Columns

Tobias '12: Shooting for safety?

Clarification appended.

Sheffield '11: Truthiness Tuesdays

Chelsea Waite '11 provides a varied array of claims about how religion is benign and beneficial ("Truth Tuesdays," March 2). According to her column, it is not the tenets of religions that are problematic — it is their corrupted lust for power and thirst for domination. Apparently, if it were ...

Norris-LeBlanc '13: Who needs teachers anyway?

Nationwide, educators in public schools are facing an unprecedented attack on their salaries, collective bargaining rights and in many cases, their jobs. Behind the euphemisms of "flexibility" and "working together to balance the budget" lay much more sinister motives — power-grabbing, union-busting ...

Lachgar GS: From Marrakesh to Brown

Hans Kung, a Catholic priest, once said, "There will be no peace among the nations without peace among the religions. There will be no peace among the religions without dialogue among the religions." After Sept. 11, things have changed in the world, and religious intolerance has become widespread. ...

Contreras '11: Shalom-Salaam: dialogue as distraction or dialogue as action?

Israel's public relations machine is working full force on campus this month in the form of the Watson Institute for International Studies' conference "Israelis and Palestinians: Working Together for a Better Future" and Brown-RISD Hillel's Israeli-Palestinian Peace Week. The events' respective goals ...

Badami '11: Just saying

At the heart of the Reserve Officers' Training Corps debate is the question: Whom does Brown University exist to serve? Ostensibly, it is the students, though the mission statement claims it's "the community, the nation and the world," so perhaps it's one of those train-and-educate-the-students-who-are-our-future ...

Braine '11.5: Keeping my head down no longer

Ian Trupin '13: Painting Brown Khaki

Arguments for and against reinstating the Reserve Officers' Training Corps as a credit-bearing institution on campus have animated this opinions section for some time now. But as lengthy as the debate has been, an important consideration has not received enough attention — the University's reputation ...

Susannah Kroeber '11: Evangelizing English

It is not elitism that worries me about Brown graduates. That elitism is defined by a quest for higher learning and knowledge. It is not the large number of students who pursue careers for no reason other than a desire for money. It is not the graduates who spend their first year out of Brown engaging ...

Waite '11: Truth Tuesday

For those who don't know, something very important is happening within the hallowed halls of J. Walter Wilson on Tuesday nights. After everyone else has finished classes for the day, a group of students congregates to participate in a project dedicated to exploring and pursuing the concept of religious ...

Johnson '11: Paper or plastic: checking out?

With the spring semester in full swing, it is appropriate to take the time to address a trend with which everyone is all too familiar — seniors mailing in the end of their Brown careers.

Rosenbloom '13: ROTC and human rights: putting the military's record in perspective

The debate about the Reserve Officers' Training Corps has caused many students and alums to demonize our military and portray it as a habitual human rights violator. Even if these critics have some valid points, their overall impression of the army is distorted. Far from being a force for evil in the ...

Uhrick '11: IR disposes of the culture buffet

So the new international relations requirements have been announced. Mark Blyth, professor of political science and director of undergraduate studies for international relations and development studies, sent out a letter that was, as promised after all the uproar last semester, completely devoid of ...

Yu '11: The new IR - better but not good enough

As a senior about to graduate with a bachelor of arts in international relations, the current reflections and debate surrounding the new IR concentration requirements have definitely caught my attention.

Matthiesen GS: Rape vs. rape-rape: confronting ambivalence about sexual violence

By now, many of us are familiar with the recent attempts by the House to legislate degrees of rape — "forcible" and otherwise — in order to further restrict the already narrow circumstances under which abortions can be federally funded. In late January, lawmakers proposed to change the term ...

Mayo '13: Brown University: in need of diversity?

Park '12: Keep ROTC out

The debate about bringing the Reserve Officers' Training Corps back to campus has left two concerns — profit and prestige — unmentioned. In my analysis, these are the implicit justifications for considering ROTC's return, though students have not been included in this part of the discussion ...

Wicken GS: Energy, ingenuity and arch supports

You, dear readers, are a tough lot to keep up with.

Tobias '12: Time to tame tuition

Funding a Brown education is already hard, and it isn't getting any easier. The Corporation just accepted a 3.5 percent increase in tuition for the next academic year, raising total undergraduate tuition and fees to a voluminous $53,136. And that's only for next year. Given the Corporation's past increases ...

Sheffield '11: Nostalgia

The 1960s and early 1970s were a very interesting time to be in college. Sure, being college-age could get you sent off to war, but that led to large demonstrations, which made the period unique. There was free love, drugs and protestors. The University changed its curriculum based on student suggestions, ...