Spring 2017 Issue 6

Tufts Observer

VOLUME CXXXIV, ISSUE 6

April 24, 2017

Adjunct Faculty Negotiate Contracts

A History of Ethnic Studies at Tufts

Memory and Living Beyond Loss

Page 3

Page 17

Page 20

Beginnings & Endings

Tufts Observer The Tufts Observer has been Tufts’ student publication of record since 1895. Our dedication to indepth reporting, journalistic innovation, and honest dialogue has remained intact for over a century.

Today, we offer insightful news analysis, cogent and diverse opinion pieces, creative writing, and lively reviews of current arts, entertainment, and culture. Through poignant writing and artistic elegance, we aim to entertain, inform, and above all challenge the Tufts community to effect positive change.

@tuftsobserver www.tuftsobserver.org

April 24, 2017 Volume CXXXIV, Issue 6 Tufts Observer, Since 1895 Tufts’ Student Magazine

The Beginnings & Endings Issue This week, we’re thinking about moments of transition, in the form of beginnings and endings. As some things come to close, others are just starting. At the end of another school year, what endings are you thinking about? What’s beginning?

Staff

Feature Ben Kesslen

Editor in Chief

News Alexandra Benjamin Misha Linnehan

Managing Editor

Opinion Liza Leonard Jamie Moore

Creative Director

Arts & Culture Susan Kaufman Will Norris

Art Directors

Campus Dana Guth Emma Pinsky

Claire Selvin

Sahar Roodehchi Chase Conley

Rachel Cunningham Annie Roome

Multimedia Director Greta Jochem

Voices Julia Doyle Poetry & Prose Carissa Fleury

Photo Director Lily Herzan

Web Julia Press MT Snyder

Lead Copy Editor

Columns Henry Jani

Lead Artists

Photo Kyle Scott Conrad Young

Eve Feldberg

Jake Rochford Ben Rutberg

Contributors Rosy Fitzgerald

Design Abigail Barton Matt Beckshaw Benson Cheng Josh Goodman Kira Lauring Lily Pisano Hannah Vigran Interactive Deanna Baris Cathy Cowell Hannah Freedman Sibonay Koo Kayden Mimmack Justin Sullivan Video Anastasia Antonova Evie Bellew Aaron Watts Publicity Alyssa Bourne-Peters Yumi Casagrande Michael Dunkelman Alexis Walker Editor Emeritus Carly Olson

Staff Writers Yaa Kankam-Nantwi Lena Novins-Montague Katie Saviano Grace Segers Alexis Tatore Wilson Wong Copy Editors Nicole Cohen Owen Cheung Nasrin Lin Christopher Paulino Alexandra Strong Fact Checkers Erin Berja Sivi Satchithanadan Columnists Chris Dowd Kate Hirsch Sasha Hulkower Georgia Oldham

Contents

8

Opinion

13

Inset

What Happens Now? Start & Finish Ben Rutberg

2

17 Major Problems Wilson Wong VOICES

20 Piecing Together Passing

In Negotiation Carissa Fleury & Eve Feldberg

Henry Jani

NEWS

The Woman with the Plan Grace Segers

ARTS & CULTURE

10 The Near Dystopia Lena Novins-Montague PROSE

12 All My Last Things

Emma Pinsky

CAMPUS

Letter From the Editors

FEATURE

6

Prose

Category Confusion

Kyle Scott & Conrad Young

Chase Conley, Sahar Roodehchi & Claire Selvin

3

28

OPINION

22 Imagining Otherwise Rosy Fitzgerald ARTS & CULTURE

24 Keeping Up & Speaking Up Sasha Hulkower NEWS

26 Responses to Syria Alexandra Benjamin & Misha Linnehan

Nicole Cohen COVER BY KYLE SCOTT

Letter From The Editors This last issue is “Beginnings and Endings,” and it feels appropriate.

This is the final production cycle for 20 senior staff members, an ending, as we move forward to what comes next, a beginning. As we look back at the past four years, we’ve watched the Observer grow into a stronger platform, ever more committed to informing this student body and pushing this campus to change for the better.

The has been a community for us on staff, and—our hope is— for you as well. We have brought together many different voices, both in the MAB Lab and on paper. We’ve engaged in hard conversations and decisions within our organization, much like those we’ve seen on our campus. Being on the Tufts campus is a special opportunity to learn from one another. Our discussions enable us to consider new perspectives and to think more deeply.

2

Tufts Observer

April 24, 2017

Over the past few months, we have heard people say that they have “never seen a campus more divided,” that “people aren’t listening anymore,” and that Tufts is lacking in “discourse.”

We want to consider the opposite.

We have always been a divided society, defined as much by difference as similarity. But those differences become most clear when they are expressed, especially by those who haven’t been heard. When the voices that have kept silent speak, isn’t discourse the most immediate outcome?

Change takes root in division. Common ground must come from common recognition of difference. At the Observer, we are proud to have published your thoughts, your imaginings, your recognitions of individual difference. Though our time as your editors is ending, we hope the magazine will continue to be a platform on which we can stimulate change. In that way, we hope that the Observer can be a place for new beginnings as well.

PHOTO BY AARON WATTS

FEATURE

Feature

In Negotiation Adjunct Faculty Fight for Fair Wages and Job Security

By Carissa Fleury & Eve Feldberg

O

n Friday, April 14, 2017, parttime lecturers entered their third round of contract negotiations with the Tufts administration. Part-time lecturers (also referred to as “adjuncts” or “adjunct faculty”) are represented in the negotiations by their union, SEIU 509; the administration is being represented by Bárbara Brizuela, the Dean of Academic Affairs for Arts & Sciences. Speaking to her role in the negotiations, Dean Brizuela said, “I represent the administration and I work along with our University legal counsel, outside counsel, and the A&S Faculty Affairs Office.”

The goal of the negotiations, which are currently ongoing, is to agree upon a new Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) for part-time lecturers. The first of these agreements was reached in 2014, after a push by adjuncts to unionize—prior to the 2014 CBA, part-time lecturers were not represented by a union.

Senior Lior Appel-Kraut, a member of Tufts Labor Coalition (TLC), was involved with supporting adjunct faculty in their effort to unionize in 2013. She explained that the faculty organizing at Tufts was part of a larger movement to unionize adjuncts at various Boston-area universities. However, the effort to union-

ize at Tufts did not come without pushback. “They [adjuncts] did it with...a lot of administration pushback and the administration sending emails saying ‘don’t do this,’ all those kinds of union busting tactics,” Appel-Kraut said.

Despite this, part-time lecturers in Arts & Sciences voted to unionize in 2013.

Professor Rebecca Gibson, a lecturer in the English Department, was involved in the unionization process. She explained that the winning vote to unionize was only the first step in the long negotiation process.

“After an enthusiastic vote, we won the right to unionize—and proceeded to several months of negotiating our first contract. The most important element of being part of a union was that we were each no longer operating at a disadvantage, as individuals dealing with an all-powerful organization: the university. Now we came to the bargaining table as equal partners with an equal voice in setting the terms of the contract,” she said.

Ultimately, part-time faculty at Tufts negotiated a CBA with the administration toward the end of the school year in 2014.

Appel-Kraut characterized the contract as “good,” and said it represented “Tufts being a leader in the Boston area” in terms of improving working conditions for adjuncts.

She went on, “I think Northeastern was right after, and they got a good contract, which definitely was connected to what happened at Tufts, and that was just a huge win and also led the way to full time lecturers to unionize the next year.”

While the 2014 CBA was an improvement in some regards, part-time faculty are looking for further improvements.

Elizabeth Lemons, a part-time lecturer in the Department of Religion, said, “While we made important progress with our first contract, our compensation per course is not equivalent to the compensation for teaching that full-time faculty members receive. In our view, we are all members of one faculty, and we all deserve to be compensated equally. Moreover, we feel strongly that course guarantees are a crucial means of job security and stability for part-time faculty members, and we’d like to see them extended to faculty much sooner than eight years into their career at Tufts.”

The disparity in compensation remains relevant going into contract negotiations this year. “Until people are paid evenly across all types of faculty then there’s still going to be work to do and a reason to fight for a better contract,” Appel-Kraut said.

April 24, 2017

Tufts Observer

3

FEATURE

Feature

Part-Time Faculty Propose Substantive Asks Job insecurity is another concern in addition to wage disparities. “About five years ago, I suffered an unexpected loss of income when one of my courses unexpectedly was officially cancelled due to insufficient enrollment. Given that there were three students, two of whom were Religion majors, I taught the course as an independent study course for a fraction of the pay; that was a difficult spring. In prior years, some of my work as an advisor or reader of honors theses, for example was not compensated,” Lemons said.

These unexpected changes in income can

guarantees for professors who have been teaching for more than four years.

Course guarantees, Schoen said, are focused on stabilizing the number of courses professors are allotted to teach in a given year. “Adjunct faculty teach between one and five courses per year between both semesters…[right now] an adjunct professor who is on a twoyear contract might go from one semester to the next and not know if they’ll get the same number of courses that they had been guaranteed, which means a huge gap in the income they’re getting that semester, and [possibly] having to scramble for work elsewhere.”

stages of negotiations have been going.

Schoen explained that she is most wary about “how the administration is coming to the table and their attitude,” adding, “Something we’ve heard recently is that negotiations are supposed to be a twoway street and a conversation, and what has been happening in this round is that the admin has been really dismissive and not interested in engaging with any of the asks...it’s not a good sign.” Appel-Kraut said, “I think the worry is that the university has sort of changed who’s negotiating, and negotiation tactics, and they hired an out of house legal representation who specializes in this sort of thing, as

These asks aren’t just about pay, but also about establishing a baseline of respect for the time and energy that professors expend in their work.

vastly affect professors’ ability to provide for themselves and families, and create an atmosphere of unrest and uncertainty among adjuncts.

TLC member and sophomore Zoe Schoen has been working closely with the adjunct faculty involved in the newest round of contract negotiations. Schoen emphasized that adjunct faculty are focused on establishing more transparent communication between part-time faculty and the administration, stating, “One of the substantive asks...is getting recourse for the newer professors and faculty who are here for less than four years…[which] means that if [the administration] is not going to renew a newer professors’ contract, they need to have reasons and something to back it up.”

Along with getting recourse for newer professors, another ask is course 4

Tufts Observer

April 24, 2017

Professor Andy Klatt, a part-time Spanish lecturer at Tufts, added that these asks aren’t just about pay, but also about establishing a baseline of respect for the time and energy that professors expend in their work. “We are concerned that to the administration we are second-class employees, seemingly unworthy of the respect that others receive. Job security and job stability are particularly important to us since we are contingent employees—and not highly paid ones at that—living and working in a social and economic environment where university instruction has been increasingly devalued,” he said.

Initial Negotiations Spark Concerns Both Schoen and Appel-Kraut expressed concerns about how the initial

opposed to the Tufts counsel. It’s a little worrisome that they would be taking all these steps to try and distance themselves and put up all these protections when it feels like if there really is all this cordial relationship, which has been celebrated, then it doesn’t feel to me like there’s a lot of reason to put up all these barriers of protection.” On the point of outside legal counsel, Dean Brizuela clarified, “Outside counsel was involved [in the 201314 negotiations] and we are working with the same person we did in 2013.”

Like Schoen and Appel-Kraut, Professor Klatt also spoke about the administration’s attitude and tactics. He explained, “We don’t feel that the administration has shown an interest in negotiating our differences. Why do I say that? Because they have rejected some of our proposals on those issues [job security and stability]

FEATURE

Feature

out of hand, without showing any willingness to explore how we can work together to reach solutions beneficial to all, and have even responded to some proposals for extending job protections by saying ‘No, we need that flexibility.’”

Klatt identified this reference to “flexibility” as Tufts’ ability to let part-time lecturers go without what he referred to as “a fair hearing.” He went on, “It is central to keep in mind that the employer’s “flexibility” is the contingent worker’s very real vulnerability. We do understand, and I think we have shown that we understand, the university’s need for flexibility, but we also insist on standing up for our job rights and due process when our livelihoods are at stake.”

Lemons said the administration’s rejection of adjuncts’ proposals left her “feeling frustrated.” She added, “After listening to their reasons, we are considering how to modify our proposals to acknowledge their concerns. We hope that the administration will likewise listen to our concerns and engage with us in seeking mutually-agreeable conclusions.”

Appel-Kraut explained that the expectation going into negotiations was that the administration would likely propose a contract similar to or the same as the 2014 agreement, so that the work of the adjuncts and the union would be to push for improvements beyond that agreement. However, both Appel-Kraut and Schoen say the administration seems to be making offers that are worse than those in the 2014 contract. When asked about this, Dean Brizuela replied, “From my perspective this is inaccurate. We are not pulling back on any terms in the current Collective Bargaining Agreement.”

Klatt also expressed dismay at this aspect of the negotiations thus far. “We have already seen the administration propose some negative changes that would weaken our protections against contract violations, and so far they have been unwilling even to consider our proposals for strengthening job security,” he said. When asked whether the administration would not consider pro-

ART BY JAKE ROCHFORD

posals for strengthening job security, Dean Brizuela said, “My understanding is that Tufts is already at the forefront in terms of job protections for part-time faculty and that no other local university provides broader job security than Tufts already does.” She also said that, in her view, the administration’s proposals would not weaken protections against contract violations.

Students Give Support These negotiations affect students as well as faculty. Schoen stressed the importance of student support for adjunct faculty. “As students...we have mentors we build relationships with, and if people are constantly leaving that’s really detrimental to the relationships we build with our teachers and how much they can give to us in our education,” she said.

Because of the administration’s shifting tone in the negotiations, the adjuncts’ tactics may have to shift accordingly. Speaking to the tone of the 2014 negotiations, Gibson said, “From the beginning we determined to find points of confluence between the needs and goals of the administrations and our needs and goals. That is, we did not enter into our conversation adversarially, but with an eye to common interests and how to achieve them.”

In this year’s negotiations, AppelKraut explained that for now, adjuncts are taking a “high road” approach to negotiations (similar to the one described by Gibson), emphasizing the improvements made by the 2014 contract and expressing hope that Tufts could continue to be a leader in improving adjunct working conditions.

She added that students are following this lead for now, though they’re ready to ramp up as needed.

Students in TLC have been spearheading a campaign in support of parttime faculty. “What we’ve done for this campaign is have a petition that indicates student support for the campaign and outlines that we care about our faculty and want them to be safe and secure in their jobs so they can be present

and be here for us in our own educations. It’s kind of a symbolic gesture and that’s still going around. And a big part of this is just talking to professors and educating ourselves—we don’t know exactly what will happen but new things and new opportunities will pop up, so keep your eyes open.”

Gibson shared that student support was crucial in the 2013-14 negotiations. “The support expressed not only by many of the tenured faculty, but also, and particularly, by the students was important not only in demonstrating to the administration that we were valued, but that people were watching expecting Tufts to live up to the ideals of social justice that it aspires to,” she said.

This is a busy time for labor organizing at Tufts—on April 14, the same day as the third round of negotiations, Tufts janitors employed by C&W Services held a speak out on Tisch patio, detailing deteriorating working conditions and mistreatment by supervisors.

A petition, a letter calling for one supervisor to be fired, one janitor’s personal testimony, and a list of demands have been shared on the TLC Facebook page and widely circulated. The demands include a mandated 15-minute break for part-time workers, a clear explanation for any changes to janitors’ workloads or schedules, and a three-month trial period for newly hired supervisors.

With janitors as well as part-time faculty, there seems to be plenty of opportunity for student engagement—at the speak out on April 14, current and prospective students walking by stopped to listen to janitors’ testimony; one student asked what they could do to get involved and was urged to sign the petition in support.

Speaking to student involvement, Schoen said, “Don’t underestimate the power of students and student voices in supporting these campaigns...we can’t be complacent. Even when there are wins, there are still so many things that still need to get done. These are people’s lives and people’s families. The stakes are really high.”

April 24, 2017

Tufts Observer

5

FEATURE

News

The Woman with the Plan Looking ahead at Elizabeth Warren’s re-election campaign

By Grace Segers

L

ong before Senator Bernie Sanders was chastising “millionaires and billionaires” at packed rallies during the 2016 Democratic primary campaign, Elizabeth Warren laid out a progressive economic agenda for an audience in a house in Andover. In the summer of 2011, Warren spoke in a Massachusetts living room, to gain support for her nascent Senate campaign. By the time potential supporters packed into the suburban living room to hear Warren speak, she had burnished her credentials as a servant of the economically downtrodden. As a professor at Harvard Law School, she was perhaps best known at the time for proposing that the government create an agency to protect consumers. She was the driving ideological force behind the newly-established Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, created by the 2010 Dodd-Frank Act. According to Doug Rubin, a senior strategist for the 2012 Warren campaign who currently teaches a course at Tufts, the candidate’s speech before a living room full of enraptured citizens was nothing out of the ordinary. The only difference was in the audience: someone was filming, and later posted it on YouTube. The video quickly went viral, not only cementing Warren’s status as a candidate, but as a burgeoning progressive icon.

“There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody,” Warren said in a speech punctuated by cheers.

“You built a factory out there, good for you. But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate.” This moment exposed Warren’s theory of America and the reason she was running: she believed that the economic fates of everyone in the country were intertwined.

6

Tufts Observer

April 24, 2017

“You built a factory and it turned into something terrific or a great idea, God bless. Keep a big hunk of it,” Warren said.

“But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.”

The video generated widespread enthusiasm for Warren’s 2012 campaign against Republican incumbent Senator Scott Brown, elevating the race to a national affair with an unprecedented level of media attention. The Warren and Brown campaigns spent a combined $68 million during the campaign, breaking Massachusetts fundraising and spending records to date.

Brown had swept into office in a special election in 2010 after the death of Senator Edward Kennedy, capitalizing on right-wing populist sentiment which presaged the rise of the Tea Party and the Democrats’ disastrous losses in midterm elections later that year. In an attempt by both candidates to eschew the political establishment and big donors, they agreed to refuse any outside funding from super PACs. Rubin noted that much of Warren’s campaign funding had been raised through small-dollar donations gathered through her website. He believes that this grassroots enthusiasm propelled her to victory, and anticipated the $27-donation success of Sanders years later. Warren has said that she wants to adhere to this policy again for her 2018 campaign.

Back in 2011, when that video was filmed, Elizabeth Warren was a political unknown. Today, she is not only one of the country’s most outspoken legislators—she is a symbol. She was assiduously courted for an endorsement by both the Clinton and Sanders campaigns during the primaries, although she declined to endorse anyone until June, when she

publicly supported Hillary Clinton. She taunted Trump on Twitter during the campaign, and has continued to criticize him into his presidency.

Her ascendance as a national figure was perhaps encapsulated best by the words of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell when he justified an action Senate Republicans took to silence Warren during a speech criticizing future Attorney General Jeff Sessions. These three sentences by McConnell turned Warren into both a meme and a feminist icon: “She was warned. She was given an explanation.

Nevertheless, she persisted.”

Warren has become the face of the movement to remake the Democratic Party, for better or possibly for worse. To right-wing partisans, she is an emblem of everything that is wrong with liberal ideology. Warren’s name is so tied to liberalism that the National Republican Senatorial Committee has created ads with her as the focal point, targeting red state Democratic senators. The hope is that Warren is so unappealing to moderates that independent voters will see a Democratic candidate as being allied with Warren and then immediately vote for the Republican.

“She’s a divisive figure,” said Political Science Professor Jeffrey Berry, explaining that her high visibility could be a turnoff for moderate voters in Massachusetts.

“She’s controversial in the sense of being an aggressive partisan.”

In January, Warren announced that she was running for re-election, specificalART BY RACHEL CUNNINGHAM

FEATURE

News

ly on the platform of relentless opposition to President Trump’s agenda.

“She’s a nemesis of the president,” Berry said. He believes that unless Warren has a viable Republican opponent, the upcoming race will play out as a national rather than a local one, with Warren running against Trump’s ideology more than anything else. He also thinks that the 2018 senatorial campaign is likely to receive attention beyond the Boston media market, regardless of who becomes Warren’s eventual opponent.

“It’s easy to say that she’s going to get a lot of visibility on MSNBC,” Berry said, adding that Fox News would also cover the 2018 campaign eagerly, although from a different ideological perspective.

Rubin suggested that Warren’s highprofile status in the Democratic Party will lead to an incredibly visible campaign, perhaps resulting in more media attention than for the one in 2012.

“Given her high-profile back and forth with President Trump, and her success on the national stage as one of the more prominent leaders on progressive issues, I think it is highly likely that out-of-state interests spend a lot of time and money attacking her in 2018,” Rubin said. Currently, only one candidate has declared that he is running against Warren—businessman Shiva Ayyadurai. However, Rubin thinks that if State Representative Geoff Diehl, a staunch supporter of the president, decided to run for Senate, it would turn the race into a referendum on President Trump

and exacerbate the high levels of outside media coverage.

Rubin believes that Warren’s visibility in national politics will work to her benefit.

“I think her popularity helps her because Massachusetts voters see her fighting for issues and values that they support, and they want their elected officials to be effective and lead those fights,” he said.

Nonetheless, a WBUR poll published in January suggests that Warren should not become too complacent. The poll found that 44 percent of respondents think that she “deserves reelection,” while 46 percent think that the senator should “give someone else a chance.” Fifty-one percent of Massachusetts voters were found to have a favorable opinion of Warren. A moderate Republican, Charlie Baker, recently became governor, and it is possible that Warren’s notoriety on the national stage has disaffected independent voters.

Despite these concerns, Rubin thinks that the senator has not changed dramatically from the candidate who spoke in a living room in Andover, though she now has a larger audience, able to reach thousands in rallies and millions through her Twitter handle.

“I think Senator Warren has remained remarkably consistent, which is very hard to do in today’s political environment. She’s been able to do that because she has such a strong moral core,” Rubin said. “The issues that I first discussed with her when she was considering running in 2012 are the same issues she spoke about during that first

campaign, and they are the same issues she has worked on every day in the US Senate.”

Berry agreed that, despite Warren’s fiery rhetoric and the media coverage that she has received, her fame is well-earned.

“She’s achieved her notoriety by her substance,” he said. “She’s been a powerful force for working people.”

As Warren ends her first term as senator and begins her campaign for reelection, her contributions to American politics and policy should not be ignored.

When asked if he had any recommendations for Warren’s 2018 campaign team, Rubin demurred.

“Honestly, I would tell her to keep doing what she is doing. She’s clearly been an effective and persuasive voice in support of issues and values that most people in Massachusetts support,” he said.

Whereas the Democratic establishment across the country appears to be reevaluating its values, Warren has a solid grasp on what the message should be.

Ironically, it’s a message not wholly unlike President Trump’s promise to make America great again—a populist battle cry for eliminating economic inequality.

Regardless of her fame or her notoriety, Warren’s message is making an impact.

On April 11, she published on Twitter that almost 16,000 people across Massachusetts had donated to her re-election campaign. It may be the end of one Senate term, of one presidential era—but for Elizabeth Warren, the movement is only just beginning.

April 24, 2017

Tufts Observer

7

FEATURE

Opinion

8

Tufts Observer

April 24, 2017

FEATURE

Opinion

April 24, 2017

Tufts Observer

9

FEATURE

Arts & Culture

Keeping Up & Speaking Up Kendall Jenner and celebrity activism in the age of social media

By Sasha Hulkower

10

Tufts Observer

April 24, 2017

FEATURE

Arts & Culture

A

few weeks ago, news feeds and front pages nationwide filled with images of supermodel Kendall Jenner smiling coyly as she hands a can of Pepsi to an attractive, unarmed policeman. The image is a still from Pepsi’s quickly-pulled ad depicting a protest for an ambiguous cause, in which throngs of beautiful, racially diverse young people take to the streets of an unspecified location brandishing posters with messages like “join the conversation” and other intentionally vague calls to action.

In the two-and-a-half-minute “short film,” Jenner leaves a photoshoot behind to march through the crowd defiantly and “join the conversation.” She moves to the front of the protest to give a carbonated peace offering to a smiling police officer, then fist-pumping as the group erupts into cheers behind her, and grinning with the naiveté of someone wholly unaware of the united front of opposition she is positioning herself to face.

Backlash against the ad was ubiquitous, with everyone from Stephen Colbert to Bernice King (daughter of Martin Luther King, Jr.) speaking out against it. Criticism covered essentially every aspect of the misguided ad, most notably its inability to support a specific cause. Sophomore Rosy Fitzgerald pointed to the implicit paradox of a multimillion-dollar company attempting to spark interest in social justice, stating, “Even if this commercial hadn’t so grossly trivialized protest and social justice, Kendall Jenner and Pepsi as they exist now are incapable of running any ad campaign promoting legitimate activism.”

In an article published the day after the controversy broke, the New York Times wrote that Jenner’s “fame as a reality television star and social media eminence,” (evidenced by her more than 77 million Instagram followers) contributed to her rise to the top of the modeling world. There is no mention of her failure to harness those same followers for meaningful social action, though they do acknowledge her history of controversy with a nod to a polarizing cornrow-wearing stint in 2015.

Jenner’s failed attempt at social commentary (or rather, complacency in the appropriation of activism and protest for capitalistic gains) stands in direct contrast to many of her contemporaries. Recent years have seen a notable trend of celebrities—young celebrities of color in particular—using their fame and public influence to advance social justice movements and

elevate the voices of those who lack the same access and leverage.

Among some of the loudest and most consistent voices among this group are those of 18-year-old Amandla Stenberg (of Hunger Games and Amma Asante’s upcoming film, Where Hands Touch, about a biracial woman living in Nazi Germany) and 15-year-old Rowan Blanchard, star of Disney’s Boy Meets World reboot, Girl Meets World. Despite (or perhaps due to) their ages and more limited spheres of influence, these two young people have used their positions and platforms to speak about the issues they care about.

In 2015, then 16-year-old Stenberg published a video for a class project entitled “Don’t Cash Crop My Cornrows,” a four-minute video in which they called out the likes of Jenner and other celebrities for their appropriation of the historically Black hairstyle.

In an interview with W magazine from July 2016, Stenberg stated, “I never really talked about issues and prejudice publicly until the video came out and it went viral…

I just didn’t realize I had all of this power from the platform I had. I didn’t realize that I could really utilize it to speak out about things until the video. And so then I began using it more.” Following the video’s viral circulation, Stenberg embraced their new role as a celebrity activist, utilizing Instagram and a variety of other platforms as the stage for their commentary.

Their Instagram (@amandlastenberg) is a mix of political and artistic expression with distinct undertones of teenage angst, the result of which is a carefully constructed and praiseworthy social media presence. Similarly, Blanchard’s page (@ rowanblanchard) features pictures of her alongside other prominent activists like Angela Davis and Mia Farrow buried between selfies, pictures of friends, and calls to action for various causes.

The homage Blanchard pays to these trailblazers begs the question of how their legacy and experiences differ from her own.

Despite numerous humanitarian and activist efforts and widespread recognition for her role as a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador, Farrow’s most notorious role is not as an activist or even as the star of high profile films such as The Great Gatsby or Rosemary’s Baby, but as Woody Allen’s ex. Biography.com writes of Farrow: “A well-regarded, but underrated actress, Farrow has received more attention for her personal life than her talents.” The piece omits entirely any mention

of her activist involvement. Perhaps Farrow’s image and role in society may have been different if she had access to the same platforms her younger contemporaries now do.

Following her speech this past January at the Los Angeles Women’s March, Blanchard told Teen Vogue that she viewed activism on social media as “one of the first steps you can take” on the path to active resistance. At 14, she told Interview Magazine that her first experience being catcalled (over two years prior, when she was 12) sparked her interest in activism. Blanchard began posting feminist content regularly on Twitter, Tumblr, and Instagram in an attempt to reach her primarily young, female fan-base because she “just couldn’t bear” the idea of her fans experiencing the same things she had.

Sophomore Ben Britt addressed the importance of celebrity activism on social media, citing Stenberg and Blanchard’s actions as ways to “be heard and to disrupt the normality of cultural appropriation and misogyny.” Social media feeds and the media in general often provide steady streams of the same voices elevated above others, and celebrities have the power to address this unequal distribution of visibility.

Stenberg and Blanchard both acknowledge the importance of turning posts on social media into tangible activism. In an interview with Dazed magazine from this spring, Stenberg said, “I feel like social media is a little oversaturated with some of those conversations… now is a really critical moment to move from conversations to action.” While these actors work to engage in meaningful action, making that action permanent through the use of social media, others continue to build their images on far less meaningful terms.

Since last week’s incident, Jenner has gained over one million new Instagram followers—an increase that can likely be attributed to the attention allotted to the model in the wake of the event. With more than 12 times the followers of Stenberg and Blanchard combined, her page features no mention of the ad, and a tweet released last week prior to the unveiling of the commercial (featuring a picture of former brand ambassador, supermodel Cindy Crawford, drinking from a can of Pepsi captioned “Goals”) has since been deleted. Despite her efforts to erase any evidence of the ad’s existence, the controversy remains salient across social media platforms with everything from articles to memes continuing to be published at a nearly constant rate.

April 24, 2017

Tufts Observer

11

FEATURE

Prose

All My Last Things

By Nicole Cohen

My day begins with long hairs in the bathroom shower stalls, but the toilets are never clogged, so I can’t complain. I mash mint-flavor in my mouth and scrub the dreams and fur from my teeth. Then I’m getting dressed and drinking coffee at the same time. One arm reaches into my closet as the other swirls a spoon in a mug. Half and Half pours onto my notes in class. We are talking about horror, the sublime, and Spike Lee. I’m looking at people’s shoes and how they walk. With their knees turned in.

Or their feet turned out. I copy Sudoku puzzles into my notebook and solve them. I meet some friends for lunch. We talk about math, scary cartoons, and Spike Lee. They’re going to build something great. A few leave, and the rest of us discuss getting jobs, wars, and panic attacks. I leave to get a pastry and more coffee to dip it in. I walk into the library, then CVS, then my first-grade classroom, looking at all the chalk dust on the edge of the blackboard. I’m learning how to drive stick shift, and I keep getting stuck on the hills. I’m thinking about that little silver car. I named it “General A-Rod” after the last horse in the Kentucky Derby.

I had to leave it at home to come to school. I saluted it for good luck. My professor pronounces “France” like “Frawhnce.” The PowerPoint flashes images of film history. There is France. There is a movie poster put up during World War II. There is my old piano teacher. She had brown scuffed up shoes, and I never came back after that summer. There is information. I copy it down, knowing that if I made more mistakes, I’d have better stories. Class gets out. I call home. I see things for sale wherever I go. I meet the friends for dinner that I didn’t see at lunch. They’re telling me about their bad teachers from high school, but all I can think about is what they looked like when they were little, and what shoes they wore until they learned about the shoes they should want to have. You shouldn’t let yourself go without a shower for more than a few days. I’m trying to undress, but I’ve still got one arm reaching into the closet from this morning. Half and Half spills out of the shower head. It clogs the toilets and floods the bathroom, and I’m carried to bed in a boat of general and vague intentions. I saw such a funny video today. I saw the coolest pair of shoes today. I heard the most beautiful song. It all mixes together in my coffee cup, and I dream. I dream that I’m trying to eat peaches off of trees, but I don’t understand the peaches or the trees. And I don’t understand the taste or the branches, only that they’re leaving.

12 12

Tufts Observer Tufts Observer

March 13, 2017 April 24, 2017

ART BY ANNIE ROOME

FEATURE

Feature

s t a r t

f i n i s h

FEATURE

Feature

14

Tufts Observer

April 25, 2017

FEATURE

Feature

April 25, 2017

Tufts Observer

15

FEATURE

Feature

FEATURE

Campus

Major Problems Race and Ethnic Studies at Tufts, Past and Present

By Wilson Wong With Reporting by Liz Bishop

Content Warning: Racial violence

T

he Task Force on Race, consisting of various administrators and faculty members, was formed in the fall of 1996 to examine the impact of race on the Tufts undergraduate community, culminating in a 1997 report that identified the discrepancies between the University’s “commitment to promoting diversity within the student body, the faculty, as well as in the curriculum” and its actual demographic population. Over the following years, students and faculty

ART BY JAKE ROCHFORD

staged protests and published articles in support of an Asian American Studies (AAST), Latino Studies (LST), and Native Studies curricula at Tufts.

The report specifically recommended that the lack of Race and Ethnic Studies courses be addressed. It encouraged the administration to “incorporate United States race and ethnic content in the existing curriculum,” in addition to the employment of “at least three new tenure track positions in American Race and Ethnic Studies.”

While the students and faculty remained hopeful, what became increasingly

apparent was the administration’s failure to respond to the needs of both parties. In 2001, Aaron Chiu (A ‘03), along with other signatories, wrote in The Tufts Daily, “The University has not hired any permanent faculty to teach in this field [of AAST],” despite the Task Force’s recommendation.

The push for AAST had significant support from faculty members as well.

Before the 2001-2002 academic year, the Asian American Curricular Transformation (AACT) Project, a group of faculty members and students, sought to institutionalize AAST by advocating for the hire April 24, 2017

Tufts Observer

17

FEATURE

Campus

of tenure-track AAST faculty, developing AAST courses, and raising student awareness of AAST within the Tufts curriculum.

For interdisciplinary programs like AAST and LST, tenure-track faculty members must be hired under another department—they cannot be housed in those programs. After the combined lobbying efforts of students and faculty, the University officially announced in the spring of 2002 that they planned to hire a tenure-track professor of AAST within the English department.

However, the position remained vacant because of “irreconcilable differences” between the American Studies program and English department, effectively ending the search between these two departments. According to AACT’s website, “Students tried again immediately to initiate a search in Spring 2003 through the History department but their proposal was rejected by the administration, which declared that the department had already received its fair share of search approvals the year before.”

Amidst these defeats, the LST minor became the newest addition to the University by Spring 2004. This victory was spearheaded by Deborah Pacini Hernandez, retired Associate Professor of Anthropology, Mark A. Hernández, former Associate Professor of Spanish in Romance Language, Rubén Salinas Stern, Latino Center Director, and Adriana Zavala, Associate Professor of Modern and Contemporary Latin America, Latinx Art, and Director on leave of LST. Similar to the organizing challenges that AAST advocates faced, Zavala said, , “When we had to recruit departments to dedicate tenure-track positions for Latino Studies, it didn’t happen…That’s the frustration we’ve had over these past few years.

I can’t tell you the amount of hours that we’ve invested in trying to persuade a department to hire a faculty member focusing on Latino Studies.”

Under the Spanish department, Hernández was in a tenure-track position, teaching Spanish literature courses, in addition to “Chicano Literature & Culture: Communities and Identities,” which was taught in English. Ultimately, he was not tenured due to departmental differences, eventually leading to his departure in 18

Tufts Observer

April 24, 2017

2008. Today, both AAST and LST struggle to house additional tenure-track faculty within these respective fields of expertise.

With faculty and student allies, AACT members staged a protest surrounding Ballou Hall on April 28, 2005, demanding that the University fulfill its commitment to hiring a tenure-track AAST professor.

In addition to their protests, AACT compiled a list of resources to support their movement. In a section titled “What Can I Do to Support AAST?”, the organization suggested students enroll in the only three available AAST courses: Asian American Music, Asian America, and Asian American Perspectives. The latter two were taught by current faculty members Jean Wu, Senior Lecturer in American Studies, and Grace Talusan (A ‘94), part-time English lecturer, respectively. Despite their continued commitment to teaching AAST courses, both professors are non-tenured.

Talusan has taught Asian American Perspectives since the spring of 2004. She continues teaching this course because, when she was a Tufts undergraduate, she took the only Asian American literature course offered at the time. She recalled, “I could not articulate the invisibility and erasure I experienced…I felt proud when I learned about our community–– how they fought for social justice; they wrote books; they contributed to our society in many rich and meaningful ways.

Learning that opened up possibilities for how I saw my life.”

On April 9, 2009, a drunk White firstyear attacked members of the Korean Students Association (KSA) with racial epithets and physical violence. As the attacker left the scene, he shouted, “Fuck you all…

Go back to your fucking country, you don’t belong in this country.” This racial bias incident garnered national attention, highlighting the University’s lack of representation in its curriculum and faculty.

A week later, a rally was held to promote awareness of the hate incident and demanded that the University make institutional changes. Their first demand was “Increased visibility and incorporation of Asian American, not Asian, experiences within the curriculum to educate and promote awareness on the Asian American racial identity.” Subsequently, there was an incentive for the administration to move

forward with an AAST minor, which was passed three years later, because it would alleviate culpability from the University.

The AAST minor finally coalesced in Fall 2012, alongside the establishment of an Africana Studies major and minor. But this would not have occurred without the work of Pan African Alliance (PAA) members, who had spent several years writing a resolution, organizing negotiation meetings, and holding protests to include Africana Studies in the curriculum––a movement that has lasted over 40 years.

In November of 2011, PAA members and allies occupied an administrative office in Ballou Hall, presenting a list of demands to establish an Africana Studies program.

This occupation set a precedent for the coalition of different organizations to work together and fight for Race and Ethnic Studies. In an interview with the Tufts Observer published on March 26, 2012, PAA member Brionna Jimerson mentioned that a few of the organizations that supported this movement were the Tufts Asian American Alliance (AAA), which would later become the Tufts Asian Student Coalition, and the Association of Latin American Students.

Concurrently, the 1997 report that recommended the employment of at least three tenure-track faculty materialized when the University hired Lisa Lowe, Distinguished Professor and Director of the Center for Humanities, Pawan Dhingra, Chair and Professor of Sociology, and Ujjayant Chakravorty, Professor of Economics.

These victories stemmed from collaborative efforts between students and faculty members. On March 11, 2012, students staged an AAST teach-in, which was co-sponsored by AAA and PAA. Additionally, former Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences, Joanne Berger-Sweeney, created the Race and Ethnicity Working Group, comprised of faculty members from various departments, in the spring of 2011. Kris Manjapra, Associate Professor in History, Interim Director of the Consortium of Studies in Race, Colonialism, and Diaspora (RCD), and a member of the working group, said, “This was part of a long-term project to conceive a body within the curriculum, which eventually came to be known as the RCD. The con-

FEATURE

Campus

crete goals of this working group were the establishment of an [AAST and Africana Studies] curricula and a cluster hire that would bring in faculty to join the RCD project by the end of 2012.”

The aforementioned RCD project unfolded within the year of 2014. Once again, these efforts were a product of the collaboration between students and faculty members. Manjapra stated, “The petition that led to the Colonialism Studies [minor] in April 2014 had more than 300 signatures by students.” It was unanimously passed in a faculty meeting that year, which was established alongside the Consortium of Race, Colonialism, and Diaspora (RCD), housing the programs of Africana, American, Asian American, Colonialism, and Latino Studies. *** The Tufts archives reveal the patterns and strategies that students and faculty members employed to prompt the administration to fulfill its commitment to promoting diversity within the student body, faculty, and curriculum.

The future holds promise for the expansion of Asian American, Colonialism, and Latino Studies from minors to majors.

However, the delayed process of incorporating more courses is disheartening for both students and faculty members.

Natalie Masuoka, Associate Professor in Political Science and Director of AAST, said, “One of the challenges we face is that we can’t offer more classes because that stretches students out too thin, creating red flags for the administration to question, ‘How much do we really need these kind of classes?’ Our strategy is to slowly roll out larger number of classes over time…students are frustrated with the lack of courses, but we’re trying to communicate to them that this is part of the constraints that we have when we’re trying to build a program.”

Sophomore Patrick Mahaney, who is attempting to finish their AAST minor, said, “Even after generations of fighting for Ethnic Studies and winning victories like the institutionalization of the AAST minor, very little has changed as far as consistent course offerings and tenured faculty members go. If you look at the course listings for Fall 2017, there is one course that explicitly centers Asian American issues in its title, and this course has been

April 24, 2017

Tufts Observer

taught since before the AAST minor was created and is taught by a non-tenure track faculty member who has been at the University since before the AACT was created in 2001. It makes me wonder—what did institutionalizing this minor really do?”

The history and expansion of these respective minors poses an imperative question for the proposal of a Critical Jewish, Muslim, and Native Studies minor. Matt Hooley, Visiting Professor of Native American Studies, expressed high hopes in the push for Native Studies. He said, “We have had classes, there is willingness, and there are no obstructions to having a Native Studies minor…There is an active interest in making a tenure-track hiring of Native Studies that is being explored… and I know that many of the candidates for that position are Indigenous people.”

Manjapra expressed similar sentiments in the hopes of establishing a Critical Jewish and Muslim Studies minor at Tufts, stating, “Both would be valuable and important on campus.”

Tracing the history of AAST discloses a pattern that we should recognize in the pursuit of establishing these programs. It will require a collaborative ef-

19

fort between student activists and faculty allies, transparency in the administrative process that spans across all interdisciplinary programs, and administrative support.

While the former two conditions are unquestionably certain, what remains unclear is the administration’s investment in the future of Race and Ethnic Studies. The cyclical discourse regarding Race and Ethnic Studies between students and faculty members remains as a continuity, calling into question the administration’s role, or lack thereof, in its contribution to sustaining the programs housed under the RCD. Almost 15 years ago, in an article published in The Tufts Daily on November 21, 2002, Laura Horwitz (A ‘03) and Pam Chu (A ‘03) advised, “In order to create a unified home for Race and Ethnic Studies, American Studies needs to be made [into] a department with primary hiring power.”

Perhaps the solution to this problem could come from a transformation of the RCD, which houses all of these interdisciplinary programs, into a “traditional” department where tenured faculty could be housed, ensuring the future of Race and Ethnic Studies at Tufts.

FEATURE

Voices

By Henry Jani

“Don’t you remember your grandson?”

Blue eyes. Vibrant against his bronze skin, innocent like always—the gleaming relics in a body secretly atrophying before us. Henerrush, he finally said. My name. A recognition to me, but the start of farewells for him.

Blue eyes. Opening for the last first time, my sister’s presence awakens him. Our bodies, kindly, know how to let us go, though. They rip apart, slowly but surely, allowing cracks for the good stuff to seep out. First goes the memory, the catalyst to the loss of cognition. The senses endure.

Jam i uritur. You can barely understand his pleas for food through the mask—a modern day torture device, blasting his airways to keep him alive while he begged for it all to stop. Half sepsis, half technology—the internal war in the body just made more room for him to keep slipping out.

My grandfather was always surrounded by women, from his first days to his last. Three daughters were enough to permanently emasculate the typical Albanian patriarch. But he was different from the others. Quiet, generous, and remarkably thoughtful. Always waiting patiently in his Ford hatchback at noon to pick me up from AM-kindergarten. But the attention faded, from forgetting how to drive the car at first to forgetting that his youngest child in Miami had ever existed. But she came for the end, when they knew the infections had aggregated to a lethal level. My grandmother, mother, sister, and aunts watched. Waited. Left as the hospice representative injected the morphine, cleaned his body, shaved his face, and tucked him into his deathbed after undoing the webs of wires and tubes that had engulfed him.

A series of short breaths. A cycle of beeps. A final release.

I called my aunt that night. She didn’t answer on the first try, per usual. She called back a few minutes after, just as suspected. But it was different this time.

“Gjyshi... he’s passed.”

But hadn’t he been doing better? Wasn’t he going to leave the nursing home finally?

“We didn’t want to worry you. None of us knew until a few days ago.”

I could feel every section of my skin becoming hot and sweaty, my heartbeat increasing exponentially.

“You called the second he took his last breath. It’s like you knew you needed to be here.”

But I wasn’t there—I was propped up in my fluorescently-lit single at a college hundreds of miles away. I wasn’t there, because I was selfishly thinking about a summer job while my grandfather was literally suffocating under the creeping presence of death. I wasn’t there to hold the hand of my sister, someone barely older than I am, who watched something that would scar most people for a lifetime. I wasn’t there. I wasn’t there. I wasn’t there.

20

Tufts Observer

April 24, 2017

ART BY NICOLE COHEN

FEATURE

Voices And then I was there. The ticket was booked, emails to professors sent, and before I knew it I was back in my cookie-cutter Ohio home. Pictures of my grandfather were scattered in every corner of the home. My favorite portrait of him, now housed in a new, sleek frame, stared back at us while we sat in the living room during cycles of silence and sniffles.

“You get your good looks from him. It’s good that you don’t look like your father,” my grandmother said facetiously. She’s wearing one of her new black outfits, part of the family bereavement shopping trip to pick out clothes for the funeral. She hasn’t worn color in almost a year now, and will likely not for the rest of her life.

His portrait followed us everywhere for the rest of the weekend. It stared back at me once again as I approached the casket.

Blue eyes, no more. I think that was when I finally understood. Two days before, I was in a desk looking down at a textbook. Now, I was looking down at death. I rested my hand on his chest and felt what should have been skin. But what was once a human was now the craftwork of the mortician, pumped with a slurry of formaldehyde and methanol and painted with chalky makeup. I almost wanted to crack open his eyelids to get one last peak at his humanity. But, of course, they were sewn shut. Just in case he decided to get one last look at life, I guess.

Roses on the coffin, soon to be descended into the ground and sealed into the vault for eternity. The priest arrived with his thurible of incense, melodically singing ancient script as we all waited in silence. The Bible closed, “the soul has risen.” It was all over. But everything felt incomplete.

We sat around the table with a mound of cash-stuffed envelopes in the middle. The Albanian tradition of giving money at a funeral, to help cover expenses, still fascinated me. It showed the character of a people who suffered so much, endured dictatorship and poverty, yet still behaved so generously in times of tragedy.

That entire weekend was filled with stories. Stories of the happy times with my grandpa, but also about the times of my family before America and our quotidian Midwestern lives. One of my favorites was about my grandmother. My grandfather worked as a truck driver, meaning he was often gone for days at a time transporting industrial goods to the country’s northern regions. My aunt remembered all the “man-jobs” my grandmother had to do as she operated as fundamentally a single parent.

The most memorable was the wood-chopping. Every evening, ax in hand, my grandmother would head down to the street and prepare fire wood for the furnace. My mom and aunts were so embarrassed by her, unabashedly performing this masculine task with her skirt bellowing in the wind. But now it reminded us of how strong she was. Rather, how strong she is. A bank worker her whole life, my grandmother has a knack for counting money. I watched as she picked up each envelope, quickly counted and recorded the bills within, and moved onto the next. She was in her element. I imagined her back when she was young and doing the same work. A woman in her late twenties, her bob haircut and simple pearl necklace, sitting in an old oak room filled with cigarette smoke and the humid summer air.

And finally, I felt certainty again. Certainty that my grandmother, immoveable and clever, would be happy again despite her husband’s departure. Certainty that the women in my life would, like always, move mountains for the ones they loved. I was certain that we would continue to thrive. We’ve never had any other choice.

One symptom of my grandfather’s dementia was an obsession with pennies. We would place them around the house, and he would laugh like a child with joy when he found them. I always get excited now when I see a penny on the street. Not for the potential luck, and of course not for the fiscal value. It’s because it reminds me of him. When I bend down and see that copper face, I don’t see Abe Lincoln—I see my gjyshi. A man of few words, but with character rich enough to be described by a million.

April 24, 2017

Tufts Observer

21

FEATURE

Opinions

Imagining Otherwise Israel, Nationalism, and Identity

By Rosy Fitzgerald

M

y mother took me to my first live concert when I was eight or nine years old. We saw Sweet Honey in the Rock perform at Boston Symphony Hall. I’ll never forget when they sang their rendition of Kahlil Gibran’s poem “On Children,” and how hard my mother worked for the duration of my childhood to hold its principles true for my brothers and me. She abides by their words still: “Your children are not your children.

They are the sons and the daughters of Life’s longing for itself. They come through you, but they are not from you, and though they are with you they belong not to you.”

The day after the TCU Senate passed SJP’s resolution demanding that Tufts divest from four multinational companies profiting from Israeli apartheid, I went home to celebrate Passover with my family. We put olives on our Seder plate to remind us of Palestinian olive groves destroyed or stolen by the occupation, and drank to life, and to the freedom of everyone on this planet.

At some point in the night my grandfather said to me, “I wouldn’t be here if my parents hadn’t been able to escape Europe.”

I don’t think my grandfather is alone in this sort of existential notion. It’s common to feel like we owe our existence to the conditions of the past, and, to some extent,

22

Tufts Observer

April 24, 2017

this is true. The idea becomes dangerous, though, when we begin feeling a sense of debt not only to our ancestors and cultures but also to the nation-states inserted into our histories. Personally, my great-grandparents suffered and sacrificed in order to survive and maintain their Jewish identities, and I appreciate the fact that their actions led to my eventual birth and growth.

But that I am here today, living and breathing and eating leftover Matzoh, doesn’t make me indebted to anyone—not to the founding of the United States, of which I am an official citizen, or to the genesis of Israel, where I could choose to live a comfortable and privileged life because of my Jewish identity. I am no one’s child.

In 2005, Palestinian Civil Society called for a global campaign to boycott, divest from, and sanction (BDS) the state of Israel, inspired by the change accomplished by similar South African antiapartheid movements. Today a lot of conversations on campus surrounding the political controversy of Israel and Palestine center on Jewish students who self-identify as progressive and will often gladly voice a variety of coded stances along the lines of, “I’m pro-Israel and pro-Palestine,” or “I’m against the occupation but anti-BDS.” Many Jewish students see BDS as an attack on Judaism, and it’s true that criticisms

of the state of Israel sometimes coincide with anti-Semitism. To me, though, this ideology seems rooted in a normative link between identity and state, and more specifically, between Judaism and Israel. Of course, there’s nothing startling about this association—Israel is, after all, the only Jewish state in the world, and plenty of historic opposition to the state has been anti-Semitic—but what does it really mean to be pro-Israel, pro-Palestine, or pro-state at all? Somewhere embedded in declaring anti-Semitism’s automatic connection to the boycott, divestment and sanctioning of the Israeli state is a presupposed tie between statehood and personhood, and this, to me, is tragic.

I should add that I’m no stranger to associating one’s sense of self and belonging to a state. I understand the sparkling appeal of American flag-printed clothing, and there have been times when I’ve taken a certain pride in my Americanism. As a kid, on the Fourth of July, I’d remedy my mother’s refusal to buy me USA-lettered t-shirts by wearing as many articles of ill-fitting Red Sox apparel I could stretch over my body, and drawing American flags on my arms with markers. National pride is powerful and pervasive, and I’m in no way immune. Today, though, I find myself recoiling at nationalism. To me,

ART BY ANNIE ROOME

FEATURE

Opinions

the concept of a nation-state is completely antithetical to community and belonging. From its inception, the institution of the state has been inherently linked to war, exclusion, and the consolidation of power for the benefit of a select few.

Modern democratic nation-states like the US were founded upon violence, and protecting and defending these states means protecting and defending their histories of colonialism and theft. So if our identities are so deeply entangled in nationalism, at what cost do we derive that sense of belonging? And at what point in time, I wonder, did it become such a personal blow to question the legitimacy of an empire that has never operated in the name of peace or justice in the first place?

In bowing to the dominant narrative that without the Israeli state there could be no alternative to the complete annihilation of Jews, we limit ourselves.

Jewish people deserve to have a place to call home, somewhere to feel safe, and to have a sense of true belonging. But it’s not just unwise to tie our conception of home to a colonial empire—it’s violent, the same way American nationalism and loyalty to this oppressive nation-state is violent. When we make the mistake of equating home with nation, and fall into

unquestioning and unbreakable nationalism, we do ourselves a disservice.

It may be true that if my great-grandparents hadn’t been fortunate enough to leave the pogroms of Eastern Europe and immigrate to the United States, Israel would have been their only option for a home. But the reality either way is that these hypotheticals are predicated on the assumption that the creation of the state of Israel at the cost of Palestinian lives was the only way to save the Jewish people. We must imagine otherwise.

In bowing to the dominant narrative that without the Israeli state there could be no alternative to the complete annihilation of Jews, we limit ourselves. We limit our ability to conceive of change, of a shared peaceful world. We perpetuate the hegemony of nation-statehood and colonialism. In fact, the very notion of change itself cannot exist within the realm of realism.

As author Ursula K. Le Guin pointed out at the 2014 National Book Awards, “We live in capitalism, its power seems inescapable—but then, so did the divine right of kings.” So let us reach beyond our histories to imagine and push for an alternative world, in which asylum for one persecuted people does not necessitate the oppression of another.

After decades of death and demolition, the last thing anyone on the side of justice would call for is the destruction of a place people call home. This divestment resolution and other facets of BDS campaigns are not seeking the destruction of the Jewish people or their home, but an end to the violence enacted by an oppressive empire, and freedom for the people displaced and disempowered by this state. I ask other progressive Jews to join me in imagining otherwise, in rejecting the idea that we owe anything to nation-states and empires, or that we must defend their legitimacy in spite of their injustices. I don’t owe anything to a state—not my Jewish identity, and most certainly not my silence.

April 24, 2017

Tufts Observer

23

FEATURE

Arts & Culture

T

he

N

Dy s

ea

r

t o p

i a

By Lena Novins-Montague

24

Tufts Observer

April 24, 2017

ART BY JAKE ROCHFORD

FEATURE

Arts & Culture

W

hen The Handmaid’s Tale was published in 1985, “it was viewed as being farfetched,” according to the novel’s author, Margaret Atwood. Today, the book’s plot of a theocratic dictatorship taking over the United States and stripping women of their civil rights is resonating once again with audiences. At the Women’s Marches in January, protestors held up signs referencing the novel, saying things like “Make Margaret Atwood Fiction Again!” and “The Handmaid’s Tale is NOT an instruction manual.”

Sales of the book spiked in 2016.

Within three months of the election, 100,000 copies were printed to keep up with demand. Recently, Hulu announced that it will stream a television adaptation of the novel. In the trailer for the series, Offred, the protagonist, says in a voiceover, “When they slaughtered Congress, we didn’t wake up. When they blamed terrorists and suspended the Constitution, we didn’t wake up then, either.” Oriana Schwindt of Vice wrote, “The series feels almost like a tornado warning when a mile-wide twister is roaring down the drive.”

While dystopias are hardly a new subject of storylines, the past year has seen a significant increase in the popularity of two dystopian themes: political dystopias and techno-dystopias. The rise in both of these types of programming reflects a growing trend of hypersensitivity to fears of a human-caused apocalypse.

Susan Napier, a professor of Japanese literature, comics, and animation who teaches the course “Cinema of Apocalypse,” noted the proliferation of the techno-dystopia genre. According to Napier, “There’s a sense of technology not always being inherently evil, but [the fear stems from] the way people use it or approach it.”

Westworld is one such popular techno-dystopian television show. The plot centers on artificially intelligent robots who act as hosts in a Westernthemed park for wealthy guests. The show questions the extent to which artificial intelligence can become human-like and suggests that these robots can become autonomous and, in some cases, violent. It addresses a growing fear of robots mov-

ing towards a level of intelligence in which they may one day take over the world. Elon Musk, the creator of Tesla, has said that he has a “deep fear” of artificial intelligence because humans cannot compete with its potential capability.

Daniel Dennett, a philosophy professor, cognitive scientist, and Co-Director of the Center for Cognitive Studies at Tufts, doesn’t believe that these fears are misplaced. He said, “The premise of the current infatuation in many corners is the idea of the singularity [artificial intelligence surpassing human intelligence]. That’s not going to happen in a hundred years.”

Dennett is wary of trying to make artificial intelligence too humanlike. He says, “We have plenty of agents around, we have lots of people, we don’t need more people. We need to use them as tools so that we don’t have any question about whether we can take them apart, destroy them, turn them off.” Westworld deals with this idea of loss of control as the robots gain consciousness and begin to rebel against their creators.

Dennett also warned against mischaracterizing the nature of artificial intelligence. He explained, “What they are is smart tools, not artificial colleagues.

They aren’t agents. They can’t take moral responsibility. They’re tools, and we have to understand their limitations.”

Furthermore, the dystopian genre addresses fears of a corrupt leadership, which has been exacerbated by current events.

When Sean Spicer, the White House Press Secretary, accused the media of underreporting the size of the crowd at President Trump’s inauguration and falsely insisted that the audience had been record-breaking, he was met with a wave of criticism.

This led to Kellyanne Conway’s infamous declaration that Spicer had not been lying about the crowd size, but was instead offering “alternative facts.” That week, sales of 1984, George Orwell’s classic dystopian novel about a nation with extreme government surveillance and public manipulation, experienced a dramatic spike.

Alexandra Alter, a journalist for the New York Times wrote, “To many observers, her comment evoked Orwell’s vision of a totalitarian society in which language becomes a political weapon and reality itself

is defined by those in power.” The novel was mentioned 290,000 times on Twitter that week.

Classic dystopian novels like It Can’t Happen Here, Brave New World, and Fahrenheit 451, are experiencing a similar surge in sales. Napier believes that people gravitate towards dystopian stories during times of uncertainly. She explained, “People voted for [Trump] because of the sense that things are falling apart, the center’s not holding. On the left and the right, there’s an increasing sense of insecurity and I see it in the people I talk to and the way people talk about politics.”

She will be offering her class “Cinema of Apocalypse” next fall for the first time since 2009. She said of her decision to reinstate the class, “After the election, I really made a point of getting this course on my schedule. There’s a sense of helplessness right now that we all feel and I’m just a professor, what can I do?

But I do feel that teaching a course like this at a time like this is highly appropriate and highly relevant.”

Dystopian media often presents itself as a warning sign. Black Mirror, the highly popular techno-dystopian series, examines the consequences of an overly technologized society. The show is set in a near-dystopia that feels familiar to reality. Characters use the same smart phones and social networks that people do today, but they are transformed into a tool for fear and intimidation. Charlie Brooker, the creator of the show, has said, “All [the episodes are] about the way we live now—and the way we might be living in ten minutes’ time if we’re clumsy.” Savannah Mastrangelo, a first-year at Tufts and fan of the show, explained its appeal: “The best part is how these scenarios are so bizarre and otherworldly at first, but by the end of the episode you realize how closely related they are to society right now, which is very telling and striking.”

Mastrangelo also said that media is a uniquely effective way to hold the government accountable. “When shows creatively point to how the government is at fault, it really makes people realize.

Versus, if it’s just an article criticizing something, their attention isn’t held as well,” she pointed out.

April 24, 2017

Tufts Observer

25

FEATURE

News

Responses to Syria The effects of military intervention on perceptions of presidential leadership

By Alexandra Benjamin & Misha Linnehan

O

n Thursday, April 6, the United States military launched 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles, aimed at Al Shayrat Airfield in western Syria.

Purportedly in response to the usage of chemical weapons by Syrian President Bashar al-Assad against his own people, the strike was the first direct military action against the Assad regime by the US government since the Syrian civil war began in 2011. While President Trump had previously been on the record as critical of plans to militarily intervene in Syria, his reaction to seeing photographs of the victims of chemical weapons strikes, combined with emphatic support for retaliatory actions from some of his key advisors, was apparently enough to shift his views and order the strike.

The strike was also the first major military action of Trump’s presidency.

With it come a number of questions, not only about how it will affect the situation in Syria, but also how it will affect his image as president. Significant military actions, whether in the form of wars, major missile strikes, or humanitarian inter-

26

Tufts Observer

April 24, 2017

ventions, are watershed moments in a presidency. They can dramatically change public perception of a commander-inchief, either in positive or negative ways.

How the public responds to Trump’s involvement in Syria will depend on how the conflict progresses, but also on how his actions line up with their attitudes on military interventions.

Historically, military action taken by a sitting President has frequently shown evidence of affecting presidential approval.

This was most recently observed throughout the various US/Middle East conflicts, particularly under George W. Bush and Barack Obama. However, the effect is not always uniform. Political Science Professor Richard Eichenberg explains that, “a dramatic military intervention can increase public approval of a president but there’s a qualification—only if it’s a truly dramatic one, and only if there’s unified sentiment among political and intellectual leaders about the wisdom of it.”

This, he says, is why Bush’s invasion of Afghanistan after 9/11 enjoyed such high support and boosted his approval ratings.

“This was a truly dramatic event,” he said. “The whole thing was basically seen as retaliation for an attack on the US that unified the country. The leaders of both countries and the entire press agreed that something had to be done about Al Qaeda.”

Trump’s approval has hovered around 40 percent for the past month or so, fluctuating only by about +/- 3 points, including before and after the recent strikes. To contrast, in the wake of 9/11, Bush’s approval surged by a staggering 35 percent within just a week of the attacks. Gallup has observed similar spikes in presidential approval during times of intense conflicts dating back to the attacks on Pearl Harbor in WWII, an observation that has come to be called the “rally effect,” which most often occurs after direct threats or attacks on the United States.

This is another important distinction about the Syria strikes. “As horrible as the Syrian Civil War is, [it] hasn’t affected the US very much,” Eichenberg said.

While military action in Syria has not been buoyed by the rally effect in the same way as in the case of 9/11 or Pearl Harbor, there is significant support from the American population for some form of intervention. According to a recent Politico poll conducted after the airstrikes, nearly two thirds of Americans support increasing the role the US is playing in Syria in response to the usage of chemical weapons by the Assad regime. The explanation for why this effect exists seems relatively simple—just like President Trump, the American people are disgusted with the way Assad has used chemical weapons.

“Using chemical weapons is very much a strategic goal,” said Malik Mufti, a Political Science Professor. “He wants to terrify people so much that all support for the uprising against him will disappear.

The evidence shows that it’s working.” The same reaction seemed to hold among Tufts students. In a survey of 32 students conART BY EMMA PINSKY

FEATURE

News ducted by the Tufts Observer, 87.5 percent of respondents said that they felt retaliatory strikes against a foreign government for its own internal actions could be justified. One respondent summed up much of this sentiment concisely: “I believe we should absolutely intervene to protect human rights. If we don’t, their blood is on our hands.”

Though the abstract concept of intervention is popular, attitudes become much less unanimous when it comes to what specific type of intervention should be used. In the aforementioned Politico poll, just over 50 percent of respondents said they supported airstrikes, while even fewer reported supporting boots on the ground.

Similarly, less than 50 percent of Tufts respondents said they supported the recent airstrikes. This seems to show that, while desire among Americans for some kind of action is palpable, what kind of action that should be is much less clear.

Despite these varying viewpoints, perceptions of Trump as a leader have remained relatively separate from these disagreements about military action, and the effect of intervention thus far may not be terribly significant.

As Eichenberg explained earlier, though the strikes dominated news media for several days, they faded from the public forefront quickly, and left opinions as torn as before.

“His approval rating is the same, presumably for the reason that it was a relatively minor affair, it has already disappeared from news discussion, and there’s substantial division in media and political circles about whether it was wise and likely to be effective,” Eichenberg said.

Furthermore, American opinion changes depending on the nature and amount of action taken. A Washington Post article written by Adam Taylor in August 2016 found evidence that Americans favored US involvement in Syria, but only if it were via negotiation rather than combat. This viewpoint, for the most part, transcended party lines.

“In general, supporters of both major political parties were fairly in line with each other, with Republicans slightly more in favor of military action than Democrats—more than half of Republicans (53 percent) favored sending ground troops in to fight extremists, for example, whereas just 42 percent of Democrats and 32 percent of independents agreed,” Taylor wrote.

“There is a real aversion to long term conflicts, but not to bombings and missile strikes like these.”

Eichenberg believes that this is a consensus that still holds true today.

“I don’t think Trump is going to put a large number of American troops on the ground. The last thing the American public wants to do is put troops in Syria. Were he to get involved […] it would have a very negative impact on his approval ratings,” he said.

Tufts students surveyed on the matter also demonstrated varying reactions to Trump’s decisions concerning Syria.

“In evaluating this military action and how it impacts my opinion of the Administration, I have separated the airstrikes from the overall debacle that is the Trump [p]residency,” one respondent said. “Nonetheless, I support these limited measures to dissuade the Assad regime from committing further atrocities while presenting minimal risk for the United States.”

Another student, however, disapproved of the strikes. “Trump ordered them without any though[t] to a long term strategy in Syria, which is what we need” they said. “I’m not at all confident that Trump’s administration can make and execute the strategy we need.”

But as the polls suggest, divided public opinion has not been enough to upset Trump’s overall ratings. Though the action

has settled for the moment, it is hard to say where the conflict will go from here, and how it will further complicate Trump’s time in office.

“It’s very hard to predict with this president what he will do because the policies change so much day to day,” Mufti said. “There is a chance it could escalate, but it’s hard to know.”

He added that “In the long term, if [Trump] gets into a quagmire, his popularity will be hurt. There is a real aversion to long term conflicts, but not to bombings and missile strikes like these.”

Eichenberg agreed. “It’s a pretty common observation that Americans have war fatigue,” he said. “Americans are not interested in getting involved in wars.”

For now, President Trump seems to have heeded this advice—he stated last week that he would not be sending American troops into Syria. However, given his habit of dramatically changing his opinions, particularly on this issue, it is impossible to predict whether he will stand by his promise. All that seems certain at this point is that Americans do not want a war on their hands, and if Trump switches his position once again, it will cost him dearly.

April 24, 2017

Tufts Observer

27

Prose

This looks kind of like one of my best friend’s houses. An old Victorian on Walnut Avenue.

We went to school together from 7th grade until he dropped out in 11th. He still lives in Santa Cruz, makes short documentaries about our group of friends and the shit we get up to. Videos of us driving 19 hours from home to Portland up the Pacific Coast Highway (those cliffs made me believe in God). A video of us on a small boat under the Bay Bridge. One of us hiking Mt. Tamalpais. One from New Years Eve when we all got half naked and jumped in the Salkinds’ pool.

The best one is of our trip to the Grand Canyon. We didn’t have a campsite, just pitched our tent somewhere along a maintenance road.

Now most of these friends have moved away. To Portland, Boulder, England, Boston. I worry about him. One night in 10th grade he ran away and we all thought he was going to try and hurt himself. It had just gotten dark and we ran barefoot up and down Mission Street yelling his name.

Eventually I found him sitting at our favorite smoke spot above the train tracks. He cried into my shoulder and the moon peeked out from behind the clouds.

By Emma Pinsky

Blah blah language blah words blah blah something about BOOKS What do we give up upon entering the symbolic order of language? By turning our Mother into language we do the same to ourselves. And we know—says Lacan—that language is the fabric with which we clothe the emptiness of the Real. What exists there?

Not negative space. Words? Emptiness is a purely intellectual concept existing only through language. The clay of the vase creates the emptiness inside of it. We mistake ourselves for the clay—the positive.

Every sentence drags with it the whole history of metaphysics and I am 19 and still trying to figure out the right Lexapro dose. clean oatmeal bowl, do laundry, call dad, call dad, call dad. journal if you have time. remember keys. call dad. eat fruit.

Yeah, I try not to let it bother me so much. Saying one thing when you mean another.

Trying to write less what I want and more what I MEAN Why do I always draw these empty fucking rooms? That lamp? I guess I should be getting tired of it by now.

You can (not?) grow grapes by light of the word SUN —> (son?)

Anyway, I’ve been thinking lately about Derrida’s concept of the supplement. Each person another link in a metonymous signifying chain trying to go back back back to whatever you think the Real Thing is.

Recognizing your truest, fullest self in the mirror. Perfect and whole and safe. What’s the difference between identity and identification? THIS IS YOUR REFLECTION. A category confusion between subject and object, “I” and “me.”

ANYWAY,,,,, my ex and I are fighting again, my friend and I started a band, and I always want to cry after Literary Theory class.

Anyway, these days the important people in my life have been blending together in my mind. A few are different iterations of the same beauty. I feel lucky for that.

28

Tufts Observer

April 24, 2017

Prose

NOTES FROM HARRY DODGE TALK 1/5/17: They are my parents, but idealized? “metaphysical special sauce” Future anterior conditional Accident —> technology Perverse instantiation What happens when we misinterpret our own desires?

Error=subversion —> A.I.? tattooed on his knuckles: FLOW FORM YOU WILL HAVE BEEN FREE I went to go see Harry Dodge talk in L.A. in January and he told us that COLLISIONS explain everything. And this is why location precedes content. In other words, the WHERE creates the WHAT. Where you are determines who you are. I collide with what makes me me. Namely, you.

So much of his theory goes over my head but I read it anyway. We emailed back and forth a few times last month.

Still trying to figure out how I learned to love the people I do.

“YOU FOUND A WAY OUT OF NARRATIVE” <— beautiful love note! } still trying to figure this one out.

And HOW can I abandon words when they EXPRESS the INEXPRESSIBLE, INEXPRESSIBLY! Writing, says Derrida, summons absent beauties —> youyouyouyouyouyouyouyou Always worried I love people as signifiers for someone else. It goes on.

I have never been inside this room but I do feel held by it.

Spent all day in the MAB Lab (no windows) so when we stepped outside the rain took us by surprise.

Took off our shoes and sloshed through the streets. Made it to the Crane Room to check out the Apple jam show. It was a weird noise art band and there were only like 10 people there. We danced in the back of the room until our feet got tired. (wrote this down because I was so afraid to forget).

Wondering if words do more DOING or UNDOING and if they feel the same as holding.

But what does it mean to be held by a place?

ART BY EMMA PINSKY

April 24, 2017

Tufts Observer

29

Tufts Observer Since 1895 www.tuftsobserver.org observer@tufts.edu @tuftsobserver

please recycle