William Deresiewicz, author of “Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite and the Way to a Meaningful Life,” spoke on campus Sept. 15 about why we shouldn’t be at Brown. In his eyes, the school that most of us worship as our home and that fosters us as intellectuals is actually turning ...
Once upon a time, there was a poplar. It was a Lombardy poplar. And everyone loved it very much. People would come and take cuttings and plant it and play botanist. And in 1784, one man took a cutting, packed it for America and sailed. Then one day, in 1803, a man from Rhode Island came to Brown University ...
The Islamic State has been declared. The first caliphate since the fall of the Ottoman Empire a century ago, claiming to represent all Muslims worldwide, has been established. The speed with which the Islamic State — formerly known as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria — spread from Syria back ...
I have never played a game of baseball in my life. Not pee-wee, not Little League, not even an impromptu inning during recess. I was the boy who flat-out protested a game of catch with his father — something akin to the guilt inspiring Kevin Costner’s introspective journey in “Field of Dreams.” ...
Almost seven months ago, police arrested former Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice for domestic violence. Now, new information is still being released about the details of the case. At this point, video evidence has shown everyone what occurred. Footage depicts Janay Palmer, Rice’s fiancee at ...
We’re not done yet. And I don’t see the end coming anytime soon. Last Wednesday, in a prime-time speech addressing the nation, President Obama announced that he was opening a new chapter in the War on Terror and in our involvement in the Middle East. The new campaign would be limited to air strikes ...
Last week, Jason Ginsberg ’16 wrote an article on what he believes to be the misleading nature of the Middle East Studies Initiative’s programming (“Brown’s Middle East misnomer,” Sept. 11). To begin with, the central premise of his argument needs to be clarified, as the author himself seems ...
I love football. There is nothing better than grabbing a bunch of friends and watching a close NFL game on a Sunday afternoon in the fall. Rivalries are intense, traditions loom large, and the Super Bowl never ceases to disappoint. But the recent events surrounding Ray Rice’s battering of his fiancee ...
Before diving into my response to Peter Makhlouf’s ’16 column in last Monday’s Herald, “Where is my Birthright?” I’d like to address certain things. Firstly, as we are all products of Brown’s environment, I think it is within our culture to try and understand various different arguments. ...
During your summer months you have, no doubt, seen various postings and re-postings of the near-ubiquitous William Deresiewicz article in the New Republic, “Don’t send your kids to the Ivy League.” And you — as an Ivy League student yourself — almost certainly read it. And if you are like ...
I remember my first technology career fair. There was a girl who couldn’t stop laughing. As resumes were scattered and business cards compared, the artists were separated from the analysts, the social workers from the computer programmers. Soon the laughter turned to tears. Apparently not a single ...
In 1998, five Cuban counterterrorism agents were arrested in Miami and held in solitary confinement for 17 months. Then — after a dubious seven-month-long trial in which no hard evidence was ever presented — the group was convicted and given the equivalent of more than four life sentences. The ...
Much has been written about Ferguson. The rhetoric of self-defense espoused by law enforcement to justify its use of military-grade weaponry against black and brown bodies is mirrored by civilians’ use of firearms for the same purported reason. Trayvon Martin, Renisha McBride, Jonathan Ferrell, now ...
It is the start of my third year at Brown, but every morning at around 1 a.m., I still find excitement in opening the latest Morning Mail. There is something liberating about having so many lectures, events and performances to choose from in the day ahead. Lately, however, my usual sense of comfort ...
Last week, the University of Arizona’s student newspaper, the Arizona Daily Wildcat, published an op-ed column by senior Rob Monteleone entitled “Only responsibility can stop rape” that featured much of the misogynist rhetoric we are unfortunately familiar with these days: Women shouldn’t go ...
At both an institutional and a personal level, current and formerly incarcerated people are consistently dismissed when they ask for help — for some people, it seems fair that they deal with the consequences of their actions on their own. But what about consequences that go above and beyond what we ...
Editors’ note: This column was written by a 2014 alum. Due to its politically sensitive nature and the author’s Chinese citizenship, we decided to run it anonymously. At a 2010 G20 summit press conference, Rui Chenggang, a journalist from China Central Television, pushed a question on President ...
According to the Association of International Educators, about 70 percent of American college students who study abroad choose to study in Europe, with only about 4 percent studying in Africa, 8 percent in Asia and 10 percent in South America. When it comes to searching online for volunteer opportunities ...
On Thursday, as I manned my post at the Activities Fair, I was interested to see students walking around with placards reading, “Ask me about a free trip to Israel.” Immediately I knew they were referencing Birthright, a 10-day, all-expenses-paid trip to Israel, run annually through Brown/RISD Hillel ...
Sorry to burst your bubbles, first-years, but the ice cream social that you attended just a few nights ago during orientation? Utterly pointless. How is it that a function designed to plunge you into the social scene at Brown and make you feel less alone manages to achieve neither of these goals? First-years ...
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