F R I D A Y MARCH 5, 2004
THE BROWN DAILY HERALD Volume CXXXIX, No. 26
An independent newspaper serving the Brown community since 1891
www.browndailyherald.com
Chinese dissident arrives in Providence
Conference to advocate “middle path” in Israeli-Palestinian debate
BY DANIELLE CERNY
small, smooth and lovable, Painter said. Burke conceived of beautiful women as white, of the upper class, weak and delicate, she said. “Black people did not fall under ‘darkness’ in the sublime. To Burke, black people were a sight of horror and uneasiness, and therefore not sublime,” Painter said. Kant was the first philosopher to introduce race, as we interpret the word today, into the concept of the beautiful and sublime, Painter said. “In the writings on Kant today, this disappears. His views of race are not known about by many scholars,” Painter said. Kant praised the noble white form, blonde hair and blue eyes, Painter said. “He thought that black people were vain in their own way and so talkative that they must be driven apart by thrashing,” Painter said. Kant effectively set up racial lines that flourished into the 19th and 20th centuries, Painter said. Kant deprecated the image of the strong woman, Painter said. “He thought that laborious learning destroyed a woman’s beautiful merits. He wrote that women are disgusting when they go unchaste,” she said. Painter cited Thomas Jefferson’s 1787 “Notes on the State of Virginia” as another source of discussion on race and sex in the context of the beautiful and the
This weekend, Brown is hosting the national student conference of the organization Tikkun, a progressive Jewish group committed to working toward peace in the Middle East through the creation of a Palestinian state side-by-side with Israel. Speakers at the conference will include Princeton University Professor of Religion and Tikkun Co-Chair Cornel West; Medea Benjamin, founder of the human rights group Global Exchange; and Jewish Renewal Rabbi Michael Lerner, founder of the Tikkun Community and Tikkun Magazine. The conference, which organizers said will bring in about 100 students from other universities, will also host workshops on topics such as Arab-Jewish relations on college campuses and Kabbalah, Jewish mysticism. While attending Tikkun’s national conference last summer in Washington, D.C., Michaella Matt ’06, president of Brown’s Tikkun chapter, said she met Lerner, who asked her if Brown would be interested in hosting Tikkun’s next national student conference. “What impressed me about the group I met from Brown was the intellectual maturity and sophistication of the people that I’ve had contact with,” Lerner told The Herald. “The reason to have (the national student conference) at Brown is because Brown has become famous as a place that encourages open thinking about issues that are usually dominated by cliches and rigid thinking.” Tikkun’s message of a Jewish spirituality fundamentally connected to progressive politics is a perfect fit for Brown, Matt said. Before Brown’s Tikkun chapter formed, the Israeli-Palestinian debate on campus was dominated by Jewish groups, such as Brown Students for Israel, that “defend Israel no matter what it does,” and the International Socialist Organization, which “pretty much denies the right of Israel to exist,” Matt said. “Tikkun started out as a group for people who cared about Israeli security but who wanted to openly and harshly criticize Israel,” she said. What Matt describes as Tikkun’s “harsh” criticism of Israel has been divisive in the American Jewish community, as has Lerner, whose name, when entered into Google, pulls up dozens of accusations of “self-hating Jew.” In the past year, Tikkun has argued that the wall currently being constructed by Israel’s right-wing Likud government to separate Israel from Palestinian territories will be a barrier to peace. The group also has supported the Geneva Accords, an alternate peace plan drafted in December 2003 by Israeli and Palestinian opposition leaders. The Accords call for the creation of a Palestinian state and the withdrawal of Israeli to its pre-1967 borders. Tikkun also mobilized against the war in
see PAINTER, page 4
see TIKKUN, page 4
BY DANA GOLDSTEIN
Wang Youcai, a Chinese dissident who fought for democracy in China, was released on medical parole from a Chinese prison early Thursday morning and arrived at T.F. Green airport that same night. Wang helped lead the 1989 Tiananmen Square student demonstrations, which resulted in a military crackdown that left hundreds dead, and served one year in prison on charges related to this incident. He was then sentenced to 11 years in prison in 1998 for his involvement in the founding of the China Democracy Party, according to CNN. Wang is the third prisoner released by Beijing this week after heavy lobbying in Washington, D.C., where the U.S. House of Representatives Wednesday urged President George W. Bush to respond more forcibly to China’s poor human rights record. Wang was among the U.S.
Nick Neely / Herald
Sitting on the floor of the Thomas J.Watson Institute for International Studies, monks from the Tashilhunpo monastery in southern India labor to create a finely detailed sand mandala. After two days of labor, the monks will destroy the creation, collect the sand and scatter the grains in the Providence River.They began assembling the design Thursday morning, and they will perform the dismantling ritual at 4 p.m. today in the lobby of the Watson Institute.
see WANG YOUCAI, page 4
Race and gender transform concepts of beautiful, sublime, scholar says in speech Thursday BY KATE GORMAN
An interest in race and gender issues demands engagement in traditional Western thought, said Nell Painter, Edwards Professor of American History at Princeton University, in a Wednesday night lecture in Smith-Buonanno 106. Titled “Where are Race and Sex in the ‘Beautiful and Sublime?’” Painter’s lecture addressed changing ideas about beauty and the sublime throughout history. “Race and sex are rarely present in traditional Western discussions of the beautiful and the sublime. When they
Judy He / Herald
Nell Painter spoke about race, gender and aesthetics in a lecture Wednesday night.
are, it’s in an insulting way,” Painter told an audience of about 50 people. Philosophers of the 18th century such as Immanuel Kant, Edmund Burke and Johann Joachim Winckelmann wrote extensively on beauty and the sublime, and their theories have influenced 21stcentury perspectives of these concepts, Painter said. “Winkelmann described beauty as something that is not passionate — to him, it was a non-sexual aesthetic,” Painter said. As a German art historian, Winckelmann drew from the ideal of the Greek statue when describing beauty. “Winckelmann interpreted beauty as mathematically proportionate and bleached white like the marble. This was seen as the human ideal well into the 1920s,” she said. This ideal was so elemental that in Miss America pageants of the 1920s, contestants’ measurements were taken and the woman whose proportions were closest to the Greek standard won, Painter said. “Winkelmann’s description of beauty still endures today. Art students still work from plaster casts on white statues,” she said. Burke was fascinated by beauty but wrote loosely about the sublime, commenting briefly on blackness in his work, Painter said. For Burke, the sublime is elevated over beauty: the sublime is associated with males, justice, wisdom, power and darkness, whereas beauty is
I N S I D E F R I D AY, M A RC H 5 , 2 0 0 4 John Hay Library exhibits military collection of Anne Brown arts & culture, page 3
Festival brings French film into focus for Brown students arts & culture, page 3
TO D AY ’ S F O R E C A S T Maximilian Silvestri ’05 says safety first, even at the expense of good fashion column, page 7
Christianity sells at American box offices, writes Jonathan Liu ’07 column, page 7
Jayne Finst ’04 is Athlete of the Week after performance at Ivy competition sports, page 8
showers high 47 low 44