THE
BROWN DAILY HERALD vol. cxlix, no. 28
since 1891
TUESDAY, MARCH 4, 2014
Royalties from research patents on the rise U. gross licensing income increases 44 percent, but lags behind Ivy peers as of 2012 By SANDRA YAN SENIOR STAFF WRITER
The University’s gross licensing income — total royalties from research patents — rose approximately 44 percent to $2.3 million in fiscal year 2013, an increase from $1.6 million in 2012. The number of patents filed decreased slightly from 98 in 2012 to 90 in 2013, and the number of patents issued fell from 15 to nine, said Katherine Gordon, managing director of the Technology Ventures Office. The 2013 increase, though, was not as high as the previous year’s change
— total royalties spiked 65 percent from fiscal year 2011 to fiscal year 2012. The office works with “researchers (to) identify novel innovative technologies that (it thinks) can be patented and then form the basis for commercialized ventures that can be partnered with industry,” Gordon said. She added that the office has limited control over the number of patents issued on a yearly basis because the process can take a number of years after the initial filing. “I kind of view the process as the planting seeds for the future,” Gordon said. Among its Ivy League peers, the University received the lowest amount of gross licensing income in 2012. Princeton led the way with $129,617,625 in adjusted gross income in fiscal year 2012, according to the » See PATENTS, page 2
JILLIAN LANNEY / HERALD
Task force Director of health gives R.I. B-minus health score state director of health discusses initiatives to proposes Inlowerspeech, incidence of smoking, AIDS, drug overdose gun reform legislation By LINDSAY GANTZ
CONTRIBUTING WRITER
By VI MAI CONTRIBUTING WRITER
The Joint Behavioral Health and Firearms Safety Task Force of Rhode Island proposed recommendations to the General Assembly last week that would prevent individuals with serious mental health issues from purchasing firearms. If the legislation is passed by the General Assembly, it would enable the state to submit mental health records of individuals deemed to be a danger to themselves or others to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, a division of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, according to the department’s website. The task force consists of 20 members from different professions in public safety, policy and public health, including Assistant Attorney General Joee Lindbeck and several state representatives. NICS is a branch within the FBI that manages the national background check system, screening potential firearm buyers for criminal, mental health and substance abuse records. » See GUN REFORM, page 3
METRO
inside
Brown a smoke-free campus,” he said. The federally funded Prescription Monitoring Program, which was implemented to help providers monitor the number of prescriptions, will help reduce the rates of drug overdose in the state, Fine said. The program was introduced last year to prevent fraud associated with the overprescription of controlled substances, The Herald previously reported. Overdoses from opiates are a major part of the state’s drug problem, with over 20 fatalities from opiate overdoses reported in 2014, The Herald previously reported. “If someone comes to see me as a doctor, saying they have a bad back » See HEALTH, page 3
Exhibit to revitalize natural history collection
METRO
Jenks Society for Lost Museums to present pre-Darwinist artifacts forgotten by University By DREW WILLIAMS SENIOR STAFF WRITER
Sharks, a giraffe and Queen Victoria’s Shetland pony were a few of the inhabitants of the Jenks Museum of Natural History, if existing records are to be believed about the anthropology and natural history collection originally located in what is now Rhode Island Hall from 1871 to 1915. One-hundred years later, students and faculty members have
ARTS & CULTURE
COURTESY OF UNIVERSITY ARCHIVES
The Jenks Museum of Natural History existed in Rhode Island Hall from 1871 to 1915, exhibiting anthropological objects and artifacts.
Arts & Culture
Commentary
American Dance Legacy Initiative’s Mini-Fest connects dance and American heritage
Okey Ndibe, visiting assistant professor of Africana studies, discusses writing and memory
Asher ’15: What does it mean to be strong at Brown?
Upadhyay ’15: Policies should be judged by their results, not their intentions
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weather
Bill would seek to block people with severe mental illness from access to firearms
Michael Fine, director of the R.I. Department of Health, gave the Ocean State a B-minus rating in the State of the State’s Health address Wednesday. The score was determined by compiling rankings from national health organizations. The rating is “a little bit subjective,” Fine said. “At the same time it gives us a chance to see where we are.”
Rhode Island ranks 19th nationally, according to a report from the United Health Foundation. While Rhode Island ranks well for its relatively low prevalence of obesity and its access to primary care providers, the state’s health scores are negatively affected by high rates of drug overdose and unequal health outcomes based on socioeconomic status, according to the United Health report. There remains room for improvement to Rhode Island’s health score, Fine said. Fine said he would like to see 20 fewer cases of HIV and lower rates of
smoking by next year. He also said he wants two or three additional neighborhood primary health centers built by the end of 2014. Fine said implementing widespread HIV testing and treating patients who test positive will result in a decrease of HIV cases. Smoking remains an important health issue in Rhode Island, Fine said. Rates of smoking fell from 20 percent to 17.4 percent of adults in 2013, but Fine said he would like smokng rates to drop an additional two percentage points by next year. And Fine said he wants colleges and universities in the state to enact smoking bans on their campuses. “I’d love to see students agitating to make
banded together to form the Jenks Society for Lost Museums to direct attention to the collection and to John Whipple Potter Jenks 1838, its namesake, founder and curator. The Jenks Society for Lost Museums was founded in spring 2013 after Public Humanities Director Steven Lubar mentioned to students that Brown previously had its own natural history museum, said Jessica Palinksi GS, a member of the society. Further research unearthed “a very dramatic paper” by a graduate student on the demolition of Van Winkle Hall, an administrative office building bulldozed to make room for the Rockefeller Library in the 1960s. The paper detailed a surprised construction worker’s discovery of cases » See MUSEUM, page 4 t o d ay
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2 university news This Week in Higher Ed BY MICHAEL DUBIN, UNIVERSITY NEWS EDITOR
Yale establishes new dean post, forms search committee Yale announced a significant change to its administrative hierarchy Thursday, creating a dean of the faculty of arts and sciences, the Yale Daily News reported. The establishment of the new dean position marks the first reshuffling of Yale’s administrative structure in the last 50 years and follows a January faculty committee report, which concluded that it was unfeasible for the university’s provost and the Yale College dean to fulfill their current duties, the YDN reported. The FAS dean’s responsibilities will include managing the budget process for the faculty of arts and sciences, as well as controlling appointments to and promotions within the body, which comprises 43 percent of Yale’s tenured faculty members. The move leaves Yale with three simultaneous dean searches after Mary Miller and Thomas Pollard, deans of its undergraduate college and graduate school, respectively, announced in January that they will step down at the end of the academic year. Yale President Peter Salovey formed a committee Friday to advise on the selection of all three deans, the YDN reported.
Harvard committee recommends new email search procedures
» PATENTS, from page 1 annual Association of University Technology Managers survey. Data are not yet available for 2013. Yearly licensing income includes revenue from all research patented by a university, including patents from previous years, Gordon said. Derek Stein, assistant professor of physics, who received a patent for his research applying condensed matter physics to biodiagnostics, said the Technology Ventures Office was a helpful resource throughout the process. The office, which engages faculty members early on to facilitate the development of patentable ideas, assisted Stein with filing his patent, providing patent lawyers and being “proactive in trying to find an industrial partner in sponsoring this research … who would be interested in paying licensing rights for this technology,” he said.
THE BROWN DAILY HERALD TUESDAY, MARCH 4, 2014
Stein currently partners with Oxford Nanopore Technologies Ltd., a company that is “trying to commercialize a set of technologies based on small holes for sequencing DNA,” he said. Edith Mathiowitz, professor of molecular pharmacology, physiology and biotechnology, said that from the beginning of her career, she “really saw the value of filing patents.” Mathiowitz, whose research revolves around drug delivery, said she has submitted more than 75 patents and was recently elected to the National Academy of Inventors. One reason for faculty members to file patents is to protect ideas that have commercial potential before publishing papers, at which point the research becomes public knowledge, Mathiowitz said. Industrial companies typically do not provide funding to researchers whose ideas are unpatented because
of concerns that the research could be legally used by competitors, Stein said. Mathiowitz said she sees a stark difference from what the process was like 23 years ago, when she first arrived at Brown. “Very few faculty were interested in patenting” at the time, because they thought if they patented their research, they would be unable to publish their papers, she said. Once faculty members discovered how the process works, more became interested in patenting their work because “funding is so hard to get these days” from the National Institutes of Health, she said. She credits the University with educating the faculty but would like to see the Technology Ventures Office grow in the future and get more professors involved. “This is definitely an avenue” for the University to grow revenues, Mathiowitz said.
m y s t e r y g i r l i n t h e r at t y
A task force established almost a year ago by Harvard President Drew Faust — after an email search scandal shook the university — released a set of recommendations Thursday to guide future searches of electronic communications, the Harvard Crimson reported. The committee’s report enumerated legitimate reasons for accessing student and faculty email accounts, recommended notifying individuals whose information is accessed and proposed the creation of an independent oversight body including faculty members to monitor adherence to the report’s standards, among other suggestions, the Crimson reported. If adopted, the new procedures would give Harvard a universal electronic communications policy that governs the entire institution. The email search scandal last spring involved secret searches of 16 resident deans’ email accounts and the unauthorized search of a faculty email address, which many speculated resulted in the resignation of then-Dean of the College Evelynn Hammonds, who authorized the searches, last May.
Common App leader departs After overseeing a turbulent transition to an overhauled online application system, Robert Killion, executive director of the Common Application, left the organization Wednesday after nearly a decade at the helm, the Chronicle of Higher Education reported. Whether he was fired or departed of his own accord remains a point of contention. Thyra Briggs, president of the Common App’s board of directors, said Killion resigned and characterized the move as Killion’s decision to step down. But Killion adamantly rejected that narrative, saying he was fired. “I was told, ‘Effective immediately, your services are no longer required,’” Killion told the Chronicle, adding that the board of directors was “making me the scapegoat” for the organization’s troubles last fall. A series of technological glitches with the new Common App last fall left students, teachers and college counselors frustrated and forced several universities using the system to delay their application deadlines.
TOM SULLIVAN / HERALD
Kelvin Chang ’16, left, and Matteo Ziff ’14 talk over a meal in the Sharpe Refectory. Kelvin approached several tables while wearing a mannequin’s head, referring to himself as “Lexi.”
ME TR O IN BRIEF Former mayor released from prison after charge vacated Former Central Falls Mayor Charles Moreau was released from federal prison Friday, and his conviction for federal program fraud — the illegal acquisition of federal dollars allocated to the state — was vacated, the Associated Press reported. Moreau’s release comes one year into his two-year sentence for corruption and bribery charges for accepting gifts from a personal friend in exchange for circumventing the city’s contract bidding process, The Herald previously reported. Moreau was mayor of Central Falls from 2003 to 2012. He pleaded guilty to the charges in federal court in September 2012 for establishing a deal with contractor Michael Bouthilette. As part of the arrangement, Bouthilette closed 167 buildings in Central Falls and charged excessive rates for his work, The Herald previously reported. Bouthilette performed free renovations and other services on Moreau’s home in Lincoln in exchange for the city’s preferential treatment of his company, Certified Disaster Restoration, to board up the buildings. U.S. Attorney Terrence Donnelly said at the court hearing last week that Moreau intentionally made the deal lucrative for Bouthilette as a friend and supporter, the Providence Journal reported. Moreau’s fraud conviction was vacated based on a separate case in which the First Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston held it was not a crime for politicians to accept gratuities, which the court defined as “a reward for a future or past act,” the New York Times reported. Prosecutors in Moreau’s case agreed to allow a void on the fraud conviction as long as his other convictions still stood, the Times reported. In addition to the time served in federal prison, the court fined Moreau $25,000, sentenced him to three years of probation and ordered 300 hours of community service to give back to Central Falls, the Journal reported. Bouthilette also pleaded guilty to federal program fraudbut did not serve prison time. He was sentenced to three years of probation and 2,000 hours of community service and paid back nearly $400,000 to Central Falls, The Herald previously reported. After going into receivership, during which the city’s governance was guided by a state official, in 2011 and becoming the first city in Rhode Island to declare federal bankruptcy, Central Falls emerged from bankruptcy in October 2012. Central Falls has a median household income of less than $30,000, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, making it one of the poorest cities in Rhode Island. Mayor James Diossa, who took over the office in a special election after Moreau resigned, was elected to his first full term this fall. — Kate Kiernan, Metro Editor
metro 3
THE BROWN DAILY HERALD TUESDAY, MARCH 4, 2014
DAVID DECKEY / HERALD
Smoking rates in Rhode Island fell by 2.6 percentage points in the last year, but smoking remains an important health issue in the state. “I’d love to see students agitating to make Brown a smoke-free campus,” said Michael Fine, director of the state Department of Health.
» HEALTH, from page 1 and asking for Vicodin, I will be able to look up what medications they’ve had from other doctors,” Fine said. Fine also listed several long-term goals for improving the state’s health. These initiatives include eradicating smoking by 2030, eliminating incidence of HIV in Rhode Island by 2018 and developing more primary care centers in communities of fewer than
» GUN REFORM, from page 1 Rep. Deborah Ruggiero, D-Jamestown and Middletown, a co-chair of the task force, said Rhode Island currently only submits criminal records to NICS. But if someone has a criminal background suggesting a possible history of substance abuse, both records will be submitted, said Rep. Michael Chippendale, R-West Coventry, Foster and Glocester, a member of the task force. Rhode Island is one of 15 states in the country that do not submit mental health records to NICS, according to the website of Mayors Against Illegal Guns. “The recommendation made by the task force was a result of an absolutely dedicated group of very diverse individuals with diverse discipline and background getting together and staying focused,” Chippendale said, referring to the task force’s proposal. The task force was careful to ensure the law would maintain the confidentiality of patients’ mental health records, as well as preserve and respect public safety and Second Amendment rights, Chippendale said. If the recommended legislation passes, only the name, birthdate, gender and ethnicity of those involuntarily committed to mental health care facilities will be submitted to NICS, Ruggiero said.
10,000 residents by 2020. The implementation of the Affordable Care Act may improve health scores, but the outcome of the new program is unpredictable, Fine said. “We know that not having health insurance puts people at greater risk for disease,” he said, adding that effects of the Affordable Care Act on health outcomes for currently uninsured individuals remain to be seen. “Many determinants of health are “We did not want to deprive anyone of their civil rights because of a mental health issue unless there is a reason to do so,” Chippendale said. Task force members are considering a language revision for parts of the statute they “feel are outdated or archaic,” Chippendale said, specifically refering to the term “mental defective,” which is used in the bill to describe people. The task force also recommends a relief fund for individuals who want to appeal in court if they are prohibited from purchasing firearms due to this bill. Given the number of highly publicized mass shootings across the country — such as the school shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. — the connection between violent crimes and mental health was part of the General Assembly’s motivation to form the task force, Chippendale said. Megan Ranney, assistant professor of emergency medicine, said critics argue the legislation might violate Second Amendment rights by obstructing the constitutional right to own a gun for people with histories of mental health problems. Other criticisms are that the legislation does not do enough to prevent gun violence and that it could discourage people with mental illnesses from seeking
social, not medical,” Fine said in his address. Social factors such as income inequality and education have an effect on health outcomes, he added. “For example, in the United States, the African-American population’s life expectancy is about five years shorter than the rest of the population.” “Most people believe that the majority of health outcomes are not determined by general health care, but by social determinants,” said
Ira Wilson, professor and chair of the Department of Health Services, Policy and Practice. These social determinants can have as significant an impact on health outcomes as the presence of adequate health care, he added. The solution to improving health outcomes and care is to leverage spending on health care dollars, Fine told The Herald. “We spend about $2 trillion as a nation on health care and
medical care. About 30 percent of that figure is wasted. We have to figure out how to spend this extra money on education and housing and safe streets and the environment. That is the way we can make everyone healthier,” he said. Wilson said he sees opportunities to improve the state’s health score. “If the grade of a B minus or a C plus leads to beneficial change, that’s all I can ask for,” he said.
LAUREN GALVAN / HERALD
Legislators in the General Assembly have proposed a bill to augment the screening process for individuals seeking to purchase firearms in the state by mandating the submission of mental health records. treatment, Ranney added. Even though gun violence is a controversial topic nationwide, professors cannot explicitly research gun violence given the government ban on
using federal funding for any firearmrelated study, Ranney said, adding that the policy could change in the future, and there could be money for research on this issue. Despite not
having federal research dollars, members of the Injury Prevention Center and the School of Public Health are still investigating gun violence prevention, she added.
4 arts & culture
THE BROWN DAILY HERALD TUESDAY, MARCH 4, 2014
ADLI engages with memory, accessibility in dance fest American Dance Legacy Initiative’s Mini-Fest highlights movement as experience By ALEKSANDRA LIFSHITS CONTRIBUTING WRITER
COURTESY OF JESSICA PALINSKI
Using the artifacts from the original Jenks Museum of Natural History, Brown and Rhode Island School of Design students and faculty members curated an exhibit to restore these findings to their former glory.
» MUSEUM, from page 1 of old anthropological and ethnographic artifacts “as the wrecking ball was crashing into the building,” said Palinski. The cases were saved, but forgotten. Brown and Rhode Island School of Design students and professors interested in biology, public humanities, archaeology and art jumped onto the project, and the fully formed Jenks Society is preparing to open an exhibit with some of the same artifacts that missed obliteration a half-century ago. With the exhibit, opening May 1 in Rhode Island Hall, “our goal is to resurrect the glory of the Jenks Museum, … illuminate hidden stories … and look at it through a lens of the comedy, tragedy and weirdness that surrounds the whole thing,” Palinski said. A series of colorful details of the museum’s history piqued the students’ interests. Its quirky past includes the acquisition of a collection of knives that just the day before had cut off 50 heads and the 1894 death of Jenks on his very own museum steps, according to the Jenks Society’s website. The story began less ominously. In 1870 Jenks told Brown “it needed a museum like all the other universities” and offered to curate it, Lubar said. Jenks’ life-long interest in natural history meant taxidermic animals abounded. The museum also contained anthropological items collected by Brown alums serving as missionaries around the world, Lubar said. The “pre-Darwinist” museum eschewed an orderly setup for an organization that “was interesting to Jenks and showed that he was a very religious man,” Palinski said. The first floor included taxidermy, skeletons
and ethnographic collections, while the upper balcony showed off the Jenks’ prized finds — the aforementioned shark and giraffe, along with other large animals, Palinski said. By the time of Jenks’ death in 1894, “the museum had become to seem old-fashioned,” with “a new generation of professors coming into Brown more interested in laboratory science than natural history,” Lubar said. The museum shut its doors in 1915, and the collection slowly withered into far-flung corners of the University, until the 1940s, when 92 truckloads of specimens were placed in a local dump, according to the Jenks Society website. The spared remnants found their way into the Roger Williams Natural History Museum, the RISD Museum, the Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology and Van Winkle Hall, among other locations, Lubar said. Jenks’ museum will be memorialized in three thematic units: the past, the present and the future, each forming a separate exhibit, Palinski said. The first section will be a recreation of Jenks’ office space in the museum, Palinski said. The present will contain the artifacts from Jenks’ collection remaining in the hands of the Jenks Society, found mostly in storage at Brown and the Haffenreffer Museum, Palinski said. The future section features artists’ interpretations of lost artifacts, demonstrating how the museum lives on through the human ability to re-create what was lost, Palinski said. Mark Dion, professor of visual arts at Columbia, leads the artists, many of whom are local residents or RISD students. A call for submissions yielded upwards of 200 responses, some from as far away as Kansas and
Florida, Palinski said. Splitting up the exhibit into linear sections “freezes this moment in time, as pre-Darwinist natural history was giving way to the modern day science of biology, and it gives us this incredible look at what happens when disciplines change and what happens with these shifts,” Palinski said. Lubar looks at the exhibit as both a reimagining and a remembrance. “The artists are recreating some of the things that were in the museum, but not as what they were, because they’re gone, but rather as ghosts,” he said. “It’s important to remember our history … and it’s important that the University think about the ways that collections can be useful in education.” The Jenks Society uses a blog to update followers on the progress of the exhibit, allowing it to expand its audience to the wider Providence community, especially as more and more people become involved in different facets of the project, Palinski said. The blog also serves as a safeguard against the downfall Jenks’ own legacy suffered. “We’re definitely interested in institutional memory, because a great deal of what this story is about is the way the Jenks museum was forgotten,” said Palinski. That the 100th anniversary of the museum’s closing coincides with Brown’s 250th anniversary is “as much chance as anything,” Lubar said. He attributes the budding interest to perhaps a form of rebellion against the institutional memory bombarding us in our daily lives. “I suppose you could tie it back to the rise of the virtual — once everything is on the Internet, suddenly thinking about real objects gains a new interest,” Lubar said.
Choreography has no manuscript. Movement and gesture cannot be transcribed as one might a novel or a symphony. Consequently, the history of dance is slippery, difficult to preserve. Even towering figures like Merce Cunningham and Martha Graham faced considerable challenges with the project of preserving their work after their deaths. In pursuit of a different kind of understanding, undergraduates, guest artists and students from Central Falls High School gathered at the Perry and Marty Granoff Center for the Creative Arts this weekend for the American Dance Legacy Initiative’s 15th annual Mini-Fest. The initiative, a project of the John Nicholas Brown Center for Public Humanities and Cultural Heritage, seeks to transform “how people think about and experience dance through collaborative programming that connects with American heritage and (build) a dance-literate public,” according to the organization’s website. The Mini-Fest consisted of two performances, an interactive installation, a lecture and master classes. “Dance can be used more than in a conventional performer-and-audience way,” said Libby Stein ’15, a member of Dance Extension. Saturday’s lecture, “Dance, Memory and the Oral Tradition,” was part performance and part discussion. One piece by Danny Buraczeski was performed three times: first by Dance Extension, then by Central Falls High School students and finally by a group of people with Parkinson’s disease. Each of the groups danced the same etude, but the movement was adapted to accommodate different bodies and different sensibilities. The Central Falls “Dance and Tech” class worked on its performance for the Mini-Fest for the past three weeks, said Kilishla Nieuls, a sophomore from Central Falls. She added that she had stage fright performing after Dance Extension. But after the dancers with Parkinson’s disease took to the stage, Nieuls said she came to understand the exercise was not about skill but “about making the dance your own dance.” “It was amazing to see the three different but similar performances,” said Jenny Sevy ’14.5, a member of
Dance Extension. “The performance displayed that dance is accessible to everyone. We are all humans, and humans all move.” Dance Extension also performed during the two evening concerts Friday and Saturday. Sevy danced a solo piece — an excerpt from a larger work called “After the Multiplex,” which displays the viewer experience watching a film. The unconventional staging all takes place with the dancer perched on a chair. She remains seated, dancing mostly by moving her upper body and arms. The audience could also perceive this original take on dance in guest artist Stephanie Turner’s piece called “Loose Seam,” which featured guest artist Oleg Sergeyevich reciting a poem by Alexander Pushkin in Russian. Though the majority of audience members did not understand the poem, it was used for acoustic rather than symbolic purposes, Turner said. “I had a kinesthetic response to his voice, so it was a spontaneous decision to include the poem as part of the performance,” she said, adding that instinctive decisions ensure that the performers’ diverse cultural backgrounds are organically incorporated into the pieces. The diversity of dance history was also emphasized in the art installations. Each living room space in Granoff focused on a theme from one of the previous Mini-Fests; as a result, these installation spaces collectively told a story about “Dance and Memory,” the focus of this year’s festival. Through artifacts, videos and stories, the installations displayed how dance continues to live on after the movement has been completed, said Julie Strandberg, senior lecturer in theater arts and performance studies and one of ADLI’s founders. Strandberg said one of the purposes of the festival is to make people feel comfortable with dance and their own bodies. “This festival is here to break down the barrier of who can do dance and who cannot,” she said. “Our field in general has not been encouraging people to dance, telling them they are too fat, too this or that.” This year’s Mini-Fest overcame these obstacles through four types of events, which gave spectators and performers diverse opportunities to interact and connect to dance. ADLI, and the Mini-Fest, gives dancers the opportunity to preserve choreography through repetition and collaboration. “In theater you do plays. … If you do music, you read music,” she said. “But most dancers don’t have access to repertoire.”
today 5
THE BROWN DAILY HERALD TUESDAY, MARCH 4, 2014
S Q U I R R E L P R AY I N G
menu SHARPE REFECTORY
VERNEY-WOOLLEY
LUNCH Vegan Vegetable Tempeh with Linguini, Grilled Turkey Burger, Broccoli Rabe, Hot Dogs, King Cake
Beef Noodle Soup, Vegan Tofu Veggie Ravioli with Sauce, Broccoli Florettes, Mashed Potato Bar, King Cake
DINNER Ratatouille and Cheese, Italian Beef Noodle Casserole, Steak Fries, Grilled Lemon and Pepper Chicken
Tuscan Pork Roast, Creamy Parmesan Primavera, Moo Shu Chicken, Elbow Macaroni, Bananas Foster
JOSIAH’S
THREE BURNERS
QUESADILLA OR GRILLED CHEESE
Crepes
Quesadillas
BLUE ROOM
SOUPS
DINNER ENTREES
Spinach and Feta, Sausage and Lentil, Three Bean Chili
Chicken with Peppers and Onions, Avial Coconut Vegetable Curry
sudoku
RYAN WALSH / HERALD
Chilly weather doesn’t hinder this squirrel from standing near a statue of the Virgin Mary outside St. Stephen’s Church.
comics Cat Ears | Najatee’ McNeil ‘17
crossword
Bacterial Culture | Dana Schwartz ‘15
calendar TODAY
MARCH 4
12 P.M. THE DUDIFICATION OF DIETING: MASCULINITY AND WEIGHT LOSS IN THE 21ST CENTURY
Discover how masculinity is constructed and manipulated in order to sell weight-loss programs to men. Emily Contois GS will lead the discussion and present her research on the topic. Sarah Doyle Women’s Center 4 P.M. PROFESSOR OKEY NDIBE PRESENTS HIS NEW NOVEL, “FOREIGN GODS, INC.”
Ndibe will read from his book “Foreign Gods, Inc.,” which follows a New York-based Nigerian cab driver’s pursuit to steal the statue of an ancient war deity. Brown Bookstore
TOMORROW
MARCH 5
6 P.M. PHILOSOPHY OF SCREENWRITING: PROBLEMS, PROCESS, HISTORY AND PRACTICALITIES
Screenwriter Andrew McElhinney will present the third lecture in a series titled “Tbe Varieties of Cinematic Experience.” The lecture series is sponsored by the Department of Literary Arts. McCormack Family Theater 6:00 P.M. TASTEBERRIES
Celebrate the Science Center’s fifth birthday with Professor Stein. You won’t want to miss out on the chance to try tasteberries, fruits that play tricks on your tastebuds. 3rd Floor Sciences Library
6 commentary
THE BROWN DAILY HERALD TUESDAY, MARCH 4, 2014
EDITORIAL
My Brother’s Keeper: The right move Recently, President Obama launched My Brother’s Keeper, an initiative aimed at helping young men of color attend college. The White House has been active in its efforts to make higher education more accessible since the beginning of Obama’s presidency. We are heartened by the president’s newest program, which will attempt to give one of the most disenfranchised groups in America equal footing to receive a higher education, and we hope that the University will lend its support. During Obama’s first term as president, 22,000 black men were murdered in the United States. Young black men are particularly at risk, since deeply rooted structural patterns lead many who grow up in low-income neighborhoods to resort to violent crime. In fact, the Center for American Progress has calculated that a startling one in three black men in the United States can expect to go to prison during his lifetime, though many of these individuals are incarcerated for non-violent drug-related crime. Obama maintains that these problems are not independent of access to higher education. Those born into low-income households are 13 times less likely to graduate from college than wealthier Americans. This clearly shows the extent to which poverty impedes access to higher education. “These statistics should break our hearts, and they should compel us to act,” Obama said in a speech at the White House. Obama recognizes that these trends will not correct themselves. He pointed to examples of “extraordinary achievement,” such as Martin Luther King, Jr., Magic Johnson and Colin Powell, who were able to bypass the structural barriers working against them. It is time to turn these extraordinary examples into everyday instances. “This is an issue of national importance. This is as important as any issue that I work on. It’s an issue that goes to the very heart of why I ran for president,” Obama declared. He has pledged $350 million in private donations and has teamed up with a variety of philanthropic organizations to bring the initiative to fruition. The president is correct in calling the issue a matter of national importance, and we hope that Brown will continue to address it. We laud Brown for its commitment to geographic, racial, social, economic and religious diversity. But we seek to emphasize that there is still work to be done, and the My Brother’s Keeper initiative highlights that reality. The University should provide outreach programs to low-income communities in order to educate youth early on about the possibility of attending college. Instilling the idea that college can be a reality for these individuals will go a long way toward providing hope and the inspiration to stay on the right track. In addition, Brown should make a renewed commitment to providing financial aid for this group of particularly at-risk youth. Obama clearly acknowledges the structural boundaries that undermine true equality of opportunity in America. Taking on the My Brother’s Keeper initiative as a personal cause, the president is sending a heartening message about the need for broad changes. We hope that the University, along with its peer institutions, will continue to join in the reforms.
K I M B E R LY S A LT Z
CORRECTION An article in Monday’s Herald (“Organic Chemistry receives makeover, yields higher midterm scores,” March 3) misidentified the creators of the textbook that students in CHEM 0350: “Organic Chemistry” are using this semester. The textbook was created by William Brown, a professor emeritus at Beloit College, and a team of co-authors, not Brown University. The Herald regrets the error.
Q U O T E O F T H E D AY
“Frame your narrative, speak, even when your voice shakes.” — Okey Ndibe, visiting assistant professor of Africana studies
See ndibe on page 8.
Editorials are written by The Herald’s editorial page board: its editors, Matt Brundage ’15 and Rachel Occhiogrosso ’14, and its members, Hannah Loewentheil ’14 and Thomas Nath ’16. Send comments to editorials@ browndailyherald.com.
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commentary 7
THE BROWN DAILY HERALD TUESDAY, MARCH 4, 2014
Embracing strength ADAM ASHER opinions columnist
The stereotypical Brown student enjoys talking about hegemony almost as much as explaining that gender is a spectrum, not a binary. And when this stereotypical student talks about hegemony, it is not in positive terms. This student is wary of anyone, or anything, exerting hegemony. He or she knows that when one entity pushes every other entity around and exerts its will, in all circumstances, we all end up suffering. Likewise, when all voices are considered, we all will ultimately prosper as a result. I’ve been thinking a lot about the concept of strength recently, and I don’t think we give enough thought to it as a character trait. Now, it’s possible I haven’t been listening closely enough, but my assessment is that, on the one hand, we pay a lot of attention to physical strength, and devote significant financial resources to it — see the Jonathan Nelson ’77 Fitness Center. But we rarely think of our mental and emotional capacities in those terms. I bring up hegemony because I think it explains why we at Brown, with our focus on collabora-
tion and equality, are hesitant to aspire to strength: We don’t want to be seen as having a desire to push other people around. But exerting dominance over others is not what being strong is about or, at least, not what it should be about. Strength is an introverted trait, not an extroverted one. Ran Zilca, a “positive psychologist”— a term I have some trouble with, but that’s another story — defines strength in part as “the opposite of aggression.” “Think about people you know
“smart,” there is no Latinate equivalent for it. It is a very old concept that we instinctively understand, and to which words like “acumen” or “endurance” or “acuity” do not do justice. If someone is “of indomitable spirit,” that’s a good thing, but it simply does not communicate the same fundamental character trait as saying someone is “a strong person.” Though we all understand what strength is, and what it means, it is surprisingly difficult to explain, as many fundamental things are. One
wanted to. But if strength isn’t a choice, what good does it do to try to be stronger? I would say we all know how to become stronger, even if we aren’t used to thinking about self-improvement in those terms. We go to college and study in part to become more knowledgeable, but we all know that the person with the most knowledge is not necessarily the happiest, or most effectual. Knowledge is a means to an end, and at this point my feeling is that the end may as well be strength.
Exerting dominance over others is not what being strong is about or, at least, not what it should be about. and consider to be strong,” Zilca wrote in a 2010 piece for Psychology Today. “Strong individuals do not need to act aggressively because they feel that they have the power and skills to take over the details of a situation and bring it to a close. Aggression is a means of covering weakness.” “Strength” is an old word — according to the Oxford English Dictionary, it’s been around for as long as written English has existed, and almost definitely before that. Unlike “intelligent” as a replacement for
characteristic of strength, however, is that there’s no choice involved. When faced with a serious illness, or a tragedy, or any sort of struggle, people are often praised for “being strong.” Yet this can be frustrating for the objects of praise because, the way they see it, they had no choice — there was something that needed to be done, to be endured, and they endured it. They didn’t choose to be strong any more than they chose to be able to speak. Strength was something cultivated before the fact, and they could not have been “weak” even if they
Strength is not the purview of a particular gender, race, age group or any other category. It is universally attainable and, insofar as a universal goal is possible, it should be everyone’s conscious aim to become stronger. I’ll acknowledge that I’m advocating for an abstract, most likely not very controversial, idea. But what we choose to consciously strive for and think about matters, especially as college students. We have been afforded four years to mold ourselves into what we wish to become for the rest of our lives — if we don’t know what
it is we are aiming for in the most basic of terms, that process of selfcreation has the potential to become aimless and muddled. When I take Zilca’s advice and think of someone I consider to be strong, one person I think of is Nadezhda Tolokonnikova of Pussy Riot. It’s easy to say she’s “awesome” or “tough,” but I think what we’re really saying is, she’s strong. She’s strong enough to be used as a political punching bag for the autocratic ruler of an intolerant country, to be thrown in jail with no cause, to be whipped in the streets — and to retaliate only by continuing to be herself. It sounds like a cliche, but maybe it’s a cliche for a reason — we must not only work to be strong, but hope to find a cause worth being strong for. And finally, because I can’t resist a good Roman example, if all else fails, take a page out of Pliny the Elder’s playbook. When Vesuvius was erupting, and he and his friends were blockaded inside one of their homes, his more fortunate nephew reported, “He bathed and dined, carefree or at least appearing so — which is equally impressive.”
Adam Asher ’15 is concentrating in classics.
Results, not intentions JAY UPADHYAY opinions columnist
Milton Friedman, a Nobel Prize-winning economist, once said, “One of the great mistakes is to judge policies and programs by their intentions rather than their results.” While Andrew Powers ’15 claimed in a recent Herald opinions column that policy evaluation should be based in ethics (“Powers ’15: Principles of American ethics,” Feb. 13), I side with Friedman in grounding our review in policy outcomes. It disturbs me that such a simple idea is lost both on the national stage and on Brown’s campus. We judge individuals on the basis of whether or not they support policies, but we view such legislation by its stated goals and not its results. These judgments sound something like this: If you believe in restrictions on who should receive welfare benefits and food stamps, your actions are discriminatory and you lack empathy for hungry, impoverished Americans. If you disagree with the Affordable Care Act, you’re against health care for the less fortunate and sick. If you believe there are benefits and costs to stop-and-frisk worth discussing, you’re not for efficient sampling — rather, you’re an insensitive racist who supports a police state. While it’s easy to decry others whose views don’t align with yours, we might consider taking Friedman’s approach as an alternative to shouting matches and ad hominem slander and as a method of implementing better policy. The congressional cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program last September serve as an important example. The Farm Bill’s inclusion of a $40 billion reduction to food stamps has liberal pundits foaming at the mouth. A closer look at the bill’s effects reveal that those who proposed it are not the alleged
out-of-touch Republicans who do not care about the well-being of the poor. Nearly $20 billion of these “cuts” are actually cost savings from enforcing an existing rule and eliminating waivers from non-participating states. This rule requires able-bodied individuals without dependents to work a minimum of 20 hours a week or be enrolled in a job training program. When analyzing this issue by its results, and not its purported intentions to take away food benefits from vulnerable populations, we gain a clearer picture of the bill’s effects. The Affordable Care Act is another case of this misrepresentation. I’ve heard guest lectur-
than Medicare and private insurance, so the quality of care these patients receive is much worse even when compared to the uninsured, who obtain care from emergency services and charitable clinics. The ACA attempts to resolve this by bringing Medicaid reimbursement rates in line with Medicare for the next year or so, even for states not choosing to expand Medicaid. But with uncertainty surrounding the sustainable growth rates that drive Medicare compensation, it’s not clear there are any long-term, sustainable solutions to this problem. Through a resultsoriented lens, the outcomes of the Affordable
The next time people disagree with you, take a second to think about the fact that it may be related more to the information they’re using to judge a policy than to their character or ideology. ers, Brown professors, students, politicians and news media personalities alike whittle the issue down to insurance coverage for sick individuals who can’t afford it. In doing so, they completely disregard the economic distortions that result from the medical loss ratio mandate, higher dividend taxes, penalties for employers and individuals and higher capital gains taxes. Even if we solely focus on health outcomes of those covered under public health insurance programs, the results don’t align with the propaganda. Studies from the University of Virginia, Penn and Johns Hopkins University concluded that Medicaid patients are more likely to die from surgery or cancer than their uninsured counterparts, even when adjusting for income level and age. While definitive explanations weren’t provided, I think the root of the problem is quite apparent. Medicaid historically reimburses doctors at a much lower rate
Care Act appear murky at best, despite what the Obama administration, your peers or your professors would have you believe. On our campus, the clearest demonstration of the results-vs.-intentions dilemma arose from the New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly talk, or lack thereof, last semester. Irrespective of the issues of free speech and spirit of inquiry that were discussed thoroughly last fall, the protests and outcry from Brown students didn’t make a great deal of rational sense. Kelly was portrayed to be a racist, one whose stop-and-frisk policies were harmful to minorities. Yet the results and programs Kelly has put into place misalign with this narrative entirely. The New York Police Department took a much more data-driven approach under his watch: opening a Real Time Crime Center, expanding and advancing upon its supercomputers, broadening its databases and data collection
and bringing in corporate experts to optimize the use of technology in its daily operations. In fact, the department is working to make stopand-frisk obsolete through development of technology that can detect solid objects, like a gun or weapon, on a person’s body. Could it be that Kelly’s policies are geared toward sampling efficiently? The results are undeniable: Crime rates and murder rates among young adults fell significantly during his tenure. While murder rates in the United States increased in 2012 before decreasing in 2013, murder rates in New York fell to a record low in 2012 before further decreasing 20 percent in 2013. While it might be true that more minorities are targeted by aggressive policing mechanisms, this policy isn’t wrong insofar as the means of sampling is statistically driven, not racially driven. It makes sense that under a technology-intensive means of data collection and an attempted shift away from stopand-frisk, these mechanisms are motivated by numbers and not merely the color of one’s skin. Still, it’s undoubtedly a conversation worth having, especially given Kelly’s 75 percent approval rating in New York last year. It’s not reasonable for Brown students to abandon their ideologies or for news pundits to rework the way they assess and present different policies. But we should consider retrospectively analyzing the results of legislation to make prospective improvements, rather than judging them strictly based on their intended purpose. The next time people disagree with you, take a second to think about the fact that it may be related more to the information they’re using to judge a policy than to their character or ideology.
Jay Upadhyay ’15 is an economics concentrator. He can be reached at jay_upadhyay@brown.edu.
TUESDAY, MARCH 4, 2014
THE
BROWN DAILY HERALD arts & culture IN CONVERSATION
Okey Ndibe: ‘If you can’t tell your story, you’re voiceless’
Nigerian-American writer on ‘Foreign Gods, Inc.’ and eating cookies with Chinua Achebe By EMILY PASSARELLI STAFF WRITER
Okey Ndibe — author, political journalist, essayist, professor, editor and current visiting assistant professor of Africana studies — is a busy man. The release of his second novel, “Foreign Gods, Inc.,” in January is part of a flurry of acclaimed fiction by Nigerian writers in the last year, including Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s “Americanah” and Teju Cole’s “Every Day is for the Thief.” Ndibe grew up in war-torn Nigeria before coming to the United States in 1983 as the founding editor of African Commentary, a project of the late Chinua Achebe, former David and Marianna Fisher University Professor and a professor of Africana studies. Ndibe received a PhD in English at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and has since written the critically acclaimed novel “Arrows of Rain” and various political essays. He is currently writing an episodic account of his adjustment to life in America. Both the novels and the memoir in progress track the redefinition of identity against various political backdrops. Ndibe will read from “Foreign Gods, Inc.” at the Brown Bookstore today at 4 p.m. He sat down with The Herald to discuss his transatlantic resume, the teaching of Africana literature and the urgency of narrative to history, politics and memory. The Herald: Your first novel, “Arrows of Rain,” takes place in Africa, and your new work, “Foreign Gods, Inc.,” is set in Nigeria and America. Given your experiences living in both places, to what degree do you find yourself telling your own story? Ndibe: I can’t make this as a broad claim, but I think that when you write, pieces of yourself ultimately slip into the work — bits of yourself — so a sense of the author is in the text. And it’s not just the author, it’s also the author’s brothers’ experiences. Pieces of the people I’ve met, stories that they’ve told me, ways in which I have responded to different narratives that I’ve picked up through life. They get into the text in oblique as well as bold ways. So to that extent, I’ll say yes, there are bits and pieces of me every time I write. But I want to deny that the new book is reducible to my experience. That’s a question I’ve been asked whenever I’ve read. “Is this your story?” Did the tumultuous political climate of Nigeria inspire your interest in writing political essays and columns? Well I was a child when Nigeria went through its very bloody civil war, so it’s an experience in many ways that defined me and continues to resonate with my life, with my experiences. So the way that I look at Nigeria, at Africa, is colored by my experiences as a child who saw the horrors of war. So my sense of tragedy as well as of the prospect for our renewal, human renewal — those two dimensions of my outlook are shaped by my
experience of the war. Could you tell me about how you wound up in America? Chinua Achebe invited me to this country to be the founding editor of the magazine which he founded with some of his friends in America. I interviewed Achebe as my first assignment as a journalist. I had finished college and got hired by Concord Weekly, but had a month before (the) start, so I was doing a bit of traveling, and I went to see a good friend of mine — a woman who was from Achebe’s hometown, so I was raving about him to her. Then she said to me, “Do you know that Achebe is my uncle? And his country home is just down the street. And he happens to be in town this weekend from the university at which he teaches. If you want, we could go see him.” So we went to Achebe’s house, and he gave me a bottle of Coke and some cookies. And here I was, a fresh college student who had read all of Achebe’s work, and I was so mesmerized. So I told Achebe that I had just gotten a job at a magazine, and I would like to interview him. But there was a mishap in the interview. I interviewed him for 3 hours, and I came back to my hotel room in the city, and I hit play on the tape — nothing. So I called Achebe and begged him — could I just come back for 20 minutes? My paper had paid for my flight to the city and my hotel, and if I had returned with nothing, my first assignment would have been my last. Achebe graciously said to me, “If you can come the day after, I can give you as much time as you need.” When we finished the interview, Achebe told me that this was the most exhaustive interview that he had done. I was just in awe of Achebe as a writer. So when I wrote the piece, he so liked it that he became like a mentor to me. So in his travels around the world whenever he won something, I was the first person he told, so I would put it out in the media. So we grew close. So in 1988, he was a professor at UMass when some Nigerian professor for academics went to him and proposed to him to start a magazine called African Commentary, and Achebe told him that he knew the perfect guy to be the founding editor. How does writing in different styles allow you to explore identity from different vantage points? Well, my first novel is more of a political work. And it had to be my first novel. I’ve always been struck by the tragedy of Nigeria, my home country, and I have always wondered how to account for what I call a country who was conceived in hope, but matured into hopelessness. You look at Nigeria today and it’s a narrative of disillusionment, of disappointment and of massive looting by politicians. And so I came to this country, and I had to come to terms with that story. I had to tell a story, and it became the way of seeking to understand that terror. And I wanted to create a little distance, so instead of calling the novel the country — Nigeria — I called it “Medea,” which was also a way of evoking madness. Nigeria is a country of incredible capacity for achieving itself, but somehow it continues to achieve its nightmare day after day. And were it not
COURTESY OF OKEY NDIBE
Okey Ndibe, visiting assistant professor of Africana studies, has produced a substantial body of work since coming to the United States in 1983. His work’s political aspects are strongly influenced by his Nigerian upbringing. for the resilience of the people — were it not for the boundless energy of the people — it would be an uninhabitable space. This second novel has more of a playfulness about it. I decided that I wanted to tell a story that would be a kind of homage to my new homes, my two homes — Nigeria and America. And a kind of way of looking on two homes at once. So you have one home, America, that is fascinated by exotic deities taken from places like Africa and Asia. And then you have Nigeria, where the Americans contemplate the taking away of an ancestral deity to celebrate the almighty God. So there is a lot of plague there. Underlying my new work is a very dark and sad and treacherous narrative in the trafficking of deities and of the spirit. As you explained, writing your first work allowed you to come to terms with your past. But with this new, playful novel, what made you want to write each next page? Well, part of what leads you to finish any novel — for me — is that you are desperate to read it. I write a book that I am desperate to read myself. And part of what sustains that interest is day after day it, in itself, surprises you. So a lot of times, I project about where a story is going — I have a particular trajectory of its movement — but then I sit down to write it, and the character says something that I didn’t know the character was going to say or wants to go to some place that I didn’t want him to go, A lot of times, you find that a story is taking you into a richly mysterious and enchanting territory and so you travel with it, in that direction. So there is a constant sense of play and adventure taken that is in the creative process. Because I like to be with friends, I like to joke, I like to drink wine with friends and tell stories rather than sit down in solitude and write them. It is that constant incessant surprise and adventure that become part of the creative process that sustains me and so I say, “Wow, who knows which friend I’m going to find today, or which character is going to take me today.” Right now you are working on a memoir, a work that by definition will include inextricably personal experiences. How has writing this been a different experience than writing fictional
pieces and writing political pieces? The working title is “Going Dutch, and Other American (Mis)Adventures.” But it is more a collection of short essays. This is why I don’t quite call it a memoir, because a memoir has a kind of thread and this doesn’t have that. The thread that holds this together is that these essays are all experiences that I have had in what I call my drama with America. With this in mind, what do you think is the importance of connecting the history of a country and the memory of the person who is experiencing it? Extremely important. I exemplify it. I came to this country heavily read. So I went (in) with history of the enslavement of Africans in this country and also of the narrative of prayer — their struggle to achieve their full humanity and their right as citizens. And that had moved me so much and was such a source of inspiration for me. As an American I am still always aware of that history, but my memory of Nigeria shapes my own being and resonates in my experience as an American citizen, as a scholar. As professor of AFRI 1955: “History and Memory in Africana Literature,” how do you teach the importance of this idea of memory and past experience to your students? I teach what I call Africana literature, which can be reduced to literature of African descent. I take the work that looks at how a number of African-American writers use the resources of memory and history in their fiction — the way in which African and African-American writers are engaged in very important conversations in which history and memory become central handles. I also think that memory is essential. First of all, good students are called upon to be aware of their history and to have a memory of their location and of their time. And so in every class that I teach, the first thing that I do is I tell one or two stories to students that shape who I am, and I invite each student to tell their own story as a way of introducing themselves. Having a voice in class by telling me a story is the minimum condition for citizenship in the class. If you can’t tell your story, you’re voiceless. I don’t really care for people who put stickers on cars, but there is a particular sticker that I saw on a car that I fell in
love with, and that sticker says, “Speak even when your voice shakes.” The day I saw it, I was so moved and struck by it, I thought, especially then, especially when your voice shakes, you have to find the courage to speak. So in every class I teach, I say, “We are all going to speak. And it’s not just by names. You have to announce your name and tell us something about you that is important. Frame your narrative, speak, even when your voice shakes.” And that is so important. You started teaching after you started writing. Did your exploration of the importance of identity and finding a voice in your works at all influence the way you run your classroom and teach your students? Part of my discovery of the importance of speaking came from my terror of speaking. I was a journalist in Nigeria. And people were invited to give talks. But as a journalist, I was never invited anywhere to give a talk. Then I came to this country to edit African Commentary and suddenly colleges and high schools and radio and television stations were inviting me for interviews, and I wasn’t used to speaking. I was terrified. I would become sick. And then, one day, I was in a green room with Jesse Jackson and they came and told him that he would be going on in 5 minutes, and he got up and started pacing and wringing his hands. And he said to me, “Wow, I’m so nervous.” And I said to him, “You?” Because in Nigeria, I had watched him at the Democratic Convention speak to millions of people on live television. And I thought, this man has found the magic of speaking. But he said, “Oh yeah, I’m always nervous. When I speak I have a way of channeling that nervousness into nervous energy. When I speak, actually, if I’m not nervous it means I don’t take the audience seriously.” And I was no longer ashamed. So now whenever I go to speak, and they introduce me, I say, “I’m nervous.” The fact that I’m going to announce to the audience that I am nervous gives me strength. It’s as if you express your vulnerability and so you become stronger. I want every student of mine to know that if they are scared of speaking that it is not uncommon, and to know that they can transcend it. This interview has been edited for clarity and length.