Daily
THE BROWN
vol. cxlviii, no. 26
INSIDE
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Imagine that Lecturer probes human happiness, imagination
One year after Paxson’s election, professors and students reflect on the president’s approach SENIOR STAFF WRITER
Mama lovin’ Phaedra production delves into themes of illicit desire Page 7
Take notes Students and alums pursue careers in music industry today
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tomorrow
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since 1891
FRIDAY, MARCH 1, 2013
Paxson lauded for ‘bottom-up’ leadership style
By SABRINA IMBLER
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Herald
One year after her selection, President Christina Paxson has earned acclaim on campus for what faculty members and students called receptiveness to the community and decisive leadership. Paxson entered the University without a set agenda and with a willingness to listen, get to know people and respect the institution, said Barrett Hazeltine, professor emeritus of engineering. Many other community members interviewed echoed his opinion. “She didn’t show up with preconceived notions of what had to happen at Brown,” said Neal Fox GS, a member of the Campus Advisory Com-
mittee, which helped select Paxson as president. “She came and spent an inordinate amount of time meeting with department heads, trying to understand the culture of Brown, see where people were and understand where Brown is as a whole.” Faculty members and students interviewed praised Paxson’s success in reaching out to all members of the community through what Hazeltine called her “bottom-up” approach to setting her agenda and effecting change at the University. Paxson visited many department heads in their own offices, a choice applauded by faculty members. Paxson’s execution of strategic planning has garnered widespread approval for her collaboration with the community and faculty-generated, interdisciplinary strategic initiatives. She has started to implement strategic planning changes earlier than did her predecessor, former President Ruth Simmons, who took a year or / / Paxson page 3 two to accli-
HERALD FILE PHOTO
Paxson, who was elected a year ago, has been praised by students and faculty members for an openness to learning.
Slavery and Justice Center teach-in reopens discussion New group The speakers reflected on the legacy of slavery at the University and the center’s role in promoting justice By KATHERINE CUSUMANO SENIOR STAFF WRITER
The Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice continued its spring semester events series with a teach-in last night exploring the University’s Slavery and Justice report, released in 2006. The event, “Slavery, Justice and the University,” featured talks by Seth Rockman, associate professor of history, Marco McWilliams, founder of the Providence Africana Reading Collective, and Anthony Bogues, professor of Africana studies and director of the center. Rockman’s introductory remarks focused on how the University has set itself apart from peer institutions in its willingness to ask difficult questions about its troubled past and mov-
ing forward. During the question and answer session that followed the teach-in, Rockman said the University’s efforts have shown that an institution’s reputation will not be ruined by confronting its past — instead, the consequences will be overwhelmingly positive. “The University offers the space to think and really think hard about what has been and what can be,” he said. Rockman then reflected on the history of the Slavery and Justice report. As of the 2011-12 academic year, many of the promises contained in the report had not come to fruition, he said. Some people had “doubts as to whether anything would happen at all,” he said. The report was only the
beginning of a wider conversation that must take place about the work involved in slavery and justice and opened up questions about the role of accurate history and narrative in social justice, he added. He urged students to take a leading role in efforts to spread the center’s work. “You must push. You must drive the faculty beyond its comfort,” he said. McWilliams then took the floor with an understated retelling of the 1955 lynching of Emmett Till in Mississippi. This year marks the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, he said, which calls for reflection about whether the 13th Amendment really abolished slavery. He said the dynamic of slavery has changed but similar institutions remain, citing prisoners on work release as a “captive audience” for labor. Each generation needs to deter-
mine what slavery and justice mean in its own moment, which entails reorienting styles of thought and challenging ingrained ideas, he said. “You don’t know how many times I’ve been called into the principals’ offices,” he said jokingly. Bogues began his speech with the genesis of the Slavery and Justice report, which arose from “robust discussions” aimed to “smash the idea that somehow slavery was just a southern phenomenon,” he said. The University could not shy away from its history — its founders, the Brown brothers, were entrenched in the slave trade, Bogues said. After deciding to label slavery a crime against humanity, the committee had to decide what sort of repair it could undertake, he said. One result was the Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice, which serves as a center for scholarly research and public education. / / Slavery page 3
Researchers merge disciplines to create robotic bat wing The robotic wing may also be integral for the development of bat-sized camera-carrying aircrafts By JESSICA BRODSKY CONTRIBUTING WRITER
Bats are incredibly agile and maneuverable flyers, but they are also uncooperative research subjects. Since bats are unlikely to follow directions from humans, University researchers developed a robotic bat wing to study how changing different parameters, such as wing motion and wind speed, affect the bat’s ability to fly. The researchers described the ro-
SCIENCE & RESEARCH
botic bat wing in a study in the journal Bioinspiration and Biomimetics last month. It is not the first robotic wing — others mimicking bird and insect flight already exist, said Joseph Bahlman GS, who led the project and designed and constructed the robotic bat wing as part of his dissertation. But the new wing is unique because of its ability to actively fold and expand just like a real bat wing, Bahlman said. The work was conducted in the labs of Kenneth Breuer ’82 P’14 P’16, professor of engineering, and Sharon Swartz ’84, professor of ecology and evolutionary biology and engineering, who served as senior authors on the paper. Understanding bat flight may hold the key to building bat-sized flapping aircrafts, also known as micro aerial vehicles, said / / Bats page 2
COURTESY OF JOSEPH BAHLMAN
The lightweight robotic wing is made of cables connecting motors to joints based on the muscular systems and tendon structures of a real bat wing.
aids peers facing U. discipline
SCIS aims to help undergraduates navigate Academic Code or Code of Conduct hearings By SAM HEFT-LUTHY SENIOR STAFF WRITER
When circumstances called on Skylar Albertson ’13 to help his fraternity navigate the University disciplinary process, he found the overwhelming amount of information difficult to process. “It’s complicated at times when you don’t want things to be complicated,” he said. Albertson, vice president of the Brown chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union, has teamed up with other members of the ACLU — as well as members of the Undergraduate Council of Students — to form the Student Conduct Information Service, a group that will assist students facing Academic Code or Code of Conduct hearings. SCIS is currently evaluating undergraduate applicants for its first class of “associates,” and Albertson said he expects the group to be operational by the beginning of next year. The idea came from similar programs at the University of California at Berkeley and University of North Carolina, Albertson said. Those programs provide “public defender” services to other students, but concerns about liability forced SCIS to become an “informational resource” rather than a source for concrete advice, he added. / / Conduct page 2