the
Justice
Volume LXXIV, Number 6
www.thejustice.org
Tuesday, October 12, 2021
BUSINESS
CTO, Assaf Feldman, shared insight into the Israeli startup ecosystem. By ELLA RUSSELL JUSTICE STAFF WRITER
TAMID Group at Brandeis, a “business organization that develops professional skills through hands-on interaction with the Israeli economy” as described on the club’s website, virtually hosted a guest speaker, Assaf Feldman, on Oct. 4. Feldman is the co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of Israeli security company Riskified. Feldman talked about his life and the circumstances that prompted him to found the company, lending insight into the realities of the Israeli entrepreneurial ecosystem. Feldman had a relatively late start to programming. After a frustrating experience at age 10 with a lagging Massachusetts Institute of Technology coding program that moved a robotic turtle, he “never touched a computer” until his mid twenties. Instead, he explored a variety of subjects in high school and at university, particularly philosophy, math and film. He recounted viewing a lecture in New
York City’s Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts about the ways in which video can be combined with computer-generated graphics to track actions such as the movement of a dancer, shaping film in new ways. This lecture inspired Feldman to pursue studies in computer science, seeing computer graphics as the future of film. Eventually, “I realized I would not be the new … hope of Israeli cinema,” Feldman admitted. Around the time he graduated from MIT, the internet boom was in full swing, and Feldman joined a startup of friends from film school. They were working on a proto-YouTube style online system that would allow users to share and comment on videos. However, while working on these ideas, computer technology was not yet advanced enough to support what would eventually become the domain of YouTube. Feldman remarked that in hindsight, the failure of their ideas was a good example of the vital importance of proper timing for entrepreneurial success. Feldman moved with his fellow entrepreneurs to New York, but quickly had to extricate himself with the burst of the internet bubble. Uncertain about his next move, Feldman applied to MIT’s Media
See BUSINESS, 7 ☛
BRIEF
Univ. preps for flu with vaccine clinic Approaching fall and winter seasons, the University held multiple flu clinics in preparation for flu season. The Health Center website says that “flu season starts in the fall and usually peaks in January or February.” The University has been holding flu clinics for the Brandeis community for many years, including last year’s open walk-in flu clinic during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. The first clinic was community-wide and took place from Oct. 4 to 6, from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. in the Hassenfeld Conference Center, according to the Flu Shot Clinic website. This clinic was open to the whole Brandeis community, including students, staff, faculty, family, friends and the Waltham community. To sign up, individuals just clicked on a link on the Flu Shot Clinic website, which showed a calendar with available appointment dates and times. The website listed rules for individuals coming to get the vaccine: bring their consent form for the vaccination and an insurance card and wear a mask at all times. Similarly to other on-campus locations,
Brandeis community members had to show a green or yellow campus passport, while visitors had to fill out the Daily Health Assessment and have proof of their results. In addition to administering flu vaccines, the clinic offered free COVID-19 booster shots for those who were eligible.The website `clarified that no separate appointment was necessary. If qualified, an individual could receive the booster shot at their flu vaccine appointment. The second clinic took place from Oct. 7 to 8 from 9 a.m. to 12 p.m. at the Golding Health Center, located in the Stoneman Building, and was specifically for Brandeis students to receive free flu shots. In order to book an appointment, students could either call the Health Center number or sign up via the secure patient portal. On the website, it says that, in addition to this clinic, students can also receive a flu shot at any other time by scheduling an appointment with the Health Center. —Jacklyn Goloborodsky
Waltham, Mass.
BRANDEISWOMEN EVENT
TAMID club brings cofounder of Israeli startup ■ Riskified founder and
Waltham, Mass.
ISABEL ROSETH/the Justice
ALUMNUS SPEAKER: Jefferson spoke about how her years at Brandeis impacted her professional career.
Pulitzer Prize writer speaks about her academic and professional experiences ■ Margo Jefferson ’68
answered questions about her time at Brandeis as well as her journalism career. By ISABEL ROSETH JUSTICE CONTRIBUTING WRITER
On Wednesday, Oct. 6, Brandeis Women’s Network hosted a conversation with Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Margo Jefferson ’68. The event was held over Zoom and was moderated by Trustee Barbara Dortch-Okara ’71. Over the course of the event, Jefferson discussed her time at Brandeis, the trajectory of her career and answered some questions from the community. Jefferson is known for her work as a critic at Newsweek and The New York Times, and for winning the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism in 1995. She wrote a biography about Michael Jackson titled “On Michael Jackson,” and her book “Negroland: A Memoir” won the 2015 National Book Critics Circle Award. The event began with DortchOkara asking Jefferson about her memoir, “Negroland.” The book was published in 2015 and details her childhood in a privileged Black community in Chicago during the 1950s and '60s. When asked how she decided on the title, Jefferson explained that while she had doubts about it, she ultimately wanted the title to “stand for the histori-
cal period that [she] had been very much a product of.” The term “negro,” she explained, was once a respectable term, and had a tone of “stalwart uplift” and “keeping your shoulders high.” She tied it in with land to represent where she grew up, which was “largely segregated, though with a little integration.” Neighborhoods in Chicago were and are largely separated by race, and this segregation, or “even cruel divisions,” shaped her life for many years. Jefferson then discussed how she, a Chicagoan, had ended up at Brandeis in the first place, saying, “There’s a long line of Midwesterners, you know, all generations, who, if they think of themselves as artistic, they [sic] have always wanted to go east.” Jefferson was one of those, and had aspired to go to college on the east coast since before she started high school. Her family stumbled upon Brandeis when her elder sister, who also aspired to study in the east, was touring colleges. Jefferson shared that while on a train, “my parents got talking to someone who was a graduate student at Brandeis, and he said, you know, maybe not this daughter, maybe another, think about Brandeis.” She ended up enrolling in 1964. What stuck out about Brandeis to Jefferson was its “feverish coed intellectualism.” In the '60s, the University was a hotbed of activism. The anti-war movement was revving up, and Jefferson said that
she and her classmates were “very involved in civil rights.” When she enrolled, the women's movement had not quite begun, and she explained that the Black Power movement was not quite there yet either. “There were always exciting speakers around, too,” Jefferson added. “And there was so much talk going on, you know, in class, in dorms. But the thing that was so interesting was to be on that, that shift [to the civil rights movement].” The events of the late '60s shaped her experience at Brandeis. The Black Panthers’ emergence in 1966 prompted Black student organizations to form, and the March on the Pentagon in 1967 was another formative event for that generation. Laughing, Jefferson recalled that the birth control pill became available when she was a first-year, which was very significant for women at the time. Jefferson also shared her most memorable times at Brandeis. She reminisced about going to Cholmondeley’s, the coffee house in Usen Castle, “sitting around all closely packed together,” listening to what she described as “to us then, groundbreaking folk singers.” Student bohemian life was very big at the time, and she laughed as she commented that there was “a lot of grass around.” In addition to student life, Jefferson also talked about courses she remembered. While not particularly focused on political science,
See ALUMNUS, 7 ☛
Transgender Inclusion
Kahlo Exhibit
Washington Post "TikTok guy" gives advice
The Justice learned more about Athletics Transgender Inclusion Policy from student athletes.
The Rose is hosting ongoing exhibition "Frida Kahlo: POSE."
By LEAH BREAKSTONE
Post-pandemic high school nostalgia
By ATHENA LI
By LAUYRN WILLIAMS
By NATALIE KAHN
NEWS 3 FORUM 9
Judges have tough homecoming weekend Image Courtesy of ALEXANDER WICKEN '23
FEATURES 8 For tips or info email editor@thejustice.org
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ARTS 19
By AKI YAMAGUCHI
COPYRIGHT 2021 FREE AT BRANDEIS.
SPORTS 16