SINCE 1891
THE BROWN DAILY HERALD TUESDAY, APRIL 2, 2019
VOLUME CLIII, ISSUE 41
WWW.BROWNDAILYHERALD.COM
Gorbea calls for new home for RI Archives Wolitzer ’81 reflects on
writing as craft, practice
Secretary of State proposes new location in an effort to increase archive visitors, including students
Novelist Meg Wolitzer discusses influence of changing readership, feminism on her work
By ALEX REICE SENIOR STAFF WRITER
Tucked away in an unassuming blue-tile clad building on Westminster Street is the Rhode Island State Archives, home to hundreds of years of state documents and legal records. Behind the building’s plain-looking door, the University’s original charter from 1764, a royal decree signed by King George III and one of the original thirteen copies of the Declaration of Independence signed by John Hancock himself can be found among the Archives’ treasures. While these documents are currently housed within a single jam-packed floor, Rhode Island Secretary of State Nellie Gorbea has big plans to transform the building into a tourist attraction, drawing visitors from across the state and beyond. The Archives are currently housed in what was supposed to be a temporary location — but it’s been there for twenty years, Gorbea said. “When I first came into office five years ago, we had to immediately jump into renewing the
By ELISE RYAN ARTS AND CULTURE EDITOR
DANIELLE EMERSON / HERALD
Nellie Gorbea advocated for moving the RI Archives from its current location on Westminster Street to a plot of land across from the State House. lease.” But that move made Gorbea start questioning the benefits of the current location — which lies in a geographic flood zone — and she began to consider building a better facility. In addition to a small exhibit space, this “temporary” location contains the “vault,” which has regulated environmental conditions to preserve particularly old and precious archives, as well as boxes upon boxes of other state records. To move forward with a new State
Panelists advocate for local farming Environmental activists promote sustainable food systems in light of new meat facility By CELIA HACK METRO EDITOR
If there’s one thing Mark Phillips, a local farmer, knows best, it’s how to grow a head of lettuce. As a hydroponic farmer, he uses a nutrient-dense solution, which allows him to yield more produce with less water and fertilizer than typical farming methods. He and his business partner, Katherine Fotiades, of Skydog Farm are looking to educate others about the alternative farming method. They found a new audience March 21, at the “Food, Farming and Our Future: A Panel on Sustainable Agriculture” event, where Fotiades spoke alongside Michael Budziszek, professor of Biological and Environmental Sciences at Johnson & Wales University, and Ellen Li ’21, operations manager of Brown Market Shares. Students and community members listened to panelists discuss challenges
INSIDE
facing the current food system nationwide, with supporting local farmers soaring to the top of the list. As a small scale farmer, Phillips quickly found that he could not make a living selling his produce to large commercial businesses like Stop & Shop and Whole Foods. Instead, the hydroponic farmer has changed his business model to sell directly to customers at farmers’ markets. Fotiades stressed the hidden costs that may not be taken into account in the prices of industrially-produced food, a reason food at the farmers’ market costs more. “Large scale, industrialized produced food appears to be cheaper, but when you factor in other costs outside of the operational costs that are absorbed directly by the farmer, it is a much higher cost of food than many people are aware of,” she said. “A lot of people aren’t aware or understand what the true cost of food is, and/or they’re not making a living wage and are able to afford what food truly costs.” Li also emphasized the importance of locally sourcing food to move toward a more sustainable food system. » See FARMING, page 3
Archives, the Department of State completed a needs assessment study, reached out to other entities in the state that might benefit from the new Archives and executed a feasibility study as well as a Site Selection Study in 2018. As archival facilities necessitate specific mechanical, electrical and plumbing systems as well as certain climate and light controls, the state department concluded that building a new facility would be more cost effective than » See ARCHIVES, page 3
Meg Wolitzer ’81 discussed the evolution of her decades-long career as a novelist at an event hosted by the Providence Athenaeum that filled the olive-green pews of First Unitarian Church Friday, March 22. She noted the way that changes in the craft of writing, the art of reading and her own understanding of womanhood and feminism have affected her numerous works. Wolitzer is the author of over a dozen novels including “Sleepwalking,” “The Interestings” and “The Wife,” which was recently adapted into an Academy Award-nominated film. Matt Burriesci, executive director of the Athenaeum, challenged the many publications that have labeled various points in Wolitzer’s career as “her moment” or “breakthrough” in his introduction, instead
suggesting that “she’s been having moments … for years. She’s a New York Times best seller, she’s walked the red carpet at the Academy Awards (and) she’s taught at the most prestigious writing program in the world,” he said. In response, Wolitzer began her talk by joking that it was this moment — standing in front of the lively audience under the church’s domed ceiling — that truly marked her breakthrough. “This is it; I’m just feeling it,” she said, eliciting laughter from the audience. After spending two years studying at Smith College, Wolitzer finished her undergraduate years at Brown, graduating in 1981. It was during her senior year at the University that she began writing her first novel “Sleepwalking,” which tells the tale of three female college students obsessed with the work and death of poets Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton and fictional character Lucy Asher. The novel was published the year after Wolitzer graduated from Brown, when she was 23. Thinking back on this time, Wolitzer mused on how the craft of writing has » See WOLITZER, page 4
BOE proposes solution to last-minute voting RI Board of Elections attempts to decrease emergency mail ballot use to avoid delayed results By DYLAN CLARK SENIOR STAFF WRITER
The Rhode Island Board of Elections is expecting an overwhelming number of emergency mail ballots — maybe more than it can handle — during the next general election. Since 2011, the number of emergency mail ballots has increased dramatically due to changes in state law that made them easier to obtain. Previous laws had stricter requirements for receiving the ballots, which can be mailed or dropped off at a board of canvasser’s location as late as 4 p.m. on election day. Now, all voters unable to get to the polls can receive these ballots as long as they place them in certification envelopes signed by two witnesses or a notary. From 2008 to 2016, the state has seen the number of emergency mail ballots double, with an especially steep uptick in the last few years. If this trend continues without a modification to the current law, the BOE estimates that it will receive well over 38,000 emergency
SUMMER ZHANG / HERALD
mail ballots in the last 20 days of the 2020 election. Although the BOE welcomes the voter participation, “We’re predicting that if the process doesn’t change prior to the 2020 presidential election … (it will be) a major hurdle in getting results as (quickly) as possible just because of the processing time involved,” said Robert Rapoza, executive director for
the BOE. Despite the increased use of mail ballots throughout the state, some areas have seen more utilization than others, said John Marion, executive director for Common Cause Rhode Island. Marion said that more affluent parts of the state have advertised the ease of using mail ballots as a form of » See BALLOTS, page 3
WEATHER
TUESDAY, APRIL 2, 2019
NEWS Astrophysicist David Shoemaker spoke on detecting gravitational waves using interferometers
METRO Self-driving public transportation vehicles are set to launch later this spring in PVD
COMMENTARY Group of U. Faculty Members: Paxson’s response to referendum ignores student voices
COMMENTARY Cañuelas-Puri ’22: U. should take moral responsibility for its financial investments
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MIT researcher discusses future of gravitational wave detection David Shoemaker examines role of interferometers in cosmic observation projects By TRISHA THACKER SENIOR STAFF WRITER
Monday afternoon, students and faculty members gathered to learn about the latest advancements in detecting gravitational waves — ripples in spacetime that occur after large-scale collisions between celestial entities, such as two black holes. David Shoemaker, who leads the Advanced Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory — which first detected the waves’ existence in 2016 — spoke about how the use of interferometers has improved the precision of astrophysics and the detection of gravitational waves. The observatory launched a third experiment to detect gravitational waves earlier that day. LIGO is the world’s largest gravitational wave observatory consisting of two laser interferometers, according to its website. The interferometers merge sources of light to create inference patterns and make small measurements that can detect gravitational waves. Shoemaker, who is also a senior research scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Kavli Institute, began his talk by sharing the history of scientific research on the waves. For
instance, Albert Einstein claimed that these waves existed but were impossible to observe. But through the use of the two L-shaped instruments at LIGO, physicists can now detect these events, he said. “With any technology one could have imagined at that time when (Einstein) came up with this theory, … it would (have been) a fool’s errand to try and detect gravitational waves,” he added. In 2010, LIGO transitioned to using cutting-edge detectors, which feature an order of magnitude better amplitude sensing and reach, Shoemaker explained. “What (was) really striking was the improvements we made at low frequencies by about a factor of 100.” After transitioning to LIGO detectors, researchers serendipitously discovered gravitational waves during a test run that took place a week before the official observation run. “We saw this beautiful signal which was visible without any fancy sensitivity. … It surprised us,” he said. The second detection was visible using three instruments which reduced uncertainty in the waves’ distance and volume. The instruments also made triangulation possible, Shoemaker said. The third observation run — featuring greater sensitivity — began Monday morning and involves a collaboration between LIGO and the Italy-based Advanced Virgo detector, he added. “If everything is working well, (the third run) should now be observing
black hole mergers at the rate of one a week,” said Richard Gaitskel, a physics professor and the head of the Particle Astrophysics Group, to The Herald. Gaitskel was one of two academics that opened the event. “Given that a few years ago we had never seen any of this, it is a whole new era of astronomy where we are able
deal about building these instruments and what not to do,” he added. Shoemaker also discussed the limitations in detection due to different sources of noise interference. To combat these problems, he mentioned future projects that may move detectors underground or into outer space to enhance detection at lower frequencies.
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David Shoemaker, leader of the Advanced Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, spoke about astrophysics technology. to detect (these) huge cosmological event(s) through the disruptions they make in space and time that we refer to as gravitational waves,” he added. During the lecture, Shoemaker shared previously unsuccessful efforts to detect the waves. “We observed for quite a number of years and we saw no signals,” he said. However, from their experiments, physicists “learned a great
For example, the Einstein telescope in Europe has the “notion of putting the instrument underground to reduce seismic noise and Newtonian background noise,” he added. Conversely, the LISA project involves creating an outer space detector that would scan the sky using a triangular system with 2.5-million kilometer-long arms. Shoemaker also spoke about the
project’s global expansion through the Kamioka Gravitational Wave Detector in Japan and the LIGO India Instrument. “When we have 5 detectors with India and Japan, … it (will) give far improved localization,” he added. In addition to geographic growth, the physical expansion of the detectors from 4km to 40km is a long-term goal for LIGO, as the increase in length will enhance the instruments’ sensitivity, Shoemaker said. “This is just the beginning of a new field, we have new instruments and new discoveries. … It will be a great contributor to the world of astronomy and astrophysics over the coming decades,” Shoemaker said. “The detection of gravitational waves was what won the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2017, so it’s some really cool ground breaking research that is just going on,” said Daniel Choi ’20, a concentrator in chemical physics and mathematics who attended the talk. The structure of the lecture provided a nice summary about the history, current research and future plans in the field, said Nick Conroy ’20, a physics concentrator who also attended the talk. “It was like a crash course in gravitational waves.” When reflecting on his work, Shoemaker told The Herald, that he was not “someone who comes to this (work) from the inspiration of seeing gravitational waves, or the theoretical side. I like to build cool stuff.”
NEWS
TUESDAY, APRIL 2, 2019 • PAGE 3
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» BALLOTS, from page 1 early voting, causing towns like Westerly and Central Falls to see especially high emergency ballot use. To counter the flood of emergency mail ballots, the BOE has proposed a bill that would provide every city and town in the state with additional voting machines and electronic polling books. This would allow voters to fill out a ballot and put it into a voting machine prior to election day, which would decrease the workload associated with receiving a high volume of ballots last minute. While the increased use of emergency mail ballots has left some municipalities and voters confused about the difference between early voting and emergency ballot use, Rapoza asserted that the BOE’s proposal “is not early voting.” The BOE’s bill, which has been filed in the R.I. House and Senate, “is
a process change,” he said, adding that “it’s an improvement in the efficiency of the process.” But Marion said that the BOE’s bill would be early voting in every sense but name. “We think the fact that it’s not labeled as (early voting) actually confuses voters and leads some voters to believe that Rhode Island doesn’t have early voting, so they (will not) take advantage of that system,” Marion said. A separate bill, proposed by R.I. Secretary of State Nellie Gorbea, directly addresses in-person early voting, The Herald previously reported . “We think the Secretary’s bill provides the same administrative relief … but has the added benefit of being better for voters,” Marion said. “We wish (the BEO) had tried harder to work with the secretary’s office to come to a common solution.” On March 21, the Senate held the BOE’s bill for further consideration.
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browndailyherald.com/join » FARMING, from page 1 She highlighted the Brown Market Share program, which as a studentrun, campus-based food distribution program, connects members of College Hill with food from nearby farmers. Similarly, Budziszek said that small and local farmers are an essential buffer against upheavals in the global food market, which could crash. He also emphasized the use of technology to grow food locally. Speakers also discussed climate change and unequal access to food as harsh realities facing the agriculture community today, both nationwide and in Rhode Island in particular. Phoebe Chatfield, an organizer with Mighty Earth Rhode Island, criticized the state for its partnership with Infinity Meat Solutions, LLC, a meat processessing facility that hired Cargill Protein as a consultant and manager of the site’s operations and employees. Infinity Meat Solutions is a subsidiary of Stop & Shop’s Dutch parent company, WPRI reported. In May 2018, Infinity Meat Solutions received $1.915 million in Rebuild Rhode Island Tax Credits to build a new facility in North Kingstown. Construction on the facility, which plans to employ 700 people by its third year of operation, began in October. Mighty Earth Rhode Island organized the panel in light of plans for the facility, calling attention to what
Chatfield called Cargill’s “uniquely bad track record of water pollution, deforestation and other environmental and political harms.” “This new partnership has moved the state a big step in the wrong direction,” Chatfield added. “We’ve been demanding that Stop & Shop stop sourcing its meat from Cargill until Cargill cleans up its act on pollution and deforestation.” But not all audience members were convinced they should oppose the facility. One attendee noted that with Rhode Island close to losing a representative at the federal level because of population decrease, the state is not in a position to turn away jobs. “I’m in college right now, and students either don’t want to stay here, or want to and can’t afford it, because there are no jobs or there aren’t wellpaying jobs,” said Dave McGraw, a student at JWU. “Are we really in a position to turn (the facility) away from an economic standpoint?” Budziszek and Mighty Earth representative Gabi Hatem both believed that maintaining moral standards was more important than the economic gain of the potential jobs. “We’re not opposed to the plant, we’re opposed to Cargill,” Hatem said. “If we had a company that came in with a really great track record, and treated their employees well, then yes, please come in, but we don’t want bad jobs just to say we have jobs.”
125 Years of quality, daily journalism www.browndailyherald.com/donate » ARCHIVES, from page 1 re-fitting an old one, Gorbea said. After narrowing the location down to Providence, Gorbea’s first choice for the new Archives is the vacant plot of land diagonal from the State House. With this location, she hopes to gain foot traffic from students on field trips to the State House. “We already have 10,000 students coming to the State House for State House tours,” she said, and “the most expensive part of the school field trip is the bus,” so enabling students to visit both buildings in one trip would ensure maximum accessibility. The proposed 52,000 square foot facility would house a large exhibition space on the ground floor alongside a multi-use meeting space, with floors above housing the Archives in an environment with the adequate climate, lighting and security controls for the preservation of the documents. The new building will consolidate records from cities like Providence and other communities, making research easier for students and scholars. The new Archives “would be a place where any historical document of a government, whether local or statewide, would have a home,” Gorbea said. The building would also serve as an “anchor of historic tourism” in the state, as well as an event space and venue for conferences, meetings and other events, Gorbea added. The state’s feasibility study estimates this new building would cost about $52 million dollars. According to the Providence Journal, Gorbea requested $5 million in next year’s state budget to design the building and the rest of the money spread out over the following four years; but, it remains to be seen whether the funds necessary for this
kind of project will be provided, or if the secretary will have to settle for a different location. Utilizers of the Archives, such as Seth Rockman, Associate Professor of History, said he worries that it will be difficult to beat the Archive’s current location. Right down the street from Kennedy Plaza, “every single bus line in Rhode Island serves it, and they’ve also done a very good job of having two hour free parking in a lot right down the street,” Rockman said. “I don’t think it would be possible to have a more accessible location.” But, the benefits of having more space and a possible location near the State House are enticing for individuals like Ken Carlson, reference analyst at the State Archives. “We really don’t have room to display or have many people come in,” he said. The range of visitors to the Archives match the range of their contents, Carlson said. “We get all kinds of people,” he added. From studying campaign finance laws to dual citizenship, “it all depends on what’s blowing in the wind.” Many visitors are genealogists coming to look at censuses and familial records as well as historical researchers and people doing business in the state — studying property lines, zoning and lawsuits about real estate. Despite the breadth of visitors the Archives attract, “it’s a small facility, it was meant to be temporary,” Carlson said. “This location, if they can get it near the State House, is even better, it’s the best possible place for it.” With over ten million records dating back to 1638, including centuries of legislative records, the Archives and the information they contain “matter a lot to contemporary lawmaking,” Rockman said.
But many of the Archive’s visitors likely remain ignorant that the “vault” is a “treasure trove of documents,” Gorbea said. Its contents extend “to things like one of the thirteen original hand done copies of the Bill of Rights,” and “amazing documents like those signed by Aaron Burr and Alexander Hamilton,” she added. “Rhode Island holds a very important part in the making of this country, because it is the birthplace of freedom of religion, separation of church and state. Any question you might have about a decision that the (state) government made, you could probably come close to finding an answer in here,” Gorbea added. “The State Archive is an amazing repository for not just things that reflect law making at the top in our state and the colony that preceded statehood, but really for everyday life of common people,” Rockman added, referencing the thousands of petitions maintained in the Archives that constituents filed to the state legislature during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. These documents detailed various aspects of their lives. Since her election five years ago, Gorbea has been working to find a new home for the Archives that celebrates its contents, given the documents’ importance in highlighting Rhode Island’s history and their role in ensuring government accountability. “Historically, people look at archives as a history project place,” Gorbea said. But they’re also about “government accountability and transparency. Having a well-designed archival center that’s also an exhibition center for Rhode Island history can serve those dual purposes much better than where we are right now, which is just an office space,” she added.
CELIA HACK / HERALD
Panelists discussed the importance of sustainable farming and criticized the state’s partnership with Infinity Meats Solutions, LLC, at an event on March 21 organized by Mighty Earth Rhode Island.
NEWS
PAGE 4 • TUESDAY, APRIL 2, 2019
THE BROWN DAILY HERALD
» WOLITZER, from page 1 changed throughout her career. She recalled drafting her novel on a typewriter, when white-out was the alternative to a backspace key. “Everyone wrote a novel and sort of painted on it — it was like doing scrimshaw,” she said. “You get to be close to the craft of writing, doing something like that, which I’ve sort of lost to some degree today.” As technology has transformed the practices of both writing and reading with the invention of e-books and online news outlets, Wolitzer has also noticed a waning interest in fiction. “We live in a non-fiction world,” she said, explaining that “as the news has heated up,” people have tended to consume non-fiction writing. “Do some of you remember when magazines and women’s magazines would publish incredible fiction? This was another world,” Wolitzer said. She cited the example of the first short story published by her mother, novelist Hilma Wolitzer, which was printed in a 1966 edition of The Saturday Evening Post, a biweekly magazine at the time. Wolitzer reflected on how the piece, titled “Today, a Woman Went Mad in the Supermarket,” resonated with her mother’s frustrations with womanhood and domesticity in the 1960s. “I think my mother would have gone mad if she hadn’t really had this outlet of being a writer.” Wolitzer reflected on how her mother’s late-developing career as a novelist fostered an environment that encouraged her passion for storytelling from a young age and enabled her own discovery of writing. “If I look at the themes that I’ve written about, I can trace it to when I was young and seeing my mother becoming who she became,” Wolitzer said. Wolitzer read from “The Female Persuasion,” her latest novel released last April. Hitting the shelves shortly after the start of both the #MeToo and Time’s Up movements, the novel follows college
LEON JIANG / HERALD
Author Meg Wolitzer ’81 read from her most recent book, “The Female Persuasion,” at an event held in the First Unitarian Church. She spoke about the transformation both her career and the literary world have witnessed alongside changing technology and social movements. freshman Greer Kadetsky through the trauma of a sexual assault. Soon after, Greer meets a sixty-three-year-old feminist activist Faith Frank, who proceeds to redirect the future Greer had imagined for herself. Burriesci noted in his introduction that many of the themes present in “The Female Persuasion,” and in Wolitzer’s earlier novels, are raised in an essay Wolitzer published in the New
York Times in 2012. Titled “The Second Shelf,” the essay began by questioning if popular novels by men had been written by women, they would be relegated to the “close-quartered lower shelf ” of “‘Women’s Fiction’” instead of heralded as literary feats. Burriesci said that women are the “chief consumers of books in the United States.” Despite this, “the top tier of literary fiction — where the air is rich
and the view is great and where a book enters the public imagination and the current conversation — tends to feel peculiarly, disproportionately male,” Wolitzer wrote in “The Second Shelf.” Before reading from “The Female Persuasion,” Wolitzer harked back to the divide, symbolized by this lower shelf, between what is considered women’s fiction and the rest of the literary tradition. She explained how she hopes to
close this divide between genders — even with a book with “female” printed on its cover. “The notion for me is that books should draw everyone in, that they shouldn’t necessarily leave anyone out. I do write about women’s lives, but I don’t think that I’m writing women’s fiction, or that I’m writing for women,” Wolitzer said. She emphasized that she believes that all people are “hardwired for story.”
Autonomous vehicles begin on-route testing in Providence State advances in efforts to provide autonomous vehicles as public transportation By ALEX REICE SENIOR STAFF WRITER
The future of robots and self-driving cars is dawning on Rhode Island as the state begins on-route testing for the Little Roady Autonomous Shuttle Pilot Project, which was detailed to community members at an informational meeting Monday night. The one-year long pilot project, run by the Rhode Island Department of Transportation, is still in its testing phase but is set to launch later this spring. The project completed testing in Quonset Beach Park earlier this year, and RIDOT is now testing the car on the route it will run in Providence. This route spans the Woonasquatucket River Corridor — a space connecting Olneyville Square to Providence Station — that currently lacks transit service. This service, which RIDOT defines as a research project, is attempting to see how autonomous vehicles and micro-transit can play a role in public transportation in the state, said Julia Gold ’06, project manager and RIDOT Chief of Sustainability and Innovation.
In preliminary testing at Quonset Beach Park, the vehicles experienced “all kinds of weather” and were able to continue operating quite well, said Charles St. Martin, chief public affairs officer for RIDOT. “In light conditions, we’ve found really no issues” regarding weather, said Andrew Dykman, senior field autonomy engineer at Michigan-based startup May Mobility, which is providing the electric vehicles. While community members had questions about safety, Gold listed it as the state’s “number one priority.” The vehicles are outfitted with a complex set of sensors that allow the shuttle to build up a model of the world around it through cameras, a lidar system and radars, Dykman said. “It is able to localize itself within a millimeter of where it is,” he added. The fully-electric vehicles are powered by lithium ion batteries that can sustain six to eight hours of operation on a charge. The shuttles will make 12 stops on the 5.3 mile loop and operate seven days a week from 6:30 A.M. to 6:30 P.M. Each vehicle can carry five passengers along with a trained attendant sitting in the driver’s seat and is capable of reaching a maximum speed of 25 miles per hour. Additionally, “all the rides are going to be completely free, anyone can jump in,” said Mayor Jorge
Elorza at the meeting. May Mobility, which already has similar projects in Columbus, Ohio and Detroit, Michigan, was selected by the state through a request for proposal process. In Providence, the company plans to provide the vehicles, data about their use and effectiveness and operation sites. May Mobility will set up a garage outfitted with charging stations, as well as staff to manage the vehicles and their operation, said Alisyn Malek, chief operating officer at May Mobility. The state’s agreement with the company is a public-private partnership, with RIDOT contributing $800,000 for the project’s first year of operation from the Federal Highway Administration and the Rhode Island Attorney General’s Office. Elorza hopes this project will push Providence into the future while benefiting the community. The project is important for him “not simply because it gets us into the 21st century and it’s an insight into the future, but because it helps us connect people to our community. It helps connect them to all the great amenities that we have here in the city of Providence,” he said. The service’s location will “further integrate” Olneyville into the rest of Providence, he added. The state hopes this pilot project
ALEX REICE / HERALD
R.I. Department of Transportation is set to launch self-driving vehicles running between Providence Station and Olneyville Square this spring. will inform policy makers and officials about the nuances of this new technology through surveys from riders, stakeholders throughout the neighborhood and data from May Mobility, Gold said. “We see this as an emerging
technology, and we don’t have a crystal ball of exactly when this technology will become more mainstream,” St. Martin said. “But we see it as coming down the road and we want to be ahead of the curve instead of behind the curve.”
TODAY
TUESDAY, APRIL 2, 2019 • PAGE 5
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bare trees in bear country
menu SATELLITE DINING ANDREWS COMMONS
Pizza: Cheese, Spinach & Feta Pho Bar, Make Your Own Salad, Baked Pasta JOSIAH’S
BLUE ROOM
Dumpling Bar, Southwestern Bean Burger, Grilled Cheese
Organic Black Bean Soup, Focaccia Bar, Muffins
DINING HALLS SHARPE REFECTORY LUNCH
DINNER
Black Bean Cornbread Casserole, Bell Pepper Sauté, Chocolate Mint Whoopie Pie
Aloo Gobhi, Basmati Rice Pilaf, Caribbean Style Tofu and Mint Sauté, Glazed Carrots
VERNEY-WOOLLEY LUNCH
DINNER
Sweet and Sour Tofu, Ratatouille Spirals, Bulgur Salad with Roasted Pepper and Dates
Spicy Beet and Potato Hash, Cilantro Tomatillo Rice, Falafel Burger, Polenta Bread
VICTORIA YIN / HERALD
Buds begin to sprout on some trees on College Hill, while other trees remain bare into the first weeks of spring. Students returning from spring break prepare for warmer weather and one more month of classes.
sudoku Q U O T E O F T H E D AY
“The notion for me is that books should draw everyone in, that they shouldn’t necessarily leave anyone out. I do write about women’s lives, but I don’t think that I’m
”
writing women’s fiction.
— Meg Wolitzer ‘81, author
See wolitzer on page 1.
c o m i c : c at c h t h e h o r s e
crossword
RÉMY POISSON
calendar TODAY
TOMORROW
Cleaning and Editing 3D Meshes 12:00 P.M. Rock Library, Digital Studio
MCAT Decoded Information Session 4:00 P.M. 167 Angell Street
Presentation Skills Capsone 9:00 A.M. South Street Landing
Growth Lab Lunch Motohiro Kumagai 12:00 P.M. Robinson Hall
Moynihan Film Screening and Panel Discussion 4:00 P.M. Watson Institute
Public Health Yoga Session 5:00 P.M. 121 South Main Street
MCBGP Seminar: James Berger, Johns Hopkins 12:00 P.M. 70 Ship Street
U-Lock or U-Lose Bike Registration Event 12:30 P.M. College Green
COMMENTARY PAGE 6 • TUESDAY, APRIL 2, 2019
THE BROWN DAILY HERALD
When Brown students speak, the University should listen: A faculty letter in support of student activism We, the undersigned Brown faculty, wish to express our concern about the content and tenor of President Christina Paxson P’19’s letter to the Brown community March 22 in response to the overwhelming support for a student referendum that called on the University to “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.” Following weeks of campus debate which produced a higher-than-average turnout in a much-watched election, 69 percent —1,939 out of 2,810 voting students — voted in favor of the referendum. Paxson’s response, issued to the entire Brown community the day after the referendum results were announced, diminishes the divestment vote as “polarizing” and something that would “detract from the inclusive, intellectually-vibrant community we aspire to be.” Belying her own claim that the University does not take sides on contested issues, Paxson also took this opportunity to reiterate her opposition to the global Boycott, Divest, Sanctions movement, even though the movement itself was not explicitly on the ballot. These strong statements can have the political effect of stifling student activism. They can also be read as an admonishment of students who organized the referendum and, implicitly, of all those who voted in favor of divestment. We write in defense of student activism and against making Palestine an exception to the right of free speech on campus. Regardless of one’s position on divestment, the roughly two thousand undergraduate students at Brown who, exercising their democratic right, voted in favor of the referendum deserve
better than the unfounded accusation that they are politically polarizing an otherwise neutral campus. All students deserve respect, protection and a fair hearing when they exercise their legitimate right to pose questions and vote. That must include those who voted against the President’s views. We are deeply concerned by Paxson’s statement that “instead” of calls for divestment, the Brown community should “engage in productive discourse on this issue through our teaching, research and contributions to diplomacy.”
It is precisely such examples of student activism for social justice that have inspired supporters of Brown Divest. The numerous public events they organized during the six months prior to the March 21 referendum contributed positively to informed and lively debate on campus and reaffirmed that all groups, without exception, are entitled to basic human rights. Through the referendum vote, many students have made clear their view that the Israeli government’s policies towards Palestinians are diametrically opposed
If principled inquiry is our method and the pursuit of knowledge for a better world is our goal, what do we have to fear?
This statement unacceptably narrows the range of legitimate activism by students and other members of the Brown community. By using the phrase“on this issue” it also sets up a double standard, in that it seems to apply only to activism that is critical of Israeli government policies. The 1968 Black Student Walkout, the 1975 student vote to strike in favor of budget transparency, the 1987 Students Against Apartheid demands for divestment from South Africa and more recently, the 2015 student organizing against university inaction on racial and class representation on campus were also entirely peaceful and democratic forms of activism that sought to challenge indifference or political gridlock that existed at the time. Ultimately, they made Brown a better place.
to Brown University’s self-proclaimed values, enshrined in its strategic plan, Building on Distinction, which calls for “Creating Peaceful, Just, and Prosperous Societies.” And they are not alone. Similar divestment referendums have passed in student government bodies at other campuses such as Stanford University, New York University, Barnard College, the University of Minnesota and George Washington University, among others. It is not surprising that many Brown undergraduates resorted to a referendum in order to make their voices heard. As she acknowledges in her March 22 letter to the community, Paxson in 2012 rejected the recommendation of Brown’s Advisory Committee on Corporate Responsibility in Investment
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raeli government policies, as well as attempts by President Donald Trump’s administration to conflate legitimate criticisms of Israeli policies with antiSemitism. It is vital to recognize that students active in Brown Divest have consistently called for upholding the human rights of all people. They have repeatedly condemned anti-Semitism along with any other form of racism and bigotry. Many attended vigils in honor of Jewish and Muslim victims of recent terrorist attacks by white supremacists in Pittsburgh and New Zealand. Several, also, responded constructively to the arguments of students who opposed the referendum — whose voices should and are being heard — in a succession of spirited op-eds in this news-
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Policies to initiate dialogue about possible divestment from companies that profit from the Israeli occupation of Palestinian Territories. Indeed, Brown Divest students have worked diligently through University processes and have sought dialogue rather than confrontation. In this, they have shown extraordinary courage in the face of not only Paxson’s record of rejection on this issue, but also aggressive national campaigns of intimidation and censorship aimed at college students and professors who dare to speak out against Is-
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paper. These exchanges highlighted the diversity of opinions among Jewish students on divestment, many of whom supported the referendum. While these students have engaged in productive discourse, Brown’s senior administration has yet to condemn egregious blacklisting websites, such as Canary Mission, that have threateningly listed Brown students and professors who criticize the Israeli government’s actions and speak up for Palestinian human rights. At a time when there is as dire a need as ever for moral clarity, transparency and democratic participation in our country, we call on our University administration to take seriously our students’ concern about injustices in which our institution may be complicit. Is Brown University a beneficiary of investments in companies that profit from companies complicit in human rights abuses in Palestine? That is the still unanswered question at the heart of last week’s campus vote. It is not a question we or anyone else should admonish our students for asking. Rather, let us support and honor all our students — and with it Brown’s renowned tradition of rigorous, conscientious and engaged scholarship — by organizing campus-wide discussions and debates on that question and others like it. If principled inquiry is our method and the pursuit of knowledge for a better world is our goal, what do we have to fear?
Respectfully, 98 Signing Members of the Brown University Faculty. For a full list, see the online version of this op-ed.
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COMMENTARY TUESDAY, APRIL 2, 2019 • PAGE 7
THE BROWN DAILY HERALD
Agnès Varda’s call for dignity DEREK SIMSHAUSER opinions editor There’s a scene in “Faces Places,” Agnès Varda and JR’s 2017 documentary of their trip around rural France, where they meet a woman in an abandoned public housing project. Local authorities want her to move from her lifelong home. Her neighbors already have. Varda, a trailblazer of the French New Wave who died last week at 90, and JR, a large-scale photographer, take the woman’s portrait, enlarge it and paste it on the front of her house. When the woman — we never get her name — sees the new facade of her home, she gasps. “What can I say? Nothing.” Then she begins to cry. It is an early moment of the film, and quickly captures the essence of Varda and JR’s documentary. Varda trains her camera on people unaccustomed to ever being seen: industrial workers, goat farmers, postmen. JR expertly pastes their portrait on some local structure. And we see the reaction from those whose lives are so rarely celebrated, the wave of emotion that comes with finally feeling recognized. After Varda’s death this past Friday, I found myself rewatching scenes from Faces Places, and from “The Gleaners and I,” Varda’s
2001 documentary that follows the lives of “gleaners” in France, who scavenge harvested fields, looking for a spare potato or bunch of grapes. In both films, Varda uses her camera to illuminate the lives of the unseen. She makes fast friendships and is able to deftly emphasize the universality of her subjects. In the Gleaners and I, her subjects are not shown to be vagabonds or hoarders; they are instead principled,
unassuming documentary, it is filled with banter between the director and the photographer 55 years her junior. It is aesthetically beautiful, replete with wide shots of the French countryside and compositions of empty landscapes. But the film’s most daring aspect is how Varda chooses to parallel the films’ subjects with her own life. Just as she depicts these small towns, literally eroding before her eyes, she too examines her own
pride, a reminder that dignity begets both honesty and happiness. More impressively, Varda keeps the tone of the film light despite her honest conversations; her humor does not preclude profundity. When Varda films a goat farmer, she does so without judgement — conveying, above all, an overwhelming desire to learn and amplify the woman’s narrative. Varda is able to isolate people and moments; her interviews drown out anxieties, her ques-
Varda’s genius in the documentary is not her intellectual capacity to label and classify her subjects prior to meeting them, but instead her innate ability to avoid that very process. stubborn and thrifty. There is a man who insists that gleaning must take place only between sunrise and sunset. We meet an urban gleaner outside a farmers market. After he finds a leftover bushel of fresh tomatoes, Varda follows him to his homeless shelter, where he teaches literature classes. Indeed, Varda is able to comprehensively depict the lives of gleaners without making them pitiable subjects. There is an amorphous respect between the two parties; filming with her digital camera, Varda walks through fields with the gleaners and peeks over their shoulders as they go about their lives. Varda strikes a similarly intimate note in Faces Places. A delightfully
mortality, albeit in a disarmingly casual manner. We see her exiting an eye exam, where she explains how her vision has grown blurry (not that it dampens her spirits). She struggles to get up a few dozen stairs, before stopping to joke that it was her exercise for the day. And still, Varda maintains a curiosity about the lives of the supposedly unremarkable that can only be genuine. In her interviews, she elicits proud responses from her subjects, eager to finally tell their story, any story. Treating them with respect, Varda is rewarded with unabashedly honest answers. It is refreshing to see people explaining their ordinary lives with
tions asked without subterfuge. Faces Places, then, while an apolitical film, nonetheless contains a message for French and indeed broader politics. As Varda and JR traverse France’s forgotten regions, they do not decide their film’s subjects in accord with any specific criteria. When they meet the aforementioned woman at the outset of the movie, they simply listen to her stories. She talks about her father, a coal miner, and his tradition of bringing entire loaves of bread into the mines. Before JR takes her portrait and pastes it onto her house, the question of whether this woman voted for Le Pen or Macron is not asked, and further, is entirely
irrelevant. In our current discursive climate, in which everyone possesses an array of labels for others — both creating and ossifying tribal divisions — Faces Places shows the resolute joy that comes with the complete absence of preconceptions. Varda’s genius in the documentary is not her intellectual capacity to label and classify her subjects prior to meeting them but instead her innate ability to avoid that very process. Of course, “Les glaneurs et la glaneuse” and “Visages Villages” comprise but a mere fraction of Varda’s cinematic legacy. This is not meant to be an obituary — a task for which I am completely underqualified — which would rightfully focus more on Varda’s significance as the only female director associated with the French Nouvelle Vague and her earlier fictitious works, such as her 1961 masterpiece Cléo de 5 à 7. But in her two 21st-century documentaries, Varda unearths shared human emotions through her ability to see the unseen, to honor the unremarkable, to elevate the ordinary.
Derek Simshauser ’20 can be reached at derek_simshauser@ brown.edu. Please send responses to this opinion to letters@browndailyherald.com and op-eds to opinions@browndailyherald.com.
Responding to President Paxson’s letter LEELA CAÑUELAS-PURI op-ed contributor Over the past few weeks, as the Brown student body has debated the question of whether we should divest from companies aiding Israeli operations in the Occupied Territories — for example by selling products that contribute to violence against civilians — I have noticed my views shifting. I don’t presume to know what the correct choice is, but I have found myself disagreeing with the arguments President Paxson presents in her response to the Brown student body’s vote in support for divestment from companies “facilitating human rights abuses in Palestine.” In her letter, President Paxson writes that “As a university, Brown’s … role is not to take sides on contested geopolitical issues.” Leaving aside the argument that maintaining our current investments is not a neutral stance but rather as much a political statement as divestment would be, it seems to me that “taking sides” is not equivalent to taking responsibility for our finances — and Brown has in the past recognized the ethical imperative of doing the latter. Surely it was a proud moment in Brown’s history when we convened the Steering Committee on Slavery and Justice to guide the University in taking responsibility and pursuing repair for the role that we played in supporting the institution of slavery — and for the fact that our early endowment benefited directly from that institution. In the early decades of Brown’s history, enslavement would have been a “contested geopolitical issue.” But it was true then, and it is true now, that sometimes our ethical responsibilities compel us to adjust how the University finances its work, even if doing so means stepping onto contentious political ground. The point here is not to draw a moral equivalence between
enslavement and the Israeli government’s actions in the Occupied Territories. It is instead to demonstrate that Brown’s history provides an honorable precedent for accepting moral responsibility for our finances. It is worth noting the CSJ’s report praised the expansion of the duties of the Advisory Committee on Corporate Responsibility in Investment Policy, the University body that reviews the ethics of our investments. ACCRIP’s projects have in-
gram while working with Congress on a path to permanent, legal citizenship. One might say that this case was different given that DACA directly affects Brown’s ability to attract qualified students, yet this was not President Paxson’s rationale. Instead, she made a much broader appeal to the contributions immigrants make to our country and to the fact that many DACA recipients did not themselves choose to come to the U.S. illegally. What criteria, then, might we employ to decide
It seems to me that “taking sides” is not equivalent to taking responsibility for our finances — and Brown has in the past recognized the ethical imperative of doing the latter. cluded, among other actions, successfully recommending that the University divest from tobacco companies, firms doing business in Darfur and, most recently, a chain of hotels whose management consistently violated labor laws. As President Paxson mentions in her letter, ACCRIP has also urged Brown to “initiate dialogue about possible divestment from companies that do business in the occupied territories.” However, while on the one hand applauding Brown investment professionals for “maintaining the highest standards of integrity,” she has refused to accept our own investment ethics committee’s recommendation for so much as dialogue about “possible” divestment in this instance. We cannot have it both ways; what exactly do our commitments to integrity and ethics in investments mean if we fail to commit to even having the discussions our own ethics advisors recommend? Further, President Paxson herself has elsewhere demonstrated a willingness to lead Brown to take a stance on contemporary political debates, as when she — admirably, in my view — called on President Donald Trump to preserve the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals pro-
when it is appropriate for Brown to enter into political debates? Perhaps President Paxson offers one possible answer to this question with another major argument she presents in her letter: that “instead of polarizing calls for divestment, the Brown community can continue to engage in productive discourse on this issue.” Here, I am concerned about the suggestion that “polarization” is a good enough reason to abandon a particular discussion, such as one calling for divestment. I am much more inclined to the view President Simmons expressed when, writing in response to the CSJ’s publication of its final report, she stated that “(t)he Committee deserves praise for demonstrating so steadfastly that there is no subject so controversial that it should not be submitted to serious study and debate.” I agree: I believe the Brown community is fully capable of respectful and vigorous debate on ethically significant questions, even when “polarized.” President Paxson also worries that the act of divestment (separately from a debate over divestment) would “polarize the Brown community and detract from the inclusive, intellectually-vibrant community we aspire to be.” I am not sure I see
how divestment would affect Brown’s intellectual vibrancy or our inclusivity, and I’m especially unsure about the suggestion that because divestment is polarizing, it is also undesirable. Since a decision not to divest is arguably as much a political decision as divestment, both courses of action would seem to be similarly polarizing. And anyway, would a polarizing University policy necessarily be undesirable? If my previous paragraph is persuasive, then we have no reason to fear that polarization will spill over into distrust and disrespect. In fact, the discussions I have observed about potential divestment in student group information sessions, student publications, and dining halls over the past few weeks seem to me the realization of the sort of “inclusive, intellectually vibrant community” we aim to create, not a danger to it. On the other hand, if the concern is that a University policy is in some way illegitimate if not supported by a large segment of the student body, I would point out that fully 69 percent of participating students voted yes on the referendum; on most ballots, that would be considered a landslide. And in any case, supposing we were ethically required to divest, would that not override any concern about divestment’s potential to polarize the Brown community? There may be some good reasons not to divest; indeed, we have seen some formidable arguments to that effect in The Brown Daily Herald and elsewhere. But as far as I am able to see, the reasons presented in President Paxson’s letter are not among them.
Leela Cañuelas-Puri ’22 is an Op-Ed contributor and can be reached at leela_canuelas-puri@brown.edu. Please send responses to this opinion to letters@browndailyherald.com and op-eds to opinions@browndailyherald.com.
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