Tuesday, December 6, 2016

SINCE 1891

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD TUESDAY, DECEMBER 6, 2016

VOLUME CLI, ISSUE 118

WWW.BROWNDAILYHERALD.COM

Path to Brown shaped by resource disparity Students, faculty grapple Some students enjoy with defining anti-Semitism personalized counseling, others share counselors with thousands

U.S. Senate passes bill seeking to define anti-Semitism for U.S. Department of Education

By ALEX SKIDMORE SENIOR STAFF WRITER

CLASS ON CAMPUS

By KASTURI PANANJADY SENIOR STAFF WRITER

This story is the first in a three-part series about socioeconomic status at Brown. The series, through interviews with five undergraduates, examines the way socioeconomic status shapes students’ relationships to Brown in three stages: the application process, adjusting to life on campus and going back home after living and studying here.

This story tracks the application processes of five students who ultimately matriculated at Brown. Students reported disparate experiences in terms of their high school social environments, knowledge about the college admission process and access to academic support systems.

Class awareness before college For some, high school classes were populated with students of similar social standing.

This is the first of a three-part series that explores how students and faculty members engage with the Israel-Palestine conflict in their academic, activist and religious work.

DIVIDED DISCOURSE

COURTESY OF AHMED ASHOUR

Ahmed Ashour ’19 is from Bahrain and attended Choate Rosemary Hall, a private school in Connecticut.

“I didn’t really have a sense of my class standing until I came to Brown,”

Students flock to corporate industries Structure, experience, culture cited among reasons alums end up in finance, consulting, tech

By LAURA FELENSTEIN SENIOR STAFF WRITER

Of the alums who were immediately employed post-graduation in 2015, about 37 percent went into tech, finance or consulting, according to CareerLAB data. In 2011, data reported

by The Herald show the number-one industry of employment was education, which has since been bumped down to number three, edged out by technology as well as finance, banking and real estate and followed closely by consulting, which lags education by just one percentage point.

To some extent, these industries create a “self-selection bias” among students, said Matt Donato, director of CareerLAB. Some students are drawn to corporate industries by factors such as high salaries and structured paths both to securing the job through recruitment and professional advancement later on.

INSIDE

Donato and his colleagues at CareerLAB encourage students to consider their job preferences holistically.

“What we want students to do is approach their decision from a much more informed, educated perspective,” he said. “If you can’t articulate why you want to do something, but you still pursue it, that’s where it gets a little bit concerning to me.”

A number of factors motivate more than a third of students to pursue employment in consulting, finance and technology. Interest in the work is widespread, but students also cite the financial perks and structured recruiting processes that the industries offer as incentives. More complicated is the link between Brown’s campus culture and the work environments these industries offer: While some consider the similarities abundant, other students and alums are more ambivalent about them. Some students looking to go corporate also face pushback from friends, who are skeptical about the ethics of lucrative jobs. » See INDUSTRY, page 2

said Molly Sandstrom ’17, who is from » See RESOURCES, page 3

The U.S. Senate unanimously passed the Anti-Semitism Awareness Act Dec. 1.

The bill aims for the U.S. Department of Education to use the U.S. State Department’s definition of anti-Semitism in investigations of religious hate crimes in educational institutions nationwide.

Modeled on the European Union’s definition of anti-Semitism, the U.S. State Department’s definition states that “antiSemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of anti-Semitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals

and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.”

The bipartisan bill proposed by U.S. Sen. Bob Casey, D-PA, and U.S. Sen. Tim Scott, R-SC, does not intend to infringe on any rights protected by the First Amendment, according to a press release.

“I want to thank Senator Casey for joining me to introduce the Anti-Semitism Awareness Act, which is urgently needed, as anti-Jewish attacks rise on campuses across the nation. By clarifying exactly what anti-Semitism is, we will leave no question as to what constitutes an anti-Semitic incident,” Scott said in the press release.

In addition, the U.S. State Department’s definition of anti-Semitism includes a section on anti-Semitism in the context of Israel. The section includes as examples of anti-Semitism efforts to demonize or delegitimize Israel and apply double standards “by requiring of it a behavior not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation.”

Professor of Judaic Studies David Jacobson expressed discomfort with the scope of the State Department’s definition and its adoption by the Education » See DEFINITION, page 4

COURTESY OF BROWN UNIVERSITY

The financial plan aims to reconcile the University’s finances with the Building on Distinction strategic plan, the Operational Plan and the BrownTogether campaign.

University presents new financial plan

Undergrad class size to freeze, 95 PhD, 125 master’s students to be added to target areas

By JULIANNE CENTER AND ISABEL GENSLER SENIOR STAFF WRITERS

Provost Richard Locke announced that the University will freeze undergraduate admission and begin expanding the

Graduate School in the University’s new financial plan released at the Oct. 4 faculty meeting.

The financial plan now incorporates an additional 95 PhD and 125 master’s students over the span of 10 years in “targeted areas” such as engineering, public health, the Brown Institute for Brain Science, the Institute at Brown for Environment and Society, computer science, public policy and the School of Professional Studies, Locke said.

All programs and departments will

be considered for growth, and they will be prioritized based on “building and preserving excellence,” “supporting the promise of future excellence,” “the interests of trainees in the fields” and “the societal benefits of the disciplines,” wrote Andrew G. Campbell, dean of the Graduate School, in an email to The Herald.

The expansion is a “natural outgrowth of the last five years” under President Christina Paxson P’19, said Dean of the College Maud Mandel. The new » See PLAN, page 8

WEATHER

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 6, 2016

COMMENTARY Nwizu ’17: African Students Association place for all regardless of nationality, ethnicity

COMMENTARY Gantz ’17.5: U. administration devalues leave-taking students’ non-traditional academic paths

NEWS Specialization certificates to be offered to PhD students to note expertise outside discipline

NEWS Faculty yield rate rises seven percentage points from last year, most new hires top candidates

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NEWS

PAGE 2 • TUESDAY, DECEMBER 6, 2016

ELENA WEISSMANN / HERALD

» INDUSTRY, from page 1 Recruitment and structure Applying for jobs in finance, consulting and technology comes with a clarity of process that many students find appealing. “The pathway into this career path in finance and consulting is really, really clear. The recruiting process is incredibly structured,” Donato said.

Much like the pre-medical path offers students a definitive plan for the foreseeable future, a structured recruitment process gives students their next move without much consideration or planning. The structure of the recruitment process “kind of gave me something to look forward to,” said Kaitlyn Thein ’19, who is planning on a career in finance.

The dominant presence of big corporate industries recruiting at Brown can be attributed to large budgets and aggressive targets for entry-level positions, Donato said.

Goldman Sachs “maintain(s) a year-round presence on Brown’s campus, bringing back alumni and hosting events in both the fall and spring,” wrote Kristin Tougias, a Goldman Sachs recruiter, in an email to The Herald.

Google was the top employer of Brown students in the class of 2015 post-graduation, according to CareerLAB data. Among the top 15 biggest hirers in 2015 were other corporations such as DigitasLBi, Microsoft, Goldman Sachs, Barclays, McKinsey and Company, Morgan Stanley and J.P. Morgan.

Exposure to major companies boosts student interest in them, which may in turn reduce the likelihood that smaller companies see success in recruiting students.

When smaller firms come to campus, Donato said, students “don’t often look at them, because it’s not Goldman Sachs, or it’s not McKinsey.”

Having friends on campus or family members who work in finance, consulting and technology is another motivating factor.

Alexa Chukwumah ’19, who plans on going into sales and trading, said having parents who worked in finance provides her with much of the knowledge necessary to properly navigate that career path.

“When I got (to Brown), I realized a lot of people go into investment banking after they graduate, so then I started looking into that and then realized that’s maybe something I

want to try out,” Thein said.

CareerLAB is working to diversify the organizations that recruit on campus.

Jaclyn Zhong ’17, who interned at AirBnB this summer and intends to return to the technology industry post-graduation, said she believes more students would work at smaller companies if they constituted a bigger recruiting presence on campus.

Some students and alums said they were not swayed by the structure of the recruiting process.

“It’s nice to know what steps to expect and what you have to do to keep moving through the process, but I wouldn’t say that’s the reason I want to do (finance),” said Josh Gelberger ’18.

Alums in these fields also did not seem to feel any push toward big corporations. “At a place like Brown, there’s not that external pressure; it’s all internal,” said Jack, who worked at a consulting firm and whose name has been changed due to his firm’s policy on speaking to the press.

“I think it was the right step for me, for my personal goals,” said Rayna Chandaria ’14, a McKinsey senior business analyst, speaking to the lack of external influence on her decision to work in consulting.

Of cash and callings For some, entering big business has been met with stigmatizing reactions. Rose, whose name has been changed because her firm restricts employees from speaking to the press, was questioned by friends and family about her decision to enter finance, or what they called a “dog-eat-dog world.”

Another student going into finance was told she was “selling (herself) to Wall Street,” about which she said, “I kind of do feel that way.”

“I see it as something that I’m doing selfishly,” said that student, who requested anonymity for fear of professional repercussions. “I’m going to be doing (investment banking) maybe for two years and then hopefully go on to something I enjoy more.”

The stereotype that the finance industry is “money-obsessed” is valid, Chukwumah said. “Some people are definitely very much motivated by that.”

Chukwumah described her own situation differently. “I wouldn’t say that I’m money-obsessed, but I definitely think that I’m money-conscious,” she said. “When I’m choosing my career path, I want something

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD that will provide me with a certain amount of security because I’m a woman especially.”

Opinions diverge on whether choosing a career path for the money is ethically reprehensible.

“I think it’s legitimate to make a choice that involves being able to raise a family and buy a house,” said Professor of International and Public Affairs and Political Science Ross Cheit, who teaches ethics and public policy, chairs the Rhode Island Ethics Commission and devotes part of his research to ethics regulation.

“We think of education as something that allows people to move up in the world, and there are certainly students from Brown who that’s what those sorts of jobs allow them to do. And I can’t begrudge that for a minute.”

Large firms generally offer better financial security than smaller ones, making them an attractive option for those without a personal financial cushion.

“As a student at an Ivy League, if you don’t receive financial aid, you need some sort of way to pay for that education,” said Alexandra Coppa ’17.

“So being a part of a corporate business is a good way to make money.”

“If you have no safety net, and you’re betting everything on a startup, it’s more risky inherently. Some people I don’t think can afford to bet all their hopes on a project,” said Curtis Stiles ’19, who is interested in design and technology.

Working for big-money corporations can also afford employees the

opportunity to provide for various communities and organizations, including Brown. “People go (work for corporate industries) and then they help support this institution,” Cheit said. “They create scholarships for students to do great things.”

Most students and alums who end up in these fields do not seem to think of the ethics of the companies themselves as problematic or cause for hesitation.

“I think the stereotypical bankers that you see in movies are definitely not the people you usually see. That’s usually the exception, not the rule,” Rose said. “And I think that’s where a lot of these misconceptions come from.”

Campus culture to corporate culture Careers in finance, technology and consulting have a lot to offer when it comes to resume building and professional development. “A lot of students want jobs in banking, consulting (and) tech because they are training grounds for other career paths down the road,” Donato said.

Consulting, a field that generally requires interfacing with companies in several industries, can set employees up to work in a variety of fields.

“Regardless of what you do after, I think (consulting) provides a good platform for learning a lot of skills early on that you could translate to a number of different environments,” Jack said.

But the plan of spending a few years making extra money at a large

corporation and then taking one’s skills elsewhere does not always translate into reality. “You get used to a certain lifestyle with consulting and with that environment, and you get in with a group of people that make it difficult to then leave,” Stiles said.

“If you’re earning six figures and suddenly you’re bootstrapping at a Starbucks, it’s very different,” he added.

The variety of work experiences offered by fields such as consulting also appeals to Brown students for its similarity to the university’s culture of academic flexibility. “I think the culture is actually remarkably similar at McKinsey (to how) it is at Brown,” Chandaria said. “What I loved about Brown was that I got a diversity of experiences, and I wanted to do that in my first job out of college. And consulting is the epitome of doing that.”

Corporate tech culture tends to be laid back, especially in affording employees the flexibility to manage their own hours, Zhong said. She compared this freedom to the way college students are allowed to allocate their time at will.

Long hours at financial firms certainly differ from the schedules to which most college students are accustomed. But for some students, such as Chukwumah, a rigorous schedule “isn’t a deterrent,” she said.

“Hopefully there are cool people that you’re working with so you don’t mind staying in and working that many hours. But I do also understand it’s a lot, being constantly focused on working for 12 to 15 hours every day.”

NEWS

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 6, 2016 • PAGE 3

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

» RESOURCES, from page 1 Lindstrom, Minnesota, a small town north of Minneapolis and Saint Paul, and attended Chisago Lakes High School, a public school. Though “some of my friends lived on the lake, and we didn’t live on the lake, and some of their houses were bigger than mine … it seemed like there was something that bound us all together.”

Similarly, Kimberly Davila ’20 identified “pretty well” with her peers at Montebello High School, a public school near Los Angeles, who are mainly from “the same background,” she said.

“It’s predominantly Latino, lowincome, and a lot of people are the first in their families to go to college,” Davila said.

Though Chinenye Uduji ’19 attended Central High School of Philadelphia, a public school that attracted students from across the city, he felt a sense of belonging in the diverse student body, he said. “Racially, it was very diverse compared to Brown,” Uduji said, adding that “a lot of lowincome students” also attended the school.

Others felt more of a strain against the perceived wealth of their schools.

“People wouldn’t be friends with you if you couldn’t keep up,” said Charlotte May ’17.5, who attended the Hackley School outside of New York City as a day student. Social missteps such as failing to wear the designer clothes many peers wore could provoke questions like, “‘Oh, what is wrong with you?’” she said.

Ahmed Ashour ’19 expressed many of the same sentiments about boarding at Choate Rosemary Hall, a private school in Connecticut. “Everyone had to put on an act to make it through because it’s really hard when you’re going to school with 200 other people who are related to celebrities or are Kennedys,” he said.

“You feel you need to put up a front of ‘I belong here’ and ‘I understand what it means to be part of the elite educational slice,’” he said.

Ashour started his journey to private education in the United States after his junior year at high school in Bahrain, when he was awarded the Crown Prince’s International Scholarship. The scholarship pays for two

» CERTIFICATE, from page 8 the programs are referred to as certificates, the Registrar does not distribute separate documents for students who complete them, according to the Graduate School website.

The directors of the four new programs said the certificates will help students in the job market within and outside of academia.

“You can show potential employers that you are not only an expert in your particular field, but you have done enough coursework to be able to teach (it),” said Rachel Franklin, director of

years at a U.S. boarding school and four years at a university of one’s choosing, he said.

Expectations about admission As the students approached the college admission process, some had long-standing aspirations, even expectations, about attending an Ivy League school.

At Choate, “There’s a strong culture of going to the Ivys, and if you didn’t go to an Ivy, you missed an opportunity,” Ashour said. “The hardest part was the pressure of ending up at a prestigious institution, not necessarily an institution that fit you best.”

Twenty-nine students from Choate have matriculated to Brown in the past five years, according to the school’s college counseling site.

There was more of a focus on “fit” than prestige at Hackley, May said.

She attended Haverford College before transferring to Brown last spring.

Yet in her class at the Mountain School, a semester-long program that sends high school juniors to work on a farm at Vermont, about a fifth of 45 students ended up at Brown, she said.

Other high schools have starkly different records on sending students to Ivy-caliber schools.

For Davila, there was a pressure to stay on the West Coast and attend a school in the University of California or California State systems, she said.

From her high school, almost no one left the state for college, she added.

Similarly, a lot of students from Sandstrom’s high school stayed in Minnesota to complete degrees at “vocational schools, trade schools, two-year (colleges)” and four-year universities, she said. Sandstrom’s curriculum included some vocationally oriented options such as “fashion, advanced foods, natural resources and forestry,” she said.

“I didn’t know anybody on the East Coast. I didn’t know anyone who’d left the state for college, with a few exceptions,” Sandstrom said. She applied early decision to Brown after liking the tour the best on a road trip to a few East Coast universities. “Looking back, not the best way, maybe, to pick a college,” she added.

At Uduji’s high school, a majority of students went on to college, though many stayed in state, he said. Being the spatial analysis certificate program, associate director of spatial structures in the social sciences and associate professor of population studies.

Susan Smulyan, director of the public humanities certificate program, professor of American studies and director of the John Nicholas Brown Center for Public Humanities and Cultural Heritage, said that as a former search committee member, she noticed that similar recognitions offered by other universities helped applicants during the academic hiring process.

“When we think of our own PhD students going out, we wanted to make

five hours away from his hometown seems “pretty far,” he added.

Uduji applied to Brown “on a whim” after hearing about a friend’s positive visit to campus, he said.

The logistics of applying Last year, the University admitted 9.3 percent of applicants, The Herald reported. For the past few years, the admission rate has remained below 10 percent.

To prepare for such a rigorous admission process, applicants who attend prestigious high schools or come from affluent backgrounds often take advantage of resources such as top college counseling and testing preparatory services. Others navigate the process with little information besides what is available online.

The University “pays very close attention to an individual’s family circumstance” during the admission process, said Dean of Admission Logan Powell.

To increase access to higher education for students of diverse class backgrounds, the University has partnered with the College Board’s Consortium on Financing Higher Education initiative, which contacted over 20,000 high-achieving low- and middleincome students with information about the college search process this fall, Powell said.

Yet disparities in resources to prepare for the process remain widespread.

“I was given misinformation” from a guidance counselor, who said Harvard would “approach you” and offer you admission before you applied, Sandstrom said. In a school of over 1,000 students with only three counselors, personalized attention was not possible, she added.

Completing the applications by herself, Sandstrom used the email “bookworm6111995@gmail.com” because, “Nobody said, ‘You should make a Molly Sandstrom gmail,’” she said.

At times, applying required “guessing what to do,” Davila said. In a school of about 3,000 students, there was one college counselor, she added.

While many applicants to Brown benefit from parents who came here themselves or went to other Ivy-caliber schools, other applicants cannot

rely on their parents for information.

“I am the child of immigrants, and because of that, they aren’t as knowledgeable about the American system of higher education,” Uduji said. Moreover, “There’s a difference between going to a college and a college like Brown.”

In response to the lack of answers from peers, counselors and family members, some applicants turn to external programs for support.

Davila participated in the Upward Bound Program, a federally funded service that serves low-income and first-generation students to increase the rate at which participants enroll in and graduate from institutions of postsecondary education, according to the program’s website.

The program held “Saturday Academy,” where participants could prepare for standardized tests and work on college applications, Davila said.

Upward Bound also provided Davila with a college counselor, but he hadn’t advised a student accepted to a school “like (Brown)” and did not have answers to some of her questions.

In a school where there was one counselor for every 800 students, Uduji engaged with the “Mentor for Philly” program, in which local college students help high school students with their applications, he said.

He also consulted with teachers after school, even though they were not paid for the effort, he added.

For other students, personalized college counseling services were furnished directly through their high school.

At Hackley, seniors met as a class with guidance counselors once a week for “senior seminars,” May said. Further, each student was assigned a college counselor who would tell them, “Here are the after-school activities you (can) do that (will) look good on your application.”

When May applied to universities, she decided where to apply based on an “equation” of grades, extracurriculars and an “x-factor” — a component of an application that is not quantifiable. “Maybe you’re an international student, or maybe your family would go to Haiti and do service projects every Christmas instead of celebrating,” she said.

Ashour was assigned a college

counselor at Choate who answered questions and read essays for about 20 students, he said. As someone who had moved to the United States the year before, “I knew about … the Ivy (League) and maybe a few other popular (colleges) like USC or UCLA,” so he benefited from the in-school resources, he said.

His parents only knew about Harvard and Yale because, “If you watched anything that made a reference to the Ivys, it would be Harvard or Yale,” Ashour said. Therefore, the process of applying to schools was principally driven by his college counselor and himself, Ashour said.

sure they have all the chances they could to impress,” Smulyan said.

The four specializations differ in breadth and structure. The gender and sexuality studies certificate, offered by the Pembroke Center, requires relevant courses, research and a teaching component. Early interest has been demonstrated by students in the humanities and social sciences, said Drew Walker, director of the gender and sexuality studies certificate program and associate director of the Pembroke Center.

The Pembroke Center does not offer graduate degrees, so the gender and sexuality studies certificate will grant formal recognition to students who have completed significant coursework on the topic, Walker said.

The Cogut Center for the Humanities offers the collaborative humanities certificate, which focuses on the development of collaborative skills in research in the humanities. Collaborative research can be difficult but also “really stimulating and really productive,” said Amanda Anderson, director of the collaborative humanities certificate

program, professor of humanities and English and director of the Cogut Center for the Humanities.

“What we’re really hoping that the students gain from the experience is learning how collaborative research proceeds and how to engage in it with respect to key theoretical, methodological and conceptual problems facing the humanities,” Anderson said.

A unique component of the collaborative humanities certificate is the interdisciplinary courses, which are each taught by a team of professors.

This focus on collaboration is in line with the BrownTogether campaign, Anderson said.

The collaborative humanities certificate is “deliberately broad” and flexible, which best fits the needs of Brown’s relatively small graduate program, Anderson said. At some other universities, humanities departments offer specialization programs that focus on specific topics of interest, but that approach would require “a lot of financial support, and you need the critical mass” of faculty members and students.

Offered by the Spatial Structures in the Social Sciences initiative, the spatial analysis certificate is also designed to be flexible and approachable to students across disciplines. Spatial analysis is akin to geography, as it relies on spatial methods, Franklin said. Though spatial analysis is mostly quantitative, alternate options are also offered, such as an elective in classics, she added.

So far, most of the inquiries regarding spatial analysis have come from students studying sociology, anthropology and archaeology, Franklin said.

The public humanities certificate, offered by the Center for Public Humanities and Cultural Heritage and the department of American Studies, was an existing program for master’s students, “So it’s not a problem to add in a couple slots for PhD students,” Smulyan said.

The certificate requires three courses as well as work experience in the public humanities.

Currently, students in history, modern culture and media, archaeology and Africana studies have shown interest, Smulyan said.

Accepting an offer After an application process characterized by vastly different resources, students approach deciding which schools to attend in distinct manners as well.

Ashour was admitted to and ultimately narrowed his options down to Rice University in Texas and Brown.

He decided to stay in New England for the open curriculum and partially for the Ivy League prestige, he said.

Uduji ended up choosing among Brown, the University of Pennsylvania and Temple University. His parents urged him to attend one of the Ivy League schools, and he did not like Penn’s competitive atmosphere, so he chose Brown.

For Sandstrom, Brown did not have much name recognition or pull in her community, she said. At her graduation, her school announced her college decision, and some people thought she was going to attend “Brown College … a community college in Minnesota,” she said.

When Davila’s mother told her friends that her daughter was attending Brown, they would ask, “‘Isn’t that a color or something?’” Davila said.

Ultimately, Davila decided to travel to the East Coast to make more of an “impact” in her community, she said. “We’ve had students go to UC Berkeley before, but we haven’t had students go to Brown, so I knew that it would send a clear message to people at my school and to my siblings … that I want to reach higher, past the UC system.”

— Additional reporting by Kasturi Pananjady

NEWS

PAGE 4 • TUESDAY, DECEMBER 6, 2016

» DEFINITION, from page 1 Department. “We have to be sensitive to freedom of expression,” he said, adding that while he believes “that the government has a role in establishing certain standards to evaluate hate crimes,” he does not see policing speech on college campuses as being within its charge.

“Speech is important, and we should be paying close attention to it. But it’s not the same as actions like drawing swastikas on walls.”

Since the State Department drafted its definition in 2010, organizations such as Jewish Voice for Peace and Palestine Legal have voiced concerns that the definition conflates anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism and that it is used to silence criticism of Israel.

In 2016, the University of California system amended the section pertaining to Israel in its institutional definition of anti-Semitism, condemning only “antiSemitic forms of anti-Zionism.” President Christina Paxson P’19 did not confirm or deny whether or not the University has an official definition of anti-Semitism of its own.

Director of the International Relations Program Nina Tannenwald’s concern about the politicization of anti-Semitism is exemplified by the website Canary Mission, she said. Canary Mission compiles a database of college students and professors that it considers to promote hatred of the United States, Israel and Jews or to be anti-Semitic according to the State Department’s definition, according to the website.

Amidst potential new regulations, faculty members and students have struggled to reach a consensus regarding their definitions of anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism in their academic and activist work.

Canary Mission “It’s a McCarthyist smear campaign engaged in the politics of personal destruction,” Tannenwald said of Canary Mission. Quotes are taken out of context and misinterpreted or mischaracterized, and individuals are linked to organizations or movements that are then linked to anti-Semitic activity or violence, she said. Brown students, alums and professors are listed on it.

In September, a petition condemning Canary Mission was signed by faculty members nationwide, including Tannenwald. “As faculty who serve, have served or are likely to serve on an admissions committee at graduate and

» FACULTY, from page 8 competitive with those of peer institutions, time off and teaching reductions — factors that allow candidates to distinguish between Brown and competing offers from other universities, Revill said.

Brown also offers new hires the opportunity to work with graduate students, which is an attractive offer for professors seeking to conduct extensive research, he said. This tactic has been employed by the University for several years, but may become increasingly popular as the graduate student population increases, he added.

In recent years, Brown has made strides to diversify the faculty in accordance with President Christina Paxson’s P’19 Pathways to Diversity and Inclusion Action Plan. Headed by Matthew Guterl, professor and chair of American studies and professor of

undergraduate university programs across the country, we unequivocally assert that the Canary Mission website should not be trusted as a resource to evaluate students’ qualifications for admission,” the petition stated.

“They’re attempting to create fear among pro-Palestinian activists,” said Josh, a student whose first name has been changed to protect him from online backlash. “It’s also clear to me that Canary Mission is playing on people’s Islamophobia and hateful rhetoric that exists around Islam in the (United States),” he said.

A disproportionate number of students profiled on the site are Muslim or Palestinian, according to the petition.

The petition has currently garnered 1,010 signatures.

The website relies on student informants to alert it of anti-Semitic activity on college campuses and claims to draw on material in the public domain to write its profiles. The founders and managers of the site remain anonymous.

Canary Mission frequently shares profiles with potential employers via social media, Josh added. “It seems not to have been effective. My concern is not about my job, not about my profession. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to return to Palestine,” he said, adding that he is aware of other Palestinians who have been denied entry by Israeli officials based on their views of Zionism and the occupation.

“This is a feeble attempt at intimidation,” Tannenwald said, adding that while she was initially concerned, “It doesn’t change what I will say in class.”

“I almost consider it a pro-Palestinian networking site now,” she added. “They did all the work for us.”

Brown Students for Israel has not been approached by Canary Mission and does not cooperate with them on a matter of principle, said Ben Gladstone ’18, president of Brown Students for Israel. “People bring up Canary Mission to make a monster out of Zionism as a whole,” he said, adding that Canary Mission is a “fringe group” in the American Zionist movement.

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

Zionism and anti-Semitism While Gladstone condemns Canary Mission’s methods, he does not agree with the proposition that the State Department’s definition of anti-Semitism in the context of Israel has no merit.

“I think it’s important because it acknowledges that anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism are linked,” Gladstone said. Zionism is the struggle for “Jewish

self-determination, liberation and statehood” and does not preclude criticism of Israel, he said.

“I would argue that in order to be truly Zionist, you would have to support Palestinian rights and a Palestinian state,” he said. There is a false dichotomy that people have to choose between being Zionist and being pro-Palestinian, he added.

“To be anti-Zionist but not antiSemitic is to accept the existence of the Jews as long as we cannot mobilize politically,” Gladstone wrote in the Jewish Daily Forward in September.

“This is not a question of abstract political mobilization,” Josh said. “Zionism advocates for a very particular kind of ethnic nationalism, that with the state of Israel is dependent on the expulsion of the Palestinian people.”

Jacobson said that while personally he believes a denial of Israel’s right to exist is anti-Semitic — as he believes that Israel is necessary for the continuity of the Jewish people — he can still understand why Palestinians would question that right.

“My Zionism does not preclude understanding,” he said, adding that he would nonetheless avoid codifying opposition to Israel’s existence as anti-Semitic to avoid playing a “zero-sum game” in which only one of the two views is conscionable.

“The trouble with this debate is that Zionist students often end up having to defend the nation-state as a concept,” Gladstone said, adding that many of the critiques of Zionism can be applied to other forms of nationalism but nonetheless are not. For someone to be antiZionist but not anti-Semitic, they would have to be equally active in opposing all forms of nationalism, and when they are not, they are applying a double standard to the state of Israel, he said.

“My concern about the double standard argument is that I don’t want that to be an excuse to not hold Israel to a high moral standard,” Jacobson said. He posited that Israel may have captured the American left’s attention regarding whether or not the United States is complicit in Israeli military occupation.

“As an Israeli myself, I expect my country to uphold my values,” said Adi Ophir, visiting professor of humanities and Middle East studies, adding that his criticism of Israel is informed by his Jewish identity. His post-Zionist critique is influenced by his understanding of Zionism as contributing to the militarization of the state of Israel. “Commitment to the Zionist cause in Israel came with being willing to serve in the army. It took over

Africana studies, and Vice President for Academic Development, Diversity and Inclusion Liza Cariaga-Lo, the Diversity and Inclusion Oversight Board is in charge of keeping the university on task with the action plan.

Professor of Engineering and Associate Dean of the Faculty for Special Initiatives Chris Rose, a member of the oversight board, is in charge of bringing underrepresented faculty members into the science, technology, engineering and mathematics fields. Rose said he encourages STEM faculty members to use their networks to identify and reach out to candidates who could come to the University.

Rose, an advocate for faculty diversity for several decades, said that with the establishment of the board, “There’s a level of accountability that we haven’t seen before.”

The oversight board has made progress, as approximately onethird of faculty members hired for

the 2016-2017 academic year are from historically underrepresented groups, wrote Provost Richard Locke in a community-wide email in September. Additionally, visiting fellows from historically underrepresented groups were brought on as part of the Provost’s Visiting Professors program and the Presidential Diversity Postdoctoral Fellows program.

With the progress that the University has already made, Rose is “cautiously optimistic” about faculty diversity.

“It feels like things are moving. I’m skeptical, as I have to be as a scientist.

But I think that there is a real administrative will … and grassroots interest (from) faculty and alumni,” he said.

With efforts to increase diversity in both the faculty and undergraduate student body, Rose hopes the University will focus more efforts on recruiting a more diverse group of graduate students as well, he said.

what it means to be Jewish,” he said.

Zionism is not a cause rooted in the suppression of Palestinian people, Ophir added. Nonetheless, as an embodiment of Zionism, one might look at contemporary Israeli policy and arrive at the conclusion that the human rights “price is too high,” he said. “I am not saying I agree with that position, but I think it is a morally legitimate position to have,” he said.

Brown Students for Justice in Palestine, which supports a one-state solution, has members who are active and passionate about a range of social justice issues, said Peter Makhlouf ’16, a former member of Brown SJP and a former Herald columnist. He emphasized that members have regularly expressed solidarity with other movements critiquing the Palestinian Liberation Organization, the United States and nationalist movements in general.

“SJP has formed incredibly intersectional deep partnerships in AfricanAmerican (and) LGBTQ student groups.

It’s been focused on creating reciprocal solidarities and being present for parallel struggles,” said Sa’ed Atshan, a former postdoctoral fellow at Brown and a current visiting assistant professor of peace and conflict studies at Swarthmore College.

Zionism as a dirty word On Brown’s campus, it is often Zionist students who have to defend that their position is conscionable, Gladstone said, adding that Zionism has been codified as an ethically untenable position to hold.

As an openly Zionist student, Gladstone wrote in the New York Times of his experience being excluded from social justice work on Brown’s campus while organizing a demonstration supporting Syrian refugees.

“I do reject the idea that people who embrace Zionism … need to be involved in social justice movements,” Josh said, emphasizing that activists have the right to refuse to work with Zionist students based on “ideological differences.”

Many Jewish students don’t feel comfortable voicing their Zionism as a result of this campus climate, Gladstone said.

He drew parallels between the ostracization of Zionists on campus and the Canary Mission blacklist. Public discrediting is a pervasive tactic “of the anti-Zionist side,” he said.

“I don’t want to be talking about Palestinian rights in the context of any sort of debate,” said former Herald columnist Sara al-Salem ’17 — who is profiled on

Canary Mission — about why she doesn’t engage with Zionists on campus.

In her Yom Kippur address, Rabbi Michelle Dardashti, associate university chaplain, spoke to these fears among members of the Jewish community when she stated that Jews are being restricted from movements for social justice “unless they show up burning an Israeli flag and holding a Palestinian one,” said Andrew Marmor ’18.

Marmor, who identifies as a Zionist, said he was initially concerned that Rabbi Dardashti seemed to be equating pressure on Jewish students to support Palestine with anti-Semitism. After speaking with her, he believes her aim was to encourage Jewish students to continue to “show up” in solidarity with other social justice work and call out anti-Semitism when they feel it necessary.

Marmor said he thinks the Black Lives Matter movement’s reference to the Israel-Palestine conflict as a genocide was an instance of anti-Semitism, but that will not stop him from supporting the movement. Similiarly, Marmor considers actions taken during the Janet Mock incident anti-Semitic but will continue to express solidarity with social justice movements on campus that supported those actions.

Makhlouf, who is listed on Canary Mission, considers the contention that Brown’s campus community is largely pro-Palestinian an oversimplification.

While public opinion at Brown is largely sympathetic to pro-Palestinian activists on campus working with SJP, Makhlouf said that Brown SJP is not supported by Brown’s administration.

“We do see a particular backlash from Paxson,” Makhlouf said, referring to her decision to comment publicly on Mock’s cancellation of her speech last year following a petition to have her talk disaffiliated with Brown/RISD Hillel.

Makhlouf added that in the past, SJP has faced administrative intervention from a “disciplinary dean.”

“I don’t expect support, but I do expect some degree of neutrality,” Makhlouf said. For instance, he would have liked to see Paxson write to the community regarding Canary Mission as well.

“Members of universities nationwide condemned Canary Mission, but there’s not a word from Paxson.”

On this matter, Paxson wrote, “There are likely thousands, if not tens of thousands, of websites (and) blogs … that are in opposition to Brown’s mission of advancing freedom of inquiry. It would be impossible to confront them all.”

LAUREN ARATANI / HERALD

TODAY

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 6, 2016 • PAGE 5

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Princeton professor Alejandro Portes gave the keynote speech at the “Entrepreneurship at the Intersection of Diversity and Inequality” conference, hosted by the Jonathan M. Nelson Center for Entrepreneurship.

Q U O T E O F T H E D AY

“My colleagues take deeply seriously the idea of the University-College. … That idea has fallen to the wayside

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by the current administration.

— Reid Cooper, director of graduate studies for DEEPS

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Summer Study Abroad 4:00 P.M. J. Walter Wilson, 440 Jazz Combos Concert 8:00 P.M. Grant Recital Hall

TOMORROW Telling A Story With Timelines 11:00 A.M. Rockefeller Library, 160

Tinkversary 5:00 P.M. Campus Center, Petteruti Lounge

MPC Information Session 6:00 P.M. BERT, 015

Meiklejohn Information Session 7:00 P.M. Salomon Center, 003

COMMENTARY PAGE 6 • TUESDAY, DECEMBER 6, 2016

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

LETTER TO THE EDITOR

Brown should go genderblind in admission To the Editor: I wish to thank The Herald for its Nov. 30 article, “Brown consistently admits male applicants at higher rate.” This is an important topic for all members of the Brown community to consider.

The article accurately quotes me saying I am “skeptical” of the argument put forth by Dean of Admission Logan Powell holding that Brown’s higher acceptance rate for male applicants is a function of its need to enroll students interested in physical science — not a function of Brown putting a premium on gender balance and thus treating women and men unequally in the admission process.

I would like to provide some context for my skepticism. As the Herald article points out, undergraduate admission processes at private colleges such as Brown are exempt from Title IX. Admission to state colleges and universities is regulated by Title IX, though, and this makes for some useful comparisons. Leading public universities such as the University of California at Berkeley, the University of Virginia and the University of California at Los Angeles also have large, well-regarded programs in

science, math and engineering, yet these schools still have higher acceptance rates for women than men.

At Berkeley, the acceptance rate is 18 percent for women and 15 percent for men, according to U.S. Department of Education data. At Virginia, it’s 31 percent for women and 29 percent for men. UCLA: 18 percent for women versus 16 percent for men. This makes sense, as research shows that high school girls generally outperform high school boys academically.

I should also point out that — like Brown — Berkeley, UVA and UCLA all received more applications from women than from men in 2015. UCLA actually received 6,000 more applications from women. Yet because Title IX requires UCLA to have sex-blind admission, the greater number of female applicants did not prompt UCLA’s admission office to accept female applicants at a lower rate. Given this, I would suggest that as part of Brown’s upcoming celebration of 125 Years of Women at Brown, President Christina Paxson P’19 and her Ivy League peers should ask Congress to repeal the Title IX loophole for private-college admission.

P IA M I L E A F- PAT E L

comic Old Habits | David Schurman

Jon Birger ’90

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COMMENTARY TUESDAY, DECEMBER 6, 2016 • PAGE 7

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

One Africa one people CHIBUIKEM NWIZU op-ed contributor The Executive Board of the African Student Association — AfriSA — would like to address the concerns recently published in an op-ed in The Herald by Daniel Murage ’17, a member of the African community.

In this piece, we wish to address the concerns and demonstrate our commitment to our mission. As an organization, we welcome criticism, as it challenges us to learn and grow.

We would like to validate the feelings expressed in the op-ed.

We are aware that members of our community may share similar sentiments, and it is something we have been and are continuously and actively thinking about and working on.

The 2016-2017 Executive Board of AfriSA is comprised of 13 students including three freshman liaisons. Our board represents a number of African countries including: Botswana, Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria,

Rwanda, South Africa and Swaziland. Our members represent an even more diverse depiction of our continent.

Per our mission statement, “The purpose of AfriSA shall be to bring together the African community and those with interest in the African continent at Brown Univer-

learning about the diverse cultures, histories and issues pertaining to the continent.”

Each member of our executive board — apart from the freshman liaisons — was elected by our general body in May 2016. Each candidate running for a position gave a speech during a general body meeting,

and transparent elections. Moreover, AfriSA allows all members to run for these positions, regardless of their country of origin or ethnicity.

We aim to be inclusive of all Africans and people who want to learn about Africa. We discourage the use of rhetoric like “continental” and “diasporic,” as it serves to divide and

We aim to be inclusive of all Africans and people who want to learn about Africa.

sity to celebrate identities and support the individual. Through educational, cultural and social activities, AfriSA will engage the campus in

and the votes were cast and counted through a Google Form, which was sent to all 189 people on our listserv. We strive to hold free, fair

further marginalize our community.

We also take seriously the suggestions and recommendations put forward at the end of the article. We

encourage anyone in our community to attend our open executive board meetings on the first Sunday of every month in J. Walter Wilson, room 501 from 5:30 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. We intend to hold a town hall meeting where all members of the community will be invited to express their concerns and offer suggestions to the executive board.

The AfriSA executive board does recognize that our general body is full of diverse students who come to Brown with different experiences and connections to the continent, and we believe that is one of the greatest strengths of our community. We regret to see that some members feel as though their experiences are not valued, but we truly do value each unique experience. We will continue encouraging our community to tell their stories, and we will continue supporting every facet of the African community.

Chibuikem Nwizu ’17 is the President of AfriSA and writes on its behalf and can be reached at chibuikem_nwizu@brown.edu.

Mid-year graduation ignores medical leave-takers LINDSAY GANTZ op-ed contributor For two consecutive years, the mid-year graduation ceremony has ignored — and thus invalidated — the experiences of medical leave-takers who comprise a substantial number of the mid-year graduating class.

According to the Office of Student Life website, there were 85 medical leaves of absence in the 2015-2016 academic year. The Curricular Resource Center reports that every year about 200 Brown students take a leave of absence.

This means that medical leave-takers comprised approximately 42.5 percent of leave-takers this past academic year. It was difficult to find the exact percentage of students who are out on medical leave currently or the percentage of mid-year graduates who took a medical leave, but it is still reasonable to suggest that the ceremony ignored the experiences of a significant number of students in the audience.

At the 2016 mid-year graduation ceremony, both President Christina Paxson P’19 and Dean of the College Maud Mandel used the ceremony to congratulate Brown on its open curriculum and apparent flexibility, rather than appreciate the variety of experiences of the students the ceremony supposedly celebrates. Importantly, both Paxson and Mandel ignored the experiences of medical leave-takers. The administrators maintained the narrative that point-fivers represent the traditional Brown experience because apparently pointfivers are the embodiment of students who embrace the freedom to craft their own educations. They failed to recognize that many stu-

dents who are graduating mid-semester did not intend to graduate late or have any interest in doing so, but did so as a result of medical issues, financial hardships or other unpreventable circumstances.

Students graduate mid-semester for a variety of reasons, Mandel said, whether it be due to transferring from a different institution, deciding to take time off or experiencing a “bump in the road” in their education. The notion of a traditional educational “road” is ableist and

periences?

The student speakers spoke brilliantly this year and last. But for two consecutive years, the mid-year graduation ceremony has refrained from highlighting (or even acknowledging) the experiences of medical leave-takers. Instead, only students who decided to take time off to enrich their Brown experience are featured at the ceremony. This would be fine if only the event acknowledged in some other way that this is not the experience of every student.

For two consecutive years, the mid-year graduation ceremony has refrained from highlighting (or even acknowledging) the experiences of medical leave-takers.

classist. The experiences of hundreds of students were carelessly dismissed in this one sentence by the dean as simply a “bump.” Why is it that the experiences of mentally ill or financially burdened students cannot also be considered normal and acceptable educational ex-

Some graduating students in that audience did not spend their time off enriching their Brown experience or pursuing professional goals. In fact, many did not do anything related to their experience at Brown. Many went home, worked in coffee shops or went to ther-

apy, and many spent as much time away from Brown as they needed to regain their health.

Though this narrative is evidently perceived as less glamorous — as evidenced by the refusal to acknowledge it at the ceremony — it is the reality for many students and should be celebrated, supported and validated in the same way.

No component of the ceremony acknowledged that medical leave-takers often do not want to take time off, and some are forced to take a leave involuntarily. Many medical leavetakers do not see their experience away from Brown as a time of growth or understanding, though the administrators implied this is true for every mid-year graduate.

The structure and content of the past two mid-year ceremonies has encouraged an ableist, neuronormative mindset that ignores the realities of a large number of students who take time off. By failing to acknowledge the experiences of many point-fivers, Brown is essentially affirming that individuals who are mentally and physically ill do not conform to the vision of what it means to be successful at Brown.

Historically, Brown’s policies on leave-taking and readmission have burdened students who have needed to take time off for medical reasons. Therefore, it is unsurprising that Brown continues to devalue such students even at a ceremony that exists to celebrate their accomplishments. When I graduate next December, I would like to see the mid-year ceremony be more representative of the true experiences of my ’17.5 class.

Lindsay Gantz ’17.5 can be reached at lindsay_gantz@brown.edu.

NEWS THE BROWN DAILY HERALD

Faculty yield rate ascends to 84 percent 2015-2016 rate represents 7 percentage point increase from 2014-2015 academic year

By JONATHAN DOUGLAS STAFF WRITER

Eighty-four percent of potential new faculty members who were offered positions during the 2015-2016 academic year for the following year accepted their offers, said Associate Dean of the Faculty Joel Revill.

This figure, referred to as the faculty yield rate, is calculated by dividing the total number of new faculty members hired by the number of searches that were filled, Revill said. Fortyseven new faculty members were brought on board for the 2016-2017

» PLAN, from page 1

academic year.

Additionally, 92 percent of hires were the top candidates who applied for their positions, the highest rate since the 2012-2013 academic year, during which 94 percent of new hires were the top candidates. The 20142015 and 2013-2014 academic years saw yield rates of 77 percent and 76 percent, respectively, Revill said.

Of the 47 new hires, 19 — about 40 percent — ­ are women. Twenty-five faculty members were hired in the humanities and social sciences, four in biology and medicine, 10 in the life and physical sciences and eight in public health, according to a University press release in September.

In order to attract new faculty members, Brown employs a number of tactics. Brown offers salaries » See FACULTY, page 4

forecast aims to reconcile the University’s finances with the administration’s “bigvision documents,” such as the Building on Distinction strategic plan, the Operational Plan and the BrownTogether campaign, Mandel added.

The forecast is a departure from the strategic plan’s intentions to increase the undergraduate population by 1 percent each year. “Prior to the operational plan, there was an idea of growth — 1 percent for faculty and 1 percent for undergraduate population — but this hadn’t been modeled out,” Locke said.

Locke said that the administration began discussing freezing undergraduate admission after the realization that the University had been growing incrementally for the last several decades without a clear plan. “We had never thought about the undergraduate population in an ecology that included staff (members), faculty (members), graduate students, infrastructure and buildings,” he added.

In response, the University began to benchmark the undergraduate experience by surveying areas such as student-to-faculty ratio, access to academic advice, number of students living on campus and student satisfaction, Locke said. The numbers showed that there were stress points caused by growth that, if unaddressed, would force the University to hire more faculty and staff members, build new infrastructure and rethink the undergraduate experience, he added.

The financial plan will freeze current undergraduate admission at the number of this year’s incoming class — 1,650 admitted students — which will top out the undergraduate population at 6,848 students, Locke said.

“The idea is to not just grow for growth’s sake,” Mandel said.

While historically the University has primarily conferred PhDs, they have recently begun giving out master’s degrees in sciences that they did not previously, Cooper said. “The University has been pushing to create master’s programs as a revenue stream,” he added.

The computer science department, which has been growing both its master’s and PhD programs, was listed as one department that would be impacted by the financial plan. For the department, the “primary limitation is space,” said Thomas Doeppner, associate research professor of computer science. “In the span of just a few years, we have grown from a moderate-sized concentration to one of the largest in the University, and we are running out of space to be able to cope with all of our students,” he added.

“To be competitive as a computer science department, we have to continue growing in terms of the faculty,” Doeppner said. Currently there are 30 faculty members presiding over 500 undergraduate concentrators, 95 master’s students and around 70 PhD candidates, he said. The department relies heavily on undergraduate teaching assistants in order to accommodate the number of students, and the TAs “are paid not that great of a salary” because of budget constraints, Doeppner said.

“If we keep on incrementing the size of the undergraduate population, it would change the character of the University,” Doeppner said, adding that the University has “reached the point where if we start increasing it just a little bit, (we) have to construct new dining halls (and) new dormitories.”

“The University’s support for graduate education is pretty important,” Doeppner said. Increasing the number of master’s students — who pay their own tuition — will help alleviate the department’s budget constraints.

Balancing the budget “It’s not about revenue and cost,” Locke said. “It’s about an experience.”

“The cost of undergraduates is a significant part of why they’re freezing undergraduate growth,” said Reid Cooper, professor and director of graduate studies for the department of earth, environmental and planetary sciences . “If they present it to you as trying to improve the quality of your experience, that’s fine because that’s also true.”

University-College The growth in the Graduate School and freeze in undergraduate admission has sparked discussion on the meaning of the term University-College — used in the University’s mission statement — and the balance that undergraduate and graduate programs should play.

A 1985 Herald letter to the editor by Robert Mathiesen, professor emeritus of Slavic languages, tracked the history of the term University-College at Brown.

TUESDAY, DECEMBER 6, 2016

New specializations offered for PhD students Graduate Council approves certificates in spatial analysis, gender and sexuality studies

By RHAIME KIM STAFF WRITER

The Graduate School now offers specialization certificates to doctoral students that will formally recognize expertise developed outside of their disciplines.

The Graduate Council has approved four certificate programs so far: gender and sexuality studies, spatial analysis, public humanities and collaborative humanities.

Before offering certifications, departments or centers must propose three to five course requirements to the Graduate Council for approval. Students who successfully complete the requirements will gain recognition on their transcripts, including an indication of their field of specialization. Though » See CERTIFICATE, page 3 “From its very inception Brown has had the character of a university as well as that of a college,” Mathiesen wrote.

In fact, Brown’s charter of 1764 speaks of it as “a College or University,” noting the function of each in its preamble, Mathiesen wrote. Additionally, in 1793, the Laws of the University provided for graduate studies on campus, even though a modern graduate school was not established until 1927, he added.

But it was not until former-President Henry Wriston, who was president of Brown from 1937 to 1955, that the concept of Brown as a University-College was formulated, Mathiesen wrote.

The term is defined by Wriston’s concept of hybridization that aims to narrow the gap between the undergraduate college and graduate university. “In contrast to a college, which exists to educate, a university is essentially an institution for research,” Matheisen wrote.

“What this has to mean in practice is not that graduate scholarship and research are weakened by being handed over to educators, but that undergraduate education is strengthened by coming under the control of scholars and researchers,” Matheisen added.

University-College is a “Brown-specific term,” Doeppner said, explaining that “in many institutions, the university is a collection of colleges,” each with their own administration, where people in different colleges report to different deans. But here, “for undergraduate education, everybody is in the college of Brown.” It’s part of the character of the University that “we don’t have the massive bureaucracy that many schools do,” Doeppner said.

“University-College model is the best of both worlds,” Mandel said, adding, “Faculty are invested in undergraduate education, but they are also world-class scholars.”

For Campbell, the term UniversityCollege is about a unified community where the “faculty who teach and mentor undergraduate and graduate students are the same,” he wrote. He added that the “interaction among students and each segment of our community adds vibrancy to our intellectual community.”

Expanding the Grad School does not go against the idea of Brown as a University-College, Campbell said.

“Being a robust research university strengthens our academic community

ELENA WEISSMANN / HERALD

and is very much compatible with our longstanding tradition of undergraduate educational excellence,” he wrote, adding that a “strong Graduate School aligns with this identity.”

Modest growth in the research side of the University-College model will attract “people who are dedicated to undergrad teaching but also want to make a difference in the world and push the envelope and solve challenges,” Locke said.

But Cooper noted that the model is not always properly balanced by the University. “My colleagues take deeply seriously the idea of the University-College,” he said. “That idea has fallen to the wayside by the current administration.”

The undergraduate experience “Graduate students provide many key benefits to the undergraduate population,” wrote Aislinn Rowan GS, the president of the Graduate Student Council, in an email to The Herald.

Almost all doctoral students are required to work as TAs as part of their training for one or more semesters, Rowan wrote. “In this capacity, graduate students are vital resources who lead discussion and review sections, hold office hours, advise students and, in many cases, grade exams or assignments,” she added, noting that in some departments graduate students go so far as to teach their own courses.

“When there are not enough graduate students, departments become limited in the courses they are able to offer, and the existing TAs are sometimes unable to keep up with student demand for their help, especially as they must balance these responsibilities with their own coursework and research,” Rowan wrote.

“Increasing the number of graduate students will benefit undergraduate education by alleviating these constraints.”

Graduate students also work directly with undergraduates doing research.

Due to a limited number of graduate students, “Laboratories often must turn away interested undergraduates,” Rowan wrote, adding that an increased number of graduate students will expand the capacity for undergraduates to get involved in research.

Iris Bahar, professor of engineering and computer science, said she thinks that the plateau in the size of the undergraduate population will improve the undergraduate experience. “This is

a good size, and if we expand it more, we’ll have to rethink about how we’re allocating resources — monetary and human — to make sure they’re still getting the same experience,” Bahar said.

“Brown has always been doing great research. But it has to keep up as a research institution and keep its place internationally or grow its position as a renowned research institution as well as a great undergrad institution,” Bahar said.

Bahar also pointed to new research opportunities available to undergraduate students that will open up with an increased graduate student population.

Rowan also believes that expanding the number of PhD students will attract more faculty members. Faculty members are interested both in teaching and research, and while the quality of the university’s undergraduates appeals to the former and to some degree the latter, “this must be accompanied by sufficient numbers of high-quality graduate students to work and undertake research with if we hope to attract the best and brightest professors to our university,” Rowan wrote. “Having stellar faculty benefits students at all levels of the university — graduate and undergraduate alike,” she added.

“It would be hard to attract top-notch scholars if you couldn’t support them with the correct teaching and grad students,” Mandel said.

Cooper said that in addition to the increased research opportunities available to undergraduate students, a better research profile will improve the reputation of the school. “The more visible the scholarship output of the university is, the more value your degree will hold,” he added.

Campbell noted that graduate students attract faculty members to the University. His vision for the Grad School is to make it “one of the best by raising the level of scholarly excellence in all of our programs,” and to have the University “be recognized as a place and destination for prospective graduate students who want to study with outstanding faculty,” he wrote. He added that in order to achieve that goal, the University must attract exceptional faculty members, which happens when prospective faculty members recognize the University “not only for our excellent undergraduates, but also our outstanding graduate students.”