the
Justice www.thejustice.org
The Independent Student Newspaper Volume LXXI, Number 7
of
B r a n d e is U n i v e r sit y S i n c e 1 9 4 9
Tuesday, October 23, 2018
Waltham, Mass.
‘OPEN MINDS AND OPEN DEBATE’
COMMUNITY
Librarians call for ‘fair contract’ ■ Members of the Brandeis Librarians’ Union made their case for improved terms during Family Weekend. By JEN GELLER JUSTICE EDITOR
The Brandeis Librarians’ Union expressed frustration over their contract negotiations with the University in a campaign during Family Weekend. The BLU, which is connected to the Service Employees International Union Local 888, have been negotiating with the University administration since June 2018 to collectively bargain for fair contracts for Brandeis librarians, according to a flyer handed out by members of the Union. (University Librarian Matthew Sheehy, a representative for the University in the negotiations, clarified in an email to the Justice that Internet and Technology Services is not a part of this
THU LE/the Justice
‘AGE OF OUTRAGE’: In Wednesday's discussion, Cornel West and Robert George held up their close friendship as an example of how to disagree with someone while respecting their beliefs.
Cornel West, Robert George discuss value of liberal arts ■ The scholars also talked
about how to disagree while respecting “common humanity.” By SAM STOCKBRIDGE JUSTICE EDITOR
Cornel West and Robert George met in the Sherman Function Hall on Wednesday evening to discuss the importance of a liberal arts education in modern political discourse. University President Ron Liebowitz described both men as “public intellectuals.” West is a self-described “radical democrat,” while George is known for his conservative attitudes toward abortion and LGBTQ rights. West is the professor of the Practice of Public Philosophy at Harvard Divinity School and has written 20 books, according to his personal website. Robert P. George is a McCormick professor of Jurisprudence and has written four books, according to his Princeton University bio. The event, titled “Liberal Learning: Open Minds and Open Debate,” was primarily sponsored by the American Studies program, with additional support from seven other campus groups, including the Schuster Center for Investigative Journalism and the International Center for Ethics, Justice and Public Life. American Studies Chair Maura Farrelly introduced the event, highlighting the generous contributions of Sam Weissman ’73 and Kent Lawrence ’66 that made the event possible.
The two scholars were united in their assessment of the value of a liberal arts education, but each described its importance in different ways. Both agreed, though, that a rigorous liberal arts education is liberating, whether from economic uncertainty for George or from fraught questions about race and justice in the United States for West. George described his philosophical and personal reasons for valuing the liberal arts, while West focused on the social and political importance of a liberal arts education. George described how his upbringing in a poor home in rural West Virginia made him value education. Both of his grandfathers were coal miners, and “education promised socioeconomic advancement” to his family. George’s first encounter with the liberal arts occurred at Swarthmore College, where he took a “kind of Plato-to-NATO” course in political theory. There, he grappled with classical philosophers’ ideas and began to question his everyday assumptions. “[Plato] forced me to think about why I believed what I believed,” he said. George said that in recent years, colleges and universities have lost sight of the true value of skepticism. The widespread failure to recognize this value, he said, is evidence that “we are losing our sense of the real value of liberal arts education.” Currently, people defend the liberal arts by arguing that it teaches students valuable critical thinking skills they can’t develop anywhere else. While George agrees with this view, for
negotiation.) On Oct. 12, Digital Literacy Specialist Ester Brandon ’12, MAT ’14 and Outreach & Special Projects Archivist Surella Seelig MA ’05 distributed flyers outside Gosman Sports and Convocation Center. User Experience Librarian Jen Giordano later joined Brandon and Seelig. Currently, the librarians are working with the SEUI Local 888, according to an op-ed written by the Brandeis Labor Coalition in the Justice. They are working to get a “fair contract” with the University, according to Brandon. She also said that the “library’s union has proposed a pathway toward a fair contract, and Brandeis hasn’t met us halfway.” Surella explained that the librarians’ contract is renewed “every several years.” She said that the last contract negotiation was supposed to come to an end in June or July, but that the librarians “extended” negotiations. To resolve the impasse, the Librarians’ Union mounted a
See UNION, 7 ☛
CAMPUS SPEAKER
IDF veteran recounts violence in West Bank
him, the real value of a liberal arts education is its capacity to cultivate a lifelong desire to pursue the truth. Both George and West agreed that a true liberal arts education should expose students to ideas and perspectives they may find offensive. “The whole point of our being here with you is to unsettle you,” George said. George added that a liberal arts education instills students with “intellectual humility” by serving as a constant reminder of their own fallibility. When we become convinced that our beliefs are correct, he said, we tend to wrap our convictions up in our emotions, and that attachment breeds closed-mindedness and dogmatism. Having a sense of “intellectual humility” forces us to constantly question our beliefs, and it keeps us from getting too complacent with what we know and how we know it. Cornel West quoted Herbert Marcuse, a philosopher and political theorist who taught at Brandeis from 1958 to 1965, on his view of free speech: “Talk about truth all you want, a condition of truth is to allow suffering to speak.” West explained passionately that he believes a good liberal arts education is intimately tied to the ideals of democracy and the free, unrepressed exchange of ideas. “Most of our history has been a history of hatred, of contempt, of domination, of exploitation,” he said. “Democracies are simply these disruptions trying to create spaces in which maybe you can arrest the hatred, arrest the contempt, arrest the domination, arrest the exploitation.”
■ Merphie Bubis described
the conflicts he witnessed during his time in the Israeli civil administration. By GILDA GEIST JUSTICE STAFF WRITER
Brandeis’s chapter of J Street U hosted Breaking the Silence, an organization of Israeli Defense Forces veterans sharing their stories about serving in the West Bank, in a lecture on Monday. Merphie Bubis, an IDF veteran who served in the West Bank from January 2013 to March 2015, was the headlining speaker of the event. Breaking the Silence formed after the Second Intifada in an effort to raise awareness about violence going on in the West Bank, especially abuse against Palestinians. The Second Intifada arose in 2000 from the breakdown of peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization. By the time the Second Intifada ended in 2005, 3,200 Palestinians and 1,000 Israelis had been killed, according to a May 12, 2018, Vox article. According to Bubis, Breaking the Silence strives to share testimonies of Israeli veterans, “even if they’re ugly, even if they’re things we don’t want to face ourselves.”
See DEBATE, 7 ☛
Bubis pointed out, “As Israelis, I think we have a moral duty to speak out against these things that we took part in, and to show that there are Israelis who do believe that we can do without the occupation, and we must.” Bubis served in the Israeli civil administration in the West Bank. The civil administration, or, as Bubis put it, “the government that the Palestinians did not choose,” is the bureaucracy that deals with security, infrastructure, water, electricity, movement permits for Palestinians and other aspects of everyday life in the West Bank. According to Bubis, many soldiers enter the Israeli Defence Force expecting to defend Israeli settlers. “Oftentimes soldiers find themselves in situations where the contrary is happening, where they’re actually trying to defend Palestinians from violence coming from Israeli civilians,” she said. Bubis described her repeated experience involving “price tag attacks,” or terrorist attacks that Israeli settlers commit against Palestinians and IDF soldiers. According to the “Historical Dictionary of the Arab-Israeli Conflict” by P. R. Kumaraswamy, “these attacks are ‘the price’ extracted from the Palestinians and the IDF for working against the development
Get Some Green
New Show
Students take part in health survey
Randy Skolnick has been selling plants at Brandeis for 12 years.
‘Dream a Little Dream’ debuts at Deis.
By JOCELYN GOULD
By MENDEL WEINTRAUB
NEWS 5
Enter the wonderful world of Neil Breen By KENT DINLENC
By LEIGH SALOMON
See ISRAEL, 7 ☛
FORUM 11
Women's soccer defeats Westfield State NATALIA WIATER/the Justice
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ARTS 18
By MEGAN GELLER
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SPORTS 16