Boston College 2012-2013 Mid-Year Compilation

FALLSEMESTER2012 OFFI CEOFNEWS&PUBLI CAFFAI RS JACKDUNN,DI RECTOR DECEMBER2012

Metro Dec 12, 2012

BC set to open new $78m academic building By Matt Rochleau | Globe Staff For the first time in 45 years, Boston College will soon open a new academic facility on the main part of its Chestnut Hill campus. BC officials say that the $78 million Stokes Hall, the school’s most expensive educational building ever, represents an investment in the humanities and a bet in the future of bricks-and-mortar higher education. It is opening as many institutions, students, and families are questioning the value of liberal arts studies in a struggling economy and amid the soaring cost of college. “Nationally, everyone is sensitive to the economic realities over the last several years,” said David Quigley, dean of the university’s School of Arts and Sciences. “But Boston College has proven over the last 150 years the value of a liberal arts education, and you see so many parents who recognize BC’s new hall is the school’s most expensive educational building. The lounge is pictured. that, who see Boston College as a wise historic buildings in that part of campus, including the investment.” school’s flagship facility Gasson Hall, which turns 100 in The building’s namesake, Patrick T. Stokes, who has 2013. donated $22 million toward the facility, earned a degree in “The biggest compliment we get from everyone is it math from BC in 1964. looks like it’s always been there,” said Patrick Keating, “College is not a trade school, and I don’t think a lot of executive vice president of BC. businesses are looking for, ‘Can you give me this particular Still, many upperclassmen and alumni have missed skill,’ ” said Stokes, former chairman of Anheuser-Busch what used to be on the site: the main quad. The site and a BC trustee. “They are looking at the individual. housed BC’s first football field until Alumni Stadium They’re looking for a mature person that is able to ask the opened in 1957. The space then became popular for right questions, contribute logically, and bring value to the student recreation. company.” Foot traffic, wind, and cold winters killed much of the Professors were scheduled to move into Stokes Hall on grass and students dubbed the spot the Dustbowl, a name Wednesday, and the first classes will be held there when that stuck long after the school replanted the lawn. students return from winter break. The space has been inaccessible since construction of It will be the second-largest educational building at BC, Stokes Hall began on Oct. 4, 2010. after Higgins Hall. One night before the work started, students held a vigil. The college broke ground on the 183,000-square-foot, Senior Taylour Kumpf was among those who gathered. L-shaped Stokes Hall two years ago on what was the last “A lot of students were really upset that they lost that substantial undeveloped site in the central part of campus. amount of green space,” said the 21-year-old, who is now On a recent visit to the new building, workers were editor in chief of the student-run newspaper, The Heights, rolling out sod for a new Campus Green and putting and who also works as a campus tour guide. finishing touches on the 36 new classrooms, common But college officials say most of the area that the school areas, an honors library, outdoor plaza, and amphitheater. calls the Campus Green is returning now that the building Despite its size, the building is rather inconspicuous. is finished. The architect, Tsoi/Kobus & Associates, designed Stokes Hall to match the English Collegiate Gothic Style of the

OP-ED

A third way on immigration Instead of deportation or amnesty, the U.S. should adopt legalization without citizenship. By Peter Skerry The debate over U.S. immigration policy has been rebooted. There now appears to be bipartisan support for what's generally called comprehensive reform. But a stumbling block remains: What to do about the estimated 11 million illegal immigrants among us. Deportation? Complete amnesty? A "path" to citizenship? There is a way forward, and it can be best summarized by "none of the above." It lies, instead, between these choices. It's legalization without citizenship . With as few conditions and as broadly as possible, we should offer undocumented immigrants status as "permanent noncitizen residents." Unlike current green card holders, these individuals would never have the option of naturalizing and becoming U.S. citizens. The only exception would be for minors who arrived here with their parents. Provided they have not committed any serious crimes, such individuals should be immediately eligible for citizenship. Simplicity is one distinct virtue of this approach. The prospect of mass deportations (or the hope of mass self-deportations) is both unpalatable and impractical. And establishing and implementing a complicated pathway to citizenship — or even to a lesser legal status — requires more faith than most Americans have in our government's ability to administer programs effectively and fairly. For example, one proposal has called for the undocumented to return to their native countries for some period of time and then apply for a visa and "get in line" to return to the U.S. legally. But how would the return trip be monitored? And after that, how effectively would the visa quotas and readmission processes be administered? What would happen when an aging grandmother is returned to a "home" she left 30 years ago, or when illegal parents and their U.S.-born teenagers find themselves on different sides of the divide? Most Americans understand that undocumented immigrants came here primarily because there were jobs waiting for them, and that American employers and consumers have benefited from their labor. They find it difficult to avoid the conclusion that all Americans are complicit in this problem. Yet in an era of increasing inequality, others insist they do not see themselves benefiting from the presence of illegals, or of unskilled immigrants generally. And while economic studies consistently demonstrate that there is substantially less competition with immigrants for jobs than many believe, opponents of immigration, especially of illegal immigration, are not wrong when they point to negative

impacts on the quality of life in their neighborhoods and to the fiscal burdens on their schools, hospitals and other social service providers. My proposal — let's call it "mere legalization" — speaks directly to these Americans. To be sure, it would not treat undocumented immigrants as criminals, as many insist. But neither would it treat them as mere victims. It would, as President Obama put it at American University in 2010, "demand responsibility from people living here illegally." Those who chose as adults to take enormous risks and break our laws would be held accountable as responsible agents who must now pay a clear and enduring penalty. Looking forward, any such initiative would have to be accompanied by rigorous and comprehensive enforcement efforts not only along our borders and ports of entry but at work sites throughout the land. Immigrant advocates and their supporters may reject mere legalization as too punitive, as "second-class citizenship." Yet a quarter of a century after President Reagan's amnesty went into effect in 1987, only two-fifths of those who became legal permanent residents through that program have gone on to become citizens. In light of restrictions imposed in the 1990s on noncitizen eligibility for various federal social welfare benefits, and subsequent programs to increase naturalization rates, such low numbers are particularly striking. Traditionally low levels of naturalization among eligible Mexican-origin immigrants are one factor at work here. Yet the point remains: The overwhelming majority of those covered by Reagan's amnesty have settled for less than full citizenship. So what exactly are we arguing about? To those who think that permanent noncitizen status is too lenient, I would respond that much would depend on the specifics of any such program, about which Congress would have enormous latitude to do as it sees fit. Even so, under current law and policy, green card holders are treated differently from citizens. Besides not being eligible for certain government jobs and social programs, they are not permitted to serve on state or federal juries. And of course noncitizens do not vote in federal and state elections, though they may in a few local jurisdictions. When green card holders travel outside the U.S., especially for extended periods, they currently risk being not allowed to reenter. As UCLA law professor Hiroshi Motomura concludes, under prevailing rulings "the Constitution protects a returning lawful immigrant no more than a first-time entrant." More generally, noncitizen residents have no absolute assurance that they will be allowed to remain here. Failing to keep documents current or committing various crimes, including tax evasion and shoplifting, could result in their deportation. So the status of green card holders is highly contingent on their own behavior and on global politics. And unlike U.S. citizens, they cannot obtain visas for immediate family members outside the usual numerical quotas. The underlying point is easily lost in the fog of rancorous debate over punishment or amnesty for the 11 million undocumented immigrants among us: The United States is a remarkably absorptive and open society, where newcomers and their children put down roots and develop ties very quickly. Indeed, our openness is so powerful that many among the undocumented have been noisily demanding relief. Why not allow ourselves to feel good about this and use it to propel us toward a middle path? We don't have to choose between granting citizenship to lawbreakers or imposing onerous penalties that we lack the will and means to implement and enforce. We can choose instead a practical, achievable policy that acknowledges Americans' share of responsibility for this mess, but that also requires illegal immigrants to acknowledge theirs. Peter Skerry is a political science professor at Boston College and a fellow of the Brookings Institution. A longer version of this piece appears in the Winter 2013 issue of National Affairs.

U.S. Students Still Lag Globally in Math and Science, Tests Show By MOTOKO RICH

Fourth- and eighth-grade students in the United States continue to lag behind students in several East Asian countries and some European nations in math and science, although American fourth graders are closer to the top performers in reading, according to test results released on Tuesday. Fretting about how American schools compare with those in other countries has become a regular pastime in education circles. Results from two new reports, the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study and the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study, are likely to fuel further debate. South Korea and Singapore led the international rankings in math and fourth-grade science, while Singapore and Taiwan had the top-performing students in eighth-grade science. The United States ranked 11th in fourth-grade math, 9th in eighth-grade math, 7th in fourth-grade science and 10th in eighth-grade science. Although the average scores among American students were not significantly lower than the top performers, several nations far outstripped the United States in the proportion of students who scored at the highest levels on the math and science tests. In the United States, only 7 percent of students reached the advanced level in eighth-grade math, while 48 percent of eighth graders in Singapore and 47 percent of eighth graders in South Korea reached the advanced level. As those with superior math and science skills increasingly thrive in a global economy, the lag among American students could be a cause for concern. “Clearly, we have some room to improve, particularly at the number of advanced students we have compared to the world,” said Jack Buckley, the commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics at the Education Department, which administers and analyzes the results of the tests in the United States. The tests, which are designed by the International Study Center at Boston College in collaboration with government education officials and academic researchers in participating countries, are administered to a random selection of demographically representative students across the world. Fourth graders in 57 countries or education systems took the math and science tests, while 56 countries or education systems administered the tests to eighth graders. (Education systems include American states or regions like Hong Kong in China or Northern Ireland in Britain.) In reading, 53 countries and education systems participated. Hong Kong and Russia had the highest average test scores in fourth-grade reading, with American students ranking sixth. Students in Florida, one of the states to break out results separately, achieved a higher average score than students in the nation over all. Students in Finland, which is often held up as a model education system for its teacher preparation and its relative absence of high-stakes testing, outperformed American students on all the exams. But students in countries with intense testing cultures also exceeded American students. “Some of the high-performing math and science countries have extremely rigorous testing regimes,” Mr. Buckley said. The test designers included questionnaires for parents about preparation before formal schooling. Ina V. S. Mullis, an executive director of the International Study Center, said that students whose parents reported singing or playing number games as well as reading aloud with their children early in life scored higher on their fourth-grade tests than those whose parents who did not report such activities. Similarly, students who had attended preschool performed better. “What’s remarkable is that in all the countries, this concept of an early start is there over and over again,” said Michael O. Martin, the other executive director of the center. “You can get the early childhood experience in a variety of ways, but it’s important you get it.”

December 11, 2012

Competitors Still Beat U.S. in Tests By STEPHANIE BANCHERO American schoolchildren continue to lag behind those of major competitors in math and science exams given globally, despite progress on some of those tests, according to results from international achievement exams released Tuesday. Students in Singapore, South Korea, Japan and Finland, among others nations, bested U.S. fourth- and eighthgrade students on the 2011 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study, known as TIMSS. The nation's fourth-graders made some progress on the math exam since it last was given in 2007, but U.S. scores on the other exams were statistically unchanged. Despite that, U.S. students still outperformed the international averages and were among the top performers compared with the 60 countries and educational systems that administered the fourth-grade math and science tests and the 59 systems that gave the eighth-grade exams. U.S. students either placed in, or tied for, the top 13 spots on all those exams. Some states volunteered to administer the tests to more students so their results could be statistically valid to be broken out separately and did very well, especially Massachusetts, Minnesota and Colorado. Massachusetts, for example, posted the second-highest scores globally on the eighth-grade science test. U.S. students have made steady progress since the exams first were given in 1995, but other jurisdictions are outpacing that progress, said Ina V.S. Mullis, executive director of the TIMMS & PIRLS International Study center at Boston College, which develops the math and science exams and analyzes the results. "We are trying to catch a moving target," she said. "This is of concern in a global economy when we are trying to compete for the health of our nation." The U.S. results were "pretty respectable," said Jack Buckley, the commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics, which administers the exams in the U.S. and studies the scores. He praised the test results posted by some of the states that were broken out individually. Still, the new data could add to the hand-wringing over the performance of U.S. students overall, which a blueribbon panel of the Council on Foreign Relations in March called a national security issue. Results released in 2010 from the Program for International Student Assessment math exam, given to 15-yearolds across the world every three years, showed American kids in the middle of the pack compared with 33 industrialized peers. Also on Tuesday, results from the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS), given to fourthgraders, were released and showed the American students made some progress since it was last given in 2006. The exam was given to students in 53 education systems globally, and five turned in higher scores than the U.S., compared with eight jurisdictions that scored higher in 2006. Florida scored among the top five education systems assessed by the PIRLS test in 2011.

Asian students have long dominated the math and science exams, dating as far back as 1995, and the new results show they not only posted higher scores but a bigger number of them performed at the highest levels. In fourth-grade math, for example, 43% of students in Singapore scored "advanced," compared with 13% of their U.S. counterparts. In eighth-grade math, 47% of Korean students scored at the top level, versus 7% of U.S. students. In science, 33% of Singapore's fourth-graders and 40% of its eighth-graders scored in the top level, compared with 15% and 10% of the comparable U.S. group. Mitchell Chester, commissioner of Elementary and Secondary Education in Massachusetts, credited the state's results on an education overhaul launched in 1993 that included setting high standards for curriculum and administering rigorous exams. "We have refused to let ourselves be comfortable with successes we've had," Mr. Chester said. —Caroline Porter contributed to this article. A version of this article appeared December 11, 2012, on page A2 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Competitors Still Beat U.S. in Tests.

Metro Dec 8, 2012

Tip’s ‘creative fidelity’ By John A. Farrell | Globe Staff MY FATHER raised me wary of priests and politicians. And life has taught me to put my faith in little said at funerals. But it was the Rev. J. Donald Monan, then president of Boston College, who best captured Speaker Thomas P. “Tip” O’Neill Jr., in a eulogy at the services at St. John the Evangelist on that cold day in 1994. “Those of us who have lived through the decades since the 1930s, of dramatic change in the moral dilemmas that modernity brings . . . realize that Speaker O’Neill’s legendary sense of loyalty, either to old friends or to God, was no dull or wooden conformity,” said the priest. “It has been a creative fidelity to values pledged in his youth that he kept relevant to a world of constant change by dint of effort and imagination and at the cost of personal sacrifice.” In my book on Tip, I spent 776 pages, groping, to convey what Monan captured in his incisive appraisal. His words were a testament to Jesuit artistry — as was, in no small part, the magnificent career of O’Neill (BC class of ’36). Many attributes made Tip a gifted politician; “creative fidelity” made him a great one. He was born 100 years ago Sunday, the son of an Irish-American ward leader who, from the exalted office of sewer superintendent, ran a world of precinct captains, Christmas baskets, and patronage jobs. Thomas Sr. had hiked himself up by muddy red bootstraps from life as a brickyard laborer, and had more than his share of the glorious American faith in possibility: His son went to college. When Tip won a seat in the Massachusetts Legislature on FDR’s coattails in 1936, he represented old and new, a herald of a breed. Thomas Jr. showed mettle from the start: risking his seat to stand against the cheapjack demagogues selling fear and bigotry in the red scares of those Depression days. He walked the sidewalks with his dad, defending and explaining his votes to his constituents, and when voters endorsed his actions at the next election, the experience left him with an incalculably valuable lesson — to face, not flee, your foes. A quick decade later, at age 36, he was speaker of the Massachusetts House, the first of his party and the first of his faith, as he always, quite proudly, noted. O’Neill was a captain in the pack of postwar visionaries who molded modern Massachusetts. One typically artful adventure suffices: As speaker of the Massachusetts House, Tip helped plan and fund the old Fitzgerald expressway. Years later, castigating it as an ill-spawned monstrosity and a hideously designed roadway, he employed his clout in the US House to dock federal taxpayers for billions of dollars to replace it. Not for nothing is that tunnel named.

His creative fidelity was displayed again during the Vietnam War and Watergate. He was lucky to have kids, and advisers — and his own worried middle-class constituency — to alert him to the war’s dismal progress. He broke with Lyndon Johnson in the fall of 1967, one of the first Democratic regulars to do so. It led him to a unique role in ’60s politics — a bridge once more between old and new, trusted by both wings of his party. He adjusted to new ways, and ethical norms. In the end, with the necessary nods of fortune, it made him speaker. Richard Nixon, whose theatric life is my current study, didn’t share O’Neill’s capacity to adapt. “He was not able to draw the right conclusions about a changing world and . . . like a tragic Shakespearean character . . . he went off-track,” said Tom Hayden, the ’60s antiwar leader. Many in the era shared the flaw, Hayden confessed. “We fell into the absolutism of the either-or, the good-or-evil categories ourselves.” Ronald Reagan did not. For shrewd and principled pragmatism, whether pitted against Gorbachev or Congress, he was O’Neill’s match. Reagan’s 1980 triumph left Tip the leader of what one newspaper called, “the national Democratic Party, to the extent that it exists.” He was, an adviser told him, “the only person in a position to continue representing the ideals of justness and compassion.” It was an elemental battle; hot lava meeting raging surf. O’Neill adapted. He added specialists to his already talented staff. He dropped 40 pounds, improved his wardrobe, and worked TV-land like the sidewalks of Mass. Ave. In the end, Americans recognized, and came to appreciate, his authenticity and empathy. He fought the conservative hero to a draw. Reagan stemmed the growth of the welfare state, but the kid from North Cambridge and BC saved the core of the New Deal and the Great Society.

As House speaker, Thomas P. O’Neill found his match in President Reagan.

Obituaries Dec 8, 2012

Henry Blackwell, 76, taxi driver-turned-English professor By Melissa M. Werthmann | Globe Staff

Having been a taxi driver long before he taught English at Boston College, Henry Blackwell offered encouragement to students who had not seen their own potential, and he inspired them to beat the odds like he did. “It was so striking that he was the only full-time professor of color at the time,” said Marc Onion, a former student of Dr. Blackwell, who was the first African-American faculty member in BC’s English department. “It was relieving to be so represented in the faculty.” Dr. Blackwell, who taught at Boston College for 32 years, died Sept. 28 in a Savannah, Ga., nursing home following complications of a stroke and diabetes. He was 76 and formerly lived in Framingham. “He was a magnificent teacher inside the classroom, as well as outside the classroom,” said John Mahoney, an English professor emeritus at Boston College who worked with Dr. Blackwell for many years. Their offices were next door to one another, so the two often chatted during the day. “Students admired that what they found in him was a strong, gracious, demanding teacher, who was a role model for them,” Mahoney said. Although Dr. Blackwell focused on African-American literature, “he had a wide-ranging sense of the whole literary experience,” Mahoney said. Dr. Blackwell, he said, was “able, scholarly, a critic, someone who cared about education, not in the abstract, but in the reality of living students.” Robin Lydenberg, an English professor at Boston College, was on the faculty with Dr. Blackwell for more than 30 years and considered him the conscience of the English department. “He was always the one who didn’t let things get swept under the rug,” Lydenberg said. “He really pushed us to face up to difficult issues, and he had a tremendous ethical and philosophical mind.” Although Dr. Blackwell spent decades discussing similar topics, Lydenberg said, he brought a fresh feel to each year’s classes. “Even after 30 years of teaching he was not coasting on old notes,” Lydenberg said. “He was very much focused on the students and identified with students who didn’t recognize how smart they were, or how much potential they had. He would really go after them hard.” Born in Baltimore, Dr. Blackwell skipped a few grades along the way before enrolling at 15 in Howard University in Washington.

He was a taxi driver when he started a family with his first wife, Barbara. Their marriage ended in divorce. Driving a cab did little to fulfill his thirst for literary knowledge and his desire to write, so he took night classes at what was then Morgan State College in Baltimore. Granted a Woodrow Wilson scholarship, he attended the University of Chicago, from which he received a master’s degree and a doctorate. “Beyond being a workaholic, he just could not do anything sort of halfway,” said his wife, Carol, whom Dr. Blackwell met while teaching English at the University of Connecticut. They married in 1975. At Boston College, Dr. Blackwell taught African-American literature, American literature, and cultural studies. When he was not scrupulously preparing class lessons or reviewing the work of his students, Dr. Blackwell played tournament chess and enjoyed Asian cuisine, his wife said, but his chief passion was literature. Onion, who graduated in 1993, met Dr. Blackwell during his freshman year when he took a survey course in AfricanAmerican writing. Describing himself as “less than determined,” Onion said that Dr. Blackwell quickly challenged him to be better. “In class, he was captivating,” Onion said. Over time, he said, Dr. Blackwell became a father figure. “He was just warm,” Onion said, “not quick to volunteer information about his own life, but I developed a real comfort, so I was not afraid to ask. He had a sense of humor, which I think for most undergraduates was a bit of a secret. You would get slashes of it if you met with him in his office, but in class he could be rigidly serious.” During Onion’s senior year, he asked for a letter of recommendation for law school. Dr. Blackwell had other ideas. “He flat out told me no,” Onion said. “He told me that the world didn’t need any more attorneys and that I needed to go to graduate school and pursue some sort of literature degree.” Onion ended up graduating from New York University with a master’s degree in English education and now teaches at a high school in New Jersey. “Without Henry, I’d probably be working in a cubicle in lower Manhattan or more firmly committed to pursuing law school,” Onion said. Though working in different states, Onion and Dr. Blackwell stayed in touch. “Throughout my adulthood, Henry pretty much functioned as a surrogate dad,” Onion said. “I would e-mail, phone him, send him letters.” Toward the end of his life, Dr. Blackwell studied and prepared presentations about Paul Laurence Dunbar, an AfricanAmerican poet, novelist, and playwright. Dr. Blackwell also examined Dunbar’s private library of books filled with annotations and marginalia. A service has been held for Dr. Blackwell, who, in addition to his wife, leaves two children from his previous marriage, Henry Jr. and Alison Blackwell Byrd; a stepdaughter, Ann Goldstone; six siblings; five grandchildren; and two greatgrandchildren. Lydenberg said that Dr. Blackwell encouraged students to strive to achieve academically and that “he was very much directed outward and noticing sort of who needed attention or mentoring.” Dr. Blackwell especially enjoyed crafting detailed introductions for the guest speakers he welcomed to his classroom, Lydenberg said. When the African-American poet Gwendolyn Brooks gave a reading for his class, Dr. Blackwell exclaimed that he wished he could dance across the stage like Michael Jackson to celebrate her arrival. “He had an enthusiasm for the work of other people and wanted to recognize other people’s brilliance in the most respectful way,” Lydenberg said

SUNDAY BOOK REVIEW

Recycled Newsprint ‘Shock of the News,’ on Artists and Newspapers By CARLO ROTELLA, Professor of American Studies at Boston College Published: November 30, 2012 When my kids get ready to make art, they reach for the newspaper. Cheap and always available, it’s our household’s all-purpose work surface for messy creativity. And when the kids are done, their creations proudly drying on the kitchen counter, the paint-spattered, goop-glopped newspaper pages spread out to protect the table are often striking to look at in their own right: a Syrian rebel disappearing into a burst of pink watercolor; an exposé of Wall Street crimes redacted with glue blobs and fake feathers. In “Shock of the News,” the catalog of an exhibition that runs until Jan. 27 at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, the curator Judith Brodie and her collaborators offer a cogent, evocative account of artists’ use and abuse of the newspaper from 1909 to 2009. In the early 20th century, the newspaper was the news incarnate, enjoying a status akin to the Internet’s today but perhaps even more dominant, given the lack of competing technologies. Last Tuesday’s paper was, in some sense, last Tuesday itself. And newsprint, the epitome of assemblyEdward Burra’s “Composition Collage”; 1929, collage and ink on paper.

line mass culture, presented the creative imagination with a predigital infinity of language and images in which to wander.

It’s no wonder that the newspaper attracted artists. Brodie and company focus on two early-20th-century works that suggested the range of possibilities for acting on that attraction. One is Filippo Marinetti’s Futurist manifesto, a fevered call to blow things up in the name of aesthetic audacity, published on the front page of Le Figaro in 1909. Marinetti demonstrated how artists could exploit the newspaper’s popular reach and opinion-making power. The other touchstone work is Pablo Picasso’s “Guitar, Sheet Music, and Glass” (1912), which contains a fragment from Le Journal. Picasso showed how to use the newspaper as found material, literally ripping it off to serve fresh and ironic purposes. A slicing, dicing, sometimes contemptuous aggression toward newspapers pervades the art in the book, although it mellows in the later works. By the 21st century, radio and television and then the Internet had eroded the newspaper’s once unrivaled status as the embodiment of the news, and the decline of the newspaper business had become a cliché. A horse-and-wagon aura of quaintness had attached itself to newsprint, now endearingly material and perishable. “Shock of the News” explores these changing meanings of the newspaper. Take an early work like Edward Burra’s “Composition Collage” of 1929, a cafe scene in which a man with the head of the heavyweight boxer Primo Carnera paws a woman whose body is composed from an article about Miss France of 1928 and an advertisement

for fast weight loss. The enormous fact of the newspaper imposes itself on the characters’ lives and the work itself; the artist counterpunches, visibly reckoning with the newspaper’s power. Compare Burra’s collage to Paul Sietsema’s “Modernist Struggle” (2008), which looks as if it includes a page of The New York Times’s Arts section from April 26, 2005, with a white paint splatter on it, but the page turns out on closer inspection to be a painstakingly hand-inked fake. Sietsema seems to be offering, among other things, a tribute to the newspaper as a relic on a par with the disappearing folkways of the Eskimos and Brazilian Indians featured in the defaced faux-articles. Even the most critical or mocking works included in “Shock of the News” accord implicit respect to the newspaper for its ubiquity. The loss of that ubiquity is one way in which the world will change if predictions of an allelectronic press come to pass. The art world, too, will feel the effect. I’m picturing my kids spreading iPads on the kitchen table before they start painting, and it’s not a pretty sight. Carlo Rotella’s latest book, published this fall, is “Playing in Time: Essays, Profiles, and Other True Stories.” A version of this review appeared in print on December 2, 2012, on page BR67 of the Sunday Book Review with the headline: Recycled Newsprint.

Dickens' Enduring Lessons By Brad Harrington

Posted: 11/30/2012 1:38 pm With December's arrival, we turn our attention to Christmas - the most wonderful, wondrous, and unfortunately, overwrought holiday for most Christians around the world. Last year, I wrote a piece on how "presence trumps presents" - encouraging people to think less about rushing to a frenetic mall to shop for gifts and rather, to spend our time with loved ones, realizing that giving them our time might prove the most precious gift of all. Our family does this each year by collectively engaging in a number of holiday traditions. One of the most cherished is attending an annual performance of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol at Trinity Repertory Company in Providence, RI, one of the most respected regional theatre groups in the country. Of all the great English-language authors, Charles Dickens has always been my personal favorite. His turns of phrase, humorous anecdotes, and unforgettable characters are second to none. But so too are his passion for social justice and his ability to help us see that his most common, understated characters are the ones that engage in noble and selfless acts. A Christmas Carol, written 170 years ago and extremely short compared to most of Dickens' works, offers more than its share of wisdom, as relevant today as it was in 1843. Three lessons stand out in particular. Two are from the visit of the Ghost of Christmas Past who "invites" Scrooge to relive Christmases of his days gone by. The first lesson Dickens offers is to simply look back. If not often, at least occasionally, ask "What led me to where I am today?" In my teaching at Boston College, often the first assignment I require of my students is to write a 20-page autobiography. As it did for Scrooge, the students' long look back brings up so many memories, both good and not so good, of the people and events that have shaped their lives. The insights students gain from this exercise are invaluable. Many find answers to their most important life questions - some of which had been long and often pondered, others never before considered. Whatever the case, the past is filled with answers to many of our most vexing and important questions, if we only take the time to reflect on it. The second lesson from Scrooge's journey back comes on the occasion of a Christmas party he attended as a youthful apprentice working for "old Fezziwig." Mr. Fezziwig, though a somewhat minor character in the novel, is nonetheless a very important one. He serves as the counterpoint to Scrooge who treats his own employee, Bob Cratchit, so callously. Fezziwig's joyous Christmas celebration for his employees and friends, by contrast, shows the impact of a good manager on the spirit and well-being of his people. When the Ghost of Christmas past questions Scrooge's admiration for Fezziwig's "trivial" acts of kindness, ("A small matter to make these silly folks so full of gratitude. He has spent but a few pounds of your mortal money. Is that so much that he deserves this praise?"), Scrooge defends Fezziwig ardently and eloquently: "It isn't that, Spirit. He has the power to render us happy or unhappy; to make our service light or burdensome; a pleasure or a toil. Say that his power lies in words and looks; in things so slight and insignificant that it is impossible to add and count them up: what then? The happiness he gives is quite as great as if it cost a fortune." Although temporarily forgotten, Fezziwig's generosity of spirit has left an indelible impression on Scrooge. Such seemingly small acts of kindness can make all of our journeys lighter. I aspire to be Fezziwig, in my work and personal life, but worry that I sometimes better resemble the main character in

this beloved tale. In fact, on my shelf at work, I keep a small statue of Scrooge which I have had for over 30 years. It was given to me by an old friend many Christmases ago. I believe she felt it best captured my then Yuletide spirit. That small artifact represents to me the third of Dickens' lessons. For many, Scrooge is remembered as Dickens initially described him - "a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner. Hard and sharp as flint from which no steel had ever struck a generous fire." But A Christmas Carol, after all, is more than anything a story of transformation and redemption. Thanks to the insights he gains from the past (and the present and future), Scrooge reinvents himself to such an extent that he himself is sure that many will look upon his changed state with great skepticism. As Dickens described: "Some people laughed to see the alteration in him, but he let them laugh, and little heeded them; for he was wise enough to know that nothing ever happened on this globe for good, at which some people did not have their fill of laughter in the outset; and knowing that such as these may be blind anyway, he thought it quite as well that they should wrinkle their eyes in grins, as have the malady in less attractive forms. His own heart laughed and that was quite enough for him." Reflection, small acts of kindness, and ultimately, transformation are just three of the lessons offered in Dickens' A Christmas Carol. On my own reflection, I'm convinced it was that transformed character of Scrooge that my old friend was thinking of when she gave me that tiny statue of Scrooge so many Christmases ago. It had to be, right? Happy holidays and as Tiny Tim observed "God bless us, every one!" Professor Brad Harrington is the Executive Director of the Boston College Center for Work & Family

Sports

Broadcasters found their voices at BC By Chad Finn | G L O B E S T A F F NOVEMBER 30, 2012

You wish you could hear the tapes. But the probability of the recordings of college-radio sports talk that aired more than 20 years ago surviving until this day is roughly equal to the chances of hitting the Powerball jackpot. Who knows what became of them? One host of the weekly program that aired in the late 1980s and early ’90s on Boston College’s student station WZBC suspects the tapes were discarded by some underclassman engineer charged with tidying up the studio. It’s even a whimsical possibility that they were recorded over, with the music of a band in its grassroots stage en route to becoming icons of a generation. “I remember getting ready to do a sports update and [the DJ] says to me, ‘Listen to how many times they say ‘grandma take me home’ in this song,’ ” remembers Jon “Boog” Sciambi, the superb voice of ESPN Radio’s “Sunday Night Baseball’’ broadcast who was part of the WZBC crew, referring to a song titled “Silver” from a thenobscure band. “He was kind of incredulous. About a year later, ‘Nevermind’ comes out, and Nirvana explodes. It was an incredible place like that. Incredible for a lot of reasons.’’ Not the least of which is the amount of talent among the fledgling hosts on that talk show, which ran for an hour each Monday and featured as many as 15 hosts, with three or four sharing 15-minute blocks. There was Sciambi, a transfer from William & Mary who found his voice there after his hopes of playing baseball ended. There was Joe Tessitore, now a premier college football broadcaster at ESPN as well as a renowned boxing and horse racing expert, who was so focused in his BC days that he would skip classes in the Carroll School of Management to attend coach Jack Bicknell’s football practices. There was Bob Wischusen, the radio voice of the New York Jets since 2002 and a college basketball and football announcer for ESPN. “We’re doing a student-run talk show on WZBC and 11 people are listening and 10 of them are in the same dorm room,’’ said Wischusen, “but I’ve got to tell you, I think it sounded like what a good show on WEEI back then would sound like. “I was an intern on the Dale Arnold show [not long after WEEI switched formats to all-sports in 1991], and Dale would yell at me because a couple of callers would get on the air, and they would kind of be talked out, because I was yelling at them while I was screening the calls.’” Another colleague — and roommate at an apartment off Commonwealth Avenue — was Christian Megliola, who took the sports producer route at NECN and Channel 4 before moving to public relations. And Jon Rish of WEEI’s Red Sox broadcasts was a class or two behind them. So much about college is about searching for something — a relationship, a career, a way to get what you want out of life. But when each of these young men arrived in Chestnut Hill in the fall of 1989, they already knew their calling. WZBC beckoned for all of them.

“I went in on my third or fourth day on campus and asked some of the classic college radio station people — you know, the girl with purple hair and the guy with 17 rings in his nose — ‘Hey, you have a sports department?’ ” Wischusen recalls. “And they were like, ‘Oh yeah, there’s a bunch of guys who do sports and have a talk show and call games.’ “And I was like, ‘Sign me up.’ ” Perhaps such a collaboration of talent at a college radio station isn’t that rare; Sean Grande, the radio voice of the Celtics, and Dave Goucher, the radio voice of the Bruins, once worked a game together at Boston University, for instance. But the way the WZBC talent meshed, whether it was during that hour on Monday night, landing an interview with a standout basketball player who was kicked off the team, or doing play-by-play of any game that would let them set up, was (to hear them tell it) practically manifest destiny. Knowing what they’ve become, it’s easy to believe. “Sciambi is a walking baseball encyclopedia. He truly is,’’ said Tessitore. “At that stage, Bob was always known as the hockey guy. I was the football guy. And Christian was the basketball guy. “If you put the four of us in a room from 1989 through 1993, I doubt that there would be any four people you could put in a room and beat us at sports trivia at that point. We had every sport covered.’’ To a man, they praise the others when asked if there was one they were sure would make it. “I can’t even remember thinking of it this way,’’ Tessitore said. “We were just seeing where life was going to take us.’’ Each of them worked his way to success with long hours and endless miles. While at BC, Tessitore never took a spring break, instead driving during every school vacation to Dallas in a 1976 Oldmobile Cutless Supreme to work for the NBC affiliate there. Wischusen got started with internships at WEEI and WFAN. Sciambi, while establishing himself in the Miami market, would go to Marlins games and record play-by-play into a tape recorder. Red Sox radio voice Dave O’Brien, then with the Marlins, was among those who would offer encouragement and critiques. “We weren’t part of some grand system where you go through this, and get your internship here, and then get your first job here and so on,’’ Tessitore said. “We were this group of guys deeply passionate about sports, having a blast, hanging out, calling games, rolling the dice, doing our show, laughing our [butts] off.’’ “It was classic, just us sitting on beat-up couches, arguing sports,” said Sciambi. “I wish I could hear now all the stuff we argued about. It was legit. I really loved it, man.’’

Business

Thanks to the duck, buyers flock to Aflac By Todd Wallack | G L O B E S T A F F NOVEMBER 29, 2012

Heard of Aflac? Credit the white animated duck. In the 1990s, just one in 10 people in the United States were familiar with the Columbus, Ga., insurance company, which mostly sells policies to help customers when they are struck by an unexpected accident or illness. But Aflac’s longtime chief executive, Daniel Amos, said that all changed in 2000 after Aflac introduced its mascot, who is famous for quacking the company’s name in dozens of television commercials. “Today, nine out of 10 people do know our name,” Amos said in a speech to business leaders at the Boston College Chief Executives’ Club of Boston. Amos, whose family founded (Handout) Daniel Amos’s family founded Aflac, a Georgia insurer, in the 1950s. Even in the 1990s, it was not well known.

Aflac in 1955, said the company’s name is now as well known as corporate icons like Apple, GE, and Coca-Cola.

The speech is a reminder of how important branding can be in a crowded market like insurance, where many companies offer similar products. Geico, another major insurance company, has become a household name in part because of its own animal mascot, the gecko. Still, Amos said, the Fortune 500 company faced a crisis in Japan — which accounts for three-quarters of the company’s earnings — after the country was devastated by an earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear plant meltdown. To make matters worse, comedian Gilbert Gottfried, who provided the US voice for the Aflac duck, threatened the brand by making jokes on Twitter about the devastation, saying in one tweet that the Japanese “don’t go to the beach. The beach comes to them.” But, Amos said, the company met both challenges by dealing with them quickly and communicating with customers and investors. “The fact is, people can handle bad news if you give it to them,” Amos said. “But they can’t handle uncertainty.” Two days after the disaster, he said, he hopped on a plane to Japan and was able to share good news with investors: The company’s operations remained up and running, and it did not expect the Japanese disaster to significantly affect claims or profits because it mainly focuses on health and life insurance, as opposed to property insurance. Property insurers, in contrast, were exposed to billions of dollars in claims.

(Charlie Mahoney for the Boston Globe) CEO Daniel Amos spoke in Boston.

Amos dealt with the Twitter jokes even faster. Within half an hour of hearing about the comments from a reporter, he said, the company decided to fire Gottfried, find a replacement, and withdraw all of its US commercials. (He said the company had only one ad left that did not feature Gottfried’s voice, a parody of a silent movie.) Amos said the decision generated good publicity. More than 11,000 people applied for the job to become the duck’s new voice. Speaking to reporters afterward, Amos said he is hopeful that political leaders in Washington will reach a compromise to avoid the combination of steep tax increases and budget cuts known as the fiscal cliff. If Congress and President Obama can’t reach a deal, Amos said, it could push the country back into recession. “It behooves everyone to find some compromise,” he said. “You’re dealing with dynamite.”

Style November 28, 2012, 9:50 am

How Children Subsidize ‘Low, Low Prices’ By KJ DELL'ANTONIA A significant part of our national antipoverty strategy over the past few decades has been increasing employment — moving people, particularly mothers, off “welfare rolls” and into jobs. But the types of jobs available to most lower-income parents, mothers and fathers alike, are low-wage jobs that present their own problems to those trying to support and raise a family. The lack of benefits, the inflexible hours and the often nonstandard shifts exacerbate the low pay and create a situation in which parents don’t have the time they want and need to spend with their children or the money to find high-quality substitutes (like activities and child care) for that time. The result, according to the Boston College sociologist Lisa Dodson and Randy Albelda, an economist at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, is that their parents’ low-wage jobs put youth at risk. Adolescents from households headed by a lowincome worker are more likely to drop out of school, to be obese and to take on adult roles too young. In providing child care for siblings and forgoing opportunities that require an engaged parent helping with homework or encouraging outside activities, teenage children in low-wage families are, Drs. Dodson and Albelda argue, “effectively subsidizing” their parents’ employment as home health aides, janitors, food-service providers and retail clerks. That can’t be what we hoped to achieve with welfare reform. “Policymakers tend to put things into what we call ‘silos,’” Dr. Dodson said. “Jobs here. Kids there. Instead, we need to look at the ways these things affect each other. The structure of lowwage jobs creates a particular kind of obstacle for parents trying to take good care of their kids.” And children thrust into their own care-giving roles are children who aren’t easily able to develop the skills they need to do better than a low-wage job for themselves as adults. The low-wage job cycle becomes a vicious one. “How,” I asked her after I read the report, “is this anything except just depressing?” As economic struggles push people into low-wage jobs, their limited resources press retailers to keep prices low and affordable — and one way to do that, as American Public Media’s Marketplace reported, is to create still more low-wage jobs, often temp jobs, that don’t cost a company in benefits or demand steady pay for a worker in the off-season. With one in four workers in a low-wage job today, and low-wage work projected to account for two out of every three new jobs in the United States over the next decade, it’s hard to see the constructive side of a report on how those same jobs are difficult not just for workers, but for their families, and even harder to see how we get out of either cycle. “Well,” she answered, “people are talking about it. We see efforts to get more flexibility in the workplace. We hope to get the folks who are interested in improving low-wage jobs to talk to the people concerned about youth, and the people talking about kids and the importance of parental involvement to understand what kind of jobs those parents have.” It’s part of our cultural narrative to insist that parents are fully responsible for raising our children (despite our national need to “produce” another generation of healthy, well-educated adults capable of filling the jobs we now hold). But you don’t have to favor subsidized day care or mandated child-care leaves for all to recognize that the forces that create and structure lowwage jobs are just one of the ways our society’s choices actively make taking that responsibility more difficult. We choose, again and again, to ignore the very real needs of the significant proportion of the work force with children at home. The result, in the low-wage worker’s world, is that job flexibility becomes the ability to quit one job and later find another, and many people describe themselves as being one sick kid away from unemployment. “These families couldn’t remain intact without the effort of young kids stepping into adult shoes,” Dr. Dodson said, but without the chance to cultivate their own talents, many of these teenagers will find themselves playing out the low-wage job cycle with their own children. That’s good for creating a nation of low-wage workers, and bad for the American tradition of helping each generation do better than the one before. A version of this post appeared in print on November 29, 2012, on page D2.

Magazine Nov 25, 2012

The importance of puppets John Bell, a visiting theatre professor at Boston College, hopes a free December 2 festival will help to spread his love of puppets.

I grew up watching television, so I saw Kukla, Fran and Ollie and Howdy Doody. I liked to act and sing, and in college I started to perform. But I WAS A TERRIBLE ACTOR, and I think the focus on my own person was sort of a problem for me. And at that time, I saw Bread and Puppet Theater, and I saw this was a way of making theater, but instead of focusing on yourself, you could focus on this object and make it move. PUPPETRY IS PERFORMANCE that involves the focus of the performer and the audience both being on this material object, which can be sculpted to represent Punch or Kermit or Elmo or a Shalako puppet from the Zuni people or whatever. In Occupy Wall Street, they had a puppet of the STATUE OF LIBERTY. Bringing that superimportant American symbol into the middle of the gathering was an attempt to say, “Hey, what we’re doing is as American as the Statue of Liberty.” IT’S A

SIMPLE OBJECT, but the ideas connected to it and the context in which it’s placed make it a pretty complicated means of performance. The idea of the festival is to bring together a variety of different types of contemporary puppetry — it’s called PUPPETS! AN EVENING OF UNCOMMON THEATER [it’s free, but reservations are required; e-mail theatre@bc.edu]. I’m hoping that the audience sees the different ways performers today use puppets to articulate really interesting ideas, things that can’t be done with actors. I think I’m a little nuts, because I’m thinking about puppets all the time. I was working at MIT for a while, and in the Media Lab they are building ROBOTS WITH EYES and faces and expressions and emotions. And when I look at those, I think this is the field of puppets.  — As told to Joel Brown

Pay limits tore at TARP bailout By Marie Szaniszlo Saturday, November 24, 2012 - Updated 3 days ago

The executive pay limits that came with the bank bailouts of the 2008-2009 financial crisis may have had the unintended benefit of reducing the bailouts’ scope, a new study has found. A report in the Journal of Banking, Finance and Accounting finds that the pay provisions discouraged some banks from participating in the Troubled Asset Relief Program, which ultimately paid out $400 billion of the $700 billion the government budgeted to shore up the U.S. financial system. Photo by AP TIME OF CRISIS: Former Treasury Secretary “We do know that some high-profile bankers complained that Henry Paulson answers TARP bailout questions in the pay restrictions were onerous. (But) our study suggests that 2008. TARP may have been better designed than bankers would have you believe,” said Mary Ellen Carter, a Boston College professor of accounting and one of the study’s authors. “The restrictions gave financial incentives for bank executives to think carefully about participating and, if they did participate, to get out from underneath the program as quickly as possible.”

The researchers studied 263 publicly traded banks that were approved for TARP and found that 35 rejected the funds and that this decision was related to higher levels of CEO pay. However, these banks fared just as well as banks that took TARP money. So the pay restrictions may have deterred banks that didn’t really need the money from taking it, Carter said. Banks that did take TARP funds saw higher executive turnover than their peers, she said, but the performance of those banks also didn’t suffer. -— mszaniszlo@bostonherald.com

Nov 19, 2012

A Gateway to science By Adrian Walker | Globe Staff Egleston Square isn’t known as a magnet for astrophysicists, yet Mike Barnett spends a lot of time there.

a C student to skate through and be forgotten. We try to get C students to get excited and become A students, and we’ve been fairly successful at it.”

Strictly speaking, Barnett isn’t an astrophysicist anymore. Instead, he is a celebrated professor at Boston College who has devoted himself to helping to teach science-phobic kids — especially from city neighborhoods — to appreciate the wonders of science.

Barnett came upon his passion almost by accident. He was a graduate student at Indiana University when the physics department fielded a call from a frustrated fifthgrade schoolteacher who wondered if someone could help her explain the moon to her students. She was referred to Barnett, who ended up in her classroom, talking about astronomy to a roomful of curious kids. To his surprise, he loved it.

One of the ways he does this is through teaching students to grow fruits and vegetables in high-tech hydroponic gardens and sell them to their neighbors at farmers’ markets. It is this pursuit that takes him, as it did Saturday morning, to Jamaica Plain. “When you grow food, you learn a little about physics, a little about chemistry, and a little about biology,” he said last week. “It’s all about helping kids get excited about science.” Barnett is an education professor at BC, specializing in urban science education. His mission is to use science to stimulate students, who might fall by the wayside, to become excited about school. The farmers’ market is part of a larger effort to teach kids how science can touch their daily lives. So they pore over data showing the location of convenience stores as opposed to supermarkets. They perform experiments to discover what kinds of plants they can grow in labs, without natural sunlight or soil. They ponder why low-income people have less access to nutritious food. And then they try to address the problem, by growing healthy food and selling it for a minimal profit. “Science is such a gateway discipline,” Barnett said. “It really opens up a wide range of opportunities, once you begin to understand it. Access to healthy food is a social justice problem.” The students in his College Bound program are mainly from Brighton High and West Roxbury High. They aren’t the students normally plucked for college-prep programs. “We recruit not the A kids but the C kids,” he said. “The A kids get plenty of attention, but it’s easy for

“What I learned quickly was that fifth-graders can do the same science as high school kids,” he said. “You just have to break it down into appropriate pieces so they can understand it. But they're really, really inquisitive.” Instead of becoming a researcher, Barnett became an expert on teaching science. His program combines teaching science to students with working with teachers from across Eastern Massachusetts on better ways to teach science and technology. Barnett, who’s 41, grew up on a farm in Kentucky, where his parents grew tobacco and raised cattle. His early love of science fiction hardened into a passion for physics partly because of an inspiring high school teacher. He was the first member of his family to go to college, which may partly explain his affinity for helping to encourage students from similar backgrounds. “I never missed the farm,” he said. “But here I am growing things.” Last week, Barnett was recognized as Massachusetts professor of the year by the Carnegie Foundation, but he deflected the praise he has received. “I’m not a huge fan of awards,” he said. “It’s more a reflection of the fact that we have a strong and dedicated team that works on these projects.” Teaching science is less important than stimulating curiosity, he said. “We’re really trying to get kids in college and keep them there,” Barnett said. “We show them how to use science to address social justice issues. Our kids are living those issues.”

Nov. 16, 2012

BC symposium explores religious identity in higher education By Christopher S. Pineo CHESTNUT HILL -- A group of 15 scholars, writers, university presidents and former university presidents gathered for a symposium titled "Religion and the Liberal Aims of Higher Education" Nov. 8 and 9 at Boston College. "One of the questions that we deeply want to engage as part of that sesquicentennial is our heritage and to reflect on our mission so that we can have another 150 years and more of being this vibrant university that is Jesuit and Catholic," said Boston College president Father William P. Leahy. The symposium addressed the question of what sets religious colleges and universities apart from secular institutions, even though they pursue very similar educational goals and methods. In his opening keynote, Wake Forest University president Nathan Hatch outlined five points for establishing an institution's distinct religious identity while, at the same time, addressing the educational needs of a student body that does not always share that identity. "Leadership is critical. To develop anything like a distinct identity will take formative leaders and great creativity. It will not be a natural evolution. It will not just happen," he said. He said this will be more difficult for Catholic universities and colleges due to the short supply of priests and religious who, in times past, established and upheld the identities of Catholic institutions. He said hiring and developing faculty in line with the identity of religiously affiliated colleges and universities must take priority in this work. He then pointed out that new funding coming into schools can also be used to establish programs on campus that underscore the religious identity of the institution. He also encouraged a dedication to

real diversity on campuses, which includes tolerance toward conservative-minded individuals. "Some of the sharpest divisions in our society involve things that most American Catholics have a heavy stake in: the rights of women and the rights of the unborn, the nature of marriage, the priority of free enterprise and of individual rights, and the priority of solidarity in the common good," Hatch said. Finally, he said religiously affiliated colleges and universities must give students something to believe in. "In a world that is cynical about political leadership, we need to show models of lively and compelling civic engagement. In a world that is cynical about the Church and its leadership, we need to show patterns of worship and service that are winsome and lifegiving. In a world that preaches that the self is the center of life, we need to show compelling examples that the purpose of life is not to find yourself, but to lose yourself in education, in health reform, in third-world development, in building businesses and professions that are genuinely for the common good," he said. Presidents of six universities also attended the symposium to explore the challenges and distinctive contributions of religiously affiliated colleges and universities to higher education in the United States. A panel discussion on Nov. 9 featured University of Notre Dame president Father John I. Jenkins, CSC; dean of the Boston College School of Theology and Ministry Father Mark Massa, SJ; Bryn Mawr College president Jane McAuliffe, and Wheaton College in Illinois president Philip G. Ryken. Educational leaders from Columbia, Harvard, Yale, and the University of Richmond also participated. New York Times columnist Mark Oppenheimer and Vanity Fair magazine editor-atlarge Cullen Murphy moderated the

Moderator Erik Owens joins Wake Forest University president Nathan Hatch on stage during a question and answer session at Boston College's sesquicentennial symposium "Religion and the Liberal Aims of Higher Education" on Nov. 8.

discussion. Eboo Patel, the founder and president of Interfaith Youth Core, served as a panelist Nov. 9 and told The Pilot he strongly values and supports Catholic education. "I just want to say as an American Muslim, I am very grateful for Catholic institutions -- universities, hospitals and schools. My mom went to Catholic schools in India. My dad came to America because of Notre Dame. We sent my son to a Catholic pre-school," he said. He said he appreciates that universities and colleges can promote sets of ideals while running concrete programs which articulate Catholic identity and moral character. "There is a 'there' there. There is a heritage. There is an identity and it is clear, but it is one that articulates a bridge and not a barrier," he said.

Boston College Education Prof. Michael Barnett Named 2012 Massachusetts Professor Of The Year PR Newswire – Thu, Nov 15, 2012 CHESTNUT HILL, Mass., Nov. 15, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Boston College Lynch School of Education Associate Professor of Science Education and Technology G. Michael Barnett has been named the 2012 Massachusetts Professor of the Year by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and the Council for Advancement and Support of Education in recognition of his teaching excellence and positive influence on the lives and careers of students. It is the only national program that recognizes excellence in undergraduate teaching and mentoring. Barnett's focus is on urban science education, specifically exciting undergraduates and the youngsters they student teach about STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) fields through projects that utilize technology and link to real-world issues. Barnett uses innovative tools such as indoor hydroponic vertical farms where BC undergraduates work with their K-12 students to grow vegetables and then sell the produce at their own farmer's markets. Through the project, which takes the participants from seed to market, his students learn about topics such as environmental science, engineering, botany, nutrition, sustainability and economics. Barnett has set up vertical farms in Boston Latin School, Russell Elementary in Dorchester, New Mission High School in Hyde Park, St. Columbkille School in Brighton, and on campus at BC's greenhouse. Earlier this fall he received a $250,000 National Science Foundation grant to launch Boston's largest indoor hydroponic gardening youth initiative. In partnership with the Salvation Army's Kroc Center in Dorchester and the non-profit STEM Garden Institute, the after-school project will serve hundreds of middle and high school students in Dorchester and Roxbury. "I try to get everybody excited about science, from K-12 students to college students to the general public," said Barnett, who joined the Lynch School in 2002. A self-described "recovering astrophysicist" from Kentucky, Barnett caught the teaching bug when he was tapped to teach a lesson about the moon to "immensely inquisitive fifth-graders" while he was working on his PhD in astrophysics. "[Professor Barnett] loves educating people on how to teach science. A self-proclaimed technical geek, he consistently encourages his students to find ways to put new technologies in the hands of their students, including some that I have incorporated in my high school classroom," said former student Andrew Trossello who now teaches chemistry and biology at a Boston high school. Carnegie Foundation The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching is an independent policy and research center that supports needed transformations in American education through tighter connections between teaching practice, evidence of student learning, the communication and use of this evidence, and structured opportunities to build knowledge. CASE Headquartered in Washington, D.C., with offices in London, Singapore and Mexico City, CASE is a professional association serving educational institutions and the advancement professionals at all levels who work in alumni relations, communications, fundraising, marketing and other areas. SOURCE Boston College

BC shows how to stay positive Struggling football team scores big by connecting with young fan and his family Jack McCluskey | November 15, 2012 NEWTON, Mass. -- Football can be brutal. It's an intensely physical game, one increasingly populated by bigger, faster and stronger players. Succeeding at the highest levels of the game requires an incredible amount of skill and, perhaps, even stronger will. This sport will grind away at muscle, tendon and bone, shake confidence and test perseverance. It can do all that for a winning team. For a losing team, the burden can feel even heavier. Boston College is a losing team again this season. And as the losses have mounted, the Eagles have looked for perspective. "There's so much in life beyond football, and we kind of get wrapped up in our own little bubble here," co-captain Emmett Cleary said. "But it really is about bigger things." Brutal as it can be, football can also be beautiful. For 2-8 BC, the beauty of the game this season is in brotherhood -- on and off the field. "You have a rough practice and you're in the middle of something," Cleary said, "and you see JB over in the end zone rolling around and kicking the ball. "You can't help but smile."

Courtesy of the Harvey family JB Harvey on the BC sideline with big sister Caroline and BC players Emmett Cleary and Jim Noel.

Little man on campus The smallest member of the team stands about 42 inches tall and weighs about 42 pounds. He doesn't know what the team's record is, and it wouldn't make a difference if he did. He is 5 years old and has Duchenne muscular dystrophy, a progressive and ultimately fatal muscle disorder. Unless there is a major medical breakthrough in the next few years, he might never make it to college. A wheelchair is likely in his future. He might never be able to play organized sports. But because of a charity called Team IMPACT, this mop-headed, little blond boy is learning what it means to be part of a team. And not just any team, but a Division I college football team. Meet JB Harvey, the newest member of the Boston College Eagles.

Light from the dark side This Halloween, he dressed up as Darth Vader. JB is a "Star Wars" fan, his mom, Elizabeth Harvey, said. "But he only likes the dark side, for some reason," she said. Bryan Murray, a fifth-year senior defensive lineman, was one of six Eagles who drove out to Dover, Mass., to take their teammate trick-or-treating this year. He laughed when asked whether JB had an explanation for his affinity for the dark side. "He didn't really have a reason," Murray said. "I know he likes superheroes and villains and stuff." This off-field involvement is part of the Team Impact program. The idea is to pair kids Courtesy of the Harvey family dealing with life-threatening illnesses with athletic programs so they can experience being part JB Harvey, 5, who has Duchenne muscular of a team. dystrophy, went-trick or-treating with some So JB goes to Chestnut Hill for practices, walk-throughs and games, and on Oct. 31 some of big kids from BC this Halloween. the players went to help him collect as much candy as possible. They pulled him down the street in a little red wagon because he sometimes has trouble getting around, and they helped him up the steps to the houses. The Harveys -- Jeff and Elizabeth, daughter Caroline, 7, and JB -- moved to a ranch-style house in Dover about a year ago because JB had trouble going up and down the stairs in their old home. "We're new to the neighborhood, and we don't know all the neighbors, so it was quite an impression with all the guys," Elizabeth said with a laugh. There were six of them in all. There was the 6-foot-2, 299-pound Murray, along with Brian Miller (6-4, 232), Jim Noel (6-4, 200), Sean Duggan (6-4, 228), Sean Sylvia (6-foot, 210) and Dave Shinskie (6-4, 209). Sylvia and Duggan wore Captain America masks. Shinskie and Murray came in their football gear.

All were there to bring a little light to JB's day, and in so doing, brighten their own. "I look at him and I just appreciate my life so much more, the blessings that I've had," Murray said. "It's really tough to think about sometimes that he may not have the same experiences as I will -- be able to play organized sports, which has been a huge part of my life."

Dealing with reality It's hardest for Elizabeth Harvey when she sees her son with a group of his peers. One day, JB was playing with a couple of kids his age. The other boys were playing catch with lacrosse sticks, running around on the grass and tossing the ball back and forth. JB couldn't keep up. "They were just running circles around him," Elizabeth said. "Absolute circles around him. I was just heartbroken." With Elizabeth having played lacrosse at Holy Cross, it was a stark reminder. Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) occurs only in boys and affects roughly one in 3,500. It is caused by a defect in a gene on the X chromosome, which comes from the mother and renders the body unable to produce dystrophin, a protein that helps build muscle. The Harveys learned that JB had DMD when he was about 18 months old after visiting multiple doctors once they realized he wasn't progressing as fast as he should have been. "It was very hard for our family," Jeff Harvey said, standing on the sideline at Alumni Stadium with JB before the game against Maryland last month. "It's very hard on moms because it's usually an inherited genetic trait, which -unfortunately, even though there's nothing you can do about it -- comes with a lot of guilt. "But you can be upset about it or you can do something about it, and I think my wife and I said we want to do something about it." The Harveys founded JB's Keys to DMD, a 501 (c)(3) nonprofit, to promote awareness of the disease and raise money to help fund research geared toward Courtesy of the Harvey family improving the lives of boys living with it. JB and the Harvey family have become part of the BC JB has a routine -- including taking six pills a day, stretching every day and family, with each benefitting from the other. doing physical therapy a couple of times a week -- to deal with the disease, a process that he accepts mostly cheerfully. While he knows his muscles don't work the same way as other people's, he doesn't really understand his situation. And he certainly doesn't have any idea of the prognosis. "Watching him, knowing what I know, is sad," Elizabeth Harvey said. "We tell him he can do whatever he wants and hopefully there will be some treatment or some cure that will allow him to be what he wants. If you do think about the future, it's not easy. I at least try to live day to day, and JB's day-to-day life is pretty great." The Eagles are doing what they can to keep it that way. The BC women's hockey and men's basketball teams also have participated in Team Impact. So when Mike Siravo, the defensive backs coach and recruiting coordinator, was approached about the football team's interest in joining the program, he knew what it could mean. "We all need a reminder to appreciate what we have," he said.

Mr. Popular As the saying goes, there's no one on a football team as popular as the backup quarterback. Is it any surprise, then, that the newest member of the Eagles has taken a shining to Shinskie? The feeling is mutual. "Dave and him are like best friends," starting QB Chase Rettig said. Shinskie, 28, played minor league baseball before deciding to return to school and play for BC and plans to become a teacher and a coach after graduating. He has gone out of his way to make JB -- who was painfully shy at first, especially around the bigger guys on the team -- feel welcome at BC. When JB came to campus for a pizza party to celebrate his birthday in September, the signal-caller spent a good portion of it playfully tossing the little guy around on a couch in the Yawkey Center lounge. "He was laughing and carrying on like I'd never seen him before," Shinskie said. "He had me sweating throwing him around. Just to get a workout like that -- I'd get a workout like that every day."

Making the most of it

Courtesy of the Harvey family Of the BC football team's relationship with JB, defensive backs coach Mike Siravo said, "We all need a reminder to appreciate what we have."

At first, Elizabeth Harvey wasn't sure they should be there. BC was practicing on a Wednesday afternoon after another tough loss. "I was like, 'Is it OK that we're here? I know that people must be stressed out or whatever,'" she said. The truth is, instead of a distraction for the team, JB has become a source of motivation.

"It's been really special to have him around," Rettig said. "When you see him come out to practice and there during the games, it's just inspiring to us. It just gets guys excited to see him out there, running around." Though outwardly he appears to be a typical, happy 5-year-old, the Eagles know JB's life will get harder as he gets older. Since DMD is a progressive disease, he likely will lose the ability to walk before he turns 10. And in his teenage years, he will likely begin to suffer cardiac and pulmonary complications. "It's hard to think that he might never walk past the age of 8 and be in a wheelchair at the age of 8," Shinskie said. "I'm 28 years old, and he might not live to see age 28. So it's hard to think about that. "That's why I would do anything for him, to brighten up his day, and I would do anything for his family if they asked me. I'd give him the shirt off my back to make him happy and see him be positive every day." The Eagles have tried to make JB feel like a member of the team. They've decked him out in a personalized BC jersey with "Harvey" and the number 12 on the back, set up a stall for him in the locker room -- complete with nameplate and kid-sized gear -- and welcomed him with high fives and fist bumps when they see him on campus. JB sends the players messages on Facebook, with help from his mom, and they always respond. He and his sister Caroline stood shoulder-to-(small-)shoulder with the Eagles on the sideline for the national anthem before the game against Notre Dame, then joined the captains at midfield for the coin toss. As referee John McDaid went through the pregame preparations, there was JB, right beside Eagles defensive back Jim Noel and just a few feet from Notre Dame linebacker and Heisman Trophy candidate Manti Te'o. And while JB will never know what it's like to be Rettig -- to be under center, staring down a middle linebacker like Te'o -- or to be Noel, backpedaling in coverage, thanks to BC he'll know what it means to be part of a team. He believes he is an Eagle, and he looks forward to his trips to Chestnut Hill and to watching the team on TV when it's away from home. "He likes everything about it," Jeff Harvey said. "When the weekend comes, he goes, 'Who's on tomorrow, the Eagles or the Patriots?' I say, 'Well, the Eagles are on today, but tomorrow it's the Patriots.' He really loves all sports, but football's his favorite." There have been other benefits of his pre- and post-practice sessions of catch with Rettig and Shinskie. "His arm has gotten a lot better by practicing," Elizabeth Harvey said with a laugh. "I like that he's starting to feel like he's part of the team. That's such an important life lesson, to have to be there for people and support other people." Though the season has been filled with setbacks on the field, the Eagles have been there for their newest, youngest, smallest teammate. And they say that support won't end when this season does. After all, brotherhood doesn't have an end date. Jack McCluskey is an editor for ESPN.com and a frequent contributor to ESPNBoston.com. Follow him on Twitter @jack_mccluskey.

More on Turning Schools Around By Stu Silberman November 6, 2012

In a recent blog post about turning around chronically low performing schools, I stressed the critical importance of principal leadership in making such turnarounds possible. In response, I heard from staff at City Connects, a non-profit organization that addresses out-of-school factors that affect learning (hunger, homelessness, violence, etc.) in the Boston and Springfield, MA, public schools. Many of these are turnaround schools. City Connects Executive Director and Boston College Professor of Education Mary E. Walsh, wrote: "While strong school leadership is imperative, we believe that it is unfair to ask schools and teachers to bear sole responsibility for closing the economic divide. Systematically addressing out-of-school factors can help students achieve and removes the burden from teachers, allowing them to focus on delivering quality instruction. In fact, our results show that the positive impact of City Connects is greater than the negative impact of poverty when considering student growth in academic achievements across grades 1-5." At City Connects, trained School Site Coordinators work with teachers and school staff to look at the whole child across four domains: academics, social/emotional/behavioral, health and family. Together, they identify the in- and out-ofschool factors affecting every student and match students to community- and school-based services and enrichment activities most appropriate for their individual strengths and needs. The current work is in K-5/K-8 schools with pilots underway for early childhood and high school models. The results they report are impressive. For a cost of less than $500 per child, they are helping to break through achievement gaps. I believe this program (and others like it), in conjunction with strong development of principals, should be replicated around the country to help turn around chronically low- performing schools. The City Connects team has been collecting and analyzing data for 10 years that demonstrate their approach to addressing non-school factors significantly improves academic performance and narrows the achievement gap. Briefly, their students are doing better on standardized tests, have less retention in grade and chronic absenteeism, and are less likely to drop out of school than students who are never part of City Connects. Full evaluation results are available in their annual report here. Their annual report notes: "Grounded in research on child development and the need that it be implemented as a core function of schools, optimized student support has six identifying characteristics. It is: 1) customized to the unique strengths, needs and interests of each student; 2) comprehensive, serving the academic, social/emotional, health and family needs of all students from a variety of cultural and ethnic backgrounds; 3) coordinated among families, schools and community agencies; 4) cost-effective to schools by leveraging the resources provided by community agencies; 5) continuously monitored for effectiveness through collecting and analyzing data to evaluate and improve service delivery and student outcomes; and 6) implemented in all sites with fidelity and oversight. The City Connects annual report is definitely worth studying and considering for scaling to more districts, especially those with high concentrations of students living in poverty. The report concludes: "City Connects has shown that optimized student support can be delivered in a high-impact, cost-effective way. By making use of existing structures in the public schools, and by leveraging the rich resources of the city's community agencies, City Connects is able to link students to the services and enrichments that match their individual strengths and needs. Careful attention to the unique skills, talents and needs of each student makes a difference." In Kentucky we have been quite fortunate to have Family Resource and Youth Services Centers in elementary and secondary schools respectively. These programs, funded from the state level, are structured to do this same type of work and have been successful in the past. However, their budgets have been cut to the bone and they cannot provide the services at the same levels they have been able to provide in the past. We must invest in programs that work and this is just one more example. When effective programs make a strong impact, we must find ways to replicate them as we move forward. As advocates in your communities I encourage you to study these models, work with your school districts and implement similar programs to help our kids.

October 28, 2012

Top Producers of U.S. Fulbright Students by Type of Institution, 2012-13 Research institutions

Number of applications

Number of awards

U. of Michigan at Ann Arbor

141

40

Harvard U.

132

31

85

29

102

24

U. of California at Berkeley

97

23

Yale U.

98

23

Arizona State U.

58

23

Columbia U.

79

22

101

22

U. of Texas at Austin

77

22

Rutgers U.

111

21

U. of Minnesota-Twin Cities

68

19

Boston College

64

18

Michigan State U.

63

17

Stanford U.

74

15

U. of Pittsburgh

54

15

U. of California at Los Angeles

53

15

American U.

48

14

Duke U.

36

14

Georgetown U.

61

14

U. of Maryland at College Park

48

14

U. of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

61

14

U. of Wisconsin at Madison

53

14

Washington U. in St. Louis

62

14

U. of Georgia

68

13

Florida State U.

51

12

Brown U. U. of Chicago

Northwestern U.

Oct 27, 2012

BC ranks at head of class Athletes graduating at rate of 97 percent By Julian Benbow | Globe Staff The perception that studentathletes have it easy wasn’t lost on former Boston College point guard Biko Paris. But every time he heard it he laughed. “I hear it a lot and I heard it a lot growing up,” he said. “I wish it was true, but it’s not.” The athletes at BC had their own tutors. But they were no different from the ones the other students enlisted at the university help center. In some ways, Paris said, studentathletes have it harder. For instance, a normal student could skip a class if he had a long night. If Paris missed a class, he ran laps. “I wish grades were given to us or we didn’t have class,” he said, chuckling. “I really wish it was like that but it’s not. I don’t know where they get that [perception] from, but we do just as much if not more than a regular student.” Paris arrived at BC with his mother’s words ringing in his ear. “The ball won’t bounce forever,” she told him. He played four years, scored 783 points in 129 games, and graduated on time in 2011 with a degree in sociology. “Making sure you graduated was a main priority at BC,” Paris said. The NCAA released its annual graduation success rate data this week (based on student-athletes who started school in 2005) and Boston College was tied for third in the nation among Football Bowl Subdivision schools, with 97 percent of its student-athletes completing their degrees. BC trailed only Notre Dame (99 percent) and Duke (98). Northwestern matched BC’s rate. The BC football team graduated 94 percent of its players, tied with

Miami for the highest rate in the Atlantic Coast Conference. Seventeen of BC’s 29 Division 1 programs graduated 100 percent of its athletes. Nationwide, graduation rates in football and men’s basketball increased. Basketball jumped to 74 percent, a 6 percent increase from a year ago, and football bumped to 70 percent, a 1 percent gain. According to US News and World Report, BC is 24th in the nation in four-year graduation rate at 87 percent. “Coaches as well as our academic advisors pushed us to the limit as far as making sure our grades were up to par and we were all up with our classes and actually on time to graduate. It was schoolwork then basketball,” Paris said. “If you didn’t have the grades or if you weren’t caught up on your work, you would miss practice. You would have study hall. You would have to spend time with a tutor. Academics was forced upon us.” After the 2010-11 season, rather than stay for his senior year at Boston College, all-ACC guard Reggie Jackson entered the NBA draft and was taken 24th overall by the Oklahoma City Thunder. But when he left the Heights, he needed only two classes to complete his degree. “That shows you how hard they push you to make sure you’re reaching your requirements and getting ahead,” Paris said. “He can go back and finish those classes whenever he’s ready to.” Paris had a chance to go to Southern Cal and play under Tim Floyd, but chose Boston College largely because of its academics.

His senior season, he was ahead of schedule. He needed just two core classes to finish. He took one in the fall, one in the spring. He played professionally in Germany after graduation, then returned to the States and looked into getting his foot in the door as a coach. He checked in with a network of BC coaches, including Steve Donahue, Joe Jones, Pat Duquette, and Mo Cassara. When a job as video coordinator under Jones at Boston University opened up, he jumped at it. Since he’s been in the working world, he’s discovered the strength of his BC degree. “Getting a degree from Boston College is huge, especially up north, from New York, the Boston area down to Washington D.C., you having a Boston College degree it speaks measures for itself.”

Opinion

The rise and fall of an idealist Former congressman runs afoul of basic political facts of life By Carlo Rotella | O C T O B E R 2 6 , 2 0 1 2

Figure 1, Anh “Joseph” Cao, center, listens to President Obama speak before the signing the Dodd-Frank act in 2010. (Associated Press)

It happens repeatedly in “Mr. Cao Goes to Washington,” an absorbing documentary that will be shown Saturday as part of the Boston Asian-American Film Festival, that the director cuts away while Anh “Joseph” Cao is still thinking about how to respond to an unanswerable question. Does he feel that he made the right choice in leaving the seminary to enter public life? How can a principled moderate succeed in a political climate dominated by extremists? Cao, a Vietnamese-American Republican from Louisiana who from 2008 to 2010 represented a heavily African-American and Democratic district in the House of Representatives, is an intensely reflective and articulate man. But these questions are stumpers. Cao was elected because his opponent, William Jefferson, who would otherwise have won with ease, was caught red-handed in a major corruption scandal. African-American voters stayed home, and Cao eked out a win. The movie tells the story of what follows. Cao works hard for a constituency still recovering from Hurricane Katrina and further distressed by the BP oil spill. During a congressional hearing, he suggests to the astonished president of BP America that he ought to consider committing hara kiri. But Cao runs afoul of basic political facts of life. He breaks with his party to become the only House Republican to vote for the draft version of President Obama’s health care bill, citing his constituents’ needs and his own relationship with the president. Then he reverses field and votes against it, claiming that as an opponent of abortion he has no choice. He risks his reputation as an upstanding character to go extremely negative in his reelection campaign, but loses anyway. Republicans abandon him, and his pal Obama lets him down. Cao initially sees Obama as a fellow man of character, an ally across the party divide. But scenes of Barack and Michelle towering benevolently over the Caos, charming the congressman and his young daughters, give way to the president appearing in a TV ad for Cao’s opponent in 2010.

Cao can’t get over that — not in the movie, and not after. When I called him this week, he said of Obama, “From the tone of his campaign I expected something different than the usual political stance. I had hoped he was a person who would do the right thing, not the expedient thing.” Can he possibly be naive enough to mean this? Did Cao really expect a Democratic president to abandon an electable Democratic candidate as a favor to a Republican who had voted against his most important legislation? “Mr. Cao Goes to Washington” tells the story of a novice whipsawed by political business as usual, but it’s also a compelling study of a character who’s both likeable and maddeningly innocent. In this campaign season we’re all sick of politicians cynically looking out for number one, but here’s a cautionary portrait of one who never learned how. I misjudged Cao when I encountered him in person in 2009. I was in New Orleans with Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, on assignment for a magazine. At a meeting with local educators and activists, I thought Cao looked bored and impatient, listening to Americans talk about hardship. After all, his refugee family had known a different order of woe in postwar Vietnam, and his father had been tortured in re-education camps. I pegged him as an immigrant bootstrapper who disdained whining. That reading wasn’t entirely wrong, but it missed the impossible idealism that earned him such nasty bruises in the rough and tumble of electoral politics. Duncan also made a snap reading of Cao, sight unseen. In the car on the way to the meeting, a member of Duncan’s staff told him that Cao was a Republican from a Democratic district who had voted against the stimulus, a significant part of which consisted of education funding. The staffer told me that this conversation was off the record. But Duncan, a manifestly honest and decent man whose own idealism acquired an armored carapace during his political education in Richard M. Daley’s Chicago, said to me, “No, you can put it in there. We’re going to kick his ass. He’s a one-termer.” Carlo Rotella is director of American studies at Boston College. His latest book is “Playing in Time: Essays, Profiles, and Other True Stories.”

Oct. 24, 2012

Verizon has all pathways covered By Ira Kantor Global communications giant Verizon, which already has an innovation center in Waltham and dozens of local retail stores, is looking to broaden its presence in the Hub. "This is a great place for Verizon. ... We like it here very much and we look to continue to grow here in the Boston area," John Stratton, president of Verizon Enterprise Solutions, told business leaders at a Boston College Chief Executives' Club of Boston luncheon yesterday. Stratton was a last-minute replacement speaker for Verizon CEO Lowell McAdam. "Our business is in a constant state of evolution and so one part slows down and the next part really heats up and starts to grow and John Stratton, president of Verizon Enterprise Solutions, the key is to meet the demand," he said. "We speaks at yesterday's Boston College Chief Executives' Club like doing business here. We do all of our Luncheon business here, meaning we cover all of the pathways." Noting that nearly 2.3 billion people around the world are connected to the Internet, Stratton said Verizon invested $150 billion from 2006 to 2011 to make its various wireless, fiber-optic and wireline networks "building blocks" for the Internet age -- $700 million of which was geared toward Massachusetts. He said Verizon's network for expansion is built on four pillars: mobile; fiber to the home network; a global backbone network that can handle growth in Internet data and video traffic; and its cloud computing environment. Verizon launched its wireless 3G network in 2004 and the next phase, the 4G LTE network, in 2010. "What we see is a technology that's literally changing the way mobile works," he said. "The super fast speeds of LTE make it a game-changer in the mobile world." The average American home has seven connected devices, and Verizon is looking to create "a broadband network that will really reinvent the traditional telephone networks" with FiOS, which delivers high-definition video and broadband to more than 17.5 million customers, Stratton said. Verizon's new company, Verizon Enterprises Solutions, currently has 500,000 miles of high-speed cables around the world, enough to circle the globe more than 20 times, while the company's "cloud" network of more than 200 data centers can store anything that can be digitized, meaning that any kind of content, from education to health care services, can be delivered anywhere, anytime over a mobile connection. Projects in development include a secure ID system that will help health care providers meet HIPAA, or Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, requirements for securing patient data. Verizon also has a mobile wallet pilot program -- now available in Salt Lake City and Austin, Texas -- that allows users to pay for purchases using just their smartphones.

The first-ever US Youth Observer at United Nations By Bella English | O C T O B E R 2 4 , 2 0 1 2

Say you’re Brooke Loughrin. You’re a Presidential Scholar at Boston College. You speak French, Mandarin Chinese, Turkish, Farsi, some Spanish and Hindi, and Wolof, a Senegalese language. You’ve volunteered at the Suffolk County House of Correction and Haley House in Roxbury. You’ve lived with host families in India and Iran and studied Persian and Farsi in Tajikistan. You spent a summer working at an HIV clinic in Senegal and took a language immersion course while living in Istanbul. You’re 20 years old. What do you do for an encore? You join the UN. Loughrin was recently named the first-ever US Youth Observer at the United Nations, selected from 730 applicants from 236 colleges and universities across the country. The final call came on Sept. 21. Could Loughrin please get to New York that day? By 11 p.m., she had checked Brooke Loughrin (at the Taj Mahal in India in 2008) has been interested into her assigned hotel and was given a briefing packet in helping people in other countries since she was in grade school. and schedule by a staffer at the United Nations Association of the USA, which along with the State Department, launched the Youth Observer program. The UNA is a non-governmental organization that informs the public on the UN’s work. Loughrin spent the next week at the General Assembly and various committees, panels, and receptions. Since she had started the Model UN Club at her high school in Seattle, she knew something about the proceedings and players. But the real thing was a thrill. “It was just overwhelming to be at the UN and be surrounded by all that energy and so many people speaking different languages,” said Loughrin, a BC junior. “Some days I’d start at 5 a.m. and not finish blogging until 3 a.m.” As she speaks of her new gig, Loughrin is drinking tea in the small apartment she and three other girls share in a campus dorm. Her bookshelf is full of titles such as “The Arab Uprising” and “Modern Persian.” She’s majoring in political science and Islamic Civilizations and Societies, and as a Presidential Scholar — based on scholarship, leadership, and community service — gets full tuition as well as summer programs in community service and language immersion. Loughrin doesn’t mean to name-drop, but she did see a lot of big-wigs in New York including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton (“I was so impressed with her”), and she watched from the front row as Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi addressed the crowd (“She’s one of my heroes”). “I’m living history at the U.N.,” Loughrin said.

At the UN, a typical day for Loughrin included a “Feed the Future” session with Hillary Clinton and New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, a session on eradicating polio featuring Bill Gates, and one on promoting religious tolerance for Afghan women, hosted by the Afghan foreign minister.

Kathleen Bailey, Loughrin’s political science professor at BC, was in New York for a conference at the same time as Loughrin, and spent much time with her. “Her schedule was exhausting, but she threw herself into every commitment as though it was the only thing she had to do for the entire day,” said Bailey.

When she got the news of her selection, Loughrin was meeting with BC professor Ali Banuazizi, director of Islamic Civilization and Societies. Banuazizi said her new role is a perfect fit: “Aside from her exceptional intellectual giftedness, Brooke has long had a keen interest in understanding other cultures, a natural ability in the use of language, and a passionate commitment to fostering cross-cultural understanding.” In early October, Loughrin was back in New York, where she and other Youth Delegates from around the world — there are 40 — worked on issues for the Social, Humanitarian, and Cultural Committee of the General Assembly. “We have been working on ideas and topic areas to better incorporate youth voices and priorities into UN resolutions,” she said from New York. Their main focus was on youth, aging, the disabled, and family development. On Oct. 19, Loughrin led a panel at the US Mission to the UN on how young people can engage in the fight against poverty, and later in the day, she cohosted a panel on women’s health at the German Mission to the UN. In December, she’ll be in Washington for nine days visiting the State Department and attending UNA events. And she’ll spend the spring traveling to schools and UNA chapters around the country. DAVID L RYAN / GL OBE STAFF

Brooke Loughrin was picked from 730 applicants nationwide.

But how will Loughrin juggle her classes and her new duties, which will continue into June?

“It’s a tricky situation because there’s such a strong commitment to being at class at BC,” she said. “But I’m living history at the UN and as long as I continue to come to class and report back, I’m OK.” She’s spoken to her professors and classmates and figures she will miss three or four classes per course for each semester. Loughrin’s commitment to social justice began when she was a child in Seattle, where her father owns a small accounting firm. At age 12, she read about a local foundation that educates poor girls in Mali, teaches them crafts, and helps them establish their own businesses with micro-loans. She asked if she could help, and is still involved with the program. Her mother, Kelli, remembers Brooke, in middle school, talking the family into volunteering in Costa Rica, where they helped villagers build a community center, making concrete out of dirt and straw. “When she saw the poverty there, it brought out the things she really cared about, the kids, the abuse of women,” said Kelli. “We could tell she wanted to do more.” Her school required community service hours, and her mother says Brooke always exceeded the requirements. “She loved it. She’d rather go with her friends to the soup kitchen or get books for prisoners than go party.” Loughrin attended the Lakeside School, Bill Gates’s alma mater. Because of programs he funded, Loughrin was able to work at an HIV clinic in Senegal one summer, studied for a semester in India, and lived in Iran, where she visited shrines to the Persian poets Hafiz and Rumi and fell in love with their words. Loughrin has also read parts of the Shahnameh, or “The Book of Kings,” an epic poem that, at more than 50,000 lines, is three times longer than the Iliad, she notes. What does she read outside of class? She loved “The Afrika Reich,” by Guy Saville, about “what would have happened if Germany had won World War II and the Nazis had extended their racial genocide to black Africans.” “For fun” Loughrin just finished “Monsoon: The Indian Ocean and the the Future of American Power and Why Civil Resistance Works: the Strategic Logic of Non-Violence.” She says she loves reading articles submitted for Al-Noor, the Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies journal that she edits at BC because “I’ve learned so much about the Middle East from reading them.”

These days, her Youth Observer role is keeping her busy. Her duties include blogging and tweeting about her experience. At the General Assembly, Loughrin was scheduled to introduce a panel on how social media is being used for social good.

Brooke Loughrin (pictured in 2010 with an Iranian family) has lived in Iran and studied for a semester in India.

“At the last minute, they asked if I would be willing to be on the panel,” she recalled. “It was broadcast live in seven languages, around the world.” After Dr. Babatunde Osotimehin of Nigeria, executive director of the United Nations Population Fund, spoke about educating youth to take over in the future, Loughrin replied: “I’m going to make the argument that we have taken over.” She then discussed the role of youth in the Arab Spring, and the conciliatory messages on social media between Israeli and Iranian youth, who don’t want war.

Next semester, Loughrin will speak to various chapters of the United Nations Association. “The most important thing is I’m now the first degree of separation between leaders and young people,” she said. “So I always ask leaders their advice on how young people can prepare for a career in international affairs.” And as for her future? Loughrin hopes to attend graduate school in international affairs and then pursue a career in foreign service for the State Department. She smiles. “I’d love a career in the UN.” Bella English can be reached at english@globe.com

Law Blog WSJ on the cases, trends, and personalities of interest to the business community

Boston College Law Creates ‘Real-World’ Faculty Position October 23, 2012 By Sam Favate Many law schools are responding to the weak legal job market by offering more practical skills courses. Boston College of Law is going one step further by creating a new position — faculty director of “experiential learning.” The school has appointed Paul Tremblay, clinical professor and law fund research scholar, to the post. His job: to “underscore and enhance” BC Law’s emphasis on real-world experience for law students, the school said in a statement on its website. “We recognize that legal higher education and the legal profession are changing, with a greater emphasis on real-world experience for law students,” BC Law Dean Vincent Rougeau said. “We want to prepare our graduates for every aspect of the practice of law in our global community.” Boston College isn’t alone in revamping to meet the changing times. New York University Law School recently announced changes to its third-year curriculum, which will include the option of studying abroad or working for the Environmental Protection Agency or the Federal Trade Commission. “There is a growing disconnect between what law schools are offering and what the marketplace is demanding in the 21st century,” Evan Chesler, a trustee of NYU Law and a partner in Cravath, Swaine & Moore, told the New York Times. “The changes we’re rolling out seek to address that.” The changes at NYU are similar to suggestions made by Paul Campos, a University of Colorado law professor. In his article,”The Crisis of the American Law School,” Mr. Campos suggested either dropping the third year of law school altogether or using it to focus on external internships. Mr. Campos also wrote that he hopes such cost-cutting moves would eliminate student tuition for the third year.

The Global Search for Education: The Education Debate 2012 -Andy Hargreaves By C. M. Rubin Posted: 10/22/2012 10:47 am "A nation's moral economy invests in education for everyone's good wherever it can, and makes prudent economies that do not harm the quality of teaching and learning whenever it must." -- Andy Hargreaves In this presidential election, I believe it is critical to vote for the candidate who has the most impactful 21st century vision for education because addressing our issues now is essential for the U.S. to maintain its prosperity and global leadership in the next decades. Matters such as economic strength, innovation, employability, reducing poverty, progress toward racial and gender equality, reducing crime, and building global citizenship are all related to the effectiveness of our education system. Education should not be the privilege of a select few, but the basic civil right of every American child. We must act conclusively to narrow our domestic achievement gap and to narrow our international achievement gap so that our students will be able to compete globally in the next decade. We must invest now in the necessary changes to our education system in order to meet the challenges America will face tomorrow. Today in The Education Debate 2012, I continue my conversations with distinguished U. S. education leaders about the major issues facing this country by talking with Andy Hargreaves. Hargreaves' book, The Global Fourth Way: The Quest for Educational Excellence (Corwin Press 2012), co-authored with Dennis Shirley, reveals the key qualities behind the high performance of some of the world's top educational systems: Singapore, Finland and Canada. His most recent book, Professional Capital: Transforming Teaching in Every School (Teacher's College Press 2012), co-authored with international reform expert Michael Fullan, sets out a clear vision as to how to achieve high return from all teachers and teaching. Andy Hargreaves is the Thomas More Brennan Chair in Education at Boston College. He studies and advises on high performance in schools and educational systems around the world. If you were Education Secretary of the United States, what would be your position on the key education issues of our times? I would follow the principles of best business practice, and work with my team to benchmark the United States against the highest performing systems in the world such as Finland, Canada and Singapore. With open eyes, and no excuses, this would prompt us to determine what we can learn from other high performers that could benefit our own people. What should the role of federal government be in K- 12 education? How much more funding should be given to education reform and in what major areas should it be spent? This nation needs a positive and inspiring educational vision. All of America's educational system, not just its world-class universities, must be among the best in the world. On the influential international PISA tests of student achievement at age 15, however, the U.S. falls somewhere between 17th and 31st out of 65 countries, depending on the subject being tested. On United Nations measures of child wellbeing, the U.S. ranks next to last.

What would be your strategy to address the domestic and international achievement gaps, including your position on early childhood education, standardized testing, on-line modular education, and teacher/principal accountability? Most U.S. reforms do the opposite of high performing competitors. These countries understand there is no substitute for strong, high quality teachers who work together to develop good teaching and who exercise shared responsibility for all students in their schools. As the U.S. increases standardized testing from Grade 3 up to Grade 8, Canadians only test Grades 3 and 6 at most, Singapore has just one highstakes test in Grade 6, and Finland tests samples of students rather than taking a census of all of them. U.S. testing must become more prudent if we are to see improvements in the quality of teaching that avoid teaching to the test, concentrating on students near the cut scores, narrowing the curriculum, eliminating the arts, and rotating teachers and principals in and out of already unstable schools in a constant panic to lift the scores. Accountability is the remainder that is left once responsibility has been subtracted. But we have put accountability first and created high threat environments that have distorted teaching and learning in a drive to lift up the scores. This can change if we test samples rather than take a census, if we test fewer grades less often, and if teachers become collectively responsible for all students' success. In the push to narrow achievement gaps, we have inadvertently widened the learning gaps between standardized teaching in highly pressured urban schools and more innovative learning experiences in the affluent suburbs. I would set about narrowing this learning gap. What would be your position on curriculum reform, including the role of the arts, the treatment of ethics, and the adoption of blended online learning? China is promoting more school-designed curriculum and innovation. Finland supports all young people to study creative arts until the end of high school. Singapore emphasizes character education because in Singapore, the first priority is to your nation, the second is to your community, and the third is to yourself. Like Singapore's national education initiative, we need to Teach Less and Learn More: to leave more curriculum time for high quality professionals to exercise the professional flexibility that engages students' diverse interests and needs in depth. Unfortunately, the U.S. educational system has been colonizing the sinking sands of centralization and standardization that other high performing systems have been leaving behind. If we want more innovative thinking among our students, our teachers must have the opportunity to practice innovative teaching themselves. Technology is part of the transformation in teaching, but there is no consistent evidence to suggest that online learning options that bypass the teacher are the answer. Like overhead projectors or chalk, digital technologies in the hands of good teachers can be a great asset. In the hands of poor teachers or no teachers, these technologies are just another expensive gimmick.

Andy Hargreaves and C. M. Rubin. Andy Hargreaves is the Thomas More Brennan Chair in Education at Boston College

The (Foreign) Language of American Politics By Alan Wolfe October 22, 2012

James Fallows, former speechwriter for President Jimmy Carter and a longtime national correspondent for The Atlantic, is generally known as a liberal-leaning but hardly flame-throwing commentator on politics. In June, Fallows, who had been writing for some time about Republican efforts to create a 60-vote "supermajority" in the U.S. Senate, posted a blog entry called "5 Signs the United States Is Undergoing a Coup." That headline lasted about three hours. On further reflection, Fallows said in a corrective message, using the word "coup" in his headline gave the wrong impression. He changed the title to "5 Signs of a Radical Change in U.S. Politics." His concern was not just with the filibuster. Fallows also asked whether we can call a society democratic if unelected judges determine a presidential election, after which the newly installed president appoints similarly minded judges, who then use their position to change the rules to favor their party. Fallows's alteration raises two fascinating questions: At what point should we start describing our liberal-democratic heritage as under threat? And what should our appropriate language be for discussing it? Was Fallows right to use the word "coup"? Before we can answer that question, we must first consider another. Fallows had taken the word from a slightly earlier post he had written, titled "Scotus Update: La Loi, C'est Moi." Readers asked, Why the French words? Fallows did not really answer, except to say something about The Atlantic's policies involving capitalization. Let me try. Perhaps because the United States was created during a liberal era, as the late 18th century truly was, our language lacks words that convey the full force of reactionary politics. From time to time, we required terms to describe the old order, such as when we denounced King George as a tyrant (itself a word derived from Old French). But our demagogues, rhetorically, have generally confined themselves to the English language. Father Charles E. Coughlin, the controversial right-wing priest who had a popular radio program in the 1930s, called Franklin D. Roosevelt "the great betrayer and liar" and Jews "Christ killers" and "usurers." Robert W. Welch Jr., co-founder of the John Birch Society, called Dwight D. Eisenhower a "conscious, dedicated agent of the Communist conspiracy." While alliteration provides emphasis, labeling someone conscious and dedicated is not among the worst of insults. None of this is to deny the viciousness of anti-Semites or racists. But even Senator Theodore G. Bilbo, Democrat of Mississippi, perhaps the most hateful politician ever elected to high office in the United States—he called his opponent's supporters "shooters of widows and orphans," "spitters on our heroic veterans," and "skunks who steal Gideon Bibles from hotel rooms"—relied on language that every backwoods white person in his home state could understand. We have had more than our share of extremism, but most of it has been homegrown. In more recent times, by contrast, when we want to leave the discourse of liberal democracy behind, we seem to leave English behind as well. Consider the title of Fallows's first post on these issues, borrowed from Louis XIV's famous declaration, L'état, c'est moi. The first word puts us on the turf of American exceptionalism: We have no equivalent term in English to l'état, or for that matter, the German der Staat. Americans call the official apparatus of politics and policy "government" rather than "the state," as if to soften the implications of what it actually does. Lacking a state, we are uncomfortable with raison d'état, or, its German relation, realpolitik. We have had practitioners of such arts, none more adept than Henry Kissinger. But Kissinger spoke with a heavy accent, as if to remind us that the pursuit of power for its own sake, associated with him, came from somewhere else. Americans instinctively (or should I say linguistically?) prefer Wilsonian idealism to Metternichian realism. The world, we insist, is not composed of states engaged in endless conflict as they follow their own interests; it ought to be a "league of nations" or, better yet, a "United Nations." Americans go to war often, but not, we tell ourselves, for our own advantage. It follows that if you really want to attack your opponents these days, you are best off doing so in another language. When the editors of the religious conservative magazine First Things determined in 1997 that the left-wing activism of the U.S. Supreme Court—oh, those were the days—had made the American government illegitimate, they characterized it as a regime, or, should I say, a régime. In choosing a French word, they suggested that the American experiment in self-government had come to an end. We can talk about a political "system" without raising eyebrows. Régime, by contrast, as in ancien régime,

connotes a preliberal, European society characterized not only by arbitrary rule but also by a corrupt aristocracy unworthy of holding on to its unearned privileges. Of course we have no such aristocracy; if we did, our extreme conservatives would come to its defense. But instead of an inherited ruling class, we have liberal elites (or Êlites), who, according to the late Richard John Neuhaus and others associated with this point of view, constitute a new class of arrogant planners determined to impose their conception of the good society upon ordinary people, whether they want it or not. While neoconservatives balked when Neuhaus, editor and founder of First Things, called for civil disobedience to the new class, there was no disagreement over the use of "regime." It was, after all, Leo Strauss, the philosopher so important to the rise of neoconservatism, who had introduced the term. Aristotle's politeia was usually rendered as "the polity" until Strauss translated it as "regime," or "the order, the form, which gives society its character." Any society can have a regime in the sense Strauss meant, and he hoped that the United States could find its way to being a "good regime." But there can be no doubt that his use of term was meant to suggest that, for him and those he influenced, much was wrong with the politics of the liberal democratic West. Those in the attack mode need not rely just on French and German. Conservatives are not generally known as sympathetic to Russia, but when it comes to denouncing the Obama administration, the Russian language is something they cannot resist. George Will, the conservative columnist, convinced that the Obama administration is on the verge of lawlessness, has on more than one occasion used the word ukase to characterize policies he disfavors. The Democrats, we are told, conscious of how unpopular those policies are, rely on czars to oversee them: The Obama administration "seems to be captivated by the un-American notion of running the country through Russian-style czars empowered to issue czarist-style ukases," Phyllis Schlafly, the dean of such discourse, opined in 2009. Townhall.com has charged the president with having a "czar fetish." Given the craze for Russian on the right, small wonder that conservatives accuse Democrats of engaging in agitprop on the question of birth control (Jonah Goldberg), filling their policy positions with apparatchiks (Michelle Malkin), and consigning their enemies to the gulag (Ann Coulter). About the only thing the Obama administration has not done, if you are a conservative, is to promote glasnost. The surprise in Fallows's column is not that he dropped the use of "coup" so quickly—but that he used it at all. This being a large country, one can always find examples of people on the liberal end of the spectrum invoking harsh terms, some of them adopted from other languages, to attack those on the right. But generally speaking, the language of reaction leans more toward Europe than the language of progress does. Shortly after Fallows posted his entry, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld Obamacare because one of its members, Chief Justice John Roberts, decided that he was a conservative first and a Republican second and not the other way around. I, for one, am glad he did; had the court overturned such a signature Democratic achievement on purely partisan grounds, I believe the case for using a term like "coup" would have been clinched. Roberts, in his own way, must have understood that. As one commentary written before the Obamacare decision put it: "If the judiciary continues on its present course, if it does not restrain itself, and if there is no way to restrain it, we are witnessing the end of democracy." That was First Things— denouncing not the decisions of the Roberts Court but those of the one before it. Should we, then, breathe a sigh of relief that Roberts spared us further talk of a coup, or, if you prefer, a putsch? As to the meaning of the words, I believe the answer is yes. Either term implies a takeover, carried out in the night by the military and its allies, for the purpose of ensuring that the rich and powerful get their way. As radical as the conservative majority on the court has been, it still works within an understanding of the Constitution that does have precedents in American history. On the larger question of whether the words imply that our political system is deeply threatened, by contrast, I do think Fallows was correct to call attention to the matter in the most significant fashion he could. There really are major changes taking place in the United States, and they do require new terms to characterize them. The strenuous efforts during this year's presidential election to prevent voters from voting, like the "birther" issues that preceded them, tell us that a fairly large group of Americans will not be prepared to accept the results if Obama wins. That is dangerous territory. Democracy works through peaceful transfers of power. Actions and words that label members of the opposition party as illegitimate or as enemies of America have been with us for some time but, if the recent prevalence of foreign words is any indication, they have taken on a whole new intensity in recent years. In 2006, I wrote a book, Does American Democracy Still Work? You would not make it a question if you thought it did. Even before then, I saw in the tactics and rhetoric of the right indications that politics was being treated as an endless, no-holds-

barred struggle between friends who could do no wrong and enemies who must be denounced. For nonpartisan agreement on that point, see this year's It's Even Worse Than It Looks, by the Brookings Institution's Thomas E. Mann and the American Enterprise Institute's Norman J. Ornstein. The fact of the matter is that, while we continue to have a two-party system, one of our parties, as Mann and Ornstein demonstrate, is more extreme than the other. All in all, it may not add up to a coup. But I fear that were extremists to come to power, our future would be best captured in another foreign phrase: Après nous, le deluge. Alan Wolfe is director of the Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life and a professor of political science at Boston College.

Names Oct 20, 2012

Celebrating Tip O’Neill’s 100th Birthday

From left: J. Donald Monan, Shep Melnick, Susan O’Neill; Thomas P. O’Neill III; and Thomas Mann on Thursday.

Tip O’Neill, the legendary Democrat whose legacy is defined as much by his bipartisanship efforts as by the federal dollars he landed to build the Big Dig, would have turned 100 this year and his birthday (Dec. 9, 1912) was celebrated a little early on Thursday by family, faculty, and alumni at Boston College. During his time as the 55th speaker of the House of Representatives between 1977 and 1987, O’Neill, who was from North Cambridge, raised money for the construction of his alma mater’s library, and created the Thomas P. O’Neill Jr. Scholarship Fund, through which $5 million in scholarships have been awarded to more than 300 BC students. In attendance Thursday were the Rev. J. Donald Monan, chancellor of Boston College; Shep Melnick, the O’Neill Professor of American Politics at BC; authorThomas Mann, senior fellow at the Brookings Institute and noted congressional scholar; and two of O’Neill’s four surviving children, daughter Susan O’Neill and son Thomas P. O’Neill III.

The Masculine Critique Brad Harrington Executive Director, Boston College Center for Work & Family and Research Professor in the Carroll School of Management October 8, 2012

In 2009, the staff of the Boston College Center for Work & Family decided it was time to significantly increase our focus on men and work-family issues. At the time, the work-family field -- researchers, practitioners, and consumers -- was predominantly women and virtually all discussion was focused on women's struggles in relation to this delicate balancing act. While that was entirely appropriate given women's central role in the family and the (relatively) recent struggles of professional/managerial women to balance their professional and personal commitments, it nonetheless kept our field in something of a box. That box suggested that family was a woman's domain and that men's work-family struggles were confined to the bumps and bruises that went with climbing the corporate ladder in their role as breadwinners. We thought, it was time to break out of that box and calibrate more fully how men were feeling regarding these issues. So we jumped in with both feet and in the ensuing three years published a series of reports based on our research titled "The New Dad." These reports looked at the transition to fatherhood, how men managed career and family priorities, and the growing ranks of pioneering "at-home dads." All three reports met with a very warm reception from the media and the public and suggested that this work was indeed much needed and long overdue. It was perhaps coincidental or maybe one of those times when you focus on something and then it seems to be everywhere you look, but the changing roles of women and men in families (and in society) really seemed to become a major topic of conversation. But I wasn't sure I liked much of what I was seeing and reading. Beginning with Michael Kimmel's Guyland, which painted young adult males as sexist, drinking, bullying homophobes and most recently with Hanna Rosin's The End of Men, with its view of men in decline (and more graphic details about "hooking up" than any parent of teenagers should ever know), the picture seemed altogether pessimistic about the male gender. I have great respect for Professor Kimmel and Ms. Rosin, but wondered (and worried) if their assertions were accurate? Suddenly my occasional visits to my son's fifth grade classroom, where the girls sat politely working and the boys seemed unfocused and chaotic, were just further "hard evidence" that the world of males was on a steep downward decline. In my more reflective moments, these hyped-up views of males didn't mesh with the research we were doing on fatherhood. Nor did it match my experience teaching hundreds of young men career-life courses in our MBA program at Boston College. These men were taking work-family issues seriously and were sincerely looking for a way to have it all. But if they couldn't have it all they were clear that their families would not be the ones that paid the price. While I recognize these somewhat privileged graduate students were not a nationally representative sample, their experiences gelled more with my perceptions than the more stark views I was reading in the press. Finally, last weekend, Professor Stephanie Coontz, a researcher who speaks from a strong, evidence-based position, published The Myth of Male Decline in Sunday's New York Times. In it she offered a well-grounded, balanced view that gave credence to unmistakable gender trends that are emerging in the U.S., but which seemed to sort fact from fiction. (It's a good read and provides excellent information on careers and family from both genders' perspectives.) While my male MBAs may not be a representative sample of men, according to Coontz, "among dual-earner couples, husbands with the least education do as much or more housework than their educated counterparts" (which, of course, is still less than their female partners). She also points out that there are some positive statistics regarding male behavior and misbehavior that are worth noting. Since 1993, domestic violence is down 50 percent and rapes and sexual assaults are down by 70 percent. And in discussing men's less egregious but nonetheless problematic tendencies, she asserts: "What's different today is that it's harder for men to get away with [bad] behavior in long-term relationships. Women no longer feel compelled to put up with it and the legal system no longer condones it. The result is many guys who would have been obnoxious husbands, behaving badly behind closed doors, are now obnoxious singles, trumpeting their bad behavior on YouTube." Or if you're Arnold Schwarzenegger on 60 Minutes. In spite of all the warnings, my research suggests that we are more likely at the dawn of men than the end. Difficult economic circumstances, less-thanstellar academic performance, and growing equality for women may have all conspired to lessen men's advantage at work, but "success" in the workplace is not the only or ultimate measure of a life well-lived. Perhaps less career advantage and greater opportunity to embrace all that life offers will yield a new and improved definition of what it means to be a successful man today. While some may be making hay (and selling books) by heralding the end of men, to paraphrase Mark Twain, I believe reports of our demise may be greatly exaggerated. At the risk of spending any more time than I'd like on the Governator, he may have spoken for all men when he uttered his cinematic line for the ages, "I'll be back." Brad Harrington is the Executive Director of the Boston College Center for Work & Family and lead author of "The New Dad" study on fatherhood. This entry if part of the National Work and Family Month Blogfest.

The 50 Best Law Schools in America Jennifer Polland | Oct. 4, 2012 In an oversaturated market where countless lawyers are unemployed or underemployed, choosing the right law school makes all the difference. The right school puts you on track to a competitive corporate or public sector job. The wrong school may be a waste of three years and $250,000. We held a survey to determine what real professionals consider the best law schools. They have determined that this school is Harvard Law School. More than 650 of our readers responded, of which 60 percent had J.D.s. and 69 percent had hiring experience. Thirty-six percent of the respondents work in legal fields, 23 percent work in finance, 10 percent work in technology, 6 percent are current law students, and 6 percent work in consulting. A full 40 percent of the respondents said that law school is NOT worth attending if you don't get into a top-tier school, while 32.9 percent said that it depends on factors like your financial background, the cost of attending, the school's alumni network and connections, the type of law you want to practice and the specialty of the school, whether you intend to practice in the state you attend school, and personal connections. "If you want to work at a large firm or company in a large city, then a top tier school is more important," one respondent wrote. "If you want to be a lawyer in a mid-size city or smaller, then attending a top tier school is not as important." Survey takers stressed that it's important to consider where you plan to practice when deciding which law school to attend, as some of the state schools can have very strong networks in their region. "Someone practicing in Portland, Maine is better off going to UMaine Law as opposed to Harvard for the very fact that that network is more beneficial in Maine," one respondent wrote. Other respondents wrote that attending a second-tier law school can still be beneficial and can even land you a gig at a BigLaw firm—if you graduate in the top of your class. Ultimately, though, if you dream of being a lawyer, the fact remains that you must attend law school and pass a state bar exam in order to do so. "If you have a very specific reason for wanting to become a lawyer, then law school can be worth attending even if you don't get into a top-tier school," a respondent wrote. "Also, a legal education has inherent value, so law school can be worth attending if you don't overpay."

#23 Boston College BC scored 2.72 out of 5 on Business Insider's rating. US News & World Report: #29 Notable alumni: U.S. Senator John Kerry, U.S. Senator Scott Brown

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The Importance of Eric Hobsbawm October 3, 2012, 9:09 pm

By James E. Cronin

The passing of Eric Hobsbawm on October 1 severs one of the last, and strongest, links between the mostly tragic and at times heroic era of the early and mid-20th century—the subject of his last major book, The Age of Extremes (1994)—and the intellectual and the political world we inhabit today.

Figure 1, Eric Hobsbawm (from Wikipedia)

His death is a reminder that many of the debates, beliefs, and passions that animate us now have roots in the great struggles of the 20th century between capitalism and communism, and fascism and liberal democracy. Hobsbawm, a Marxist historian, helped explain the convoluted links between that past and our present.

Part of his brilliance came from his enormous reach. He seemed to know almost everything about the modern world as well as earlier times. His first major historical work was a two-part essay on the “Crisis of the Seventeenth Century,” published in 1954. Echoes of its arguments can still be found in the work of scholars of early modern Europe. The essay grew out of efforts among members of the Historians’ Group of the British Communist Party to understand the transition from feudalism to capitalism: Figuring out that transition was a first step in grasping how the next big transition—from capitalism to communism—could happen. The aim, then, was not to analyze the past for its own sake, but to figure out how the world around us came into being and, if possible, how to navigate and improve it. Hobsbawm was, in this sense, a modernist at heart. His writings on Bandits (1969) and Primitive Rebels (1959) were not about nostalgia but about the conflict between these people on the margins and the relentless progress of modern capitalism. He harbored no longing for tradition or quirky survivals, but was more interested in how traditions were invented and deployed for use in the present. The Invention of Tradition (1983), which he edited with Terence Ranger, and his analysis of nationalism—Nations and Nationalism Since 1780 (1990)—put this critical stance toward the imagined past brilliantly on display. His interest in how we got to our present state motivated both his three-volume history of the 19th century—The Age of Revolution (1962), The Age of Capital (1975), and The Age of Empire (1987)—and his single volume on the short 20th century, The Age of Extremes (1994), which covers the years 1914 to 1991. These masterful books were global in scope long before the fashion for world history, and they succeeded not because they set out to be allinclusive but because they developed an argument with global implications. The trilogy on the 19th century was about the rise and consolidation, and the transforming effects, of the “dual revolution” produced by the roughly simultaneous and interacting growth of capitalism and mass democracy. In the years just before 1914, those transformations had led to an age of empire encompassing the world and set the major powers on a collision course that led to the “age of catastrophe” between 1914 and 1945. This crisis of the 20th century is the subject of Hobsbawm’s Age of Extremes, but it was also the making of Hobsbawm himself. As an orphan living with relatives in Berlin in the early 1930s, he saw the rise of Nazism up close and in response became a communist as a teenager, marching against the Nazis even after they seized power. He soon escaped to join other relatives in England, where he became a more normal schoolboy, but his time in Berlin influenced his ideas and political commitments. He joined the British Communist Party while a student in Cambridge, and he never left it. It was his world, perhaps even his family, and it shaped his approach to history. Hobsbawm has been much criticized for not leaving the party when so many others—including friends and comrades among the Historians’ Group—decided they could not support the Soviet Union and what it stood for. The charge looms large in assessing Hobsbawm’s legacy, and it needs to be taken seriously. But how? He himself addressed the issue at length in his arresting memoir, Interesting Times (2002), even if his answers did not entirely satisfy his critics. He convincingly writes of his time in Berlin as having “left the deepest impression on my life” and explains that “in the crisis-saturated atmosphere of Berlin in 1931-33 … political innocence was

impossible.” That context forced one to take a stand in what was arguably the greatest cause of the era—the struggle against fascism. His case for not rethinking or repudiating that commitment to communism later seems more labored. Hobsbawm chose, he says, to remain loyal to who and what he was and did not want to give aid and comfort to former enemies by conceding that they were right. He did admit that in becoming “a lifelong communist, or at least a man whose life would lose its nature and significance without the political project to which he committed himself as a schoolboy, even though that project has demonstrably failed, and, as I now know, was bound to fail…,” he had bet on the wrong horse. Should he have been more self-critical? Perhaps. But that is asking a lot. And it is not clear that a firmer break with communism, rather than the gradual detachment that occurred, would have made Hobsbawm a better historian. It was, after all, his Marxism that gave him the “totalizing” vision that informed his work and allowed him to make the connections among economics, politics, and culture that so distinguish his scholarship. Was there another perspective that would have been so productive? Arguably not, or not at the time and perhaps still not yet. There were, presumably, costs that came with his politics: He never quite reckoned with the destructive effects of the Soviet Union on the causes with which he so obviously identified. Nor did he ever come to terms with those features of the United States, and postwar capitalism more broadly, that led the West to prevail in the cold war. Still, we can be assured that others will tell those stories; in the meantime, we can treasure the history that Hobsbawm has bequeathed to us. James E. Cronin is a professor of history at Boston College.

Obama, Romney eye blinks could decide election David Jackson

4:19PM EST October 1. 2012 - As far as one researcher is concerned, the fate of presidential candidates is in the eyes -- namely, how many times they blink during debates.

Figure 1, President Obama and Mitt Romney (Photo: Mary Altaffer, Evan Vucci AP)

Joseph Tecce, a Boston College psychophysiologist who studies political body language, reports that the candidate who blinks the most during debates has lost every election but one since 1980 -- and the exception is George W. Bush, the year he lost the popular vote.

Four years ago, Tecce reported, Barack Obama blinked 62 times per minute during debates -- John McCain blinked 104 times per minute. Obama won the election. You be sure Tecce will be watching and timing on Wednesday when President Obama and Mitt Romney debate Wednesday night in Denver. Scientists have long associated eye movements with one's emotional state. People blink more often when they are under stress, and some observers believe it can have a subliminal effect on voters. The website The Daily -- to whom we are indebted for this tidbit -- reported: "Explaining the apparent link with election results is a bit trickier though. Does the audience find the faster-blinking candidate unnerving and form a negative impression? Or does the candidate who is trailing in the polls tend to be under greater stress — and therefore likely to blink more often? Tecce says that both factors likely come into play. This year, Romney seems to be an early favorite to blink less, based on Tecce's analysis of the candidates' mostrecent convention speeches. Romney blinked 33 times a minute during his acceptance address, while Obama did 41 times a minute. Still, Tecce said, he expects the blinking contest will be tight. 'It appears from previous performances that they are both relatively close in blink rate and both in the normal range,' Tecce told The Daily. 'Consequently, we will have to watch carefully in the coming debates to see if this pattern holds or whether there will be an observable difference between these two candidates. If their rates hold now, as it has in the past, there may not be enough of a difference for voters to be affected.'"

Harry Connick Jr. helps raise $3.3 million for BC’s Pops Scholars 09/30/2012 4:46 PM

September 28, 2012 20th Anniversary Concert of "Pops on the Heights" LTR Boston College President William P. Leahy, SJ, Harry Connick, Jr, Special guest and John F. Fish, CEO of Suffolk Construction. ©2012 Photo by Bill Brett

Singer and actor Harry Connick Jr., who appears to have stopped aging, performed with Keith Lockhart and the Boston Pops during Friday night’s 20th anniversary celebration of “Pops on the Heights.” The annual concert raises money for Pops Scholars, a group that helps students pay for tuition at Boston College. This year’s celebration raised $3.3 million. Crooner Connick brought his own big band to help him out during the show. One of his regular sax players couldn’t be there, but Branford Marsalis happily filled in. Joining Connick (center) in the green room during intermission were the Rev. William P. Leahy (left), president of Boston College, and John Fish, CEO of Suffolk Construction.

How 401(k) could work much better “I have to participate on a panel that looks at the current state of the U.S. defined contribution system. This event is forcing me to reassess my views on 401(k) plans.” By Alicia Munnell, Director of Retirement Research at Boston College September 26, 2012

Investors in 401(k) programs have to decide whether to join, how much to contribute, how to invest contributions, whether to roll over accumulations when they shift jobs, how much to invest in company stock and how to withdraw money at retirement. And many make serious mistakes at each stage. Investors in 401(k) programs have to decide whether to join, how much to contribute, how to invest contributions, whether to roll over accumulations when they shift jobs, how much to invest in company stock and how to withdraw money at retirement. And many make serious mistakes at each stage.

I start with the premise that the move away from defined benefit plans to 401(k)s in the private sector is not reversible. Employers do not want a pension system where they bear all the risk in terms of investment and longevity. Moreover, while “final earnings” defined benefit plans are great for employees who spend their entire career with a single employer, they produce haphazard income for employees who shift jobs frequently.

Moreover, defined contribution plans in the private sector help balance the overall risks to the retirement system. In the payas-you-go defined benefit Social Security system, the risks are primarily demographic. Lower fertility and increased life expectancy explain why Social Security costs will rise sharply. In contrast, in a funded defined contribution system, the main risk — which is borne by employees — comes from fluctuations in asset returns. Longevity risk remains, but it is also borne by the employee rather than the plan sponsor. Given that the two pension arrangements are exposed to different risks, it makes sense to have defined contribution plans as a component of the nation’s retirement system. Thus, the problem is not that the U.S. ended up with defined contribution plans in the private sector but rather that 401(k)s are the most extreme individualistic form of a defined contribution plan. People have to decide whether to join the plan, how much to contribute, how to invest those contributions, whether to roll over accumulations when they shift jobs, how much to invest in company stock and how to withdraw money at retirement. People make serious mistakes at each step, producing low coverage rates and small balances. Building on the work of behavioral economists, Congress passed the Pension Protection Act of 2006 to make 401(k)s easier and more automatic. The legislation encouraged automatic enrollment and automatic escalation in the default contribution rates and made target date funds an acceptable default investment. The problem is that less than 50% of firms have adopted automatic enrollment and only about a third of those have automatic escalation in the default contribution rate. The other problem is that fees are very high. The result is only 80% of those eligible participate, and balances are modest. The median balances for households approaching retirement (age 55-64) are only $120,000 — $575 per month if the household purchases a joint-and-survivor annuity. Some argue not to worry about low

participation and balances because the system is relatively new, coming into existence in the early 1980s. My view is that the “new” argument is getting a little old. Participation and balance questions are only part of the story. Many of those approaching retirement will be reliant entirely on 401(k) assets for income in retirement. Yet, most will have no idea how to draw down their assets to balance the risks of running out of money too early and depriving themselves of necessities once they stop working. Annuities would solve this problem, but people hate annuities and don’t buy them. The question is what to do with a large defined contribution system that is falling far short of its potential. The obvious answer is “fix it.” This raises both political and legal questions. The big political issue is the fact that the employer-provided pension system is voluntary, so legislators are reluctant to make the burden too onerous. The legal question is how many changes can be made within the 401(k) construct. My recommendation for immediate fixes is to pass legislation with three changes. First, make automatic enrollment and automatic escalation in the default contribution rate integral parts of the definition of a 401(k) plan, rather than leaving the choice of whether to adopt these provisions up to the individual employer. Second, require — at least as a default — that all 401(k) investments be in the form of indexed ETFs or low cost indexed mutual funds and limit fees for rebalancing. (My reading of the literature is that active management is not worth the additional fees.) Third, require – again, at least as a default — automatic annuitization of some portion of the balances. In the longer run, my view is that an ideal defined contribution system should have extensive risk sharing, similar to that in the Dutch collective defined benefit plans. Instead of each employee having his own account, assets would be pooled so individuals would be freed from the burden of selecting their portfolios. Benefits would be paid as an inflation-adjusted stream of lifetime payments. If the plan suffers losses, adjustments could be made by an increase in employee contributions, a reduction in cost-of-living adjustments, and/or lower benefit accruals for current workers. Similarly, if returns come in better than expected, participants would share the bounty. Such risk-sharing arrangements may not be consistent with American culture, much less with the 401(k) system. But making 401(k)s automatic and cheap should be an achievable goal.

Magdalene survivors still held hostage to politics James M. Smith | September 26, 2012 OPINION: Dáil Éireann will vote this evening on a motion addressing the Magdalene laundries. Two facts are fundamental to the debate preceding it. First is the indisputable fact that three years after Justice for Magdalenes (JFM) circulated an apology and redress scheme for survivors of the laundries, 22 months after the Irish Human Rights Commission called for a statutory inquiry into alleged abuses and provision of redress in appropriate cases, and 15 months after the UN Committee Against Torture obliged the State to ensure that within one year survivors obtained redress, the women at the centre of this debate find themselves in exactly the same position as when this all started. No apology, no pension, no lost wages, no redress and no acknowledgement that what happened to them was wrong. A population of Irish women, aging and elderly, living at home and abroad, many vulnerable and marginalised, is left waiting as time slips by. Second is that there is overwhelming evidence of State involvement in the Magdalene laundries – sending women to the institutions and ensuring they stayed there; direct and indirect financial support; and failing to regulate the commercial laundries and thereby prevent human rights violations. The pending final report on the issue by an interdepartmental committee will offer an even more complete picture of State involvement. But, in the meantime, JFM’s principal submission to the committee, a redacted copy of which every member of the Oireachtas received last week, and which was supported by 795 pages of survivor testimony and 3,707 pages of archival and legislative documentation, constitutes incontrovertible evidence of significant State involvement. JFM is a non-political organisation but it was consulted on the wording of the Sinn Féin Dáil motion, which calls on the Government to act now to address the women’s immediate needs. Specifically, the motion calls for the setting up of a survivor helpline and outreach service. In addition, it asks the Government to commit now to ensuring that survivors can access pensions for the years they spent working unpaid in the laundries. The motion acknowledges the important work in this area of Senator Martin McAleese, the chairman of the interdepartmental committee, and it recognises that the four religious congregations in question have rights too. But time is of the essence here as it is the commodity survivors can ill afford. The Government statement on the Magdalene laundries (June 15th, 2011) announced a twin-track investigation, namely (a) the formation of the interdepartmental committee, and (b) the ministerial track (for want of a better title). Survivors and representative groups, and the religious congregations, are co-operating with the departmental committee. JFM has met the committee and made numerous submissions. We may have reservations regarding the committee process as a vehicle for investigation, for example the lack of terms of reference, lack of statutory powers, and questions about transparency, but no one questions Martin McAleese’s commitment to bringing this work to completion. Our concern, once again, is time. The committee’s interim report (October 2011) anticipated a final report by “mid-2012”. Then it was due by the end of the summer. Now it will appear no later than the end of the year. These delays may not seem unreasonable but they take on added significance given Minister for Justice Alan Shatter’s insistence that the publication of the final report alone will determine Government action on an apology and redress. Consequently, survivors’ immediate needs are held hostage to the political process. The ministerial track, too, is not serving its intended purpose. Alan Shatter has refused repeatedly to discuss “the putting in place of a restorative and reconciliation process and the structure that might be utilised to facilitate such a process”. JFM is unaware of discussions that address what such a process might look like or what structure will facilitate it. In August 2011, the Minster for Justice’s office asked JFM to develop and resubmit the group’s earlier proposal for a redress and restorative justice scheme. This we did on October 14th, 2011. We have not heard from the Minister since. JFM has expressed concern that the ministerial track is dependent on and consecutive to the publication of the final report. TDs have asked parliamentary questions seeking progress reports with respect to redress. Alan Shatter’s response has become a refrain (repeated on at least six occasions), a typical comment being: “I am not going to pre-empt the work of the interdepartmental committee by making decisions on such matters as reparation before I receive the final report.”

This is in stark contrast to the Minister’s insistence in December 2009, when in opposition, that there was “absolutely irrefutable evidence” of State complicity in the Magdalene laundries. JFM wrote to the Minister on February 29th, 2012, asking him to establish a threshold for State involvement short of the committee’s final report so as to enable discussions on an apology and redress to begin, but our pleas for a concurrent approach involving both tracks of the government process went unheeded. his means even more time will elapse. Work that could be done now will wait until the report is published and the Government decides on a course of action. No doubt additional discussions and planning will then be required and somewhere down the line, perhaps, survivors’ needs might be met. The risk is that survivors may not live that long. Supporting the Dáil motion is the moral and ethical thing to do. Survivors of Ireland’s Magdalene laundries have already waited too long for State, Church and society to say: “We were wrong, and you were wronged, and for that we are sorry.” They have, moreover, experienced government inaction as tantamount to a deliberate policy of “deny ’til they die.” Will tonight’s vote tell them that State policy has become “delay ’til they die”? James M Smith is an associate professor in the English department and Irish Studies programme at Boston College. He is the author of Ireland’s Magdalene Laundries and the Nation’s Architecture of Containment (2007) and serves on JFM’s advisory committee.

Yelling 'Fire' in a Crowded Planet By Frank J. Garcia Professor, Boston College Law School September 25, 2012

Ever heard the reference to yelling fire in a crowded theater? That comes from the Schenck case, where Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes ruled that speech can be regulated when it presents a "clear and present danger" of serious public harm -- in other words, you can't just say anything you want if a lot of people might get hurt. While the Schenck test has evolved into the risk of imminent lawless action, the metaphor lives on as a powerful example of the dangers of reckless speech in volatile situations, and the law's ability to respond while still protecting our own cherished First Amendment rights. We face another important moment now with the anti-Mohammed video, and the rioting and acts of terrorism that have followed. No matter how offensive speech may be, such actions are never justified, and of course local leaders can manipulate crowds for their own purposes, but that misses the point. Globalization and the telecommunications revolution have fundamentally changed the way information moves throughout the planet since the Schenck days. Our notions of proximity, distance, even imminence must be re-examined. Reckless or inflammatory words can be uttered ten feet away, or ten thousand miles away, and the distinction is meaningless: YouTube and Twitter mean they are heard, felt and responded to on the other end of the globe instantaneously. This is particularly dangerous when cultures vigorously protecting speech don't prohibit speech deeply offensive to those of other cultures, as with the video. They simply can't understand why we allow such speech, and all too easily believe we are therefore complicit in its message. Globalization means it is just not enough to explain in terms that make sense to us, why we protect speech so vigorously in the US when its effects are felt immediately and dramatically in other cultures with a very different approach. Our explanations don't translate nearly as well as our digital communications do. When every major Western liberal democracy except ours regulates certain forms of racist and hate-mongering speech, we can no longer simply assert that our approach is a non-negotiable liberal value. Others have made different choices yet respect the same value. In the United Kingdom, for example, speech aimed at expressing hatred towards other groups on the basis of ethnic, national or racial differences is punishable by fines, imprisonment or both. Professor Jeremy Waldron has recently argued that it is time for the US to re-think its position on hate speech, and that a well-conceived hate speech law could protect the human dignity of minority groups while still respecting our fundamental freedom of expression. The anti-Mohammed video reminds us that such a law should be crafted not only to protect the human dignity of our own fellow-citizens, but the human dignity of communities outside ours borders that are nevertheless intimately affected by our media in this digital age. Globalization means we cannot assume the limits of our concern -- and our responsibility -- stop at our territorial boundaries. Closer to home, our Supreme Court has ruled that "fighting words" -- low-value speech calculated to incite the "average person" to retaliation -- could be constitutionally regulated. As Professor Kent Greenfield has recently suggested, such a doctrine could be applied to cases like the anti-Mohammed video. The key would be extending the scope of our doctrine to include fighting words aimed at people outside our borders. Congress or the courts should clearly indicate by law that our 'fighting words' doctrine includes speech aimed at people outside the US through the Internet. The Schenck case also reminds us of the risks of overregulating speech in a national crisis. Holmes and his decision have been roundly -- and justly -- criticized for prohibiting peaceful anti-draft leafleting by mail in a time of war. While the importance of free speech to our society cannot be overemphasized and the risks posed by limiting it are serious, we must remember that we already limit speech in the ways I've mentioned. Globalization requires us to go farther and re-think how we both protect speech and prevent harm in a shrinking planet. We do not have to punish the perpetrators of such speech - simply blocking reckless or inciting speech itself is remedy enough, and sends the necessary signal to the Muslim world -- or whichever community is the next target -that we recognize the harm in crude, offensive and inflammatory speech that moves beyond our territory through cyberspace. We can take a few small steps to extend our own doctrines in ways that recognize our own new global reality without doing violence to our cherished principles. At a minimum, we have to work much, much harder to justify our society's particular choice when it is costing others (and ourselves) so much. We simply can't afford to protect those yelling "Fire!" in a crowded planet.

Thoughts on ‘Innocence of Muslims’ By FRANCK SALAMEH 09/23/2012 22:30

Rather than asking “who is the author of this abomination, and how might revenge be meted out?” Muslims, Christians and others, people of goodwill everywhere, may wish to inquire why something was deemed blasphemous? Innocence of Muslims, the shoddy production that recently unleashed waves of outrage throughout the Middle East and the Muslim world, was, mildly put, an insult directed at Muslims and non-Muslims alike. Whether in form, language, or content, the film made a mockery of basic standards of human decency, good taste, artistic subtlety and historical discernment. Its crassness was an affront to its subject matter, its intended audience, those involved in its production, and the community (or communities) that the producers were assumed to represent – in this case American Copts and by association Christians, and even Christendom and the West in more general terms. Figure 1 PHOTO: YOUTUBE SCREENSHOT

At best, the film in question was a collection of obscene stereotypes, crammed with breathtaking incompetence into a buffoonish production that even by the standards of the Arab world’s most offensive adaptations of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion – and other such anti-Semitic fixtures of Syrian, Hezbollah and Egyptian television – would have been deemed too clumsy and crude, even for captive Muslim audiences. No serious film critic, and not the most artless of amateurs, could have kept a straight face referring to this frivolous feature as a film – that is, of course, no one except those who went into frenzies of mayhem and murder this past week lambasting the film and its country of origin, most of them without even having seen it. Without the angry mobs, that trivial production, like others of its kind, would have passed unnoticed, desiccated in Western pantheons of indignity, alongside other such samplings of jaundiced, primitive screed. That being said, one would be hard pressed to label the Innocence of Muslims a form of hate speech; an “affront to Islam and monotheistic religions” that “ought to be criminalized by International Law and its perpetrators brought to justice,” as recently clamored Lebanon’s Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah. Ironically, Nasrallah, commands a powerful private militia that defies the Lebanese national army and flouts both Lebanon’s national prerogatives and international law. Additionally, through a baneful mix of coercion, intimidation and violence, Nasrallah conducts himself as Iran’s satrap in the Levant, and has perfected to the hilt the art of offending others and denigrating their religious, national and cultural symbols. What’s more, Hezbollah’s private satellite television station Al-Manar (“The Beacon”), designated a “global terrorist entity” by the United States and banned in a number of countries, has normalized portrayal of the creeds and cultures of others as “Evil,” “Satan” and “Cancers” meriting eradication. It is all the more farcical in this light that Nasrallah invoke international law to criminalize offenders of religion. Yet crudeness and indecency, obvious features of those who made the Innocence of Muslims, are character failings worthy of contempt, not a crime warranting Nasrallah’s righteous indignation, or the international community’s punishment. In point of fact, wouldn’t it be fair to expect those who wish to brandish (and have recourse to) international bodies to be, at a bare minimum, respectful of international law? Yet, if anything, Nasrallah’s bombast and bellicosity have for the past 20 years, and as a matter of principle and theology, impugned the will of the international community and willfully flouted international statutes. For the rest, Nasrallah might be better served familiarizing himself with the sanctity of freedom of expression, one of the hallmarks of international human

rights law. Indeed, one of the authors of Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights was none other than the great Lebanese philosopher and jurist, Charles Malik, a compatriot of Nasrallah’s. Alas, Nasrallah’s ears appear to be less engaged than his mouth these days, and Lebanon’s humane past seems less of the exemplar (or “Beacon”) to him than its belligerent, militarized present. Otherwise, Malik might have revealed to his petulant junior that Man’s freedom to criticize, even lampoon, religious, political and cultural symbols is a basic tenet of human rights; that without this freedom to offend, Man would still be languishing in the dark ages paralyzed by superstitions and caged in servitude to sorcerers, soothsayers and witch doctors. Would someone dare remind Lebanon’s hallowed Sayyid in which century we live? In the end, the catalyst in these latest Middle Eastern convulsions was a risible, primitive, bigoted and willfully incendiary home-video. But the Innocence of Muslims was hardly the kind of catalyst warranting the intensity of anger and the span of violence it spawned – at least not in civilized company where mores are offended as a matter of principle, and where Man’s humanity and humanism are tested daily. In a Christian context, the Innocence of Muslims might have been placed in the same category as the 1987 Piss Christ photograph – an image of a crucifix submerged in a cup of the artist’s urine. Like its Muslim counterpart of early September 2012, the late 20th century Piss Christ was a crude affront to Christian pieties. But unlike the Innocence of Muslims, the Piss Christ photograph was partially funded by a United States government agency; the National Endowment for the Arts. At the time, its irreverent creator, Andres Serrano, received death threats, and his artistic creation was ultimately vandalized. Yet Serrano still lives, and his work still arouses strong emotions among both proponents and opponents. Ironically, among Serrano’s most vocal defenders in 1987 were members of the clergy – most probably Jesuits, invested in ecumenism – who suggested that rather than being “blasphemy,” and a “desecration” of a religious symbol, one might look at Piss Christ as a statement on what modern Christians have done with the legacy of Jesus. There is a moral to this story. If one is looking to be offended – and “pick a bone,” as the saying goes – then both Piss Christ and the Innocence of Muslims are crude, revolting offenses, rigged to inflame. If, on the other hand, one is willing to engage in civilized intercourse, even with those deemed unworthy of it, then the context of the offense might offer more clarity and more rewarding benefits than actual retribution. Rather than asking “who is the author of this abomination, and how might revenge be meted out?” Muslims Christians and others, people of goodwill everywhere may wish to inquire why something was deemed blasphemous? Why was there blasphemy to begin with? And what can be done to address the apprehensions of both blasphemers and injured parties? As a rebellious teenager eager to offend, I once told a Jesuit catechist that I was a devil worshiper, and that I wanted out of his class – this was, by the way, deeply offensive in the Lebanon of the late-1970s. To my surprise, my catechist did not scold me, did not dismiss me from class, and did not banish me to eternal hellfire. He simply smiled and said “that’s interesting; tell me more about it!” I never left catechism. The writer is assistant professor of Near Eastern Studies at Boston College and author of Language Memory and Identity in the Middle East; The Case for Lebanon (Lexington 2010). His academic work has focused on the history of ideas and nationalism in the Levant, and his scholarly articles have been published in a number of leading academic journals.

Sept. 20, 2012

‘QUOTE, UNQUOTE’

Quick with his quips, Bayer AG CEO Marjin Dekkers said innovation is his pharmaceutical company’s best ‘competitive weapon.’ The former chief of the Bay State’s Thermo Fisher Scientific spoke at yesterday’s Boston College Chief Executives’ Club luncheon.

Names Sept 16, 2012

His Life In Words

Poet and author Paul Mariani, an English professor at Boston College in Chestnut Hill, has released a new collection of poetry. “Epitaphs for the Journey: New, Selected, and Revised Poems” features 96 poems divided into eight sections. They chronicle his childhood on New York City’s East Side as the oldest of seven in a working-class family, marriage, -fatherhood, grand-fatherhood, and his enduring Catholic faith. Mariani started studying for the priesthood at age 16, but he left the seminary after a year because he knew he wanted to marry and have a family, he said. “I brought the passion I had for doing something bigger than myself to teaching, and by extension, to my writing,” he said, describing his poems as open, honest, and confessional. “I’m trying to show a life, a life that’s had, I hope, a purpose,” he added, “and over time, a sense of growth and grace and wisdom.” Mariani, 72, has published more than 200 essays and reviews plus 17 books, including seven volumes of poetry and five biographies of poets: William Carlos Williams, John Berryman, Robert Lowell, Gerard Manley Hopkins, and Hart Crane. He is now at work on a biography of poet Wallace Stevens.

Sept 16, 2012

BC anniversary gala begins with Mass at Fenway Alumni, faculty, students attend service for 150th By Dan Adams | Globe Correspondent Thousands of Boston College alumni, faculty, and students went to Fenway Park Saturday afternoon for a special Mass that kicked off a series of celebrations marking the 150th anniversary of the Jesuit school’s founding. In his comments at the Mass, Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley cited the school’s role in Boston’s Irish history, while Boston College theologian the Rev. Michael J. Himes gave a homily that drew connections between the Jesuit tradition and the college’s educational mission. “Education is the process through which we become more fully human,” Himes said. “All education makes us more like God.” Himes implored graduates and the 4,000 BC students who attended to use their education to enrich others. “The reason to be educated is to teach somebody else,” he said. “If you think of your education as training to get a better job and earn more money . . . I think you’re unworthy of your education.” In relatively brief remarks, O’Malley praised Boston College for its role in the “Catholic emancipation,” a reference to the strong anti-Catholic sentiment faced by early Irish immigrants to Boston, such

as BC’s founder, the Rev. John McElroy. “In the days of Father McElroy, it wasn’t easy to be a Catholic or immigrant in Boston, and it isn’t easy today,” O’Malley said. “We still need the giants of Catholic education to help form new disciples in the church. “The involvement of BC with the renewal of our Catholic schools has made a huge difference,” he continued. “BC has been a very important part in the history of our local church and we are all delighted to be a part of this magnificent celebration in Fenway Park.” US Representative Edward J. Markey, a graduate of Boston College and Boston College Law School, was among the 20,000 who attended the Mass. “It was perfect,” Markey said moments after the ceremony concluded. “All of the Jesuits who built BC are smiling down on this perfect day at Fenway.” Asked how the college has changed since his graduation, Markey said, “The Jesuits always provided a first-class education, but now the facilities match the quality they’ve always provided.” Himes’s impassioned case for a Catholic education resonated with Christine Cope, a Pittsfield teacher who graduated from BC in 2001.

BC president William P. Leahy during the anniversary service.

“I love the idea of giving of yourself to your students, so I really connected with his sermon,” Cope said. “It was really cool just being in Fenway Park and having Mass and seeing all the Jesuits we learned from.” The Mass also celebrated the start of Boston College High School’s academic year. About 1,000 BC High students were in attendance, according to Jack Dunn, a BC spokesman. Breezy and mild late-summer weather provided a perfect backdrop for the ceremony at Fenway Park, which is celebrating its own centennial this year. The baseball-centric setting didn’t go unnoticed by O’Malley, who joked to Himes that he “hit it out of the park” and that “the Boston Red Sox should get you, they need you.” Many in attendance said they had longstanding family connections to BC, including Bernie O’Kane, a 1970 graduate whose great-uncle graduated in 1909. O’Kane is now the college’s director of employee development. “He would be incredibly proud to see the development of the university,” O’Kane said of his uncle. In another 150 years, O’Kane predicted, “it’s going to be even better. The place’ll be filled.” More recent graduates also expressed a deep pride in BC, which grew from an initial class of 22 students in 1864 and persevered through enrollment and financial crises in the 20th century to emerge as one of the country’s richest and most selective schools. “It’s overwhelming,” said Amy Piepiora, a 2008 graduate from Carver. “Just the legacy and the way that BC has touched me and shaped me. . . . I can only imagine what it has done for everyone.”

Fenway faithful BC rings in 150 years at baseball’s cathedral By Richard Weir | Sunday, September 16, 2012

Though the Red Sox [team stats] were playing 550 miles away, there were prayers to God and praises of “Alleluia” throughout Fenway Park [map] yesterday from some 20,000 people with ties to Boston College who turned the house of baseball into a house of worship as the Jesuit school hosted a Catholic Mass to celebrate its 150th anniversary. “As I look out at all of you, it is clear to me that Red Sox nation has now DAY IN PARK: Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley blesses the crowd at a Mass at Fenway Park to celebrate Bosto become Jesuit nation,” said the Rev. William P. Leahy, president of Boston College’s 150th anniversary. College, who led what he called the “grand event” on a dais that doubled as an altar on the first base side of the infield. “We place ourselves in God’s presence.” While the concession stands were silent, the scoreboard under the Green Monster did get some action with its white signs reading: “Happy 150th BC.” Boston College High School, whose boys’ choir joined the college’s, was honored for its 100th anniversary, a milestone also marked this summer by the ballpark. The Rev. Michael J. Himes, a professor of theology at the college, delivered a homily that implored the thousands of BC grads to pass on to others the gift of their education. “If you think of your education as a training to make more money or to get a better job ... then I must think you are unworthy of your education. The reason to be educated is to teach somebody else,” he said. “You never fully grasp the fruits of your education until you give it away to another.” Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley, archbishop of Boston, said “a Jesuit education has always and everywhere been considered a treasure” — one he credited with changing the face of Boston and leading to Catholic emancipation. Not a Jesuit himself, O’Malley joked, “I often share with my Jesuit friends that I don’t think it’s fair that the Jesuits have 36 craters on the moon that are named for Jesuits and we Capuchins only have a cup of coffee named after us.” U.S. Rep. Edward Markey, who after attending Catholic schools in Malden graduated from Boston College in 1968, said becoming an Eagle was a “predestined plan” by his parents. “The people here were born to go to BC and to be Red Sox fans and then we were baptized seven days later,” he said. “It’s all part of a package that we all feel is part of our destiny, our legacy.” Franz Loeber, class of ’90, drove his three kids and wife from Weston for the unique experience of attending Mass at Fenway. “It’s an opportunity for my kids to realize that there is a lot more to going to Mass than just being in an old church somewhere,” Loeber said. Bill Hedlund, an usher and non-Catholic, stood in the grandstand as the choir sang, and was impressed by the harmony in the normally raucous ballpark. “I’m overwhelmed,” he said. “I don’t know what the correct word is but this is just very emotional.”

Blessed By History Boston College celebrates 150th, reflects on Jesuit roots, tradition By Jessica Heslam | Sunday, September 15, 2012 When Boston College first opened in the South End in 1864, there were just 22 students and three professors -- and tuition was a mere $60 a year. But the revered Hub institution has come a long way since those humble beginnings as a commuter school for poor local Irish boys. The Jesuit school -- which moved to Chestnut Hill in 1913 -- now has 14,600 students and 752 full-time faculty members -- and includes 235 acres across three campuses. These days, the college -- which costs $43,140 a year -- is among the most prestigious schools in the nation. Today, BC kicks off a year-and-a-half-long celebration of its 150th anniversary with a 4 p.m. Mass at Fenway Park that's expected to draw a crowd of 20,000. "We are a fantastic academic institution," said BC's senior vice president Jim McIntyre, who has worked at the school for 54 years, earning him the nickname "Mr. BC." Boston College, McIntyre points out, ranks 31st among the best universities in the country, according to the latest U.S. News & World Report. And it's very competitive. Last year, 34,000 students applied and only 2,200 were accepted. But there is one thing that hasn't changed. "We are still very decidedly a Jesuit Catholic university," McIntyre, 78, said yesterday. "We're proud of that. That's what we are. That's what we want to be. Despite all the changes quantitatively and visually, this is still the core of BC." McIntyre graduated from BC in 1957. He later earned a master's degree and doctorate from the school. All six of his children are BC graduates -- and so is his wife of nearly 50 years, Monica. This college, McIntyre says, means "everything to me." "I've been fortunate to do something that I very much enjoy doing," said McIntyre, who started out in BC's admissions and financial aid office. BC's alumni include a litany of prominent Boston business leaders, politicians, celebrities and sports stars. Jack Connors, co-founder of the Boston-based ad firm Hill Holiday, drove a taxi and sold hot dogs at Fenway Park while going to BC. He graduated with a business degree in 1963. "They had the sense of humor to accept me, and they gave me an opportunity that I'm not sure a lot of other colleges would have given me," Connors said. "I had a great experience there." U.S. Sen. Scott Brown earned a BC law degree in 1985. His daughter, Ayla, played basketball for the school and is a 2010 graduate. "I received a tremendous education at BC, which helped to put me on a positive track in my career," Brown said in an email. "BC will always have a special place in our hearts." Added Cardinal Sean O'Malley, who will preside over today's Mass, "We are blessed by Boston College's many contributions to the formation of their students, to our Catholic faith and to the common good, and give thanks for BC's role in promoting a just society and evangelizing the people of God."

Sept 15, 2012

At the Heights In 150 years, Boston College has overcome challenges including bankruptcy threats, to build its reputation By Peter Schworm | Globe Staff At the height of the Great Famine in the 1840s, as tens of thousands of Irish immigrants poured into Boston, the Rev. John McElroy embarked on a dream to establish a Jesuit college where sons of Irish immigrants could receive a Catholic education. McElroy, pastor of St. Mary’s Church in the North End, faced fierce anti-Catholic sentiment. But he persisted, and in 1863 obtained a charter for a new school in the South End. As “pious revenge” for the city’s resistance, he named it Boston College.

BC's first graduating class was small. More than 34,000 applied to be undergraduates in 2011

From those humble beginnings, the college has grown to rank among the nation’s leading universities, surviving two wartime enrollment crises and a near-bankruptcy along the way. “It’s the distance covered that’s remarkable,” said James O’Toole, a BC historian. On Saturday, the college kicks off a wide-ranging 150th anniversary celebration with a Mass at Fenway Park that is expected to draw some 20,000 people.

The Rev. William P. Leahy, the university’s president, will celebrate the Mass, and Cardinal Sean P. O’Malley will preside. Boston College High School, which is also marking the 150th anniversary of its founding, will also take part. A reception and tour of the park will follow. In all, the celebration will extend over three semesters and feature a series of speakers and academic conferences and a gathering of college presidents to discuss issues facing Catholic higher education. BC students will be asked to perform 150 minutes of volunteer community service over the period, and athletes will wear a sesquicentennial logo on their uniforms this season. BC said it will invite the US president to address the university on its Founders Day next April, as President Kennedy did at BC’s 100th anniversary in 1963. Kennedy noted that BC was founded “in the darkest days of the Civil War” and that the world was still faced with the “great question of whether this world will be half slave and half free or all free.” Kennedy opened with a quip about his distinctive way of speaking. “It is a great pleasure to come back to a city where my accent is considered normal,” he said. In an interview, Leahy said the 150th anniversary is an occasion to be grateful for the “gifts and blessings” BC has enjoyed and an “invitation” to reflect on how the school began and how far it has come. He said that McElroy and the other Jesuits who helped found BC were men of faith and focus, committed to starting the school despite opposition. “They saw the need for education,” he said. “They were relentless.”

When BC finally opened, demand was light. As the college officially launched in September 1864, days after the fall of Atlanta, just 22 young men showed up. The first dean, the Rev. Robert Fulton, was scarcely impressed with the new crop. “Many came gratuitously, and only one or two had talent,” he wrote, according to a survey of the college’s first 150 years written by Thomas O’Connor, the university historian who died in May. But the Jesuits believed in their mission, and the college slowly grew. For second-generation Irish, whose parents arrived in this country with almost nothing, the college was a springboard to a better life. Tuition was just $60 a year in its early days, compared with the $150 a year charged by Holy Cross, the school’s Jesuit predecessor. “For the average immigrant family, [$150] might just as well have been $1 million,” O’Toole said. By the turn of the century, the college had outgrown its South End campus, and turned its eye to its modern-day home, what college president the Rev. Thomas Gasson called the “magnificent site on Commonwealth Avenue toward Brighton,” O’Connor wrote. The first building opened in 1913, ushering in BC’s modern era. But geography was not the only motivation. In the 1890s, Harvard University announced its law school would no longer accept BC graduates, saying they were not qualified, sparking a cross-river spat. BC vigorously defended its academic rigor, and Harvard ultimately backed down. But BC came to realize that Harvard had a point. “BC’s pride is hurt in all of this,” O’Toole said. “People recognize that the academic program has to change.” During World War I, however, enrollment plummeted from 671 in fall 1916 to 125 two years later. If the conflict had persisted for even another year, the college may have closed, O’Connor noted. BC experienced another precipitous decline during World War II, with enrollment falling from more than 1,200 in 1941 to 236 in 1944. After the war, as veterans took advantage of the GI Bill, the college thrived, and in the years that followed added a range of graduate and doctoral programs. Yet by the late 1960s, the universithy was again in dire straits, a commuter-school that was losing wealthier Catholics to more prestigious institutions. In 1973, BC had suffered five years of major deficits and was on the brink of bankruptcy, O’Connor’s history noted. “It was more than possible the place would simply fold,” O’Toole said. But instead of hunkering down to stabilize its finances, BC chose to raise its sights, a bold gamble that gradually transformed it into a national university. Jack Connors, a longtime trustee who graduated from BC in 1963, recalled picking up four other students on his drive to campus, a far cry from today’s residential experience. “You went to class, you went to work, you went home,” he recalled. Connors said he is amazed how far the college has come since its 100th anniversary, when the school “wasn’t even on the charts in terms of national profile.” Last year, more than 34,000 students applied to be undergraduates. Leahy said BC will seek to build on its strengths and hopes to increase fund-raising to broaden its ambitions. But he said the university will remain mindful of what got it this far. “It’s a chance to dream and reach into the future,” he said. “But our future has to be shaped by our past and present.”

How Boston College is Quietly Growing a Powerhouse Entrepreneurship Program September 12th, 2012 by Lauren Landry The list begins with Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of worldwide marketing; Nikesh Arora, Google’s senior vice president and chief business officer; Tim Morse, Yahoo!’s CFO; and Bijan Sabet, a general partner at Spark Capital who’s led investments in foursquare, RunKeeper, Tumblr and Twitter. And they’re only the beginning. The Boston College community has an ever growing roster of notable alumni. Visit Amazon, Zynga, Highland Capital Partners or Sequoia Capital, and you’re bound to bump into at least one employee with a Boston College degree. After all, Boston College recently ranked 31st on the ‘Best Colleges’ list, and their Carroll School of Management is known as one of the top business schools in the country.

Figure 1, photo taken by Gallaugher of Boston College’s recent TechTreks.

Neighboring storied institutions, such as Harvard and MIT, isn’t easy, however. Out in Chestnut Hill, there is no Innovation Lab or Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship.

“What we do need at Boston College is an umbrella to put our exceptional tech and entrepreneurship programs under,” says John Gallaugher, a professor of information systems at the Carroll School. “A shingle to hang so everyone knows where we are. The success is jaw dropping, but there’s no center to look.” One of the programs Gallaugher speaks of is the TechTrek, that spans the East and West Coast. The West Coast TechTrek is a threecredit course, combining classroom learning with a week-long field study to Silicon Valley. Students are able to meet with senior executives, entrepreneurs and venture partners, whom Gallaugher admits have been nothing but helpful. “At Boston College, we’ve leveraged our alumni base to extend classroom learning,” Gallaugher says, noting a few of the California offices he’s brought current students in that are run by his former students, including Bill Clerico of WePay and Shahbano Imran and David Tolioupov of LocalOn. Nearly every Friday, students are also engaging in TechTreks across Boston. At 4:00 a.m. on Boston’s Marathon Monday, students are boarding a bus to Manhattan to hear from alumni at Google NYC, TechStars NYC, Etsy and Rent the Runway. And this summer, Gallaugher has been working on developing a TechTrek Ghana. Soon, students could be studying the impact of technology in developing markets and then visit Ghana for a week to learn from experienced entrepreneurs firsthand. Following trips, students are then able to incorporate what they’ve learned into the Boston College Venture Competition (BCVC) — a competition Gallaugher says “needs a bigger bullhorn.” The BCVC has graduated teams that have gained admission to TechStars, Y Combinator, MassChallenge and Summer@HIGHLAND, as well as raised millions in financing and launched multiple products. “I love the entrepreneurship competition, because I think it fills a critical gap in higher education,” Gallaugher says. “Many of our students aren’t given an opportunity to take risks and fail. But by offering a high quality venture competition that’s not tied to grades, students can learn, experiment and swing for the fences.” This year, BCVC is working alongside other organizations on campus to host the college’s premier “Entrepreneurship Week.” Activities kick off on Monday, September 17, with a talk from Alex Hodara, who founded the first student-run real estate agency. The main event, “Silicon Valley Comes to the Heights” on September 21, will welcome in Clerico, Pat Grady of Sequoia Capital and Peter Bell of Highland, and everything concludes with a speaker series, also tying in Rent the Runway, SCVNGR and Jebbit on Friday. Over the next few years, expect to see more from the students studying in Chestnut Hill. Boston College might be under the radar now, but their entrepreneurship program is only growing stronger.

Redefining Aging: What It Means to Grow Old September 5, 2012 The Sloan Center for Aging & Work at Boston College regularly interviews groups of employees to better understand the impact of an aging population on workplace and societal roles. A facilitator asks people to gather into different groups related to multiple aspects of aging, explains Sloan director Marcie Pitt-Catsouphes. An initial grouping, for example, might be to divide along generational lines—think millennials, Gen Xers, and baby boomers. "Then we ask them to divide themselves into groups in terms of their careers stages," she says, "and these groups are different than the generational groups." Yet more groupings are suggested, such as asking people to organize according to their experiences with significant life events such as marriage, parenthood, being a grandparent, and so forth. "And people again regroup" into different configurations, Pitt-Catsouphes says. The benefit of the exercise is to powerfully illustrate that "the kinds of perceptions that we associate with age really may not be true for us or for other people." Developing new and more open ways of thinking about aging can alter not only how older people view themselves, but how younger people view their elders. And both perspectives can help change traditional views of what it means to be old. Sloan's work is closely related to workplace behaviors and relationships but has broader social implications. Widespread longevity gains have "changed what people's expectations are and what their desires are for what they will be doing" in the later stages of their lives, Pitt-Catsouphes says. "Things have been shaken up enough that truly there's this opportunity on the horizon for reinventing the idea of what it means to age." The center recently issued a report called "The Prism of Aging" that discusses numerous concepts of aging in addition to a person's chronological age. Factoring them together can yield a person's subjective age, which may be either much more or much less than the number of years they've actually been alive. Two 65-year-olds, for example, can share birth years but actually have wildly differing profiles that define their subjective ages and thus their approaches to life. Recognizing and understanding these differences can improve the ways such people are treated by others, as well as their own internal assessments of what's important to them. Here are Sloan's different concepts of age. See which ones apply to you and to people you know. "Chronological age"—the simplest indicator of age—refers to the number of years lived since birth. Longevity gains have already stretched out stages of life—many people are marrying later, having children later, extending their careers, and becoming grandparents at later times in their lives. Many other people, of course, have not altered the time horizons of these decisions. Groups that share many similarities thus may contain people with a broad range of chronological ages. The point is that chronological age is becoming less meaningful as a core definition of age. "Physical-cognitive age" refers to physiological changes occurring over time that affect people's ability to function. Some 60years-olds are physically beat-up while others run marathons. "It is easy to understand why there might be differences in the age at which a carpenter fits the description of an older worker compared to a scientist," the Sloan report said. "Socioemotional age" reflects an understanding of human maturation. Some people do seem to behave as if they're "65 going on 40" and vice versa.

"Social age" measures the age that others gauge a person to be. This can be a source of age discrimination among those who associate various limitations with advancing age. But it also can affect biased views that a younger person's capabilities are solely a function of their chronological age. "Career stage" (sometimes called career age or occupational age) assigns a person's age in the context of his or her career or occupation. This measure of age calibrates the person's acquisition of knowledge, competencies, and experiences against a developmental yardstick. It often differs greatly from chronological age. "Tenure" is commonly understood to be the length of an employee's relationship with an employing organization. "Organizational age," a more expansive concept, looks at the relationships an employee may have also had with a supervisor and possibly a department or team. "Normative age" takes into account a society's expectations of age-appropriate roles and transitions. "Age-related expectations and norms are woven into the fabric of societies around the world," the report said. "Varying from culture to culture, there are both explicit and unspoken expectations about the 'right' age for certain experiences, transitions, or roles." "Generational age" cohorts are determined by birth years, and thus linked closely to chronological age. Beyond baby boomers and other generational groups defined by their chronological ages, there also can be generational groupings formed by the shared experiences of powerful events and trends. The Depression is one such formational force, Pitt-Catsouphes says. More recently, so is "9/11." "Relative age" acknowledges that we may compare our own aging experiences with the aging experiences of those around us, such as members of our work group. In the workplace, the Sloan report noted, "Employees who see themselves as old, regardless of their chronological age, may feel less effective than those who perceive themselves to be young or even middleaged." "Life events age" refers to important transitional experiences that shape the roles we assume. Because being a spouse or parent strongly influences social roles and activities, these shared characteristics can bond people of varying chronological ages. "Subjective age" is the overall assessment a person makes of his or her age and can translate into a feeling of being young or old. You may arrive at a subjective age that differs a lot from your chronological age. This decision may be yours to make, but it is influenced by any number of ways you are judged and treated by the people and institutions with whom you interact.

Black carbon's role in climate change may be overstated Posted by Beth Daley, September 5, 2012 01:16 PM

Black carbon - the main ingredient of airborne soot - has long believed to be a key contributor to climate change with its warming impact second only to carbon dioxide. In fact, some scientists and policy makers have suggested targeting black carbon emissions, which live only one to two weeks in the atmosphere, as a possible way to fight global warming. But a new study in smoggy California by Boston College and other researchers suggests that black carbon absorbs significantly less sunlight than previously thought. Published in the journal Science Aug. 31, the study doesn't change the fact that the world is warming, but it could mean climate models may be overstating the role of black carbon. Boston College chemistry professor Paul Davidovits, an expert on airborne particles, and Timothy B. Onasch, principal scientist at Aerodyne Research Inc. in Billerica and an associate research professor of chemistry at BC, aided in the study led by University of California, Davis with Prof. Christopher D. Cappa as lead author of the Science publication. Below is a condensed and edited version of an interview with Davidovits. Green Blog: What is black carbon and why is it so important to manmade climate change?

Figure 1, Boston College Chemistry Professor Paul Davidovits

Paul Davidovits: Some ways we produce black carbon particles include when we run gasoline-powered lawnmowers, drive cars or operate heavy machinery. Natural events, like forest fires, also produce black carbon. These are all examples of incomplete combustion processes that produce soot, which is largely black carbon. Once airborne, particles containing black carbon absorb light and heat the local atmosphere. These particles play an important role in climate change studies because they come largely from manmade sources, they live relatively short lifetimes in the atmosphere, and they possess strong atmospheric warming abilities. GB: How does black carbon absorb heat and do all black carbon absorb heat the same way? PD: The type of black carbon produced depends mostly on the fuel–to-oxygen ratio and to some extent also on the type of fuel. But the warming ability of black carbon is not highly sensitive to the source. Perhaps more importantly, black carbon particles during their lifetime are coated with airborne chemicals. The type of coating that accumulates on the particle is strongly dependent on local conditions and may affect its warming ability. GB: How was it measured in the past and what did your team do differently? PD: In the past, air samples were collected for several hours or even days on filters for analysis. Such a process did not allow the real-time measurement of the chemical and optical properties of airborne particles, which are central to understanding the way they absorb sunlight and heat the atmosphere. Our team used recently developed instruments that allowed us to directly measure the warming ability of airborne black carbon particles. Additionally, we were able to observe how the warming ability varied as chemicals in the atmosphere condensed onto black carbon particles. GB:What are the leading explanations for the difference between the warming expectations for black carbon and your field result? PD: Our observation of less absorption enhancement than predicted by modeling and previous laboratory studies is very likely due to the location of the black carbon component inside each individual particle. The standard models assume that the black carbon component is located in the core of the particle, with other chemical

components creating a shell, or even coating, around the black carbon core. Laboratory results for a few specific compounds appeared to support this assumption. However, previous modeling studies exist that look at the effects of the black carbon component being located off-center or even on the surface of each particle. These studies do indicate that less absorption enhancement is expected under these conditions than the core-shell configuration. We believe that this is what explains our observations. BG:How dramatically do these findings change warming scenarios in the future? PD: Future global climate change modeling studies will be necessary to determine the magnitude of our observations. At this time, and from our observations, the extent of the implications is not clear. But these findings do require us to reduce our projections about the amount of heating soot produces, at least under some experimental conditions. But the findings don’t point to soot as being harmless in climate change. Soot remains an important climate heating agent, as well as a health problem that has been well documented. BG: What questions do you still want to answer on black carbon and what will you research next? PD: One the most important questions that comes directly from our field observations is what type of coating material or atmospheric conditions yield the low absorption enhancements? We are currently conducting laboratory studies of black carbon containing particles with various coating materials to investigate this issue. In addition, we plan on making similar measurements in other parts of the world, focusing on the measurement of black carbon particles that are emitted into the atmosphere by other combustion sources, in addition to the urban environments in northern-southern CA sampled in this study.

Aug. 30, 2012

Looking at Klee from Another Perspective BC museum puts his art in context with philosophy By Nancy Shohet West | Globe Staff Boston College’s McMullen Museum of Art is presenting an exclusive look at the work of artist Paul Klee that is different from previous shows of the same artist, according to lead curator John Sallis, because of its “focus on the relationship between Klee’s art and his philosophy.” The exhibition, titled “Paul Klee: Philosophical Vision; From Nature to Art,” opens Saturday at the museum, on the college’s middle campus at 140 Commonwealth Ave. in Chestnut Hill. “When I began planning this exhibition, I traveled to Bern, Switzerland, to visit the Zentrum Paul Klee,’’ said Sallis, who is also a philosophy professor at BC. “In discussing my ideas with scholars there, I discovered that an exhibition focusing on the philosophical aspects of Klee’s work had never been done.” Klee, who lived from 1879 to 1940, was known for his focus on nature and philosophy and his intense interest in the influences of the natural world. European philosophers who reciprocally engaged with Klee’s works included Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Martin Heidegger, Michel Foucault, and Walter Benjamin. According to Sallis, the McMullen exhibition features more than 65 works, some of which have never been on display in the United States before. “The goal that I had in mind in planning the exhibition and proposing it was to explore the philosophical dimension of Klee’s work,” Sallis said. “I’m a philosopher and have long studied the links between philosophy and art. In actually curating the exhibition, what I discovered is just how profound the connection is between Klee as a thinker — he wrote extensively about his ideas — and Klee as an artist. His philosophical ideas inform his paintings. “At the same time, what I found is that his art serves as a way in which he develops and extends his ideas. Some of the ideas that are important for the exhibition are his ideas about nature, his ideas about the imaginary, his ideas about space, time, movement. Also the relation between visual arts and music — he was a professional musician also — and his ideas about politics,” he said. On display through Dec. 9, the exhibition’s watercolors, drawings, etchings, illustrations, and oil paintings demonstrate how Klee expressed the same theories about nature, words, and music that he initially developed in his writings and lectures through form, line, and color.

Detail from Paul Klee's 1937 "Printed Sheet with Pictures." among his works in a new exhibition at Boston College's McMullen Museum. The McMullen Museum’s director, Nancy Netzer, credits Sallis for organizing a display that is, in her words, “a dazzler.” “We are pleased to have been able to capture the new research being undertaken by scholars around the world on Klee’s role in the world of philosophy,” said Netzer, an art history professor at BC. “Additionally, we are pleased to be bringing together for the first time many works by Klee from the Zentrum Paul Klee in Bern with those in American collections.” An opening reception and special viewing of the Klee show is scheduled for Sunday from 7 to 9:30 p.m. In conjunction with the exhibition, an international conference on Klee with particular attention to his philosophical writings is scheduled for Oct. 17–19, and a concert titled “Klee as Music” will take place on Oct. 18 from 5 to 7 p.m. in Room 100 of Gasson Hall. The McMullen Museum, on the first floor of Devlin Hall, is open Monday through Friday, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., and Saturday and Sunday, noon to 5 p.m., with free admission. Docent-led tours will take place from 2 to 2:45 p.m. every Sunday during the exhibition.

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Top 10 New Ivies 2013 August 30, 2012 In one of our favorite categories in the 2013 Unigo College Rankings, today's list features colleges whose students couldn't be more proud of their alma mater. The Top 10 Schools That Are the Next Generation of Excellence 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

NYU Georgetown University Wesleyan University Emory University UCLA University of Michigan

7. Boston College The city of Boston is home to a slew of famous and revered educational institutions, and on the eve of its 150th anniversary, Boston College is making sure it has a place at the table with schools like Harvard and Boston College MIT. While the college is known for its substantial workload and comprehensive core curriculum, students say that a BC education, while demanding, is more varied than it gets credit for, with both lecturers who energize their charges even in a class of 300 and professors who give out their cell phone numbers so students can reach them twenty-four seven. In 2007, BC debuted the “Master Plan,� a decade-long, 1.6 billion dollar project to revamp the campus and bolster the faculty line-up. The idea took some time getting through the city's approval process, but finally picked up steam in 2009. In the coming years, the school will add several new academic buildings, a recreation center, hundreds of spots for student housing, and even refurbish the campus green. With its commitment to academic rigor, a far-reaching improvement plan, and one of the largest endowments in the country, Boston College is ready to cement its place among the big boys of academia. 8. Macalester College 9. Swarthmore 10. Pomona College

The Ridiculous Rise of Ayn Rand August 19, 2012, 12:10 pm By Alan Wolfe When the literary editor of The New Republic asked me to review two new books on Ayn Rand three years ago, I readily agreed. Rand, the Russian-born writer known for her take-no-prisoners defense of capitalism, was beginning to come back into vogue among conservatives, and I recalled hearing that there was a congressman from Wisconsin who was singing her praises and assigning her writings to his staff. I had had my own flirtation with Rand, when I was 18, and although it lasted less than a year, I could never forget a college classmate who kept extensive index cards ready so that he could quote her whenever he deemed the situation appropriate. The two books were interesting, indeed fascinating. One, Goddess of the Market: Ayn Rand and the American Right, was written by Jennifer Burns, a historian at Stanford University. The other, Ayn Rand and the World She Made, came from the journalist Anne C. Heller. As good as the books were, however, I felt that to do justice to the essay, I would have to reread Rand’s own novels. That proved to be too much. One of the best things I have done for American politics in recent years was to turn down the review assignment. It went instead to Jonathan Chait, now at New York magazine, and I consider his masterly essay to be one of the outstanding pieces of political journalism of the past decade. With Paul Ryan’s selection as vice-presidential candidate on the 2012 Republican ticket, Rand is back in the news. Chait continues to write about her. Burns came out with two essays about her contemporary relevance, one in The New York Times, the other in The New Republic. We now know that Ryan tempered his enthusiasm for Rand when he realized that her atheism might prove problematic for members of his party. It has become clear that Rand was pro-choice and, like any hater of government properly ought to be, a civil libertarian. She would be disgusted by the Republican Party’s spending on defense (let alone Ryan’s support, during the George W. Bush years, for the Medicare Part D prescription benefit and TARP). Yet as much as I like it when intellectuals receive attention, I still find myself uninterested in Ayn Rand. I do not care what she would have thought of the current scene. That those who invoke her name treat her selectively is of almost no significance to me. I have the sense, moreover, that I am not alone, at least among those in the academic world. Despite a flutter of interest, she has been mostly ignored. Rand wrote novels that are highly unlikely to be read and taught in departments of English. Her subject was the market, but no academic economists take her seriously, unless, of course, wealthy libertarians offer funds for that purpose. She considered herself an Aristotelian, but it is impossible to imagine departments of philosophy and political science adding her to the canon. For those under Rand’s spell, all this is just more evidence of academe’s irrelevance. For me it demonstrates that, for all the attacks directed against it, American academic life still has standards. I will be teaching a course next semester called “Liberalism and Conservatism.” John Stuart Mill and Edmund Burke will be on the reading list. So will libertarians such as Friedrich von Hayek and the founder of the National Review, William F. Buckley Jr. Contemporary liberals such as E.J. Dionne will be there. But not Rand. My reasons for excluding her may be the same reasons that other academics ignore her.

Rand’s “thought,” such as it is, boils down to two propositions. One is that selfishness is the highest of moral virtues. The other is that the masses, above all resentful of success, are parasites living off the hard work of capitalists far superior to them in every way. Self-interest is a useful concept, while selfishness is not. That, I believe, helps explain why Adam Smith is a firstrate thinker and Ayn Rand is an amateur. Self-interest makes altruism possible: I can decide to help others, even if in doing so I may be set back financially, because other gains to my self-esteem are important to me. Self-interest requires a nuanced psychology, which is why economists now find themselves investigating all kinds of human behavior and are increasingly interested in how the mind works. Selfishness, by contrast, is not psychologically interesting; Rand’s understanding of human behavior has no room for the complex, the unexpected, or the paradoxical. It is one thing to say, as she frequently did, that altruism is evil; that is a normative position with which one might agree or, I hope, disagree. But to claim that altruism is impossible, an empirical question, is another matter entirely. Any social science, including economics, must be based on a realistic psychology. Rand does not offer one. As for the masses, serious thinkers have shared Rand’s concern about their impact on society: de Tocqueville spoke of the tyranny of the majority and Ortega y Gasset of their “revolt.” There was a time when the concept of mass society was taken seriously in academic sociology: Daniel Bell wrote an essay about it, C. Wright Mills a chapter, and William Kornhauser a book. But while we continue to discuss mass media and mass culture, we have also learned, as Mills tried to teach us, that elites have flaws of their own. A theory of society that attributes virtues to one group and vices to another cannot pass the realism test: Rand’s “inverted” Marxism, as Chait calls it, is as myopic as its opposite. Right-wing think tanks can have Rand (even if she had little use for them). In the academy, she is a nonperson. Her theories are works of fiction. Her works of fiction are theories, and bad ones at that. Should the Republicans actually win in 2012, we might need to study her in the academic world. It would be for the same reason we sometimes need to study creationism. Alan Wolfe is director of the Boisi Center for Religion and American Public Life and a professor of political science at Boston College.

Business Aug 7, 2012

BC student’s site taps Amazon sales to help charities By Laura Finaldi | Globe Staff Growing up, Dan Sipple learned the importance of charities. His father ran a safe home for boys, and the younger Sipple often met them. But he also saw the stress running an organization put on his father — dealing with funding cuts, for example. There must be a better way for nonprofits to raise money, he thought. Now 19, Sipple, thinks he has come up with one. Last November, while a freshman at Boston College, he launched Buy For Us , a program that gives about 5 percent of a customer’s purchase price on Amazon.com, and some other sites it owns, to a charity.

Staff at the Children’s Museum in Dover, N.H., helped youngsters and parents create sculptures from cardboard tubes.

At Boston College, Sipple is studying economics and computer science. The website, he said, is a way for him to blend together his two loves: technology and doing good.

“I gained a kind of altruistic view of the world,” he said. “I kind of always wanted to help people through computers and technology.” Sipple said Buy for Us operates as part of Amazon Associates, a program where companies collect a portion of any sales they steer to the online seller through a link on their own websites. The money Buy For Us gets from directing customers to Amazon is then donated to a charity of the buyer’s choosing. Buy For Us keeps a small percentage of its Amazon revenue to pay for administrative costs. A spokesman for Amazon would not disclose whether others among its Amazon Associates have a charitable component like Buy For Us. The website’s start is still modest — it has raised about $600 for charities since November. A push in the past month earned most of this money. “I was hoping for a little more, but we’d never done anything like this before,” Sipple said. “It’s a new thing, I guess anything really counts.” Still, it’s a good example of how a company uses an existing system, such as the Amazon Associates program, in a new and different way, said Craig Bida, executive vice president of cause branding and nonprofit marketing at Cone Communications. “The message to people everywhere is that social impact can come in many forms and there are a lot of models that are already existing in our environment that can be tapped for good,” Bida said.

Plus, a charitable cause is good for business. BiddingForGood, which helps schools and nonprofits raise money through online auctions, found in a survey of 2,049 people last year that 94 percent of customers said they were more inclined to shop with a company that supports charities. And 67 percent of the respondents said their biggest reason for using BiddingForGood was its dedication to supporting causes consumers care about. So far most of the 10 charities in Buy For Us’s stable are based in New Hampshire (that’s where Sipple is from), including the Malley Farm Boys Home, the safe home in Somersworth, N.H., that Sipple’s father, Mark, runs. Qualified charities or their supporters can enlist in the program right on Buy For Us’s Web page, clicking the “add a cause” tab. Another charity the site supports is the Children’s Museum of New Hampshire , located in Sipple’s hometown of Dover. The museum’s executive director, Justine Roberts, said the “broad participation at a very low level” model Buy For Us adopted is something she is seeing more of, not just in the nonprofit fund-raising sector, but in businesses in general. “We’re talking about very small amounts at any one time that add up. But we’re also talking about building relationships,” she said. “I think this is going to stick whether it translates or can ever replace large corporate gifts — which I doubt — but I think it’s an important supplement and it’s where the trend is.” Buy For Us also is helping A Leg To Stand On Inc., a New York City foundation that gives rehabilitation services as well Dan Sipple, 19, created a website that helps nonprofits like the as prosthetic limbs and surgery to children with limb Children’s Museum of New Hampshire. impairments at a cost of about $250 per child. Executive director Gabriella Mueller said A Leg To Stand On has an affiliation with iGive, a company similar to Buy for Us, but that Sipple’s company stands out because the donation rate is generous compared to many others. A Leg To Stand On hasn’t raised a lot of money through either site, but Mueller said it’s still a good way for her charity to get its name out there. Sipple has developed an offshoot that operates on the same principle as Buy For Us. The project, called Textbooks For Life , helps college students search for textbooks on Amazon, with about 5 percent of the sales price going to a single group called “charity: water,’’ a nonprofit that builds wells and thereby creates sustainable jobs in communities that lack adequate water supplies. “The cost of textbooks can financially hurt college students, [but this way] they can potentially get behind something and it wouldn’t hurt as much,” Sipple said.

Names Aug 3, 2012

Oprah surprises students in visit to BC

Daytime diva Oprah Winfrey made a surprise appearance Thursday at Boston College, where she met with seven young women from South Africa — members of the first graduating class of the Oprah Winfrey Leadership Academy for Girls. The girls are currently studying at BC as part of a summer enrichment experience. (BC is the only US college or university that offers such a program for OWLAG grads.) Oprah created the academy in 2007 to provide a supportive educational environment for disadvantaged South African girls in grades 8 through 12.

Shopping and Activism Can Go Together Juliet Schor is a professor of sociology at Boston College and the author of "True Wealth: How and Why Millions of Americans Are Creating a Time-Rich, Ecologically Light, Small-Scale, HighSatisfaction Economy." July 30, 2012 By Juliet Schor Based on the evidence, neither of these positions — that green spending yields significant environmental results or that it “distracts” from them by assuaging people’s feelings — captures the relationship between buying patterns, activism and environmental degradation. The trouble is that there just are not enough of either: the conscious consumer or the civically engaged. The first position is folk wisdom, but it’s naïve and historically uninformed. Major changes, like the transition from a polluting energy source to a clean one or a shift away from toxic chemicals, don’t automatically flow from the market. They are the result of pressure from advocacy groups, experts, some segments of business and other constituencies. Consumer dollars play a role when businesses need to be convinced that there’s a market for new products or when there are enough “green” businesses to push for new regulations. But they almost never drive policy or legislation in the straightforward way suggested by the metaphor of “voting with our dollars.” The distraction position, while popular among some social scientists, is unsupported by the data. A study I conducted with my colleague Margaret Willis, which will be published soon in the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, found the reverse: people who buy green are more likely to be politically active, whether they’re engaging in standard political behaviors like contacting members of Congress or writing letters to the editor, or informal activities like e-mailing friends and family about issues. We used a nationally representative sample of Americans as well as our own online survey of 1,800 “conscious consumers.” Among the latter we found high levels of activism. This is also a finding reproduced in European surveys. About half of our respondents got into conscious consuming at roughly the same time they became politically active. About a quarter transformed their buying patterns and then became active. In my view, the pathway to activism does run through retail. This is less because buying power on its own moves regulation and legislation, and more because today’s activists feel the need to “be the change” they want to see. That having been said, activism is a relatively scarce commodity these days. According to the latest findings from the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication, only 10 to 20 percent of the population is active in any way on the issue of climate change. That number will have to rise to get any real solutions, whatever is happening at the mall.

Boston College student-made app offers tour of Dublin through James Joyce characters By Associated Press, Published: June 14 AP BOSTON — Combining classic fiction with modern technology, Boston College students created a new app that takes users on an interactive walking tour of Dublin through the eyes of James Joyce characters in his stream-ofconsciousness masterwork “Ulysses.” Dubbed “JoyceWays,” the app grew out of a class project that students of English Literature professor and Ireland native Joe Nugent started in 2009. University officials expect the app to launch on iTunes this weekend. The app website says it will sell for 2.99 in Euros, which would be about $3.75. Nugent said the app uses Joyce’s masterpiece as a window into the tastes, smells and sounds of Dublin at the turn of the century. It takes users along the route of the book’s characters, as well as past locations from Joyce’s book “Dubliners.” “It’s all about being on the ground and trying to invent the experience of 1904,” Nugent said Thursday in a phone interview from Dublin, where he and a Boston College contingent introduced the app at the James Joyce Centre, a museum devoted to the Irish writer’s work. Published in 1922, “Ulysses” traces one day of protagonist Leopold Bloom’s wanderings around Dublin in the stream-of-consciousness manner that Nugent said lets readers inside the head of a character dealing with a child’s death, a father’s suicide and a wife’s affair. The book’s treatment of religion, masturbation and adultery led to it being banned in the United States and Ireland for years after its publication. In 1998, a panel of scholars and writers on the editorial board of Modern Library, a Random House division, named the book the best English-language novel of the century. Nugent said he hopes the app comes out Saturday, the same date as the setting for “Ulysses” in 1904, when Joyce fans celebrate “Bloomsday.” Since Bloom was an ad salesman, the app uses ads from the period that student researchers culled from archives, along with historic city photos. Besides maps, the app also has photos and videos from students, plus narration from BBC broadcaster Frank Delaney. Nugent said the app’s routes go to some sights tourists are likely to visit anyway. It takes users along the River Liffey, as well as to the National Library of Ireland, the National Museum of Ireland, the General Post Office, and Dublin Castle. It also includes stops at pubs that Joyce characters visited. “Even if you’ve never read Joyce ... you go past locations you can appreciate,” said Louis Fantini, 19, a research assistant for Nugent who was among the group in Dublin on Thursday. Logan Macomber, 22, another member of the group, called the app “incredibly helpful in getting people into a text that might be daunting.” Macomber, a Boston College graduate, did photography for it. The professor compared the app design project to writing a book. The university provided a grant, a Kickstarter.com campaign raised $16,000, and Nugent also invested in the project, he said.

Boston College student-made app offers tour of Dublin through James Joyce characters By Associated Press, Published: June 14 AP BOSTON — Combining classic fiction with modern technology, Boston College students created a new app that takes users on an interactive walking tour of Dublin through the eyes of James Joyce characters in his stream-ofconsciousness masterwork “Ulysses.” Dubbed “JoyceWays,” the app grew out of a class project that students of English Literature professor and Ireland native Joe Nugent started in 2009. University officials expect the app to launch on iTunes this weekend. The app website says it will sell for 2.99 in Euros, which would be about $3.75. Nugent said the app uses Joyce’s masterpiece as a window into the tastes, smells and sounds of Dublin at the turn of the century. It takes users along the route of the book’s characters, as well as past locations from Joyce’s book “Dubliners.” “It’s all about being on the ground and trying to invent the experience of 1904,” Nugent said Thursday in a phone interview from Dublin, where he and a Boston College contingent introduced the app at the James Joyce Centre, a museum devoted to the Irish writer’s work. Published in 1922, “Ulysses” traces one day of protagonist Leopold Bloom’s wanderings around Dublin in the stream-of-consciousness manner that Nugent said lets readers inside the head of a character dealing with a child’s death, a father’s suicide and a wife’s affair. The book’s treatment of religion, masturbation and adultery led to it being banned in the United States and Ireland for years after its publication. In 1998, a panel of scholars and writers on the editorial board of Modern Library, a Random House division, named the book the best English-language novel of the century. Nugent said he hopes the app comes out Saturday, the same date as the setting for “Ulysses” in 1904, when Joyce fans celebrate “Bloomsday.” Since Bloom was an ad salesman, the app uses ads from the period that student researchers culled from archives, along with historic city photos. Besides maps, the app also has photos and videos from students, plus narration from BBC broadcaster Frank Delaney. Nugent said the app’s routes go to some sights tourists are likely to visit anyway. It takes users along the River Liffey, as well as to the National Library of Ireland, the National Museum of Ireland, the General Post Office, and Dublin Castle. It also includes stops at pubs that Joyce characters visited. “Even if you’ve never read Joyce ... you go past locations you can appreciate,” said Louis Fantini, 19, a research assistant for Nugent who was among the group in Dublin on Thursday. Logan Macomber, 22, another member of the group, called the app “incredibly helpful in getting people into a text that might be daunting.” Macomber, a Boston College graduate, did photography for it. The professor compared the app design project to writing a book. The university provided a grant, a Kickstarter.com campaign raised $16,000, and Nugent also invested in the project, he said.

BC Grads: Solving The World’s Water Crisis With A Beetle? June 14, 2012 12:00 PM

BOSTON (CBS) – A couple of Boston College graduates are banking on a beetle to help solve the world’s clean water crisis. The World Water Council estimates about 1.1 billion people lack access to safe drinking water worldwide. Deckard Sorensen and Miguel Galvez are hoping to help change that through their start-up company NBD Nanotechnologies. They already won the $10,000 grand prize from the Boston College Venture Competition, which is going toward developing their prototype. Now, NBD has been picked as one of 125 finalists in this year’s MassChallenge, a competition that awards promising entrepreneurs world-class mentorship, free office space, access to funding, media and more. The competition’s finalists participate in a 3 month accelerator, and the top 10-20 startups split $1,000,000 in cash awards. Material made to mimic a Namib Desert Beetle holds droplets of water. (Photo Courtesy: NBD Nanotechnologies) NBD’s design for a water collecting device is based on the Namib Desert Beetle, which manages to survive in one of the hottest, driest, and most uninhabitable places on the planet. The bug uses its back to extract its water supply from morning fogs. Wind pushes the moisture into the peaks of the beetle’s back until enough condensation builds up to form droplets of water. Galvez credits Sorensen with coming up with an idea while taking a Biomimicry course. “His final paper was about the Namib Desert Beetle, and thus, the idea was born,” Galvez said. Galvez and Sorensen turned to Andy McTeague, a chemist who’s currently enrolled in MIT’s graduate program, to recreate the chemical properties of the beetle’s back. Using nanotechnology, McTeague built a material that’s being incorporated into the prototype, which is designed to optimize collection of condensation. “By engineering designs that support condensation we have the ability to be a sustainable method of harvesting drinking water from the atmosphere,” Galvez tells CBS Boston. Sill in its early stages, NBD Water is currently focused on creating a small-scale product. But given the success they have seen so far, these three scientists won’t rule out big plans for the future. “We believe we can create a scalable design that could prove valuable for a number of applications,” Galvez said.