.
The University’s agenda this year includes further discussion of free expression principles, decisions on new general education requirements and the hiring of new staff, University President Ronald Liebowitz told the Brandeis community in a Sept. 8 email.
PERUSING PIECES: A visitor studies one of the smaller works exhibited at the Rose Art Museum.
LIGHT OF REASON: Two students have a snack by the Light of Reason during the Rose Art Museum open house.
The Rose Art Museum hosted a partial opening this past Thursday to kick off the fall semester’s exhibitions. The opening, which boasted free popcorn, cotton candy and lemonade, offered the public the opportunity to see new works, some of which, unfortunately, are not part of the Rose’s permanent collection. One of the exhibitions, titled “Body Talk” welcomes interesting conversation about abstract yet relevant ideas — a great example of how art can mesh aesthetic and message. Of the four shows downstairs, including a collection of Joe Bradley’s work as well as an exhibition curated by Bradley himself, only three were open, including a new film by John Akomfrah and Kevork Mourad’s “Immortal City.”
First-years from 41 states and 21 countries gathered together for the first time on Chapel’s field on Aug. 27 for the annual convocation ceremony.
On Aug. 3, the Boston Globe published an article revealing that the majority of the students accepted into Harvard University’s class of 2021 were non-white. While this is true, it still remains that the seated class of 2021 — the students who actually enrolled — is more than 50.8 percent white and 47.9 percent non-white, according to data from a freshman survey conducted by the Harvard Crimson. Despite this, admissions methods such as affirmative action are still being called into question for the alleged discrimination against white applicants. According to an Aug.1 New York Times article, the Trump administration is looking to investigate and possibly sue institutions with admissions policies that seem to discriminate against white applicants. An official document obtained by the Times mentions investigating practices that support “intentional race-based discrimination,” which clearly alludes to programs designed to increase the number of students of color on college campuses. Per the same Times article, Roger Clegg, a former top official of civil rights during the Ronald Reagan administration, stated that civil rights laws were meant to protect students against discrimination, yet white and Asian students are often overlooked.
See the work of Brandeis Prof. Sean Downey (FA) at the Steven Zevitas Gallery in Boston’s South End. The show, titled “Wholly Idle,” features a new group of large scale paintings that critique the underlying circumstances of an image’s origins. Drawing on the history of mechanical reproduction, Downey makes powerful assertions on the role of image production as it is compared to lived experience. Wholly Idle is on display until Oct. 28; gallery hours are Tuesday through Saturday 11 a.m. until 5 p.m.
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The University’s Phi Beta Kappa Mu Chapter of Massachusetts inducted 99 students in a ceremony welcoming family and friends on Saturday.
Faculty members convened for the last meeting of this academic year on Friday, conferring graduate and undergraduate degrees and discussing a faculty handbook amendment that focuses on the expectations of the ad hoc committee responsible for tenure appointments.
Luis A. Croquer will assume the role of Henry and Lois Foster Director of the Rose Art Museum starting on July 14, University President Ronald Liebowitz announced in a May 12 email to the student body.
If you have heard the complaint that today’s college students are too sensitive, you are far from alone. It seems the latest moral panic for conservative talking heads is this idea that American colleges have become a hypersensitive hellhole of safe spaces and trigger warnings, utterly delusional and separated from the outside world. These modern-day doomsday prophets warn that anything that dares to so much as resemble objectionable thought is pounced on by a veritable army of critics and silencers. “A movement is arising, undirected and driven largely by students, to scrub campuses clean of words, ideas, and subjects that might cause discomfort or give offense,” wrote Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt in “The Coddling of the American Mind,” the September 2015 cover story of The Atlantic. You really do not have to go far to find examples of conservative media outlets trying to make an example out of college activist efforts and the supposedly suffocatingly liberal atmosphere on college campuses. In fact, Brandeis University, known for its social justice pedigree and activist proclivities, manages to find its way into the headlines from time to time. Tucker Carlson, now best known for taking the time slot once held by the disgraced Bill O’Reilly, seemingly made it a point to go after our dear university in his time running the online newsletter, The Daily Caller. In addition to describing the University as “one of America’s foremost lairs of leftism” in its list of the “13 Most Rabidly Leftist Politically Correct Colleges for Dirty Tree Hugging Hippies,” the Daily Caller also found it fit to run headlines like “Fancypants, $60,000-A-Year College Student: ‘No Sympathy’ For Brutally Executed Cops” and “Asian Kids At $60,300-Per-Year College Find Exciting New Ways To Feel Insulted By ‘Microaggressions’” as legitimate news content. This is hardly surprising when you consider that the Daily Caller also claims that “a Brandeis student uncovered a huge listserv used by Brandeis professors containing several scary exchanges bashing conservatives, Jews, Christians, and basically anyone who views America as a force for good,” per the first article. A little tip for Eric Owens, the writer who brought us that last paragraph and whoever wrote all those lovely headlines for him: Brandeis is not a secret “lair” where conservative Christians are tortured night and day, and neither is any other college.
The Vatican
Brandeis Department: ‘Martyr’
Over the years, the Justice has been fortunate to have many dedicated editors, and this year, we must bid farewell to four of the best. These editors have been an invaluable contribution to the paper, and as they leave Brandeis to begin the next chapters of their lives, this board reflects on their time here and commends them on their achievements.