The Tufts Daily - Monday, November 25, 2019

MEN’S SOCCER

Students, professors discuss astrology, Co—Star see FEATURES / PAGE 3

Jumbos advance past Camels, Generals to Final Four

Pokémon ‘Sword,’ ‘Shield’ bring welcome innovation to long-loved franchise see ARTS&LIVING / PAGE 5

SEE SPORTS / BACK PAGE

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VOLUME LXXVIII, ISSUE 54

Monday, November 25, 2019

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Tufts faculty donate $1.5 million to political organizations, overwhelmingly to Democrats

by Caleb Symons and Anton Shenk

Executive Investigative Editor and Assistant News Editor

Sean Ong and Jarod Gowgiel (LA’19) contributed data analysis to this article.

Tufts faculty and academic administrators donated more than $1.5 million to political campaigns and organizations between January 2015 and September 2019, with a large portion of contributions going to Democratic candidates and progressive causes, according to a review of Federal Election Commission records.

That sum comprised more than 17,000 individual contributions, made by 680 unique faculty members, over the nearly five-year period. Three faculty members were responsible for $885,000, or 57%, of all donations.

Ninety-four percent of donated money went to Democratic candidates and causes, while just under 1% went to Republicanaligned recipients. Non-partisan organizations, including those supporting independent candidates, received 4% of Tufts faculty members’ contributions.

With such a heavy partisan skew, the Tufts faculty represented in this analysis appear to be dramatically more liberal than the Massachusetts electorate, which voted for Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump by a 27-point margin in 2016.

Tufts Provost and Senior Vice President Nadine Aubry noted that while professors may hold their own political beliefs, the university encourages students to consider a broad range of ideas.

“We expect that our faculty, staff and students will have a variety of viewpoints that they will explore in healthy and respectful debate,” Aubry told the Daily in an email.

“We actively promote a diversity of voices and views, inviting people from across the ideological spectrum to speak at Tufts.”

The university’s faculty members donated far more than their contemporaries at other Northeast liberal arts colleges. During the 2016 election cycle, Tufts faculty donated over 13 times more than employees at Williams College — the next-most munificent school in the NESCAC — according to reporting by the Bowdoin Orient.

Eitan Hersh, associate professor of political science, attributed this discrepancy to the fact that Tufts is uniquely situated near a major city. This means it has more lucrative professions, offering people a greater opportunity to participate in political fundraising, according to Hersh.

“The kind of people who work here might have spouses in finance or law,” he said.

“There just aren’t a lot of fundraisers in rural Maine, but there are a ton in Boston, so you’re much more likely to be in a social network [that encourages political donations] here.”

Political contributions by Tufts faculty have fluctuated from year to year since 2015. In the 2015–16 election cycle, 344 faculty members donated a combined $555,782 to candidates and political organizations. The following two years saw an increase in both the number and overall magnitude of donations, with 432 individuals contributing $765,268.

EVAN SAYLES / THE TUFTS DAILY ARCHIVES

Goddard Chapel is pictured at sunset on March 18, 2016.

However, the median individual’s donation fell from $200 during the 2015–16 cycle to $137.50 in the midterm cycle.

Less than a year into the 2019–20 election cycle, 269 Tufts faculty members have donated more than $228,000 to political candidates and causes, and the median donor has contributed $58.50.

This investigation reveals that a significant share of Tufts faculty from across the university’s academic institutions, departments and positions make political donations. It also examines the ideological bias

that these donations indicate and its impact on the university’s scholarly mission.

Who is donating?

Faculty members at the Jonathan M. Tisch College of Civic Life and in the School of Arts and Sciences (A&S) were responsible for the majority of donated money since 2015, giving a combined $1.1 million. Together, the Tufts University School of Medicine (TUSM) and the

see DONATIONS, page 6

Senate passes resolution calling for land acknowledgment

by Rebecca Barker Staff Writer

The Tufts Community Union (TCU) Senate met on Sunday night to discuss a resolution titled “S. 19-13 A Resolution Calling for Tufts University to Create an Official Land Acknowledgement, Increase the Amount of Indigenous Presence on Campus, and Raise Awareness of Tufts History with Indigenous Peoples,” written by sophomore Cyrus Kirby.

The resolution called for the university to publicly recognize that it stands on Massachusett and Wampanoag land, and requested that this acknowledgement “accurately recognize[s] Tufts University’s history and current relationship with indigenous peo-

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ple.” The resolution passed unanimously, with a final vote of 23–0–0.

The resolution said that other universities, such as Northwestern University, McGill University and Yale University have recently created their own land acknowledgments.

The resolution also highlighted the lack of indigenous presence on Tufts’ campus, saying only ten faculty and students identified as Native American only.

Only one faculty member identifies as solely Native American, and completion of the Native American and Indigenous Studies minor consists of only four courses and a capstone project. Kirby said that the minor is not as intensive as it could be.

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The resolution calls for an increase in Native American faculty and staff to address why the minor has so few requirements, as well as broaden these requirements and the available curriculum. The resolution also called on Tufts to accept more Native American students.

The resolution requested Tufts acknowledge its history with Native American and Indigenous peoples through a widespread digital statement, communications with the Senate and plaques in various public spaces around campus.

The Senate also passed supplementary funding requests made by Athletes of Color (AOC), the Lifting Club, Tufts Psychology Society and TEDXTufts.

AOC requested $1,837 for a Martin Luther King Jr. alumni event, as well as funding for

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tickets to the annual Harvard Africa Business Conference. The Allocations Board (ALBO) granted them $1,677.

The Lifting Club was granted $185 after requesting $2,000 to host a nutritionist and physical therapist, provide new equipment to their members and to hold two movie nights.

The Tufts Psychology Society requested $100 to cover costs for a trivia night, which the Office of Campus Life charges for weeknight events. ALBO voted to match this request, which the Senate approved.

Senate will also provide TEDXTufts with $2,000 for a new sign to improve the club’s set design. The sign is estimated to cost $1,800, and the additional money is expected to cover shipping costs.

NEWS............................................1 FEATURES.................................3 ARTS & LIVING.......................4 INVESTIGATIVE....................6

FUN & GAMES.........................8 OPINION.....................................9 SPORTS............................ BACK

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THE TUFTS DAILY | News | Monday, November 25, 2019

THE TUFTS DAILY Jessica Blough Editor in Chief

EDITORIAL Ryan Eggers Justin Yu

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Murrow Center at The Fletcher School hosts media, democracy conference

by Madeleine Aitken Staff Writer

The Edward R. Murrow Center for a Digital World, part of The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, hosted its first annual “Conference on New Media and Democracy” on Thursday and Friday.

The theme of this year’s conference was “The Future of Democracy in the Age of Disinformation: Innovating Policy Solutions for a Networked World.” The conference had a morning and an afternoon session, each with its own theme, a keynote speaker and two panels of distinguished speakers.

Edward Schumacher-Matos, director of the Murrow Center, emphasized the work Fletcher students put in to organize the event, as well as the importance and timeliness of the conference, in his opening remarks.

“We really wanted to focus very much today on finding solutions to many of the problems that we know exist and have been emerging and growing on the internet and on the web,” Schumacher-Matos said.

Rachel Kyte, dean of The Fletcher School, delivered the morning keynote address. Kyte (F’02), a Fletcher alumna herself, assumed the role of dean on Oct. 1 and is the first woman to lead The Fletcher School after 13 male deans. Previously, Kyte was the CEO of Sustainable Energy for All and special representative of the United Nations secretary-general for Sustainable Energy for All. Her career has been focused on climate change activism, specifically sustainable energy as the answer to climate change, and she retains this view in her new role.

“I’ve been working for the last six years intensively on, you know, one of those knife fights that we’ve got going on in the world, where the media plays such an important role, where data and evidence have been thrown out of the window or attempted to throw out of the window, and where shaping the narrative is the domain of huge amounts of money being thrown in quite explicit ways, but then in deeply subversive ways in order to move the conversation in one way or the other,” Kyte said.

Kyte spoke to how such behavior, which she observed in issues of climate, is just as visible in realms like politics, debate and democracy.

“I think democracy’s already very wobbly. What I’m really worried about now is the rule of law, which underpins democracy,” Kyte said.

She hypothesized about the direction in which our “post-globalized world” is moving.

“We’re now emerging into a world with three blocs, which will govern, I presume, or rule, around issues of media and technology and security in different ways. And it’s not just about regulatory approaches, it actually reflects a fundamentally different set of values around privacy and communication. Those three blocs are China, the EU and the U.S.,” Kyte said.

Following the keynote address, Ellysse Dick, a candidate for a Master of Arts in Law and Diplomacy from Fletcher, introduced the first panel of the morning session: “US Information Strategy in the Cyber Era: Promoting US Interests and Preserving American Values.”

“Communication policy and information strategy have rarely experienced this level of public scrutiny. With the credibility of American democracy under threat from foreign disinformation campaigns, the U.S. needs to engage in active attempts to counter malicious information opera-

ASHA IYER / THE TUFTS DAILY ARCHIVES

The sign in front of The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy is pictured on March 4, 2018. tions,” Dick said. Dick was one of the student organizers of the conference.

Thom Shanker, an editor for The New York Times, was joined in the first talk by panelists Admiral Philip Hart Cullom, a global strategic advisor, entrepreneur and energy innovator, and retired vice admiral for the U.S. Navy; Nina Jankowicz, disinformation fellow at the Wilson Center; David Sanger, national security correspondent at The New York Times; and Maria Barsallo Lynch, executive director of the Harvard Kennedy School’s Defending Digital Democracy Project.

The panelists covered topics including election hacking, distinctions between digital defense and digital resilience, and Russian interference in elections.

“I went to Ukraine during their presidential election in the spring, kind of on the hunt for Russian interference, having spent a year there advising the foreign ministry, as Thom said, and seeing, on a day-to-daybasis what damage just this torrent of false and misleading information can have on a country’s foreign policy, on a country’s dayto-day operations. I think we’re seeing a lot of that brought to bear now, in the United States, unfortunately,” Jankowicz said.

Lynch spoke about her efforts with the Defending Digital Democracy Project (D3P), which aims to protect and preserve democracy in the technological age.

“It’s a combination of students, fellows, experts in technology, cybersecurity, national security, politics, who come together to provide real-time tools and solutions against cyber and information attacks that are faced by people who uphold the democratic process. And really, we call them the front-line defenders of democracy because they are ensuring that we continue to uphold these processes,” Lynch said.

Lynch also clarified the difference between misinformation and disinformation, which is a central part of the playbook on information operations the D3P is planning to release.

“We talk about both mis- and disinformation as a part of the toolkit of information operations, misinformation being information that is false or deceptive but that’s accidentally spread,” Lynch said.

“Disinformation is false or inaccurate information that is deceptive and it’s spread on purpose, knowingly false. And that’s the category that we’ve seen more often used by foreign actors.”

The second panel of the morning session centered around the same theme, which was “National Security and Foreign Policy in the Disinformation Age.” The

panel was entitled “Balkanization of the Internet: The Growing Popularity of the Chinese Firewall” and was presented in collaboration with Hitachi and moderated

by Andrew Walworth, chief content officer at RealClearPolitics.

While the morning session focused on identifying and outlining the main problems surrounding modern media, the afternoon session, titled “Innovating Solutions Across Sectors,” focused on searching for solutions. It was constructed the same way as the morning session, with a keynote address delivered by Richard Stengel, former U.S. undersecretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs, followed by two panels.

The first panel, “Can the Platforms Save Us? The Strengths and Limits of the Private Sector,” was moderated by Casey Newton, the Silicon Valley editor at The Verge.

Panelists discussed the role of the private sector in mitigating the spread of disinformation and how new forms of media are going to factor into public policy.

The second panel of the afternoon was “Can the Government Save Us? Emerging Models of Regulation and Free Speech,” moderated by Dipayan Ghosh of the Shorenstein Center at Harvard University.

The three panelists all represented different governments — Malaysia, India and Mexico — and spoke to how each of their countries is responding to new media.

Many of the conversations at the conference stressed methods for achieving innovative solutions to recent technological and media developments. However, they also emphasized the need to recognize that these issues aren’t isolated.

“It’s always important to remember when we talk about what’s going on today, we’re talking about a snapshot in time,” Walworth said. “It’s a real danger to think that we live in the worst of times or the best of times. Things will change.”

Editorial coordinator of the event, Anuradha Herur, a second-year Master of Arts in Law and Diplomacy candidate, explained that one of the goals of the conference was to include as many people as possible in the conversation.

“The idea came about as sort of a collaboration between wanting to engage thought leaders in an interesting conversation about these topics while at the same time making this accessible to students and other people that want to learn about this,” Herur said. “We may be getting a lot of experts to talk about these things but it’s accessible to all.”

Natasha Mayor contributed reporting to this article.

Features

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Co—Star, astrology influence the lives of Tufts students

JUSTIN YU / THE TUFTS DAILY

A student checks the Co—Star app on their phone.

by Raga Chilakamarri Contributing Writer

“Be hungry for yourself.” / “Your nervous energy won’t be especially useful today.” / “You can be daring without being careless.”

The Co—Star “Your day at a glance” push notifications read as a mix between harsh fortune cookie quotes and life advice from Queer Eye’s Karamo Brown.

This minimalist, millennial-forward app promises “hyper-personalized” daily horoscopes powered by artificial intelligence algorithms, satellite data from NASA and traditional astrological practices. Co—Star boasted over 5 million registered accounts as of this summer, with an Apple App Store user rating of 4.9 out of 5.

“These are not your average magazine back-page horoscopes,” the Co—Star description reads.

Co—Star is one of many apps in the recent wave of contemporary astrology, joined by others such as The Pattern, DailyHoroscope and Astrology & Palmistry Coach. At Tufts, though, C0— Star takes the crown for most popular.

In an online survey of 126 Tufts students, around 42% stated that they have an astrology app — the overwhelming majority of whom cited Co—Star as their app of choice. However, of those who did have an astrology app, nearly half voted that they never use it, compared to about 18% who said that they use the app every day.

Regardless of app ownership or consumption, about 75% of survey respondents reported that astrology has no influence on their daily decisions, with only a handful of votes to indicate the opposite. Despite this trend against the everyday relevance of horoscopes and astrology, some students seemed reluctant to fully swear away the practice.

When asked, “Do you believe that astrology is accurate?” nearly 40% voted “Somewhat.” And again, a little less than 40% of respondents found that their star signs “Somewhat” reflected their personality.

Assistant Professor of Religion Jennifer Eyl was not surprised by the uncertainty with which a good portion of Tufts students approach astrology.

“I would suspect that that percentage of the population which is not entirely sure if [astrology is] accurate or if it works, but does it nonetheless, is also

a population statistic that we find in all kinds of religions,” Eyl said. “That’s an approach that a significant number of people approach religious practices more generally: not entirely positive that it works, but [find that] it’s meaningful to engage in it nonetheless.”

Moreover, astrology has evolved to fit into the 21st century despite originating thousands of years ago. While the Western practice of astrology can be traced back to ancient Babylon, the tradition of interpreting the celestial bodies has always been cross-cultural. Astrology, like religion, initially served a practical, mundane purpose, back when the stars were the only tools to help people navigate the world, Eyl explained.

“Those positions and those events can be read and interpreted so that the questioner can live the most livable life …

They’re about to take a journey by sea, or now by airplane, they marry the right person, or they avoid the wrong person,” Eyl said. “Right, this is very practical information that is supposed to give people a way to flourish and to avoid mishap.”

From abundant zodiac memes to Spotify’s Cosmic Playlists to apps like Co—Star, astrology has remained a recurring topic in pop culture, creating a surge of discussions around the revival of New Age traditions.

In fact, on the eve of Halloween, Tufts University Social Collective ( TUSC) hosted a tarot card reader event in the Campus Center. Allison MacKenzie, a daytime coordinator for TUSC, described the event as an overall success.

“I think people really liked getting personalized information about themselves that maybe they might not know, and you know the tarot card readers really fit the bill. They were these two sweet older ladies that really had that knowing aura about them,” MacKenzie, a junior, said.

MacKenzie noted that by the end of the event, the line grew to an extent that they started to read multiple people at once. If plausible, MacKenzie said, TUSC would probably run the event again next year, possibly hiring one more reader for greater efficiency.

Eyl was surprised by the concept of referring to horoscopes for a personalized, individual interpretation of the stars and said she considered such a focus on the “me” as indicative of the current age of “Neoliberalism.”

“Typically astrological events and readings are not historically … about everyone’s uniqueness and everybody’s individuality. They are about reading information so that people know how, of course, to navigate the world and to make the right decisions and read information from God that is cryptic,” Eyl said.

For Nicole Setow, a Pisces, her daily horoscope serves as a reminder to reflect inwardly.

“I think what I take from astrology is what I want to. So I don’t use it to figure out what my life is going to be about, but I enjoy looking at Co—Star and being like, that matches up to how I’m feeling today,” Setow, a first-year, said.

Setow also said that she believes people engage with astrology ironically and as a way of hearing other people’s generalizations of each others’ personalities.

“I think people do it jokingly. It’s still one of those things where people enjoy knowing, but it’s not like anyone takes it super seriously,” Setow said.

Co—Star, in particular, embraces this ambiguity, playing into the modern use of astrology as a means for meditation and snippets of life advice, similar to Fitbit’s “Reminders to Move.”

“Like much in the astrology world, the messages and meanings are up to you to take as you will,” the Co—Star description reads.

Many survey respondents had similar thoughts, referring to horoscopes as comforting and entertaining.

“I don’t think astrology is accurate in any way, but I do think it can help you think about yourself and your life through a different lens, which is always refreshing and helpful,” one respondent wrote in the survey.

Some students commented that they found the practice, and any credence in it, to be vague and nonsensical.

“I think that it feels arbitrary what [horoscopes] say about who I am or what I am likely to feel. Of course they’re going to get some stuff right, but I’m not the same person all the time, and it’s easy to write general things” another student wrote.

Professor of Social Psychology Sam Sommers agreed that, given the lack of specificity innate to astrological interpretations, people could easily perceive themselves in characterizations of their zodiac signs or “prophecies” for their day.

“A lot of the appeal and so called success of astrology comes from confirmation bias. These very general horoscopes and predictions that anyone can see some semblance of truth in,” Sommers said. “Anyone can see some grain of truth to the idea that ‘you are in a challenging spot right now, and you like your independence but also working with others.'”

The value that astrology holds among students may lie less in interpreting the convergence of celestial bodies based on one’s birthday as prescriptive fortune-telling, and more about encouraging conscious recognition of one’s challenges and successes at a given moment.

Astrology, to some, can serve as a daily dose of spiritual medicine, and a reminder of one’s connection to the intricacies of the cosmos itself.

“The world is an unpredictable and chaotic place,” Sommers said. “We gravitate toward perspectives and world views that help us impose a sense of order and predictability into, onto the social universe.”

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Monday, November 25, 2019

Ryan Gell JumboCash

It’s never too early to think about retirement

I

f you’ve kept up with JumboCash, you know about different asset classes and investing strategies. Now it’s time to talk about the best account in which to implement those strategies. Different account types offer distinct advantages to bolster your returns, so understanding which account fits you best can have a large impact on how much money you keep after taxes.

Anyone can simply open a brokerage account with a company such as Fidelity, Charles Schwab or E*TRADE. However, as I discussed in last week’s article, you incur a capital gains tax if your investment appreciates in value. If you have money you want to invest over a shorter time horizon, a brokerage account might be the right fit. Over a longer time horizon, though, retirement accounts help you pocket more cash.

The most widely-known account types relate to retirement. They are broadly known as Individual Retirement Accounts, or IRAs. If you are comfortable setting aside money now, and not touching it until you retire, these accounts have massive tax advantages that can generate you a high return in the long run.

The first important retirement account is a traditional IRA. Here’s how a traditional IRA works: You contribute pre-tax dollars to the account, you select investments within the account and the money grows tax free until you withdraw it when you retire (which is called a distribution). The term pre-tax means that your contribution is tax deductible; so the money is not taxed before it enters the account. Currently, the contribution limit for a traditional IRA is $6,000 per year.

The second key retirement account is a Roth IRA. The tax advantage of the Roth IRA is the opposite of the traditional IRA: money is taxed before you contribute to the account, but you can withdraw it tax free when you retire! The maximum annual contribution is also $6,000.

Each account also has a “catch-up” provision, where the maximum annual contribution increases to $7,000 for those over 50.

However, just because there is a “catch up” provision doesn’t mean you should procrastinate investing! You can save a paper until the night before and still get an A, but you can’t avoid saving for 30 years and expect to have $1 million when you retire. Try to contribute early and let your money compound.

In a brokerage account, if you sold shares of a mutual fund at a gain, you would have to pay taxes on that gain; with IRAs, you can sell the stock without paying taxes, but the money remains in the account, where you can re-invest it in another mutual fund.

In either IRA, you still pay a tax — the key is that you can choose when you pay the tax. With a traditional IRA, you get a short-term tax break, as your contribution is tax deductible, but your distributions from the account are taxable in the future.

With a Roth IRA, you have to wait for your tax break: you cannot deduct contributions from your income, but you get to take your money out of the account tax free! If you’re prepared to invest for the long term, a retirement account could be the right way to get started.

Ryan Gell is a senior studying economics and history. Ryan can be reached at ryan. gell@tufts.edu.

4 Monday, November 25, 2019

ARTS&LIVING

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Coates speaks about ‘The Water Dancer,’ his quest Rihanna’s reality to create a counter-story

Sammy Park Bangers and Bops

I

hate the radio. For the first 16 years of my life, my parents drove cars that didn’t have AUX or Bluetooth capabilities. So, as a middle schooler that took too much pride in her indie music knowledge repertoire, I was always subjected to hearing Imagine Dragons’ newest hit.

However, while I did have a distaste for the second oldest form of mass media, I have to give Big Radio some credit for introducing me to a woman who defined an entire generation: Rihanna. There are few artists whose songs have dominated pop music radio stations: Hearing the song “Cheers (Drink to That)” (2010) makes me nearly feel the texture of the red iPod Nano that I shared with my siblings. Yet, the impact of Rihanna’s career is so much more than its longevity and ability to inspire nostalgia.

In 2009, at what seemed like the height of her career, with three chart-topping albums and a fourth one on the way, her then-boyfriend Chris Brown’s abuse was made public. TMZ’s distribution of photos of her bloodied and bruised face and the subsequent media circus surrounding her relationship with him illustrates the dehumanizing aspects of celebrity.

As a function of being an entertainer, one is portrayed as inadvertently consenting to this rabid obsession we have toward celebrities.

Despite this very visible breach of her dignity, Rihanna was able to subvert media narratives that cast her as either an agency-less victim or a sexcrazed girl who was asking for it. In “S&M” (2010), she satirizes the media’s response to her assault. In a scene from the music video, she is seen behind a layer of plastic wrap while gagged journalists scribble in a reporter’s notebook and take pictures of her. The entire video is a clear message that she has reclaimed the sexuality that was robbed as soon as her physical body became a forum for public debate.

Rihanna’s authenticity isn’t Jennifer Lawrence falling at the Oscars or Cory Booker tweeting about sleep and coffee.

It is a product of her insistence that we see her as a person. She has the artistic range to deliver a powerful vocal performance on “Needed Me” (2016) and cover Tame Impala on “Same Ol’ Mistakes” (2016), but her impact is so much larger than the sounds that she produces.

After spending her formative years in the limelight, Rihanna has taken the assertion that she is not a figurehead for a record label to monetize, but a woman single handedly changing the makeup and fashion industry, much to the chagrin of fans waiting for a ninth album.

In many ways, the passion that fuels everything Rihanna does, from lipsticks to lingerie, helps us conceptualize her as a multi-dimensional woman.

For people who have even tangentially followed her career, they have been witness to her refusal to be categorized. The agency over her art and public image has inspired a generation of female artists to reject playing into what is marketable or safe and, instead, pursue their own reality.

by Elizabeth Sander Assistant Arts Editor

The Chevalier Theater in Medford welcomed National Book Award Winner Ta-Nehisi Coates on Oct. 18 to speak about his latest work “The Water Dancer” (2019), a fictional work following protagonist Hiram as he recounts his escape from slavery. He and other characters in the novel, like Harriet Tubman, have magical powers which help them escape.

Hiram has the gift of an extraordinary memory, the trigger for his powers, but the only thing he cannot remember is his mother. The novel becomes a quest in remembering and learning how to use said powers.

Coates spoke about the importance of memory on multiple occasions. Not only did he want to write a book about remembering, he also wanted to write a book which would create a counter-story, affecting the memory of its readers. He explained that black writers often “take outlines of white heroism and paint it black.” He asked himself on stage how he “could tell a different story.” What would he include? Coates explained that he didn’t want to include anything violent, so he really “laid into non-violence” in his writing. This also seemed true to African American history, as he explained, because enslaved people “seldom had the power of straight-up revenge.”

Coates also noted the “power of escape” in African American history and attempted to “amp it up” in creating a novel which centers on Hiram’s escape from slavery.

This is where magical realism comes in; Coates was able to “amp up” this power of escape by painting Harriet Tubman’s character as a magical hero, which, he said, was basically the truth.

Harriet Tubman has always seemed like a superhero to Coates, and he mentioned the work of Jacob Lawrence, whose “pieces have a very surrealist, supernaturalist sort of feel; Harriet almost looks like a giant.” Coates said that “it felt so natural to tell [the story] this way … when I thought about [Harriet Tubman], it wasn’t the pictures that I thought about; I thought about this art.” To Coates, Tubman has always been a figure of strength and mysticism. The methods she used to rescue so many people without losing any are still not known. The magical realism surrounding her character simply enhances the truth behind her heroism.

Coates also spoke about the process of writing the novel, during which he visited many historical sites in the South that are connected to the history of slavery and escape from it. One of these was Thomas Jefferson’s residence, Monticello. Coates asked the audience how many people had visited there, and almost a third of the audience raised their hands, but when he asked how many black people had visited there, most hands went down. He asked “why that might be — why black people don’t go to these sites in general.”

He began by stating that “it’s a hard visit” because it is a place of “war crimes,” though an audience member shouted that it’s not seen that way. “The vast majority of people who come to Monticello know Jefferson had slaves, but they don’t really get that he had nothing without them,” Coates said. He Sammy Park is a sophomore who has not added that this was a “beautiful metayet declared a major. Sammy can be reached phor for America in itself.” at samantha.park@tufts.edu.

COURTESY WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

Ta-Nehisi Coates gives the keynote address at the University of Virginia’s 2015 MLK Celebration.

Thomas Jefferson lived an extravagant life; he is a known over-spender. So even with the free labor of hundreds of slaves, he died in debt. The audience laughed for a long time at that story, but it is true that most people who come to Monticello don’t see that. They don’t see the front lawn as the place where Jefferson’s family auctioned off all his slaves after his death to make up for his debts. “People get married [at Monticello], they have wine tastings there. That’s tough,” Coates added.

But despite this reality of altered memory, Coates wanted “to urge specifically black people who have not gone to go, and I want to encourage us to visit these sites of memory because there are people there fighting the battle, and they need to be supported. We need to take our possession of these places … and be active in how the story is told and how people remember history at places like Monticello.”

Coates explained that his visit to Monticello gave him much insight into the writing process. To him, as a writer, one has to be clear about the pain people like Jefferson inflicted by owning slaves.

“On one level you have to be clear about the damage without ‘all lives mattering’

slavery, but gotta know you’re talking about a system, an entrenched system, that that portion of the country participated in,” he said.

Coates said that much of himself is reflected in the protagonist Hiram. “But it’s a lot of me in every single character in the book, even the white ones, especially the white ones,” he said. “If you’re going to write them, you’ve gotta get inside them.”

At the end of the talk, Coates was asked about forgetting and how that has affected the current national moment.

“When I think of me and my desires to become a better person, what good does it do to forget my weaknesses?

What good does it do for me not to remember my own history? What good does it do to forget when I have failed to be the person I aspire to be? So then what good does it do for a country to forget its worst moments? And for people to urge other people to forget those things? … That ain’t love. It ain’t love of self. It ain’t love of country. And it sure isn’t love of family.”

The audience then responded in kind, applauding, whistling, agreeing fervently with his words.

Arts & Living

Monday, November 25, 2019 | Arts & Living | THE TUFTS DAILY

5

GAME REVIEW

‘Sword,’ ‘Shield’ are most balanced, exciting Pokémon games in years

by Christopher Panella

Executive Social Media Editor

Nintendo is back with “Pokémon Sword” (2019) and “Pokémon Shield” (2019), the latest installments in the iconic role-playing game series. The eighth generation games have already seen plenty of success; they’re the fastest-selling Nintendo Switch games ever, with 6 million copies sold in their launch weekend alone. And despite the games’ release being clouded with negative criticism toward their graphics and the lack of the National Pokédex, the “Sword and Shield” games are fun, fantastic and bring to life everything that makes playing Pokémon enjoyable.

The games follow a relatively simple plot — gone are the days of the thrillingly intricate stories of games like “Diamond” (2006) and “Pearl” (2006) and “Black 2” (2012) and “White 2” (2012) — but the storyline works well for what it is, putting the emphasis on battling in a way that’s never been seen in the games before. “Sword” and “Shield” does away with the Elite Four and makes the Gym challenge similar to the animation series; it’s all about rivals, and the games present the player with a variety of them to battle. From the overly ambitious Hop — the younger brother of Leon, who is the currently unbeatable Galar region Champion — to the mean-spirited Bede and the beloved Marnie, the player has plenty of characters to battle against.

The focus on battling is certainly fun, but some of these battles can be a little too easy. Indeed, “Sword” and “Shield” might

thrive from more challenging gameplay.

The best way to accomplish this would be the inclusion of a difficulty setting, akin to the Challenge Mode from “Black 2” and “White 2,” which raised the levels of rival Pokémon, gave Gym leaders extra Pokémon with items and new moves, and satisfied fans who didn’t want to breeze through the game.

The new villainous team is Team Yell, a group of obnoxious supporters of Marnie, and the player must navigate both the Gym challenge and the discovery of Galar’s legends regarding two heroes, the Darkest Day and the Dynamax and Gigantamax phenomenon. Dynamax and Gigantamax are two of the most exciting gameplay ideas that the series has implemented, arguably much more appealing than the Mega Evolutions introduced in “X” (2013) and “Y” (2013).

And with the focus on battling and gyms, there’s also an emphasis on building the perfect team. “Sword” and “Shield” faced controversy when it was announced that the games would not feature all preexisting Pokémon — a decision that was certainly looming, especially as the number of Pokémon gets closer to 1,000. While it’s upsetting that some favorite choices are not available in the Galar region, the push to “Bring Back the National Dex” has exploded, leading to thousands of angry tweets, petitions and boycotts.

Despite this controversy, “Sword” and “Shield” thrives. The available Pokémon are certainly varied enough to allow for every player to build a complex team. Some of the newer Pokémon designs are the most

innovative since “Diamond” and “Pearl”; Pokémon like Inteleon (the final evolution of water-type starter Sobble), the fiery centipede Centiskorch and Hatterene all show that while the number of new Pokémon introduced in recent games is smaller — 81 new Pokémon in “Sword” and “Shield” and 13 regional exclusives of preexisting Pokémon — there are plenty of exciting options and innovative creations.

The games follow their predecessors “Sun” (2016) and “Moon” (2016) in releasing these region-exclusive Pokémon. While some of the exclusives in “Sun” and “Moon” are quite strange — the extremely longnecked Exeggutor isn’t exactly aesthetically pleasing — “Sword” and “Shield” provide interesting revisits to previous Pokémon, like the majestically beautiful Ponyta and the unicorn Rapidash. It’s a reminder that the series will always find a way to bring new ideas and designs to the games. While “Sun” and “Moon” might have made some questionable choices in its revisionism of previous Pokémon, “Sword” and “Shield” are much stronger releases.

“Sword” and “Shield” thrive on beautiful graphics, but certain elements could have used a little more detail. Some of the moves used in battling can be awkward to watch, like when Cinderace (the final evolution of Fire type starter Scorbunny) barely jumps to use a move like Double Kick. It’s certainly easy to criticize moments like this, but it should also serve as a reminder of just how far the series’ graphics and gameplay have come and that some of the biggest complaints regarding graphics are merely about

a Pokémon’s jump. The Switch is the perfect console for the next generation of Pokémon games for this very reason: when noticing the details in cities and on routes in “Sword” and “Shield,” it’s impossible not to be awestruck by just how beautiful it all is.

The towns are large, with multiple detailed and intricate locations for the player to enter. Inarguably, one of the most gorgeous towns in the entire Pokémon series is Ballonlea, which features various tall mushrooms that glow bright colors and brighten when touched. Other cities, like Hammerlocke, are heavily influenced by British architecture and culture — Galar seems to take inspiration from Great Britain, much like “Sun” and “Moon” were influenced by Hawaii. The in-game music is some of the best in years, with places like the Boutique featuring absolute bops. One of the most exciting new features is camping with Pokémon — players can set up a campsite, cook curry and play with their team.

When it comes to balanced and fun Pokémon games, no games hit the mark like “Sword” and “Shield.” While they might have their drawbacks — the National Pokédex is certainly something that needs to be thought about for future Pokémon games, and it might be nice to return to a more complex plot and gameplay that’s just a little more polished — they’re an excellent installment in the franchise, and certainly the best installment since “Black 2” and “White 2.” The games show that there’s still plenty of room for the Pokémon franchise to grow, and after nearly 24 years since the first games, that’s very promising news.

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INVESTIGATIVE

Monday, November 25, 2019

tuftsdaily.com

Faculty donations lean heavily Democratic; administrators, professors insist no political bias in classroom DONATIONS

continued from page 1 Sackler School of Graduate Biomedical Sciences comprised the greatest number of individual donors among the university’s graduate and undergraduate schools.

Donations from faculty members in each of Tufts’ eight schools as well as two other academic institutions — the university’s administration and Tisch College — leaned overwhelmingly Democratic.

Faculty in Tufts’ nutrition programs at the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy and the Jean Mayer USDA Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging (HNRCA) donated exclusively to Democratic candidates and causes.

Faculty members in the university’s other academic institutions were nearly as partisan; only TUSM and Sackler School faculty gave less than 95% of their contributions to Democrats.

Tufts’ largest school by enrollment, A&S includes more than 70 undergraduate degree programs and more than 60 graduate programs. A&S faculty numbered 687 in fall 2016, according to the university, making the 16% of faculty who made a political donation that year slightly higher than the 12% share of Americans who reported doing so.

From January 2015 to September 2019, A&S faculty contributed more than half a million dollars to federal candidates and political organizations, comprising 37% of Tufts faculty members’ contributions over that period.

Of the $566,462 in donations from A&S faculty, nearly all went to Democratic campaigns and progressive causes. Groups not affiliated with a political party received 1.5% of their contributions, while Republican efforts received just 0.2% of A&S faculty members’ donations.

Rachel Wolff, president of Tufts Republicans, is not surprised by the heavy liberal slant in faculty members’ political contributions.

“Tufts is known for being a fairly liberal institution, and I think that attracts more liberal-leaning professors and administrators and students,” Wolff, a senior, said.

Wolff added, however, that conservative views among the faculty may be underrepresented by looking at political donations.

“I think that people who might lean conservative would be less likely to donate to conservative candidates in case someone might see it,” she said. “Given that a conservative professor would already be in the political minority here, they might be less likely to do that.”

Faculty members at Tisch College contributed slightly more than their A&S colleagues, with $578,704 in political donations since 2015, despite having only 12 unique donors. This discrepancy is largely due to spending by Dean of Tisch College Alan Solomont, whose contributions represent nearly the entirety of donations from Tisch College faculty.

Solomont, who has spent $576,515 since 2015, primarily to bolster Democratic efforts, is the top donor among Tufts faculty. Ninety-nine percent of his contributions went to Democratic candidates and organizations, with more than $200,000 going to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

Solomont said he views his campaign contributions as a minor aspect of how he

impacts civic discourse, given his work at Tisch College.

“My own personal views are not a secret,” he said. “But people ask me now who [my] candidate [is], and I tell them I don’t have a candidate. What we do [at Tisch College] is study what young people are doing. That’s probably a better contribution I can make to democracy today.”

TUSM and the Sackler School led all Tufts schools with 257 unique donors and boasted the most diverse apportionment of contributions. Of the nearly quarter of a million dollars donated

by TUSM and Sackler School faculty, 70% went to Democratic candidates and causes, while 25% went to organizations not affiliated with a political party.

TUSM and Sackler School faculty also donated $12,609 — 5% of their contributions — to Republican-aligned groups, the most from any Tufts school.

Ken Olum, a research professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, has given $225,420 to Democratic candidates since 2015, making him the second-highest donor at Tufts. Olum commented that faculty members in STEM fields are more insulated from political discussions than their peers in other departments. “[Politics] doesn’t arise in my work or interactions with students,” he said.

“One of the nice things about physics is you don’t have Republican physicists or Democrat physicists.”

Nonetheless, Olum added that he tends to avoid ideological debates with his colleagues.

Tenured faculty members donated a combined $738,922 to political organizations since 2015, followed by academic administrators, who gave $595,375. The latter figure is distorted

by Solomont’s contributions, however, as only 10 administrators made political

JESSE ROGERS / THE TUFTS DAILY

Figures above each bar represent the number of unique donors within the corresponding category. donations. 88 Tufts employees engaged primarily in research donated a combined $143,443.

Where did the money go?

Donations from Tufts faculty filled the coffers of political organizations in all 50 states, as well as Washington D.C. Candidates in New York and Massachusetts received the most money, while races in Kansas, Idaho and South Dakota garnered the least.

Tufts faculty contributed nearly $850,000 directly to candidates for federal office between January 2015 and

JESSE ROGERS / THE TUFTS DAILY

Figures above each bar represent the number of unique donors within the corresponding category.

“It’s not the case that all the faculty here in our department have the same political views … but I don’t want such conversations to interfere with our ability to work together on physics,” Olum said.

“That makes me reluctant to have conversations with people with whom I know I’m going to have a disagreement.”

Faculty members in 34 departments within A&S and the School of Engineering contributed to political organizations between January 2015 and September 2019. Physics and astronomy led all departments in money donated, largely due to Olum’s contributions. Among departments with the most unique donors, however, child studies and human development (25), biology (20) and English (19) topped the list. Only two of the 223 donors in A&S and the School of Engineering contributed to Republican-aligned causes.

$17,697 in contributions, followed by South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg ($6,831) and California Sen. Kamala Harris ($4,710). Tufts faculty members have donated $43,250 to Warren’s various campaigns since 2015. The progressive firebrand won re-election in 2018 before entering the 2020 presidential race.

September 2019. Candidates for the House of Representatives received 43% of those funds, followed closely by candidates for the Senate (39%).

While only 18% of donated money went to presidential candidates, Tufts faculty showed greater engagement with the presidential race than House or Senate races. Three-hundred and sixty unique donors contributed to a presidential campaign, while House and Senate campaigns received donations from 214 and 283 faculty members, respectively.

Tufts faculty members donated $168,991 to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign in the 2015–16 election cycle.

By contrast, university faculty have given U.S. President Donald Trump a total of $2,259 between his two campaigns.

Among 2020 presidential candidates, Sen. Elizabeth Warren has received the most money from Tufts faculty members, with

Herd mentality in higher education?

In her remarks at the 2017 Conservative Political Action Conference, U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos warned college students to be wary of receiving undue political influence from faculty members.

“The faculty, from adjunct professors to deans, tell you what to do, what to say and, more ominously, what to think,” DeVos said.

DeVos’s comments reflect a decadesold concern in American conservatism.

Right-wing commentators have long bemoaned college campuses as bastions of liberal groupthink. William F. Buckley Jr. remarked in 1961 that he “would rather be governed by the first 2,000 people in the telephone directory than by the Harvard University faculty.”

Indeed, higher education faculty leans heavily progressive. In a 2007 study by researchers at Harvard University and George Mason University, 44.1% of professors identified as liberal, while only 9.2% identified as conservative. In the same study, 51% of professors identified as Democrats, 35.3% identified as independents and 13.7% identified asF

Republicans.

Moreover, the share of progressive faculty has been on the rise.

The Higher Education Research Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles has surveyed full-time faculty at U.S. colleges and universities every three years since 1989. That year, 41.7% of respondents identified as politically liberal or far-left and 40.2% identified as moderate, while 18.2% identified as conservative or far-right. In 2016, the surveyed professoriate identified as 59.8% liberal or far-left, 28.1% moderate and just 12.1% conservative or far-right.

Much of this progressive skew is concentrated in New England — where research indicates liberal professors outnumber their conservative colleagues 28 to one — as well as in the arts, humanities and social sciences.

These disciplines represent “activist scholarship” and naturally attract a more liberal faculty, according to Samuel Abrams, professor of politics at Sarah Lawrence College.

“There’s been a selection mechanism where ultra-progressive people are moving more and more to a lot of these

A I rts & Living

departments and programs,” Abrams said. “If you look at the last two decades or so, the programs have become less purely ‘ivory tower’ academic.”

At the same time, conservatives have become increasingly hostile toward higher education.

Thirty-eight percent of American adults believe colleges have a negative impact on the country in 2019, up from 28% in 2015, according to Pew Research Institute. This shift has largely been driven by changing attitudes among Republican and Republican-leaning independents, 59% of whom say colleges negatively impact the country — compared to 37% four years ago.

Conservatives’ antipathy to higher education appears to result from, at least in part, a mistrust of college faculty.

Nearly one in five Republican and Republican-leaning respondents in a 2018 Pew survey expressed no confidence that professors act in the public interest. Meanwhile, among respondents in a separate Pew survey who believe higher education is going in the wrong direction, 79% of Republicans blamed professors for bringing their political and social views into the classroom, while only 17% of Democrats did so.

The growing body of research examining partisanship in higher education does Y not reveal a concerted effort to indoctri. nate students, however. Rather, Abrams said professors typically include a range of perspectives in their curricula.

“There may be a lopsided ideological personal bent [among professors], but we’re not necessarily seeing it thrust upon students that way,” Abrams said.

Monday, November 25, 2019 | INVESTIGATIVE | THE TUFTS DAILY former doctoral candidate in that department, also found little evidence of “liberal indoctrination” on college campuses. Like Woessner, Binder and Wood observed that conservative students receive unique advantages from being educated in a leftwing milieu.

“Conservatives benefit from having liberal professors providing … a liberal perspective because it allows them to challenge their underlying beliefs,” Woessner said. “The liberal students don’t get that opportunity because they have very few conservatives professors who will poke at their beliefs or challenge them.”

Abrams and Woessner stressed the need for more conservative voices among university faculty, though both reject using an ideological test or quota program to hire professors.

“The concern is that if everyone does share a worldview, those other views may just disappear,” Abrams said.

Efforts to diversify the professoriate are often hindered by right-wing narratives that vilify higher education, according to Woessner.

“Part of the problem that we have in trying to diversify our education is actually exacerbated when organizations like Fox News exaggerate the nature of the conflict,” he said. “For the most part, students on the left and the right get through college just fine.”

Nonetheless, several unsettling trends may result from partisan skew among college faculties.

Woessner’s research indicates that students who feel ideologically at-odds with a professor are less likely to have a positive learning experience in that class.

JESSE ROGERS / THE TUFTS DAILY

Figures above each bar represent the number of unique donors within the corresponding category.

“Students around the country are not being fed one particular line at all — they are getting balance.”

Nor does such scholarship indicate that students’ political beliefs change substantially due to faculty influence, intentional or unintentional.

A 2009 study of more than 1,500 students revealed a slight leftward shift among the students over their four years in college but found little evidence that professors’ ideologies were responsible for this shift. The study also showed that both Democrats and Republicans adopted more moderate views while in college.

Matthew Woessner, one of the study’s authors, explained that students are largely resistant to political indoctrination.

“Students aren’t sponges,” Woessner, who now serves as professor of institutional research at the United States Army War College, told the Daily. “By the time they’re 17 or 18 years old, they’ve already developed an ideological disposition that isn’t easily swayed by college professors.”

Similar research by Amy Binder, professor of sociology at the University of California, San Diego, and Kate Wood, a

Conservative students may simply avoid disciplines in which they are likely to encounter progressive faculty, according to Abrams.

“That leads to sort of this funnel and then we have this monoculture, and that’s … in my opinion, the antithesis of what higher education should be about,” he said.

Evidence of an ivory tower atop the Hill Solomont acknowledged the concern that college campuses are often echo chambers of liberal thought. However, he rejected the notion that professors imbue students with their personal views as not only false but fundamentally opposed to their academic responsibility.

“Students are here to learn and grow intellectually … and one element of learning is to be able to look at things through different lenses,” he said. “I believe faculty can teach from a variety of standpoints, regardless of what their political views are.”

Aubry explained that university employees can donate to any cause or candidate they support and that Tufts does not monitor such contributions.

She highlighted the university’s Inclusive

Learning Institute, an annual program organized by the Center for the Enhancement of Learning and Teaching, as one way it encourages professors to present diverse perspectives in the classroom and engage students in challenging yet productive conversations.

“A great professor — and we have great professors at Tufts — has the ability to put her or his personal views aside and present a variety of perspectives,” Aubry said.

“As a university, we always strive to create an environment in which all members of our community feel free to express their opinions in or out of the classroom.”

This often requires that faculty members recognize their personal biases and consider, or even embrace, opposing viewpoints.

Peter Levine, associate dean of academic affairs at Tisch College, teaches the introductory course in Tufts’ new civic studies program. Levine explained that he works hard to understand libertarian economic theory, which includes speaking with libertarian thinkers, in order to confront his own left-leaning beliefs.

“I think it’s really important for anyone who’s intellectually serious to challenge themselves by wrestling with ideas that they don’t agree with and by making sure they’re in networks and situations where they get challenged,” Levine said.

Hersh added that uniformity among students’ political views introduces a greater risk of bias in the classroom than professors’ personal beliefs.

“Whether a faculty member who is of one party can’t bring themselves to articulate, when appropriate, a worldview that is inconsistent with theirs, it’s an even bigger problem in the student population,” he said. “The school needs to do a much better job recruiting an ideologically diverse student body.”

Hersh surveyed his electoral politics class this semester and found that 95% of the students identify as Democrats.

“I … work very hard to make sure they see that the other side on many of the issues that they feel strongly about is reasonable and sometimes serves their interest more than they think,” he said.

“I think in politics, it’s very important to cultivate a sense of empathy. It doesn’t help anyone to be so dismissive of another side that you can’t even understand where they’re coming from.”

Conservative students appreciate professors’ efforts to challenge liberal consensus in the classroom, according to Wolff.

“When we are in classes where we might be the only conservative, that professor will a lot of times make a very concerted effort to make sure that they are … paying equal respect to conservative arguments [and] making sure the student is heard and respected,” Wolff said. “Professors can have their own political opinions that skew to the left and also be fair to arguments and students that are on the right.”

Levine acknowledged, however, that professors cannot — and should not — be completely objective in designing curricula, adding that he presents certain views, such as libertarianism, as more ideologically legitimate than others, like fascism.

“You have to exercise some judgment about what counts as a reasonable position that students should take seriously,” Levine said. “I try to be transparent about what my own views are when they might be relevant and also why we’re reading things … Are we reading them because they challenge our … view, [or] are we reading them because they’re actually bad things in the world that we should learn to confront?”

Levine explained that rather than pushing any particular view as correct, he encourages students to grapple with ideas they find uncomfortable.

7

As Wolff often finds herself among the ideological minority at Tufts, she has frequent opportunities to do so. Consistent with the scholarship on classroom politics, she noted that these incidents have strengthened her personal views.

“It’s been a great experience being a conservative on this campus with more liberal-leaning professors, just in the sense that it’s challenged me on a lot of issues,” Wolff said. “I think if I was surrounded by conservatives all the time, I would be stuck in the exact same echo chamber that a lot of the liberal-leaning students here are stuck in.”

Nonetheless, she expressed support for having a greater range of views in academia and suggested that Tufts promote ideological representation among its faculty as it would other academic qualifications and forms of diversity.

“Academia is basically this constant discourse [between professors] pushing back on one another, and I think that’s hard to do when you don’t have a politically diverse faculty,” Wolff said.

The university does not currently consider candidates’ political beliefs in the faculty hiring process, according to Aubry.

Levine believes that a professor’s ideology is a personal matter and should be kept out of hiring decisions. Moreover, he cautioned that political donations may not accurately represent someone’s beliefs, which are likely more nuanced than any one candidate or cause represents, nor do they necessarily betray a political slant in their teaching.

“I don’t jump to the conclusion that because a lot of faculty contribute to Democratic candidates, they are ideologically biased in the classroom,” he said. “It’s the kind of thing that you should reflect on, as a professor, because we all ought to be committed to intellectual diversity … but I think it’s just the beginning of a conversation about what ideas fit in which classes and how to present them.”

Methodology The Daily analyzed the federal political donations of 680 individual contributors who reported Tufts or one of its constituent schools as their employer and were listed in Tufts White Pages or on university websites as researchers, administrators overseeing academic and research programs, or faculty members. This includes staff who hold adjunct and visiting positions or who have left or retired from Tufts since January 2015.

This data excluded political donations from the Board of Trustees, student employees and other Tufts employees whose work does not directly influence academic or research programs. Donations from staff members with appointments at multiple schools or departments at Tufts only counted toward the data of the school or department at which they have their primary appointments.

The data set, available publicly from the Federal Election Commission (FEC), comprised 17,060 donations from January 2015 to September 2019 made to 556 authorized committees, political parties and political action committees (PACs), including so-called “super PACs.” The data did not include donations to tax-exempt nonprofits that are not required to disclose any donor information, including 501(c)(4) organizations. Earmarked donations only counted toward the final recipient and not the intermediary committee.

Information on committees’ party affiliations and geographical locations were obtained from the FEC and the Center for Responsive Politics’ website, OpenSecrets. org. Information on donors’ titles, school affiliations and departments came from the Tufts directory and university websites.

Data collection and analysis were conducted in Microsoft Excel and Python.

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CROSSWORD

Opinion

tuftsdaily.com

EDITORIAL

Tufts must not normalize hate by remaining silent For the second November in a row, white nationalist posters have appeared on Tufts’ Medford/Somerville campus.

One sticker with the phrase “It’s okay to be white” was found last week by the Daily on N. Hill Road, and a photo of another was shared on Facebook by a member of the Tufts community. Though this particular form of white nationalism is unfortunately not new to Tufts, this demonstration of ignorance follows many other acts of hate that have taken place on campus this semester, including incidents of antisemitism, homophobia and anti-black racism.

While last week’s vandalism was not necessarily targeted at a particular group, it is still a cause for deep concern on this campus, especially considering the lack of response from Tufts’ leadership.

Last November, similar posters were found plastered to signs put up by JumboVote and the Jonathan M. Tisch College of Civic Life before the 2018 midterm elections. In response to that event, Tufts University President Anthony Monaco sent an email to members of the Tufts Community condemning such incidents of “hate and division” and TUPD began an investigation. Similar messages by the administration have been sent out in the wake of more recent acts of hate and have been followed by investigations

by the Tufts Office for Equal Opportunity.

Any sort of public denunciation or investigation of the recent events, however, has yet to occur.

As the Daily has noted in previous reporting, the slogan “It’s okay to be white” first appeared on the internet forum 4chan, and there can be no doubt that its use is racist, or at least biased. Of course, Tufts’ recently developed Bias Response Teams were designed to tackle incidents like these, but included in the administration’s silence on the issues is a lack of communication about Bias Response Teams — their status or their response.

With tensions heightened this semester after many disturbing incidents of hate, there should be no hesitation on the part of the Tufts administration when it comes to condemning white supremacy.

“It’s okay to be white” perpetuates the false idea that whites are marginalized and in need of protection. It neglects centuries of white oppression and dominance in American society. This idea is discriminatory, ignorant and false. The slogan endangers historically marginalized groups who are coming closer to attaining the rights and spaces to which they are entitled. It also rejects the notion of equality, suggesting that equal rights and opportunities for people of

color infringe upon the rights of white people. This winner-takes-all worldview is deeply flawed and supports notions of white supremacy; defending the rights and freedoms of people of color does not equate to denying white people their rights and freedoms. Equality for all creates a more equitable and just society.

The Tufts administration should formally address and denounce this incident. It should demonstrate that these acts of hate will not be normalized and reinforce that hate has no place on campus. It is critical that the community remains aware of these actions and does not become desensitized to the harm that they inflict. Administrators should also share updates about the Bias Response Teams and communicate whether the incident has been acknowledged or is under investigation. Substantial action is required to continue the fight for equality and maintain forceful denunciation of hate.

In the face of university inaction, the Tufts community will remain strong and united, and together we can work to ensure that those who share vicious slogans fail in their attempts to spread hate.

We must continue to extend compassion and support to those who are harmed by systemic racism and incidents of hate.

MY SHELTER PETS ARE MY BEST FRIENDS

OLIVIA MUNN WITH CHANCE AND FRANKIE: ADOPTED 2014 AND 2016.

THESHELTERPETPROJECT.ORG The Tufts Daily is a nonprofit, independent newspaper, published Monday through Friday during the academic year, and distributed free to the Tufts community.

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Monday, November 25, 2019

John Little Gray Areas Matter

A

Encryption

s the technological revolution rumbles along, society is continually challenged by new legal and ethical questions. In 2016, the FBI wanted the California tech giant Apple to provide a backdoor bypass through iPhone security to aide in the investigation of the 2015 San Bernardino shooting.

The case sparked a national conversation about privacy and safety. Should Apple have been compelled to compromise its phone’s security in the name of public safety? Or does Apple have a right, even a duty, to its customers, to protect the contents of its phones absolutely? The issue is certainly complex, and it’s difficult to immediately see a clear answer — so let’s take a closer look.

The FBI claimed that Apple’s refusal to cooperate with its demands for a master key to all Apple devices prevented the agency from completing an investigation into a devastating terror attack on American citizens and will allow terrorists to continue to hide behind Apple’s high-grade security in the future. While that is technically true, the spirit of that argument is not as convincing when taken in a larger context. Apple’s brand relies on a guarantee of security and privacy to its customers.

There are a few reasons why providing the government with an easy-access key is a bad idea. To start, forcing Apple to compromise its own security, a tenet of its very successful business model, would come at a great cost for the company, not to mention its customers. The American government has a shady track record with mass surveillance, most, if not all, of which should be considered unconstitutional.

Allowing the government easy access to our personal data is simply not in the best interest of the American people or their liberties. A government that cannot be trusted to respect the rights of its own constituents does not deserve yet another way to exploit them. The American government is accountable to its citizens, not the other way around.

Apple’s commitment to its customers’ privacy was commendable in this case, but as I discussed in one of my previous articles, data collection is king nowadays — and Apple wants in. According to a recent lawsuit, the company allegedly sold information to third parties in an effort to generate revenue, creating a stark contrast when we juxtapose its user privacy policy and its actual decisions.

Who can the American people trust?

The government wants access to your data in the name of safety but has blatantly exploited those methods for malicious purposes. The companies that champion data privacy as a human right sell your information behind your back. Where is there to turn?

I don’t know the answer to that question. I don’t think anyone does. But perhaps there is one thing we can agree on: Americans deserve data privacy, and one step we can take in that direction is ensuring that when a company sells a secure system, it’s actually secure. So no, the federal government should not have access to my iPhone or my computer or my bank accounts. Nothing.

John Little is a sophomore studying computer science. John can be reached at john. little@tufts.edu.

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11

12 Monday, November 25, 2019

Sports

tuftsdaily.com

Men’s soccer advances to Final Four of NCAA A future without tournament

Matt Goguen Keeping up with the 617

A

Tom Brady

s much as I don’t want to believe that title above, the prediction is inevitable: Tom Brady can’t play forever. The day he retires will cast a dark shadow on New England, yet us Pats fans need to prepare for a future without his weekly domination over this league.

Here are two solutions to fill the gaping hole Brady will leave following a saddening retirement speech: Jarrett Stidham Coming into the 2019 NFL Draft, analysts predicted that the Patriots would draft a quarterback with one of their many early-round draft picks. In the fourth round at pick 133, the Patriots selected Jarrett Stidham, a successful quarterback from Auburn University. During an extensive training camp, Stidham impressed Bill Belichick and company, eventually receiving a 53-man roster bid to open the season, beating out NFL journeyman Brian Hoyer and fan-favorite Danny Etling. After his surprising upgrade to a backup role to start the season, fans were beckoning the team to put him in during a blowout. Stidham finally received his chance in Week 3 and proceeded to put on a terrible display. Simply put, he looked like he didn’t belong in a Patriots uniform. To be fair, his skill set is raw and still early in his development; let’s not be so hard on him yet. If Brady *gulp* eventually decides to retire, Stidham needs to be ready to handle the constant heat and pressure from this passionate fan base. Learning the Patriots system will be difficult; however, if Brady lasts two to three more years, Stidham should be ready for a role in the offense and hopefully will maintain success in New England for years to come.

Keep role players and sign key free agents Signing hotshot free agents is a common occurrence in New England. Whether it’s Randy Moss, Darrelle Revis or Antonio Brown (this one still stings), big-time free agents are attracted to this town. Belichick must trade or sign free agents to continue the reign of this dynasty. Stidham and offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels won’t be able to field a competent offense in future years if they have no weapons at their disposal. Additionally, the Patriots should continue to develop young receivers such as Jakobi Meyers and N’keal Harry while also re-signing key role players such as Julian Edelman and Dont’a Hightower. Although many Pats fans believe that Brady is the key to successful seasons in Foxboro, the coaching staff plays a major role in the championship seasons. Belichick utilizes all players on the roster to win a game — it doesn’t matter the position or talent of the player. If the Patriots can keep role players in the locker room once Brady retires, then New England Patriots football should be saved.

No matter how much TB12 Method he uses, Brady’s muscles and talent will eventually subside. Although his retirement will be a sad day for New England, the Patriots should have enough at their disposal to continue their winning seasons. Let’s just hope Stidham turns out to be a competent quarterback or else this fanbase will have his head.

Matt Goguen is a first-year who has not yet declared a major. Matt can be reached at matthew.goguen@tufts.edu.

EVAN SLACK / THE TUFTS DAILY

Senior forward Joe Braun keeps his eye on the ball during Tufts’ 4–0 win over Colby on Sept. 21.

by Alex Viveros and Aiden Herrod

Executive Sports Editor and Assistant Sports Editor

This weekend, the men’s soccer team advanced to the Final Four of the NCAA Div. III tournament with back-to-back wins over Washington and Lee University and Conn. College.

On Sunday, the Jumbos beat the Conn.

College Camels in the quarterfinal game by a score of 3–1. The Jumbos qualified for that Elite Eight match following a tight 2–1 overtime victory against the Washington and Lee Generals the day before.

Sunday’s all-NESCAC quarterfinal matchup was a rematch of Tufts’ 2–0 shutout victory over Conn. College on Oct. 19. The Camels have not beaten the Jumbos since 2014.

It took less than two minutes for the Jumbos to get on the board. Coming out of the gate with intense offensive pressure, senior midfielder Brett Rojas found senior midfielder Zach Lane in the middle of the field right outside the 6-yard box. Lane beat out his defender and took a shot that made it past the Camel goalkeeper, putting the Jumbos up by a score of 1–0 with over 88 minutes remaining in regulation.

With the early lead, the Jumbos maintained strong control of the ball, taking backto-back corner kicks and attempting a shot in the ensuing 10 minutes. Despite being up by one, the Jumbos still maximized their pressure on the Camels, attempting a whopping seven shots in the remainder of the half.

Of course, the Camels also tried to get on the board, attempting two shots in the half. However, sophomore goalkeeper Erich Kindermann was quick to shut down the first shot. In the 25th minute, Bailor Jalloh beat out the Tufts defense and attempted a shot for the Camels, but it went wide right.

The second half started out similarly dominant for the Jumbos. Tufts infielded a corner off the left side of the post, which went right over a set of Conn. College defenders, including the goalkeeper. Senior forward Joe Braun headed the ball up into the air off of the bounce, from which sophomore defender Ian Daly connected the ball into the goal for a 2–0 Tufts lead.

Less than 10 minutes later, the Jumbos scored yet another insurance goal, sealing their fate against the Camels. Off a pass from midfield, senior midfielder/forward and co-captain Gavin Tasker dribbled the ball to the left side of the post. Tasker passed the ball to Lane, who shot the ball directly past the standing goalkeeper, putting the Jumbos up 3–0.

Conn. College scored its only goal of the match late in the second half. However, it was too little too late. The Jumbos advanced to the Final Four with their 3–1 win. In the end, Tufts outshot Conn. College 17–6 in the match, and Kindermann’s first-half save was the only one for the Jumbos in the entirety of the game.

On Saturday, the team kicked off the weekend with a thrilling win over Washington and Lee that vaulted them into the quarterfinals.

The final score of 2–1 in the Jumbos favor required 74 seconds of overtime to reach when sophomore midfielder Zach Seigelstein belted in the game-winner.

The game was a hard-fought battle from the first minute to the last. At the end of the first half, Tufts trailed 1–0, and it took until the 62nd minute for them to tie it up. Tasker spoke about Washington and Lee’s opening goal in a press conference after the game.

“That strike was really disheartening,” Tasker said. “But we found ways to get back in the game. Our depth really carried us, and our starters were able to come in with fresh legs.”

The tying goal came off of a corner kick, where Daly was there to knock in a rebound and knot up the score.

The tied score held from there until overtime. Tufts managed to create numerous chances throughout the match, ultimately ending with advantages of 18–12 in shots and 8–2 in corners.

Coach Josh Shapiro spoke in a press conference after the Washington and Lee game about his team’s performance.

“We looked like the team more likely to win, but we were still getting pushed in the other direction,” Shapiro said.

While the Generals were able to deflect many of these chances, the momentum from

the Jumbos’ opportunities was enough to quickly carry them to the dramatic overtime game-winner in the 92nd minute. Seigelstein spoke about the goal, his first in the postseason thus far.

“The ball got to [senior midfielder/ defender] Drew Stern, and he beat about four players,” Seigelstein said. “I just tried to get the ball on target, and I was fortunate that it went in.”

Shapiro is now in his 10th season and is in the midst of his sixth NCAA tournament appearance, vying for his fourth title with the Jumbos.

“I thought it was a great battle, a great example of what NCAA division III soccer should look like,” Shapiro said.

Ultimately, the win was huge for a Jumbo squad looking to make another deep run in the NCAA tournament. Lately, they’ve been riding a wave of tough yet decisive matches, with four of its past six games being decided by just one score.

“I thought our guys responded really well, it’s very very hard to come back in tough games like this,” Shapiro said. “We had a lot of character and a lot of resolve.”

Shapiro referred to the comebacks and resolves as of late, using it as an indicator of what will hopefully be a future success for the Jumbos.

“We’ve been in situations where we’ve had to come back, especially of late,” Shapiro said. “Our ability to come back is a big part of who we are. We hope it can help us carry forward.”

With the Elite Eight win over Conn.

College, Tufts will advance to the Final Four in Greensboro, N.C., against a familiar foe — the Calvin College Knights. Last year, the Jumbos concluded their phenomenal, undefeated 2018 season with a 2–1 victory over the Knights in the NCAA championship game.

Kickoff against the Knights is set for 7:45 p.m. on Friday, Dec. 6. Immediately prior to the Jumbos’ game, the Amherst Mammoths will battle the Centre College Colonels in the other semi-final game.

Amherst remains the only NESCAC team to beat Tufts since 2016.