First Achebe Forum on Friday

December 9, 2009

The first Achebe Colloquium on Africa is this Friday in downtown Providence. Details about the event, which is free and open to the public, are available here. As the name suggests, the colloquium is being held this year in conjunction with the hiring of post-colonial Nigerian writer Chinua Achebe to the faculty of the Africana [...]

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Affirmative Action By Another Name

December 8, 2009

Early applications at Brown have risen 21 percent, The Brown Daily Herald reported last week. What could account for this upswing? According to the report, the Program in Liberal Medical Education garnered 35 percent more applicants while Bachelor of Science degrees gained 27 percent more. But these increases were dwarfed by those among minority groups: [...]

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Brown Makes Slavery Reparations Payments to Providence Schools

December 7, 2009

Nine years after the debate over slavery reparations rocked the campus, the verdict is in: Brown has decided in favor of reparations, thinly disguised as “social justice.” The University has given $30,000 to three local elementary schools, as the first installment of what The Providence Journal says is a multi-million dollar commitment. The gift was [...]

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Opening Up the Open Curriculum

December 6, 2009

The provost has asked professors to start uploading course syllabi onto courses.brown.edu, according to a Brown Daily Herald report last week. This announcement is in response to a recommendation from UCS as well as a column in The Herald earlier this semester.
This simple step will make the course selection process far easier for students. As [...]

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Banning Speakers: “Tolerance” versus free speech, take 622

December 5, 2009

See if this sounds familiar, from the New York Daily News earlier this week:
“At Princeton, she was to be the guest of a pro-Israel student group. But then, according to published reports, Muslim students took offense at her presence, a campus imam interceded with a campus rabbi and a leader of the sponsoring organization suddenly [...]

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Expanding the Open Curriculum

December 4, 2009

This Brown Daily Herald column probes one of the conundrums of the open curriculum: Why is it that with all the freedom students are given, many don’t end up getting to take what they really want? Here is his diagnosis of the problem:
During freshman year, and to a slightly lesser extent sophomore year, there’s nothing [...]

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Rethinking ROTC

December 3, 2009

This recent Brown Daily Herald Post- article re-examines the relationship between Brown and ROTC, which was kicked off campus amid all the anti-war fever of the Vietnam era. The author cuts to the heart of the issue: fundamentally, it isn’t about being pro-military or anti-war. It’s about giving students an opportunity to serve and learn. [...]

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A Vigil for Hate Crimes?

December 2, 2009

Following a spree of hate crimes on campus, the University of Rhode Island decided to hold a 15-minute silent vigil, to which we can only respond: seriously? Here is more from The Providence Journal:

The silent vigil was organized by Christina Knoll, a junior from New Jersey, who said she wanted to give students an [...]

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Forum Features Both Sides on Race Question

December 1, 2009

Occasionally, Brown gets it right. A great example is the Janus Forum, which features a series of Lincoln-Douglas style events between policy experts each year. The most recent Janus Forum, earlier this month, brought famed Harvard professor Lani Guinier and Jim Sleeper, author of Liberal Racism, together to answer the question “Does Race Matter?” Earlier [...]

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Brown Professor Responds to Criticism

November 30, 2009

During his grand welcome at Brown earlier this month, an audience member questioned Nigerian writer and new faculty member Chinua Achebe about his criticism of Joseph Conrad and his novel, Heart of Darkness, as being racist and anti-African. Achebe neither defended his view nor backed away from it.  Here is how The Brown Daily Herald [...]

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