Wesleyan in the News
Lauren Rubenstein
In this recurring feature in The Wesleyan Connection, we highlight some of the latest news stories about Wesleyan and our alumni.
Recent Wesleyan News
Sharon Belden Castonguay, director of the Gordon Career Center, offers career advice for young people just starting out.
2. The Times Literary Supplement: “Multiple Lives”
Hirsh Sawhney, assistant professor of English, coordinator of South Asian studies, explores the “complicated existence” of Mahatma Gandhi.
3. The Washington Post: “The Delight of Being Inconspicuous in a World That’s Always Watching Us”
President Michael Roth reviews a new book, How to Disappear: Notes on Invisibility in a Time of Transparency, by Akiko Busch.
4. The Middletown Press: “For Wesleyan Film Class Project, Students Learn About Themselves and Their Subjects”
For the past three years, students in a documentary film class have been encouraged to “get outside campus, in Middletown and other nearby areas, to build a relationship with their subjects during the filming process to more accurately portray them on screen.”
5. E-International Relations: “A Looming Peace for Afghanistan’s Long, Hard War?”
In this essay, Retired Officer Teaching Fellow Robert Cassidy greets news of “progress with Special Envoy Khalilzad’s recent talks with the Taliban and their Pakistani sponsors in Qatar” with some optimism. He writes, “However, there are also reasons for much caution and some alarm about the current progress and the potential for peace in Afghanistan since the deliberations and decisions about many previously intractable issues still require prudence and patience.”
Recent Alumni News
Atlantic staff writer Edward-Isaac Dovere writes about Colorado Senator Bennet’s tour through northeast Iowa: “Sitting under a framed ticket from an old Obama town-hall meeting, down in the basement of a farmhouse surrounded by snowy fields of corn and soybeans, I tell Michael Bennet that an Iowa Democrat who’d come to hear him speak compared him to pea soup. Good pea soup, hearty. But still pea soup, in a 2020 primary field that has sizzling fajitas and cake on the table.
“Some politicians might have been insulted. Bennet smiles. ‘There’s something to that,’ he says.”
2. Los Angeles Times: “Former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper [’74, MA ’80, Hon. ’10] Launches Presidential Bid, Touting Executive Experience”
Eli Stokols, a White House reporter based in the Los Angeles Times Washington, D.C., bureau. writes: “John Hickenlooper, the two-term former Democratic governor of Colorado, entered a crowded presidential field Monday, casting himself as an experienced executive with a record of progressive achievement who can deliver on his party’s chief objective: defeating President Trump.”
3. Washington Post—“FDA Commissioner Gottlieb [’94], Who Raised Alarms About Teen Vaping, Resigns”
“Food and Drug Commissioner Scott Gottlieb [’94], who used his post to tackle difficult public health issues from youth vaping to opioid addiction—surprising early skeptics worried about his drug industry ties—resigned Tuesday, effective in about a month. Gottlieb, who has been community weekly to Washington from his home in Connecticut, said he wants to spend more time with his family.” The article, written by Laurie McGinley, Lenny Bernstein, and Josh Dawsey, quotes Gottlieb as calling this “a very hard decision,” and “the best job I will ever have.”
4. The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education: “Seven Black Scholars in the U.S. from Foreign Nations Have Been Awarded Rhodes Scholarships”
”The Rhodes Trust has recently announced the 2019 cohort of Rhodes Scholars selected from Rhodes constituencies outside the United States. There are 16 international Rhodes Scholars who are attending or have recently graduated from American colleges and universities. Out of the 16 international scholars at American educational institutions who have been awarded Rhodes Scholarships, seven are Black.” Claudia Kahindi ’18, a development assistant at Legal Outreach in New York City, is one of these scholars; she is from Kenya. At Wesleyan she served on the Wesleyan Student Assembly and the board of the Patricelli Center for Social Entrepreneurship. A College of Social Studies major with an African Studies minor, she graduated with honors.
5. New York Times—“New York Review Names 2 Top Editors 5 Months After Ian Buruma’s Departure”
John Williams writes: “The New York Review of Books has installed two editors to lead the magazine after being without a top editor since the sudden departure of Ian Buruma in September. Rea Hederman, the publisher of the intellectual journal, announced Monday that Emily Greenhouse [’08], 32, and Gabriel Winslow-Yost, 33, have been named co-editors, and that Daniel Mendelsohn, a longtime contributor to the Review, will assume the newly created role of editor at large.”
6. Deadline Hollywood—“Sundance Institute Unveils 2019 Screenwriters Intensive Fellows”
“The Sundance Institute announced today the 11 screenwriters that have been selected to participate in their 7th annual Screenwriters Intensive in Los Angeles which is set to take place Feb. 28-March 1…. Justin Denis [’08] is a Nuyorican filmmaker from New York City’s Lower East Side. His first short film, 8 Million Miles From Hintahood, was an official selection at the 2018 Blackstar and Urbanworld Film Festivals, among others.” He will be working on his project, Beware of the Boomerang.
7. Hartford Courant: “From Abe to RBG to Oprah: Great and Famous Americans As Never Seen Before”
A poll on who were the greatest Americans “got painter Jac Lahav [’00] thinking about the nature and perception of greatness. The result of that musing is his own interpretation of ‘great Americans,’ an exhibit titled The Great Americans on view at Florence Griswold Museum in Old Lyme.
“‘Maybe the series should have a question mark at the end of it: The Great Americans?’ Lahav says. ‘It’s not so polemic that way. It starts a conversation about who are great Americans. Our perceptions change and grow, as to who people are and how we see their roles in history.’” The exhibit is open until May 12.
James Sims
Editorial Staff
Ziba Kashef