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THE BROWN DAILY HERALD VOLUME CLVIII, ISSUE 13

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 24, 2023

BROWNDAILYHERALD.COM

ARTS & CULTURE

UNIVERSITY NEWS

Student group proposes sustainability certificate

Yin Q talks kink, consent, community Artist-in-residence shares plans for spring semester, discusses sex in digital context

118 students respond to interest survey about interdisciplinary program

BY AALIA JAGWANI ARTS & CULTURE EDITOR

BY MAHIN ASHFAQ SENIOR STAFF WRITER

Yin Q, the American Studies department’s Spring 2023 Asian American artist-in-residence, likes to think of themself as “not a leader but a gatherer.” Q, who is a writer, producer, director and sex work activist, plans to use their new position to bring “people together” by working in conjunction with organizations Red Canary Song and Kink Out. “I’m bringing people to Brown to have conversations with me, because my work does not exist in a void,” they said. “My work is really with community.” Q is an organizer at Red Canary Song, a collective of Asian and migrant sex workers, as well as a founder of Kink Out, a production group of queer, leather art and activism events that “center BIPOC representation,” she said. Connecting members of Red Canary Song to Brown’s campus is particularly

The Brown Renewable Energy and Sustainability Society, is a student-led chapter of a national organization focused on building out solar and renewable energy, is discussing the possibility of a certificate in sustainability with the University, according to BRESS members. BRESS is keen to work with the University to launch the certificate program “to get people to care more about sustainability in the curriculum without (having to pursue) a degree in environmental science,” said Naemi Ditiatkovsky ’25, a BRESS member who is leading the initiative alongside Ariana Turner ’23, the group’s secretary. Turner said the group thinks the program could consist of five classes

COURTESY OF YIN Q

In April, Yin Q will host a program on digital sexuality, which will center around engaging in safe sexual practices online. important to Q, as many of the women the collective works with have not had previous access to academia, they explained. These women are “so hardworking and so smart,” and “bringing their work into

a space” like the University bridges the gap between academia’s focus on subjects rather than “the people themselves,” she

SEE ARTIST PAGE 3

with “one or two core requirements,” including an introductory environmental science class. BRESS has discussed plans to incorporate current classes and develop new ones “that focus on sustainability solutions and people working from different disciplines to solve multifaceted sustainability issues,” Ditiatkovsky said. The program might also entail a social sciences class and a sustainability-focused physical sciences class, she added. Additonally, BRESS wants to organize a new independent study or group capstone as part of the certificate to encourage students to consider the intersections of their concentrations and sustainability, Turner said. The certificate could also focus more on projects and experiential learning than the environmental studies concentration does, she added. Certificates provide students with an opportunity to engage in a subject “that they might not otherwise have curricular bandwidth for,” Sydney Sky-

SEE SUSTAINABILITY PAGE 6

UNIVERSITY NEWS

Student-athlete leadership program launches at U.

Two faculty members named Sloan fellows

First cohort of Tillman Leadership Institute began sessions this spring BY GRACE HOLLEB UNIVERSITY NEWS EDITOR The University announced its first full cohort of student-athletes in the Tillman Leadership Institute, a new program run by the Pat Tillman Foundation that offers executive coaching and leadership development courses to student-athletes, businesses, charitable groups and governmental organizations, on Feb. 13. The foundation unveiled the TLI in January 2022, according to a press release from the foundation. Pat Tillman, the foundation’s namesake, was a professional football player who enlisted in the United States Army shortly after 9/11. After Tillman was killed by friendly fire in 2004, his family and friends created the Pat Tillman Foundation to promote the academic and leadership advancement of veterans and military spouses, according to the foundation’s website.

“The Pat Tillman Foundation exists to close a leadership gap in our country through uniting and empowering veterans and military spouses,” wrote Dan Futrell, the group’s chief executive officer, in an email to The Herald. The foundation runs the Tillman Scholars program for veterans, spouses and military service members, who receive “academic scholarships, lifelong leadership development opportunities and a diverse, global community of high-performing mentors and peers.” Partners with the foundation had asked the Tillman Foundation to help them “build the kind of humble leadership in their teams that they’ve seen in their scholars for nearly two decades,” Futrell wrote, leading to the creation of the TLI. With the institute at Brown and other schools, the foundation will look to bring its “curriculum to people who are sitting where Pat once did, as a student-athlete committed to change, which is where he really began growing into the leader he became,” Futrell wrote. According to Futrell, the PTF connected with Brown Athletics in 2021. Soon after, in January 2022, the foun-

SEE TILLMAN PAGE 3

Jia Li, Peter Hull discuss plans for research investments, reflect on honor of award BY SOFIA BARNETT UNIVERSITY NEWS EDITOR Two University faculty members were awarded research fellowships by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, according to a Feb. 15 announcement from the organization. Peter Hull, assistant professor of economics, and Jia Li, assistant professor of physics, are two of 125 researchers across North America who received the fellowship, which grants $75,000 over two years to advance their work. Li said his first investment with the fellowship money is already sitting in the basement of Barus and Holley: “A very fancy coffee machine.” “Work is pretty intense,” Li explained. “We’re experimentalists, so we study quantum physics in very extreme environments … because of the nature of how that works, some people are always here in the lab.” Li runs the Low-Dimensional Electronics Lab, which studies “properties of electrons confined in a unique two-di-

COURTESY OF PETER HULL AND JIA LI

Peter Hull and Jia Li are regarded as caring and nurturing members of their departments as well as prolific researchers, colleagues said. mensional environment,” according to the lab’s website. “This prize obviously had a lot to do with the work from the entire group put together,” he added. Li explained that while it might seem unproductive to spend award funds on a new espresso machine, the high cost of materials within his field goes well beyond $75,000. “The equipment is very costly,” Li said, noting that a dilution refrigerator, the “fundamental” equipment his lab

Arts & Culture

S&R

Commentary

“You” season 4 strays from show’s formula, quality suffers Page 2

Photography exhibit focuses on humanity in patients Page 3

University student pursues PhD in planetary health Page 8

Rahman ’26: The U.S. should lower its drinking age Page 7

TODAY

18 / 37

uses, costs $1,000,000. Still, Li said he plans to make use of the fellowship’s funds by purchasing other necessary pieces of equipment for the lab, such as “small electronics.” Award money, though, is not the fellowship’s greatest benefit for Li. “The biggest impact of the Sloan fellowship is its recognition,” he said. “This title is recognized within the scientific community quite well, so I’m

SEE FELLOWSHIP PAGE 8

TOMORROW

13 / 25

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD | NEWS

Friday, February 24, 2023

ARTS & CULTURE

‘You’ season 4 struggles with believability, resorts to cheap shock value New season lacks important social commentary, features ensemble of caricatures BY INDIGO MUDBHARY SENIOR STAFF WRITER There are shows that define a generation. Though perhaps not every member of Gen Z has watched “You,” many are familiar with the blue baseball cap that renders notorious stalker Joe Goldberg (Penn Badgley) largely invisible. What previously made “You” great was its brilliant social commentary. It showed what cisgender, heterosexual, white male privilege lets someone get away with — Joe Goldberg is never a suspect because of his presumed innocence. In season four, the show completely departs from what made it such a striking social commentary by casting Joe in the role of a victim. The season begins with Joe on the run after he murdered his wife, Love Quinn (Victoria Pedretti). He tries to find Marienne Bellamy (Tati Gabrielle), his season three obsession, but decides to let her go and stop pursuing her after she calls him a murderer. Already, the season is not believable. Joe — who put a man through a meat grinder, kidnapped several women and murdered his wife — has a sudden change of heart, deciding that stalking women is beneath him. While characters are allowed to develop, this unexpected turn in Joe’s personality arrives with no buildup whatsoever. It’s like if Blair Waldorf decided to join the military or if Michael Scott won the Nobel Prize for physics. While in London, where most of the season takes place, Joe encounters another lucky coincidence that requires the viewer to suspend their disbelief entirely: A hitman for the Quinn family, Elliot

(Adam James), decides that he’s done with killing people just after being ordered to murder the protagonist. Instead, Elliot gives Joe a fake identity to set up a new life in London. Once again, Joe is just too lucky. But “You” isn’t about a lucky guy. It’s a show about a white guy with tremendous amounts of privilege and expert manipulation skills — or it used to be. Joe uses his new identity to become a professor at an Oxford-esque university in London — with a new apartment conveniently located directly across from Kate Galvin (Charlotte Richie). Kate is the girlfriend of one of his fellow professors, Malcolm Harding (Stephen Hagan), and one night, relapsing into his old ways, Joe follows her to the parking lot but ends up preventing her from being mugged This incident becomes Joe’s golden ticket into a circle of young British elites — an unnecessarily large collection of shoddy caricatures with poorly-constructed backstories — when Malcolm invites him to a party at an exclusive club as repayment for saving Kate. In past seasons of the show, the characters were believable. Guinevere Beck (Elizabeth Lail), a struggling Master of Fine Arts student, and Forty Quinn (James Scully), the disappointment of his Los Angeles grocery store royalty family, both felt like people that might actually exist in real life. But in this season, the characters feel like they belong in a TV show — and I mean that in a bad way. From names like “Lady Phoebe Borehall-Blaxworth,” to a scene where one of the socialites makes workers pose as human lawn ornaments, none of the characters feel believable. And “You” demands believability — what used to make Joe’s actions so sinister is that they were rooted in the everyday realities faced by women. The morning after meeting the

COURTESY OF NETFLIX

Earlier seasons showed what privilege lets someone get away with — Joe Goldberg is never a suspect because of his presumed innocence. In season 4, the show foolishly tries to make Goldberg a victim. elites, Joe wakes up with Malcolm’s dead body on his kitchen table and no recollection of what had happened. An expert in how to deal with a dead body, Joe disposes of it in a wood processing facility in the idyllic British countryside. When disposing of the professor’s body, the viewers are given an unnecessarily gratuitous, multiple-second shot that lingers on the dead man’s genitals. It’s obvious that the writers are just going for cheap shock value at this point, a disappointment for fans of a show that was once a masterclass in subtlety and elegantly executed twists. Slowly but surely, Joe becomes a part of this circle of British elites. The writers try to make him into a working-class hero — the only one who sees through the British socialites’ absurd wealth and disgusting excess. The show tries to satirize British society

and class, but because of its forced dialogue and implausible premise, it comes off as a half-baked imitation of “Knives Out,” trying to call attention to wealth disparities but failing miserably. The reveal that the person killing off the wealthy socialites is a resentful character who grew up in poverty is so on-the-nose that the viewer feels as though the showrunners expected them to be utterly unable to process subtle class commentary. Additionally, Joe himself gains a stalker this season. After Malcolm’s death, Joe receives a text informing him that he didn’t actually murder his colleague and that someone is framing him — a reality that becomes clear as more of the elites die. It should feel like Joe is getting a taste of his own medicine, but instead, it just seems as if he was randomly placed in a

particularly bad episode of “Pretty Little Liars.” Each past season of the show had its strength: season one introduced us to Joe’s iconic inner monologue and blue baseball hat, season two had a plot twist nobody could ever see coming and season three had its own unique charm by satirizing suburbia. Season four has nothing that makes it great. It is utterly unsatisfying. It’s clear the writers want audiences to root for Joe this season by casting him as the normal guy amongst the circle of rich assholes. But they seem to have forgotten that Joe is supposed to be the bad guy. He’s a murderer who stalks women and gets away with it because of his privilege. The show forgets such complexities in season four — and the result is an utter lack of self-awareness that makes for a disappointing viewing experience.

Support The Herald www.browndailyherald.com/donate CA L E NDA R TODAY’S EVENTS

FEBRUARY S

Countdown to Graduation Celebration 10:00 a.m. Brown Bookstore

GMP Lunch Bunch: Imani Guest 12:00 p.m. Lincoln Field, Room 120

DSI DUG Movie Night: The Imitation Game 6:00 p.m. Salomon Center

Grad Night at the Globe! 6:30 p.m. Salomon Center

TOMORROW’S EVENTS Workshop: Practical Explorations of Various Notions of the Self 10:00 a.m. - 4:00 p.m. Winnick Chapel

Women’s Lacrosse vs UAlbany 12:00 - 3:00 p.m. Stevenson-Pincince Field

Women’s Basketball vs Columbia - Senior Day 4:00 - 6:00 p.m. Pizzitola Sports Center

Men’s Swimming & Diving Ivy League Champtionships 6:00 - 9:00 p.m. Moran Aquatics Center

Friday, February 24, 2023

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD | NEWS

ARTS & CULTURE

Photography exhibit at Med School celebrates ‘shared humanity’

Exhibit wrapped in December after four months, will relocate to Bradley Hospital BY OWEN DAHLKAMP SENIOR STAFF WRITER Rick Guidotti, former international fashion photographer and CEO and founder of Positive Exposure, partnered with the Alpert Medical School and Precision Medicine in Autism last semester to create an exhibit displaying photographs of people with developmental disabilities. The exhibit was featured at the Med School from September to December and will move to Bradley Hospital in the coming months. Through Positive Exposure, a photography company that focuses on subjects with medical conditions, Guidotti said he aims to “promote a more inclusive world through photography, film and educational programs.” When he initially founded Positive Exposure, Guidotti remembered observing photos of individuals with diseases in medical textbooks that he felt lacked humanity. With Positive Exposure, his mission is to “put humanity back in medical training.” Daniel Moreno De Luca, assistant professor of psychiatry and human behavior, said he founded Precision Medicine in Autism at Brown with a goal that also centers around patients’ humanity: “to provide research education and community engagement efforts around people on the autistic spectrum.” In 2017, while photographing a conference for people with rare genetic disorders, Guidotti was introduced to PRISMA and knew he wanted to work with the group again, he said. From

ARTIST FROM PAGE 1 added. Student program coordinators, who determine the artist-in-residence after soliciting community feedback, kept the resources offered with the position in mind during the selection process. “This is a huge opportunity to bring someone to an elite institution like Brown — and for Brown students to be able to engage with someone who they might not normally” engage with, said student coordinator Ren L[i]u ’23. “Because this (position offers) a lot of money, we were hoping … it would be a redistribution of resources,” L[i]u added. “Knowing that the residency is shared by Q with the collectives” and that

TILLMAN FROM PAGE 1 dation piloted TLI programming at the University with two on-campus and two online programs. These included sessions with Tillman scholars Adrian Perkins, the former mayor of Shreveport, Louisiana and Kimberly Jung, the CEO of podcasting publisher Blanchard House. All head coaches of varsity athletics teams were contacted and asked to nominate students to participate in the program this year, according to Sean Hendricks, senior associate director of athletics for student-athlete development. The program aims to involve roughly 50 student-athletes from various sports and class years throughout the spring semester, he said.

there, the idea for the “Positive Exposure” exhibit was born. Through photographs, the exhibit aimed to help audiences better understand each individual subject’s niche, or “what drives them,” said Molly Goldman, a genetic counselor at PRISMA. In February 2022, De Luca, Goldman and Guidotti contacted Kris Cambra, assistant dean of biomedical communications at the Med School, to seek approval for their project. Cambra wrote in an email to The Herald that the Med School’s Arts Council, which ultimately approved the project, looks for exhibits that “use art to bring a new perspective to how we look at illness and the human ex-

perience.” “We especially like to display works that encourage medical students to see the whole person in front of them, not just a patient or their illness,” she added. Once it was approved, interest in the project among De Luca’s patients “just exploded,” Guidotti said. Seth Thomas, a longtime patient of De Luca, was one of the participants asked to join the project, with approval from his moms, Lisa and Joanne Thomas. Seth Thomas was diagnosed with Fragile X syndrome at the age of 4, a genetic condition that causes intellectual disability. “If you look up a book about Fragile

X syndrome or autism, you don’t see very beautiful photographs,” Joanne Thomas said. “You see very clinical-looking pictures.” “Seth is not just a diagnosis,” Lisa Thomas said, adding that she hopes the exhibit showed that her son is “much more than that. He’s a human being.” Guidotti said he remembers a remarkably “joyful” atmosphere at the exhibit’s photo shoot. Within their photographs, participants proudly displayed their artwork, ability to solve Rubik’s Cubes and niche knowledge of 3-D printing. Participants were “presenting themselves as honestly and as authentically as they were,” he added. “It was

COURTESY OF RICK GUIDOTTI FOR POSITIVE EXPOSURE

The photographs, which focused on each subject’s specific interests, were accompanied by a QR code detailing PRISMA lab’s missions and more information about the subjects.

the money would financially benefit the communities of Red Canary Song and Kink Out encouraged their decision. L[i]u also thought Q’s work made them a good fit “for conversations that were going on already among Asian diasporic and Asian American communities” on campus, including discussions about gender-based and sexual violence. Q has organized a wide range of events for the spring semester, including a Valentine’s Day special workshop “Introduction to Rope/Shibari” and a conversation with Empress Wu, a social media coordinator and digital archivist for arts nonprofits, on “Sadomasochism, Power, Blood and Money.” Upcoming events in March include a second Rope workshop and a screening

of the documentary film “Fly in Power,” which explores issues among Asian migrant massage and sex workers, Q said. Q’s goal is to expose students to larger conversations about topics like consent and kink. Given the glorification of abuse in some online representations of sadomasochism, the information present online today can be both intimidating and damaging “to how someone thinks about conducting kink in their relationships and communities,” they explained. They emphasized the importance of “digging deeper into consent,” beyond “tutorials that were given during orientation,” which are aimed at perpetrators and victims but do not address how to “explore our own interests in a safe way,

The first formal cohort of Brown student-athletes met Feb. 13 in a session led by Futrell and Tabatha Renz, interim director of programs at the PTF, according to Futrell. The program will work on a hybrid schedule with in-person sessions in February and April and online sessions in March. “There’s already a lot on their plate with athletics and academics,” Hendricks said. “We tried to frame (the program) … in a way that wasn’t going to be too overwhelming or time-consuming.” The programming will focus on the six attributes which the foundation considers essential for outstanding leadership: creativity, caring, decisiveness, tenacity, inclusivity and passion, wrote

Colleen Reaney, director of the TLI, in an email to The Herald. Tillman Scholars will run the sessions, she added. Students will also get an overview of career pathways and lessons on preparing an elevator pitch and transitioning to the workforce. According to Reaney, PTF is eager to expand TLI’s student-athlete programs across the nation and is also working with Bank of America, CLEAR and the United Service Organizations to reach professionals. The program developed and piloted at Brown last year is customizable to any university that wants to offer it to its student-athletes, Reaney wrote. “Our goal is to help (student-athletes) develop the skill sets they’ve built

(taking) into consideration the power dynamics that are inherent in everyday relationships.” For femme bodies, queer bodies and trans bodies, “consent is too soft a word,” Q said. Q’s workshops also aim to debunk some of the misrepresentations of kink in popular media. When doing their workshops, “whether I’m teaching something like rope bondage or something like flogging or spanking, I really let people know that this is about sensation,” she said. “It’s about really enjoying sensations and the cusp of sensations from pleasure and pain or power dynamics.” One of the events Q is looking forward to most is a program on digital sexuality in April, which will be centered around

extraordinary.” When the exhibit opened Sept. 14, Guidotti said “there was so much love in that room.” Families came together and participants could see themselves in the photos, “not as a snapshot, but they get to see themselves honored and respected,” he said. When Seth Thomas first saw his picture “he just kept taking pictures of the picture of himself. He just didn’t know what to say or what to do, he was just so excited,” Lisa Thomas said. The photographs were accompanied by a QR code that linked to a PRISMA website page detailing the lab’s missions and more information about the subjects — their unique “thing” and experiences growing up with developmental disorders. Since the exhibit, Guidotti said he has made an effort to stay in contact with project participants. “Once you come to make those connections you feel part of the family –– part of the community,” Guidotti said. Seth Thomas still has his picture on his nightstand, a proud display of him being “a part of something,” Lisa Thomas said. The trio of Guidotti, Goldman and De Luca also has plans to continue their collaboration, Guidotti said. Their next project “faces redefining the art of medical education” is a series of “brief films helping a healthcare provider-in-training get the basic hallmark characteristics of a certain diagnosis or topic, but as presented by somebody living that experience themselves.” For De Luca, the human element remains the key element of the new project. “We wanted to … celebrate the shared humanity that we all have,” he said. “We’re so much more connected by our differences,” Guidotti said.

“how to stay sexy online, but also how to protect yourself,” they said. Q’s analysis of “censorship of sex work in digital spaces … is coming at a really critical political moment because of federal policies like the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act and the Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act that are really increasing surveillance and criminalization of sex work in digital spaces,” said graduate coordinator Mark Tseng Putterman MA’20 GS. “I hope that students, through participating in these programs, can come away with just a more expansive and creative idea of what Asian American art ... can do and how that might play into their own creative practices,” Tseng-Putterman said.

COURTESY OF TILLMAN LEADERSHIP INSTITUTE

The programming consists of Tillman Scholars teaching student athletes about leadership and offering sessions on professional development. on the field or the court to their next stage in life as leaders in the world,” Reaney wrote. “Not every student-athlete goes on to a career in athletics, as

Pat did. But college athletics set people up to consider how to lead and how they can exemplify those leadership lessons as they move on to what’s next.”

post-

FEB 24 — VOL 31 — ISSUE 2

FEATURE

See Full Issue: ISSUU.COM/POSTMAGAZINEBDH

NARRATIVE

white noise

seeking comfort in lieu of sleep by Sophie Pollack-Milgate Maybe I’m sitting at the dinner table, feeling the warmth of the tea mug and the crumbs on the tablecloth. My brother might be beside me, still eating—methodical as a surgeon. My mother is probably ribbing him for sleeping until the afternoon, and between bites, he defends himself: “It took me so long to fall asleep last night.” Or maybe it’s approaching bedtime, and there are people talking outside my room, with errant lilts sneaking in under the door. What if they aren’t quiet soon? Insomnia is always in the background. It causes a rush in my chest, distracting me from the

the blue hour

what i am trying to say when i say i like evening walks by Joyce Gao illustrated by lena he IG: @liquidbutterflies

surrounding banter. (Soon I’ll need to brush my teeth, which feels like putting on battle armor.) The word loses meaning as I repeat it over and over in my mind. By dissolving it into nothing, maybe I can weaken the word so that sleep will dissolve me into nothing too. Inhabiting myself has consequences. As I prepare to go to sleep, I arrange my surroundings with care. First, I turn on the big white box fan, positioning it so the airflow is parallel to my body (its low-pitch hum masks cars-stopping-at-stop-sign sounds). Then I roll earplugs between my fingers

After sunset is the blue hour. The sun is just below the horizon, and on a clear day, the remaining

was tailored for the blue hour. The chime, the long droning sounds, and the low murmuring were the

light scatters through the air, turning everything blue. At some point, you must have pushed out of a door, rolled down a window, or dragged a trash bag to the driveway and suddenly felt that blue air

perfect texture on which to layer the sounds of wind, traffic, kids chasing down the sidewalk as the lights went up, and the city turning in for the night. Submerged in the blue hour, the streets that

plunge into your lungs. You can taste the difference like you can smell a storm before it arrives. At the beginning of 2021, I was home in Beijing,

I grew up on became strange but cinematic. The neighborhood convenience store, which, in my memory, was crammed to the point of becoming a

taking my first university classes online, living with my parents for the longest time since I was 14, and feeling confused about everything. I decided I

fire hazard, was now growing empty. Its windows were covered with bolded sale signs promising a final move-out at the end of the month, a fate that

couldn’t stay home forever, and that I would come to Brown for the summer semester, even if it meant uncertainty regarding Covid and my visa status. In

foretold my own. Through the windows above the convenience store, the apartment lights flickered on and off as people returned from work, shuffled

the few days after that decision, I started taking more evening walks around my neighborhood. I told my parents that these walks alleviated the headache

the contents of bags, walked in and out of rooms, and tucked children into beds. I pictured myself with my family framed by a similar window, and a

that arose from staring at travel documents, which was not a lie. Mostly, though, I was using those walks as a way to process the approaching goodbye.

premature sense of nostalgia tinged those images as I thought about saying goodbye. It was a nostalgia that I only knew how to process by looking at it

On those walks, I started listening to Sigur Rós again, an Icelandic band whose music sounds

from a distance, so I walked again and again in the blue hour, until my neighborhood felt like a

like long train tunnels, whale songs, the end of a

reproduction of itself in a dream, where the details

It's an inane concept, but one that so many of

movie, and the beginning of something new. Svefng-englar, one of my favorite songs, seemed like it

grow more vivid and bizarre the closer you are to waking up...

us subscribe to. The siren song of the perfect going-

“I want to melt down every moment, keep them in a heartshaped locket around my neck. But time is like water between my fingers. The scene always ends, and a new one arrives, burning just as brightly.”

— Emily Tom, “Here and There” 02.25.2022

“You remind me that everything I encounter—buildings, door knobs, paperclips—can be broken down into little infinities, and be plotted, graphed, and analyzed. Despite your objective and quantitative methods I can use to understand you is nearly boundless.”

—Ellie Jurmann, “n+1 Reasons I Love You” 02.12.2022

and slot them into my ears. Finally, I play white noise through noise-cancelling headphones...

the perfect going out top

transformation through fashion by Jeanine Kim Mysterious and alluring, it is one of the rarest creatures in the world. Only spotted on the most unlikely of nights, it constantly evades capture at the last minute, coming tantalizingly close before dancing away once again. Despite its slippery nature, it entraps the world's attention as its depths hold secrets and promises about not only the natural world but also our true selves. This solitary creature, an apex predator in its own right, is none other than the most elusive animal of all: the perfect going-out top.

out top calls out to all who venture into the night, making us hope and dream for that instant fix, the panacea to all our problems. I can picture it: a daring little red thing with straps that criss-cross in mystifying patterns; or maybe a black leather piece, tight in all the right places yet classy nonetheless; or perhaps a flimsy, glittery monstrosity that incomprehensibly stays on despite all common logic. Regardless of what it looks like, I know it's there, daring me to find it. Every weekend, as the prospect of another night out approaches, the idea of the perfect going-out top returns to haunt me...

LIFESTYLE

the best dressed man in bologna of coats, suits, and the monochrome by Sean Toomey

Here we are again in the dead of a seemingly neverending winter. But, hell, that’s what Februaries are for. I hope that you all are staying toasty and layered up, because I seem to have found myself overseas, some four thousand miles from home, and it’s just as fucking frigid. But, here I am, doing some old fashioned reportage for you old fashioned readers, on the city of Bologna, Italy and its denizens. Studying abroad is an incredible opportunity to experience a new culture, see new places, and speak a new language, but that doesn’t mean you can slack on the language of style. I wanted to give you all some useful and well-needed style advice for a trip or semester abroad because, let's be real, a wardrobe consisting of Nike joggers, your smelliest hoodie, and your favorite pair of sandals might not cut it. Today, we’ll be taking a little tour through the Bolognese style and all its little quirks. My first stylistic impression of Bologna was that there must’ve been some terrible accident right before my arrival because, as far as the eye could see, everyone was wearing black. Much to my surprise (I had already queued up the Gordon Lightfoot) there was no shocking and songworthy industrial accident—people just really seem to like the color, or lack of it. Every street is dotted with black-clad figures looking like out-of-focus extras

in a Powell and Pressburger movie, though sadly Europe isn’t all in black and white. Black coats, black berets, black bags, it’s universal. Beyond the black, which appears as a stylistic unifier throughout the city, Bolognese fashion diverges into three categories, generally based around age, that catalog the fashion seen on the streets. First up: university students. In their constant presence around the Piazza Verdi and in cafés sipping on endless espressos, they contain by far the most diverse set of styles seen in the city and also (sorry) probably the least interesting. It’s just about what you would see at Brown: puffers, beanies, sweatpants, with lots of slim-fit chinos and jeans carrying over from the last zeitgeist—timeless fashion indeed—the primary ethos being to keep warm, look stylish later. This hits men’s fashion the hardest, where the desire to look good clashes with the societal necessity to conform to an outdated idea of masculinity to create guys who care a little but not too much about how they look, only succeeding in looking boring and terribly uniform. Be it skinny tech fabric pants with a sweatshirt or dark sweater, or the (why, god, why) universal presence of slim-fit chinos in navy or charcoal, the menswear for the younger demographic in Bologna is very lacking. The womenswear of the university...

“You don’t have bitch-on-bitch experience.” “I didn’t appreciate it, I was just there to hit the quan.”

Expansions 1. The Universe rn 2. Wood ;) 3. Binomial 4. Mongol empire 5. Sims Packs 6. Those dinosaurs when you put them in water 7. Westward 8. Alveolar 9. Thermal 10. Brown’s land ownership

ARTS & CULTURE LIFESTYLE

a love letter to babylon

an ode to hollywood and the films that celebrate it by Dorrit Corwin

becoming a bad feminist fleabag and the power in vulnerability by Aalia Jagwani illustrated by emilie guan In the very first episode of Fleabag, a beloved comedy-drama, the titular character and her sister Claire attend a feminist lecture together, in which the speaker asks the audience: “Please raise your hands if you would trade five years of your life for the socalled ‘perfect body.’” The rest of the audience stays perfectly still, but Fleabag and Claire raise their hands, exchanging sheepish glances. “We are bad feminists,” Fleabag whispers to Claire. What is a “bad feminist?” A younger me thought it was a woman who was passive, submissive, or post–

Want to be involved? Email: mingyue_liu@brown.edu!

emotional—any diversion from the quintessential strong, independent woman. Having long since outgrown this opinion, it now feels impossible to answer. A lot of critics seem to think that Fleabag, as a show, is “bad feminism.” The case against what people have been calling “Fleabag feminism” or “dissociative feminism” is that it moves away from complaining about or acting against oppression to passively wallowing in it, or laughing at it with deadpan humor. But this discourse is itself placing the burden..

My grandfather, a motion picture exhibitor, used to declare every film he saw the “best picture of the year.” I can still hear the natural inflection of that phrase in his voice revealing his pure, unadulterated delight. My grandmother would walk out of the theatre and tell him she couldn’t believe they’d both seen the same movie. She’d criticize the screenplay or say it was too slow, and most of the time, she’d be right. But my grandfather overlooked such cinematic flaws in favor of the relationships between characters and the settings in which the stories took place, especially in sentimental films that served as love letters to Hollywood, his home. My grandfather nudged my father into his chairman position at the family company: a small chain of movie theaters on the West Coast. My father, who should have been a sports agent, loves to tell me what movies to look out for but never watches any of them himself. In 2016 he insisted that my musical theatre-loving, hopeless romantic 15-year-old self was going to love La La Land (2016). I thought it sounded gimmicky. By age 15 I had a feeling I’d one day end up back in LA fighting for my own Hollywood pipe dream as a screenwriter, not necessarily as a direct result of the family business, though perhaps there was an ancillary subconscious link. I grew up alongside children of producers, writers, and showrunners galore who made it appear as though becoming a Hollywood creative... February 24, 2023�7

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD | NEWS

Friday, February 24, 2023

UNIVERSITY NEWS

Reimagining New England Histories shares Black, Indigenous stories Grant-funded project partners U. with Williams College, Mystic Seaport Museum BY ASHTON HIGGINS CONTRIBUTING WRITER The Reimagining New England Histories: Historical Injustice, Sovereignty and Freedom project tells Black and Indigenous histories through publications, educational programming and exhibitions. Founded in 2021, the initiative is a grant-funded partnership between Williams College, Mystic Seaport Museum and the Brown Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice. The central focus of the initiative is to “address the marginalization of Indigenous and Black bodies” in the history of New England through various programs and events, according to Akeia de Barros Gomes, senior curator of maritime social histories at the Mystic Seaport Museum. The program is currently working on

SUSTAINABILITY FROM PAGE 1 better, deputy dean of the College for curriculum and co-curriculum, wrote in an email to The Herald. Currently, the University offers certificates in data fluency, engaged scholarship, entrepreneurship, intercultural competence and migration studies. “We welcome the consideration of all proposals for new certificate programs, as they give us a sense as to emerging disciplinary and interdisciplinary horizons,” Skybetter wrote. According to Ditiatkovsky, the idea of a sustainability certificate was first raised by alums a couple of years ago. “We’re not creating something that’s completely new, we’re pushing something that” has already been talked about, Ditiatkovsky said. The group has begun a survey to gauge student interest in a sustain-

COURTESY OF BROWN UNIVERSITY

Reimagining New England Histories hosts programs which currently reach students as early as high school and as late as graduate school. an exhibit at the Mystic Seaport Museum titled “Entwined,” which illustrates how stories of Indigenous and Black Americans are inseparable from the history of New England, according to Tom Van Winkle, executive director of the Williams-Mystic Coastal and Ocean Studies Program. The exhibit will be on display next year. Van Winkle said that students will contribute to the installation by creating the artistic work that will be displayed, conducting historical research work and

participating in internships at the Museum over the summer. Through the initiative, Williams-Mystic is planning to host an undergraduate summer cohort aboard a ship sailing along the coast of New England, Van Winkle added. The 20 students selected to participate in the weeklong experience will travel to various Black and Indigenous communities and learn about their histories from local activists and historians, Van

ability certificate. While the survey is ongoing, BRESS has already received 118 responses, according to Turner. “People are really excited about it,” Turner said, citing the results of the survey to date. According to Turner, students’ excitement stems from the chance to connect other areas of interest with the topic of sustainability. The results of the survey so far suggest that there is interest in every class year, Ditiatkovsky said. “If more people fill out the survey, there’s a higher chance that what they’re interested in within this potential certificate will be heard,” Ditiatkovsky said. “It’s definitely in the really early parts of becoming something,” Turner said. “It starts with first convincing (the Institute at Brown for Environment and Society to support a sustainability certificate) and having enough

students interested, having enough people on the board interested, and having enough professors engaged to push through.” While working on the certificate, BRESS has been meeting with Stephen Porder, assistant provost for sustainability, who is helping the group schedule meetings and navigate the different departments, Turner said. Porder did not respond to a request for comment. The next step for BRESS is an April meeting with IBES to share students’ perspectives and “talk about what we saw from the survey,” Turner said. At the meeting, the group will also discuss what the certificate might look like, she added. In the future BRESS hopes to meet with Dawn King, the director of undergraduate studies for the environmental studies program, and Director of IBES Kim Cobb, according to Ditiatkovsky.

Winkle said. Though the summer program was initially intended to serve only Williams and Brown students, Van Winkle hopes that it will eventually be available to undergraduates from any college. The initiative also plans to “create a print book and digital website for the publication that will foreground the historical and lived experiences of” Indigenous, African American and Afro-Indigenous communities, according to the Reimagining New England Histories website. According to de Barros Gomes, any Black and Indigenous community member can share stories for the initiative’s exhibition and publication. The initiative also hosts educational programs which currently reach students as early as high school and as late as graduate school. For high schoolers, the initiative hosts a summer institute related to Black and Indigenous histories, de Barros Gomes wrote. And at the graduate level, she wrote that the Frank C. Munson Institute at the

Mystic Seaport Museum is amplifying the project’s narratives through lectures and field seminars. At Brown, CSSJ is contributing to the initiative by producing curriculum materials for K-12 history courses to tell a fuller, reimagined history of New England, according to CSSJ Director Tony Bogues. Bogues said that he hopes the initiative can tell histories through “the voices of those persons who have been historically dispossessed” to better understand “the ways in which those conditions” impact the present. Bogues added that CSSJ aims to highlight the dispossession of Indigenous populations of their land and the enslavement of Black people, demonstrating that the two processes “are two grounds on which America was formed,” especially in New England. De Barros Gomes said that she hopes “this project will represent a first step in the creation and development of reciprocal, sustainable and meaningful relationships between the institutions involved and Black and Indigenous communities.”

JENNIFER CHEN / HERALD

Ultimately, proposed certificates must be approved by the College Curriculum Council. According to the group’s webpage, the CCC is “an elected body of faculty and students, along with administrators, charged with overseeing undergraduate curricular offerings at Brown.” Certifi-

cate proposals must be sponsored by an academic department or program, demonstrate faculty support and student interest and lay out learning objectives, among other requirements. “We just wanted to have something that has a lasting impact,” Ditiatkovsky said.

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Friday, February 24, 2023

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD | COMMENTARY

Rahman ’26: College drinking culture is not normal. The national drinking age is to blame. It’s Friday night and I’m at Josiah’s with friends after a night out. As I walk to the bathroom, I see an all-too-familiar sight: There’s a kid passed out with his worried friends attending to him. While initially reluctant, the kid’s friends eventually decide to call for help and 10 minutes later, EMS vehicles arrive. This anecdote encapsulates the everyday reality of being a college student in America. It’s time we acknowledge that our national drinking culture is not normal and demand that universities and the government do more to protect students and promote healthy drinking habits. This starts by lowering the legal drinking age. America has always had a complicated relationship with alcohol. From the pilgrims to the Mothers Against Drunk Driving hysteria of the ’80s, there has always been a push-andpull between our simultaneous thirst for alcohol and our desire to keep it at an arm’s length. But as the failures of Prohibition, the war on drugs and the national minimum drinking age have shown, taking a punitive approach against drinking rarely works. Despite underage possession of alcohol being illegal in all 50 states, a 2018 study found that 37% of college students engaged in binge drinking within a month of being surveyed and 11% met the criteria for Alcohol Use Disorder. Instead of enjoying alcohol in moderation, many students binge drink in what is now a ritualized and central part of the American college experience. To best address the unhealthy relationship young people

have with alcohol, we ought to take a harm-reduction approach instead of trying to ban it entirely. Most countries around the world set their minimum drinking age between 18 and 20 years old. Although 18 is the age of majority in the U.S., coming with all the responsibilities of adulthood, young adults are still unable to pur-

clubs won’t serve customers that are already intoxicated, the rampant pregaming culture among underage college students noticeably lacks this security. Making alcohol taboo has unintentionally created an aura of mystique around a drunken night out for teenagers. Given the prevalence of underage drinking, the current drinking age

“To best address the unhealthy relationship young people have with alcohol, we ought to take a harmreduction approach instead of trying to ban it entirely.”

chase alcohol until they turn 21. The irrationality is striking. Our current drinking age results in a situation in which students pretend to be of age when they drink, and university administrators look the other way. For most young people, this means that their first independent experiences with alcohol will be in an unsupervised environment ripe for disaster. While bars and

criminalizes the vast majority of young people and has spawned an industry for fake IDs. What kind of message does that send to young adults as they move into the real world? That laws are meant to be broken. And are we really safer if students feel that, because of illegal drinking, they are unable to get help in emergency situations for fear of self-incrimination?

Many adults will continue to partake in recreational drinking long after leaving school. It is therefore imperative that students develop responsible and informed drinking habits while still in college. The frat basement is not the place for that preparation. As the first stop towards independence for many young people, universities have a unique responsibility to play a more active role in guiding students toward healthier habits. The EverFi training Brown provides to all first-years might let the University claim it is doing something. However, in practicality, the program is unengaging and provides only short-term benefits to students preparing for the realities of college drinking. Lowering the drinking age would allow universities like Brown to more meaningfully engage with students throughout their time in college by openly acknowledging the presence of alcohol on college campuses and better regulating how and when it is served. As a society, we need to have a more nuanced conversation about alcohol use and abuse. But that conversation can only begin when we finally treat young adults as rational agents capable of making good decisions.

Tas Rahman ’26 can be reached at tasawwar_rahman@brown.edu. Please send responses to this opinion to letters@browndailyherald.com and other op-eds to opinions@browndailyherald.com.

Fang ’26: Low-impact, low-intensity workouts can have a high reward On a fateful skiing trip this winter break, I tore my anterior cruciate ligament — more commonly known as the ACL — on a sharp turn and had to be transported down the slopes in a snowmobile. It wasn’t the pain or upcoming surgery that crushed me most about the injury — it was the half-marathon I wasn’t going to run in May, the mountains I wouldn’t climb this summer and the weights I couldn’t lift that disappointed me the most. Coming from an active family, it was hard for me to accept a new reality without the high-impact and high-sweat activities that made me feel the strongest. Since my surgery, I’ve modified my daily physical activity significantly. Instead of long runs around Providence and heavy lifting at the Nelson Fitness Center, I’ve switched to low-intensity and low-impact exercises such as Pilates, light weights, yoga and lots of walking. To my surprise, I feel great. I’ve been able to work new muscles and challenge myself without the risk of further knee damage. Because of my injury, I’ve realized that low-intensity and low-impact exercise is far from being low-effort or low-reward. Participating in gentler forms of exercise can be just as engaging as high-impact activities without wearing out joints and muscles. Low impact refers to the force the joints endure during exercise, while low intensity refers to the level of difficulty and exertion required to perform an activity. For example, running is a high-impact and high-intensity exercise, while cycling is a low-impact but potentially high-intensity exercise. Activities such as yoga and walking are considered low-impact and low-intensity.

Unfortunately, “low-impact” and “low-intensity” are somewhat loaded terms, since the activities they encompass can be viewed as inferior to more rigorous activities, such as running or high-intensity interval training. In the past, I would gauge the effectiveness of a work-

also lead to amenorrhea, or loss of the menstrual cycle. Low-impact work can offer similar benefits to high-impact work without many of the potential negative consequences, and is especially accessible to older individuals or those recover-

“Overlooking the role that lowintensity and low-impact exercise can play in a healthy exercise routine neglects all the benefits of slowing down on one’s physical and mental well-being.”

out by the amount of pain I had endured or how much I had sweat. However, training hard every single day without incorporating gentler movements can disrupt hormonal function and lead to overuse injuries, especially to the knees and shoulders. When we perform a high-intensity and high-impact activity, our brain releases cortisol, a stress hormone, to make the body’s energy sources more available for use. While increased cortisol levels can boost immunity and reduce inflammation, too much cortisol in the long run can backfire and lead to a worsened immune system, chronic fatigue and mood swings. It can

ing from injury. Low-impact work such as swimming or stationary cycling can still raise the heart rate, improve cardiac function and help manage weight without the physical demands of high-impact activity. The main difference is that low-impact work allows individuals to be more consistently active. There is a shorter recovery period from low-impact work, so individuals can take fewer rest days and more easily maintain healthy lifestyles. For instance, it can be difficult for someone to run every single day since it is so physically demanding. Breaking up days of running with swimming and cycling can make exercise more interesting and sustainable

in the long term. Low-intensity work also offers important benefits. Participating in activities such as yoga and Pilates improves posture, flexibility, stability and strength while mitigating joint pain and improving stiffness after injury. Pilates can build muscular endurance by targeting different areas than high-intensity workouts do. These low-intensity exercises also stress mindfulness, which can help mental health through breathing and relaxation techniques. Since minimal equipment is required and many tutorials exist online for beginners, Pilates and yoga are easily accessible for most people. There is no one correct way to maintain a healthy lifestyle, but overlooking the role that low-intensity and low-impact exercise can play in a healthy exercise routine neglects all the benefits of slowing down on one’s physical and mental well-being. It’s true that I feel the strongest while running or sweating up a storm, but engaging in gentler forms of exercise has made me more attuned to my body’s needs and limitations. Pilates may not give me the same endorphin-filled rush as a good run, but taking time to discover new ways to move is exciting and will keep me occupied as I recover from surgery. In the meantime, the half-marathons, mountains and deadlifts will have to wait.

Juliet Fang ’26 can be reached at juliet_ fang@brown.edu. Please send responses to this opinion to letters@browndailyherald. com and other op-eds to opinions@browndailyherald.com.

THE BROWN DAILY HERALD | NEWS

Friday, February 24, 2023

SCIENCE & RESEARCH

Gradaute student explores self-desginated program in planetary health Experts describe growing field of planetary health, meaning for humanity BY AKSHAY AMESUR STAFF WRITER John Nicklas ’20 GS grew up loving the natural world. Now, he hopes to protect it. A second-year medical student currently on leave from the Alpert Medical School, Nicklas is additionally enrolled in a PhD program focused on planetary health in the Department of Earth, Environmental and Planetary Sciences. Planetary health is an interdisciplinary field that studies the links between human health and the health of the planet’s natural systems and resources. Together with his advisor Baylor Fox-Kemper, professor of Earth, Environmental and Planetary Sciences, Nicklas created a “self-designed” program over roughly three years that allows him to merge his mathematical skills, environmental interests and clinical goals. “It’s an inspiring thing to see how he’s designing (his path),” Fox-Kemper said. In recent years, the University has increasingly focused on the intersection of climate change and human health, according to Fox-Kemper. Nicklas’s work in the field of planetary health is just one of many interdisciplinary efforts to study climate change occurring between the Med School, the School of Public Health and DEEPS, Fox-Kemper said. Currently, Nicklas is working alongside Fox-Kemper, Assistant Professor of Emergency Medicine Katelyn Moretti and Professor Emeritus of Applied Mathematics Charles Lawrence on multiple research projects, including one focused on mitigation techniques for groups vulnerable to diseases as a result of climate change. The Herald spoke to Nicklas, as well as three experts, about the study of planetary health.

FELLOWSHIP FROM PAGE 1 hoping that … with this newfound recognition, I will be successful in pursuing other funding opportunities that will allow me to expand the lab and add more cutting-edge equipment.” Hull expressed a similar sentiment: “It’s much more than the money,” he said. “It’s the award and recognition as a whole, for myself, Brown economics” and for the University, he added. His work surrounds “education, health care, discrimination and applied econometrics,” according to his website. To better understand those problems, Hull develops new statistical methods to analyze them, according to a University

Addressing the root of the cause Nicklas’s interest in climate largely stems from “the parts of the natural world that I experienced growing up,” he said. “Going outside on a winter day when the whole world is frosted like a cake is just one of the most incredible feelings to me.” While in high school, Nicklas took mathematics courses at the University of Michigan and patented a new design for wind turbines using principles from sailing. These early experiences forged a love of nature, quantitative analysis and creative innovation, Nicklas said — which in turn guided him when he came to Brown in 2016 as an undergraduate in the Program in Liberal Medical Education. Though he concentrated in applied math and biology, he was intrigued by climate change and planetary health. At Brown, Nicklas successfully patented an innovation in solar power and another in in 3D printing. The analytical skills that Nicklas gained in his undergraduate program allowed him to succeed across fields, Fox-Kemper said. Nicklas explained that although he knew he wanted to help individual patients as a clinician, he also wanted to pursue work that could have a population-level impact. “I wanted to invent and do things to help people,” he added. His undergraduate years, however, showed him that it “is very rare … for a doctor to cure the fundamental thing going wrong” in clinical medicine, he said. By pursuing a career in planetary health, Nicklas believes that he can help individuals and populations while addressing the root causes of diverse health challenges.

COURTESY OF JOHN NICKLAS

John Nicklas ’20 GS, who is currently on leave from pursuing his medical degree, carved out his own interdisciplinary PhD program surrounding planetary health.

Examining how climate impacts health — and how health impacts climate change Shifting weather patterns, natural disasters and fluctuating temperatures will become more widespread as climate change progresses — in Rhode Island, for example, the annual number of days with temperatures above 90

degrees Fahrenheit has more than doubled, according to Ellen Tohn, assistant professor of epidemiology. Extreme heat has problematic consequences for human health, Nicklas explained, noting that it is linked to rises in cardiovascular disease, suicide and violent crime while also worsening chronic conditions due to dehydration and overheating. Climate change will have countless other health impacts: Air pollution and wildfires may exacerbate respiratory illnesses, while cold areas experiencing increasingly rainy winters will see icy conditions that lead to falls and car accidents, said Teddie Potter, director of planetary health for the School of Nursing at the University of Minnesota. Climate change’s impacts extend to nutrient sources as well, Nicklas explained, noting that recent studies

show that crops lose nutrients when grown in environments with high levels of carbon dioxide. The impacts of climate change will affect each population and individual differently, Nicklas added. “Now, it is up to humans to do something and adapt to (these) changes,” he said. One of planetary health’s primary goals is conducting solution-oriented research that seeks to gain “information for adaptation” in order to reduce harmful health impacts from climate change, Fox-Kemper explained. But planetary health is not just limited to understanding the environment’s impacts on human health — it also explores the impacts of human health care on the environment, according to Potter. As health care systems aim to confront the impacts of climate change,

they will increasingly have to grapple with how their own actions exacerbate the problem: The U.S. health care industry contributes roughly 8.5% of domestic carbon dioxide emissions, she said. “If we’re really a do-no-harm sector, then we’ve got to live it,” Tohn said. “The health care sector has to work on its own emissions.” Clinicians who understand the relationship between health care and the environment must play a central role in maintaining a focus on climate change, she said. “Planetary health gives us a blueprint of how we need to begin transforming our systems,” Potter said. “We know that harming our environment is always going to harm the people who have the least assets. Any path forward has got to be a just solution.”

press release. Economics research requires far fewer physical materials than “researchers in other fields like physics or chemistry,” Hull said. Instead, his field requires funding to hire people. “The thing that I mostly need money for is people, so I hire a lot of students and full-time research assistants to help crunch numbers, process data and help me think about econometric arguments,” he said. “A lot of the award is probably going to go towards supporting those efforts, supporting graduate students (and) undergraduates for research experience.” Hull added that the fellowship an-

nouncement comes as the economics department goes through “a really exciting phase.” “There’s a lot of new, younger faculty … working on using advanced statistical methods to unpack hard social problems,” he said. “I’m really looking forward to carrying that momentum forward … and continuing to grow the department and develop courses in econometrics and other topics.” Emily Oster, professor of economics, said she looks forward to seeing Hull advance his work in “really important intersections between empirical methods and strong topics.”

“There’s been a movement in economics over the last number of years towards using more sophisticated techniques to learn causal effects in various kinds of data, and (Hull) is very much in that space,” she said. Oster added that Hull’s importance to the department also comes from the relationships he builds with scholars and students. “He’s an unusual combination of an incredibly prolific and important scholar whose work is very influential in academic spaces and also just someone who is a really good citizen who really cares about the department and students.” Li is also highly regarded as a

warm colleague as well as an esteemed researcher, said James Valles, professor of physics and a past Sloan Foundation fellowship recipient. The department is “really lucky to have (Li) here,” he said. “Part of why I think (he) can be so successful in his lab is because he exhibits such care about the people around him,” he said. “He truly nurtures students and is willing to be an authentic person in the space, and with that authenticity comes the joy he shows toward his research.” “Not only is his work catching people’s attention,” Valles added. “But it also just gives energy to the people (working with) him.”