THE STUDENT NEWSPAPER OF AMHERST COLLEGE SINCE 1868
THE AMHERST
STUDENT VOLUME CXLVIII, ISSUE 7 l WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 24, 2018
Men’s Soccer Tops Wesleyan and Brandeis See Sports, Page 9 AMHERSTSTUDENT.COM
Harvard Lawsuit Raises Potential Threat to Affirmative Action Seo Yeon Kim ’21 Managing Arts & Living Editor
Photo courtesy of Samantha Aparicio ’21
The Science Center celebrated its official opening on Saturday, Oct. 20 with department demonstrations, guided tours and a panel. The event prompted questions about the college’s attempts to marry science with the liberal arts.
Science Center Opening Explores Liberal Arts Emma Swislow ’20 Managing News Editor With the official opening of the Science Center on Oct. 20, the question of how science fits into a liberal arts education, and more specifically an Amherst education, guided the events of the day. Andrew Nussbaum ’85, the chair of the Amherst board of trustees, began the event by speaking about the presence of science throughout Amherst’s history and into today. “Our message, which is now gloriously manifested in this building, is simple and it is clear: science, scientific inquiry and discovery reside together with other forms of the arts in the humanistic inquiry that occur here every day, every week,” he said in his remarks. “It is not A or B; it is A and B.” Nussbaum emphasized the fact that the science center has been put to use immediately by students and faculty members. “To me, the beauty of this facility is not just that it’s a beautiful facility, but that we have the faculty and the students who are going to put it to excellent use now,” he said in an interview with The Student. “We don’t need to wait to attract better students and superior faculty. We have both of those and we’re very lucky in that regard. It’s not ‘build it and they will come.’ They are here.” During her remarks, President Biddy Martin explained that the science center will provide students and faculty with more opportunities.
“[The Science Center] says that we have faculty and students who warrant a facility of this sort, whose research and teaching deserve to occur in a place that is completely up-to-date and allows them to do their best work,” Martin said. “We have faculty and students with ambition and that’s as it should be.” Julie Segre ’87, a senior investigator at the National Human Genome Project, spoke during a panel of alumni in science careers about how her experiences with science at Amherst tied into her liberal arts education as a whole. “My advisor, under whom I wrote my senior thesis, taught me how to write,” Segre said. “Of course I was taking English classes, but to write scientifically and not have it be technical is something that has really served me and has enabled me to be not just a scientist, but a leader in science … I thought of myself as a scientist who was a liberal arts student first and foremost.” Nussbaum explained that although not every student at Amherst is necessarily immersed in the scientific community, science itself is a central part of an education at the college. “The reality is that a liberal arts education Amherst-style has always believed that science, scientific inquiry and discovery are not ancillary or on the margin, but that they are part of the very center,” Nussbaum said. “Not every student who comes to Amherst will become a scientist, but every student who comes to Amherst should have the ability to learn about the scientific process, the
scientific method and what it means to ask a question in the context of a scientific dialogue.” Martin, along with some of the panelists, pointed to the ability to ask good questions as the foundation of a science education and a liberal arts education more broadly, no matter the discipline. She also highlighted the need for students to understand science enough in order to take part in debates surrounding science’s place in politics today. “Several of the panelists emphasized that it’s impossible to become adept at virtually anything, whether it’s writing or science, if you don’t learn how to ask good questions,” Martin said in an interview with The Student. “At the very least, all students should graduate understanding the tenets that really define the scientific method and know enough about science to be able to participate meaningfully in policy debates.” Both Martin and Nussbaum see the building’s design, specifically its all-glass facade, as an asset that will help facilitate more interaction and communication between students and faculty members who use the building on a daily basis. “Interaction is critical to knowledge and that’s the base upon which we offer residential education,” Martin said. “I think any facility that makes people more visible to one another, makes interaction easier and has labs and instrumentation that allow for the best possible science will mean that students will graduate from this place knowing how to do science really well.”
A lawsuit alleging that Harvard’s admissions process discriminates against Asian-American applicants began its trial on Oct. 15 in the federal district court of Massachusetts in Boston. The case, which became national news after the group Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA) filed a complaint against Harvard in 2014, has the potential to change how colleges and universities use affirmative action practices in their admissions process. In its lawsuit, SFFA argues that Harvard illegally engages in racial balancing in order to limit the number of Asian-American students admitted each year and that by utilizing these “racially and ethnically discriminatory policies,” Harvard’s admission policies are in violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. SFFA, which is made up of over 20,000 students, parents and others interested parties, points to data which shows, according to SFFA, that Asian-American applicants are consistently ranked lower on “personality,” hurting their chance of admission despite academic and extracurricular achievements. SFFA is led by Edward Blum, a white lawyer who has been a long-time opponent of affirmative action. Blum gained prominence after his work on Fisher v. University of Texas in 2016, a case in which he argued against the “reverse discrimination” policies of affirmative action that allegedly denied plaintiff Abigail Fisher, who is white, admission into the University of Texas at Austin. The Supreme Court decided against Blum and Fisher, alleging that considering race in college admissions is constitutional as long as its intent is to increase diversity on campus. His leadership has raised questions from those concerned about the future of affirmative action, who question whether the Harvard lawsuit is aimed at uncovering discrimination against Asian Americans or simply at dismantling race-conscious policies. The legal implications of this trial have the potential to shape college admissions for years to come. Professor of American Studies Franklin Odo
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Symposium Highlights Link Between Hate and Democracy Lauren Pelosi ’22 Staff Writer Three guest speakers visited campus for the “Hatred in Democracy” symposium on Oct. 19, an event sponsored by the Colloquium on Practicing Democracy. Manar Waheed, legislative and advocacy counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), and Nadia Aziz, program manager of the Stop Hate Project, addressed attendees in the Center for Humanistic Inquiry, while Joseph J. Levin Jr., co-founder of the Southern Poverty Law Center, delivered the keynote address over dinner later in the evening. Manar Waheed began by addressing the title she chose for her talk: “I Need a Hero.” “We have been socialized to think of heroes,”
she explained. “But there is no hero after the [2016 presidential] election.” She critiqued the White House’s “fear-based agenda” for targeting Muslim, Arab, Middle Eastern and South Asian communities, pointing to the use of the phrase “travel ban” as a euphemism for “Muslim ban.” “If we call it anything less than [a Muslim ban],” said Waheed, “we are sanitizing history.” She went on to address the process of “extreme vetting,” implemented by the Trump administration in March of 2017, which requires immigrant and non-immigrant visa applicants to submit their social media handles for examination. “There are no known predictors of terrorism,” she said, and argued that this form of vetting requires profiling and discrimination. She also
spoke about the inhibitive implications on the free speech of people who know they are being watched by the government. Waheed expressed her belief that President Trump’s administration is working toward a longterm movement to end birthright citizenship by first denaturalizing U.S. citizens. She believes that the fallacy that the Trump administration does not understand the implications of its actions is a dangerous one. “This administration,” she said, “knows exactly what it’s doing.” Nadia Aziz spoke next about her work with the Stop Hate Project, which provides resources to victims of hate crimes and helps prevent future violence. As a community lawyer, she investigates the legality of forms of resistance to hate. She has helped businesses navigate how to legally refuse
service to white supremacists when there was a hate rally in town. In those cases, she recommends shutting down temporarily or advertising that portions of proceeds will go to civil rights organizations. She explained that in community lawyering, the most important component is listening. “The simple act of listening can galvanize change,” she said. “Today’s climate requires that we listen.” Following a reception, the guest speakers joined attendees for dinner. Levin delivered the keynote address later in the evening. Levin was born in 1943 in Montgomery, Alabama and spoke about his upbringing in a city where segregation had deep roots. “I never knew anything as
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