Tathagata Dutta is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of History and a dissertation fellow at the Center for Humanities at Tufts for 2022–23.
To our readers,
To the newest members of our community,
The Massachusetts House of Representatives voted 136–17 on a bill two weeks ago to strengthen protections for reproductive and gender-affirming care in state law. I was one of 25 women legislators who spoke in strong support of the bill. Below is an excerpt from my remarks on the House floor on Wednesday, June 29.
Dear Class of 2022, family and friends,
The annual Tuftonia’s Day carnival took place less than four weeks after our Faculty Senate passed a resolution to end legacy consideration in admissions processes. Both ideas work well in theory: While the latter allows the university to take one step further into becoming an anti-racist institution where students from traditionally marginalized backgrounds may obtain greater representation, the former allows the current Tufts community, of which many members celebrated the elimination of legacy admissions and other pro-egalitarian measures, to enjoy the magic of dizziness-inducing rides as well as food trucks, ranging from apparently Asian dumplings to the classic American grilled cheese.
Terrorist attacks in Israel in late March and early April have claimed the lives of 14 Israeli civilians. Many are worried that the region is again spiraling into war. Yet when messages of hope and calls for dialogue are most needed, Tufts Students for Justice in Palestine has expressed support for violence against Israeli civilians: “SJP supports the full range of Palestinian resistance against settler-colonialism,” students wrote in a Tufts Observer op-ed published prior to the attacks. SJP has also begun calling on Tufts students to boycott a number of Jewish-led student groups, including Tufts Friends of Israel, in which we serve as student leaders. Tufts Friends of Israel condemns this recent effort to marginalize Jewish students.
As universities like Tufts become increasingly ensnared in corporate practices, an ominous cycle develops: Workers face unjust conditions, community members demand action, and administrators deflect responsibility. The history of violence from which Tufts has built its capital, including the seizure of Massachusett, Pawtucket, Nipmuc and Wampanoaglands and the Royall family plantation,undergirds the system of racialized labor which now poisons the university. Today, worker exploitation — which we identify with the corporatization of Tufts — has eroded possibilities for solidarity among an increasingly vulnerable workforce whose labor keeps Tufts viable as a corporation. First, we will look at how exploitative corporate policies affect workers at Tufts. Then, we will look at the framework of the endowment which legitimizes administrative decisions. Lastly, we will provide our demands.
If you want a TCU president who will be a voice for all students, advocate for campus mental health at the highest levels, stand against sexual assault on campus, consistently support the new Indigenous Center and call for equitable academic policies, then Jaden Pena is the candidate for you.
Globalization, defined by Merriam-Webster as “the development of an increasingly integrated global economy,” is inextricably tied to the global inequality that has shaped the lives of billions across the globe. Economists Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez suggest globalization has led to an increasing gap between the rich and poor. The 2022 World Inequality Report highlights this gap, finding that the globe’s richest 10% have 75% of global income while the poorest 50% of individuals share just 2% of income. The issue of global inequality is exacerbated by a number of factors like gender and race. For example, research shows that women make up just 27% of individuals in the top 10% of the income distribution and less than 17% at the 1% income level. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, racial discrimination is also prevalent in the discussion of global inequality, with white workers earning approximately 22% more than Black workers. Other data strengthens this finding, highlighting that a median Black family owns $24,100 in wealth compared to the average $189,100 held by a median white family. Globalization has certainly played a role in increasing this high level of global inequality.
Tensions between the United States and Russia over the invasion of Ukraine have made their way to the outer space domain. The packet of sanctions announced on Feb. 24 included measures directly targeting the Russian space program. Addressing this, President Biden remarked that “[the sanctions] will degrade their aerospace industry, including their space program.”
This year, the Education for Public Inquiry and International Citizenship class run by the Institute of Global Leadership at Tufts has been guided by the theme “Problems without Passports.” As an environmental studies and international relations major, the relevance and urgency of this framework is evident. Environmental scholars increasingly cite the interconnectedness of the global ecosystem, which calls for understanding an ‘instance’ of environmental degradation on a wider spatial and temporal scale. Just as the effects of climate change are dispersed over time and space to be felt unevenly by those who have had little hand in causing it, pollution and toxicity created in one place will not be neatly contained out of sight and out of body.
Social media has revolutionized terrorism, acting as a tool to streamline communication in underground networks and make the recruitment of individuals more accessible. This has resulted in the increased dissemination of extremist content online, facilitating radicalization. Terrorist or extremist groups can readily communicate their opinions and misinformation in an immediate and widely accessible format, sharing information with a large, global audience, while also tailoring their messages to specific audiences at local levels. As stated by expert Dr. Maura Conway, “Today's Internet does not simply allow for the dissemination and consumption of ‘extremist material’ in a one-way broadcast from producer to consumer, but also high levels of online social interaction around this material.”
I woke up on May 23, 2021, ready to graduate. After donning a suit, cap and gown, I walked downstairs to find my housemates in their pajamas.
Some of the world’s most pressing problems such as climate change, mass-migration and food insecurity transcend state borders. These issues are beyond the capacity of any single country to solve themselves, necessitating international cooperation. Former Secretary-General of the United Nations Kofi Annan labeled these challenges as “problems without passports.”
Two years ago, Johns Hopkins University announced that they had quietly phased out legacy preferences in admissions decisions, beginning in 2014. Their logic was simple: Legacy preferences, admission advantages given to families of alumni, were limiting their ability to admit talented students from diverse backgrounds. Since then, news outlets have denounced legacy admissions, activists have mounted aggressive campaigns and states have passed legislation discouraging or prohibiting their use. Despite these efforts, many universities, including Tufts, have been loath to end such policies. Their principal reasoning for upholding the status quo stems from their conviction that legacy admissions result in increased donations from alumni.
The start of a new year offers space for reflection on the past year and airing of hopes for the coming year. In September, Harvard announced that it would stop investing in fossil fuels and wind down its existing investments in them. At the same time, BU announced that it would divest from fossil fuels. The COP26 summit of October and November further emphasized the urgency of the climate crisis. In December, Boston Mayor Michelle Wu signed an ordinance requiring the City of Boston to divest from fossil fuel industries by the end of 2025. Also in December, Tufts’ Chief Investment Officer Craig W. Smith presented the Fossil Fuel Divestment and Tufts Endowment Webinar as part of the Path to Carbon Neutrality Webinar Series, organized by the Tufts Office of Sustainability.
One of the most enigmatic and troublesome failures of our modern socioeconomic system lies within our impractical food network. Food waste has been dubbed “the world’s dumbest environmental problem,” and for good reason. While 40% of the food supply in America goes to waste, over 38 million people in the United States experience food insecurity. Globally, 1.3 billion tons of food go to waste every year, which accounts for about a third of total food produced. When we talk about hunger in our country and in our world, it’s clear that these problems don’t arise from a deficiency in food production systems. So what is the cause of these harrowing statistics?
Hi, everyone! My name is Alex Janoff, and I am the Editor in Chief of The Tufts Daily for this upcoming spring semester. As the Tufts community returns to campus over the course of the next week or so, I — personally — have started to make that oh-so difficult but necessary mental switch from the winter break lifestyle to thinking about classes, readings, exams and assignments. As I prepare for this upcoming semester, I would like to use this space to both introduce myself and also share some thoughts I have for this spring semester regarding the Daily’s production.
Dear students, faculty, staff and all others that make up the Tufts community,
