Letter from the Editor in Chief: Welcome back to the Hill
By Julia Shannon-Grillo | January 18Dear Tufts community,
Dear Tufts community,
The departure of University President Anthony Monaco following this academic year will certainly be emotional for the Tufts student body. Serving as president for over a decade, President Monaco demonstrated his resolute leadership while navigating the university through a challenging pandemic and the subsequent rebound to in-person learning. Although he has received backlash from students on certain issues, he nevertheless remained an open book and did his best to respect and address their concerns.
Dear Tufts community members and Tufts Daily staff,
On Sunday, Nov. 27, a rare anti-lockdown, pro-free speech protest broke out in Beijing. Demonstrators crowded the Liangmaqiao diplomatic district, holding up pieces of blank, white paper to show their opposition to China’s draconian zero-COVID policy. Protests also broke out in other major Chinese cities such as Shanghai, Guangzhou and Chengdu following a fire in Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang, where at least 10 lives were lost due to COVID-19-related “barricades and locked doors” that slowed down the fire evacuation.
The Diversity & Inclusion Report embedded below represents The Tufts Daily’s first comprehensive effort to gather insights into the composition of our staff and their experiences in our organization. The report was compiled by a group of the Daily’s current and former student leaders under the purview of the paper’s Intentionality & Inclusivity Committee.
During his trophy acceptance speech at the 2017 Australian Open, newly crowned champion Roger Federer acknowledged the competitive nature of the match against longtime rival, Spain’s Rafael Nadal in a simple yet meaningful way: “Tennis is a tough sport, there are no draws. But if there was going to be one, I would have been happy to accept a draw tonight and share it with Rafa, really.”
Talia Wilcox is a sophomore studying international relations.
Mark Lannigan is the president of the Tufts Democrats.
Justin Hong is a junior studying American Studies.
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.”