Duke, UNC to clash in tennis
Q&A with next GPSC president
The two top-10 women’s tennis teams will face off at Duke Tuesday at 3 p.m. | Sports Page 5
Marcus Benning hopes to increase transparency in the graduate student council | Page 2
The Chronicle T H E I N D E P E N D E N T D A I LY AT D U K E U N I V E R S I T Y
TUESDAY, MARCH 29, 2016
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ONE HUNDRED AND ELEVENTH YEAR, ISSUE 96
Sean Kingston to headline Old Duke 2016
Discredited writer reveals payments Amrith Ramkumar The Chronicle
Victor Ye | Chronicle File Photo At next Friday’s concert, Sean Kingston will follow previous Old Duke headliners Vanessa Carlton and Bowling for Soup. See story online.
Faculty question adding Asian American major Jaime Gordon The Chronicle Student activists continue to advocate for the creation of an Asian American studies major at Duke, although faculty are uncertain whether there is enough student interest to merit the addition. The Duke Asian American Alliance, Duke Asian Student Association and Diya, Duke’s South Asian Student Association, presented the administration with a list of demands at the second community forum Nov. 20. The demands included the creation of an Asian American Studies major, which was first requested after the controversial Asian-themed party hosted by the fraternity Kappa Sigma in 2013. Sophomore Christine Lee, vice president of political affairs for Duke’s Asian Students Association, noted that classes about Asian American culture already exist, but are difficult for students to take because they must fulfill requirements in the existing Trinity curriculum. “Students want to take these classes; we just don’t have the institutional framework and support,” Lee wrote in an email. Lee noted that students have been meeting with administrators about the feasibility of adding the major. Leo Ching, associate professor of Asian and African languages and literature, wrote in an
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email that he does not believe there is enough student interest to merit the creation of a full Asian American studies major. However, he noted that he believes that a certificate or some viable alternative is needed. “Students have good intentions and are very adept at mobilizing,” Ching wrote. “We might want to begin with something more modest to ensure sustainability.” Ching also noted that this problem could be remedied by requesting that courses focused on the United States emphasize the importance of contributions made by Asians and Asian Americans. Lee Baker, dean of academic affairs for Trinity College of Arts and Sciences, said that the administration’s reticence to add the Asian American studies major is not out of disregard for student concerns, but rather a practical consideration based on their observation of student interest. Baker noted that neither the East Asian nor the South Asian Studies certificates have been particularly popular. He pointed out that there have not been many Asian American Studies proposals within Program II, which students can use to create a personalized area of study. He cited global health and neuroscience as examples of new majors that were created in response to the large volume of students pursuing related Program II pathways. “I think it’s vital to have a suite of courses that allow students to understand subject position,
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heritage, history and the racial politics of being Asian or articulating an Asian heritage,” Baker said. “We’re trying to work on courses students can take and faculty that can teach this within the other extant disciplines.” The Harvard Crimson reported Jan. 27 that students at Harvard University are similarly advocating for increased Asian American studies course offerings. A similar report was written in Dartmouth’s student newspaper in February 2015. Among Ivy League institutions, Asian American studies is available as an undergraduate major and concentration at Columbia University, a minor at Cornell University and the University of Pennsylvania and as a concentration within the ethnic studies or American studies majors at Brown University. Many other institutions across the country—including the University of California at Los Angeles, the University of California at Berkeley, Northwestern University and Stanford University—offer Asian American studies majors. In an email to The Chronicle, Nitasha Sharma, associate professor of Asian American studies at Northwestern University, wrote about the student efforts that led to the creation of an Asian American studies program there. See ASIAN STUDIES on Page 8
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Stephen Glass, who was fired from The New Republic after fabricating several articles, told Duke students in a journalism ethics class Monday that he has repaid $200,000 to the media organizations he used to work for. Monday’s disclosure appears to be the first time Glass has publicly disclosed the specific total amount he repaid The New Republic, Harper’s Magazine, Rolling Stone and the Heritage Foundation— which previously published the public policy journal Policy Review—for more than 40 stories he fabricated. The New York Times reported in October that Glass paid Harper’s $10,000 as repayment for a discredited article and noted that Glass’ total repayments could run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Glass said in his conversation with students in News as Moral Battleground, a class on journalism ethics taught by Bill Adair, Knight professor of the practice of journalism and public policy, that he made the payments based on what the organizations had paid him for the pieces and added interest. “I should have done it earlier,” Glass said of the repayments. “I took that money and wrote lies.” Glass wrote several stories for The New Republic in the late 1990s with fabricated See GLASS on Page 8
Special to The Chronicle Stephen Glass fabricated more than 40 stories as a journalist. At Duke Monday, he discussed repaying magazines for which he wrote.
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