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THE TUFTS DAILY
Beyond Boundaries is close to attaining $1.2 billion goal BY
TUFTSDAILY.COM
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 10, 2010
VOLUME LX, NUMBER 61
CORINNE SEGAL
Tufts Hillel says it will not co-sponsor events with SJP BY
MARTHA SHANAHAN
Daily Editorial Board
Daily Editorial Board
Tufts’ Beyond Boundaries capital campaign is 95 percent complete with its goal to raise $1.2 billion by next year, according to Director of Advancement Communications and Donor Relations Christine Sanni (LA ’89). Launched in November 2006, Beyond Boundaries has raised $1.14 billion to date, drawing over 360,000 gifts from 130,884 individuals, which constitutes about half of all alumni, Sanni said. The campaign has raised $586 million for the endowment, $371 million for faculty support and $415 million for studentrelated uses such as financial aid, prize funds and program funds, Sanni said. Some of the funds are double-counted toward different uses, she said. Sanni credited the Beyond Boundaries campaign with helping support 258 endowed scholarships and 354 term scholarships so far. The campaign, Director of Central Development Programs Chris Simoneau said, is part of an effort to attract the best possible students and faculty to the university. “That was the framework for launching the campaign — what would it take for Tufts to recruit, retain and attract the best students and the best faculty?” he said. Though the campaign is on track to hit its goal by next year, alumni giving has slowed in the past two years in light of the economic downturn, according to Simoneau. “They haven’t stopped giving, but perhaps they’ve given less,” he said. “That’s a trend that’s facing all organizations that rely on philanthropic support, and Tufts is no exception there.” The campaign emerged from an academic planning process between Provost and Senior Vice President Jamshed Bharucha and University President Lawrence Bacow shortly after Bacow’s arrival at Tufts in 2001, Sanni said. It began with a quiet phase in 2002 and officially launched in 2006. “They engaged all of the schools and all of the deans in looking at the schools and figuring out what the schools needed to do to grow,” Sanni said. Beyond Boundaries was not Tufts’ only fundraising entity to see donations slow. Tufts’ annual fund — distinct from Beyond
A national directive put forth by Tufts Hillel’s national parent organization discourages co-sponsorship of campus events between Hillel and the Tufts chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), according to Rabbi Jeffrey Summit, Tufts Hillel’s executive director. The policy came to discussion after senior Jack Irmas, president of the Tufts chapter of SJP, approached Hillel about co-sponsoring the Nov. 15 event featuring Diana Buttu, a former spokesperson and negotiator for the Palestine Liberation Organization, and Alice Rothchild, the chair of the Boston chapter of the nonprofit organization American Jews for a Just Peace. Rothschild and Buttu came to campus to discuss the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the future of the Middle East peace process. “In order to reach more people, in order to make the event more robust, we wanted to invite other student organizations on camp to co-sponsor the event with us,” Irmas said. According to Irmas, Summit informed him that Tufts Hillel could not sponsor
DAILY FILE PHOTO
The university’s Beyond Boundaries capital campaign is 95 percent complete. Boundaries but a contributor to the campaign — declined by 6.8 percent last year, the first decline in ten years, the Boston Business Journal reported on Tuesday. In a recent interview with the Daily, Bacow said giving has not suffered as much at Tufts as it has at other universities. He said philanthropic support for higher education across the country decreased by 11 percent last year. “It went down last year, [but] not as much as it went down at most institutions,” Bacow said, referring to giving at Tufts. Though the amount of overall donations has decreased, the number of total donors has increased, Sanni said. The annual fund has already raised more money this year than it had at this point last year, she said. Simoneau said that while the downturn affected donor mindsets, the stabilizing economic climate is ushering in greater donations. “We are turning a corner,” he said. “People are feeling a bit more stable than they have in the past, but their circumstances are definitely changed.” Sanni praised alumni involvement in the campaign. “We have a tremendously loyal alumni see BOUNDARIES, page 3
Where You Read It First Est. 1980
any event with SJP because of objections to the actions and issue positions of other SJP chapters across the country. It is a national Hillel policy that Hillel chapters do not co-sponsor events with any organization that advocates for boycotts, divestment and sanctions against Israel, Summit said. “The reason that it doesn’t make sense for Hillel to co-sponsor with SJP is that SJP chapters around the county have been the address for the movement to boycott, divest from and impose sanctions on Israel,” Summit said in an e-mail to the Daily. Tufts Hillel President Rachel Finn, a senior, agreed and said that her organization is dedicated to engaging in a comprehensive discussion about the Middle East. “Hillel has a problem with associating our name as a co-sponsor for an event with a group that seeks to delegitimize Israel,” she said in an e-mail to the Daily. “We … encourage and are deeply committed to dialogue … and working under the NIMEP [New Initiative for Middle East Peace] umbrella to bring to light multiple narratives and opinions.” see SJP, page 3
JUSTIN MCCALLUM/TUFTS DAILY
Tufts Hillel has declined to co-sponsor events with the Tufts chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine, above in a group meeting, citing its national organization’s policy.
Harvard students combine science and cuisine in the classroom BY JON
CHENG
Daily Editorial Board
The idea behind a chocolate chip cookie is not typically discussed in Harvard University science courses, nor are the delectable desserts usually baked using physics and chemical formulas. But some Harvard students have recently ditched their kitchens in favor of the classroom, baking their cookies by submerging them in a vat of liquid nitrogen. “[The liquid nitrogen] accelerates cooling and if you do it for the right amount of time, you’re able to take the heat off the outside,” Harvard teaching fellow Daniel Rosenberg told the Daily. “So when you cool it down, the outside is frozen and crisp while the inside
is still molten because the heat doesn’t have time to escape.” That is how cookies are made in Harvard’s new class, Science of the Physical Universe 27: Science and Cooking: From Haute Cuisine to Science of Soft Matter. Nearly 700 students signed up for just 300 spots in the course, which aims to teach students the scientific principles behind modern cuisine and uses the principles of molecular gastronomy to alter the chemical and physical structures of the ingredients. Substances such as xantham gums and techniques such as spherification, for example, are used to achieve different textures and bring out different flavors in foods, Rosenberg said. According to David Weitz, a professor of physics at Harvard’s
School of Engineering and Applied Sciences and Department of Physics, the class grew out of a visit two years ago by Ferran Adriá, whose restaurant, El Bulli, was named the world’s best restaurant by the S.Pellegrino World’s 50 Best Restaurant list for the past four years. “One of the [post-doctorates], Otger Campás, wanted to invite Adriá,” Weitz told the Daily. “I said that he’d never come, but he did. When he was here, he was like a rock star; afterwards, we asked what we can do, and he said that he wanted to teach a course, and from then on it started.” Adriá is not the only famous chef involved in the course. Some of the other visiting lecturers include Wyley Dufresne of New York’s
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wd~50, Grant Achatz of Alinea, Dan Barber of Blue Hill Farm, José Andrés of Jaleo and the White House’s pastry chef, Bill Yosses. Every Tuesday, students in the class attend a laboratory demonstration by one of the 12 chefs, and on the following Thursday, Weiz and Michael Brenner, Harvard professor of applied mathmatics and physics, take turns explaining the scientific principles involved: phase changes, calorie interactions, viscosity, Coulomb’s Law and gelatin and foam stabilizations, among others. Some of these concepts can be intimidating, but for the most part, they are usually straightforward, food blogger and Harvard Culinary Society President Lingbo Li, a senior, told the Daily.
“For the most part, the recipes are pretty standard,” Li said. “Although you’re in kind of a weird lab setting — you’re dealing with burners and portable stoves — you can still extricate the recipe pretty much like everything else.” “The teachers really emphasize the science part of it with equations,” Li added, “and you do some experimental stuff like measuring the elasticity, or you might see how the mass of a purified liquid changes based on how long you leave it in a solution.” Though the class is unusual in its course subject, Weitz stressed that it is as challenging as any other science course. see FOOD, page 3
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