SINCE 1891
THE BROWN DAILY HERALD MONDAY, MARCH 18, 2019
VOLUME CLIII, ISSUE 35
WWW.BROWNDAILYHERALD.COM
UCS, UFB candidates debate ahead of elections Participants discuss representation, transparency, Brown Divest referendum By KAYLA GUO
Bruno punches ticket to Lake Placid with pair of victories over top-seeded conference opponent
SENIOR STAFF WRITER
Candidates for top positions on the Undergraduate Council of Students and the Undergraduate Finance Board addressed topics including representation and inclusivity, transparency, campus engagement and the Brown Divest campaign during a debate Sunday night. William Zhou ’20, Melissa Lee ’20 and Vanessa Garcia ’20.5 vie for the UCS presidency, while Alex Song ’20 and Jason Carroll ’21 contend for the vice presidency, The Herald previously reported. Julian De Georgia ’20 and Alesandro Walker ’20 are competing for UFB chair. Fatoumata Kabba ’22, Peter Deegan ’21 and Phillip Champagne ’21 are in the race for vice chair. All candidates for UCS president and vice president discussed issues of UCS transparency and accountability. “It is critical that UCS works to become more transparent so that we can be more representative of the student
Bears sweep Quinnipiac, advance to semifinals
By ALEXANDRA RUSSELL SPORTS EDITOR
VICTORIA YIN / HERALD
Candidates for positions on the Undergraduate Council of Students and the Undergraduate Finance Board debated topics such as transparency and campus engagement Sunday night. body as a whole, recognizing again that we can only speak to our personal lived experiences, and the experiences that our given identities have,” said Zhou, the current UCS vice president. Song, who is UCS’ chair of Student Activities, referenced the lack of campus
awareness of UCS, leading to a “cycle of students and student groups not really understanding what UCS does.” As a result, it is difficult for the student body to hold UCS accountable, he said. Other candidates mentioned similar observations.
The debate’s moderators — UCS President Shanzé Tahir ’19, UFB Chair Lisa Schold ’19, Vice President for Campus Life Eric Estes, Director of the Stephen Robert ’62 Campus Center and Student Activities Joie Steele and Herald » See DEBATE, page 2
The men’s hockey team defeated No. 5 Quinnipiac University, the top-seeded team in the ECAC, in two games of a best-of-three quarterfinal series this weekend to advance to the semifinals for the first time since the 2012-13 season. After eliminating Princeton in the first playoff round last weekend, the Bears upset the Bobcats 2-1 in overtime Friday before scoring four goals in the third period to earn a 4-3 comeback victory Saturday. “The team performed tremendously — we swept the top team in our conference and the number five team in the » See M. HOCKEY, page 5
Shake Shack to open Wednesday Youth rally, strike for First Rhode Island climate legislation location moves into 249 Thayer Street, offering new shake flavors, local beer
Students join global school strike, Youth Climate Rallies, denounce legislative inaction
By JORDAN KEI-RAHN STAFF WRITER
Shake Shack is set to open on Thayer Street Wednesday at 11 a.m., marking the burger joint’s first location in Rhode Island. The American fast-food chain will be located at 249 Thayer St., across from the Brown Bookstore. Thayer Street “is a strong community of families, students and faculty, and thus the perfect place to lay our Rhode Island roots,” wrote Shake Shack Chief Development Officer Andrew McCaughan in an email to The Herald. “We gravitate to community centric locations where we can find incredible people to join our team, establish a strong guest demand and become ingrained in the neighborhood culture,” he added. Known for its customizable burgers and namesake frozen custard shakes, Shake Shack touts the high-quality taste of its food. “What we pride ourselves on is the real, premium ingredients we use in our food, our responsible sourcing practices and our warm hospitality,” McCaughan wrote. Shake Shack will introduce shake
INSIDE
By OLIVIA GEORGE CONTRIBUTING WRITER
ANITA SHEIH / HERALD
Shake Shack will open its first Rhode Island location on Wednesday morning. The menu will feature locally-inspired shakes and beers. flavors unique to the Thayer Street brings local art projects to the communilocation, including “Pie Oh My,” a va- ty. These efforts fall under the company’s nilla custard with a slice of seasonal pie; initiative, “Stand For Something Good,” “Chocolate Thayer Cake,” a chocolate McCaughan wrote. “We’re committed to custard with fudge sauce, PVDonuts extending hospitality beyond the four chocolate sea salt donut and chocolate walls of the Shack and into the comtoffee; and “À La Rhode,” a vanilla cus- munity. In every neighborhood in which tard with salted caramel, malt powder, we open, we develop deep ties, become banana and chocolate sprinkles. The a part of the dialogue with community Shake Shack will also feature local centers (and) local neighborhood partbeers from Narragansett Beer, Fool- ners and give to local charitable orgaproof Brewing Company and Whalers nizations.” Brewing Company. Shake Shack began in 2001 as a single Thayer’s Shake Shack will donate 5 hot dog cart in Madison Square Park, the percent of the proceeds made from their brainchild of restaurateur Danny Meyer “Pie Oh My” custard flavor to the Thayer and his associate Randy Garutti, who is Street District Management Authority’s now Shake Shake’s CEO. In 2004, Meyer Public Art Fund, an organization that » See SHAKE SHACK, page 3
Young people from across Rhode Island joined a global climate strike Friday as they gathered outside the State House to demand immediate legislative action on climate change. Students, many missing school for the protest, mounted the steps gripping colorful banners: “Science not silence” one read, and “The Climate is Changing, so Why Can’t We?” read another. Chants and songs of solidarity punctuated speeches, as high schoolers, college students and recent graduates alike voiced their frustration with their public leaders. The protest was one of more than 1600 Youth Climate Rallies held in at least 105 countries Friday. From New York to New Delhi and Munich to Montreal, students skipped school to appeal to local legislators for stronger climate action. Friday’s rallies collectively marked one of the largest international climate change actions to date.
The organized “school strikes” were inspired by 16-year-old Swedish activist Greta Thunberg. She began protesting outside of the Swedish parliament in August of last year, refusing to attend school to denounce adults’ inaction, The Guardian reported. Thunberg, founder of the Youth Strike for Climate movement, was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize March 14 for her work on environmental justice. Local high school students Joelye Land and Amick Sollenberger coordinated the R.I. rally with some assistance from Lauren Maunus ‘19, lead organizer with Sunrise Rhode Island, a youth-led political movement that advocates for political action on climate change. About 250 people attended, according to an estimate by UpRise RI. Land’s reason for not attending school Friday was simple: “Climate change is a huge issue, and the government isn’t taking strong enough action,” she said in a conversation with The Herald. It was also important to her to show solidarity with the international student movement demanding a safe, healthy future for all, she added. In 2014, Rhode Island passed the Resilient Rhode Island Act, which called for 80 percent emissions reductions below » See RALLY, page 3
WEATHER
MONDAY, MARCH 18, 2019
SPORTS Baseball goes 2-2 against Fairfield University in first series of season, to face Yale this weekend
SPORTS Women’s lacrosse edges out Yale 14-11, ends three-game losing streak
COMMENTARY Gladstone ’18: Brown Divest is not distinct from problematic national BDS movement
COMMENTARY Overall ’19, Doumani ’22: U. should divest from companies tied to human rights abuses
PAGE 2
PAGE 3
PAGE 7
PAGE 7
TODAY
TOMORROW
44 / 26
44 / 25
NEWS
PAGE 2 • MONDAY, MARCH 18, 2019
» DEBATE, from page 1 University News Editor Melanie Pincus ’21 — asked candidates predetermined questions. Audience questions were not permitted, but some official questions were submitted by students prior to the debate. Candidates all discussed methods for increasing student body engagement with UCS and its initiatives. “One of the best ways to foster relationships between students, faculty and (administration) is by directly involving students in the development of a lot of institutional structures and policies,” said Lee, UCS’ chair of Campus Life. Garcia, who is UCS’ secretary, discussed increasing UCS outreach to student groups. “It shouldn’t be their burden to come to us. We should go to them,” they said. Zhou’s platform includes creating more avenues for student involvement through the creation of a UCS committee focused on supporting culture and identity-based student groups. Song and Carroll, who is UCS appointments chair, both discussed increasing outreach to first-years and incoming first-years to further engage students with UCS. Carroll also proposed disseminating State of UCS emails to update the community. Candidates also talked about improving representation in UCS and its work. “Even though I’m a member of the black community, the queer community, people who go to CAPS — I don’t speak for them,” Carroll said in response to a
question asking candidates to describe an experience that helped them understand the needs of community that is not their own. “We too often undervalue our own ability to interact with our own communities and to take in voices that aren’t our own within our communities.” Garcia drew on their own experiences at the University. “For me, the personal is political,” they said. “(My lived experiences) have given me no other choice but to demand accessibility, inclusion and wellness within my classrooms, students’ groups, including UCS, and wider existence.” Lee and Zhou both discussed recognizing the limitations of their own identities and defaulting to those with personal experiences. As president, they would each aim to bring groups with expertise into relevant conversations with administrators. Song described UCS as a platform for any student to pursue any initiatives, focusing on “empowering … any voice, all voices,” he said. All UCS candidates said they were in favor of the referendum on this year’s ballot. The referendum, proposed by student coalition Brown Divest, will ask students if the University should “divest all stocks, funds, endowment and other monetary instruments from companies complicit in human rights abuses in Palestine and establish a means of implementing financial transparency and student oversight of the University’s investments,” according to the referendum’s official wording, The Herald previously reported. “There’s no reason why we should be
THE BROWN DAILY HERALD invested in” companies that perpetuate human rights violations anywhere, Carroll said. “We need to divest from all of them, not none of them.” The UFB debate occurred in the hour prior to the UCS debate with the same moderators and structure. All candidates discussed how to best achieve equity with the Board’s budget, which totals over $2 million. “In order to obtain equity, we need to start with transparency,” said Kabba, an at-large member of UFB. She proposed that the Board make more information available online about where UFB’s funding is allocated. De Georgia, UFB’s vice chair, expressed a similar sentiment and said he would aim to further transparency by publishing the Board’s annual budgets among other UFB processes to build on UFB’s first budget report, released in November. Walker, an at-large member of the Board, emphasized the importance of training UFB representatives to best support student groups. He also stressed applying UFB policies to funding requests on a case-by-case basis to promote equitable funding. Champagne, who is a member atlarge of UFB, referenced the different ways that student groups can receive funding outside of UFB as one way to address the issue of equity. For instance, groups could access departmental funding. Deegan, also an at-large member, objected to the idea of distributing funding equally across students. His platform rests
on the redistribution of funding based on students’ financial need, proposing that when student groups submit funding requests to UFB, they should also present anonymous survey results indicating the number of group members who require financial assistance. Candidates also discussed UFB’s financial aid fund, which intends to provide subsidies for low-income students participating in on-campus activities. Every candidate agreed that the fund should be expanded. Walker emphasized the importance of expanding the fund to better cover events such as Spring Weekend, which he said is important to many students’ Brown experiences. Kabba added that the fund should also cover costs for low-income students to attend conferences and off-campus events. Candidates also talked about representation on the Board. Students with different identities all “need to feel included when they walk into UFB meetings,” Kabba said. “They need to be able to see themselves in those positions, and they need to be able to know that whoever is on the Board will fully understand where they are coming from.” Champagne expressed a similar sentiment, saying that “it’s very important that individuals are able to relate to UFB members that they’re speaking to.” Deegan discussed increasing accessibility to the Board by making UFB outreach-based — instead of requiring students to present to UFB in order to receive all their funds, UFB would approach student groups. Deegan argued
that this approach could remove a “barrier” to funding for students who do not come from high-income backgrounds. Members of Brown Divest presented and answered questions from the same moderators at the start of the debate. “Brown has implicated itself and therefore its community members in the Israeli occupation and its continuous human rights violations,” Brown Divest member Noah Mlyn ’20 said in the group’s opening statement. “We must recognize that Brown’s investments in certain companies that perpetuate violations of Palestinian human rights render the University complicit in the same.” The group has proposed criteria “firmly based in international human rights law” to distinguish companies directly involved in human rights violations in Palestine, Mlyn said. In their closing statement, a member of Brown Divest who requested anonymity out of fear of personal repercussions said that “Brown Divest calls for divestment from companies implicated in unethical activities that are not limited to a particular region in the world.” “Although the coalition’s criteria for divestment are regarding Palestine, most of the companies that violate these criteria perpetuate violence against marginalized communities across the world,” they added. Voting for UCS and UFB positions will open Tuesday at 12 p.m. and remain open until 12 p.m. Thursday, March 21. Undergraduates will be able to vote through an online survey.
NEWS
MONDAY, MARCH 18, 2019 • PAGE 3
THE BROWN DAILY HERALD
Bears win home opener, split series Bears win 5-3 in first game, lose 7-8, 13-8 in double-header, win 9-8 in final matchup By RYAN HANDEL SENIOR STAFF WRITER
The baseball team split its first home series of the year, winning games one and four of its home opener over Fairfield University, but dropping both contests of a Saturday doubleheader. In the series’ first game, right fielder Garett Delano ’20 hit a go-ahead single in the eighth inning and Will Tomlinson ’20 pitched a save to lock up the 5-3 win. But the Bears blew six run leads in each game of Saturday’s doubleheader, falling by scores of 7-6 and 13-8. Then on Sunday, Bruno was on the right side of a comeback, storming back from an 8-6 deficit in the seventh inning to defeat the Stags 9-8. Several Bears enjoyed strong weekends at the plate, including catcher Parke Phillips ’20 (6-16 with 5 RBI), Delano (5-14, 2 RBI) and right fielder/ pitcher Calvin Farris ’20 (5-14, 2 RBI). “Up and down the lineup we had guys that performed really well at different times,” said Head Coach Grant Achilles. Fairfield (4-10) opened scoring in the first contest with an RBI double from Dan Ryan. But Brown (3-11) battled back to a 2-2 tie, and shortstop Rich Ciufo ’20 blasted a home run to left field to put the Bears ahead. In the eighth, the Stags tied the game back up at three, but Delano’s single and an RBI double from catcher Mark Sluys ’19 gave Bruno the 5-3 victory. JJ Sliepka ’19 earned the win on the mound. Brown started off strong in the series’ second tilt, the first game of Saturday’s back-to-back duels. After the Bears jumped out to an early 2-0 lead, Ciufo launched another homer, scoring his teammates Sluys and Phillips. A Delano RBI double extended Bruno’s
advantage to six runs. But Brown collapsed, getting shut out in the game’s final three innings while giving up seven runs to the Stags. It was more of the same for Bruno in game two of the doubleheader, as they again used an early offensive outburst to pull ahead 6-0, but could not hold on to the lead. Fairfield put 13 runs on the board along with 15 hits. For the second consecutive game, Brown’s offense and pitching were ineffective in the later innings. “Doubleheaders can be long days down here at the field,” Ciufo said. “But when we bring focus and play as a team and compete every single pitch, we usually come out on top.” Game four of the series appeared to follow a similar pattern, as the Bears built up a 6-2 lead with the help of a home run from second baseman Cameron Deere ’20. Brown once again gave up the lead, as the Stags scored three runs apiece in the fifth and sixth innings to take an 8-6 advantage. This time, though, Bruno fought back. Two RBI singles in the seventh followed by a go-ahead RBI single in the eighth from left fielder Frank Caprio ’19.5 put the Bears in front. Farris pitched two scoreless innings to close out the Brown victory. “We got some good pitching at the end today (and) certainly Calvin Farris coming in and shutting the door was key,” Achilles said. “You just can’t back down and never believe it’s going to be over until it is.” “We’ve faced a lot of adversity as a team up to this point in the season,” Farris said. “When we came back in the eighth inning and took the lead, it gave me a lot of fire.” Brown will next return to Attanasio Family Field for a three-game tilt against Yale to open the team’s Ivy League schedule this weekend. The Bears will then complete their homestand with a matchup against Ocean State rival Bryant University Tuesday March 26.
Women’s lacrosse bests Bulldogs Bears beat Yale after losing streak against Dartmouth, Bryant, Naval Academy
By EMORY HINGORANI STAFF WRITER
Coming off a series of losses to Dartmouth, Bryant University and the Naval Academy, the women’s lacrosse team (3-4, 1-1 Ivy) faced a pivotal matchup against Ivy rival Yale (4-3, 0-2) Saturday. Despite the recent unlucky streak, the team was able to turn the momentum around with a 14-11 win over the Bulldogs. Momentum in the game swung back and forth for much of the first half. KC Williams ’20 opened scoring for Brown four minutes into the game, which was met with a response from Yale less than a minute later to level the tally at 1-1. Emma DeGennaro ’20 then scored for the Bears with 24:19 left in the period, which the Bulldogs quickly followed with a point of their own seven minutes into the half. Zoe Verni ’19 found the back of the net for Brown off an assist by Maggie Fowler ’21, giving the Bears the lead by a margin of one with 21:09 remaining to play in the first. But Yale’s offense began to rally in the middle of the period. The Bulldogs put up two scores before a man-up goal from Sophia DeRosa ’22 tied the game at four apiece. This goal was the first of her collegiate career.
»SHAKE SHACK, from page 1 built Shake Shack’s first permanent location in Madison Square Park and shortly thereafter expanded throughout New York City. Shake Shack projects to have 200 U.S. locations by 2020, according to a CNBC article. When asked whether Shake Shack would compete with other businesses on Thayer, University Vice President for Real Estate and Strategic Initiatives John Luipold said “any time you add into a retail area, some businesses are likely to be affected.” But Shake Shack may bring
OLIVIA GEORGE / HERALD
The protest Friday was one of more than 1600 Youth Climate Rallies that took place throughout the country. The movement was inspired by 16-year-old Swedish activist Greta Thunberg.
The Elis answered once more with a pair of consecutive goals, giving Yale a 6-4 advantage with 7:24 left to play in the half. But DeRosa struck again, scoring two goals within a 90-second span to tie the game at 6-6. Yale followed with a goal with 3:51 remaining in the first half, the final tally of the period. Despite taking 15 shots in the first half, six more than the Elis, the Bears were unable to capitalize on the advantage, and entered halftime at a deficit of one. Brown also struggled to secure draw controls in the first, as Yale dominated draws by a margin of 11-3 in the period. Bruno won the draw control to open the second half, but Yale found the first point of the period, setting the contest at 8-6 two minutes in. In response, the Bears’ offense began to heat up and take control of the game. Alaina Parisella ’22 scored for Brown with 26:26 remaining in the period, and Risa Mosenthal ’21 notched a pair of goals in the next four minutes to put the Bears at an advantage of one. Yale tallied another point to tie up the game once more at nine-all, but the Bears’ offense continued to build up steam. Back-to-back goals from Mosenthal and Claire Jeschke ’22 gave Bruno a two-point advantage with 19 minutes left to play. DeRosa and Mosenthal then scored their fourth goals of the afternoon at the 16:10 and 13:38 minute marks respectively, setting the game at 13-9. Kelsey Shea ’22 finished the scoring for the Bears, putting Bruno’s 14th point on the board. Yale finally responded with
a goal with 1:43 left in the contest, ending a 19-minute scoreless streak for the Bulldogs. The Elis then scored once more a minute later, and the game closed at a final score of 14-11 in favor of Brown. The Bears’ fiery offense in the second half fueled them to their first victory over the Bulldogs since 2011. The second-half rally was a testament to the team’s cohesion and composure, said Emily Fryer ’20. “It all came down to playing as a team,” Fryer said. “In the second half both teams are tired, but whatever team is more willing to play as a unit and play together … is the team that wins the game.” “We said during halftime that we wanted to go up right away,” DeGennaro said. “That’s exactly what we did. The offense really started to work together and move the ball, and when you’re patient on offense, that’s when things go the smoothest.” Another key factor in the Bears’ offense was their versatility. Eight different players scored for Bruno on the afternoon, four of whom were first-years. “On attack, we always look at every player as a threat,” Fryer said. “Anyone can go to goal, anyone has the confidence to shoot at any time.” The Bears have another tough Ivy League matchup coming up, as they travel to New Jersey to face Princeton Saturday. “Ivy games have a different feel to them than other games, and especially Princeton,” Fryer said. “They’ve been doing really well this season, so we’ll obviously have to give them a good fight.”
new customers to the area and potentially benefit nearby businesses, he added. “Most other restaurants offer a wider variety of dinner and lunch options, which is something Shake Shack is a little weaker at,” Ben Myers ’21 said. According to McCaughan, part of Shake Shack’s goal is to “highlight the already rich culinary scene in Providence.” Myers noted that long lines might build up on Thayer Street for Shake Shack. But he is willing to “wait in line for (Shake Shack). You know it’s special.” While Shake Shack’s prices tend to run higher than other fast-food burger
chains — the barebones “ShackBurger” costs $5.29 compared to $3.99 for McDonald’s “Big Mac” — Myers is still looking forward to the restaurant’s offerings. “You pay for what you get, and Shake Shack’s quality is just so incredible,” Myers said. He added that “I used to have a Shake Shack half a mile from where I live. … It was so much better than McDonald’s. I mean, the patties are better, the buns are better, the fries are better.” But Myers is most looking forward to their “really quite superb shakes … and around here, it’s a little hard to find a good shake.”
» RALLY, from page 1
the movement being a youth-led effort. “The seas are rising, the temperatures are rising and what gives me hope is that we are rising!” climate activist Nicole DiPaolo told the crowd. DiPaolo, 26, is a born-and-raised Rhode Islander currently on the leadership team of Climate Action RI and a volunteer with Sunrise. “We will keep rising until we can solve this climate crisis and secure a livable future for everyone,” she added. “The hope for change is in us!” Maunus echoed the sentiment, leading the crowd in a chant of “the youth united will never be defeated!” “For too long we have seen our elected officials not representing us,” she told The Herald. “We are not going to continue watching our futures being jeopardized like this.” Maunus, among many other activists present, stressed the importance of a united climate change movement and cross-cultural solidarity. “I’m here because I know that we can’t win when we stand alone … We need to unite because that is the only way we build power.”
1990 levels by 2050 in the state. Multiple participants at the protest Friday called for a stronger emissions reductions target than the R.I. goal, citing a report from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change from last October. “We need 100 percent emissions reductions below 1990, or 100 percent carbon free by 2030,” Maunus told The Herald. Activists also noted that the Resilient Rhode Island Act is not legally enforceable and instead simply serves as a set of targets. While the voices of young students sounded outside the State House, a crowd comprised of people of all ages gathered to listen and stand in solidarity. Sister Carol Jussaume, a teacher at St. Mary’s Academy Bay View in Riverside, R.I., brought her students to the rally. “The environment is one of our critical concerns,” Jussaume told The Herald. “We asked anyone who wanted to come to join us, and we have about 30 students with us.” The students attending from Bay View ranged from ninth to twelfth graders. Speakers affirmed the importance of
COMMENTARY PAGE 4 • MONDAY, MARCH 18, 2019
THE BROWN DAILY HERALD
CS ‘grind’ is unhealthy and unproductive DONNIE SAYHOUNI op-ed contributor As computer science students on this campus know all too well, any trip to the Center for Information Technology is bound to be accompanied by the murmurs and moans of concentrators buried under heaps of assignments. In fact, frequent attendees like me probably have heard whispers of a sort of sick contest as to who can sustain the heaviest workload or survive the most all-nighters. Much of CS culture at Brown is, unfortunately, infected with workaholism. There are, as I’m sure my fellow CS concentrators are well aware, countless mental and physical health risks that come with severe sleep deprivation and fatigue. Heart disease, obesity, anxiety and depression, to name just a few potential problems, are all strongly correlated with insufficient sleep and chronic exhaustion. Irregular eating and inadequate nutrition are also associated with heart disease, diabetes and stress. But why do I place an emphasis on students in computer science? Isn’t sleep deprivation a problem for all college students? While this is mostly true, studies have shown STEM students are at the greatest risk of the aforementioned health risks. Some may brush off these downsides, because it doesn’t seem like
sleeping less at 20 could lead to heart disease at 55. Evidence, however, is plentiful to suggest these stressors can increase persistent health risk in adulthood and beyond. Unhealthy habits in youth set a bad precedent and can be root causes for more serious conditions later in life. I understand that computer science is one of the most demanding concentrations on campus. CS stu-
under-sleepers. The same can be said for skipping meals. There is evidence to suggest that skipping even one meal a day to delegate additional time for work may reduce not only average productivity but total productivity as well. That is, by skipping breakfast, you may be getting less of your homework done, not more. I do not want to imply that CS
of what we make. Certainly, there’s virtue in bettering lives everywhere with good software, otherwise I’d be in a different industry. Greatness requires hard work. I look up to those who devote so much of their effort to putting food on the table and making the world a better place. It is, however, largely misguided to sacrifice one’s health, well-being and social life to take an extra CS class or join that grad
Computer science is about creativity and exploration, freedom and experimentation, and the CS ‘grind’ is antithetical to what should be the mission statement of this discipline.
dents routinely struggle to juggle project deadlines, club obligations and personal lives, but cutting extra time out of meals or sleep to get things done may not be nearly as effective as many in the department believe. Losing even a few hours of sleep negatively affects both motivation and efficiency. An analysis of employee productivity finds that chronic under-sleepers reduced their productivity three times more than those with normal sleep patterns. Normal sleepers were also 50 percent more motivated to complete work than chronic
department policy requires that students overwork themselves. In truth, thanks to Brown’s flexible concentration requirements and the Open Curriculum, it is possible for computer science students to lead healthy lives in college while maintaining an active social life. Yet, many do not. This may be because students in the department glean value from overworking themselves. That’s partly due to a larger fault in American society that sees virtue in “working until it hurts.” To be sure, I am fully behind the idea that we should be proud
course a year early. I get it. Some people really enjoy learning about computer science by taking courses in this department, and some people can handle a larger workload than others. But I can speak from personal experience that 60+ hours of weekly coursework is not a good recipe for forming deep understanding of class material. Overly heavy course loads inevitably lead to cycles of deadline rushes with little or no time to digest new concepts. Never-ending waves of assignments force students out of extracurriculars
or social events that are almost always more valuable than the assignments themselves. Even if one’s primary purpose is to further their CS career, there are more constructive ways to go about it. Networking and social skills are among the most important factors for hiring and promotion in today’s competitive job market. The fact is that an extracurricular or leadership position may be more influential on a resume than another entry in the coursework list. Even a few good words of referral will likely get you a lot farther than taking an extra grad course. I’d like to urge those of my colleagues who are eternal residents of the CIT to put some of your energy elsewhere. This career is worth no one’s health, social life or leisure, and the CS concentration ought not be one of pain and suffering. Computer science is about creativity and exploration, freedom and experimentation, and the CS “grind” is antithetical to what should be the mission statement of this discipline.
Donnie Sahyouni ’21 can be reached at donnie_sahyouni@brown.edu. Please send responses to this opinion to letters@browndailyherald.com and op-eds to opinions@browndailyherald.com.
Being transparent regarding investment transparency JOE DOWLING, JANE DIETZE AND JOSHUA KENNEDY op-ed contributors Brown’s endowment is a vital part of the University. In FY17, it funded 18 percent of the operating budget — $165 million, or $19,000 per student. It is a permanent asset that is managed by Brown’s Investment Office with careful oversight and governance from the Investment Committee of the Corporation and members of the University administration. The goal of the investment program is to balance capital appreciation and capital preservation. Generations of future Brunonians are counting on this resource. The recent commentary from students on the issue of investment transparency has revealed misunderstandings in the campus community about how Brown manages the endowment. Particularly in light of a pending Undergraduate Council of Students referendum, where students will vote on a question related to “divestment,” we perceive an opportunity to explain why the University is limited in its ability to selectively choose to remove individual companies or holdings from its investments. Many may believe that the endowment consists of stocks and other investments selected by the Investment Office. This is not the case for approximately 95 percent of investments. Brown does not directly manage its own investments. Instead, the Investment Office hires and oversees external investment managers who manage portfolios of investments. In certain instances the endowment may use low-cost indexes. This model of employing external managers is also followed by the vast majority of our peers.
As part of the agreements we sign with our investment managers, we agree not to disclose our underlying managers’ positions. The mix of investments that constitute these portfolios is essentially the managers’ intellectual property: they allocate considerable research resources on developing these positions. In order to generate competitive investment returns, the managers cannot afford to have this intellectual property shared freely.
capable of generating with other critical factors. One of these includes the ethical integrity of the manager’s strategy and personnel, as well as Environmental, Social and Governance policies. We place a high value on considerations of ethics and sustainability when evaluating our managers. The other key decisions made by the Investment Office relate to determining the proportion of Brown’s endowment allocated to spe-
We place a high value on considerations of ethics and sustainability when evaluating our managers.
Brown’s investment managers, in almost all cases, manage portfolios that are shared by several clients. These are not bespoke solutions, and neither Brown nor the other investors have the ability to dictate specific requirements about the contents of the portfolios based on our own preferences or interests. The individual holdings also tend to change dynamically, sometimes dramatically so. Some strategies that employ systematic quantitative techniques change their holdings frequently, even daily. Therefore, the Investment Office’s primary pursuit in generating competitive investment returns for the endowment is selecting the managers with whom the University will partner. In doing so, we take a holistic approach that balances the risk-adjusted returns the manager is
cific asset classes (equities vs. commodities vs. bonds, etc). The Investment Office does so within ranges approved by the Investment Committee of the Corporation of Brown University. We oversee the distribution of external managers invested across these asset classes, ensuring a diversified portfolio of world-class outside managers investing for Brown across multiple assets and securities. The portfolio is designed to weather multiple economic scenarios. Additionally, the Investment Office maintains internal controls to monitor the endowment and ensure that it complies with investment policies at all times. Some might argue that Brown simply should not be invested with external managers that don’t allow clients to shape the managers’ port-
folio. But such a position would lead to an endowment that does not generate the returns needed to sustain the University and to increase the impact of the funds given to Brown for fulfillment of its mission of education and research. And although the endowment is managed as a single pool of funds, it is in fact thousands of separate charitable gifts. Alumni, parents, students and friends of Brown have made generous donations to support a specific University purpose (financial aid, a specific professorship, research space, etc). The funds are invested with the intention that the original gifts will grow in size and will provide an ongoing income stream to support the specific endowed purpose. It is through the process of providing a stable and growing financial resource that Brown’s endowment reflects and ultimately helps to shape the values of the University. In keeping with these values, we expect the highest level of integrity and intellectual honesty from our managers and our team while fulfilling our charge of enhancing the University’s long-term financial security.
Joe Dowling, chief executive officer of the Investment Office, Jane Dietze, vice president and chief investment officer and Joshua Kennedy ’97, Investment Office managing director can be reached at joseph_dowling@brown.edu, jane_dietze@brown.edu and joshua_kennedy@brown.edu respectively. Please send responses to this opinion to letters@browndailyherald.com and op-eds to opinions@browndailyherald.com.
TODAY
MONDAY, MARCH 18, 2019 • PAGE 5
THE BROWN DAILY HERALD
s u n n y d ay s wa r m u p t h ay e r s t r e e t
crossword
VICTORIA YIN / HERALD
Cars line the sides of an empty Thayer Street on a late winter morning as the Sci-Li looms in the distance. With the opening of Shake Shack on Wednesday and the beginning of spring, traffic is sure to pick up.
Literary Arts Prizes Literary Arts is accepting applications for a number of prizes that are open to undergraduate and graduate students. Prizes are to recognize excellence in fiction, poetry, children’s literature, innovative writing, translation and language art. Submissions are due by 11:59 pm on 20 March 2019. For more details (and for online submissions) visit: https://brown.edu/academics/literary-arts/literary-arts-prizes-2019 or brown.edu/cw (then look for “Literary Arts Spring Prize Listing”)
» M. HOCKEY, from page 1 country in their building, and that’s a huge accomplishment,” said Head Coach Brendan Whittet ’94. The Bears face Cornell in the semifinals of the ECAC Tournament at Herb Brooks Arena in Lake Placid, New York Friday. The winner will advance to the championship game the following night. Brown 2, Quinnipiac 1 (OT) Friday night, Brent Beaudoin ’20 tied the game with 21 seconds remaining in regulation, before Jack Gessert ’20 notched the golden goal late in overtime to secure victory for Bruno (15-13-5) in the series opener. Following a scoreless first period in which the Bears killed off a critical five-minute major, Karlis Cukste put the Bobcats (25-9-2) on the board with a goal early in the second stanza. Bruno killed off another penalty later in the frame to preserve the score, before mounting an offensive surge and outshooting Quinnipiac 12-5 in the third. After Brown pulled netminder Gavin
Nieto ’20 for an extra skater with just over a minute remaining in regulation, Beaudoin equalized the contest to send the teams into overtime. Positioned just outside the right circle, Beaudoin collected the puck off a pass from Zach Giuttari ’20 and sent a smooth shot past Quinnipiac goaltender Andrew Shortridge for the late tally. Bruno pressured the Quinnipiac net in overtime, outshooting the Bobcats 147. With three minutes remaining, Colin Burston ’21 fired a shot that bounced off the boards toward the front of the goal, where Gessert drove the puck past Shortridge backhanded to secure the win. Brown 4, Quinnipiac 3 The following night saw the Bears mount a four-goal comeback in the third period to stun the Bobcats and secure the series sweep. Tommy Marchin ’19 recorded a pair of goals, including the game-winner, while Max Gottlieb ’19 and Beaudoin also scored in the victory. The team’s mindset of resilience and confidence was a major factor in the win, Marchin said.
“After the second period (when) we were down two goals, we weren’t afraid at all and we weren’t nervous at all — we were still just as confident coming in,” Marchin said. “We had to keep doing what we were doing correctly and tighten some things up, and everyone had faith that we were definitely in the game.” Alex Whelan opened scoring for Quinnipiac just over a minute into the first stanza, finding the back of the net on the team’s first shot of the contest. Whelan doubled the lead late in the period, burying a rebound to give the Bobcats a 2-0 advantage entering the first intermission. Following a scoreless second period, the Bears scored a pair of goals in the opening two minutes of the final stanza to level the tally and begin their offensive surge. At 1:22, Gottlieb gathered a feed from Burston at the top of the left circle and launched a shot past Shortridge to give Bruno its first of the evening. Marchin added a goal 32 seconds later, finishing a rebound in the crease for the equalizer. Chris Berger ’21 and Giuttari recorded assists on the play.
Ten minutes later, Beaudoin collected the puck in the neutral zone just as a Brown penalty expired and scored on a breakaway to reclaim the lead. Marchin struck again in the 14th minute, beating Shortridge on a shot from the slot after the Bears won a faceoff in the Quinnipiac zone. Craig Martin notched an extra-attacker goal with two minutes remaining, but the Bears fended off the Bobcats to secure the win and punch their ticket to the semifinals. The evening was also highlighted by several critical saves from Nieto, who frustrated Quinnipiac with 28 stops to keep Bruno’s tournament bid alive. “Gavin in net was really, really good both nights — he kept us in it,” Gessert said. “We outshot them a lot on Friday night, but that doesn’t tell the full story. He definitely kept us in it Friday night, and then made some huge saves last night too. It could have easily been three or four nothing before we started the third period.” Brown’s visit to Lake Placid this weekend marks its first appearance
in the semifinal round of the ECAC Tournament since 2013, when the team defeated Quinnipiac to play in the championship game against Union College. “Two more wins and we win the conference and go on to the national tournament,” Gessert said. “That’s something that everybody on our team is really striving for and pushing for.” If the team advances and takes home the crown on Saturday, it will achieve a first for the program. Since becoming a member of the ECAC’s hockey division at its founding in 1961, Brown has never won a conference championship. As the Bears prepare to take the ice at Herb Brooks Arena, the title is more tangible than ever. “It’s a great hockey team — they play the game very hard. They play the game with a ton of grit and a ton of resolve and I truly believe it’s a team that’s built to win now,” Whittet said. “We’re going to give everything in our power to come back with Brown’s first ECAC championship.” The Bears face off against Cornell in Lake Placid Friday. Puck drop is at 4 p.m.
COMMENTARY PAGE 6 • MONDAY, MARCH 18, 2019
THE BROWN DAILY HERALD
Vote no on divest BENJAMIN GLADSTONE op-ed contributor When I heard about the “divestment” campaign being waged at Brown, I felt anew the exhaustion and frustration of my years on campus. In Israel, where I am living for the year, there is a constant, lively debate over Israeli policy, extensive research into serious social problems and great opposition to the way that the Israeli government handles the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Absent from this discourse is a serious constituency that seeks to destroy the country’s existence as a Jewish state. Brown Divest, which describes itself on its website as part of “a movement to Boycott, Divest and Sanction (BDS) the state of Israel,” claims to have no position on that matter. That is because its leaders know that disguising their opposition to the two-state solution, which accommodates and promotes the self-determination of both Jews and Palestinians, makes their cause more palatable to Brown’s voters. In doing so, they seek to hide the pernicious effects of their campaign on both the situation in Israel and Palestine and within Brown’s campus. Although international BDS, like “Brown Divest,” claims to not support a one state or two state solution, it is in fact an outgrowth of the historical “Arab boycott” movement, which was sponsored by several states that actively sought to wipe Israel off the map militarily. Palestinian parties that reject a two-state solution (like the anti-Semitic Hamas) endorse BDS while Palestinian parties that ostensibly support a peace process (like Fatah) oppose it. BDS also advocates for a version of the Palestinian “right of return” (including for descendants of Palestinian refugees), which BDS cofounder Omar Barghouti himself has
said “would end Israel’s existence as a Jewish state.” Anti-occupation Israelis feel the harm that BDS causes, perhaps more acutely than anyone else. I spoke with an Israeli friend, who is a university lecturer and spends much of his time working to promote a more democratic, just Israel. As much as he opposes the settlement enterprise and the occupation, what he saw on American campuses still appalled him. While he publicly critiqued Israeli policies in Tel Aviv, he saw that what BDS called for would destroy the society in which
the US is teeming with people calling for their annihilation? That is why, as many Israeli leftists understand, BDS is such a boon to the Israeli political right. It validates the narrative that Israel is alone in the world and must therefore take every precaution to secure itself. After sustaining the collective trauma from more than a century of Zionist-Arab conflict, and a millennia of anti-Jewish oppression, Israeli anti-occupation activists face an uphill battle to convince their fellow citizens to overcome their fears. Every attempt to further
Every attempt to further isolate Israel from the outside deals a devastating blow to the internal anti-occupation movement, empowering the most extreme elements of both Israeli and Palestinian politics. he lived. Last month I spoke with another, anti-occupation Israeli scholar, who explained to me further how BDS hurts pro-peace and pro-justice work. She told me she was amazed to hear that BDS advocates demanded that Israelis lay down their arms and take risks for peace, while simultaneously showing Israelis why they could not trust the international community. Israelis know that every step they take toward peace with Palestine comes with new risks for a security crisis. For instance, in 2005 when Israel unilaterally withdrew from the Gaza Strip, the enclave collapsed into violence and Hamas took over two years later. As a result, Israelis need assurances that, if they take similar steps in the West Bank, they will not recreate the Gaza situation just meters away from downtown Jerusalem. How could I tell these Israelis that they should risk their own lives and those of their families when they know that
isolate Israel from the outside deals a devastating blow to the internal antioccupation movement, empowering the most extreme elements of both Israeli and Palestinian politics. To Israelis, as to Palestinians, “the conflict” is not a distant idea. After living in Jerusalem for less than a year, I learned that every time there is an outbreak of violence I will likely know someone personally affected by it. A rabbi with whom I have been studying at Hebrew University, for example, recently mourned with his former student the death of her unborn child after she and her husband were wounded in a shooting. I am not even Israeli — just Jewish — and even I have personally known two people killed in terror attacks related to the conflict. When I hear that BDS is launching yet another assault on Brown through Brown Divest, I could not help but think about the very real violence of this conflict. It is hard to take Brown
Find us online! facebook.com/browndailyherald
browndailyherald.com
@the_herald
@browndailyherald
youtube.com/browndailyherald
Sections
Multimedia & Production
Business
Editor-in-Chief Emily Davies
Arts & Culture Editors Elise Ryan Annabelle Woodward
Design Editors Kyle Cui Bilal Ismail Ahmed Dylan Tian Julie Wang
General Managers Ravi Betzig Nicholas Masiakowski
Senior Editors Anita Sheih Sarah Wang
Metro Editors Colleen Cronin Sophie Culpepper Celia Hack
Editorial Page Editors Grace Layer Krista Stapleford
News Editors Katherine Bennett Jacob Lockwood Melanie Pincus Allie Reed
post- magazine Editor-in-Chief Anita Sheih
Science & Research Editors Cate Ryan Chris Schutte Sports Editors Alexandra Russell Alex Smolar COMMENTARY Opinions Editors Rebecca Aman Emily Miller Derek Simshauser
Head Photo Editors Tiffany Ding Benjamin Turuño Copy Desk Chief Kelley Tackett Illustrations Editor Daphne Zhao Video Editor Victoria Caruso Max Dekle Graphics Editor Sarah Martinez
Students identifying their cause with BDS have previously pressed for an “academic boycott” of Israel. For example, they vehemently opposed the establishment of an “Israel Fund” for academic studies of Israel at Brown. Note that Brown has for years hosted an initiative called “New Directions in Palestinian Studies.” Since arriving in Israel, I have been able to access new archival and human perspectives, especially perspectives from Jews of Color, and to better understand the challenging history of early Israel. I can now write a more thorough critique of early Israeli policies because of the resources available to me here. But BDS has no interest in such critiques, even harsh ones — ultimately, its ideology is not critical but eliminationist. Brown RISD Hillel was another frequent target of older BDS campaigns at Brown. For example, when a Hillel group planned an event to host
Location: 195 Angell St., Providence, R.I. www.browndailyherald.com
Editorial Leadership
Managing Editors Anna Kramer Priyanka Podugu
Divest’s claim that it is not “proposing a political solution for the situation in Israel-Palestine” seriously. “Brown Divest” has done nothing to distance itself from the international BDS campaign — it openly identifies with it. Moreover, it has done little to distance itself from previous BDS activities at Brown, which is unsurprising given the overlap of people involved in past activities and those occurring today. In past campaigns, BDS at Brown — not yet billing itself as “Brown Divest” — has been less subtle in its calls for an end to Israel’s existence.
Office Manager Diane Silvia Directors Sales: Bersabel Yifru Finance: Rudra Srivastava, Reynaldo Blandon Strategy: Edwin Farley
the intersectional justice activist Janet Mock — an event unrelated to Israel — it was met with such powerful opposition from BDS supporters that Mock decided not to attend. The campus was deprived of the opportunity to hear from and engage with Mock on issues of violence against LGBTQ+ individuals and communities. From the record of these various iterations of BDS at Brown, we can infer the future of “Brown Divest” — certainly, it has no intention of stopping at the end of the palatable list of companies it has offered to Brown voters for the purpose of this referendum. While Brown Divest would have Brunonian voters believe that they are running a targeted divestment campaign against companies they claim facilitate human rights violations in the Israel-Palestine conflict, Brown Divest has not articulated how they differ from these older movements. I would really like to believe that Brown Divest is radically different from both international BDS and past BDS projects at Brown. There are steps that it could take to earn some credibility: Apologizing for past calls for academic boycotts, severing ties with the international BDS campaign and declaring support for a two-state solution, with Israel and Palestine existing side by side, would be a good start. Without taking these actions, however, BDS will only hinder productive discourse about the conflict on campus and actively hurt anti-occupation movements in Israel itself.
Benjamin Gladstone ’18 can be reached at benjamin_gladstone@alumni.brown.edu. Please send responses to this opinion to letters@browndailyherald.com and op-eds to opinions@browndailyherald.com.
Editorial contact: 401-351-3372 herald@browndailyherald.com
Advertising contact: 401-351-3372 advertising@browndailyherald.com
Submissions: The Brown Daily Herald publishes submissions in the form of op-eds and letters to the editor. Op-eds are typically between 750 and 1000 words, though we will consider submissions between 500 and 1200 words. Letters to the editor should be around 250 words. While letters to the editor respond to an article or column that has appeared in The Herald, op-eds usually prompt new discussions on campus or frame new arguments about current discourse. All submissions to The Herald cannot have been previously published elsewhere (in print or online — including personal blogs and social media), and they must be exclusive to The Herald. Submissions must include no more than two individual authors. If there are more than two original authors, The Herald can acknowledge the authors in a statement at the end of the letter or op-ed, but the byline can only include up to two names. The Herald will not publish submissions authored by groups. The Herald does not publish anonymous submissions. If you feel your circumstances prevent you from submitting an op-ed or letter with your name, please email herald@browndailyherald.com to explain your situation. You can submit op-eds to opinions@browndailyherald.com and letters to letters@browndailyherald.com. When you email your submission, please include (1) your full name, (2) an evening or mobile phone number in case your submission is chosen for publication and (3) any affiliation with Brown University or any institution or organization relevant to the content of your submission. Please send in submissions at least 24 hours in advance of your desired publication date. The Herald only publishes submissions while it is in print. The Herald reserves the right to edit all submissions. If your piece is considered for publication, an editor will contact you to discuss potential changes to your submission. Commentary: The editorial is the majority opinion of the editorial page board of The Brown Daily Herald. The editorial viewpoint does not necessarily reflect the views of The Brown Daily Herald, Inc. Columns, letters and comics reflect the opinions of their authors only. Corrections: The Brown Daily Herald is committed to providing the Brown University community with the most accurate information possible. Corrections may be submitted up to seven calendar days after publication. Advertising: The Brown Daily Herald, Inc. reserves the right to accept or decline any advertisement at its discretion. The Brown Daily Herald, Inc. is a financially independent, nonprofit media organization bringing you The Brown Daily Herald, BlogDailyHerald and Post- Magazine. The Brown Daily Herald has served the Brown University community daily since 1891. It is published Monday through Friday during the academic year, excluding vacations, once during Commencement and once during Orientation by The Brown Daily Herald, Inc. Single copy free for each member of the community. Subscription prices: $200 one year daily, $100 one semester daily. Copyright 2019 by The Brown Daily Herald, Inc. All rights reserved. Periodicals postage paid at Providence, R.I. Postmaster: Please send corrections to P.O. Box 2538, Providence, RI 02906.
COMMENTARY MONDAY, MARCH 18, 2019 • PAGE 7
THE BROWN DAILY HERALD
E D I T O R’ S N O T E
Transparency at The Herald In a March 12 letter, Jack Wrenn GS urged The Herald to consider creating a public editor position to increase transparency with readers. A public editor, Wrenn contends, would serve as a liaison between The Herald and its readership — hearing community concerns, explaining editorial policies and reporting on missteps in The Herald’s coverage. We appreciate the input from Wrenn and are grateful for the opportunity to reflect on how we can improve as a campus institution. Because transparency is fundamental to The Herald’s daily operations, we, as an editorial board, are always looking for ways to strengthen our relationship with the community we serve. But we believe that implementing a public editor position at this time would compromise The Herald’s mission as a newspaper and teaching organization. As a teaching organization, we understand that our staff members are not yet professionals; they are learning to be reporters and in this process, they are bound to make mistakes. A position that often requires publicly critiquing individual staffers risks discouraging students from continuing their work at The Herald. We must balance our desire to be transparent with the need to build an environment in which writers feel comfortable and motivated to learn from their missteps. In the absence of a public editor, we seek to provide transparency in other ways. When our writers make mistakes, we work with them to run clarifications and corrections in print papers and at the end of their online stories. Within our newsroom, The Herald has a strict conflict of interest policy: when such conflicts arise, our editors and reporters must recuse
themselves from coverage. As a result, our reporters cannot interview or edit the words of their family members, friends, professors or employers. They also cannot accept gifts from the sources that they cover. Additionally, we welcome all of our readers to submit letters and op-eds in response to our coverage, which encourages us to think critically about our stories. Publications throughout the nation are also grappling with questions of transparency and the usefulness of public editors. Many, including the New York Times and Washington Post, have chosen to eliminate the position in recent years. According to a 2015 Politico report, only about 20 U.S. news outlets employ public editors. While there are multiple factors contributing to the position’s decline, representatives for major outlets have argued that reporters and editors must absorb the responsibility to be transparent. “Our responsibility is to empower all of those watchdogs, and to listen to them, rather than to channel their voice through a single office,” former Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. P ’04 said in a statement. Ultimately, strengthening The Herald’s accountability and transparency is an ongoing conversation in our newsroom — one we expect will evolve with time. We urge our readers to reach out with tips, suggestions and critiques. As always, you can reach the editorial board at herald@browndailyherald.com and 129@browndailyherald.com. Editors’ Notes are written by The Herald’s 129th Editorial Board: Emily Davies ’19.5, Priyanka Podugu ’20, Anna Kramer ’20, Anita Sheih ’20, Sarah Wang ’20
Follow us on ...
Vote yes on divest SOPHIE OVERALL op-ed contributor Last month, the United Nations Human Rights Council concluded that Israeli forces’ shooting of over 6,000 unarmed Palestinian protesters in Gaza last year had “no justification” and that these acts “may constitute war crimes.” The report also investigated the deaths of 189 Palestinians on official protest days and found that of those, 183 were killed by Israeli forces with live ammunition. Since 2006, and as recently as February of this year, Israel has demolished over 1,400 Palestinian homes in the West Bank. At least two East Jerusalem families have been violently evicted from their homes in the past two months to make room for more Israeli Jewish settlements. Last month, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu confirmed that the Bedouin village Khan al-Ahmar in the West Bank “will be evacuated” and destroyed before the upcoming Israeli elections. In the early hours of Feb. 10, 13-year-old Palestinian East Jerusalem resident Adam Abu Ryalah was arrested in his own home and detained for 11 hours by Israeli police without specific charges, as part of a routine practice of arrest and detention of Palestinian children. These are merely some recent examples of the regularized human rights violations that Israel continues to inflict upon Palestinians living under Israeli occupation in the Occupied Territories — the West Bank, East Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip. Though as Brown students, these events may seem isolated and removed from our everyday academic routines, Brown has implicated itself, and therefore its community members, in the Israeli occupation and Israel’s continuous human rights violations. We must recognize that Brown’s investments in certain companies that perpetuate violations of Palestinian human rights render the University complicit in the same. President Christina Paxson P’19 proudly asserts that Brown makes a concerted and deliberate effort to engage in ethical investment. In a 2013 announcement, Paxson states that Brown’s Advisory Committee on Corporate Responsibility in Investment Policies recommends divestment if “a company’s actions produce social harm, and (if social harm exists) when either (1) ‘divestiture will likely have a positive impact toward correcting the specified social harm’ or (2) the company ‘contributes to social harm so grave that it would be inconsistent with the goals and principles of the University to accept funds from that source.” But Paxson has ignored many of ACCRIP’s calls for divestment or even calls for a critical examination of Brown’s investments raised by any campus movement pushing for social and institutional change. In this context, Brown Divest, a broad and diverse coalition of student organizations and individuals, proposes five criteria that help distinguish companies that are directly involved in violating Palestinian human rights. Those that have met any of these crite-
ria are Safariland Group LLC, Boeing, Caterpillar, Oaktree Capital Group, Motorola Solutions, Textron and Hewlett-Packard. Although the Corporation’s investments are not public, Brown Divest argues that they are likely part of Brown’s endowment. Each of these seven companies, among others, has been integral in perpetuating human rights abuses under Israeli occupation through construction of illegal settlements, home demolitions and technology and arms sales to the Israeli state. Brown must divest from these and other similar companies that violate the five criteria. There exists clear parallels between the goals of Brown Divest and the values outlined in Paxson’s statement. Brown’s investment in the companies complicit in human rights abuses highlights patterns of institutional support for violence and social harm that we must reject. Without divesting from the companies that profit from the occupation, Brown cannot claim to be committed to socially responsible investment practices. It is imperative that Brown includes human rights abuses against Palestinians in its definition of social harm. It is also critical to address concerns raised by community members that since this campaign highlights human rights abuses perpetrated by the only Jewish state in the world, it is anti-Semitic. We must all acknowledge the lived realities of anti-Semitism, be deeply alarmed by varied expressions of anti-Semitic hatred that have surged across the world and stand in solidarity with Jews and allies in their steadfast struggle to combat anti-Semitism anywhere. Yet, we reject the notion that engaging in meaningful criticism of Israel’s policies, especially given its purported democratic values, is antiSemitic. It is important to remember that Brown Divest is in response to a unique call by Palestinian civil society for divestment from the international community. In addition, while it is certainly true that human rights abuses are perpetrated by many other states in the world, this should not justify silence on Palestine. It is important to raise awareness and organize pressure campaigns to end complicity in state sponsored human rights abuses committed across the world — in Syria, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, China, India and Myanmar, to name a few. But this must be in addition to the campaign for Palestine, not as a tool to deflect from the conversation about Israel. The United States is uniquely supportive of Israel — in terms of military aid, unwavering support in multilateral organizations and termination of all aid to Palestinian refugees — which makes us uniquely responsible to take a stand on Israeli human rights violations. Most importantly, Brown Divest calls for divestment from companies implicated in unethical activities that are not limited to a particular region of the world. Although the coalition’s criteria for divestment address Palestine, most of the companies that violate these criteria perpetuate violence against marginalized communities across the world. For example, Safariland Group LLC, one of the companies on Brown
Divest’s list, produces tear gas canisters and defense equipment that have been used by state security apparatuses internationally; against civilians in Ferguson, Water Protectors in Standing Rock, asylum-seekers in Tijuana and protesters in Istanbul, Bahrain and Gaza. Brown Divest has clearly made a commitment to drawing parallels between the systems of violence that these companies perpetuate around the world by working with groups on campus who focus on these areas — Railroad, Native American Heritage Series and Brown Immigrant Rights Coalition respectively. More importantly, we must allay fears that divestment from these companies would reduce the financial aid available for first generation and/ or low-income students. According to a recent press release published by Brown, financial aid is mainly comprised from donors that support The Brown Promise, and some of those donations do not go into endowments or investments and instead directly to students. The statistical data on BrownTogether and The Brown Promise suggest that University donations are growing at unprecedented rates, which assures us that divestment from specific companies would most likely not have a substantial effect on financial aid. In regards to the parts of financial aid from endowment, we must remember that not all of the endowment is unethical — divestment would not make endowment as a whole disappear. Divestment efforts across campuses are not new, and their efficacy in enacting social change is not limited to Brown. Examples include the international movement to end apartheid in South Africa through divestment in the 1980s and Brown’s own successful campaign in 2006 to divest from companies sponsoring genocide by the Sudanese government in Darfur. Today, college campuses across the country and the world are increasingly mobilizing to support divestment initiatives on a broad range of issues, including against human rights abuses in Palestine. Swarthmore College became the most recent campus to pass a student or teacher resolution for divestment, joining Stanford University, George Washington University and New York University, among others. The participation of students in the upcoming referendum, which opens at noon March 19 and closes at noon March 21, is a major step forward toward pressuring the Corporation to divest from companies that are complicit in and benefit from Palestinian and other suffering. Together, we can hold our University accountable for its complicity in human rights abuses against its espoused values and work toward ethical investment around the world. #YesOnDivest.
Sophie Overall ’19, a Jewish American, is a member of Brown Divest and can be reached at sophia_overall@brown.edu. Please send responses to this opinion to letters@browndailyherald.com and op-eds to opinions@browndailyherald.com.
NEWS THE BROWN DAILY HERALD
MONDAY, MARCH 18, 2019
The Rise of China: Past, Present and Future Featuring: James W. Head III Louis and Elizabeth Scherck Distinguished Professor of the Geological Sciences
Rebecca A. Nedostup Associate Professor of History
Edward S. Steinfeld Dean’s Professor of China Studies Director of the China Initiative, Howard R. Swearer Director of the Thomas J. Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs
Tongzhang Zheng Professor of Epidemiology
Moderated By: Richard M. Locke Provost
Monday, March 18, 2019, at 5 p.m. To request special services, accommodations or assistance for this event, please contact the University Event & Conference Services Office at universityevents@brown.edu or 401-863-3100
Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs Stephen Robert ’62 Hall, Room 101 280 Brook Street Reception to Follow
Building on Distinction: Integrative Scholarship at Brown Featuring the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs