Endquotes
“INSENSITIVE INTELLECTUALS: Do your friends love you? Do they admire your perceptions and wit and respect your judgments? Change all that! Write criticism for the Review. Contact Jon Wilkman at Thompson House or Lord.” Notice published in the January 10, 1964 Oberlin Review
“We are closer to the potential use of a nuclear weapon than we’ve been since the Cold War. Part of that is because the relations between the nuclear powers, between us and Russia, us and China, are declining and the risk of conflict is growing. At the same time, there’s an unprecedented complacency about this. People just aren’t focused, including leaders, sufficiently on the risks of these weapons and the risk of miscalculation.” Lynn Rusten ’80, vice president of the Nuclear Threat Initiative and leader of the Global Nuclear Policy Program, on the radio program Intelligence Matters
“The desire for change burns very bright inside me. To do this work, you have to be a true believer. Otherwise, why would you do it? There are a million easier ways to run a museum.” Baltimore Museum of Art director Chris Bedford ‘00, on controversial plans to sell three works to fund programs to make the museum more diverse, in the November 20, 2020 Baltimore Sun
“I am reminded how, throughout my career, I’ve often felt that my playing had the most meaning, and the demands on my artistic imagination, emotional reserves, and technical ability were greatest, when I performed for audiences in special need of care and healing—at senior centers, memorial services, prisons, rehab facilities, and the like.” Violinist Diane Monroe ’75, on the website of Philadelphia public radio station WRTI, February 15, 2021
“There is nothing quite like telling all of your professors when you were 18 that you’d be a news reporter, and then they turn on the TV and witness you living your dreams.” Now-former WEWS Channel 5 reporter and fill-in anchor Amanda VanAllen ‘09 about what she will miss when she leaves the Cleveland news station for a job in Philadelphia
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“[I]n focusing so acutely on scholarly production—i.e., peer-reviewed publications— as a scholarly society and academic discipline, we overlook other sites where meaningful ethnomusicological work takes place. Put simply, teaching IS my work, the thing over which I labor the most. And, more importantly, I consider teaching, especially with a critical, antiracist approach, a moral imperative.” Jennifer Fraser, associate professor of ethnomusicology and anthropology at Oberlin, during a panel on “Ethnomusicology as a Liberal Art,” October 2020
“These 10 months reminded me that science, like race, gender, geography, and class, is ‘happening’ in the stories we tell. What do we want that to mean? How can we justly and deftly accept, explore, exploit the science in our stories?” Writer Kiese Makeba Laymon ’98 on Twitter, February 3, 2021