On a gray Saturday afternoon during Homecoming weekend, Tufts students crowded into tightly packed bleachers in a showing of school spirit that some may consider uncharacteristic. Those familiar with the sports culture at Tufts understand that this kind of high attendance at sporting events is the exception to the rule.
After its establishment in the spring of 2012, the Center for the Study of Race and Democracy is officially being launched this semester.The CSRD is largely an outgrowth and expansion of the annual Barack Obama and American Democracy conference , hosted alternately by Arizona State University and Tufts since 2010, according to Professor of History and CSRD founder Peniel Joesph.The proposal for the center really talked about making it a research center that would serve as a clearinghouse for research-based and intellectually driven conversation about issues of race and democracy ... at the local, national [and] international levels," Joseph said.The center's mission is to promote engaged research, scholarship and discussion with a focus on the ways that issues of race and democracy impact the lives of global citizens. Elissa Bowling, a member of the CSRD working group, explained how the center is different from past discussions about race on campus."Being very passionate about race relations is very important, but we are putting an intellectual side to it," Bowling, a junior, said. "It's more of an, 'okay, it's great that you feel that way, but why do you feel that way
The Boston area has certainly gotten a glimpse of Palestinian life and culture over the last month, with celebrations of Palestinian art through The Boston Palestine Film Festival (BPFF) and the photography exhibit From These Streets" at the Tufts University Art Gallery.Beginning on Oct. 18, the 10-day film festival featured over 30 films portraying Palestinian life, family and culture. It was hosted by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Cambridge Public Library and Harvard Law School.The films addressed issues surrounding the political occupation of the Palestinian territories and its effects on refugee camps, as well as offered a look at Palestinian culture. According to Assistant Professor of Anthropology Amahl Bishara, providing this alternative viewpoint is particularly important."We most often see Palestinians represented through the news and through political negotiations or acts of violence," Bishara said. "But the Boston Palestine Film Festival lets us think about Palestinian society and culture in a more multidimensional way."Tufts students who made it to the festival were exposed to films that showed Palestine through a more personal perspective. Munir Atalla, a member of Tufts Students for Justice in Palestine, attended the event and enjoyed the opportunity to screen the films."I'm so happy that the Museum of Fine Arts puts its weight behind such a sometimes controversial event," Atalla, a junior, said. "It's been going for eight years, and they keep upping the quality. It's also that Palestinian filmmaking has developed a lot recently, and we are starting to see more films that are competitive on a global level."The film festival, a program of the Middle East Charitable and Cultural Society Inc., is one of the larger events that the organization hosts throughout the year, along with discussions, film screenings and workshops throughout the Boston area. The mission of the festival is to showcase the Palestinian narrative and culture through cinema and art.Founded in 2007, the festival has since presented over 300 films, as well as hosted numerous Palestinian artists and filmmakers through concerts and exhibits. This year's festival was co-sponsored by various community groups, including the Center for Arab American Philanthropy, Jewish Voice for Peace Boston and Grassroots International.One film featured this year was "When I Saw You" (2012) from director Annemarie Jacir, who was recently named one of Filmmaker Magazine's 25 New Faces of Independent Cinema. "When I Saw You" is set in Jordan during the 1960s and documents a boy's journey after running away from his refugee camp.The BPFF also showcased "Just A Child" (2012), directed by Mohammad Al-Azza, who grew up in the West Bank in a refugee camp. The documentary short centers on a Palestinian teenager's life after he is released from an Israeli detention center in the West Bank. Though his release garners a positive response from the community, through his perspective, audience members gain an understanding of the more complex consequences of his return to the community.Bishara, along with students in her Media, the State and the Senses seminar, recently collaborated with Al-Azza to bring the photography exhibit "From These Streets: A Palestinian Refugee Perspective on Community" to the Slater Concourse Gallery, located in the Aidekman Art Center. The exhibit, which will run until Dec. 8, displays Al-Azza's photos depicting the Palestinian community.The young Palestinian photographer, born and raised in Aida Refugee Camp, Bethlehem, in the Palestinian West Bank, developed his photojournalism skills from a local youth organization called the Lajee Center. He later became the director of the Media Unit in the Lajee Center and continues to teach these skills to Palestinian youth in the area, according to Bishara."[The Lajee Center] is a community-based organization, and they do a lot of activities for children and youth," Bishara said. "One of the most thriving, successful programs they have is a media unit that teaches youths about documentary production and photography. And for me as a media scholar, it's a gift. It's just a really interesting story for me to think about and tell."Bishara expressed excitement about bringing the Lajee Center and Tufts together with the exhibit. Various university groups co-sponsored the exhibit, including the Department of Anthropology
Professor of Political Science Jeff Berry and Associate Professor of Sociology Sarah Sobieraj released a new book called The Outrage Industry: Political Opinion Media and the New Incivility" in November 2013. The book, which explores how partisan cable and radio shows grab audience attention with emotional appeals, combines Tufts' professors academic interests in politics and media. Berry spoke with the Daily to share some of his thoughts about their project. The Tufts Daily: What is your new book "The Outrage Industry" about? Jeffrey Berry: The book is about a particular genre of political commentary that Professor Sobieraj and I have labeled "outrage." It is political rhetoric designed to make you angry. It plays with your emotions and evokes a variety of sentiments. Not only anger, but engagement. Reflection, but more than anything else, anger. You respond to the visceral rhetoric of the TV host or radio host in a very direct and emotional way. TD:: How did this idea for the book come along? JB: It was a bit of an accident. I hadn't ever studied the media before and I was a guest on "The O'Reilly Factor" on Fox News in 2004. They wanted someone to stand in for Senator [John] Kerry because he wouldn't go on the show during the presidential campaign of that year. It was a bizarre experience ... Flash forward about four years and Professor Sobieraj had gotten an invitation to apply for a grant with a grant program that was given by the Bernstein Family for interdisciplinary research ... But one of the requirements of the grant - the university didn't make this up, it was the family that gave the money - [was] that she had to work with a senior faculty member from another discipline. Professor Sobieraj had worked in the field of advocacy, which is my field - interest groups and social movements - so she suggested we get together. We decided that we would work on something together as opposed to me just being a mentor ... We talked more seriously about doing something book length ... [So] we decided to plunge ahead and write a book. TD: How did your similar backgrounds in advocacy aid your partnership? JB: It was more that our dissimilar backgrounds complemented each other. We didn't think alike. We saw things from different points of view and we had different strengths. There are parts of the book that she wrote that I couldn't have written, and there are a couple of chapters that I think she probably wouldn't have put in the book if she had written it by herself, that I wrote. So, I actually think that we complemented each other in [each] having expertise that the other didn't. And it made for a book that is expansive and that really cuts across three academic fields: political science, sociology and media studies. TD: What was the process of research like? JB: The process of writing and research took about five years and it's a nice tough story in that along the way a number of students were involved in the research. They either got credit or were paid. But there were four in particular that were instrumental in producing content that we used in the book. They did a lot of the grunt work and I think that it was work that required some thought on their part, [they weren't] just some mindless cogs on a wheel. One student worked on the Tea Party - the 2010 primaries where the Tea Party really broke through. She developed a database that became the basis of Chapter Six in the book. Another student ... watched and listened to TV and radio programs that use [outrage] and took notes about the ways in which the hosts engender loyalty and, in a sense, interact with the audience - things they do to make the audience loyal. She was very good at that, and she actually got her name on one of the papers. Then two other students worked with us ... to do a content analysis where we actually recorded what people said and analyzed it along 13 different variables that were different forms of outrage. And those students were terrific at it.TD:What were you hoping to accomplish with this project? JB:We wanted to shed light on this [outrage industry] in a way that makes people appreciate how it fits into the larger political system - that it wasn't just Rush Limbaugh saying stupid things on the radio
Woodrow Wilson Center Fellow Alison Brysk spoke yesterday to a group of students and faculty about the way in which the U.S. government uses foreign policy initiatives to promote women's rights around the world. The feedback that I get from my students is that they would like to hear more about gender issues in international relations so we wanted to do something about that," Professor of Political Science Richard Eichenberg said. "I got together with a group of faculty ... and we decided to bring in several speakers." Gender issues are a growing component of foreign policy, according to Eichenberg. "Issues of global gender equality are at least a nominally declared priority of American foreign policy around the world," he said. "The programmatic activities have grown greatly and there are a number of initiatives under way in the foreign policy establishment ... There's a lot going on and we thought it was about time to publicize it a bit and engage [students] in a conversation." Eichenberg explained that he experienced difficulty finding a scholar who focused on women's rights as a U.S. foreign policy objective. He added, however, that Brysk, the Mellichamp Professor of Global Governance in the Global and International Studies Program at the University of California, Santa Barbara, was the perfect person to discuss global gender initiatives. Brysk said that her recent work on gender equality grew out of her previous research on human rights and human trafficking. "I started working on this issue out of about 20 years of human rights scholarship and I had been running across a lot of issues related to gender, women's rights, gender equity, women's empowerment all along the way," she said. "When I turned to this issue I wanted to know in what ways it follows a certain pattern with other human rights issues and in what ways there are distinctive concerns related to gender and related to identity issues and how that influences the concrete policy environment." A major problem in achieving global gender equality is violence, according to Brysk. She said that one in three women have experienced gender-based violence and one in five women have been subjected to sexual violence. She cited Malala Yousafzai as an example of her concerns. "Here is a young woman who is finally gaining access to education, who is finally gaining some potential for realizing just the most basic conventional rights and equity in her society," Brysk said. "What's stopping her? It's not law
The final Tufts Community Union Senate meeting of the semester took place in the Sophia Gordon Multipurpose Room last night with discussion of the final version of the Diversity Report and an announcement regarding the Committee on Student Life's (CSL) justified departure" policy.
In his sixth inaugural address, Somerville Mayor Joseph Curtatone outlined his goals for the city, with many pertaining specifically to the environment and divestment from fossil fuels.Our environment, in fact, is priceless," Curtatone, Somerville's mayor since 2004, said in his inaugural address. "Around the world, cities are taking the lead in sustainability. As we have done in so many other areas, Somerville will lead the way there, too. So, let's advocate together for the city's retirement system to divest from fossil fuels."Many students expressed interest in the mayor's stance. Devyn Powell, a member of Tufts Divest for Our Future, said that Curtatone's call for divestment shows Tufts students that divestment is spreading to communities around the world."I think that now that the mayor is coming out in support of [divestment], there's going to be a lot more movement around divestment in Somerville [and] within the community in general," Powell, a senior, said. "I'm sure that that will attract some students because divestment is an international movement."Sophomore Will Pearl, also a member of Tufts Divest, said that Mayor Curtatone's vocal support of fossil fuel divestment is valuable in informing others about the benefits of finding renewable energy solutions. "[Curtatone] has some pretty awesome, ambitious goals in the area of climate policy," Pearl said. "If the federal government could be at that level that would be great because he's got some seriously progressive climate related goals."In a Jan. 16 op-ed in the Somerville Times, Curtatone elaborated on his economic and ethical reasoning for supporting city-wide divestment."There is a looming $20 trillion carbon bubble, according to a report by London School of Economics' Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment, in collaboration with nonprofit organization Carbon Tracker," Curtatone wrote in the op-ed. "Divesting from fossil fuels is not only the moral choice
Robinson Professor of Chemistry David Walt will receive the Gustavus John Esselen Award from the Northeastern Section of the American Chemical Society during an April 10 ceremony in Cambridge, Mass. The award recognizes a chemist who has done significant work to benefit the public interest, according to Karen Piper, secretary to the Esselen Committee. [Walt] is being honored for his work in developing microarrays and single molecule detection for understanding and treatment of disease," Piper told the Daily in an email. "His work is especially useful in early diagnosis, for example, in malignancies." According to Walt, his research focuses on technology at the molecular level. "We develop techniques that work at the micro- and nano-scale ... these are devices that have technologies that we've created that have dimensions kind of smaller than an antenna on an ant," he said. "We develop technologies that are able to do molecular balances of everything from genes to proteins at a very tiny level that involves extremely small measurements of low concentration things that are in blood or any kind of environmental sample." This research has been widely used, Walt explained. "The technology that came out of my lab has turned out to have a tremendous amount of impact in a wide variety of fields for both the clinical market and the agriculture market, but has also enabled a tremendous amount of new research discovery," he said. "[It] is particularly gratifying that the technology that they developed at Tufts has enabled many new discoveries in thousands of research labs across the world." One such research lab was the J. Craig Venter Institute, according to Krishna Kumar, chair of the Tufts Department of Chemistry. "When Craig Venter was here he mentioned David Walt ... multiple times," Kumar said. "The reason for that was even the Craig Venter Institute is using instruments from Illumina ... This has basically touched everyone's life and ... every company in the world that is involved in sequencing or medicine is using this technology." Walt, who has been at Tufts for 33 years, started numerous companies during his tenure, including Illumina, a multibillion-dollar publicly traded company that develops systems for analyzing genetics and Quanterix. "The science was developed right on this floor, and what he and his group have developed is essentially a way to sequence [genomes] using fiber optics," Kumar said. "Forbes had a cover article on the fastest growing companies in America. Illumina was number one. [Illumina] just recently announced a $1,000 genome, so this is a big deal." Kumar emphasized that the Esselen Award is not only for chemists working in the Northeast, but that Walt follows many international winners, including Nobel laureates. "[The award] is administered by the Northeast Section of the ACS, but it's really an international award," he explained. "They choose people who are not just Americans but [from] across the world. Mario Molina, who is a Nobel Prize winner in chemistry
The Latino Center will this Saturday commemorate its 20th anniversary in the Aidekman Art Gallery and the 51 Winthrop Street Function Hall.
Admiral James Stavridis (F '83, '84), former commander of the United States European Command and supreme allied commander of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization , entered his new position as dean of The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy on July 1.
One week from today, Cornelia Schneider (F '06), will be the first individual presented with the Fletcher Women's Leadership Award (FWLA), established this year by the Fletcher Board of Advisors. The award was created to honor female Fletcher graduates who are making significant impacts in both the private and public sectors.According to Betsy Powell (F '62), member of the Fletcher Board of Advisors and chair of the FWLA committee, the criteria to be considered for the FWLA are simple.You could be in economics, banking, business, environmental [areas], NGOs, peace keeping - it was wide open," Powell said. "You didn't have to be married or with children, or without. [There were] no other requirements except [being] an outstanding individual who was a star in the international field."Powell pointed out that this award is unique in that it takes into account the level of accomplishment of the nominees."This is the first women's award focused on women [who are] mid-career," she said. "We felt very strongly that we didn't want to give it to someone who had already risen to the top."The creation of the award, in fact, was a direct product of conversations about how to increase the prevalence of women's leadership at Fletcher, according to Powell."The Fletcher students are roughly 55 percent female, and it [has] been that way ... for about the past 19 years or so," Powell said. "Women, [however], have not risen to the same height as the men [in the workforce]."At a spring board meeting in 2011, Powell and other board members started questioning why the number of female students at Fletcher was not directly proportional to the percentage of women who hold prestigious positions at the school. Powell cited the fact that Maria Gordon was the only female vice chair on the Fletcher Board of Advisors."We're not getting tenured women, [for example]," Powell said. "We followed this up in the fall into 2012. We got a task force of women who were willing to work with us."According to Powell, Fletcher created a program called the Initiative for Women's International Leadership (IWIL) in order increase the presence of women in leadership positions. Once established, the IWIL's first action was to create FWLA.Powell underscored that the FWLA, however, is not intended to benefit only women. The board heavily considered how the award may influence male leaders at Fletcher."The men at Fletcher who will be managing this kind of [leading] woman can learn from whatever we learn," she said. "It was not an exclusive woman's deal. It was to strengthen men and women in the international field in managing people."The Board of Advisors received 47 strong nominations for the award from the Fletcher community, according to Powell. "We came to a decision the morning of [Fletcher's] 80th Anniversary Gala in Washington, D.C., and it was unanimous," Powell said.Schneider will be flying to the United States for the award ceremony from the Democratic Republic of the Congo , where she currently works with the United Nations Development Programme's Access to Justice Project, focusing on improving the accountability of the DRC's justice system."I'm in Goma, which is the Eastern part of the DRC," Schneider said. "We try to make access to justice easier for affected persons, in particular for victims of sexual violence and victims of violent crimes."She explained that there are four main aspects to her work: first, making people aware of their rights
The Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine in January received a $2.5 million donation from Travis and Anne Engen, bringing the school closer to its $5 million fundraising goal for the Henry and Lois Foster Hospital for Small Animals (FHSA).
An engineering student and a volunteer for the Leonard Carmichael Society, freshman Josh Brown is also the co-founder and drummer of an up-and-coming band on campus, Like Wolves.
In our first Top Ten since 2013, the Daily Arts Department would like to honor the pageantry and glamour of the upcoming Academy Awards. This year, Ellen DeGeneres will be hosting the show. Though DeGeneres is a fan-favorite, we all pray for the day that Amy Poehler and Tina Fey host every event ever. However, since the planets have not aligned to that end just yet, we'd thought we'd share our master list of ten better hosts for the 2014 Oscars.
Collins Players, a Tufts Children's Theater group for students in grades seven through 12, has once again begun rehearsals for the 2013-2014 academic year. The children and young adults in the program will showcase their work with a full-length performance of Willy Wonka Junior" this March.
Blue Is the Warmest Color" (originally titled "La Vie d'Ad?le") is possibly the best film of 2013. Having won the Palm d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival, it has already achieved remarkable acclaim for its director, Abdellatif Kechiche, and its two lead actresses, Ad?le Exarchopoulos and L?a Seydoux. Its release into mainstream theaters has been highly anticipated and was well worth the wait.Three hours long and rated NC-17 for graphic sex scenes, "Blue Is the Warmest Color" is a brutally intimate film, sparing absolutely no aspect of its protagonist's emotional or physical life. The film is composed almost entirely of close-up shots of Ad?le (Ad?le Exarchopoulos). Throughout the film, the viewer sees every blemish and stain on her face: splatters of pasta grease left un-wiped on her chin, tear tracks and snot streaking into her mouth and slick strands of hair framing her face. Watching her take a drag from a cigarette, viewers can practically feel the smoke seeping through her teeth as she exhales. The overall effect of this stylistic choice leaves the audience feeling almost like they know Ad?le. Any shot that contains a background or even Ad?le's whole body feels like a deviation - a breath of fresh air from the claustrophobic focus on the film's protagonist. The film accomplishes this in other ways, as well: the sound, the lighting, the acting - everything is tailored to familiarize the audience with Ad?le's life.Ad?le is a 15-year-old high school student who aspires to become a teacher. One day she passes a blue-haired art student named Emma (L?a Seydoux) and becomes inexplicably enamored with her. From this moment on, the film traces the rise and fall of Ad?le and Emma's relationship. One of the movie's most shocking elements is its graphic depiction of Ad?le and Emma having sex. Nothing is left to the imagination - Ad?le and Emma's first sex scene alone is a nearly 10-minute marathon of contorted limbs, full-on nudity and a medley of pants and moans. Still, even through this, the film maintains its signature proximity to its characters' faces and mouths - one of the most controversial aspects of the film. The inclusion of such explicit scenes has prompted several critics to ask whether this is a legitimate demonstration of the characters' humanity or simply glorified pornography.In any case, it would be difficult to discount the rest of the film based on these assertions alone - it is simply too well done. The dialogue is natural, understated and always poignant. Indeed, nothing the characters say is trivial or cliched - you won't hear any refrigerator magnet quotations here. Their lines build meaning slowly and subtly from one exchange to another, relying heavily on innuendo and facial expressions.In this and other ways, the film is effortlessly subtle. Throughout the movie, a series of thematic milestones are introduced through culture, art, philosophy and literature. Classroom scenes depicting literary discussions indirectly mirror the turmoil of Ad?le's life. Yet, the movie never throws these moments in the viewer's face. Instead, it allows them to linger in the background. There are no "a-ha!" sequences
If you are in the mood for a good laugh tonight, you should consider heading down to Balch Arena Theater for the opening night of The 39 Steps" (2005). One of the minor productions developed this semester by Pen, Paint and Pretzels (3Ps), the student-run musical theater group on campus, "The 39 Steps" uses spies, murder, intrigue and romance to win hearts and create humor. The story follows Richard Hannay, a dashing bachelor living in London who goes to the theater one night and witnesses a murder. When Hannay is persuaded to help the murderess, he becomes entangled in an elaborate plot.
Over the weekend, members of the women's track team competed at the Eastern College Athletic Conference Championships (ECACs), held at the Reggie Lewis Center on Saturday, and the Tufts Last Chance Meet, held at the Gantcher Center on Thursday. There were tangible goals for the meets, as the Jumbos looked to either end the season on a strong note or improve their seed times to qualify for the NCAA Championships, held next weekend in Lincoln, Neb.A few Jumbos were in action on Thursday at the Gantcher Center, as they hosted the annual Last Chance Meet, which served as an opportunity for teams to nab fast flat track times to improve on their times to qualify for Nationals. Senior tri-captain Anya Kaufmann won the 60-meter dash in a time of 7.84, just a few ticks off of sophomore Alexis Harrison's team best time of 7.78. Sophomore Marilyn Allen broke the school record in the 60-meter hurdles, as she ran a time of 8.99 for her first sub-nine time ever, which was good for a second place showing.Despite the impressive weekend performances from Kauffman and Allen, neither runner will travel to Nationals.It was a tough day for the distance girls, as they went zero for three in qualifying runners for Nationals. In the 3000-meter run, sophomore Audrey Gould finished first with a time of 10:04.38 while sophomore Olivia Beltrani came in third with a time of 10:24.96. Trying to shake off last weekend's failure to qualify for Nationals, the distance medley relay (DMR) took a second shot at qualifying but came up short, as the team of sophomore Hanako Shigenobu, senior Jana Hieber, junior Lauren Gormer, and senior tri-captain Laura Peterson took fourth overall with a time of 12:05.33, placing them seventeenth in the country. Since only the top 10 relay teams earn bids to Nationals, the DMR will be watching all of the action unfold trackside this season. On Saturday, the Jumbos got off to a great start as Harrison and Kaufmann qualified for the semifinals of the 60-meter dash. Harrison bowed out of the semifinals with a solid time of 7.87, good for a ninth place finish. Kaufmann was also out of the semifinals with her 11th place on a time of 7.91, but ran a time of 7.80 in the preliminaries, the second fastest Jumbo time this season. In the 60-meter hurdles, sophomore Marilyn Allen ran her personal best, as she ran a time of 8.96 in the event to take third.Personally, I wanted to improve my time to help me get closer to qualifying for Nationals
The women's cross country team placed third out of 47 teams at the Eastern College Athletic Conference Championship (ECAC) meet on Saturday in Bristol, R.I. The team's score of 111 points was bested only by NESCAC rivals Middlebury and Williams.
