Lauren RubensteinPresident Michael Roth reviewed New York Times columnist Frank Bruni's new book, Where You Go Is Not Who You'll Be: An Antidote to the College Admissions Mania for The Washington Post. Though Bruni directs his thoughts specifically to the young men and women competing to gain admission to Ivy League and other highly competitive colleges and universities, Roth sees his message as speaking "more broadly to the culture of manufactured meritocracy--a culture of rankings and branding, of recruiting and rejection." "Bruni tackles the roots of this lesson with example after example of successful, accomplished and happy people whose college experiences were far from the elite halls of Stanford…
Writing in The Daily Beast, President Michael Roth reviewed In Defense of a Liberal Education by Fareed Zakaria, a refreshing change from the scores of books published in recent years decrying the state of higher education. Roth writes: Into this atmosphere of cynicism and spleen, Fareed Zakaria offers a compact, effective essay on the importance of a broad, contextual education. Cheerfully out of step with the strident critics of higher ed, In Defense of a Liberal Education is a reminder that American colleges and universities are a powerful resource that has allowed so many young people to learn about themselves and their ability to have a positive impact…
When the Nobel Prize-winning German writer Günter Grass died at age 87 this week, The Wall Street Journal turned to Krishna Winston, his translator, for perspective on his life. According to the Journal's obituary, Grass was Germany's best-known contemporary writer "who explored the country's postwar guilt and in 2006 admitted to serving in one of the Nazis' most notorious Nazi military units." Winston remembered Grass as "a gregarious man who loved cooking and invited his children to sit in on meetings with translators that often lasted several days..." (more…)
MarketWatch columnist Howard Gold turned to Professor of Economics Richard Grossman for his take on reforming the Fed. Gold took issue with calls from presidential candidate Sen. Rand Paul and others to "audit the Fed," but instead advocated for term limits for Fed chair-persons and changes in the pivotal Federal Reserve Bank of New York. On the matter of term limits for the Fed chair, Grossman spoke of former chairman Alan Greenspan, who stuck around nearly 19 years. (more…)
#THISISWHY Lily Herman '16, co-founder of The Prospect website on college admissions and college life, has been named one of Glamour magazine's Top 10 College Women of 2015. Herman, of Jacksonville, Fla., told Glamour that while her mom helped her to choose the right school, many first-generation and international students don't have the same resources. (more…)
Psyche Loui, assistant professor of psychology, assistant professor of neuroscience and behavior, discussed the phenomenon of tone-deafness on Radio Health Journal. Millions people go through life thinking they're hopelessly tone-deaf when they are not--they can distinguish between correct and incorrect notes, yet they're just unable to sing them properly. Ironically, those who are truly tone-deaf cannot hear such distinctions, and thus may be unaware of their condition. "You'll see some people who don't really know that they're tone-deaf," said Loui. Identifying tone-deafness can be done by having people listen to, rather than sing, music. Many people who are tone-deaf don't enjoy music. "Some people think it all sounds the same,…
Professor of Theater Ron Jenkins wrote in The Jakarta Post about recent performances of Rateb Meuseukat, a form of Acehnese dance from Indonesia, at Wesleyan and a few other New England colleges, which gave American audiences "an eye-opening introduction to an aspect of the Muslim world that is rarely seen in the West." The group "Tari Aceh" performed at Wesleyan's Crowell Concert Hall on Feb. 27. The day after the performance, some audience members returned for a workshop in which they learned how to do the movements they had seen onstage. Jenkins writes: Images of Muslim women in Western media often focus on the restrictive nature of…
Bryan Stascavage '18On March 12, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) aired an episode of The Nature of Things called "Safe Haven for Chimps" in which host David Suzuki and his crew follow the efforts of the staff at Chimp Haven in Louisiana. The compound is a place where chimps, who have been used in biomedical research at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), are retired and allowed to live our their lives in a sanctuary. Lori Gruen, chair and professor of philosophy, professor of environmental studies, professor of feminist gender and sexuality studies, first appears about 10 minutes into the episode. She speaks about…
Gina Athena Ulysse, associate professor of anthropology, wrote a tribute on the Tikkun Daily Blog to Karen McCarthy Brown, professor emerita of anthropology and sociology of religion at Drew University, who passed away earlier this month. "Reading Karen’s Mama Lola kept me in grad school. Vodou got a human face from her," Ulysses posted on Facebook after hearing news of Brown's death. She goes on to explain, "Mama Lola was published by the University of California Press in 1991. Based on extensive fieldwork conducted over a decade, Brown became an initiate of her subject, as a condition to deeper research and writing…
The Jewish Daily Forward has published an in-depth interview with Assistant Professor of Art Sasha Rudensky '01. The conversation ranges from her immigration to the U.S. from Moscow at age 9 to her start as an artist to her latest photography project, Eastern Eve. Hannah Rubin '13, a former student of Rudensky, wrote the story as part of a larger series she's working on that spotlights Jewish female artists. Rubin describes Rudensky's work: "She uses her photography as a means of personally investigating the contradictions and continuities of contemporary Russian culture. Though her work defies being labeled as 'feminine,' it culls from a sensibility that is distinctly gentle and yet…
Kari Weil, the University Professor of Letters, was a guest on WNPR's "The Faith Middleton Show" to discuss how our evolving understanding of animals should affect how we treat them personally and professionally. They began by discussing the announcement that Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey would stop using elephants in their circus performances within three years. "I think there is a fine line between use and abuse," said Weil."I don't think all use is abuse. I think animals depend on us, we depend on them. We can use certain animals for certain things, but when we're down to exploitive techniques like bull hooks…
President Michael Roth reviewed The End of College by Kevin Carey for The Atlantic. Though it might be tempting to dismiss the book as just another doomsday declaration about higher education, writes Roth, Carey's "call for more accessible student-centered universities is a powerful response to some of the real problems that beset these institutions today." Carey visits a handful of colleges and universities, including some--Harvard, Stanford, MIT--that admit fewer than 10 percent of applicants. "This dynamic of exclusivity is, Carey contends, about to change. Big time," writes Roth. Carey signs up for an online biology class from MIT, and proudly reports his test scores.…