The Justice, January 26, 2016

ARTS Page 18

FORUM Fear of refugees overblown 11

WRITERS @ WORK

SPORTS Swim teams stack up hardware 16 The Independent Student Newspaper

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of

B r a n d e is U n i v e r sit y S i n c e 1 9 4 9

Justice

Volume LXVIII, Number 15

www.thejustice.org

Tuesday, January 26, 2016

ADMINISTRATION

SHIFTING SKYLINES

Divestment plans analyzed during presentation ■ At a discussion on

Thursday, scholars and administrators discussed the feasibility of divestment.

By cARMI rOTHBERG JUSTICE Editor

“The University needs to do something real … to engage the Board of Trustees and the new president to come up with a recommendation,” said senior lecturer in the Brandeis International Business School John Ballantine Jr. at a discussion of divestment on Thursday. The event focused on the facts, background and recommendations of the divestment report that the University’s Exploratory Committee on Fossil Fuel Divestment and the new Presidential Task Force on Campus Sustainability hosted last Thursday. The event

IMAGE (C) 2016 GOOGLE, MAP DATA (C) 2016 GOOGLE. ILLUSTRATION BY MIHIR KHANNA/the Justice

TORN DOWN FOR WHAT: In the photo illustration above, the areas in blue — Schwartz Hall (labeled S) and C, D and E Towers — will be taken down after the Spring 2017 semester. Cholmondoley's Coffee House in Tower B will remain open throughout the process.

Board votes to demolish parts of Usen Castle ■ Vice President for Campus

Operations Jim Gray said the project will cost around $37 million to complete.

By AVI GOLD JUSTICE Editor

Interim President Lisa Lynch announced in an email to the University community yeserday that the Usen Castle will be mostly torn down at the end of the spring 2017 semester. The space will be used to house a new residence hall for around 160 students that would “meet modern standards of student living and energy efficiency, and would be designed to allow full accessibility,” according to Lynch’s email.

The plan, which was approved by the Board of Trustees, leaves Tower A — which includes Cholmondeley's Coffee House — and Tower B standing following the completion of the project in August of 2018. Towers C, D and E and Schwartz Hall will all be torn down to make space for the new

dormitory. Lynch’s email stated that Chums will likelyremain open during the interim period while the other spaces will be closed “while the university further analyzes options and possible fundraising opportunities for their future.”

In an interview with the Justice and the Brandeis Hoot, Vice President for Campus Operations Jim Gray confirmed the cost of the project will total “in the neighborhood of $37 million” and stated that he did not know whether the University would continue to use Towers A and B as an on-campus housing option after the renovations. “The hope is that we are able to preserve those [towers] and develop plans … to finance a renovation of A and B so that they might remain on campus for the long term,” he said of one potential option. “We could put 40 or so students back in towers A and B and make it part of the complex there residentially, or it's possible that we may decide it serves the University better in some other way.”

Lynch’s email outlined a timeline for the project, which begins

featured four short presentations on climate change and the status of University divestment.

After a few minutes of refreshments, Senior Advisor to the President Peter Giumette introduced a panel of speakers, all contributors to the divestment report. The panelists included Ballantine; Eric Olson, a senior lecturer in the Heller School for Social Policy and Management and the chairman of the Newton Citizens Commission on Energy; Aneil Tripathy, B.A. ’12, M.A. ’15, a Ph.D. candidate in Anthropology with a focus in economic and environmental anthropology; and Michael Abrams ’15, a cofounder of Brandeis Climate Justice currently working as a staff legal researcher at the Schuster Institute for Investigative Journalism.

Ballantine began the event with a

See DIVESTMENT, 7 ☛

fACULTY

Barganing unit gathers data on unionized profs

with the Castle Advisory Group, composed of faculty, trustees, alumni, staff and students providing input on architectural plans for the new building.

The timeline for the project allows for students to live in the Castle through the end of the fall 2016 semester, after which they will be offered an alternative housing option on campus, though Gray said discussions are still ongoing concerning where they would be moved to during the spring semester of 2017. Site work is expected to begin in the spring of 2017 with Towers C, D and E and Schwartz removed the following summer. The construction of the new residence hall will last from the summer of 2017 to August of 2018, according to the timeline. “During the construction period, we will continue to guarantee campus housing to firstand second-year students,” Lynch wrote in her email.

Gray suggested that upperclassman quads may be used as guaranteed on-campus housing for underclassmen during the construction

■ The organizing committee

of Brandeis Faculty Forward has rebranded itself and formed subcommittees.

By MAX MORAN JUSTICE EDITOR

The newly formed bargaining unit of adjunct and part-time faculty hasbeen working on three main fronts since joining the Service Employees International Union Local 509 in December: gathering information about their constitutents’ main concerns, increasing the number of faculty actively involved in the union and requesting full information from the University about current members’ contracts.

The organizing committee of Brandeis Faculty Forward, the coalition of professors who led the charge while the faculty was unionizing, now call themselves the contract action team and have formed several subcommittees to handle these initiatives.

See CASTLE, 7 ☛

Prof. Amy Todd (Rabb) told the Justice in a phone interview that she is serving on the bargaining priorities sub-committee, which distributed a preliminary survey to the bargaining unit members in December. This survey was set to gain cursory information about professors’ priorities.

The sub-committee is distributing a more detailed, eight to nine-page survey next week, according to Prof.

Chris Abrams (FA), a member of the contract action team. The initial survey asked faculty to simply rank the issues they feel are most important in order of personal preference, according to a Dec. 18 Justice article.

“We have spent a lot of time over this past year having conversations with faculty and finding out what some of the issues are that we’re really interested in,” Abrams told the Justice in a phone interview. “This will be a much more formal way of gathering that information.” The information will most likely be analyzed by a committee who will start to form a negotiating strategy according

See UNION, 7 ☛

Book launch

Looking to pass

Website redesign

 André Levy's "Return to Casablanca" sparks dialogue about Jewish-Muslim relations in Morocco.

 The women's basketball team could not hold on in straight losses on the road.

 The Brandeis Web Team released a survey to gauge interest in two potential new layouts for the website.

FEATURES 9

For tips or info email editor@thejustice.org

Waltham, Mass.

Let your voice be heard!

Submit letters to the editor online at www.thejustice.org

INDEX

SPORTS 16 ARTS SPORTS

17 13

EDITORIAL FEATURES

10 9

OPINION POLICE LOG

10 2

News 3

COPYRIGHT 2015 FREE AT BRANDEIS.

2

TUESDAY, January 26, 2016

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THE JUSTICE

NEWS SENATE LOG

POLICE LOG

Senators approve internal money request for upcoming Black History Month ’DEIS Impact event The Senate convened for its weekly meeting on Sunday to welcome new senators and discuss two senate money requests.

The meeting began with a roll call to introduce the newly elected members of the Senate, including Massell Quad Senator Morris Nadjar ’19, Off Campus Senator Mitch Mankin ’16, Ziv Quad Senator Gwenyth Fraser ’17, Class of 2017 Senator Ryan Tracy, Class of 2016 Senator Stephanie Reifenberg and Class of 2018 Senator Cacildia Cain.

There were no clubs seeking recognition or charter, so Student Union Vice President David Herbstritt ’17 chose to go into the senate committee chair reports. Racial Minority Senator Bethlehem Seifu Belaineh ’16 discussed the Social Justice and Diversity Committee’s sponsoring of three ’DEIS Impact events, while Sustainability Committee Chair Matt Smetana ’17 discussed the committee’s plan to host a four-part video series on climate change in order to increase awareness on campus.

The Senate then discussed two senate money requests that had been previously addressed at last week’s meeting.

The first was a request by the Social Justice and Diversity Committee for $200 to sponsor one of the ’DEIS Impact events that Seifu previously mentioned.

The event will coincide with Black History Month in February and will focus on the intersection of food and black culture in the U.S. South, the Caribbean and around the world. “Eating food is a very community-building activity,” Seifu said, noting that it is an easy way to bring people together to talk about critical issues involving race and black culture.

The SMR passed with a vote of one abstention and everyone else in favor.

The second SMR, also discussed last week, was requested by the Services and Outreach Committee to sponsor a project called “Brandeis Bands Together” to sell wristbands and donate the proceeds to charitable causes.

Several senators raised questions of whether the Union can legally do this, as it is a rule that the money raised by student groups or clubs on campus must somehow come back into Brandeis rather than go to outside causes.

The Senate unanimously voted to table the SMR until next week so as to conduct more research on this issue before a vote.

Herbstritt then briefly explained the process for applying to be a committee chair before moving into senator reports.

Two new senators outlined their goals for the semester: Ziv Quad Senator Gwenyth Fraser ’17 said she wants to find some sort of landmark to tie the Ziv Quad residents together, just as Massell Quad has Massell Pond, and Off Campus Senator Mitch Mankin ’16 said he wants to continue the work of previous Off Campus Senator Sam Krystal ’17 to make sure off campus students have access to buildings.

Other initiatives brought up by senators included working with the Office of Prevention Services to create mandated bystander training for all club leaders, creating a more up-to-date list of all the University clubs, bringing together student unions from different colleges to create an inter-collegiate Union, getting more washers and dryers in laundry rooms on campus — as well as a coin machine in each laundry room — and creating a process by which people could be held accountable for excessive energy usage.

The Senate meeting concluded with executive officer reports, in which Executive Senator Paul Sindberg ’18 asked senate members to think of overarching goals for the semester.

Medical Emergency

Jan. 17—University Police received a call concerning a party in the Village Quad with a foot injury.

BEMCo staff members were notified, and the party was then treated on the scene.

University Police transported the party to Newton-Wellesley Hospital via police cruiser for further care.

Jan. 17—A party in Massell Quad reported they were experiencing double vision and requested the assistance of BEMCo. The party was treated on the scene by BEMCo staff with a signed refusal for further care.

Jan. 17—Police received a call requesting BEMCo care for a party in Ziv Quad who was suffering from stomach pains.

BEMCo was notified and

treated the party on the scene, additionally requesting the aid of Cataldo ambulance.

The party was then transported by Cataldo ambulance to Newton-Wellesley Hospital for further care.

Jan. 19—A party in East Quad called to report that their face was swelling.

BEMCo was paged and treated the party on the scene, and University Police then transported the party to NewtonWellesley Hospital for further care.

Jan. 24—Police received a report of a possibly intoxicated party in North Quad.

University Police responded and were able to locate the party in the second-floor women’s bathroom and requested BEMCo assistance.

The party was treated on the

scene by BEMCo staff and was then transported via Cataldo ambulance to Newton-Wellesley Hospital for further care.

Larceny

Jan. 19—A report stated a party in the Usdan Student Center had their ATM debit card stolen from them. University Police compiled a report on the incident.

Jan. 20—Police received a report of missing United States currency from the Village Quad. University Police compiled a report on the incident.

Jan. 23—A party in the Shapiro Campus Center reported that their wallet was missing.

University Police compiled a report on the incident.

Disturbance

Jan. 24—Police received a

A SHOW OF FORCE

nA cartoon featuring Democratic presidential candidates Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton also pictured a cake reading “Obama’s foreign policy,” which was too blurry to read due to a printing error (Jan. 19, page 11).

The Justice welcomes submissions for errors that warrant correction or clarification. Email editor@ thejustice.org.

Justice

the

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Harassment

Jan. 22—A caller from the Charles River Apartments called to report to the University Police that they had received several text messages from another party and that they wished to report the incident to the Department of Public Safety.

University Police compiled a report on the incident and advised the Department of Community Living staff about the incident.

— Compiled by Avi Gold.

BRIEF Waltham and Newton among school systems that received bomb threats

—Rachel Sharer

CORRECTIONS AND CLARIFICATIONS

complaint of loud music coming from one of the Charles River Apartments.

Police advised the residents to lower the volume, and the residents complied without incident.

MICHELLE BANAYAN/the Justice

A student shows a martial arts defense technique at the Aikido Club-sponsored martial arts demonstration on Sunday. The event included samples of martial arts like aikido, boxing and krav maga.

Students at Fitzgerald Elementary School in Waltham were forced to evacuate the building on Tuesday after a bomb threat was called in to school administrators. The threat was one of over a dozen sent to local public schools in the Boston area, according to boston. com. The Federal Bureau of Investigation has begun a formal investigation into the threats.

Waltham, Newton and Boston were among the cities targeted, in addition to Groton, Weymouth, Taunton, Arlington, Plymouth, Salisbury, Ayer, Tewksbury, Billerica, Swampscott, Kingston and Westford. Many of the threats were called in via phone, and some were made using an automated calling system, according to CBSBoston. State Police officials have not released the content of these messages as of press time.

Though no bombs were found at any of the threatened schools, the FBI is still working closely with state and local officials, including the Commonwealth Fusion Center, which focuses primarily on homeland security and emergency response.

“Even when they are low level incidents like this where we’re getting robocalls or continually seeing computerized threats, you can’t just dismiss them. You need to do something reasonable,” Director of the Massachusetts Association of School Superintendents Tom Scott said regarding the incidences, according to CBSBoston.

After the initial round of threats on Tuesday, additional threats were made against schools in Falmouth, Bourne, Mashpee, Plymouth, Weymouth, Arlington and Boston on Friday, though it is unclear whether these sets of threats were related. According to Massachusetts law, the penalty for anyone convicted of making bomb threats includes possible prison time up to 20 years, a fine of up to $50,000 or both. Additionally, those convicted of making bomb threats may also be held responsible for paying restitution for state and local resources used in investigating the threats.

—Abby Patkin

ANNOUNCEMENTS Desperately Seeking Animal Suffering

Beth Berkowitz from Barnard College will be delivering a presentation titled, “Desperately Seeking Animal Suffering: Perspectives from the Talmud on Our Moral Schizophrenia about (Other) Animals.”

This colloquium provides a critical forum for graduate students and faculty to present and discuss works-in-progress, thereby fostering an interdisciplinary intellectual community in all areas of modern Jewish studies.

Today from 12:20 to 2 p.m. in Lown 315.

Living with Difference

What habits of the mind and the heart do we need to develop to face the strangers who populate our lives? This lecture presents on an aspect of Rahel R. Wasserfall’s co-authored book “Living with Difference: How to Build Community in a Divided World.”

Today from 12:30 to 2 p.m. in the Epstein Liberman-Miller Lecture Hall.

International Holocaust Remembrance Day

Six members of the Women’s Studies Research Center’s Holocaust Research Study Group will present their views about the Holocaust, locating their ideas in relation to the history of the Holocaust through the creation of poetry, history, public art, film, photography and biography.

The presentation is the group’s first collective effort, the date having been chosen to coincide with International Holocaust Remembrance Day, proclaimed by the U.N. Tomorrow from 12:30 to 2 p.m. in the Epstein Liberman-Miller Lecture Hall.

Study Abroad Expo

Still trying to figure out exactly where you’d like to go abroad, or need a little bit of advice about filling out all of the applications? This is the perfect opportunity to meet with advisors from Brandeis or representatives from multiple Brandeisapproved programs and ask any questions

you might have.

Thursday from 11 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. in the Shapiro Campus Center Atrium.

Louis D. Brandeis 100 Brandeis University will present an exciting series of events in the winter and spring of 2016 to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the nomination and confirmation of Louis D. Brandeis to the United States Supreme Court.

Live streaming will be available at brandeis. edu/streaming.

Thursday from 5 to 7 p.m. in the Gosman Sports and Convocation Center.

Dive-In Movie: ‘Finding Nemo’

Come watch “Finding Nemo” on an inflatable screen! There will be fish cookie decorating, popcorn, “Darla’s Fish Tank” drink, an “Under the Sea” photo area, coloring books and sand-art.

Friday to Saturday from 9 p.m. to 12 a.m. in the Shapiro Campus Center Atrium.

THE JUSTICE

Administration

administered a survey to students to gauge reactions to a couple sample layouts for the redesigned website.

RACHEL SHARER JUSTICE EDITOR

As a first step in its efforts to redesign the University website, the Brandeis Web Team sent a feedback survey with potential new layouts to the student body on Jan. 15. The website is set to undergo several changes when the redesign begins in March.

The Web Team, which is composed of staff members from both the Office of Communications and Library and Technology Services, has partnered with mStoner, Inc., a web strategy and design firm that focuses on higher education and has worked with more than 300 colleges and schools, according to their website. mStoner Inc. will be working with the University to complete the redesign.

Audrey Griffin-Goode, the director of digital communications in the Office of Communications and a member of the Web Team, wrote in an email to the Justice that the two main goals of the redesign are to make the website mobile-friendly and accessible to those with disabilities.

“There have been a lot of changes in how websites are consumed since the current Brandeis website was designed,” Griffin-Goode wrote.

“More and more people view sites on their mobile devices, and our website is being redesigned to meet the demands of that growing trend,” she added.

The new templates will be built in the content management system Cascade Server, the CMS that the current website uses.

Some of the specific changes that will be made include a more modern design, larger fonts and photos, an improved search engine and the integration of more social media and multimedia on the site.

“We want the new website to reflect how dynamic the Brandeis

community is,” Griffin-Goode wrote, adding that the new content-focused approach will display the University’s “best qualities.”

Griffin-Goode also noted the importance of including opinions of the Brandeis community in design strategy.

On Jan. 15, the Web Team sent out a survey to the student body to gain input on possible redesign ideas.

The survey showed samples of redesigned webpages of the Brandeis website and asked a variety of questions, including which three words the viewer would use to describe the design and whether they thought it was easily navigable and engaging.

Students were also able to click on specific sections of the sample webpage to highlight which elements they liked and disliked.

According to the survey that was administered to students, the sample webpages shown incorporated “many features that were requested through the Brandeis web team’s survey of campus web editors” and were developed by a “nationally recognized strategy and design consultant.”

Additionally, Griffin-Goode noted that last June the web team conducted “a series of discovery sessions on campus with students, faculty and staff to solicit feedback” on potential new website designs. The official redesign project began in June 2015 and went through several stages of planning and production, including formation of strategy and creative production. The actual template implementation is set to begin in March and will continue throughout and after the spring semester.

According to the website for the Office of Communications, there are over 22,000 live web pages whose templates must be changed in the redesign process, but most pages will be completely migrated to the new template by the end of 2016, with the main pages launching in the late summer, according to Griffin-Goode.

The Brandeis website was first launched in 1997 and has gone through several previous redesigns.

TUESDAY, January 26, 2016

3

ILLUMINATING A MEMORY

University looks into new layouts for website redesign process ■ The Brandeis Web Team

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HEATHER SCHILLER/the Justice

LIGHTING LIVES: Students throw glow sticks to commemorate loved one during the Luminaria ceremony on Saturday night.

Annual event raises over $40,000 for cancer research

■ The Brandeis chapter of

Relay For Life held its annual 12 hour event on Saturday.

By abby patkin JUSTICE Editor

The Brandeis chapter of Relay For Life held its annual fundraising event in the Gosman Sports and Convocation Center on Saturday, raising over $40,000 for the American Cancer Society. The event ran from 5 p.m. on Saturday to 5 a.m. on Sunday and included performances from dance troupe KAOS Kids, a cappella group Rather Be Giraffes and comedy improv group False Advertising.

The event netted 54 fundraising teams and 638 participants, with 11 teams and 153 registering at the event, according to Talia Holtzman ’16, the chair of Relay’s publicity sub-committee. She noted that the event raised $40,409.54, more than half of the chapter’s goal of $70,000 for the entire year.

The chapter’s Relay For Life website, she added, will continue to accept donations until August. In an email to the Justice, Holtzman, who led the charge in raising awareness on cam-

pus for the event, added that her work was part of the larger event leadership team — ELT — which was in charge of planning and putting on the event.

She noted that this year’s event was particularly moving, writing, “This year, the ceremony was surprisingly emotional. [Interim University President] Lisa Lynch likened Relay For Life to battling cancer because of the importance of having a supportive community.”

Holtzman elaborated that the stories shared during the event’s “celebrate” ceremony — meant to allow survivors and loved ones to share their stories — proved inspirational and emotional to her. For the purposes of Relay, she added, “survivor” is defined as “anyone who has been diagnosed with cancer at any point in their life, whether they are still going through treatment or have been in complete remission for years.”

“The stories [shared during the ceremony] really highlighted the fact that cancer is a disease that does not discriminate,” Holtzman said. She added that she believes this year’s opening ceremony was one of the most wellattended. Another part of the evening

that proved particularly memorable, she added, was the Luminaria ceremony, during which participants crack glowsticks and put them in luminaria bags to commemorate loved ones.

She emphasized that the overarching theme of the event is one of support and love, which she said was demonstrated clearly during the Luminaria ceremony when “everywhere I turned I saw someone breaking down in tears being supported by friends. During our silent lap around the track and throughout the ceremony participants were holding each others’ hands, had their arms around each other, and were quite literally leaning on their friends for support.”

Reflecting on the aftermath of the event, Holtzman wrote, “We all know someone who has been affected by cancer. I hope that Relay For Life participants leave the event hating cancer just a little bit more, and wanting to do something more to make an impact in the fight against cancer. It could be anything from donating an extra $10 next year, to joining the ELT, to making a career out of it by becoming an oncologist or an American Cancer Society staff partner.”

STUDENT UNION

Ten Student Union positions filled in first round of voting, while Rosenthal Quad and Midyear Senator remain unfilled ■ The Student Union will

likely hold another election in the coming weeks to fill the last two seats.

By AVI GOLD JUSTICE editor

The Student Union filled 10 of the 12 open positions during the first round of Spring Elections over the weekend, leaving only the Rosenthal Quad Senator and Midyear Senator positions unfilled.

The election, which ran from midnight Friday to midnight Saturday, used the Union’s new definition of majority, according to the email sent from Union secretary Shuying Liu ’16 to the student body. “If ABSTAIN is composed of 50 [percent] or less of the voting body, it means the majority of voting students did support a candidate entering the of-

fice,” the email read.

Liu explained the reason for the new definition of majority in a Nov. 24 Justice article: “We re-looked at the constitution, and it says that abstain wins only if it wins a majority vote, which means that it is greater than 50 percent. We interpreted the constitution differently this time because we think it’s more fair to all candidates,” she continued. Liu explained what voting for abstain entails in her email to the student body announcing the elections.

“Keep in mind that by selecting the ABSTAIN option, you imply NO candidate is suitable for the position—whatever your reasons may be—and that by selecting abstain you affect the election results,” she wrote.

Morris Nadjar ’19 won the vacant seat for Massell Quad Senator, according to an analytics sheet attached to Liu’s announcement of the

election results. Nadjar received 32 of the 74 votes cast in the election, but under the new majority definition he was elected due to winning the majority of non-Abstain votes.

Additionally, Mitch Mankin ’16 won the Off Campus Senator position, tallying 62 percent of the 110 votes cast in the election. Cacildia Cain ’18 became the new Class of 2018 Senator, defeating Matthew Kowalyk ’18 in the race. Cain received 82 votes for 44 percent of the voting responses.

Ryan Tracy ’17 was elected Class of 2017 Senator, receiving 79 percent of the vote, while Gwenyth Fraser ’17 won the position of Ziv Quad Senator, tallying 41 of the 50 votes cast in the election. Stephanie Reifenberg ’16 became the new Class of 2016 Senator, receiving 70 percent of the 145 votes that were cast in the election.

The position of Midyear Senator

is currently unfilled after Vincent Lauffer ’19 received two votes as a write-in candidate. His two votes tied him with the Abstain option, a result that, according to the Union Constitution, sees the candidate declared the winner. The Union Constitution reads, “If there is a tie between a candidate and abstain, then the candidate will be declared the winner of the seat.

Liu clarified the election’s result in an email to the Justice, writing, “Lauffer actually won the midyear senator position after I discussed with the Judiciary board,” she wrote. “However, because he won by only two votes and by write-in, I will set up a meeting with him to talk about his duties and find if he wants to take the position.”

The position of Rosenthal Quad senator was also left unfilled even though Claudia Roldan ’18 won 30 of the 39 votes. “Although [Roldan]

won the Rosie senator position, she actually dropped out of the election,” Liu explained in an email to the Justice. “I didn’t know it until the result came out, so that position is still vacant.”

In accordance with the recent changes to Allocations Board, four new members were elected. Xini Xu ’19 and Xiaoran Wang ’18 were elected to two-semester seats on the board. Emma Russell ’19 was elected to the three-semester seat on the board, and Jaibei Wang ’18 was elected to the Racial Minority seat on the board.

Liu confirmed in an email to the Justice that the vacant positions will likely be open for re-election in the coming weeks but said no date has been finalized yet for the subsequent election.

—Hannah Wulkan contributed reporting.

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CHALLENGING THE STANDARD

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TUESDAY, January 26, 2016

5

BRIEF MBTA alters commuter rail line and considers fare hike

DAISY CHEN/the Justice

BREAKING THE BINARY: Zengin cited examples of trans individuals who challenged the gender binary set by the Turkish state.

Scholar speaks on issues of violent intimacies in Turkey

■ Dr. Asli Zengin argued

that state intrusions into individuals’ genders should be considered violent acts.

By Abby PATKIN JUSTICE EDITOR

When state power begins to dictate gender and sexual identity, that power may then be classified as a “violent intimacy,” argued Dr. Asli Zengin, the Allen-Berenson postdoctoral fellow in the Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies program in a lecture on Friday.

Zengin, who came to the University in 2015, has conducted years of research on sex and gender in Istanbul, and presented on how transgender individuals are treated in Turkey and how the government interacts with them.

In her lecture, she argued that the state exercises its power in an “intimate” way, becoming involved with individuals’ gender identity and sexuality to a degree that then becomes violent. These so-called “violent intimacies,” she elaborated, are especially evident in two aspects of trans life: the gender reassignment process and the death and burial process.

Zengin began her lecture by explaining that Turkey issues two different colored identification cards to its citizens: pink for women and blue for men. She spoke about her experiences interviewing and interacting with transgender women in Istanbul, and how, in one particular case, a postoperative trans woman described how a doctor told her to exercise her reconstructed vagina with a cylindrical tool, as the state examination she needed in order to get her pink card relied on whether her new vagina was more than 4 inches deep, or roughly the length needed to accommodate

a penis. “‘The state rapes us to make sure we’re female enough,’” Zengin remembered the woman telling her.

Such a practice is a “violent intimacy of the state,” Zengin argued.

Zengin also cited the famous case of Bülent Ersoy, one of the first well known trans women in Turkey. Ersoy, who got her start as a singer and performer in the 1970s, was shunned from the music scene after coming out as trans. Though she returned to Turkey as a postoperative woman, it took her years of lobbying to be legally recognized as a woman, Zengin recalled.

She added that the policy for legal gender transitions in Turkey was altered in 2002, when the new conservative government added hurdles to the process and made the requirements for obtaining a government ID card more difficult. Now, she explained, trans individuals must appear in court to obtain the new identification, and they must be unmarried, sterile and possessing a medical report stating that gender reassignment is medically necessary. After surgery, she reiterated, trans individuals must demonstrate to government officials that they possess a “proper” penis or vagina. This whole process — including the mandatory psychological evaluations needed to obtain a medical referral — can take well over two years, she added.

Zengin then discussed how Turkey’s treatment of transgender individuals fits into the government’s conservative approach to reproductive justice rights and women’s rights overall. The government, she said, can often limit how women obtain jobs and care for their families, and can also impact how LGBT individuals function in society. Gender reassignment surgery regulations, she added, base themselves on “what the trajectory for intimate life should be” according to their set of gender binary

ideals.

Though gender can often be ambiguous in reality, the Turkish government’s efforts to make gender unambiguous is finalized by physical intrusions into trans people’s bodies, which are then “made sexually legible and less ambiguous by the state,” Zengin argued.

In discussing the second half of her thesis — death and burial in trans circles — she then cited one instance where a trans woman suffered from a brain hemorrhage and ended up dying after a brief hospital stay. Zengin explained that her trans friends were the only ones to visit her in the hospital — save for one brief visit from her brother and sister — and that when it came time to wash and prepare the body for burial, her family refused to take part in the rituals.

This type of situation is not uncommon, Zengin noted, adding that in deaths where no will was left behind, biological families that had previously disowned their trans kin can then bury them in unmarked plots, even misidentifying their gender identity throughout the burial process. These incidences, she argued, are an example of how a “biological family can be a model of violent intimacy.”

Zengin ended her speech by arguing that the world at large needs to check Turkey’s exercise of power over sexual and gender identity, concluding, “We need to pay more attention to the role of the state as the mediator and authorizer of … forms of intimacies between trans people, their native communities and other social actors.”

The lecture, titled, “Violent Intimacies: Trans Embodiment, MedicoLegal World, and the State in Contemporary Turkey,” was held as part of a departmental colloquium for the Anthropology program and was also sponsored by Brandeis Anthropology Research Seminar.

Changes to the Fitchburg commuter rail line may add three new times the train will stop at Brandeis/Roberts station while taking away two old times, according to a new schedule proposed by the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority. The inbound line toward North Station in Boston will gain stops at 6:24 p.m. and 10:34 p.m. while losing the stop at 8:41 p.m. Meanwhile, the outbound line will gain a stop at 3:57 p.m. and will lose a stop at 9:19 a.m.

The proposed changes are set to go into effect on May 23, but the MBTA is holding a period of public input on the new schedules until Feb. 12. MBTA officials are holding town halls throughout the Greater Boston area for residents to air concerns and questions about the new train schedule.

The changes come after an earlier proposed schedule released in November was met with vocal backlash from the Greater Boston community. A Nov. 25 Boston Globe article details that commuters spoke out against the November timetables’ eliminating trains that are used heavily during rush hour, and that eleven state legislators

met with MBTA officials to advocate for revising the schedule changes. According to the Globe, the changes were first proposed to address “scheduling anomalies,” and the MBTA claimed the changes would reduce delays and improve service.

Vice President for Operations James Gray wrote to the University community on Friday, “For our many students, staff and faculty who rely on the commuter rail to get to campus, this new plan is a meaningful improvement on the first proposed changes. We are grateful that the M.B.T.A. officials listened to our concerns and took our comments into consideration.”

The MBTA is also proposing fare increases to balance its projected $242 million budget deficit next fiscal year, according to a Jan. 4 WBUR Boston report. The two proposals for these hikes would increase fares by averages of either 6.71 percent across the board or 9.77 percent. The MBTA is hosting one of several forums about the fare hikes on Feb. 4 at Bigelow Middle School in Newton, which is seven miles from campus.

—Max Moran

A RUN TO REMEMBER

HEATHER SCHILLER/the Justice

Students run a lap of Gosman Sports and Convocation Center to raise money for cancer research during the annual Relay For Life fundraiser on Saturday night.

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CLIMATE TALKS: Professors, administrators and a former student discuss the University's policy on divestment on Thursday.

DIVESTMENT: Scholars call for reevaluation of current policy summary of the Exploratory Committee’s 174-page report — which, Ballantine joked, “five people have probably read” — and the presentation given to the faculty last year. He pointed to the University’s existing investment policy, which states that the University’s portfolio managers should only avoid purchasing a corporation’s securities when the corporation's conduct “is found to be clearly and gravely offensive to the university community's sense of social justice,” as a starting point to understand the issues involved in divestment. This is a relatively high bar, Ballantine argued, and there are a number of questions the University must consider before taking action against a corporation. Specifically, Ballantine said, the University must ask itself about the “impact of [its] investments,” “look at alternative investments” and “look at the overall carbon footprint … of the University.”

“What [the University’s investment managers’] charge is, of course, is to make money,” Ballantine explained.

“The charge that they have is to make an above market return — an ‘alpha,’ we call it — and that then helps fund the University.” Ballantine explained that energy investment is one of the tools that investment managers use to reach that alpha, and that taking away this tool would create a constraint that could potentially have a considerable impact on the University’s investment returns.With the broader political and business angles of the issue covered, Ballantine moved on to the Brandeis divestment report’s recommendations. The report states that “Brandeis can divest its entire portfolio of the most polluting fossil fuel firms” and recommends that the University “pursue a more sustainable endowment as measured by comprehensive portfolio metrics.” Additionally, it suggests that “investment managers could track the risk and returns of its sustain-

able portfolio in comparison to more traditional investment options over extended periods of time” and calls for the University to “actively promote, measure, and encourage reducing the carbon footprint on campus.”

Ballantine concluded that the University must take action against climate change. “This is part of a political and investment perspective. … Business as usual is not a responsible option.”

From there, Olson continued the presentation, expressing a concern that the public — as well as investors — are deceived about the causes and impact of global warming. "There’s been deliberate efforts by the conservative elements in this company — including support from fossil fuel companies — to discombobulate Americans,” Olson said. “And they have succeeded.” In support of this claim, Olson cited a 2015 Yale survey reporting that only 56 percent of Americans say that global warming is happening and that only 56 percent of those who do believe in climate change believe it to be caused by human activities.

“Why,” Olson asked the audience, “are we so stupid? Why are Americans so uniquely, consistently confused among developed, wealthy, highly educated — presumably — nations?”

In answer to this, Olson referred to a paper by Robert J. Brulle, “The Creation of U.S. Climate Change CounterMovement Organizations.”

“It’s pretty clear that the CCCM organizations have really designed this propaganda machine that aims to support the conservatives’ advocacy of inaction,” Olson lamented. “Nearly a billion dollars per year is spent to maintain public confusion about the scientific understanding of the cause and urgency of climate change.”

This, Olson argued, is why divestment is necessary. "Divestment is about an obligation to counter the nefarious forces that have succeeded in perverting the dialogue,” Olson contended. “Brandeis … should lead. This country should lead. Instead, we are a

TUESDAY, January 26, 2016

7

CASTLE: Towers A and B to be left untouched

DEBATING DIVESTMENT

CONTINUED FROM 1

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disgrace.”

Olson then passed the floor to Tripathy, who began his presentation with a 1911 quotation from Justice Louis Brandeis: “There is no such thing, to my mind, as an innocent stockholder. … It is his business and his obligation to see that those who represent him carry out a policy which is consistent with public welfare.”

“What kind of an institution,” Tripathy asked, “Do we want Brandeis to be?” Of course, Tripathy acknowledged, “there are lots things that are valuable about an institution being able to run its day-to-day course — but … perhaps we need to re-evaluate.”

“The University must ultimately be guided by its social justice responsibility,” Tripathy said. In 2005, Students Taking Action Now: Darfur took divestment action against Sudan. In 1985 and 1986, students encouraged divestment from South Africa. In 2010, the Student Union created the Committee for Endowment Ethics and Responsibility.

For a recent undergraduate perspective on divestment, Abrams continued on to share his experience working on divestment. “Brandeis is ahead of a lot of other institutions in terms of responding to fossil fuel divestment.”

However, what drew Abrams to the issue was the distance the University still has left to go. “Every community around the world is going to be affected by climate change,” Abrams said. “[Divestment is] a chance for Brandeis to take a step forward in the world.” What the University has to do, Abrams claimed, is set its priorities. “Is that little bit of money worth the social costs of climate change?” he asked. Studies have shown that endowments that have divested haven’t actually had much of a greater financial risk, Abrams said, and “divestment represents … this very clear political statement.”

After Abrams concluded his presentation, Giumette opened the floor to questions.

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CONTINUED FROM 1 we're going to have that full of freshmen, so unless there's another category of housing that I come up with between now and then, it's going to squeeze out some upperclassmen housing too in order to be able to keep the commitment that we will make sure that all freshmen and sophomores have housing on campus.”

Gray explained that the decision for the new residence hall to accommodate 160 students was made to balance the affordability of the project with the necessity for more on-campus housing. He said the new residence was originally going to accommodate only 120 students to match the current space of the Castle. Gray also said that the current plan is to build dormitorystyle residence halls up to modern standards, including air conditioning and elevators, though he said plans are still in their early stages.

Lynch’s email also said the new building will be energy efficient, and Gray explained that energy efficiency will be a major part in the

planning of the building. “We'll be designing the building to meet the [Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design] Gold standard, at minimum.

The University is committed to building any new buildings with LEED Gold or better standards, and we'll be meeting or exceeding that with this project,” he said. “When the time comes, we will also be considering whether the building is well-suited for a solar array of panels on the roof—I don't have an answer to that yet, but I definitely want to study it before the building goes up.”

The LEED certification system is a rating system that analyzes various aspects of building design and construction, according to the LEED section of the United States Green Building Council.

Gray said the plan may not affect how many students are admitted to the 2020 midyear class, though he stressed that much may change as planning moves forward.

—Max Moran contributed reporting

UNION: Science faculty desired for union core CONTINUED FROM 1 to Abrams.

Todd told the Justice in an email that some of the top priority issues faculty identified in the preliminary survey were salaries, job security and inclusion in curriculum development and University governance. Many of these are similar to issues identified by an ad hoc committee that investigated contract faculty in 2005, which issued a report stating contract faculty “are concerned not only with salary and benefits, but with academic freedom, job security, and opportunities for professional advancement.”

Additionally, faculty are calling for clearer standards as to how health insurance is distributed among adjunct faculty. While some departments and programs offer health insurance to adjuncts teaching two or more classes, this standard is not applied across the board, according to Todd. Part of the information SEIU is requesting from the University relates to how departments and programs determine health insurance policy.

The University’s website states that employees working half-time or more for at least one semester are eligible for the University’s benefits program “unless otherwise stated.” Executive Director for Integrated Media Bill Schaller wrote to the Justice in an email that the University's policy is “consistent” but that the number of courses necessary to reach half-time status varies among departments.

The outreach committee, another sub-committee of the contract action team, is responsible for getting more of the roughly 200 faculty represented by the union actively involved in its work. “I can say that at the last contract action team meeting, we had at least 10 people, so it’s probably 15 in total” who are heavily involved in the contract action team at present, Todd told the Justice. “What we aspire to is for really active members to be about a one to 10 ratio, so at least one person representing 10 members who is quite active.”

Currently, the contract action team includes representatives from the English, Anthropology, History and Fine Arts departments, as well as the Heller School for Social Policy and

Management and the Rabb School of Continuing Studies. “We are now going to more actively outreach to the sciences and to the International Business School, since we would really like to have some representation on our contract action team from those places,” Todd said. To increase interest, the outreach committee is organizing several forums for bargaining unit members to discuss their concerns. While Abrams said that the contract action team has not yet determined whether these will be open to the public, Todd said that usually when unions form and host these types of forums, they are closed so that union members can feel comfortable discussing private concerns.

She is a member of the faculty-staff union at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. The information SEIU is requesting from the University, Abrams said, includes “name, role, title at the University, how long faculty members have worked at the University, what their official terms of their contracts are, in some cases — as I understand it, it might include requesting details of their job description, to really try to develop a very accurate picture of how the university employs faculty right now.”

Union requests for information are a standard part of labor negotiations and are often used so that unions can gather information to investigate grievances brought by bargaining unit members. In most cases, the National Labor Relations Board requires employers to comply with requests for information. Jason Stephany, a spokesman for SEIU Local 509, wrote to the Justice in an email that "Brandeis faculty look forward to receiving a response from university administrators in the coming weeks, as this data will help to inform colleagues and establish bargaining priorities."

Schaller wrote in his email that “The union sent an extensive list of information they requested. We are reviewing the requests and will do our best to respond in a timely manner.” He added that the University has been in contact with SEIU Local 509 since the faculty joined the union but that negotiations have not yet started.

8

features

TUESDAY, January 26, 2016 ● THE JUSTICE

just

VERBATIM | C.S. LEWIS You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.

ON THIS DAY…

FUN FACT

In 1837, Michigan became the 26th state to join the United States.

An earthquake once caused the Mississippi River to flow backwards.

WORLD TRAVELER: David Benger ’14 spent his spring semester of 2013 in the Netherlands through the Brandeis in the Hague program, where he interned for the International Criminal Court.

PHOTOS COURTESY OF DAVID BENGER

The Netherlands and beyond David Benger ’14 named in inaugural cohort of Schwarzman Scholars

By JAIME KAISER JUSTICE EDITOR

Like many Brandeis students, David Benger ’14 was a first-year with diverse interests and no intention of settling on one life path — at least not before exploring where each of his passions might lead. As a first-year he took classes in the Near Eastern and Judaic Studies department and spent the summer learning Yiddish.

The year after, he took up a minor in Theater Arts, involving himself in productions on and off campus. He polished his Russian to fluency with a major in Russian Studies, took on a second major in Politics and although he was enjoying his academic experience, a career path had not clicked.

It was only when Benger had the opportunity to study abroad in the Netherlands through the Brandeis In The Hague program that he became inspired to pursue a career in International Law. This month, the next milestone in Benger’s journey toward an international relations career came when he was named a Schwarzman Scholar, part of a brand new program aimed at “preparing a generation of global leaders” and “[expanding] students’ knowledge of China while introducing them to a broader global network,” according to the scholarship’s website. Scholars leave the program with a master’s degree in one of three tracks — either Public Policy, International Affairs or Economics and Business.

Benger is in the International Relations track and is part of the program’s inaugural cohort. The program was created recently by Stephen A. Schwarzman, a philanthropist who has made sizable contributions to public entities such as the New York Public Library and is the CEO of the Blackstone Group, an equity and investment firm. Thousands of applicants applied, but only 100 were ultimately selected to participate in the first year of the program.

All their courses will be conducted in English, but only 45 percent of those selected are from the United States. Another 20 percent are from China, and the remaining 35 percent are from other countries. A special building named Schwarzman College has been built on the Tsinghua campus for the scholars, where the stu-

dents will take classes together and form close social networks.

“I’m most excited to meet fascinating, interesting people from all over the world. I feel like we’re in an incubator for a full year of just making up ways to make the world a better place,” Benger said in an interview with the Justice.

In explaining his interest in international relations, Benger recalled the Hague semester that sparked his interest. The program is a onesemester opportunity for a group of Brandeis students to gain a global perspective on international criminal law issues at one of the international centers for human rights.

During his semester, he also got a job as the legal intern for the defense team of Jean Pierre Bemba, a politician from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, who was indicted for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

He described Prof. Richard Gaskins (LGLS) as well as his other Hague instructors as “professional thinkers before they became lawyers,” since many had advanced degrees in the humanities before getting their law degrees.

He realized that for him, international law “would never get boring … there would always be questions to explore, so that’s what kind of stoked my interest from the beginning.”

Benger’s past international experience has been decisively European, but the program’s location in China was particularly important and appealing to him, even though his personal ties to the country are not as strong as many of the other candidates. “Most of the people who apply have some background in China and I don’t. I don’t have any background in Chinese language, I’m not of Chinese descent,” he said.

Nevertheless, it wasn’t hard for him to come up with an answer to the question, “Why China?” “I’ve been thinking about this for a while, the peculiar position China is in,” he said. “If we could, we being people who care about China, international justice and law, could convince China that it could really be in its interest to pursue prosecution against war criminals — that could make a huge difference in the potential future of the [international] court,” he added.

Benger forged ahead with his application despite his lack of exposure

to Chinese culture. He was enthused by the prospect of participating in the program but simultaneously was “not expecting to hear anything back,” he admitted.

Although Benger could have applied to the program without involving Brandeis, he decided to call on Meredith Monaghan, the director of academic fellowships in Academic Services, who had helped him apply for scholarships in the past.

Among other application assistance, she arranged a mock interview with a panel of Brandeis professors that included Monaghan, Prof. Daniel Breen (LGLS), Dr. Leigh Swigart (Ethics Center) and Professor Kristen Lucken (IGS).

The application process was intense. It involved a video, three essays and a short statement. When Benger was declared a semifinalist, he attended a day-long interview process at the Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York City that included a teambuilding exercise with legos, a group lunch and individual interviews.

Although the wait for a letter of acceptance is over, the challenges are only beginning. One of the toughest parts of the program for Benger will be the rigor of the academic schedule, which affords only a one-week break for the Chinese New Year.

Currently, Benger is an Investigative Analyst at the New York County District Attorney’s Office. During his time at Brandeis, he was a highly involved member of the community, serving as president of the Brandeis Players Theater Club and co-captain of the Ice Hockey Club while balancing multiple independent research projects with the support of the Schiff Undergraduate Fellows Program, the Provost’s Undergraduate Research Fund and the Research Circle on Democracy and Pluralism.

“How do we make people who don’t care … to care and invest money and time and manpower into putting war criminals in jail?” he asked while trying to articulate why he is passionate about International Relations. As a Schwartzman scholar, he hopes to be immersed in a community of peers as interested in these questions as he is.

Editor’s note: David Benger ’14 was a staff writer for the features section of the Justice from 2010 to 2011.

PLAYING AROUND: Benger played Albert Einstein, one of two leads in the spring 2011 Brandeis Players production of “Picasso at the Lap in Agile” by Steve Martin.

PROUD FAMILY: Benger (center) poses for a picture with his sister, Melanie (left), and his grandfather (right) at his college graduation ceremony in May 2014.

THE JUSTICE

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TUESDAY, January 26, 2016

PEN IN HAND: After the book launch, author André Levy signed copies of “Return to Casablanca.”

BRIANNA MAJSIAK/the Justice

Reaching across cultures Visiting scholar André Levy launches “Return to Casablanca”

By LAUREN PAGAN JUSTICE CONTRIBUTING WRITER

According to Moroccan-born Israeli anthropologist and author André Levy, “In my eyes, anthropology, more than any other discipline in the social sciences, aspires to be present in life itself, in order to make sense of it and to give it meaning. It attempts to understand human action from an immediate closeness of which there is no comparison in the social sciences.”

This quote is taken from the beginning of Levy’s new book “Return to Casablanca: Jews, Muslims and an Israeli Anthropologist” and encases the methodology of anthropology according to Levy.

Levy, a visiting scholar for the 2015 to 2016 school year at the Schusterman Center for Israel Studies, is a senior lecturer in the department of Sociology and Anthropology at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. He received his doctorate in Anthropology from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and has focused his research on the decreasing Jewish presence in modern Casablanca. His anthropological fieldwork focuses on Jewish-Muslim relationships in Morocco.

A field study itself, Levy’s recent book “Return to Casablanca” authentically captures the Moroccan-Jewish way of life among their Muslim neighbors.

Combining his skills as an anthropologist and his background as a Moroccan, Levy’s “Return to Casablanca” blends ethnographic research with the nostalgia of a man returning home.

On Wednesday afternoon, the Schusterman Center for Israel

Studies hosted an event to feature the launch of Levy’s book. David Ellenson, director of the Schusterman Center for Israel Studies and visiting professor in the Department of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies, introduced the event’s speakers, Roy Mittelman, director of the Jewish Studies program at City College of New York, and Levy himself.

A longtime friend of Levy’s, with expertise in Jewish communities, Mittelman introduced “Return to Casablanca” as a premier work in its field and presented his favorite elements of the book as an anthropologist. He focused on the theme of nostalgia and the idea of the “Other,” drawing from his own time in Morocco performing photo-ethnographic fieldwork. Mittelman explained that the book’s encounter with the “Other” was similar to his own personal encounters. He further explained how difficult it is to try to break through the circle from the outside.

In a follow-up interview with the Justice, Mittelman shared more regarding his own fieldwork and time spent in Morocco. While Levy’s connection to Morocco is more straightforward, Mittelman’s love for the country is equally as strong.

“What drew me to Morocco originally was seeing a way of being Jewish that was very different than what I had seen before.

It was a form of living a life that seems so a part of — not compartmentalized — the way I am used to celebrating my Jewish identity here in the states. It seemed to be so inexorably related to daily life that I thought it was very, very beautiful,” said Mittelman.

Mittelman’s own photo-ethno-

graphic fieldwork in Morocco stands in conversation with Levy’s. “I am really, really, intensely interested in how Jews and Muslims get along with each other, how they look at each other in a mostly Muslim environment.

I think it’s really fascinating to look at that relationship, so I try to spend some time trying to tease out how Muslims see Jews and how Jews see Muslims,” Mittelman explained.

The crowd that gathered for Levy’s book launch spoke languages from Hebrew to Arabic to English, all laughing among themselves as jokes were tossed around the room, drawing from the humor of each language.

Levy’s work combines a familiarity with all of these and, in doing so, strikes a chord with not only his fellow anthropologists but also his readers.

Visibly humbled by his reception by the audience and his peers, Levy took to the podium to impart one last story. According to Levy, his book is a personal voyage of sorts, one in constant motion, and, just as his voyage has no clear end itself, his written work similarly lacks conclusion. That being said, Levy shared with his audience what would have been the conclusion to “Return to Casablanca.” Today, Levy wears a ring given to him by his mother following his late father’s passing, but in his youth, he was incapable of wearing it, as it riddled him with feelings of claustrophobia. When Levy was five years old, he and his family moved from Morocco to Israel, where Levy’s father struggled immensely to find work and stability. During his postdoctoral research at Harvard University, Levy once more experienced a

time of uncertainty, until his hire at Ben-Gurion University in BeerSheva, Israel, for which his family relocated once more. This final move closed this transient cycle for Levy and is what allows him to wear his father’s ring with pride.

Concluding on that personal note, Levy thanked his audience, who rose and applauded the author.

Copies of “Return to Casablanca” were made freely available to all those in attendance, and Levy signed copies after the event.

“Return to Casablanca” is a highly personal work for Levy, as made evident by his brief discussion of his personal history.

In an interview with the Justice, Levy further explained his motivations for pursuing fieldwork in Morocco. “The fact that I was born there, [and] left early — I was eager to confirm the memories that I wasn’t sure if they were at all true or not — if they were just the imagination of a five year old kid or whether they were concrete and real memories — this on the one hand. On the other hand, it was the intellectual interest that it so happened that the most important development in anthropology took place in Morocco under the influence of one of the greatest anthropologists of the 20th century, Clifford Geertz.”

After meeting Geertz, Levy was inspired to try to understand Morocco in different ways. “He [Geertz] was, kind of, a complete stranger to Moroccan society, while I was a stranger in a way, because most of my life I was out of Morocco. But on the other hand, even when I was out of Morocco, I grew up in a neighborhood that was composed of Moroccan immigrants to Israel. I had this ongoing complicated relationship with

Morocco which made me a sort of insider, but not really, and I wanted to compare it to Clifford Geertz, Paul Rabinow [and] Kevin Dwyer — all of these important anthropologists that did their fieldwork in Morocco between the 1960s and the 1980s,” Levy explained.

According to Levy, it took a year and a half to physically write the book and 15 to 20 years to conduct his research and anthropological fieldwork.

As a quasi-outsider, Levy possesses a unique perspective regarding the Moroccan-Jewish experience, and given such, he recognizes the subjectivity of his fieldwork outright in the title of his book “Return to Casablanca: Jews, Muslims, and an Israeli Anthropologist.” When he was asked if the results of his fieldwork would have differed had he approached his research from the Muslim-Arabic perspective, Levy shared his wisdom on authenticity versus objectivity.

“Knowledge is positioningdependent. That is, knowledge is not objectively free-floating in the air. Knowledge is mediated by the person who perceives it, and the positioning of the person, therefore, will influence what kind of information, what kind of understanding you have,” Levy said.

“It’s better to do a work that positions yourself in your product so that people understand why you understand things in this way, and therefore, that is why I am involved in the book. I am imbricated in the text, and people can understand me understanding other people,” he added.

— Brianna Majsiak contributed reporting.

RED FLAGS: Levy conducted research and fieldwork in Morocco for 15 to 20 years before writing “Return to Casablanca.”

BRIANNA MAJSIAK/the Justice

PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY BRIANNA MAJSIAK

FRIENDS IN THE FIELD: Mittelman (left) came from Manhattan to speak at Levy’s (right) book launch on Wednesday in the Mandel Reading Room.

9

10 TUESDAY, January 26, 2016 ● THE JUSTICE

the

Justice Established 1949

Brandeis University

Max Moran, Editor in Chief Avi Gold, Managing Editor Carmi Rothberg and Hannah Wulkan, Deputy Editors Noah Hessdorf, Rebecca Lantner, Catherine Rosch, Jaime Kaiser, Grace Kwon and Rachel Sharer, Associate Editors Abby Patkin, News Editor, Brianna Majsiak, Features Editor Jessica Goldstein, Forum Editor, Jerry Miller, Acting Sports Editor Jaime Gropper, Arts Editor Michelle Banayan and Mihir Khanna, Photography Editors Emily Wishingrad, Online Editor Sabrina Sung, Acting Copy Editor Talia Zapinsky, Advertising Editor

EDITORIALS

Commend University decision on Usen Castle On Monday, Interim President Lisa Lynch emailed the student body to announce that, beginning in spring 2017, students will no longer be able to live in Usen Castle and that every part of the iconic building beside A and B towers will be torn down over the summer of 2017. New dorms, with air conditioning and expanded bedding, will replace the aged Castle. Demolishing one of the most iconic parts of the Brandeis campus is obviously a painful decision for everyone involved; the Castle was historically recognized by the National Register of Historic Places in 1979 and is beloved by students, alumni and visitors. However, this board agrees with the decision to take down the Castle.

While it is the most charming piece of architecture on campus and a unique sight that attracts prospective students to the University, the Castle is simply no longer a viable space for most any function, and particularly not for its current status as a dormitory.

According to a note on the Brandeis Alumni and Friends website from Jim Gray — vice president for campus operations, shared with alums on Sept. 5, 2015 — the Castle is the oldest dormitory on campus.

In a Dec. 9, 2014 article, Gray told the Justice that a lack of renovations could possibly be a threat to student safety, especially from falling objects during extreme weather, and that the structure’s infrastructure needed to be investigated. Although in a Feb. 9, 2015 article, Gray said that the building could still be used as housing for the 2015-2016 school year, it seems that these well-founded concerns about both student safety and the structural integrity of the Castle have been taken to heart.

Justice articles from February 2010 and 2011 cite multiple reports of leaking roofs, leading to the destruction of some residents’ possessions and extensive water damage. Additionally, the February 2010 article stated that heavy rain contributed to the collapse of a roof, forcing a student to relocate to Hassenfeld Hall in East Quad. It is far better to make sure students have a safe place to live raher than maintain a status quo that is potentially dangerous and literally falling apart.

Clearly, the Castle has presented safety concerns for the last several school years, and anecdotal evidence points to ongoing issues long before then. While the University has done everything it could to make the Castle viable for students, repair work simply can’t undo the structural issues in the Castle’s construction itself, many of which are the results of past renovations that had each attempted to preserve the deteriorating building for just a few more years.

The fact is that bringing down the Castle is a choice that has been a long time coming for the University; yet fond feelings and alumni memories —and a plurality of marketing material — have kept the inevitable formal conversation about the Castle’s sustainability and future mainly behind closed doors, as prospective students continue to be wowed by a building that few sophomores actually desire to live in once they are on campus. The hesitance around this conversation represents iconography and marketing material taking precedence to acknowledging hard realities. This board believes the University should have begun this public conversation long ago, before the situation became

Maintain open dialogue so dire. Deciding to tear down a major landmark is a difficult decision with many factors, such as legitimate concern about cost and the added concern of sufficient student housing in the interim period, but the aesthetic of the Castle should not serve as a legitimate cause for the University’s hesitation to act on the issue.

If the University had been more proactive and open, community members dedicated to the preservation at the Castle might have been part of the conversation earlier, and they may not have felt blindsided by the University’s move. Gray told the Justice in a Jan. 25 interview that the cost of this plan will be 37 million dollars, while renovating would cost many multiples of that and would not be sustainable in the longterm.

There are many people who will probably be upset about this decision, especially alumni who feel nostalgic about the Castle. However, nostalgia cannot be the reason why students do not have adequate housing, and it should not stand in the way of making an important call. Many of the most vocal defenders of preserving the Castle in University discourse thus far have been online commenters, many of whom no longer live on campus and do not have constant reminders of the Castle’s decayed state.

The safety of students now and increased on-campus accommodation of students in the future sadly must outweigh the fond memories of students past. Further, preserving A and B towers maintains many of the most iconic locations of the Castle, such as Cholmondeley’s Coffee House, which should serve to soften the blow and maintain the traditions associated with the Castle.

Allowing a level-headed, cost-effective decision that any business which maintains property would make to impact one’s perception of the University as a whole is irrational and prioritizes one’s own rosey memories above the realities of the current situation.

Following this decision, this board calls on the University to be transparent about where students will reside while new dorms are being built as well as to ensure the community is informed about the new building replacing Usen Castle, including construction costs and level of environmental efficiency.

According to Gray in an interview with the Justice, specifics on the new piece of architecture have not yet been finalized, so we hope that Gray will provide the community with regular reports as more information is set in stone. The board sees this difficult decision as a positive. This is a rare opportunity to add more state-of-the art housing to a central location on campus as the University faces a large housing shortage.

The efforts of the University to address this longstanding issue provide a step in the right direction. While the Castle holds a place in the hearts of many in the Brandeis community, this alternative is both a way of saving an important aspect of the Castle, ensuring student housing and prioritizing student safety. This board encourages the University to remain transparent in its endeavors while maintaining an important element of the Brandeis campus and its history.

GRACE KWON/the Justice

Views the News on

Human rights organization Amnesty International recently released a report tracing cobalt, an essential element in the production of lithium-ion batteries, back to mines in the Democratic Republic of Congo that practice child labor. According to UNICEF estimates, around 40,000 children work in mines across southern DRC. During the course of its research, Amnesty discovered 16 multinational corporations listed as customers of Huayou Cobalt, which has been known to utilize child labor. Among those multinationals are Apple, Sony and Samsung, all three of which claim to have a zero-tolerance policy in regards to child labor. What actions, if any, should these multinationals take in response to Amnesty’s findings, and how should consumers react?

Prof. Alain Lempereur (HS) Siemens CEO in China, John Rabe, endorsed the responsibility to protect the poorest of the poor in Nanking when he created an International Safety Zone in 1937: “Anyone who has ever sat in a dugout and held a trembling Chinese child in each hand through the long hours of an air raid can understand.” Though he was a foreigner, Rabe felt responsible for his Chinese employees and their families, and helped save 250,000 lives.

More than ever, today CEOs need to make Corporate Social Responsibility their priority and fight child labor. The mining industry, especially in the DR Congo, must prove most vigilant. In Confucian wisdom, Zengzi, said: “Every day I examine myself once and again: Have I tried my utmost to help others?” When abuses are committed, everyone in the supply chain, from the DRC to us as mobile phone users, via all corporations, should become more responsible.

Alain Lempereur is the Alan B. Slifka Professor and Director of the Graduate Program in Coexistence and Conflict at the Heller School for Social Policy and Management.

Prof. Detlev H. Suderow (IBS)

A zero-tolerance policy for child labor is not worth the paper it is written on unless there are economic consequences. In the consumer products industries the customer is “king” but also bears the responsibility of being an ethical buyer and consumer. Don’t buy anything you feel was produced in a manner that does not match your personal values or beliefs. If you buy the “cheapest” product while knowing it was probably produced by child labor in impoverished countries, you are part of the problem. If that “cool” new shirt you just bought was produced in Vietnam, it may have been produced by underpaid labor. Nike learned years ago to pay attention to child labor abuse when consumers boycotted their products for their failure to monitor child labor practices in Bangladesh. Don’t ask what other people should do, ask what you can do to create sustainable change in the corporate world supply chain.

Detlev H. Suderow (IBS) is a senior lecturer in the Brandeis International Business School.

Vice Provost John Unsworth Well, it’s complicated, as all the conflict mineral issues are. It’s a livelihood for people who don’t have a lot of alternatives. That’s why STAND and other organizations advocating on these issues don’t recommend boycotts. There are alternate possibilities (Canada is probably now going to gear up their cobalt mining following this reporting), but will that be a completely good thing? The DRC cobalt gets into a supply chain like Apple’s indirectly, by way of China in many cases, so Apple isn’t a direct actor in this case, but they have been able to change practices in their Chinese suppliers in the past, so perhaps they will be able to do so this time as well. Unfortunately, the best answers here are not immediate ones: resolve conflicts, build civil societies, eradicate corruption, reduce the alienation of value from the people who initially create it. But really, those are the things to work on if you want to make the world a better place. Or, in a more succinct formulation, if you want peace, work for justice.

University Librarian, Vice Provost and Chief Information Officer John Unsworth worked with STAND to develop a review policy on conflict minerals and electronics from the DRC.

Divanna Eckels ’18 Hopefully, Amnesty International’s findings will lead these corporations to actually adhere to the standards that they say they follow. Companies have a responsibility to, at the very least, be true to the promises they make to consumers. It is clear that these corporations have little to no actual commitment to labor justice and human rights but instead just claimed to have a zero-tolerance child labor policy in order to appeal to their consumers’ sentiments. Upon hearing about Amnesty’s findings, I think consumers should stop perpetuating these humans rights violations by continuing the use of products from Apple, Sony, and Samsung. Ultimately, though the majority of consumers may say that they oppose child labor on paper, I do not think the majority of consumers would be willing to change their lifestyles by not using Apple, Sony or Samsung products. This demonstrates the apathy of corporations to conduct clean business (which, in my opinion, is not actually possible) and an equally apathetic consumer base. Capitalism and labor justice cannot coexist. I am glad that organizations like Amnesty International are keeping corporations accountable for what they say.

Divanna Eckels is a member of the Brandeis Labor Coalition.

THE JUSTICE

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TUESDAY, January 26, 2016

Re-evaluate United States’ response to Syrian refugees

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By BEN FESHBACH JUSTICE STAFF WRITER

In the United States and Western Europe, Germany’s welcoming of Middle Eastern and North African refugees has come under fire in recent weeks following an incident on New Year’s Eve in Cologne, Germany. Hundreds of young men reportedly sexually harassed and assaulted young women on the streets of Cologne. Conservative pundits in the U.S., many of whom already opposed the Obama administration’s decision to admit any refugees at all, pounced on this attack as vindication of their xenophobic prophecies.

But this is completely blown out of proportion: according to a recent Bloomberg View article, “This year, Germany will probably take in more Syrians than the U.S. refugee total, even though it has a population one-quarter the size.”

While many in the U.S. and Europe have been outright xenophobic in their attitudes towards refugees, a legitimate conservative argument against admitting large numbers of refugees into the U.S. does exist. One of the best forms of this argument appears in Ross Douthat’s Jan. 9 New York Times column: “For decades conservatives on both sides of the Atlantic have warned that Europe’s generous immigration policies, often pursued in defiance of ordinary Europeans’ wishes, threaten to destabilize the continent ... The issue isn’t just that immigrants are arriving in the hundreds of thousands rather than the tens of thousands. It’s that a huge proportion of them are teenage and twenty-something men.”

The notion here is that although our better angels — as Abraham Lincoln put it in his inaugural address — may tell us to value compassion over caution, assimilation does not happen overnight, and given the massive number of displaced persons across the Mediterranean region (including, according to UNHCR, 4.6 million people from Syria alone), it’s worth taking a step back before attempting to assimilate enormous subsets of entire nations.

In last week’s edition of the Justice, contributing writer Andrew Jacobson advanced another form of this argument: “Until America can be absolutely certain that refugees’ intentions are benign, allowing them U.S. entry would be imprudent and misguided.”

Perhaps the most glaring problem with Jacobson’s article — and indeed with the entire line of reasoning behind arguments like this —is the assumption that compassion and caution are somehow mutually exclusive. In conflating the “precedent” of the “European rape epidemic” with U.S. refugee policy, as Jacobson’s article puts it, advocates of this attitude conveniently leave out how incredibly stringent U.S. refugee policy ac-

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tually is. According to a Nov. 17, 2015 article in TIME Magazine, only half of all applicants pass the screening process, which takes almost two years.

Each individual seeking asylum in the U.S. must first obtain a reference from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, see his or her case file reviewed by no less than nine U.S. government agencies and go through a “terrorist screening process”; of all the ways in which both benevolent and malevolent individuals can enter the U.S., the refugee process is the most stringent.

Jacobson calls these non-Western values “baggage.” The same thing has been said of virtually every immigrant and refugee group entering the United States since July 4, 1776, and this notion has been disabused by every faith and folk who have come to America and made this melting pot their home.

We learn from Jacobson that “it is a shame that the safety of Europe’s women is being sacrificed on the altar of humanitarianism and political correctness”; he supports this assertion by telling us that under Sharia law, men have more power than women and that some Muslim countries practice female genital mutilation, or FGM, and that therefore the ideals to which a “group of refugees are accustomed are incompatible with Western norms and values.”

There are many, many problems with linking these generalizations to U.S. refugee policy.

First, although the treatment of women in many Muslim-majority countries is quite awful, we

still accept both male and female migrants from all sorts of other countries with bad records on women’s rights, including many countries in South and Southeast Asia where human trafficking remains an enormous problem. Second, the Arab Spring has challenged traditional foundations of power across the Middle East, including between men and women; the New York Times editorial board asserts in a November 2012 article that “in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Yemen and Syria, [women] have been on the front lines of revolution….these nations will not succeed unless women are fully incorporated into political and economic life.”

Third, many Kurdish women, according to a March 2015 CNN article, are on the front lines of fighting the Islamic State, fighting against what so many refugees are fleeing from. Fourth, although FGM is absolutely atrocious, UNICEF and other reputable sources on the subject agree that the practice is most preponderant in the Sahel region of Africa, which isn’t actually where most refugees are coming from. But this doesn’t even matter, as the Arab Spring teaches us that the traditional practices of Muslim-majority countries are by no means representative of Islam as a whole.

Look to Indonesia, the country with the world’s largest Muslim population. Indonesia may have seen some setbacks in women’s rights since its last election, but former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton put it fairly well when she said in 2009 that “if you want to know whether Islam, democracy, modernity and women’s rights

can co-exist, go to Indonesia.”

But not only that, given that current U.S. refugee policy prioritizes the elderly, women and children (around three-fourths of the refugees admitted, according to TIME, are children or over age 60), I’m not sure how hiding behind “concern for women” squares with what these refugees are fleeing from: a barbaric caliphate calling itself an “Islamic State” which keeps sex slaves, regularly gang-rapes women and young girls, and commits other atrocities too nauseating to even repeat on paper. If you are so inclined to check out these reports yourself, a Dec. 29, 2015 Reuters article discusses them in some depth.

A concern for our own security is real. An evaluation of Germany’s own assimilation strategies is justified.

A discussion on what the U.S. can do to actively defeat ISIS is ongoing. Indeed we could do even more to advance this discussion if Congress were to give President Obama an Authorization for the Use of Military Force. This discussion is imperative because, although our generosity and humanity is imperative, the long-term solution to this crisis lies in the defeat of ISIL and stabilization of the region.

But at no point does fear of the “other” mean that the other is actually fearsome. This is not the first time Americans have expressed fear of refugees — nor will it be the last. But our better angels are our smarter angels, too: In overcoming our fear of strangers from a strange land, we grow stronger as a people and strengthen our national security in the process.

Daniel Holtzclaw case highlights need for feminist leaders Catherine

ROSCH Cynical Idealist

On Dec. 10, 2015, Daniel Holtzclaw, a police officer in Oklahoma City, was found guilty on 18 of 36 charges of rape, sexual assault, stalking and oral sodomy. The jury recommended 263 years in prison to be served concurrently and on Jan. 21, he was sentenced to that exact term. His legal team has said they would appeal the decision. Holtzclaw assaulted at least 13 women from December 2013 through June 2014. All of these women were black, and the majority of them were either low-income women or had minor criminal records. The youngest victim was only 17 years old. According to a number of the victims, Holtzclaw operated under two specific modi operandi: He would either assault women after he had them in custody for an active warrant, or he would threaten to arrest them unless they had sex with him. After all, nobody would believe a lowincome black woman who had a criminal history if they said a police officer had sexually assaulted or even raped them.

Holtzclaw “messed up,” according to an Oklahoma City prosecutor quoted in a Sept. 5 2014 Buzzfeed article about the case, when he targeted a 57-year-old black woman, Jannie Ligons, and forced her to expose her breasts and perform oral sex on him. Ligons is a middle-class grand-

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mother without any criminal history and, thankfully, she felt comfortable enough to go forward to the police and tell them exactly what had happened to her. Ligons was not the first woman to report Holtzclaw, however. In May 2014, a woman known only by her initials, TM, told the police that Holtzclaw had arrested her on active warrants and then forced her to perform oral sex. The police did not do anything with TM’s report until after Ligons’ testimony sparked an investigation. There is no information about if the department is being investigated for not acting earlier.

Through arrest histories and GPS records, the Oklahoma City police found at least 13 women Holtzlcaw assaulted. The women who testified were able to share consistent details, like how Holtzclaw would expose himself through the fly of his police uniform before assaulting them.

The Holtzclaw case is horrifying on many levels. At least 13 women were assaulted or raped by the same man, a man who had a position of power and privilege over these women. The women he targeted were vulnerable because of their race, their class and their occupation — several victims had participated in survival sex work at some point in their life, according to the Sept. 5 Buzzfeed article. Holtzclaw targeted them for this reason; he knew that they had criminal records and lived in a high-crime community — that they were unlikely to go forward to the police, that nobody would believe them. In fact, a number of the victims, in transcripts gathered by Buzzfeed in December 2015, said just that: They knew the police would not believe them or they would never get justice because they were poor black women who had criminal records accusing a biracial, white-passing male police officer of a crime that only results in convictions around

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three percent of the time, according to FBI data.

TM, for instance, admitted, “I didn’t want to because people were telling me … they wasn’t going to believe me over a police …” Holtzclaw’s defense attorneys made that exact argument to the all-white and predominantly male jury — that the victims could not be trusted because of their pasts and that they may even have an agenda. As with so many sexual assault cases, the victims were seemingly more on trial than the accused, but this time, justice was ultimately served.

What makes the case even more upsetting is how widely ignored it was, especially by mainstream feminist movements. As a feminist who cares deeply about combatting sexual violence, I did not even find out about the case until I read the September 2014 Buzzfeed article in passing one day, and then, admittedly, completely forgot about it again until author and New York Times contributor Roxane Gay referenced the case on Twitter. Molly Redden pointed out in a Dec. 10, 2015 article for the Guardian that, unlike at many other high-profile rape trials, there were few representatives from national women’s groups in the courtroom. Not one major news network covered the trial or the verdict, according to the same article. Treva Lindsey, a columnist for Cosmopolitan, called the lack of national media attention “both blaring and disconcerting” in a Dec. 15, 2015 article about the trial.

Further, while Black Lives Matter is a powerful and transformative movement that has brought serious concerns about racial inequality and police brutality to light, Lindsey points out that even within that movement, both black women and victims of sexual violence at the hands of the police, go unheard from within their own community, from major feminist organizations like the

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National Organization for Women and from the national press.

Many systems failed the 13 or more women Holtzclaw attacked. The criminal justice system failed when the Oklahoma City police department did not take TM’s first report seriously and only acted when a “respectable” victim came forward.

Although Holtzclaw will hopefully never leave prison, the court system failed by appointing an all-white jury to hear a case where a male cop systematically attacked black women, rather than a more racially diverse jury. The media failed by not giving what should have been a shocking and high-profile case national coverage. And activists, especially those who have privilege and the ability to be a voice beyond just social media, failed by not helping to share this story or raise more awareness. That is not to say there were not people who raised awareness, especially on Twitter; both Mikki Kendall, a prominent blogger and cultural critic and Black Lives Matter activist Johnetta Elzie had an absolutely amazing and informative livestream of tweets during both Holtzclaw’s verdict and his sentencing, but the movement as a whole did not unite around the Oklahoma City victims as they have in other high-profile cases involving murdered black men.

However, the silence from mainstream feminist groups is absolutely unacceptable. It is not enough to pay lip service to fighting sexual violence or to demand that black women alone raise awareness for these atrocities. To be truly intersectional and truly feminist, white, upper-middle class women, who will most likely never be targeted in this way, must also speak out for, but never over, the 13 survivors in Oklahoma City and other survivors around the country — especially when nobody else will listen.

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TUESDAY, JANUARy 26, 2016 ● THE JUSTICE

FORUM

Rise of poverty restores anti-establishment movements By dylan hoffman JUSTICE CONTRIBUTING WRITER

Donald Trump has managed to retain his stranglehold over the Republican field of presidential candidates far longer than most pundits had assumed he would. When Trump declared his candidacy, most experts assumed that Trump would follow in the footsteps of Michelle Bachmann and Herman Cain before him: a rapid ascent followed by an equally rapid fall from the stage. Yet Trump shows no signs of fizzling out as the first round of voting — Feb. 1 in Iowa — rapidly approaches; he still leads in national polls with a 37.4 percent plurality, according to Huffington Post Pollster, and there is no reason to believe that he will fade from the scene in the foreseeable future. Therefore, it is important to examine the conditions that have allowed him to rise to prominence and the ways that America could hopefully reverse this trend.

Trump is not your run-of-the-mill Republican.

In fact, that is a large part of his branding: He angles himself as an “outsider candidate” who is not beholden to corporate interests — as long as you don’t count himself as a “corporate interest.” As such, he has tapped into a vein of frustration that other anti-establishment candidates such as Herman Cain have used in previous elections. In response, the establishment has tried to derail Trump as early as the first Republican debate, where the very first thing the moderators asked the candidates to do was to pledge to not run a third-party campaign should they lose the nomination — something that Trump alone had threatened. Trump, predictably, refused, after which the moderators reminded him that it would likely result in Hillary Clinton winning the presidency. When Trump remained resolute, the audience started booing — and yet, Trump still leads the polls.

A large part of the reason that Trump is more successful than past anti-establishment candidates has a lot to do with the era in which we live.

More so than ever, the populace is fed up with the Washington establishment because they feel that Congress and other politicians are aligned with the interests of large donors more so than their own views. The success of anti-establishment candidates in both parties — Bernie Sanders and Trump — evinces the widespread extent of these feelings. Further, as Yuval Levin points out in his Jan. 12 National Review article, most of the Republican candidates have sourced a dissatisfaction with current political elites and have consistently fired off at the establishment in their stump speeches.

Another key reason for Trump’s success has

been the changing economic fortunes of rural white people. As a Jan. 18 New York Times article points out, in recent years, the level of poverty among working class people living in rural areas has skyrocketed, and people in their prime earning years are the most affected. This relatively bleak economic outlook is part of what explains the eruption of anger currently manifesting in the armed takeover in Oregon.

On Jan. 2, an armed militia led by Ammon Bundy took a wildlife refuge in Harney County, Ore. after protesting the jail sentencing of two men, Dwight and Steve Hammond, for arson on federal territory. Weeks later, the occupation continues. Called “terrorists” or “protesters” depending on the source, the occupiers have not made an official statement endorsing Trump, but they echo his anti-establishment cries.

Despite admitting that the occupiers must vacate the refuge, Trump told the New York Times editorial board on Jan. 5 that he would invite the occupiers to the White House to listen to their requests: “I think what I’d do, as president, is I would make a phone call to whoever, to the group I’d talk to the leader. I would talk to him and I would say, ‘You gotta get out — come see me, but you gotta get out.’” The shared anti-establishment sentiment of the occupiers and Trump, as well as the latter’s relatively sympathetic response to acts that many — including CNN National Security Analyst Juliette Kayyem — have deemed terrorism, suggests that the occupiers and Trump may originate from the same political vein.

In many ways, the occupiers and Trump supporters have acted in reaction to a federal government that they feel no longer listens to them, as well as a bleak economic outlook. To make matters worse, population in rural areas is falling as more people move to western cities that are rapidly developing into metropolitan social centers like Portland, Ore., Salt Lake City and Denver.

This has led to a condensing of financial resources in the urban centers. As the Times reported, “half the jobs in Oregon, for example, are now clustered in just three counties in and around Portland, according to a study by Headwaters Economics, a nonprofit research group in Bozeman, Mont.” As the economic insecurity of these groups increases, they often look for someone to blame. For the occupiers, the entity at fault is the federal government; for Trump and his supporters, it’s Muslims and immigrants — but in both cases, the source of the rage is the same.

The desire to “Make America Great Again” speaks to these people from rural areas and other working-class white people because they have

BEN JARRETT/the Justice

seen a noticeable increase in both poverty and unemployment, and they feel that inefficiencies in Washington have prevented them from receiving the help that they need, according to a Jan. 18 New York Times article . Trump has been able to channel this anger and hyper-nationalist zeal to propel himself to the top of the polls and prolong his stay there. The only way to quell this movement of right-wing populism — manifested in the Oregon takeover and Trump’s success — is to address the economic needs of these groups. Progressives need to do a better job of reaching out

to people of poverty, and Americans need to start asking themselves what they can do to alleviate the economic suffering these groups experience.

They have, like countless other groups — including the people in Flint, Mich. — been failed by their government. The only way to eradicate Trumpism is to eradicate its source: worsening poverty in rural areas and excessive disenchantment with the U.S. government. Solving this will not be easy, and it will be a long process that will have to include significant campaign finance reform, but it is necessary.

Recognize glaring hypocrisies in Democratic political party Mark

GIMELSTEIN Give me liberty

The Democratic Party often has obvious cognitive dissonance. This has reached an absolute extreme, however, in light of several developments both in America and abroad. By trying — and failing — to ignore the unintended consequences of their favored policies, leftists have begun to tear away at the seams that once tied them together against their common political enemies.

The leftist paradigm consists of several major ideological tenets: feminism, intellectualism to — many times — a hyper-elitist degree, minority politics, and big-government socialism. At the surface, these principles are always in line, complementing each other as the leftist cause metastasizes. But at the granular level, these basic tenets are now working actively against each other, complicating matters for usually unified leftists.

How? There are two ticking time bombs for the American and international leftist movement.

The first has implications for the “smart” portion of the leftist movement. Often dubbing conservatives condescending, ridiculous labels that connote ignorance and stupidity, this leftist bloc prides itself on its sanctimonious, elitist views. Hillary Clinton, and especially Bernie Sanders, regularly pursue these lines of attack against conservatives both on the debate stage and the campaign trail.

One would thus imagine that once leftist policies come under scrutiny, Democrats would receive answers from their ideological leaders based in sound logic, reason and fact.

Rambling, nonsensical answers are only for those Bible-thumping conservatives, after all.

Something like Bernie Sanders’ single-payer healthcare “Medicare for all,” which is supported by 81 percent of Democrats according to Kaiser Health Tracking Poll, is just common sense.

So when Andrea Mitchell, during the recent Democratic primary debate in South Carolina, asked Sanders about the financial solvency of his single-payer healthcare plan — something that has been an issue for months — it was anticipated that Sanders would cerebrally defend his agenda.

“But let me ask you about Vermont,” Mitchell said. “...Vermont walked away from …

Medicare for all, single-payer, because they concluded it would require major tax increase.”

Fair point. What was Sanders’ response?

He responded that the reason why Vermont’s plan couldn’t be funded was that “we have a campaign finance system that is corrupt, we have super PACs, we have the pharmaceutical industry pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into campaign contributions and lobbying, and the private insurance companies as well.”

This is where leftists encounter their first problem: Their intellectualism is in direct contradiction to a central piece of their economic ideology.

Sanders’ answer on this issue is absurd.

How can anyone rationalize blaming insurance companies and super PACs for socialized health care being too expensive?

Clearly a desperate man who can’t defend his ideology, Sanders has such problems with basic math and economics (Vermont cannot mathematically fund single-payer without going bankrupt or severely increasing taxes) that he blames them all on organizations with literally no involvement whatsoever. Unfortunately, there is only silence from liberals who would salivate had a Republican said something similar.

This isn’t the first time Sanders — who should be held to his high liberal intellectual standards — has jumped to scapegoating or other absurdities when the questions get tough. Although it is obvious that politicians of all stripes do this, the lack of any sound arguments by the ideological leader of the present-day Democratic Party in defense of such a key part of leftism should trouble leftist leaders who want to keep the movement together.

Sacrificing intellectualism for laughable theories about corporations, rich people and other bogeymen threatens to start a dangerous prec-

edent that could lead to honest liberals going the way of former Connecticut Senator and 2000 Vice Presidential candidate Joe Lieberman and disassociating themselves from the movement and the party that houses it.

However, this predicament for Democrats is supplanted by an even more pressing and serious internal threat that could actually rip the party apart much sooner than the clash between intellectualism and socialism.

The real dividing issue within the Democratic Party today boils down to minority politics and feminism, which now stand at two opposite ends of the leftist spectrum. Democrats want to argue that they’re pro-women while the GOP is misogynistic and sexist, but they also want to be perpetually politically correct.

Turns out, you can’t always have your cake and eat it too — prioritizing one end means neglecting the other.

In particular, the Middle Eastern refugee crisis is now the critical issue that has begun to splinter the leftist coalition.

Middle Eastern refugees present a potential yet imminent national security threat because of the current impossibilities of vetting them, as explained by the Director of the F.B.I., James Comey, according to an Oct. 21, 2015 Daily Caller article. However, national security has never been a top priority for leftism, or Democrats would not have blocked measures like the SAFE Act that attempt to address the underlying problems with refugee acceptance. Feminism and minority politics, however, are.

This brings us to Cologne, Germany, where hundreds of men — the majority of whom victims identified as Middle Eastern — engaged in mass sexual assault against defenseless women during New Year’s Eve celebrations.

Indeed, Der Spiegel reported that “groups of male migrants were repeatedly named as perpetrators” by female victims.

According to a Jan. 8 Wall Street Journal article, “at least 22 migrants seeking asylum were among the suspects in alleged New Year’s Eve assaults in Cologne,” while many more will never be brought to justice because of gross incompetence by German law enforcement as well as the sheer number of perpetrators. Horrifically, in Cologne alone, there have now been 821 complaints and police have

only 30 suspects, according to a Jan. 24 Daily Express article. Even more sickening, the same article reported that similar incidents occurred in the German cities of Stuttgart and Hamburg as well as in Helsinki.

It goes without saying that under normal circumstances, when there is a large, conspicuous and pervasive problem, it is labeled as such. However, because it is heresy to talk about who actually committed these atrocious acts and how to actually begin solving the problem, the conversation instead moves to tarnishing the few, but growing number of liberals who dare have a different opinion.

This is where minority politics and feminism finally clash.

That’s why in the present-day battle for the face of liberalism, it’s the Bill Mahers, Richard Dawkinses and Sam Harrises of the world against the politically correct Barack Obamas and Hillary Clintons. While Maher, Dawkins and others desire a debate about Islam and the ways in which its extremists have become a sizable part of the problem within the religion, Obama, Clinton and others constantly give the same, tired spiel — not all Muslims are to blame. While that is certainly true, the repetition of that same straw man argument silences the important and necessary discussion on a complicated issue before it even has the chance to begin.

This has frustrated many liberals — especially those like Maher, Dawkins and Harris — who disagree with the politically correct leftists who dominate the conversation on the subject. As a result, it has led to a noticeable fissure within the leftist movement — a movement that often attempts to tarnish the reputations of the Mahers of the world by labeling them as racist or bigoted.

For all the media hype about a GOP civil war, news outlets and political commentators have ignored the ideological battle for the soul of the Democratic Party — a battle that grows more prominent due to the glaring inconsistencies and hypocrisies that emerge each time a new controversy emerges. Frankly, it’s not a matter of if the leftist movement will eventually separate but a matter of when. And when that happens, old coalitions will break, new alliances will form and our political system may change forever.

THE JUSTICE

CONTINUED FROM 16 utive win of the season.

To start off the day the women’s ‘A’ team narrowly beat Bridgewater to take gold in the 200-yard medley relay.

Kylie Herman ’19 then took off, winning the top spot in both the 500-yard freestyle and 100-yard butterfly events. Sherry Tu ’18 came in one second later for a silver in the 100-yard butterfly, while Maya Saar ’17 squeezed into third place in the 500-yard freestyle.

Joanna Murphy ’17 also took home a pair of golds in the 100 and 200-yard freestyle races.

The Judges saw a trifecta of medals come from the 200-yard individual medleys race. Fallon Bushee ’16, Sabrina Greer ’19 and Audrey Fein ’19 crowded onto the podium as first, second and third-place finishers for the squad.

Diving proved no different with Julia Tartaglia ’19 and Genna Karp ’18 taking first and second place,

JOYCE YU/Justice File Photo

BALANCING ACT: Guard Paris Hodges ’17 crossed over defenders as Brandeis took a win against Emory University last Saturday.

WBBALL: Judges’ offense comes up short in defeat quarter behind 13 points from freshman guard Natalie Orr, who shot 5-for-5 from the field in the quarter.

Brandeis responded with a strong defensive effort in the second quarter.

The Judges only allowed six points in the period and scored 15 points of their own to head into halftime with the game tied 29-29.

Sodine and Hodges combined to score nine of the Judges’ 15 points in the quarter.

The Bears took a six-point lead in the third quarter and were up 47-42 with 3:19 remaining in the quarter when guard Sarah Jaromin ’19 hit two free-throws and a three-point shot to

tie the game. The Judges entered the fourth quarter down 49-47 following a WashU jumpshot.

The visitors took the lead after a three-point shot from Jaromin early in the quarter, but WashU regained the lead seconds later on a pair of clutch free-throws.

The Judges took the lead again on a layup from Jackson and led 54-51 following a jump shot from Sodine.

WashU went on an 11-0 run, though, to take a commanding 62-54 lead with 3:40 remaining in the game.

After turnovers from both teams, Jackson hit two lay-ups to cut the lead to four points at 62-58 with 2:29 left.

Gabriel hit 1-of-2 at the free-throw line with 16 seconds remaining, but the

TUESDAY, JANUARY 26, 2016

13

SWIMMING: Teams deliver thrashing win

ANKLE BREAKER

CONTINUED FROM 16

●

Bears hit three of four foul shots to put the game out of reach.

Jaromin finished the game with 12 points, and Sodine contributed five assists, five rebounds and three steals to her 16 points. The Judges shot 43.1 percent from the field, while the Bears shot 36.2 percent.

The Judges turned the ball over an unforgivable 21 times, which led to 15 points by the WashU squad. Turnovers were key for WashU, as the team was able to convert late in the game off the Judges' mistakes.

Brandeis continues UAA play at home against Case Western Reserve University this Friday at 6 p.m. and against Carnegie Mellon University on Sunday at 2 p.m.

respectively, in the three-meter diving event. Tartaglia also added a gold to her repertoire in the onemeter diving event. Karp also added three points to the Judges scorecard with a third-place finish.

Amy Sheinhait ’18 came through in the 100-yard backstroke to take home the coveted gold medal.

Before the meet, Sheinhait spoke about the team’s continued dominance in the pool explaining, “The team has done great this year. With every meet we continue to learn how to make ourselves better. It’s been a long season, but I think the best has yet to come.”

Hopefully the best has yet to come, as the Judges will be hardpressed to improve upon such an incredible performance that came this past weekend.

Both teams will continue their efforts next Saturday at home versus Clark University before the beginning of the University Athletic Association championships begin in mid-February.

TRACK: Men nab a top-five finish in the 400-meter dash CONTINUED FROM 16 in 23.65 and 23.81 seconds, coming in 6th and 8th place, respectively.

Jeremy Wilson ’17 also ran for the Judges in the 200-meter dash, stopping the timer in 19th at the 24.71-second mark.

Charlie also raced to a sixthplace finish in the 60-meter dash, turning in a time of 7.38 seconds.

Adam Beckwith ’16 took seventh in the 300-meter dash. Wilson grabbed a fourth-place finish in the 400-meter dash, clocking in at 53.63 seconds in the finals.

Matthew Becker ’18 took sixth place in the 800-meter run invitational, turning in a time of 2:00.76, a close .77 seconds behind the fifthplace time.

The Judges sent two competitors to the one-mile run, where Brad Payne ’16 stopped the clock at 4:42.40 and Christian Castro ’18 ended the race at the 4:49.98 mark.

The two came in 20th and 29th place, respectively.

Brian Sheppard ’18 was the Judges' sole representative in the 5000-meter run, where he took third-place in 15:34.00.

Brandeis took a victory in the 4x220 yard relay, as the quartet of Charlie, Adam Berger ’16, Beckwith and McDonald raced to a 1:35.14 finish.

The Judges will next take to the track this weekend at the Terrier Classic, hosted by Boston University. The Judges will also send competitors to the Tufts Stampede.

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Tuesday, JANUARY 26, 2016

15

MEN’S BASKETBALL

Men’s BASKETBALL TEAM STATS

UAA STANDINGS

Points Per Game

UAA Conference

W L W Chicago 5 0 14 Emory 4 1 11 NYU 3 2 13 Rochester 3 2 10 WashU 2 3 10 JUDGES 2 3 8 Case 1 4 8 Carnegie 0 5 7

Robinson Vilmont ’17 leads the squad with 15.4 points per game.

Player PPG Robinson Vilmont 15.4 Jordan Cooper 13.5 John Powell 9.6 Tim Reale 6.6

Overall L Pct. 2 .875 5 .786 2 .867 6 .625 6 .625 8 .500 8 .500 9 .438

Rebounds Per Game John Powell ’17 leads the team with 7.1 rebounds per game.

Player RPG John Powell 7.1 Robinson Vilmont 4.6 Jordan Cooper 4.1 Colby Smith 3.4

UPCOMING GAMES: Friday vs. Case Sunday vs. Carnegie Mellon Feb. 5 at Case

WOMen’s basketball UAA STANDINGS

TEAM STATS

UAA Conference Overall

W L W L Pct. Rochester 5 0 15 1 .938 NYU 4 1 15 1 .938 WashU 4 1 13 3 .813 Carnegie 2 3 13 3 .813 Chicago 2 3 10 6 .625 Emory 1 4 10 6 .625 JUDGES 1 4 8 8 .500 Case 1 4 6 9 .400

Paris Hodges ’16 leads the team with 9.7 points per game.

Player PPG Paris Hodges 9.7 Sydney Sodine 9.5 Heather Cain 8.5 Maria Jackson 8.5

Points Per Game

UPCOMING GAMES: Friday vs. Case Sunday vs. Carnegie Mellon Feb. 5 at Case

Rebounds Per Game Maria Jackson ’17 leads with 8.5 rebounds per game.

Player RPG Maria Jackson 8.5 Sydney Sodline 6.1 Paris Hodges 4.9 Neffie Lockley 4.1

track and field Results from the GBTC Invitational at Harvard University.

TOP FINISHERS (Men’s)

TOP FINISHERS (Women’s)

200-Meter Dash

200-Meter Dash RUNNER TIME Haliana Burhans 26.55 Kanya Brown 27.35 Olivia Givens 29.24

RUNNER TIME Henry McDonald 23.65 Regan Charie 23.81 Jeremy Wilson 24.65

DAISY CHEN/Justice File Photo

STEADY DRIBBLE: Guard Jack Fay ’17 takes the ball upcourt in a tight overtime contest against Emory University on Jan. 17.

Late field goals seal a win for men’s team

■ Forward Jordan Cooper ’18 led team to victory against WashU with 23 points and five rebounds on Friday.

By AVi gold Justice editor

UPCOMING MEETS: Friday at the Terrier Classic at Boston University Saturday at the Terrier Classic at Boston University Feb. 6 at Tufts Cupid Challenge

SWIMMING AND DIVING Results from a meet at Bridgewater State University on Friday.

TOP FINISHERS (Men’s) 100-yard breastroke

SWIMMER David Lazarovich Adib Milani Rich Avrutsky

TOP FINISHERS (Women’s) TIME 1:05.76 1:06.11 1:06.66

200-yard Individual Medley

SWIMMER TIME Fallon Bushee 2:26.08 Sabrina Greer 2:30.13 Audrey Fein 2:33.37

UPCOMING MEETS:

Saturday vs. Clark Feb. 17 vs. UAA Championships at Rochester University Feb. 18 vs. UAA Championships at Rochester University

The men’s basketball team evened its record at 8-8 with a split of University Athletic Association contests on the road last weekend, topping Washington University in St. Louis 69-66 on Friday but falling to the No. 12 University of Chicago 65-50 on Sunday. The Judges fell to 2-3 in UAA play, tied for fifth in the conference with WashU. Judges 50, No. 12 Chicago 65 Brandeis entered Sunday’s contest with the Judges coming off a big game from forward Jordan Cooper ’18. On Sunday, Cooper posted a team-high 11 points and pulled down seven rebounds in a team-high 33 minutes on the court.

The visitors also got a good day from guard Robinson Vilmont ’17, who netted eight points, five rebounds, three assists and a steal for Brandeis.

The Judges managed to stay with

Chicago for most of the first half, as neither side was able to jump out to more than a four-point lead. The Judges’ largest lead of the day came with three minutes, 35 seconds left in the half when guard Tim Reale ’16 netted two of his four points to hand the visitors an 18-14 lead.

In the second half, Chicago erupted for 41 points to run away from a possible upset bid, using an 11-3 run midway through the half to jump out to a 39-28 lead. From there, Chicago never looked back, maintaining a comfortable doubledigit lead throughout the final quarter of the game.

Center John Powell ’17 was contained to just three points and three rebounds in 17 minutes of action. Guard Michael McReynolds ’19 continued to contribute off the bench during UAA play, seeing a season-high 19 minutes.

Judges 69, WashU 66 The Judges began the weekend road trip by gutting out a close victory over WashU on Friday night, topping the Bears in a thriller, 69-66. The Judges were presented an opportunity to close out the contest when Vilmont was intentionally fouled with 10 seconds left. Vilmont was unable to put in either free-throw attempt, allowing

the hosts one final chance at a desperation three, which WashU junior guard Luke Sherman-Lloyd missed from beyond the arc.

Cooper and Vilmont led the way in the victory, posting a combined 43 points for the Judges. Cooper netted 23 points in 35 minutes, pulling down five rebounds and dishing out five assists in the process. Vilmont contributed 20 points and three rebounds to go along with three assists and a pair of steals in 27 minutes played.

Each of the Judges’ five starters netted at least five points, including seven from Powell and eight from guard Jack Fay ’18. Brandeis managed just five points from bench players but was able to hold the hosts to just 12 bench points of their own.

The Judges managed the defensive side of the ball well, holding WashU to 36.2 percent shooting from the field and a paltry 22.2 percent from three-point range. Brandeis shot 52.1 percent from the field and 41.7 percent from beyond the arc.

Brandeis resumes UAA play this weekend when they host bottomranked Case Western Reserve University on Friday at 8 p.m. and Carnegie Mellon University on Sunday at noon.

FENCING Men and women’s fencing teams add two league titles to impressive repertoire of achievements ■ Women foilists won eight of nine matches to overcome tough losses by the epee and saber squads.

By noah hessdorf JUSTICE editor

The men and women’s fencing team clinched two Northeast Fencing Conference league titles this past Saturday at Boston College. The women went 5-1 in the meet, while the men compiled a record of 4-1.

The women finished the NFC season with an overall mark of 9-2, earning themselves the league title for the first time since 2010. The squad captured the crown after a

thrilling fourth-round matchup against the hometown Eagles. The foil team led the Judges as they edged BC 14-13 to hand the opponent their first loss of the season.

The foilists went 8-1 on the match, which was enough to overcome defeats from both the epee and saber squads. The most dramatic point of the match came during the saber portion of the competition.

With the score tied 13-13 and the winning point up for grabs, saberist Nina Sayles ’17 found herself down 4-0. Sayles rebounded impressively to win the next five consecutive points to capture both the victory and the match that ultimately gave the Judges the title.

The squad’s only blemish on the day came against Brown University in a 14-13 defeat. They were able to

rebound quite nicely by posting victories against Vassar College, Tufts University, Smith College and Dartmouth University.

Epeeist Sonya Glickman ’16 led the Judges with a record of 11-4 during the meet while Sayles went 11-6 on the day. Foilists Emilia Dwyer ’16 and Caroline Mattos ’16 were each able to post impressive records of 7-2 during the day.

The men’s side contributed with a league title of their own. Like the women, the men’s lone loss during the meet was against Brown, by the same score of 14-13.

They were able to come out victorious in a close match decided by one point against Vassar. The men relied on the foil squad, which went 8-1 in the match. The Judges defeated BC 15-12, with a 6-3 epee

decision propelling them forward for the victory.

Foilist Elishua Litle ’18 compiled a perfect 11-0 record to lead the team. Fellow foilist Charles Wells ’19 contributed a 10-4 record that gave the foil squad a dominant 1-2 punch victory.

For saber, Kyle Berney ’18 also went 10-4 on the day to help lead the team. Also big for the sabers was Curtis Wilson ’18, who added a 9-5 record for the 4-1 team.

The team’s next competition will come at home this Saturday afternoon, hosting the Eric Sollee Invitational, when the Judges square off against competitors from Stevens Institute of Technology, New Jersey Institute of Technology, Haverford College, New York University and Hunter College.

When the squad faces off against NYU, the winner will earn the University Athletic Association league title.

Coming up on the team’s schedule will be important events at the Duke Invitational, hosted by Duke University, and the Beanpot Tournament at BC. They will also be competing at the USA Fencing Junior Olympics Championships and the New England Collegiate Championships this coming February.

Also coming up on the Judges’ schedule will be the 2016 National Collegiate Athletic Association Fencing Championships on March 24-27. Brandeis will host the prestigious tournament that will showcase the best fencers from across the country.

just

Sports

Page 16

SWORD PLAY The fencing teams came out on top of Northeast Fencing Conference wins on Saturday, p. 15.

Tuesday, January 26, 2016

Waltham, Mass.

Women’s basketball

HEAD FIRST

Women fall in consecutive games over the weekend ■ The Judges fell to

conference opponent WashU despite a solid 43.1 shooting percentage.

By ELAN KANE JUSTICE Staff writer

The women’s basketball team went 0-2 this past week, losing to the University of Chicago 73-59 on Sunday afternoon and to Washington University in St. Louis 65-59 on Friday evening. The Judges fell to 8-8 overall and 1-4 in University Athletic Association play.

Judges 59, Chicago 73 Though the Judges got ahead early in the game, the Maroons pulled away with a dominant fourth quarter performance.

Brandeis started the game with a three-point shot from guard Niki Laskaris ’16, giving the Judges a 15-4 lead with 5:28 remaining in the first quarter. The Maroons responded with a scoring run of their own and finished the quarter on a 9-4 run, cutting the deficit to a fairly reasonable six points at 19-13.

Chicago outscored Brandeis 17-10 in the second quarter behind eight points from freshman forward Britta Nordstrom. Brandeis guards Heather Cain ’16 and Paris Hodges ’17 kept the

Maroons within range, as both players scored four points in the quarter.

A free-throw from Hodges cut the Chicago lead to 30-29 just before halftime.

Both squads played fairly equally in the third quarter. Chicago freshman guard Elizabeth Nye started a 10-0 run in the beginning part of the quarter with a three-point shot.

Brandeis responded with an 11-4 run highlighted by five points from guard Kyla Gabriel ’17. Still, Brandeis entered the fourth quarter trailing 45-42.

Chicago took control of the game in the fourth quarter, outscoring the Judges 28-17 in the period. They opened the quarter on a 10-4 run and then went on a 14-7 run to open up a 69-55 lead with 1:15 left. The lead was too much for Brandeis to overcome.

Overall, Chicago dominated the paint with 50 points down low, yet the Judges held their own, posting almost 40 from within the key.

Though the Judges outrebounded the Maroons 36-31, Brandeis shot just 39.7 percent from the field, while Chicago shot 52.5 percent.

Judges 59, WashU 65 Brandeis could not overcome an early deficit, despite 15 and 16 points from forwards Maria Jackson ’18 and Sydney Sodine ’17, respectively.

WashU took a 23-14 lead in the first

See WBBALL, 13 ☛

track and field

HEATHER SCHILLER/Justice File Photo

INTO THE DEEP: Genna Karp ’18 dove from the top board in a Judges’ victory against Trinity University on Jan. 16 at home.

Judges swim to record perfomance on Friday ■ Both squads swept

Bridgewater State University with a record 21 of 24 total wins.

By Jerry Miller Justice Editor

The men and women’s swimming and diving team delivered a powerful punch as both teams handily beat Bridgewater State University on Friday night. The teams took the meet by storm, combining to win 21 of the 24 events held throughout the day. The men won their meet 130-82, while the women were victorious 159-52.

Men — Brandeis 130, Bridgewater State 82 On the men’s side, the Judges were able to secure the first win of their season with a nearly fiftypoint drumming of Bridgewater.

Cameron Braz ’18 led the team with two gold medals, stealing the 50- and 100-yard freestyle events.

Brandeis also nabbed the silver

medals in both events, with Evan Thom ’18 and David Lazarovich ’16 stepping onto the podium in each event, respectively.

Before the meet, Thom commented on the team’s rebuilding season ,saying, “So far I think the team has performed pretty well this season.

We might not have a winning record to show for it, but in regards to personal performance I think everyone's doing tremendously. Everyone is passionate about what we do and we give it our all.” His words were spot on, as each swimmer made huge strides during the meet.

Lazarovich stacked on more hardware as he won gold in the 100-yard backstroke. Brandeis kept the momentum going and stole the event with silver and bronze medal finishes by Adib Milani ’18 and Rich Avrutsky ’17, respectively.

Zach Diamond ’18 swam to the beat of a gold medal in the 200-yard freestyle, demolishing the next-best competitor by a full 10 seconds. In the same race, Sam Scudere-Weiss ’18 easily took the bronze by a margin of seven seconds.

Although Brandeis was not able

to take the gold in the 200-meter individual medley event, the Judges still came away with a second- and third-place finish from Taku Harada ’18 and Milani, respectively. Harada missed his golden opportunity by an infintesimal twentieth of a second.

In the longer 500-yard freestyle, Harada narrowly edged out fellow Brandeisian Diamond by a cool two seconds to take first place in the freestyle event.

Sam Zucker ’18 came out on top by a hair in the three-meter diving event, beating junior Brian Sheehan by a mere one-tenth of a point.

The last event of the day saw the men’s ‘A’ team top off the fantastic day with yet another gold medal in the 200-yard freestyle relay.

The men’s ‘A’ team also took top honors in the 200-yard medley relay, adding one more to the men’s total of nine gold medals on the day.

Women — Brandeis 159, Bridgewater State 52 The women’s team destroyed Bridgewater by a jaw-dropping 107 points to tack on their third consec-

See SWIMMING, 13 ☛

Men and women’s track each log gold ■ Brian Shepard ’18

finished in 15:34.00 for a bronze medal in the 5000-meter run.

By AVI GOLD JUSTICE Editor

The men and women’s track and field teams went up against strong opposition at the Greater Boston Track Club Invitational on Sunday and walked away with a number of impressive finishes.

Haliana Burhans ’18 and Kanya Brown ’19 both earned spots in the women’s 60-meter dash finals, posting times of 8.24 and 8.33 seconds respectively during the preliminary race. In the finals, Brown timed in at 8.26 seconds for a sixthplace finish, while Burhans ran to an eighth-place finish in 8.34 seconds. Burhans recovered for a second-place finish in the 200-meter dash, crossing the line at the 26.55-second mark, just over a half a second slower than the race’s winner. Olivia Givens ’19 and Maegann Stafford ’19 also raced in the 200-meter dash, running to reasonable times of 29.24 and 30.38 seconds, respectively.

The Judges picked up another top-five finish in the 600-meter run, when Tove Freeman ’16 ran to a time of 1:42.74, earning a thirdplace spot in the race. Her time, just over three seconds out of second place, was more than five sec-

onds faster than her time in the qualifying race. Aubrey Clemens ’19 just missed out on a top-10 finish in the race, turning in a 1:50.77 time to grab 11th place. Her time was a step behind the 10th-place finisher, who crossed the line .85 seconds ahead of Clemens.

Maggie Hensel ’16 grabbed second in the one-mile run in 5:15.85, just three seconds off the pace of the race’s winner. Emily Bryson ’19 continued her strong season with a top-five finish in the onemile run invitational, running to a fourth-place finish in 5:06.93.

The quartet of Brown, Freeman, Burhans and Haley Hashemi ’19 earned the top spot in the 4x220meter relay race, stopping the timer at the 1:49.76 mark. Their time was a half-second ahead of the second-place team.

Abby Daniels ’18 jumped to 1.35 meters in the high jump, good for fifth place, while also turning in an eighth-place day in the pole vault, where she topped out at 2.45 meters. Jordin Carter ’17 and Ashley Klein ’16 both competed in field events, earning top-10 finishes in the weight throw. The pair also competed in the shot put, where Carter threw 9.63 meters to earn 10th place and Klein took 15th with a throw of 8.21 meters.

The men’s day began with a pair of top-10 finishers in the 200-meter dash, as Henry McDonald ’18 and Regan Charlie ’19 crossed the line

See TRACK, 13 ☛

January 26, 2016

Vol. LXVIII #15

justARTS

An Inspiring Life ÂťP.19

Waltham, MA.

Images and design: Mihir Khanna/the Justice.

18

THE JUSTICE | TUESDAY, january 26, 2016

TALK

PEN TO PAPER: Prof. Abdur-Rahman (ENG) (middle) and Prof. Johnson (AAAS) (right) read excerpts from their upcoming projects.

JAIME GROPPER/the Justice

Faculty discuss writing process and upcoming projects in Writers @ Work By jAIME gROPPER justice editor

Setting aside time to write and then actually writing during that time, is difficult to say the least.

This was a consensus of Prof.

Aliyyah Abdur-Rahman (AAAS, ENG, WGS) and Prof. Jasmine Johnson (AAAS, WGS) during a session of the Writers @ Work series, a discussion that offered an intimate glimpse into Johnson and Abdur-Rahman’s writing processes.

During the event in the Alumni lounge in Usdan Student Center, each writer also shared excerpts from her current writing projects.

Johnson read a piece from her upcoming manuscript that focuses on the industry of West African dance in the United States and Guinea. Abdur-Rahman shared an opinion piece, as well as an excerpt from her book that explores

political and ideological implications of generic experimentation in visual art and black fiction — as noted the moderator of the event Prof. Gina Pugliese (ENG).

Pugliese opened the discussion by asking Johnson and AbdurRahman to describe their writing spaces — whether they choose to write in public spaces or private spaces and if they have specific objects or reference unique to their writing spaces, Johnson answered — and Abdur-Rahman agreed — that she could not have a single writing setting because the moments of inspiration for writing happen everywhere, and so carving out blocks of time has proven to be ineffective.

Abdur-Rahman answered in response to a question about the inspiration behind pursuing research questions, “As I’m formulating research questions, I’m thinking about what are the kinds

of questions that matter now in my discipline?” She continued, “I like to be moved by what’s happening in the world. Even as I’m a writer and a professor, I like to think of myself as an agent in the world, and so my source of inspiration often comes from the kind of ethical questions that end up constituting my research.”

Abdur-Rahman’s areas of expertise include American and African-American literature and culture, critical race theory and multi-ethnic feminisms. She is a two-time winner of the Darwin T. Turner Award for Best Essay of the Year in African American Review. Abdur-Rahman read aloud from her upcoming second book, provisionally titled “Millennial Style: The Politics of Experiment in Contemporary African Diasporic Culture.” According to Abdur Rahman, the book theorizes about the “aesthetics of intimacy” and

links aesthetics to racial politics.

Johnson is a founding member of the The Collegium for African Diaspora Dance and has areas of expertise including Afro-diasporic dance, black feminisms and West African politics and culture. Before reading aloud from the final chapter of her manuscript, she introduced it by explaining its focus on the industry of West African dance and drum tourism. According to Johnson, this type of tourism, often called “homecoming trips,” is the biggest tourist industry in Guinea and consists primarily of white and European women traveling to Guinea to drum and dance.

Johnson explained that the popularity of these trips comes in part from the nature of the dancing and drumming providing an intimate exchange that is grounded in encountering Africa, connecting with diaspora and “what it means

for non-black bodies to return home.”

These homecomings have a different significance for Guineans however; “it is in part because it is very difficult to have the freedom of movement in Guinea, because of the legacy of colonialism there specifically.

Dance and drum tourism becomes a way that folks actually get to move in ways that they may not have access to,” Johnson commented.

Both of the upcoming works by Johnson and Abdur-Rahman were powerful to hear aloud, especially as they were given life by the authors themselves.

The Writers @ Work event, part of a series hosted by Writing @ Brandeis, served as a cozy platform to hear the writing thought process and to get a preview of some professors’ own scholarly work.

Theater

Q&A with producers of student-written “Quickies” This week, justArts spoke with Emily Galloway ’18 and Halley Saul ’17, the producers of Brandeis Theater Ensemble’s annual show, “Quickies.”

This year, the ten-minute play festival consists of nine mini-productions, all written and directed by undergraduate students. “Quickies” will take place this Sunday at 8 p.m. in the Shapiro Campus Center Theater. We spoke with the producers to get a sense of what producing this fast and furious show is like: justArts: If it does, how does producing a show like “Quickies” differ from producing a conventional theater production?

Halley Saul: It’s a lot more coordinating individuals, I feel like.

Emily Galloway: I feel like it’s completely different — I don’t know if it’s necessarily easier or harder or whatever. It’s probably a little easier because it’s not as long of a time commitment.

But just, you know, in a show, everyone, is kind of all in one place, and there’s one director that you can talk to, and there’s one person that does each job. But for this, we have ten directors and nine different shows and forty-something cast members.

HS: 43, I believe. And then we also have the production staff, who needed to also individually reach out to every single director and get the individual designs. So it’s a lot of just, like, everybody’s in a different place, and you have to know where everyone is.

JA: What has been or what do you foresee will be the most challenging part of producing “Quickies”?

EG: I don’t know. I don’t think we’ve had any, really huge challenges overall.

HS: There have been,, minor miscommunications, surely. But that’s inevitable.

EG: I think the hardest part so far — and not to say that it wasn’t necessarily a big challenge — but just casting the shows was just a very long process.

And it can be a little bit difficult because when you’re trying to get ten directors to sit in for auditions, there’s [going to] be people who can’t be there the whole time.

And so figuring all of that out and getting everyone into a Quickie, because we try to be all-inclusive — and we were successful this semester in being allinclusive with Quickies — so getting everyone who auditions into a part can be challenging.

JA: Were the scripts already written before you cast?

HS: Yes. So what we do is we have an admissions process. This year it took place in late November, where anyone who wants to write a short one-act can submit it to us. And we, of course, have to vet them and make sure they’re appropriate for the stage etc. but yeah, they’re all written beforehand.

JA: So how do you make sure you get everyone who auditions into a piece?

EG: Well this year we were lucky because we had a few shows that have the ability to create an ensemble. There’s one show that’s about meth-heads …

HS: There are all of these people in

the background that are sort of like eyes watching it go on, and it’s supposed to add to the paranoia.

EG: And so things like that can help.

But I know, like, in the past when there haven’t been necessarily shows that were written with bigger ensembles, they do a lot of role splitting. So they say, “okay so this police officer says seven lines — let’s split it into two.” …

HS: Which is also something that definitely happened for this production.

JA: What has been the aspect that you have most enjoyed while producing “Quickies”?

EG: I think the two of [us] as well as — we have another core coordinator who was involved last semester—Morgan Winters [’17] … like last semester when she was here she was obviously a very equally big part of going through the plays that were submitted and picking directors and all that stuff. … So just — I don’t know — I think just like working together and really seeing what can happen when you put good minds together.

It’s really been a really good experience.

HS: I’ve definitely gone into threehour brainstorming sessions with them and come out and just had a smile on my face even though it’s, like, one o’clock in the morning. Just ’cause, even though we’re doing the work and we’re obviously coordinating this huge production or whatever, we’re also making sure that we’re having a good time and that the content and the form is enjoyable.

JA: Was there anything you specifically did differently this year as compared to previous years?

MIHIR KHANNA/the Justice

MINI THEATER: Emily Galloway ’18 and Halley Saul ’17 are the producers of the “Quickies,”

Brandeis Theater Ensemble’s annual festival of student-written and directed ten-minute plays.

HS: Right off the bat. Last year, “Quickies” was on December 8th, which was the last week right before finals.

EG: It has always been [that week].

HS: That has been the precedent since the beginning of “Quickies.” And we changed that this year to the beginning of the spring semester.

EG: We wanted to because in the [Undergraduate Theater Collective], the 24Hour Musical kicks off the fall semester as an all-inclusive event for people to get involved on campus. And so we thought that moving “Quickies” to the spring semester might —

HS: Do the same thing, because there was no opportunity for all-inclusive lowcommitment theater in the spring. And midyears who came in and wanted to get involved in the UTC but weren’t sure of the commitment level didn’t have the opportunity to do so. So by moving it, we created — I don’t want to say that it’s the same thing. It’s not a second 24-Hour. It’s not that. But it gives the same benefits, and it provides the same opportunities in another semester.

Editor’s Note: The third named producer, Morgan Winters ’17, is abroad this semester.

—Emily Wishingrad

THE JUSTICE | TUESDAY, january 26, 2016

19

Exhibit DOCUMENTED LIFE: “Inspiring Life” includes an array of artifacts, including photographs and letters to show the evolution of Louis Brandeis’ life.

PHOTOS BY MIHIR KHANNA/theJustice

Brandeis’ legacy on display in “Inspiring Life” By bROOKE gRANOVSKY justice Staff writer

“Louis D. Brandeis: An Inspiring Life,” sponsored by the University Archives & Special Collections, showcases the highlights of the former justice’s life. The exhibit in Level 2 of Goldfarb Library starts from his early childhood and moves through his time on the Supreme Court bench, ending with his enduring legacy. The University Archives & Special Collections’ Leslie Reicher, Preservation officer and Special Projects coordinator, and Surella Seelig, Archives & Special Collections Outreach librarian, curated the Goldfarb exhibit.

A plaque on the “early life” section of the exhibit emphasizes the exhibit’s goals: to give viewers a look at the man behind Brandeis’ famous legal persona.

The exhibit uses various artifacts, including letters, photographs, commemorative plates, telegrams and even one of Brandeis’ Torah scrolls, to convey a vivid image of what Brandeis’ life was like.

The exhibit is part of “Louis D. Brandeis 100: Then and Now,” a series of events in winter and spring of 2016 celebrating the 100th anniversary of the nomination and confirmation of Brandeis to the United States Supreme Court. In an email to the Justice, Seelig clarified that there are actually two “Louis D. Brandeis: An Inspiring Life” exhibits: The first is the physical exhibit in Goldfarb, while the second is a digital exhibit curated by Zoe Waldman ’16 and designed by Jenn Schlick, an outside consultant. A computer in the physical exhibit allows guests to access its digital component.

One interesting facet of the ex-

BEHIND THE MAN: The exhibit features articles from Brandeis’ wardrobe as well as documents that he wrote during his own time as a student.

hibit is Brandeis’ coursework and journal articles.

On display are two of Brandeis’ physics notebooks, written with impeccable penmanship in German. A plaque from the exhibit’s “early life” section notes that Brandeis “enrolled in Harvard Law School just shy of the age nineteen,” and works from that time are on display in the exhibit’s “legal career” section.

A copy of Brandeis’ famous article “The Right to Privacy” for the Harvard Law Review, originally published Dec. 15, 1890, sits open next to the article’s first page. In her email to the Justice, Seelig commented on Brandeis’ coursework, remarking that “[she loved] looking at his grammar and law school notebooks (and the pressed flowers [she] found in one of them!)”

Seelig also mentioned that she found “the letters of condolence

after Brandeis’ passing [to be] incredibly powerful testaments to the ways in which he touched people’s lives the world over.” The exhibit’s “legacy” section includes telegrams, letters and postcards from government officials and interest groups praising Brandeis’ contributions and principled stances on a variety of issues. The Government reached out to the Brandeis family through letters from the U.S. Senate Small Business Committee and the Assistant Secretary of State and at the state level through the Massachusetts House of Representatives.

Perhaps the most relevant part of the exhibit is its section on the University. It contains a photo of students walking out of Usen Castle shortly after the school’s founding, a photo of the University’s founders featuring Albert Einstein sitting front and center and a yearbook from the class of

1952 dedicated to Louis Brandeis’ life and works.

A newsletter on display announces the University’s plans to build dorms for 500 students and to start construction on an expansive library — presumably the library that houses the exhibit now.

The newsletter was subtitled with an explanation of the University’s Jewish connection, noting that the University was a “nonsectarian university under Jewish auspices.” People outside the Brandeis community frequently ask students about the University’s Jewish connection, and most students say some variation of the subtitle on the newsletter.

Another common question people outside the Brandeis community ask students is about the University’s namesake: “Who was Louis Brandeis?” After visiting the exhibit, viewers will be able to thoroughly answer this question.

TESTAMENT OF CHARACTER: On display are letters of condolence written by government officials and interest groups upon his death.

20

TUESDAY, JANUARY 26, 2016 | THE JUSTICE

Brandeis TALKS

INTERVIEW

What is your latenight food delivery of choice?

James Conlon ’16

Conlon speaks on plans for BTV COURTESY OF JAMES CONLON

Sam Zucker ’18

This week, justArts spoke with the president of Brandeis Television James Conlon ’16. Conlon says of the club, “since very few people watch TV on a college campus, BTV has become more of an online media network, highlighting video content on social media and a Youtube channel.”

“Insomnia dumplings, because you can get 30 dumplings for a little bit of money.”

justArts: Can you give an overview of BTV?

ALI SANTANA/the Justice

Philip Cooper ’18

“Baan Thai, because you can get pad thai late at night. It’s terrible for you but makes you feel really good.”

CROSSWORD ACROSS:

Pichya Nimit ’16

“I don’t typically order late-night food, but if I’m with people we’ll usually order Asia Wok because that’s open latest.”

Tahlia Quartin ’18

“Pizza because it’s usually the most accessible and cheapest.”

—Compiled and photographed

by Michelle Banayan and Abby Grinberg/the Justice.

STAFF’S Top Ten

Untranslatable Words

By SABRINA SUNG JUSTICE EDITOR

Brandeis is home to a diverse array of languages. If you get the chance, try looking up these beautiful words for feelings that are impossible to summarize in just one word of the English language. (And let me know if you know some more!)

1. Ya’aburnee (Arabic) 2. Niedosyt (Polish) 3. Toska (Russian) 4. Ashwium (Korean) 5. Ubuntu (Bantu) 6. Kilig (Tagalog) 7. guanxì (Mandarin) 8. b’shert (Yiddish) 9. Fernweh (German) 10. Saudade (Portuguese)

1 Small plate 5 Org. that allegedly attempted to make an exploding cigar 8 “Ellas ______ Español” 14 Send a package 15 Tolkein baddie 16 Kevin of “Shark Tank” 17 *This phrase describes a halfhearted performance 19 Spitting animals 20 After tax and expenses 21 *If you have diplopia, it means you do this 23 Pays for, with “to” 26 Dolls’ partners 27 Wade’s opponent 28 Pressures to commit a crime 31 Cut 34 To be, en Français 36 Christmases 37 Word followed by a low number 38 Nightcrawlers, usually 39 Sch. near Orange County 40 Architectural feature 41 Sicilian mountain 42 Extremely angry 44 Guns 45 Where college kids take a stand?

46 Roughhousers 48 School, for short 49 It might be buried 50 They are rarely found in a glove compartment 52 *This NCAA round is often called the Sweet Sixteen 57 Rhyming candy eponym 58 Undisturbed 59 This word can come after the last word in each of the starred clues 63 Like some ski areas 64 Had one of three squares 65 Father of France?

66 Stones?

67 Todd’s brother on “The Simpsons” 68 Caesar’s doomsday Down: 1 Recipe Amt. 2 Sigh of relief 3 Avant-garde 4 Breathing disorder during sleep 5 The fish in Fish n’ Chips, often 6 Flower named for the Greek rainbow goddess 7 Problem purportedly alleviated by Clearasil 8 Bank robberies

James Conlon: Brandeis Television has been around for a long time. It’s not so much of a television station as it used to be but more of a media conglomerate.

It’s a network for students to be able to shoot films, to pool together interests, to bring together people from the movie industry to campus, to film screenings. It’s just a place for people who are interested in visual arts to come together.

JA: Is there a specific theme that BTV focuses on?

JC: We have done a lot regarding campus video production. We’ve shot student films, we’ve done a lot of music videos on campus for traveling bands and also for Brandeis musicians. We’ve recorded campus events, and we’ve done interviews and promotional videos for different clubs. So on campus, we try to do as much as we can to help the community, because a lot of people want exposure through videos.

JA: What kinds of projects are planned for this semester?

CROSSWORD COURTESY OF EVAN MAHNKEN 9 Steel and brass, for example 10 Good-looking dudes 11 Book subtitled “The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Child- hood Pal” 12 Central Asian sea 13 Where traders meet 18 Major ending?

22 Partner of Liberté and Fraternité 23 This man is the host of 59-Across 24 Switch in and out, as shifts 25 Medical equipment co. to 13-Down 29 Guides 30 It is found before many a drama 31 Bobbed and wove, say 32 High-______ (exciting) 33 These words are commonly found in 59-Across, and placed before the starred clues 35 Airport info, for short 37 ____-Jongg 42 Compounds containing Element 53 43 Formation called a “Dune Sea” 46 Hone, as a skill 47 Take a spill 49 Above-board 51 African animal with white and black stripes 52 Nasty argument SOLUTION COURTESY OF EVAN MAHNKEN 53 Fashion magazine 54 They are often found in a glove compartment 55 Not very open 56 He’ll play The Joker in “Suicide Squad” 60 Eng. resource 61 World famous Dr. with no degree?

62 English prog-rock band

SUDOKU INSTRUCTIONS: Place a number in the empty boxes in such a way that each row across, each column down and each small 9-box square contains all of the numbers from one to nine.

JC: This semester we are bringing an actress from “Orange is the New Black” [Marisol Gonzalez]. Her name is Flaca on the show. We’re very excited about that; the date is to be determined at the moment. We’re bringing back our film festival that hasn’t been around in like five years because there are issues every year, but finally we are bringing it back, and we’re really excited. We’re getting lots of submissions and lots of interest. We are also going to be doing more skits, more music videos and as much creative content as possible.

JA: If a student comes to BTV with an idea for a project, what is the process behind pursuing it?

JC: I think, the first thing is to evaluate the persons experience and to see if they are really interested in the long run for what they want to produce. So if they are interested, we give them as much help as they want. We have video equipment, we have writing seminars; we have editing stations. So regarding all that we help as much as we can.

I think it really depends on people’s experience. If they are inexperienced, we might focus more on training them and on helping them write and getting a crew together, whether they want to direct it or not.

JA: Is there something specific that you hope to achieve this semester?

JC: I’ve been following BTV since I came to came to campus as a freshman.

This being my last semester, as a senior and as president, I just want to make sure that there are a lot of underclassmen who are interested in film who have the comfort and the confidence to keep giving life to the club.

Solution to last issue’s sudoku

Sudoku Copyright 2014 Tribune News Service, Inc.

—Jaime Gropper