Message from Dean Greene
Issue 11: 4 April 2014
Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid
Chief Editor: Indrani Kaliyaperumal Co-Editors: Joyan Tan and Spandana I can’t believe it’s almost here. After thousands of miles of travel, presentations at high schools, applications, interviews, admissions committee and decisions, my favorite time of year is here: Bhattacharya
Experience Yale-NUS Weekend (EYW)!
After reading applications, interviewing students and discussing them in committee, EYW gives us the chance to interact with our admitted students in person. For some students, this is the first time meeting face-to-face; for others, it’s a chance to meet more informally after our in-person interview. And, as great as our admitted students are on paper and in the interview, when I meet them in person, I am simply in awe. The way they think, connect ideas and show passion & enthusiasm comes alive when you talk to them. (Don’t worry, I felt the same about the inaugural class!) The other highlight of EYW is seeing the excitement on the faces of the students when they come to realize what Yale-NUS is about. It’s one thing to read about it; it’s another thing to experience it. I’ve already heard comments such as, “I think this college was specifically made for me” and “I can’t believe how much access you have to faculty and that you get to hang out with them”. I can’t wait until they hear more about the curriculum, student life and the unique experiences offered through CIPE. It reminds me of how unique Yale-NUS College really is and how lucky I am to be part of this college. I could give you all kinds of statistics and anecdotes about our admitted students but I’d rather let you meet them for yourselves and see what a great class they will make. See you during EYW!
|YALE-NUS STUDENTS TALK ABOUT EYW “I’m sure you will all have great university choices but remember that coming to Yale-NUS will be a once in a life time opportunity no other university can offer - to build a college from scratch. Also, where else can you be recognised by your first name? It’s incredible.” - Erika
All photo credits to Yale-NUS Admissions
“I remember the legendary 2-5am conversation at EYW May 2012 for Round 0 admits. Ten of us in a circle were talking about anything from our most embarrassing moment to the beauty of a liberal arts college like this, to important jobs skills that the Singapore education system fails to recognise in people, and how we can try to change that.” - Karen
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“Release yourself from your inhibitions and mingle! You will honestly never find a more encouraging and enabling culture elsewhere than at Yale-NUS, so take advantage of it and just have random and spontaneous fun (but do take care of your health as well).” - Wee Yang
“I’m excited about making new friends from around the world, and letting them experience firsthand what makes Yale-NUS and Singapore really special. I will “WELCOME TO be bringing a group of students SINGAPORE and in the wise around Tiong Bahru and/or Arab words of Rihanna, ‘I want you Street and both happen to be two to stay’!” - Reuben of my favourite places in Singapore so I am really really excited! - Diamanta “Welcome to Yale-NUS! Picking “Think long and hard about what a college is like finding Cinderella your expectations for college are; with a glass slipper - it’s all about this place will surpass them. Then fit! I hope you find time during it’s no longer a matter of thinking, the weekend to take a step back but throwing yourself into the and see if you can imagine yourenergy and enthusiasm Yale-NUS self living and learning here for has to offer. And don’t look back. 4 years. Whether you ultimately This institution keeps the whole love us or leave us (or both!), we world at your feet!” - Raeden wish you all the very best! You are always welcome here.” - Carmen
INTERVIEW WITH PROFESSOR JAY GARFIELD
Professor Garfield obtained his AB at Oberlin College in 1975, MA at University of Pittsburgh in 1976, and PhD at University of Pittsburgh in 1986. Professor Garfield previously taught at Hampshire College, University of Tasmania, Smith College, University of Massachusetts, University of Melbourne, and Central University of Tibetan Studies in India. He currently holds the Chair of Kwan Im Thong Hood Cho Temple Professor of Humanities.
Hampshire College, where you previously taught, sounds rather similar to Yale-NUS. What made you come to Yale-NUS; and have the experiences of teaching in a new, experiential, and interdisciplinary liberal arts college been similar? My first teaching job was at Hampshire College; when I arrived, the College had already been running for 10 years. While it was still new by college standards, the excitement of the first years had passed and those of us who came in a few years later always felt like we had missed out on the real fun. So I thought it would be cool to help start a new college like Yale-NUS. I like to start things. I have built departments, exchange programs, and interdisciplinary programs, and I always enjoy that. One respect in which Yale-NUS and Hampshire College is similar, is that both colleges do not have academic departments, but three open interdisciplinary schools instead. This form of organization is one with which I am very familiar, and when I later taught in departmental structures at the University of Tasmania and Smith College, I really missed the interdisciplinary environment I had in Hampshire. When I first began my teaching career, I co-taught with linguists, computer scientists, psychologists, other philosophers, art historians, physicist, legal studies scholars, and historians; my approach to teaching has always been very interdisciplinary and the opportunity to be back in that milieu and to be teaching with people from different fields is very attractive to me. What responsibilities do you hold as the Kwan Im Thong Hood Cho Temple Professor of Humanities? There aren’t special formal obligations in virtue of holding the Chair. I am grateful to the Temple for endowing it and they can count on me agreeing to anything they may ask me to do. I also advise the NUS Buddhist Students’ Union, which I see as part of my service to the Chair. The way I see it, the Chair places some responsibility on me to exercise a bit of senior leadership on campus, to be available to younger faculty members and to help my colleagues out a little more than would be expected otherwise. But I have never worked a day in my life. I love to teach, I love to do research, I love to hang out with my students and colleagues and so I do as much of these as I can in any case! What research are you working on currently? I tend to work on a lot of things simultaneously, so it sometimes sounds a bit over the top! I am just finishing a big book that I have been writing for a couple of years; that’s going to press within weeks, it’s called Engaging Buddhism: Why it Matters to Philosophy. I have Yale-NUS student assistants working with me on that, which is fun. I also have a couple of anthologies in press, one specifically on the History of Indian Buddhist Philosophy, and the other one on connections between Buddhist philosophy and contemporary logic and analytical Philosophy. I am working on a book with a colleague at Smith College on the history of Indian Philosophy in English during the British occupation and the intellectual history of the Indian renaissance more generally. I am working on a book project with a big group of scholars called The Cowherds; we previously published one book together called Moonshadows: Conventional Truth in Buddhist Philosophy, and we are working on a second book called Moonpaths: Ethics in the Context of Conventional Truth. Then I am working on a very big project with a large international team: it’s a translation of an early Indian Buddhist text and all of its Tibetan and Chinese commentaries with critical editions and discussions. Those are the main projects that I am working on right now; there are other little projects on the side, but these are the main ones that keep me up at night! What got you interested in Buddhist philosophy? That’s a funny story; I was dragged into it by students when I was in Hampshire College. I finished my PhD at a very typical graduate program in the United States; as is typical of a lot of programs, it was entirely Western Philosophy. I finished my PhD not knowing that there was such a thing as non-western philosophy. So on my very first day on campus in Hampshire, I was literally unpacking my books and arranging my new office when this tall kid strolls in – long hair, long beard, bare feet, beads, and bangles. He says, “Hi, my name is, like, David and stuff, and I want you to, like, chair my senior thesis committee on like, the connection between medieval Tibet epistemology and the social contract tradition.” I just burst out laughing; I thought someone had paid him $10 to give me a welcome to Hampshire joke. He was really upset because he had been really working on this research and this brand new Assistant Professor is laughing at his face. He said, “hey, man, (another professor) Rob Thurman, up the road at Amherst, will do the Tibetan stuff with me. I just want you to keep me honest on Locke and Rousseau. You can read Locke and Rousseau can’t you?” So I agreed. This meant that I also had to read all the stuff that he was reading, but in the English translations. It was really interesting and kind of cool, but not something I was going to pick up because I had a career to get started on foundations of cognitive science and logic, which was the area in which I was trained in and in which I still work. I supervised this thesis, and then forgot about it. Seven years later, there was a big battle at Hampshire College, and to my undying shame I was on the losing side, but I am glad my side lost because I was wrong on this one. It was a battle over a new curricular requirement called the Third World Expectation, which was a very strong multicultural requirement: all students, regardless of discipline, had to study how it was being pursued in some non-western tradition. I protested along with other colleagues on the grounds of academic freedom, but we lost. And it turns out you can’t require students to study something you don’t teach. So, all of us on the faculty were told that we had to retool and learn some non-Western tradition in order to teach it. I panicked and thought that I didn’t know any non-western philosophy, and then I realized, “aha! Medieval Tibetan Epistemology! I could learn enough of that to satisfy my obligation.” So I applied for a grant and added a week of Tibetan epistemology to my epistemology course. The students really liked it, and the next year I applied for an even bigger grant to do a comparative epistemology course, which was even more fun, and students were liking it even more! I then applied for a grant to go to India to study at the Central Institute of Higher Tibetan Studies. I got the grant, packed up my wife and our two young kids, went to India for a year, and never looked back. So that’s how I got interested in Buddhist Studies, and I like to say that I got dragged in to it kicking and screaming by my students. 2
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STUDENT GROUPS!
Is there any advice you can give to any student who is considering pursing a major in Philosophy? Do philosophy if you really love it. If you don’t love it, there is no other reason to do it. It’s a lousy get-rich-quick scheme; it’s a lot of work; it’s a lousy way to pick up members of the opposite or same sex in bars. It’s something you do because you love it. So if you love philosophy, go for it. It’s a lot of fun, it makes your life richer, and you develop intellectually throughout your life. There are a lot of worse things you can do with your life than enjoy a life of pure intellectual pleasure. The other great thing about philosophy is that it is the quintessential interdiscipline. If you do philosophy, you have to do it with something else in order to do it well. If you are doing political philosophy, you also need to study politics; if you are doing philosophy of science, you also need to study science. Philosophy is always done best when you do it in collaboration with people in other disciplines. So one piece of advice to a student is “always study something else. If you are doing philosophy, do something else as well.” Another big piece of advice, which we have built into the curriculum here at Yale-NUS, is to study philosophy from as many intellectual traditions as you can. Philosophy is something that is done all over the world, and it is very narrow to just study Chinese Philosophy, European Philosophy, Indian Philosophy or African Philosophy. Study philosophy broadly, pay attention to lots of traditions, learn as many languages as you can, especially languages in which people do philosophy. If you can read lots of literature, it really enriches your abilities as a philosopher. And if you stop loving it, find something else to do.
STUDENT GROUP ACHIEVEMENTS
The Fifth Wall is YaleNUS’ first organization dedicated to all things drama! Our vision is to create communitas through performing stories. We are open to any member of Yale-NUS, regardless of prior experience with theatre. Right now, we’re busy rehearsing for our very first show, which will be performed in mid-April. Do look out for our publicity in the next couple of weeks! Next semester, we hope to conduct theatre workshops for our classmates and also bring in external artists to work with. We’re excited for an amazing year ahead! (: For more information, contact Kinnari at kinnari.sahita@yale-nus.edu.sg
YALE-NUS International Relations and Political Association (YIRPA)
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ale-NUS’s own International Relations and Political Association (YIRPA) recently sent a group of its members to the prestigious Asian-International Model United Nations in Beijing, China, organized by Peking University. The conference had over a hundred universities participating in it, including overseas universities from Korea and Pakistan. YIRPA sent a total of 11 members, participating in 8 different councils in total.
In the Security Council, Elizabeth Chan and Walter Yeo (representing China) engaged with the issue of reform in the United Nations Security Council system. There was a lot of controversy in the council with the bloc of USA refusing to relent to China’s bloc, as well as intellectual property accusations as both parties claimed certain ideas to be their own. Despite high tension between the various delegates at first, a draft resolu3
tion was successfully passed in the end. For their efforts in furthering discussion and reaching compromise, Elizabeth and Walter won the best delegation award, along with the best position paper award. Chia Teck Yuke, in turn, was China’s ambassador in the ambassador program, and was pivotal in maintaining a consistent foreign policy within the delegates of China. This was an entirely new and experimental pro-
gram which sought to mimic the functions of ambassadors in real life. Teck Yuke said, “It was certainly a very different MUN experience. For one, I had to be well-versed on all the topics my peers were debating, and had to roam between councils to make sure they stuck to China’s foreign policy. The most challenging aspect of my role came in the third day, after our delegates in the Security Council accused other countries of
plagiarizing from their draft directive. Other ambassadors lambasted the Chinese delegation, but I stood firm by my delegates and negotiated with other ambassadors for their cooperation.” At the end of the conference, Teck Yuke was awarded the Best Ambassador award for his cooperative but consistent stance as China’s ambassador.
Overall, our classmates did extremely well, bagging a total of 11 awards despite tough competition. They were also awarded with the best country delegation title for their great performance in every council they participated in. YIRPA would also like to thank their partner, Singapore Airlines, for the great service and smooth journey that they provided to the delegates. More information about the delegates can be found on the PANOPT website. Photo Credits to Melody
The Soul of Hindustani Classical Music
of rationally, but Indian music can’t be exEvan Ma plained — it can only be felt by the heart. The vocalist must sing through these scales ne hour later, and I try to stand up. I multiple times to grasp their true essence becan’t. My feet have that stinging feel- fore presenting them to the audience. I was a ing when you sit down too long and your little skeptical at first, but it takes experience legs start to get numb. Instead, all I can do in order to know the feeling of grasping the is slump against the cabinet while I laugh at essence of a music scale. my inability to stand. The old maestro simply smiles at me as he tries to help me regain the feeling in my feet. It’s been a long lesson.
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On the 26th of March, I had a fascinating lesson with two fantastic Hindustani musicians. Their names are Devashish Dey and Santosh Mishra. Devashish is a vocal trainer who taught me the solfège system and scales (known as thaats) for both Hindustani and Carnatic music (the North Indian and South Indian systems respectively). I won’t go into the details of the scales, but this lesson was one of nuance and a test of my listening ability. I had to sing through all the different scales (ascending and descending), because each scale had a certain feeling associated with it. This is where Western and Indian music differ. Western music can be thought
number and type of strings. The sarangi has 5-6 strings on the right set and 6-7 strings on the left, with 35-37 sympathetic strings to enhance the timbre of the instrument. In contrast, the violin only has 4 strings. The difference is that the sarangi becomes so much more resonant. With each bow of the instrument, each note is so full in tone and envelopes you in a lush rich soundscape. I was really excited after playing the first note, and never got tired of playing through the Kafi scale. Having never played a bowed instrument, I initially struggled getting the pitching right, but soon noticed that there were small white mounds on the bridge that I could use as reference points for the pitch as Santosh guided me through the scale. I never got tired because the sound was so beautiful I could listen to it all day. I fully understood why the sarangi was so close to the human After which, I had a lesson with the sarangi voice — it has so much emotional nuance to maestro Santosh Mishra, who is an 8th gen- move the heart to bits. eration sarangi master from the ancient city of Varanasi, Pandit. The sarangi is a version Photo Credits to Evan of the Western violin, sharing many similarities including the bow, both of which are made from horse hairs. They differ in the
JUST A BAD DAY BY WANG CHENXI
Remove my watch, bracelet, necklace and spectacles, Pull my hair, pretending that someone else does it. Close my eyes and wait for others to fake scars on my face and elbow I am not Chenxi, I am a helpless mother with my one-year-old crying in my husband’s arms. The same arms that landed on my body hours ago. The same arms are now banging on my neighbor’s door, begging for forgiveness. I look at my neighbors. What can they do? They are defenseless women like myself. I stand, thank them for the temporary refuge, and say: He does love me; everything will be okay. I walk out. My child and my husband are just outside the door. Stupid woman! Why wouldn’t you call the police? Stupid woman! Why did you marry him in the first place? Stupid woman! Why did you gain so much weight after giving birth? Could I turn back the clock? You, among the audience, made the same wish.
Yes, we can. In the magic realm of Forum Theatre, Whereby any audience can intervene the scenes and change the ending, Who sadly realizes that in life, real struggles are called struggles for a reason. A play is a play. You say to yourself, before you walk out of the theatre to embrace your true life. I do the same. Just that when I wash my make-up at night and see the red water dripping down, I ask one more question, or two, What if it is real? And how about the ones that water can’t wash away? A big thank you to 19 Yale-NUS students and faculty for their support. Thanks to Rector Mc Adoo for his approval of school subsidies. Special thanks to Professor Ng, Professor Asplund and his wife. Photo Credits to NUS Chinese Drama Society
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