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TUESDAY, APRIL 5, 2011
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THE JUSTICE
INAUGURAL SYMPOSIA Academic Wisdom FERNANDO ROSENBERG (ROMS) “A diversified ethnic background of our student body, as desirable as it is, doesn’t immediately translate into diversity of social classes, abilities, languages, cultures, ages [or] sexual orientations.” UNIVERSITY PRESIDENT FREDERICK LAWRENCE “What I really hoped to achieve through this was the opportunity to have a coming together ... to reflect on this necessarily general theme of a global liberal arts university.”
TALI SMOOKLER/the Justice
FACULTY FINDINGS: From left, Profs. Fernando Rosenberg (ROMS), Bernadette Brotten (NEJS) and Ulka Anjaria (ENG) discussed diversity at a global university.
Symposia discuss inaugural themes ■ The panels addressed
the roles of social justice, diversity and business in liberal arts universities. By ANDREW WINGENS and TYLER BELANGA JUSTICE STAFF WRITERs
Symposia featuring four discussion panels were held last Monday and Tuesday on various topics as part of University President Frederick Lawrence’s inauguration week. The goal of the symposia, according to Provost Marty Krauss, was to “identify issues facing liberal arts universities that have a global presence and to analyze how those issues are dealt with at Brandeis.” Day 1: Monday The first panel, titled “The Business of the University and the University as a Business: Issues of Work, Money, and Power and the Liberal Arts University,” included panelists Profs. Benjamin GomesCasseres (IBS) and Jane Kamensky (HIST), as well as Daniel Terris, vice president for Global Affairs. Profs. Gregory Petsko (BCHM), Robin Feuer Miller (GRALL) and Joseph Wardwell (FA) made up a second panel titled “Sciences, the Creative Instinct, and the Liberal Arts.” In addition to participating in the discussion, each panelist also wrote a short essay summarizing his or her opinions and thoughts on the topics that they discussed.
Essays were posted on the Brandeis website and are available for anyone to view. In his opening statement, Terris talked about his extensive experience with Lockheed Martin, the world’s largest defense contractor. Terris explained that at every location he visited around the country, the corporation had put into place an extensive series of conversations at every level and that all 150,000 of its employees were involved in the conversation of ethics, values and decisionmaking. It is interactions such as these that Terris believes would be useful in a university as well as a business setting. “The sense of engagement was really quite dramatic. … You had that sense of constant engagement in ‘what is it we are all about,’” said Terris, whose essay was titled “Putting Business to Work.” Kamensky praised Brandeis for the atmosphere that it creates for students and the significance of the close, personal interactions that occur between students and faculty members. “As the sector of higher education shakes out, the value of the face-to-face ... is something that needs to be articulated again and again,” said Kamensky. In the second panel, which focused on the importance of both the arts and humanities in addition to the sciences, Petsko emphasized the inseparability of the schools and the importance of including both schools in one’s knowledge base.
Day 2: Tuesday Social justice is defined as helping the “underdog” or the “oppressed,” explained Michael Sandel ’75, the Anne T. and Robert M. Bass professor of government at Harvard University and member of the Board of Trustees, as the moderator of Tuesday’s symposium. The first panel, titled “Diverse Communities and Liberal Arts,” consisted of Profs. Ulka Anjaria (ENG), Bernadette Brooten (NEJS) and Fernando Rosenberg (ROMS). The second panel, called “Human Values, Global Challenges and the Liberal Arts,” was comprised of Profs. David Cunningham (SOC), Theodore Johnson (Heller) and Kathleen Moran (PHIL). Sandel moderated both panels. Anjaria noted a dual threat to liberal arts institutions in today’s economy. Liberal arts academies are threatened “from outside the academy, where we are constantly being asked to justify ourselves—how practical are we, how much are we going to ensure our students economic success in a climate of uncertainty,” said Anjaria. Additionally, Anjaria said that liberal arts institutions are squeezed “from inside the academy as we use financial language to justify professionalizing ourselves, making ourselves more marketable.” Brooten said that the University should reutilize existing resources to better teach languages to prepare students for “global leadership.” This includes the use of language
tables, guest lecturers in foreign languages, open office hours with faculty in foreign languages, use of multiple languages in research papers, support of language faculty and a central-language website. Rosenberg addressed the role that diversity should play at Brandeis. “It is by making sure that our community of students, faculty, administrators and trustees is increasingly more diverse in every possible way that we can envision a future in which Brandeis will continue to thrive and be an exciting place that contributes something unique to the world,” said Rosenberg. However, Rosenberg said that diversity is not based solely on ethnic backgrounds and that it includes socioeconomic, linguistic and cultural diversities. The second panel focused on the role of social justice at a global liberal arts university. Moran said that as humans, we must “think of the conditions other people live in and understand the options and choices people have and are faced with.” Johnson suggested that a process of “deliberative dialogue” could lead to the “discovery of social justice” and the “elusive concept of coexistence.” One of the final speakers, Cunningham, noted the connection between scholarship, social and political activism and the debate about the “appropriateness of the connection between scholarship and activism, scholarship and politics, [and] facts and values.”
DANIEL TERRIS (ETHICS) “We can learn something from certain forms of corporate enterprise about what it is to be corporate, what it is to be a body engaged in work… a sense of constant conversation… is something we can learn from business while trying to go about pursuing the values that we have.”
BERNADETTE BROOTEN (NEJS) “If you want to meet people on their own terms, you have to cross the language barrier. They will say different things to you. They will communicate different things to you in different ways. … Diversity is not about being comfortable.”
GREGORY PETSKO (BCHM) “The humanities without the objectivity of observation and evidence can easily turn into tyrannical dogma. The sciences without the leavening effect of the humanities can lead to the tyranny of the machine. The best of the arts and the humanities sets the mind free; so does the best of the sciences.”
Graduate students explain research project presentations ■ Graduate students, some
of whom received University awards, presented their research in poster form. By SARA DEJENE JUSTICE EDITOR
University graduate students presented their research at the fourthannual Graduate Student Poster Research Symposium held over the course of last week leading up to the inauguration of University President Frederick Lawrence. At the symposium, students presented what they had been researching throughout their time at the University. The symposium featured 12 posters that were displayed in the Art Gallery in the Shapiro Campus Center from master’s and doctorate students throughout the week. In
addition, two receptions were held with the presenters to discuss their research. The posters, some of which were professionally printed through scholarships made possible by workshops provided by Assistant Provost for Graduate Student Affairs Alwina Bennett, displayed information gathered and research conducted by the students and their findings. Graduate student Senator Zachary Matusheski, who coordinated the symposium, said in an interview with the Justice that a panel of faculty from the Heller School of Social Policy and Management and the International Business School narrowed down the submissions to 12 presenters. According to Bennett in an interview with the Justice, submissions were chosen based on the overall strength of the presentation. Four research presentations were given awards based on votes that
were cast by graduate student senators, faculty and staff who viewed the posters, according to Bennett. Both Bennett and Matusheski said that about 100 people attended the event during the 2 days when the receptions were held. Matusheski said that the symposium would complement the two faculty symposiums that were also held as a part of the inauguration week. Bennett, who sat on the Inauguration Planning Committee, worked with the committee to hold the symposium as a part of inauguration week. According to Bennett, Sara Wooten (GRAD) and Xiaolin Li (GRAD) received provost awards which, according to the inaugural website, were given for “overall excellence.” In addition, Yue Pan (GRAD) and Kristen Sutherland (GRAD) were given Graduate Student Association prizes. Wooten wrote in an e-mail to the Justice that her poster displayed her
findings of a study she conducted among college and university LGBTQ students in the Boston area and their experiences of sexual violence. “I am trying to bridge the gap between what we know about campus rape culture and what we know about LGBTQ experiences of harassment and marginalization on their campuses,” wrote Wooten. According to Wooten, 40.9 percent of participants experienced some form of unwanted sexual harassment during college. One in five participants said that they were sexually assaulted and one in 14 said they were raped. “My colleagues who participated in the symposium as well are engaged in incredibly exciting and important research, so I really felt in the presence of greatness throughout the event,” wrote Wooten. “This project is something that I am truly passionate about, so to receive this sort of
recognition is incredibly encouraging.” In an interview with the Justice, Pan said the symposium “was a great chance for the graduate students in different areas to exchange their ideas and to show my work to [people] who are not majoring in science.” Pan wrote in an e-mail to the Justice that his poster displayed his research on the use of novel nanomaterials for multifunctional anticancer therapy, a way to kill cancer cells and tumors as a type of cancer treatment. Another presenter, Monica Curca (GRAD), explained in an interview with the Justice that she researched the use of social marketing to promote social action in order to encourage peacebuilding and conflict resolution. “It was great that they could show research that was more qualitative research as well as quantitative research,” said Curca.