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Faculty discusses University rankings in the U.S. News and World Report, retention rates and confirmed microcredentials

Opinion: More than Morant

Forum, Unfiltered — Brianna Earle

Grad is not that bad.

Finding a New America on The Hellp’s Newest Release

We’re halfway into the 2020s, and so far it has been a decade defined by throwbacks — Y2K fashion is coming out of exile, the 90s are making a reappearance, and — for this review — most importantly, 2010s indie sleaze is back with a vengeance. We saw The Dare suddenly emerge as a new artist to follow in 2024, followed by an onslaught of similar — yet not derivative — bands in his wake: Bassvictim, MGNA Crrrta, The Truth, 2hollis — and, most importantly, The Hellp. The Hellp have been around since 2021, making music drenched in muddy synths, angular drumming and glitchy production that creates a musical experience that, yes, harkens back to the indie sleaze artists of the 2010s (LCD Soundsystem, The Strokes and MGMT, to name a few) but is all the same fresh and intriguing. “Riviera” will be the third album the band has released, and it has a lot to live up to: at their best, the musical chaos that so defines The Hellp’s discography is elevated into something beautifully transcendent — but at their worst, the chaotic nature of The Hellp leads to something undefined and messy. “Riviera” is proving to be an album that might not be that simple to define — for better or for worse. 

The University's 16th annual Kindness Week concludes with club and service fair

On Friday, Nov. 14, the University concluded its annual celebration of Kindness Week with a club and service fair in the Shapiro Campus Center 's Atrium. Hosted in a prominent and well-trafficked hub for campus life, the event allowed students to interact with the fair as they desired. 

Students from universities across the Boston area rally to protect academic freedom and civil rights

On Saturday, Nov. 15, students from more than 10 colleges in the Greater Boston Area gathered in the Back Bay Fens to urge universities to stand up to the Trump administration and protect their students. Organized by the Educational Freedom Project, the rally featured speeches from activists, student organizers, state representatives and prominent federal workers. The speakers covered a wide variety of topics, from the Trump administration's immigration crackdown to universities transitioning from diversity equity and inclusion initiatives and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits being cut. In addition to the speakers, there was a live band and many local student activist organizations tabled in the park.  

Looking back at the Brandeis quadball season

Inspired by quidditch, a fictional sport from “Harry Potter,” quadball boasts a complex set of rules and an opportunity to get involved with a sports team in a relatively low-stakes and fun environment. 

In defense of the modern novel

There has been a recent discussion in The Brandeis Hoot about the downfall of the novel due to capitalism. To me, this seems like a surface-level argument. The novel chosen as the pinnacle of “pre-capitalist” peak literature in this debate is George Eliot’s 1871 novel “Middlemarch,” a novel that astute readers might point out was written and released at the end of the Victorian period, a time during which capitalism had already sunk its fangs deep into the anglophone world, as demonstrated by Mark Twain referring to the period in American history as the Gilded Age. So, is “Middlemarch” truly unaffected by capitalism? Probably not, but that is neither here nor there. 

Calling for clear AI policy on campus

We have reached a point in our world where Artificial Intelligence is everywhere, bringing with it ethical and logistical challenges. In educational spaces, this new technology often means reckoning with multiple conflicting truths: On one hand, AI is a useful tool with increasing relevance in everyday life. On the other hand, it can be used as a false replacement for exercises in learning and critical thinking. As these considerations persist, the Brandeis community continues to grapple with its usage in our classrooms. 

A New Molecular Approach to Prostate Cancer Treatment

Prostate cancer drugs have saved countless lives, but even the best-known treatments come with a long-standing problem: They often affect far more of the body than they should. Medication meant to shut down one enzyme responsible for producing testosterone, the hormone that fuels prostate tumor growth, can end up blocking several other enzymes that have nothing to do with cancer. This broad action leads to serious side effects including liver damage and hormonal imbalance. Inside Prof. Thomas Pochapsky’s (CHEM/BCHEM) Laboratory at Brandeis University, chemical biology major Talia Lazar ’26 has spent more than a year investigating a more precise molecular approach that could eventually help avoid these complications.

The Beautiful Sound of Daniel Caesar's "Son of Spergy"

Released on Oct. 24, Daniel Caesar’s fourth studio album, “Son of Spergy,” has reintegrated the grassroots nature of R&B back into the community. The album was highly anticipated after Caesar teased its upcoming release with a string of free pop-up shows. Across 12 tracks, Caesar experiments with new genres including folk and gospel and explores the struggle with his father and religion through intricate storytelling. “Son of Spergy” is Caesar’s most unique album yet.

College dating in the digital age

Dating apps have come a long way since the now-archaic computerized dating services that first rose to prominence in the 1960s. Since then, decades of digital advancements and software innovations have refined dating apps with highly efficient features designed to match the user to others based on specific dating preferences and common interests, creating a vast pool of people to choose from. However, the ubiquity of apps like Tinder, Hinge and Grindr, begs the question — are dating apps truly a good way to find a partner? With almost 50% of college students reporting using them, as of 2023, these apps boast convenience and speedy match-making, yet a laundry list of cons, risks and flaws are entailed in their usage. The spaces created by these apps can seem confusing and contradictory, with great disparity between intention and outcome creating insecurity and harm where the apps promise success.  

The Ladies: Tell Me More

Since August 2025, artist Danielle Joy Mckinney has been the Rose Art Museum’s artist in residence. Her exhibit “Tell Me More” will be touring until January 2026, and the Rose is Mckinney’s first ever solo museum exhibit, featuring 13 of her pieces with two being exclusive to just the Rose Art Museum. 

Frame of Mind

 When Mona Houjazy ’26 steps into the Aging, Culture, and Cognition Lab each week, she is thinking about what most of us take for granted — how we see, and how those sights remain in our memory. A neuroscience, psychology and biology major, Houjazy is investigating how subtle visual details such as sharpness and brightness affect short-term memory.

Los Angeles Dodgers win World Series season

The 2025 MLB season wrapped up on Saturday with the Los Angeles Dodgers winning their second consecutive World Series. The Dodgers fought past the Toronto Blue Jays in seven incredibly intense games that featured a total of 10 extra innings, 19 home runs and several controversial calls.

President Levine addresses how students will be affected by The Brandeis Plan in coming months

 On Wednesday, Oct. 29, University President Arthur Levine ’70 spoke to a crowd of undergraduates about the Brandeis Plan to Reinvent the Liberal Arts. He touched on the plan’s three major facets: reorganizing the graduate and undergraduate schools, remaking the core curriculum and creating a Center for Careers and Applied Liberal Arts. The event took place in Rapaporte Treasure Hall and featured small presentations from Levine, as well as members of the faculty and administration involved with the project.  

Brandeis holds groundbreaking ceremony for new residence halls

On Friday, Oct. 31 the University held a groundbreaking ceremony for the new residence hall, set to be ready for use by either the summer or fall of 2027. Though construction on the site began in late June of this year, speakers noted the importance of acknowledging this new chapter and how this new living space will be beneficial for future Brandeis students. 

Getting Killed by a Good Life on Geese's latest album

Geese’s new release “Getting Killed” has been met with essentially unanimous praise, and for good reason. The band has been around since their 2021 debut album, and, relatively speaking, have stayed close to their roots: funky rock with a chamber orchestra thrown in when deemed necessary. That’s not to say that their albums — “Projector,” released in 2021, and “3D Country,” released in 2023 — thus far have been monotonous, quite the contrary. Their fundamental sound stays the same, to be sure, but with each new release the band reaches through time and space for inspiration — whether from ’90s math rock, ’80s post-punk or — on their most recent album, a delightful mixture of bluesy krautrock and psychedelia hailing from the ’70s. On “Getting Killed,” we see Geese collaborate on production with Kenny Beats, which seems to have given us a sound familiar and foreign alike: The chaotic rock of their previous album, “3D Country”  is there, but a tinge of melancholy seems to lightly cover the album, softening wailing guitars and angular drumming into something more powerful and more human than we’ve seen from Geese before. 

The risk of teenagers’ emotional dependence on Artificial Intelligence

CONTENT WARNING: This article contains mentions of suicide. 

First week of NBA’s 2025-26 season opens with a bang

The 2025-26 NBA season is only a week old and we’ve already seen historic performances, big surprises and involvement from the FBI. The season kicked off last Tuesday with an instant classic between the Oklahoma City Thunder and Houston Rockets. The game went to double overtime and came down to a single missed shot from the Rockets’ Jabari Smith Jr. to decide the game, with the Thunder coming out with the season’s first win. This game would prove to be prophetic of what would come over the next week.