Monday, September 10, 2007

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The Brown Daily Herald M onday, S eptember 10, 2007

Volume CXLII, No. 64

Simmons condemns proposed Israeli academia boycott By Debbie Lehmann Senior Staf f Writer

A boycott of Israeli universities and professors proposed by Britain’s University and College Union in May has since been “virtually a daily issue” for President Ruth Simmons, who recently wrote a letter to the UCU condemning the boycott. Simmons told The Herald that she is assessing other opportunities to make her views known and promote dialogue on campus. The UCU, an academic professional association in the United Kingdom, will hold a series of debates on a motion passed May 30 that calls for a boycott of Israeli academia in response to Israel’s occupation of Palestinian land in the Middle East. The resolution deplores “the denial of educational rights for Palestinians” and says Israel has “seriously damaged the fabric of Palestinian society.” It goes on to condemn the “complicity of Israeli academia in the occupation” and calls on members of the UCU to consider the moral implications of connections with Israeli universities. The proposal yielded a strong response from presidents of American universities. In early August, presidents of 286 universities, including Cornell and Princeton universities and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, signed a full-page advertisement in the New York Times declaring, “Boycott Israeli Universities? Boycott Ours Too!” The ad featured a statement by Columbia University President Lee Bollinger, who called the boycott “utterly antithetical to the fundamental values of the academy.”

c o ll e g e hill kicks o ff

Simmons did not sign the petition, choosing instead to write a personal letter to UCU Joint Secretar y General Sally Hunt condemning the boycott. In her letter, posted on her Web site, Simmons expressed her support for Israeli universities and wrote that supporting such a boycott “is not an option for people who are dedicated to the core principles of the academy.” Simmons told The Herald she would never sign an advertisement as the president of Brown without first consulting with others. Even though there was “immediate and intense dialogue” over the summer about what action to take, she said, she ultimately decided to do something distinctive that would have a larger impact. “I’m weary of one-shot efforts for profound issues,” Simmons said. “It’s tempting to sign things like this and walk away.” Simmons added that she thought the advertisement did not express fully why the boycott was inappropriate, and she stressed the need for a “salient and more prolonged” argument. Many in academia will be tempted to view this issue as a political one, Simmons said, adding that political discourse “belongs in the political world.” “Fundamentally, this is something that is an attack on what universities are and what universities do,” Simmons said. “You have to explain to people why this is so inimical to what freedom of speech and scholarship is all about.” It is a “dangerous step,” Simmons added, to single out students and scholars from any one group

Chris Bennett / Herald

Student band Mister Tamel performs during Saturday night’s College Hill Kickoff on Wriston Quadrangle.

Internationalization takes shape in report By Michael Skocpol Senior Staff Writer

Aiming to establish Brown among the world’s top universities, a report released today calls for the University to invest significantly over the next several years in a spate of new initiatives designed to highlight its international strengths. The wide-ranging repor t of Brown’s Internationalization Committee provides guidance for plans to raise Brown’s global profile, highlighting potential projects ranging from a new global health institute to an expansion of the University’s existing International Writers Program, which provides a haven for persecuted writers from around the world.

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The report represents the first major step in the larger internationalization effort that President Ruth Simmons put at the top of the University’s agenda last fall. Likely to guide University policy for the next several years, internationalization will shape everything from faculty hires to new academic partnerships. “The best universities in the United States in the future are going to be judged in good part by their standing not simply in this country, but in the world,” Provost David Kertzer ’69 P’95 P’98 wrote in a campus-wide e-mail sent today announcing the report’s release. “This means having a world-class faculty and the world-renowned graduate programs and research that go with them, as well as a world-class under-

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graduate program. Brown must be one of the major meeting-grounds of the world’s greatest scholars and intellectuals.” The 21-page report represents the conclusions of the Internationalization Committee created in October 2006 and chaired by Kertzer. Charged with investigating ways Brown could improve the international quality of its education and become a more significant player in global higher education, the committee stopped short of prioritizing its proposals or presenting a detailed blueprint for executing its goals. That task will fall to a new vice president for international affairs, whom University Hall officials expect to continued on page 6

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John Hay Library now open for longer hours The John Hay Library will have extended hours starting today, thanks to a gift from Richard Gilbane. For the rest of the semester — and possibly the rest of the year — the library will remain open an extra hour, until 6 p.m. on weekdays. The library, which has traditionally been closed on the weekends, will now also be open on Sundays from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. This semester will be a trial run for the extended hours to gauge student and community interest, according to Brent Lang, a Brown library communications and marketing specialist. “To say we need this might be a stretch,” Lang said. “But it’s enhancing and improving library services and access to special collections.” Lang added that the extended hours may allow more people in the community who work during the week to visit the library on Sundays. The John Hay Library, which housed the University’s entire library collection from 1910 until the Rockefeller Library opened in 1964,

Since 1866, Daily Since 1891

Admission officers poke around Facebook By Rachel Arndt Senior Staff Writer

Chris Bennett / Herald

The John Hay Library is now open for an extra hour on weekdays.

now features a variety of special collections, including the University archives, the world’s largest repository of military and naval uniforms and over 60,000 comic books, graphic novels, comic art and related materials dating from the mid-1970s to

SEA OF TREES Japanese installation artist Yumi Kori uses light and sound to turn the Bell gallery into a peaceful space.

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the present. The library is named for John Hay 1858, a personal secretary to Abraham Lincoln and, later, secretary of state under William McKinley and Theodore Roosevelt. — Debbie Lehmann THE VIDEO EXPERIENCE At a new RISD exhibit, modern music videos and avant-garde silent film are combined to good effect.

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195 Angell Street, Providence, Rhode Island

This fall, Brown hopefuls might want to consider a new potential aspect of the application process: their profiles on Facebook. Though they deny doing so on a regular basis, University admission officers sometimes follow up on anonymous tips to examine applicants’ profiles. These days, Facebook is no longer a place just for students — as its Web site states, “All that’s needed to join Facebook is a valid email address.” There are currently 39 million active members on the social networking site. “We don’t use Facebook unless someone says there’s something we should look at,” said Dean of Admission James Miller ’73. But Miller conceded that admission officers take outside tips seriously. “Anything we get, we follow up on,” he said. R.I.P., PINK SLIPS Maha Atal ‘08 mourns the passing of the University’s old pink-and-white add/ drop forms.

Associate Director of College Admission Elisha Anderson ’98 agreed with Miller. There is a “limit to what we can appropriately judge people on,” he said, but added, “You have to remember (Facebook) is a public place.” He said there was “maybe one case” in which Facebook yielded information that affected an admission decision. Sometimes admission officers receive friend requests on Facebook from applicants, Anderson said, noting that accepting the requests “would appear weird.” At least one admission officer at Brown questioned even caseby-case visits to Facebook profiles when evaluating applications. “I don’t think that’s a fair practice,” said Victor Ning ’07, a Brown admission officer who said he looks only at the materials the students send to the office. Though he said

12 SPORTS

continued on page 7 M. soccer sweeps The m. soccer team beat No. 5 Santa Clara and Fordham to win the AdidasBrown Classic

News tips: herald@browndailyherald.com


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