The Brown Daily Herald Wednesday, A pril 23, 2008
Volume CXLIII, No. 57
Since 1866, Daily Since 1891
Despite protest, Friedman delivers green message Morales tells of Bolivian boyhood
By Chaz Firestone Features Editor
The green revolution sweeping across the globe seems more like a “green party” to columnist, author and Pulitzer Prize winner Thomas Friedman, who spoke to a captivated Salomon 101 audience Tuesday night about the causes of and solutions to global climate change. “Have you ever been to a revolution where no one got hurt?” But the revolution may be coming faster than Friedman thinks. In addition to the 600 audience members and two standing ovations that greeted him last night, a female student sitting in the front row jumped on stage and hurled a bright green pie at Friedman’s face as he began his speech, covering him in a sweet paste before she dashed out of the auditorium with a male accomplice in tow and a police officer close behind. Though initially startled, Friedman took the attack in stride, tasting the pie and leaving the room to wash up before quickly returning to deliver his lecture, titled “Hot, Flat and Crowded” after his upcoming book. He divided the lecture into sections that mirrored the book’s chapters. In chapters one and two, the New York Times columnist declared this past year the beginning of a new era, marked by a convergence of “individual flames that have come together into a fire.” “It’s a perfect storm between global warming, what I call ‘global flattening’ ... and global population growth,” said Friedman, whose book “The World is Flat” is an analysis of globalization. “We’ve gone from B.C.E. to C.E. to E.C.E. — the energy-climate era.”
By Juliana Friend Contributing Writer
Min Wu / Herald
The student who threw a pie at New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman was held in the Salomon Center lobby for a short while, flanked by police, media relations officials and Assistant to the President Marisa Quinn.
Times columnist pied in face by activist Male accomplice threw political pamphlets By Chaz Firestone Features Editor
A female audience member ran on stage last night and threw a green pie at New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, who had just begun a lecture on environmentalism in Salomon 101. The woman had been sitting in the south side of the auditorium’s front row when she pulled the pie out of a Brown Bookstore plastic bag that had been tucked in a red backpack and leapt out of her seat. At the same time the woman
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threw the pie, a male accomplice seated a few rows back ran down the aisle and onto the stage, throwing small pamphlets explaining the actions into the crowd. After the pie hit Friedman and splattered on his face and torso, the two jumped offstage and ran out of the southeast exit of the building, followed closely by a man trying to catch them. A police officer also ran toward the exit but stayed inside. The thrower was eventually caught by police, who detained her in Salomon’s lobby before moving her elsewhere. “One of the offenders was apprehended, placed in the custody of the Brown Department of Public Safety and identified as a Brown student,” University spokesman Michael Chapman said in a state-
ment released Tuesday night. “The University will review this incident through its non-academic disciplinary system to determine the appropriate response.” DPS Lt. Rick Lombardi told The Herald that no party wishes to press charges. Lombardi would not confirm the student’s identity. Friedman appeared uninjured and ready to continue his lecture, titled “Hot, Flat and Crowded,” but audience members encouraged him to clean himself off. He left the auditorium and returned five to ten minutes later to deliver the lecture. The pamphlets thrown by the male accomplice identified the pair as the “Greenwash Guerillas,” who continued on page 6
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Profs. looking for a voice on the big picture By Jenna Stark Senior Staff Writer
In response to professors’ concerns, expressed at a faculty forum in February, that recent University decision-making has followed too corporate a model, the Faculty Executive Committee has proposed a University College Advisory Committee to increase professors’ influence in broad academic policy changes. Among specific administrative decisions professors point to as having been made without sufficient faculty input are aspects of the implementation of Banner and structural changes in the Writing Fellows program. Concerned by what some professors see as the underlying trend of the changes, the Faculty Executive Committee, a governance body of 10 professors, has proposed the UCAC, which a draft charge suggests would advise the deans of the College and Graduate School on curricular and degree
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programs and weigh in on “the balance between the undergraduate and graduate programs.” The proposal for that committee has met resistance from deans who say its mandate would overlap with the various faculty governance committees that already exist, such as the College Curriculum Council. But while the CCC addresses many detailed curricular issues, the proposed committee would take a broader look at large policy changes in the undergraduate College and the Graduate School, said FEC Chair Ruth Colwill, associate professor of psychology. A top-down approach? According to some professors, the proposed committee reflects a growing discontent, as expressed in February’s faculty forum, that the University is running under a “business model,” meaning that decisions are made only at the administrative level without consulting the faculty.
PACKING ... NOTHING? Students are holding an “empty holster protest” for the right to carry concealed weapons on campus
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Colwill said professors are generally “very happy” with changes occurring at the University, but she confirmed that there is concern that administrators are following a corporate model in making decisions. “The issue that has come up is the sense that we are following too much of a business model, and we see this in the way decisions come down to faculty,” Colwill said. “Examples of this would include the changes that were made to graduate student admissions a year or so ago, (or) the sense that the administration is raising standards for tenure without consulting the faculty,” she said. Other professors said they were satisfied with the University’s decision-making process. “I’ve certainly seen lots of changes with new chairs, new provosts, new deans, new presidents,” said Professor of Mathematics Thomas Banchoff, continued on page 4
PROFS PAST PRIME Brown’s faculty is old and getting older. Retirements harm programs, but staying has its own problems
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Framed by the United States flag on his right, and the Bolivian and University flags on his left, Evo Morales raised his palm to a packed Sayles Hall and quieted the roars of the standing ovation that greeted him. In lilting Spanish, the President of Bolivia did not begin his address with a crowd-pleasing joke or a political cry. Instead, after apologizing for having to cancel his first scheduled visit to Brown in Februar y, Morales began by describing the highland town of Orinoca, Bolivia, where he grew up with his illiterate mother and semi-illiterate father. The president told the audience in his intimate yet subdued tone that he himself had dropped out of school in sixth grade after his father declared, “That boy of mine is no good at studying, so now go to work.” He has been working since, but politics was not his initial occupation. “Never in my life did I think of being a leader, much less a president,” Morales said of his early years. However, in his speech that intertwined his past with his country’s future, Morales said with evident pride that after his inauguration as president in 2005, Bolivia has seen increasing economic prosperity and political equality. While it is impossible to make reparations for 500 years of oppression, “for the first time the government is reaching places it’s never reached before,” he said. Morales’ tone intensified as he
Min Wu / Herald
Bolivian President Evo Morales, in his trademark casual dress, spoke to a full Sayles Hall in Spanish last night.
ROLLIN’ UPHILL Matt Prewitt ‘08 has had enough of this country’s nostalgia for its past and contempt for its present
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tomorrow’s weather Significantly sunnier than a cream-covered Thomas Friedman in Salomon 101
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