12 items found for your search. If no results were found please broaden your search.
(01/21/16 4:15am)
Kimberlé Crenshaw, a professor of law at Columbia University and UCLA, filled Mead Chapel last Friday night as the keynote speaker for the grand opening of the Anderson Freeman Resource Center (AFC). Crenshaw’s speech was one of many events held over the weekend to celebrate the opening of the new intercultural center on Saturday, Jan. 16.
The opening of the AFC is the culmination of more than a year’s worth of effort by students and former Vice President of Affairs and Dean of the College Shirley Collado. The grand opening coincided with the College’s second Alumni of Color weekend.
Crenshaw is known for coining the term “intersectionality.” Her talk, titled “Intersectionality Matters: Why We Can’t Wait for a Racial Justice Agenda That Centers Us All” highlighted the multiple avenues through which racial and gender oppressions are experienced.
Crenshaw spoke to changes happening on college campuses nationwide. She said: “We are at a moment to transform our society. In some ways, racial discourse has reached a new low with the presidential candidates. But at the same time, we have new forms of social justice agitation that have sprung the conversation back to life.”
She also talked about the defenders of Justice Scalia’s recent comments on black students’ incompetency at elite institutions. “If it is not institutional factors, structural factors, historical factors, that explain inequality, then we are talking about racial differences without talking about racial power, creating a formula for individual and cultural responsibility,” she said. “Individuals in their social groups are responsible for their lack of participation in higher education, for the lack of access.”
Crenshaw then turned her focus to injustice for women and girls in society. She discussed how critical it is to reverse the cycle of invisibility for women and girls with initiatives such as President Obama’s “My Brother’s Keeper” which excludes girls and young women of color.
She asked the audience to identify the names of victims of police brutality, revealing that females were mostly unknown. “We don’t know who these girls are, because the media doesn’t tell you; our leaders don’t tell you,” she said.
Crenshaw concluded her speech with a plea for racial justice and inclusion. “I can’t think of a better time than now to create a new inheritance and a better legacy to foster creating inclusion for everyone. I hope we all lift up in our hearts the possibility of creating racial justice that fulfills the desperate needs of everyone and unfolds to embrace all of us,” she said.
The AFC will function as a center for the College community to come together to foster inclusion and education in support of students who have been “historically underrepresented or marginalized in U.S. higher education.”
“Meeting alumni who are doing amazing things makes me ask them how they survived. There was a joke at the keynote where Crenshaw was amazed that alumni of color actually came back, because I don’t know if I’d come back. But with the alumni here, and the center here, there is a sense of victory,” Jenn Ortega ’18 said.
The celebration continued on Saturday afternoon with a panel discussion titled “History of Diversity and Student Activism at Middlebury College.” Participants included Collado, Chief Diversity Officer Miguel Fernandez ’85, Leroy Nesbitt ’82, Alumni of Color and current students.
One of the first discussions addressed themes of collaboration. Nesbitt noted that student activism at the College has been important throughout its history. He said, “Every growth around issues of diversity have come from student activists. It was activism that created the Chellis House, the Jewish Center, Palana House and Coltrane. The spirit of collaboration also speaks to those faculty and administrators who were excited to see the student activism over the years so they could find ways to join in and support.
In 2010 Collado became the first ever woman of color to join the College’s administration. Last Jan. Collado left the College to work at Rutgers University- Newark but she has remained dedicated to efforts of diversity. She said, “We wanted to dream up what would it mean to move the work of diversity, equity, inclusion, social justice to the center of a place rather than leaving it at the margins of a campus. Harder questions of policy, are we really talking about all students?”
Some of Collado’s turning points included leading a working group of faculty who made the Center for the Comparative Study of Race and Ethnicity possible.
“We felt that we needed a space for something as simple as, but as loaded as, using the word race in the name of a building, in the name of a place at the institution in 2007,” Collado said. “The issue of intersectionality was a great concern because if we focused on race, some assumed everything else would get lost gender, class, ability. But we worked hard to have race in the title.”
Collado also spoke about inclusion programs on campus led by students such as the First Generation Peer Mentoring Program.
“What also emerged were white students who cared, vocal about their curriculum and faculty not being as diverse as the student body, alongside, and sometimes separate, from students of color,” she said.
“There was amazing visibility in that the administration realized this is no longer an issue for just students of color, and this is going to hit us in the face repeatedly because the demographics of this nation are changing,” she added.
The dedication was followed by a ribbon cutting by President Laurie Patton. Associate Professor of History William Hart then gave a talk titled “To ‘engraven her [Middlebury College] an imperishable name ... with honor’: Martin Henry Freeman 1849, Mary Annette Anderson 1899, and the Challenges of Early Diversity at Middlebury College” Anderson was the first woman of color to graduate from the College and Freeman was the first African American college president in U.S. history.
Fernandez finds the AFC playing an essential part in talking, processing and making a plan of action. “Some people say we shouldn’t have a multicultural center because it separates. But collaboration is possible in that center. We live in a racist society and we need to think of our institutions. Students who felt they had no space on campus opened our eyes.”
Roberto Lint Sagarena, director of the AFC, called it a day of celebration, and a day of awareness. “The center is only as powerful as the community,” he said.
(11/05/15 12:36am)
On Wednesday, Oct. 28, Chair of the Federal Election Commission (FEC) Ann Ravel spoke at Dana Auditorium to discuss campaign finance in the 2016 presidential election and the role of money in politics. Ravel was appointed to the FEC by President Barack Obama in 2013.
Created by Congress in 1975, the FEC is the agency charged with regulating the way political money is raised and accordingly spent. The commission discloses campaign finance information, enforces the provisions of the law, such as the limits and prohibitions on contributions and oversees the public funding of presidential elections.
“The FEC was set up not only to provide disclosure so people could be the enforcement [of political money] … but also [to allow] people to know whether or not they would support a particular candidate based on who was behind that candidate,” Ravel said.
Ravel said that part of the reason why the FEC has failed to rein in abuses in the 2016 presidential campaign is because of the stalemate among the agency’s six commissioners. “[The FEC] is kind of a frustrating place, particularly when you look at what is happening in our present 2016 campaign,” she said. According to estimates, this year’s campaign could generate a record $10 billion in spending.
Her evaluation is a reflection of the commissioners’ perpetual three-to-three ties along party lines, which often inhibits the agency from effectively enforcing laws.
In her talk Ravel noted that the Citizens United Supreme Court case drastically changed political spending in the 2012 presidential election by allowing corporations and unions to spend unlimited funds in support of political candidates. “A lot of people complain or say that the whole problem with the campaign finance system today is because of Citizens United,” Ravel said. “[The Citizens United case] is admittedly a convenient way of talking about some of the problems, and it has been used to rally a lot of people to feel anger about what’s happening in the campaign finance system.”
“It seems to me, though, that the real issue in campaign finance, and we see it in this election, isn’t the total amount of money contributed in this campaign ... because really it requires a lot of money to run campaigns ... but the problem that we have is where the money comes from, and the fact that a small slice of people in the country are giving all the money,” she said.
Another problem Ravel elaborated on was the lack of voter turnout. “The number of people who vote now in the country is at the lowest that it has ever been since World War II,” Ravel said. “A lot of this has to do with, I believe, a lack of trust. It has to do with the feeling that they don’t have a voice anyway. They don’t see the need to contribute because of super PACS, so they’re dropping out.”
Ravel called upon individuals to get involved. “Given how the situation is now in campaign finance, it is even more important for people to get involved,” she said. “Talk about [political finance] issues to [Congress] and make them realize how important they are to the policies that are being made. Because unless everyone else participates, politicians are only going to be answerable to this small group of people who are giving all the money and they are not going to be answerable to us.”
Chair of the Political Science Department Bert Johnson described Ravel as an outspoken commissioner in an agency with so few outspoken. “In reaching a broader audience, she is using the power that she doesn’t have in a deadlocked committee” Johnson said, referring to Ravel’s initiatives to getting information out publicly rather than waiting on the commission itself.
“Ravel is a realist but an optimist,” Holly Burke ’15.5 said.
“Money in politics is not the sexiest or coolest topic, but it should be,” said Nora Lenhard ’18, one of the key organizers of the event.
(10/14/15 10:06pm)
On Oct. 1 the Department of Public Safety released its annual Security and Fire Safety Report, highlighting several variances in crime rates on property under the College’s jurisdiction over the past three years.
The College is required to compile crime statistics in seven major categories to the federal government under the Clery Act – a 1990 protection law requiring all colleges and universities who receive federal funding to share information about crime on campus. These categories include sexual offensives, burglaries and alcohol violations. The report includes data from Public Safety, the Middlebury Police Department and law enforcement agencies in locations where Middlebury has a presence.
The most marked change since 2012 was the number of drug law violations. In 2012, the College witnessed 49 drug related crimes on Middlebury’s campus and 38 in residential facilities. However, after Vermont decriminalized possession of small amounts of marijuana in the summer of 2013, that number dropped to one violation total, and to two violations in 2014.
The report also showed significant variance in fires. After 2012 had a total of 12 fires, there was a dramatic drop to two fires in 2013. 2014 then saw seven fires.
Significant from this year’s finding also includes the statistics on sexual offenses. In accordance with the updated Violence Against Women Act, the 2015 report includes new categories and definitions of crimes related to sex offenses. As mandated by the Clery Act, sex offenses are defined as “any sexual act directed against another person, without the consent of the victim, including instances where the victim is incapable of giving consent. Sex offenses include rape, fondling, incest and statutory rape.”
In 2012, there were five accounts of sexual offenses, which increased to 17 the following year. In 2014 there were ten reported sex offenses, including nine rapes and one case of forced fondling. However, due to required reporting changes, comparing 2014 statistics to those from the two previous years might not necessarily be indicative of overall trends.
Such findings in years past have invoked change on campus to educate students, faculty and staff about ways to tackle such crime. For example, in 2013 the College secured a grant from the Department of Justice to enhance campus programs aimed at preventing sexual violence. In addition, numerous educational programs hosted by students and faculty exist on campus to promote awareness and prevention of domestic violence, dating violence, sexual assault and stalking. The Green Dot Violence Prevention Strategy launched this fall as a mandatory program for all incoming first-years and teaches bystander intervetion as a method to mediate potentially harmful situations.
Another initiative, MiddSafe, includes students, faculty and staff committed to providing a safe and confidential resource for peers in need of support and information around sexual assault, stalking, dating violence, domestic violence and other personal violations. The group’s goal is to function as a non-judgmental, compassionate and affective resource for individuals in emergency and non-crisis situations. Advocates provide an array of options to guide students toward medical, legal and emotional resources on local, state and national levels. MiddSafe advocates offer services such as a 24-hour hotline operated by volunteer student advocates.
“I’m happy to see the expansion and increased awareness of programs like MiddSafe and Green Dot, which I think are great steps towards eliminating power-based personal violence on campus” said Molly McShane ’16.5.
(01/21/15 7:49pm)
On Jan. 17, alumni from the Sunday Night Group (SNG) and 350.org held a ten-year anniversary reunion for the conference “What Works? New Strategies for a Melting Planet.” SNG is Middlebury’s first environmental activism group, and 350.org is the largest international campaign for climate action.
Ten years ago, this conference helped establish SNG. Three years later, SNG alumni and Scholar in Residence in Environmental Studies Bill McKibben co-founded 350.org. In celebration of the conference’s 10-year anniversary, alumni returned to campus to reflect on what has worked and to generate new ideas for the local and global climate movement .
Co-organizers Jeannie Bartlett ’15, Hannah Bristol ’14.5 and Teddy Smyth ’15 opened the event. Alumni shared their stories and held roundtable discussions.
Executive Director at 350.org May Boeve ’06.5 reflected on SNG’s founding in 2005.
“We were beginning to experiment on campus like lowering the thermostats in dorms and changing light bulbs. But then we marched in Montreal with 40,000 people, the largest climate demonstration that had ever happened up to that point. And we got this infusion of energy we brought back to Middlebury,” Boeve said.
“It’s one of the most wonderful feelings to be back here with all of you in this community and to remember that the relationship between Middlebury and the world beyond Middlebury is so alive,” she added.
According to Boeve, the capstone of this was the People’s Climate March in September, the largest to have ever occurred.
“If history is any guide, there will be other, larger marches because we need every large climate march we can get. We are in a race against time,” she said.
In addition to sharing their experiences, the alumni also discussed their thoughts on current events.
U.S. Policy Director at 350.org Jason Kowalski ’07 spoke about fighting the Keystone Pipeline.
“One cool thing coming back to Middlebury is seeing the carbon neutrality goal. That was a campaign we were pushing [when I was a student here]. Now it’s something the campus has bought into,” Kowalski said.
“Just last week I had 30 different senator staffers asking for talking points. We have produced a sea change with this campaign that is really similar with what’s happened with carbon neutrality on this campus. We started on the margin, and we’ve dragged the mainstream to our position. Bold ideas can have power in Washington, and that to me is what carbon neutrality and SNG is all about, and that to me is what the keystone campaign is all about. That’s what I’m really excited about.”
The manner in which language and psychology influence how people view climate change interested Hilary Platt ’12.5, an environmental policy and psychology major.
“A study found that the most effective strategy was to say, ‘Save energy in your home; your neighbors are saving energy too.’ This study led to [the founding of] a company called Opower, where I am working today…we are using behavioral science to impact the way people use power in their homes and reduce consumption. We saved enough energy to take all the homes in Hawaii and Alaska off the grid for a year. Together we’re making a big impact on the climate,” Platt said.
Alumni reflected on their efforts to have fair-trade coffee available in the dining halls by reducing food waste and saving money.
“The path to victory is often not what you expect. People are beginning to do that with climate change. People thought that we would get one big climate bill out of Congress and the world will be saved. Clearly that was never going to happen,” said Communications Director at 350.org Jamie Henn ’07.
He continued, “The solution is going to be diverse and come from different directions, it’s not one beautiful linear from problem to solution. The media doesn’t get it and politicians can’t track it, but I think that’s part of our generation. There’s innovation out there and people are beginning to realize that we can piece it together.”
He added: “What I’m excited about is how do you tell that story. It’s a harder story to tell but it’s a more exciting story and it will require more people telling it, not just one voice.”
Henn explained the mechanics of getting a message out.
“One of the things we’ve learned is that if you’ve set up in the right way, what you’re really doing is finding many different messengers who can then speak to their community in a way they already know how. We can expand the messenger base and find people that can speak to their own communities about climate change and provide resources to support them,” Henn said.
Greta Neubauer ’14.5 spoke on how the movement embodies a lot of historical privilege.
“One thing we’ve been thinking a lot about in the divestment movement is with Black Lives Matter happening, and how we can not just go to rallies and then come back to our own movement and do our work independently, but really see those [efforts] as being connected. We can be proud of being climate activists but also do the work of being allies,” Neubauer said.
A roundtable group suggested creating a map linking different movements such as social inequality and racial inequality with current activism and demonstrating it in a visual manner.
Faculty Director of the Center for Social Entrepreneurship (CSE) and Professor of Economics Jon Isham expressed his enthusiasm for seeing alumni interact with current students.
“What I can do as a faculty member is provide a certain kind of support just by encouraging them to try things and not get frustrated. But the best part of SNG is not only that its 100% student conceived, but it remains 100% student run. And that’s exactly one of the many reasons it’s so effective. I guarantee you some of these ideas will see fruition,” Isham said.
“Our goal was for current and past SNG students to meet each other and create these connections so we can continue to share ideas across generations and different places in our lives,” concluded Bartlett.
(11/05/14 6:05pm)
For two hours on Sunday, Nov. 2, President of the College Ronald D. Liebowitz, along with Dean of the College Shirley Collado, Dean of Students Katy Smith-Abbott, Director of Public Safety Lisa Burchard, Director of Health & Wellness Barbara McCall, and others held an open forum during which students and administrators engaged about social life on campus.
Liebowitz started the conversation by asking students, “What issues are problematic?” He stressed that this forum was not limited to the issue of tailgating and off campus party issues.
“I feel the frustration, and we do want to help to make this a better place,” Liebowitz began.
Students expressed a general discontent for party options on the weekends. Many commented that parties are shut down too quickly, and students flock to the one or two options that they have, creating crowds and noise complains.
Taylor Custer ’15, President of the SGA, was the first to speak about the party-monitoring program as an opportunity for common ground between students who want to throw parties and take ownership of social life and administrators who are worried about the safety of students and liability of underage drinking. The role is to support the party host and make sure regulations are being followed.
“This is a two-way street and students are not stepping up,” Liebowitz said. He went on to emphasize the potential for students in the Party Assistant program, where students have the opportunity to get paid the highest level of student work wages and play an active role in social life, while Public Safety would have a smaller role.
Many students admitted after the forum said they had no knowledge of the Party Assistants position, indicating a need for the administration to be clearer with students.
Ola Fadairo ’15 brought up this problem of disconnect and that students don’t know anything about how policy is made at the College.
Liebowitz quickly responded that the Task Force on Alcohol and Social Life was created to assess the relationship of alcohol to social life at Middlebury. Fadairo replied “that exact marketing and advertising was poor. We know exactly what the administration wants us to know about Carbon Neutrality by 2016, but other things such as how policies are made are kept in the dark.”
Collado also mentioned that though Public Safety often gets blamed for shutting down parties, the requests often come from students.
“Frequent calls from students asking public safety to shut down parties because they got out of hand. On the surface, Public Safety is the face of it, but it is often your peers who are requesting help,” she said.
Blake Shapskinsky ’15 spoke next and said, “Students don’t take advantage of groups, such as Community Council or SGA, where grievances have been discussed before.”
He continued, “People are busy, and the administration can’t wave a magic wand, there’s no ‘one-page-all-you-need-to-know’ memo, it’s more complex than that.”
Kelsey O’Day ’15, president of the InterHouse Council, added to this and commented on student’s lack of initiative to host parties.
Emily Alper ’15 stated that registering a party is a hassle largely because Public Safety shuts them down too quickly. She referenced a party that was shut down because of five underage drinkers. Both Burchard and Liebowitz justified Public Safety’s actions by citing incidents in the past where Middlebury Town Police would step in to these situations, leading to more severe consequences.
Emma Cree Gee ’16, co-president of Chromatic said, “We’ve really enjoyed the creative freedom in building the house, but there are structural and administrative ambiguities that have created a few challenges for us in getting up and running.”
Octavio Hingle-Webster ’17 shared this frustration. He claimed a “lack of administrative transparency regarding issues not included in this discussion but pertinent to our definitions of social life at Middlebury that deeply affect our senses of safety and belonging here.”
Hingle-Webster continued, “This discrepancy between the issues of the privileged and the issues of people often marginalized and targeted on this campus demonstrates a severe lack of administration response towards the well-being of all students.” Hingle-Webster was joined in his call to action by a group of other students who together demanded that the administration holds similar evening discussions among other things.
Liebowitz responded immediately after a great majority of the room stood in solidarity with Hingle-Webster’s call to action. Liebowitz said, “I make a pledge for each of us to continue conversation.”
Liebowitz also asked Hingle-Webster, “What is the administration doing to deconstruct the hierarchies within the ‘Middlebury identity’ that privilege white upper-class cisgendered heterosexual able-bodied identities by normalizing them, while tokenizing and exoticizing marginalized identities as the ‘other’?”
Jeremy Stratton-Smith ’17 had to clarify the meanings of tokenizing and exoticising during the forum, “which speaks to the very issue of unspoken bias towards white, upper-class, cisgendered, heterosexual, able-bodied, and US citizenship bearing identities in that there is not an awareness of the problematic power structure intrinsic to the idea that people of diverse backgrounds have the responsibility, on top of being full-time students, to educate their peers about their experience. This expectation puts an unjust amount of pressure on minority students here on campus because it asks them to become spokespeople for the identities they carry that are seen as different from the traditional Middlebury identity.”
Collado mentioned that the creation of the Intercultural Center will provide a place for students to discuss these issues and be provided support.
McCall responded to a question presented regarding why the administration had taken a reactive stance as opposed to preventative measures surrounding sexual violence and rape culture.
“Middlebury received a three-year grant of $272,528 from the Department of Justice to enhance the College’s efforts to prevent and respond to sexual violence on campus,” she stated.
With the Sexual Assault Oversight Committee and MiddSafe, Collado stated many actions are being taken to be proactive and preventative.
Andrew Snow ’15 spoke about his group of friends going to the administration to get funding to throw parties, and so far have all been successful.
“Student agency made that happen,” he stated.
Liebowitz was asked if there could be a party initiative fund for students to pull from, to which Liebowitz responded, “You got it. My commitment is there.”
Stratton-Smith and others in solidarity would like to hold President Liebowitz to his statement that more such forums will continue to happen, “particularly around the five additional questions that were presented to him around Middlebury identity, campus inclusivity, and the campus environmental commitment.”
(10/09/14 2:44am)
President of the College Ronald D. Liebowitz updated the College on the development of Environment, Social, and Governance (ESG) progress outlined in a mass email sent Sept. 23.
The development of stronger ESG principles for the investment portfolio, the creation of ESG guidelines to help monitor operations on campus and the pledge to increase the amount of the endowment directed toward ESG investments, including those focused on clean energy, green building projects, and other efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and benefit the environment were the steps outlined followed by the actions taken.
Jeannie Bartlett ’15, an advisory committee member of the Socially Responsible Investment Club (SRI) was “glad to see that Pres. Liebowitz felt the pressure of the accelerating national fossil fuel divestment movement. His statement was clearly a reaction to the preceding day’s incredible press coverage of fossil fuel divestment by Rockefeller Brothers and 50 other endowments, amounting to $4.2 billion, and the People’s Climate March in NYC.”
Sharing similar sentiments, Teddy Smyth ’15, a staunch advocate of divestment and a member of SRI and SNG (the Sunday Night Group) said, “President Liebowitz’s announcement was in direct response to the Rockefeller Brothers Fund ditching Investure to divest from fossil fuels. Middlebury could have joined with the Rockefellers and divested, but instead we got placating partial measures.”
Allie Cohen ’16.5, co-president of SRI, is pleased with the work the administration is doing to implement ESG factors. “Research and Investment in Sustainable Equity (RISE) has completely taken off, with a large group of students pitching sustainable and socially responsible companies to each other and voting on which ones they’d like to invest in with the portion of the endowment we manage. I think it’s great that the school has given students a tool to engage with the endowment in a meaningful way, and I know I have learned so much about investing and ESG from RISE.”
Nate Cleveland ’16.5 was excited to see the creation of RISE, a group that he helped form that now manages and invests $150,000 of the college’s endowment by considering ESG in the investment process. “I think that this group has been extremely successful in teaching people about ESG and how it can be implemented in real world situations.”
Cleveland was, however, surprised that there was almost no mention of divestment in the email from President Liebowitz. “In the statement from over a year ago, he said that divestment would continue to be considered, and I’m not sure that that has actually been the case,” he said.
Cohen shared Cleveland’s sentiments, because while acknowledging that the administration is making great progress in this field, felt important factors were left out. “Divestment is definitely one factor that I think should be continually addressed, but there are others that need consideration as well. One of these factors is transparency,” she said.
Cohen cited the new tailgate policy as an example. “Middlebury students are not always clear about how decision-making works in the administration and why certain decisions are made. It’s wonderful that the administration is taking strides to incorporate ESG principles into how the school is run, but shouldn’t students be able to know more details about this process than a summary in an email once a year?”
She added, “I think students would be much more conscientious in their dealings with the administration (and would have even more respect for the administration) if they were informed about how important decisions that directly affect them are made. SRI hopes to make this push for transparency a key part of our agenda this year, along with our desire to see divestment be continuously considered.”
Bartlett continued, “One great thing about the President’s email is that it introduced new students to some of what students and administrators have achieved in socially responsible investing in the past few years. Students on the Advisory Committee for Socially Responsible Investing continue to meet with administrators, and are advocating for fossil fuel divestment, transparency, and enhanced student involvement.”
Virginia Wiltshire-Gordon ’16, co-president of SRI, said “We see this statement as a very positive one. It not only shows how Middlebury is committed to aligning its investments and investment practices with the college’s stated values and mission but also shows that the administration is open to changes and an evolution to reflect the growing risks and opportunities for financial returns that are offered based on factors that have not traditionally been included in analysis, such as ESG factors. Looking forward, we are excited to improve the rigor and depth of ESG principles in our endowment, and to look at our investments not simply to bring “attention those companies that are practicing good ESG principles” but to look objectively for ESG risks in our portfolio as well as the opportunities.”
(09/17/14 10:48pm)
The third annual International Politics and Economics Symposium, “Crisis and Confusion: Responses to Global Economic Turbulence,” was held at Middlebury’s Rohatyn Center for Global Affairs last Friday.
Michael Bordo, a professor of Economics at Rugters University, spoke at the first panel of the day. The panel, titled, “Is the Crisis of 2007-2008 Unusual? An Historical Perspective” examined how the most recent financial crisis related to those in the past and, most importantly, the Great Depression.
Bordo explained, “Though the financial crisis of 2007-2008 is seen as the worst since the Great Depression of the 1930s, it was not as major an event in the 1930s or even the 1890s.”
He, critical of Federal Reserve, found that the policy lessons the Fed has taken from the 1930s crisis did not apply. He said, “The financial crisis of 2007-2008 was primarily a banking crisis, which involved both traditional banks and non-bank financial intermediaries, or shadow banks.”
He continued, “The traditional view of a banking crisis was a banking panic or a liquidity crisis. It involved a scramble by the public for means of payment, stock market crash that leads to fear that loans will become unavailable at any price. A banking crisis is a prolonged disturbance that is resolved by government agencies other than the lender of last resort.” Bordo concluded with policy lessons from history.
Professor of Economics Robert Prasch enjoyed the symposium due to its relevance and timeliness. “Professors at Middlebury know what I think, so it’s great to have this symposium with famous economists and political scientists, and to engage with them,” he said.
Josh Kruskal ’15 introduced Graciela Kaminsky, professor of Economics and International Affairs at George Washington University.
“It’s great that we do the symposium, it’s exciting to bring these speakers to campus and to get outside perspectives and discussion on campus,” said Kruskal, an International Politics and Economics major.
Kaminsky, whose work has been published in The Economist, lectured on the varieties of sovereign crises in Latin America from 1820-1931. “Sovereign crises have been the bread and butter of developing countries for centuries. Now they have come back with a vengeance with developed countries who are in the midst of a sovereign crisis,” she said.
She added, “Crises occur in the midst of vulnerabilities in the periphery, but with a healthy financial center. Crises in the financial center are rare disasters and there is a need to examine longer episodes of financial globalization.”
Kaminsky examined the first episode of financial globalization from 1820-1931.
“There are varieties of crises: systemic crisis and idiosyncratic defaults, defaults with large and small debt reduction rates, short and long default spells. Overall, the crises occur in bad times. But the estimations indicate that many crises occur because of problems in the financial center that led to international liquidity crunches and of course to a shadow in the periphery. Increase in international liquidity doesn’t solve insolvency, large debt reduction does,” Kaminsky said.
Sanela Smaka ’15 introduced Matthias Matthijs, assistant professor of International Political Economy at the John Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies for a lecture titled: “Do Washington and Berlin Handle Economic Meltdowns Differently? Ideas and Leadership During Times of Crisis.”
In the lecture, Matthijs explained, “The global financial crisis and the Euro crisis, though similar in magnitude and potential for international conflagration, had quite different outcomes. The global financial crisis shored up relatively quickly over the course of 2009, while the Euro crisis sputtered on.”
Matthijs concluded, “I love the title of this symposium, Crisis and Confusion, because political scientists cannot predict revolutions just as economists only predicted 2/7 of the last crises.”
“This symposium is really reflective of the International Politics and Economics department,” said Smaka. “We covered the United States, Latin America and Europe with two economists and a political scientist, and came up with a dialogue, which is what combines IPE and why I love the department.”
(03/19/14 11:47pm)
Two Iowa State University professors gave lectures as candidates for a senior faculty position in the College’s burgeoning Food Studies program on March 18.
“We’re advertising for one position, but on the basis of this visit, we found a way to broaden the search to accommodate potentially two positions,” Vice President for Academic Affairs Tim Spears said. “We understand that this is an unusual and important enough search that we want to be accommodating to different sorts of applications.”
The lectures of Dr. Laura Merrick from the Department of Agronomy and Dr. Matthew Liebman, the Henry A. Wallace Endowed Chair in Sustainable Agriculture highlight the College’s intent to establish an integrated Food Studies program.
The Educational Affairs Committee has been working to establish a Food Studies minor since the fall of 2012. The committee then decided to hire a scientist who has expertise in the area of sustainable agriculture who could also help create the curriculum in Food Studies. While there are courses on Food Studies being taught, there is a lack of expertise in this area at the College.
“This will likely be a free-standing position and it won’t be officially tied to a particular department necessarily,” Spears said.
“We’re also conscious of the fact that the position will be closely tied to one or more of the science departments and Environmental Studies. We want to think critically about where to physically and figuratively position the individual who will fill this position,” he added.
The interest for a Food Studies program has come from a number of different directions and reflects the varying academic disciplines that might eventually comprise the Food Studies program.
“One of the things that we’ve discovered about Food Studies is that the entryway into the study of food can come from a number of areas,” Spears said. “At this point we’re hiring a scientist, but there are other ways in which one could think about Food Studies. You can think about it from a geographical perspective, you can come at it from an economic point of view, and you can come at it from cultural or historical point of view.”
In response to growing interest in Food Studies, the College has also developed FoodWorks, “Middlebury’s signature internship program for students interested in local food and sustainable development.” FoodWorks places students in paid internships in Louisville, Kentucky and Vermont that focus on local food economy. Participants also engage in a curriculum that includes sustainable agriculture, nutrition, food security, culture, and traditions.
“There are educational outcomes built into the program, which provide a nice connection back to the curriculum we’re trying to develop,” Spears said. “When you work on agriculture, you’re already outside the classroom, literally, doing work out on the land, and there’s a natural bridge between laboratory classrooms and the world outside the classroom.”
Spears also noted that the College hopes to craft the Food Studies program in a way that maintains a global orientation.
“We have been identifying possibilities for students to study food abroad. That means going through our study abroad programs and seeing what kind of curricular opportunities there are at our partner institutions—institutions where Middlebury students are already studying, for students to study food, agriculture and other related subjects.”
The College is now a member of the Vermont Higher Education Food Systems Consortium.
Spears indicated that the consortium comes together in order to help the local economy grow and to establish jobs in the Vermont agricultural economy.
“It’s very clearly focused on economic issues, but to get to those economic issues, this group is focusing on ways in which it can collaborate, and make use of their educational resources together, to do work together,” Spears said. “It’s a fascinating and exciting opportunity for all these Vermont colleges and universities to connect with one another.”
Spears noted that at the crux of the Food Studies program is a desire to balance growing interest in locally-sourced food with the necessity of feeding the hungry.
“There’s a tension between the desire to eat locally grown food, to grow food and vegetables in a particular kind of way, to pay attention to the environmental and political considerations … But there’s this other huge global issue, which has to do with trying to meet the [food and nutritional] needs of the world. That’s a challenge that I think Middlebury students need to learn more about. There are debates and such, but there ought to be space within our curriculum, venues on campus, where these kinds of issues can be discussed.”
(01/23/14 1:49am)
At the December 2013 Board of Trustees meeting, Professor of Philosophy Lorraine Besser-Jones, Professor of Economics Nicholas Muller, Professor of French William Poulin-Deltour, and Professor of Political Science Amy Yuen were promoted from assistant professors to the rank of associate professor without limit of tenure.
Tenure is granted to professors in tenure track positions after a series of forums and interviews by the faculty review committee. While candidates are evaluated primarily on performance reviews and research published while at the College, the process of granting tenure can remain flexible.
Poulin-Deltour, who has been a member of the College faculty since 2005, followed a non-traditional path to tenure after delaying the process after a year while he took a leave of absence due to throat cancer. The College then gave him an additional year before being reviewed for tenure.
“Because I had been here that extra year, I was starting to feel part of the furniture, as they say,” Poulin-Deltour said. “Having the tenure gives a feeling of rootedness. You’re obviously more willing to invest in the institution because the institution has taken this huge investment in you.”
Besser-Jones echoed Poulin-Deltour’s sentiments on the value of tenure.
“The importance of getting tenure is not only having job security, but also being included,” Besser-Jones said. “Being firmly part of the Middlebury community is why I’m so happy to have tenure. The community, the connection, between faculty and student and between faculty, is strong and cohesive, and I hadn’t found that at other places.”
Besser-Jones also noted that tenure is somewhat of a byproduct of her job, and not necessarily her primary motivation.
“If I were doing things for the sake of tenure I think I would be less successful,” Besser-Jones said. “I’m very motivated and receptive to making changes, and I am continually looking at how classes can go better. I’ve been successful from a research perspective largely because I’ve been willing to put myself out there, and I haven’t hesitated to put my work out there.”
Muller noted that the caliber of students and faculty — active people and active minds interested in talking about ideas both new and old — are what makes him excited to stay at the College.
With regards to research — tenured professors’ responsibility in addition to teaching — tenure can open doors.
“It’s supposed to protect things like academic freedom, so doing research that can be controversial, for example, but useful,” Yuen said. “But I think more else, especially in an institution like this, it also feels like you are accepted in an institution that values what you do.”
While camaraderie among faculty can be counted as a benefit of tenure, the practice and the job security it provides comes with the risk of abuse, according to Yuen.
“When people are granted tenure, most grow through the process and recognize their responsibilities, but some can get distracted and slow down in research,” Yuen said, noting that research and teaching responsibilities offer ample structure and can work to “keep faculty engaged with students, to keep them engaged with research and to keep them engaged with the institution.”
(11/06/13 11:12pm)
TEDxMiddlebury event takes the mic this weekend on Saturday, Nov. 9, featuring 11 speakers presenting ideas and stories on the subject of “Research, Rethink, Rebuild.” The annual event will again feature a student speaker, and will be introducing a new tradition of a faculty speaker.
Amanda Wiggans ’14.5, one of seven student organizers of TEDxMiddlebury, said that choosing speakers is the most challenging element of the event.
“We try to bring a wide variety from local Vermonters to people who might not be brought to campus otherwise, from all different fields,” Wiggans said. “This year’s lineup is the most diverse lineup that we’ve had. We had complaints in the past so this year we made a diligent effort to get people from the food industry, a slam poet, scientists, social entrepreneurs. It’s diverse and very awesome.”
Professor of Environmental and Biosphere Studies Steve Trombulak will be the first faculty member to speak at TEDxMiddlebury.
“We wanted to make an effort to bring community members into the event,” Wiggans said. “Trombulak is a biology professor, and I’m not in any way involved with the biology department, but I would love to hear him speak. It’s a great way to not only get faculty engaged with the program, but to also give students the idea that you don’t have to bring speakers from halfway across the country to give good talks.”
Trombulak cited TED talks as a major pathway for the exchange of ideas on a wide array of topics. He plans to speak about standards of higher education in his own TED talk.
“Everyone needs to see education as being about much more than preparing for a job market or becoming a well-rounded citizen,” he said. “Education is the platform on which people learn how to become effect agents for positive social transformation, but that won’t happen unless everyone involved in the educational enterprise — student, teacher, family and institution — recognizes the importance of nurturing in each person the skills for leadership and creativity.”
A student at the College will also be speaking at the event, a tradition which began last year. Applicants pitched their talk to a panel of judges that included former Vermont Governor Jim Douglas, Dean of Faculty Andi Lloyd and Director of the Project on Innovation in the Liberal Arts Elizabeth Robinson.
Alec MacMillen ’14 was chosen as this year’s student speaker.
“It was all on a whim,” he said. “I read the book ‘Quiet’ by Susan Cain this past summer, a book about introversion, extroversion, science of personality and social norms and how to interact with each other. I never had the words to describe the way that I am, but watching Susan Cain’s TED talk on introversion and how introverts draw energy from having a very rich internal life and spending time on their own really resonated with me. I started to think of this TED talk because I felt like I could add on her ideas by applying them to the setting of college.”
MacMillen’s main idea is to first define introverts and extroverts because “people throw those words around without knowing what they really mean.”
“The basic distinctions are that introverts generate energy by turning inwards — spending time alone, thinking, processing, reading, writing — all solitary activities where introverts tend to feel more alive, whereas extroverts generate energy from being outwardly focused engaged with the world around them, so engaged with other people, new experiences, new places, new things, where they feel most alive,” MacMillen said.
MacMillen will also be talking about the extrovert ideal.
“I’ll be particularly applying it to undergraduate colleges, [which] celebrates the value of extroversion while undervaluing introversion,” he explained. “If you ask people if they would rather be an extrovert or an introvert, most people would say extrovert because we have this idea that having lots of friends and always being busy and engaged is what will make you happy.”
MacMillen will touch upon the ways in which college life, such as class discussions, parties, job hunting and athletic events, cater toward extroverts.
“Living in that place makes introverts feel that there’s something wrong with them or that they have to change themselves in order to fit in or be happy, and it’s a shame, because a lot of time people will sacrifice their natural temperament,” MacMillen said. “I just hope it makes people aware of forces at work around us on a daily basis, and help be more understanding of people who are different from them.”
TEDxMiddlebury will be held on Nov. 9 in the Concert Hall of the Mahaney Center for the Arts from 10 a.m. - 4 p.m. Tickets are available at go/boxoffice. All-audience discussions will take place following each speaker.
[CORRECTION: An earlier version of this article, as well as that in print, stated that TEDx will be held from 9-11 a.m. on Nov. 9. This is incorrect; it will be held from 10 a.m. - 4 p.m. Further, the audience will participate in discussions after each speaker, not at the "conclusion of the event." We apologize for these errors.]
(09/26/13 1:17am)
The College and the Monterey Institute of International Studies (MIIS) are teaming up for the first time to co-host the annual Clifford Symposium.
This year’s symposium, titled “Translation in a Global Community: Theory and Practice,” will run from Sept. 24 to Sept. 28, and will feature faculty from both the College and MIIS as well as academics from a variety of other organizations and institutions.
The Clifford Symposium is named after College Professor of History Emeritus Nicholas R. Clifford who in his many years as a member of the faculty and administration refined analytical inquiry. The topic varies each year.
“This year’s topic came about because Middlebury’s language curriculum does not generally emphasize translation, though it’s tied to Monterey, which is one of the foremost institutions in the country for teaching translation and interpreting,” said Kawashima Professor of Japanese Studies Stephen Snyder.
Snyder also emphasized that input from both institutions will contribute to the diversity of discussion at the symposium. College faculty will focus on translation of literature or on translation theory, whereas MIIS faculty will focus on the professional application of technical translation skills.
On Sept. 26, the Clifford Symposium will kick off with a Keynote Address by David Bellos, Director of Translation and Intercultural Communication at Princeton University. Bellos wrote Is That a Fish in Your Ear? Translation and the Meaning of Everything, the cover of which is featured on posters around campus.
Normally the Clifford Symposium is a two-day event, but pre-activities were held earlier this week before the heart of the program begins the afternoon of Sept. 26, with the keynote address by Bellos.
Translingual Magazine organized a translation trivia game in Crossroads on Tuesday night, and playwright David Edgar gave a lecture on Wednesday on the use of language in his play. Panels and presentations will run from tonight through Saturday afternoon.
“President Liebowitz and Monterey Institute of International Studies President Sunder Ramaswamy have signed onto this notion of a joint conference with the faculties working together to plan this, having their support,” said Snyder.
Snyder noted that the symposium could increase student awareness of opportunities in the translation field.
“We are under the impression that Middlebury College students in language programs probably don’t know as much about everything done at Monterey, because of the way we teach languages, it’s possible that students don’t know the range of possibilities for actually using their languages when they graduate from Middlebury. Taking them out in the real world and translating and interpreting are one of the most immediate ways that can be done.”
On Friday morning, there will be a simultaneous-interpreting booth on campus, featuring Monterey interpretation experts.
“Translation studies is a very important field now because globalization studies dominate so much of the social sciences in political science, economics, anthropology, everyone is thinking about global relations,” said Snyder. “Translation is one of the fundamental underpinnings of that, to think about how languages are learned, to think about who provides communication between cultural spheres.”
These events will underscore the theme of the symposium, which is to “make visible this invisible practice of translation.”
(04/10/13 4:29pm)
On Saturday April 13, UMOJA, Middlebury’s African Society, will host the Amka Africa Conference in collaboration with the Middlebury Center for Social Entrepreneurship (MCSE) to discuss how business and youth entrepreneurship are changing the face of commerce within Africa and beyond its borders.
President of the UMOJA Aminata Deme ’15, a native of Senegal, Africa, explained the group’s motivation to host the event.
“We see a change in the rhetoric about Africa,” she said. “Recently business gurus and economists and entrepreneurs are talking about Africa as [the] next big thing, the next big boom, the next Asia — or the next frontier. We want Middlebury students to be part of that, we want them to be aware of that, [and we want them] to see the dynamic changes occurring in Africa,” she said.
“Amka Africa means Awake Africa in Swahili,” she said. “With this conference we wanted to highlight the growth and potential of the continent.”
Deme pointed to the College’s relatively high number of international students, and explained that she hoped that the event would expose a greater number of students to the culture of Africa. She explained that the event will include a fashion show, artistic performances, a gala and an after party co-hosted by Distinguished Men of Color (DMC).
The conference will begin with an opening note by a young entrepreneur, innovator and scientist, David Moinina Sengeh. “The many things he does in Africa, such as creating prosthetic limbs for paralyzed people in Sierra Leone, will be an inspiration for the youth. We felt it was important to have a conference that doesn’t just state facts. We also want this to be an opportunity for youth to take a proactive stance,” Deme said.
The conference will continue with a talk by Assistant Professor of Political Science Nadia Horning to “enlighten and delve into the topic of corruption and unethical leaders,” according to Deme.
“Africa is a dynamic continent, and it is important to look at it as it is, not as how we think it should be,” said Horning. “It is refreshing to see that UMOJA students have decided to highlight that the continent is one of hope and positive change, at least from the perspective of the educated youth. The initiative was not born out of frustration and despair, but simply from the desire to present the continent as it is at present: booming in all sorts of ways.”
Fred Swaniker, the CEO and co-founder of African Leadership Academy, will also participate in the conference through video messages.
“His story is the best way to go about changing Africa to educate its youth. He created a high school to unite Africa,” said Deme.
As the conference nears, Middlebury students have shown excitement for the upcoming events.
“I’m interested in entrepreneurship and finding creative solutions to community issues,” said Erin Reid ’16, a student who intends to attend the conference. “I love hearing about the amazing things that people are doing around the world. It always makes me feel like I should be doing more with my life, but also inspires me to do more around me! Also, [Fred Swaniker] is dope and I’d love to hear what he has to say! I visited the school he founded, African Leadership Academy, last year and I think the school is doing some really cool things.”
According to Deme, the primary goal of the conference is for participants to enjoy their experience while continuing to broaden their understanding of the changes occurring in Africa.
“If people want to know what kind of role as a global community they can have in changing Africa in a positive way, their answer will be at the Amka Africa Conference 2013.”
More information on the details of this event can be found at Middleburyafrica.org.