These past two weeks have reminded me of the place that professional sports hold in the American heart. Not a day has gone by in which Ray Rice, Adrian Peterson or Roger Goodell has not been mentioned. The actions and inactions of these men have single-handedly opened up the national conversation about ...
In yet another faux pas, Urban Outfitters recently released a vintage Kent State sweater that looks to have bloodstains on it. A seeming reference to the shooting of students by the National Guard during anti-Vietnam War protests in the 1970s, the design offended many people and began yet another short-lived ...
Brown has recently started an initiative called “Transformative Conversations.” The program aims to “provide opportunities and spaces to engage respectfully and thoughtfully across our differences." These conversations, however, will have a minimal effect on campus discourse at Brown, contradict ...
This weekend, we will continue the “Imagine 250+” celebration that began last March and will run through Commencement in May 2015. I look forward to joining students, faculty members, staff members and 1,500 visiting alums at faculty and alum panels, the football game where we will play — and ...
Amidst the jumble of hyped-up greetings and questions you are bombarded with when you return to campus after a long summer, the number one FAQ is inevitably this: “What is one exciting thing you did over the break?” While I was listening to all the adventurous and exhilarating episodes of working ...
If you haven’t heard of the Paleo diet by now, you probably live under a rock. Ironically, this would separate you from your Paleo-praising peers, who participate in a diet inspired by our Stone Age brethren but still read Paleo blogs on their MacBook Pros from the comfort of their solar-paneled homes. Paleo, ...
Hard-core students study the hard sciences but leave the humanities to the slackers. After all, anyone can cook up a philosophy paper, but try that approach on an orgo exam and you’ll learn firsthand that grade inflation at Brown isn’t all it’s chalked up to be. Or so goes the common rhetoric ...
I entered Petteruti Lounge Monday Night an hour earlier than the anticipated student-run panel on the Gaza War was said to start. I had my dinner in hand and was prepared to be wildly disenchanted by the panel, which I thought would essentially normalize a complex conflict into idle chitchat. As ...
Almost exactly 250 years ago today, a slave ship named Sally departed Providence for West Africa. Funded by Nicholas Brown and Company, the Sally sailed east, acquired the first of her 196 captives on Nov. 10, suppressed an uprising in August and reached the West Indies sometime during the fall of 1765. ...
As far as bioengineering goes, stem cells and the surrounding moral controversy have provoked a variety of particularly vehement media commentary. I suppose the conversation, thinly walking the bright line between technical scientific innovation and philosophical quandary, makes for an enigmatic hors ...
William Deresiewicz, author of “Excellent Sheep: The Miseducation of the American Elite and the Way to a Meaningful Life,” spoke on campus Sept. 15 about why we shouldn’t be at Brown. In his eyes, the school that most of us worship as our home and that fosters us as intellectuals is actually turning ...
Once upon a time, there was a poplar. It was a Lombardy poplar. And everyone loved it very much. People would come and take cuttings and plant it and play botanist. And in 1784, one man took a cutting, packed it for America and sailed. Then one day, in 1803, a man from Rhode Island came to Brown University ...
The Islamic State has been declared. The first caliphate since the fall of the Ottoman Empire a century ago, claiming to represent all Muslims worldwide, has been established. The speed with which the Islamic State — formerly known as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria — spread from Syria back ...
I have never played a game of baseball in my life. Not pee-wee, not Little League, not even an impromptu inning during recess. I was the boy who flat-out protested a game of catch with his father — something akin to the guilt inspiring Kevin Costner’s introspective journey in “Field of Dreams.” ...
Almost seven months ago, police arrested former Baltimore Ravens running back Ray Rice for domestic violence. Now, new information is still being released about the details of the case. At this point, video evidence has shown everyone what occurred. Footage depicts Janay Palmer, Rice’s fiancee at ...
We’re not done yet. And I don’t see the end coming anytime soon. Last Wednesday, in a prime-time speech addressing the nation, President Obama announced that he was opening a new chapter in the War on Terror and in our involvement in the Middle East. The new campaign would be limited to air strikes ...
Last week, Jason Ginsberg ’16 wrote an article on what he believes to be the misleading nature of the Middle East Studies Initiative’s programming (“Brown’s Middle East misnomer,” Sept. 11). To begin with, the central premise of his argument needs to be clarified, as the author himself seems ...
I love football. There is nothing better than grabbing a bunch of friends and watching a close NFL game on a Sunday afternoon in the fall. Rivalries are intense, traditions loom large, and the Super Bowl never ceases to disappoint. But the recent events surrounding Ray Rice’s battering of his fiancee ...
Before diving into my response to Peter Makhlouf’s ’16 column in last Monday’s Herald, “Where is my Birthright?” I’d like to address certain things. Firstly, as we are all products of Brown’s environment, I think it is within our culture to try and understand various different arguments. ...
During your summer months you have, no doubt, seen various postings and re-postings of the near-ubiquitous William Deresiewicz article in the New Republic, “Don’t send your kids to the Ivy League.” And you — as an Ivy League student yourself — almost certainly read it. And if you are like ...
Solutions by The State News
