Not that the pre-med path isn’t worthwhile-it’s just not for everyone. Many students are not sure about what they want to do, and medicine just seems like a good idea. Doctors are well-paid and well-respected, and (so far at least) we can’t outsource our ophthalmologists to Bangalore.

Most frequently, these students say that their goal is to help people. However, there are many effective ways to help people besides medicine, and it takes more than this desire to succeed as a doctor. It’s not only that it’s difficult (which it is without a doubt)-you must also have more specific interests than being a useful member of society. In particular, you have to be able to enjoy (or at least tolerate) organic chemistry, genetics and physiology. Many students may find themselves better suited to be social workers, lawyers, teachers or economists.

But enough about the trials and tribulations of pre-medical studies. I’m here to encourage all of you, not just pre-meds, to be flexible, curious and open-minded about your courses and majors.

There are far more majors at Wash. U. than anyone can realistically hope to try out. Still, you should do your best to sample the ones that could interest you. There are surely at least a few majors which you are able to rule out right off the bat (many people are quite sure that they don’t want to major in math!), but other majors are more difficult to assess unless you’ve taken a course or two within them. So cast a wide net during your freshman year, and don’t worry about specializing this early in the game.

There is, however, more to the process of self-discovery than deliberately diversifying your choice of courses-your state of mind is important too. Even if you end up in the course that could change your life, the significance could be lost if you don’t give it a chance.

Some may think this isn’t so important-after all, if you end up in a course you love, shouldn’t it take a hold of you no matter what? It’s not always this simple, however.

I recently changed my major to philosophy during my eighth(!) semester (I’m going to be a second-year senior), even though I had taken some philosophy courses several semesters earlier. Why didn’t I declare philosophy sooner? It’s complicated, but a big part of the problem was that I was unwilling to seriously consider it. During one of those courses, the professor asked me why I wasn’t a philosophy major. Even though I didn’t have a good answer to him at the time (something like “I’m not smart enough”), it still took me until the second semester of my senior year to finally go for it.

Now, maybe I’m uniquely inept at knowing myself (ironic for a philosophy major), but I suspect that others have similar attitudes towards some majors, quite possibly because students are worried about their job prospects, and hold in their minds at all times the common skeptical query, “What are you going to do with a major in X?” These worries are generally misguided.

For most career paths, your major choice is unimportant. There are exceptions of course-it would be tough to be a theoretical physicist if you’ve taken only English courses-but most employers aren’t looking for any specific knowledge. They just want to find smart graduates who can communicate, write and think effectively, and most majors can be used to gain these skills. I know English majors who have gone into consulting, philosophy majors who have gone on to be Web programmers, and biology majors who have gone into business. So choose something you enjoy. The jobs will still be there, I promise.

Finally, don’t be afraid to change the major you’ve chosen. No one likes to feel like they’ve been wrong, but its better to find out sooner rather than later. And along the way, after changing your major three times, you might find that you’ve become a more educated person.

Bill Hoffman is a senior in the College of Arts & Sciences and a forum editor. He can be reached by e-mail at forum@studlife.com.

Now, far be it from me to defend McCain, who was, by nearly all accounts, incorrect. One reason that his comments are especially surprising is that Iran has actually helped us fight al-Qaida in the past, especially in the war in Afghanistan. Still, there is something disturbing about the way that many Westerners assume that all of Muslims’ behavior can be deduced from their religious identity.

This kind of thinking permeated the responses to McCain’s gaffe. Rather than simply pointing out that the groups in Iraq, which had been aided by Iran were not al-Qaida, many also excoriated McCain for daring to assume that Sunni and Shia Muslims could ever cooperate.

I certainly don’t deny that religion has a powerful influence on Middle-Eastern politics. Iran may find more natural alliances with Hezbollah in Lebanon or with the Shia majority in Iraq than it does with Saudi Arabia or Hamas in Palestine, but that does not mean they will not cooperate with Sunnis when the opportunity presents itself. Indeed, Iran has given financial aid to Hamas, a Sunni organization, despite their religious differences. Admittedly, this may be more because they share a common enemy in Israel than because of religious solidarity, but if Muslims cared as much about their religious differences as many seem to suppose, this sort of cooperation would not occur.

Nowhere is the religious explanation of conflict more frequently invoked than in commentary on the Iraq war. There is, of course, nothing wrong with pointing out that many of the fault lines in intra-Iraqi conflict are between Sunni and Shia Muslims (though as the Sunni/al-Qaida fighting in the Anbar province and the recent clashes between the Sadr army and the Maliki government show, this is not always the case). However, I do have a problem with how these conflicts are often explained. Many argue that the conflicts arise solely from differences in religious doctrine. The most irritating variant of this belief is the “Sunnis and Shias have hated each other and fought for a thousand years, so there’s not much we can do in Iraq” meme, the most prominent proponent of which may be the liberal commenter Bill Maher.

The problem I have with this belief is that they completely ignore historical contingencies that also help to explain conflicts between the Sunni and Shia in Iraq. Might it be useful to know that the British arbitrarily drew the borders that now enclose Iraq without taking into account the cultures, nationalities and religions of its inhabitants? How about the fact that wealth and power in Iraq have become, with the help of first the British and later Saddam Hussein, disproportionately concentrated in the hands of the Sunni minority? Or that the Shia majority faced terrible oppression at the hands of Saddam Hussein, leading them to band together and disdain their Sunni-dominated government?

The conflicts in Iraq need not be traced to an ancient enmity, because there is plenty of recent history to explain it. An arbitrarily-constructed country, in which the constant rule of monarchs and dictators never gave a glimmer of hope for the development of civil society, cannot settle its problems overnight. Had the population of Iraq been full of Christians, Jews or atheists, we would have observed similar results. We should not be content to condescendingly shrug our shoulders and say, “Oh well, they just hate each other’s religion” when, without our well-developed institutions, we would fare no better in the anarchy following Saddam Hussein’s removal.

Bill Hoffman is a senior in Arts & Sciences and a forum editor. He can be reached at forum@studlife.com.

The typical onscreen atheist is a broken-spirited cynic. She may have been a believer in the past, but an unbearable personal tragedy has darkened her outlook and shattered her faith.

Rarely will you see a non-believer on film who has arrived at an optimistic atheistic worldview through her own reason and agency. Instead, her atheistic beliefs are forced upon her by circumstances beyond her control.

As PZ Myers, a professor of biology and a prominent atheist says, “The acceptable atheist is the one who has faced so much tragedy, whose life has been damaged by cruel fate to such a degree that his declaration that there is no god is understandable.”

Myers wrote this after seeing “I Am Legend,” which features Will Smith as one of the few survivors of a plague that has wiped out most of humankind and turned all but a tiny fraction of the survivors into vicious, zombie-like monsters. When he later encounters another survivor who shares her belief in God with him, he angrily recounts these events and declares that God cannot exist.

A similar portrayal is found in Mel Gibson’s performance as an ex-priest in M. Night Shyamalan’s “Signs.” Gibson’s character loses his faith after his wife’s death in a car accident and her seemingly arbitrary dying words to him (“Swing away”).

Atheism, then, is like a deep wound, always unfortunate and never to be celebrated. Atheist characters are rarely found in movies, but when they are, they almost always conform to this stereotype.

Christians don’t fare much better. While not quite as narrowly pigeonholed as atheists are, none of the multiple stereotypes of Christians is very flattering. In movies and television, Christian characters are typically either stupid, crazy, humorless or some combination of the three.

Think of the uptight Angela from “The Office” or Ann Veal from “Arrested Development” (humorless), Freakshow (the guy with the hideous boils) from “Harold and Kumar” (crazy and possibly stupid) or Eli from the recent “There Will Be Blood” (totally insane). Don’t get me wrong-these are all great shows and movies, and the stereotypes they employ make for great entertainment and important plot developments. But they are stereotypes nonetheless.

Some might disagree with me that Christians are portrayed in this way. There are certainly counterexamples, but my argument is about a tendency, not a certainty, and the tendency is to conform to these stereotypes.

Others might say that the stereotypes are accurate-Christians really are stupid, crazy and humorless! To be sure, there are plenty of stupid, crazy and humorless Christians around, but to paint with such a broad brush is unfair and irrational.

A more subtle (and slightly more reasonable) variation of this view is that only some Christians behave this way, and it is these Christians who are being mocked in the examples I gave above. No need for a Christian to be offended then, unless he is himself stupid, crazy or humorless. Hopefully the way I have characterized this view should make its implausibility painfully obvious.

It is as absurd as claiming, as Rudy Giuliani did, that the normal majority of Muslims should realize that they are not the target of rants about “Islamofascism,” so they need not take offense. Both of these views tar entire groups with negative associations, and both are unacceptable.

I expect that some will accuse me of ignoring the plight of other more disadvantaged groups and wonder why I bother defending atheists, and especially Christians, who form a majority in this country. Let me be clear-of course it is much harder in America to be a black person, a gay person, a Muslim or a woman than it is to be a Christian. But most of you, enlightened college students that you are, already realize this, and I’m writing for Student Life, not USA Today.

And as Nicholas Kristof of the New York Times has pointed out, “[Christian evangelicals] constitute one of the few minorities that, on the American coasts or university campuses, it remains fashionable to mock.” This is consistent with my experience at Wash. U.

The beliefs and arguments of atheists and Christians are fair game for respectful criticism. But character traits are not beliefs and tarring them with negative stereotypes is unfair and unjustifiable.

Bill is a senior in Arts & Sciences and a forum editor. He can be reached by e-mail at forum@studlife.com.

While merely a thought experiment here at Wash. U., the issue is not at all imaginary for students at Harvard.

Recently, Harvard administrators decided to establish “women’s only” hours at one of Harvard’s three gyms in order to respect the beliefs of female Muslim students, who don’t wish to be seen in immodest workout clothes by men. Mondays from 3 to 5 p.m. and Tuesdays and Thursdays from 8 to 10 a.m. are now off-limits if you’ve got a Y chromosome.

Before examining the significance of this event, it is important to first point out what is not at issue.

First, what is important about this event is not that a university is making an effort to accommodate religious views and practices. No one is (or should be) upset by the presence of the Catholic Student Center or the provision of kosher meal plans at Wash. U. Furthermore, a moment’s thought about the scheduling of breaks for all universities makes it obvious that, right or wrong, Christianity is accorded a special status-our between-semester break does not occur during Passover, Yom Kippur or Ramadan.

Second, attempts to co-opt this incident into the larger “clash of civilizations” narrative about the West and Islam are nothing but sensationalistic.

As Harvard student Sahil K. Mahtani pointed out in the political magazine The New Republic, the administrators responsible for the policy acted largely independently of Muslim students, who were unaware of what was happening until it was nearly finalized.

Mahtani is right to say that “this clearly wasn’t Harvard ‘capitulating’ to Islam, considering how minimally Muslim students were involved in the decision.” The journalist and blogger Andrew Sullivan, with whom I often agree and respect, is therefore mistaken when he declares this to be an imposition of “sharia at Harvard.”

Sullivan does, however, raise an interesting point when he asks, “What’s next? Removing all gay men from the locker room?” This comparison fails in some respects-for one thing, this would be difficult to enforce, because sexual preference is less salient than sex or gender -but the principle is the same.

What is to be done if respecting the religious beliefs of one group requires an infringement on the freedoms of others? If religious freedom conflicts with equal treatment, something has to give.

Some might object to Sullivan’s comparison, pointing out that the Muslim women’s requests were reasonable, while a request by Christian or Muslim men to exclude gays from male locker rooms would be irrational and disrespectful.

I might agree with these people that the women have a better case here, but that isn’t really the point.

The desire of Muslim women to avoid exposing their hair and forearms to men is not based on reason, but religious and cultural beliefs (which is not a criticism by any means).

Once we start evaluating the validity of religious claims based on what we believe to be reasonable, religious pluralism is no longer achieved.

My aim is not to argue for or against such pluralism (though I believe it is a worthy goal), but rather to point out that we cannot resolve the issue by merely appealing to what we believe to be reasonable. In both of these cases, either someone is unfairly excluded or someone’s religious beliefs are not respected, and this conflict is not easy to resolve.

What do I think about the Harvard decision? I’m on the fence, but pragmatic concerns lead me to believe that it is probably all right when all is said and done.

There are two other gyms at Harvard, and men will only be excluded for six out of the 70 weekly hours of the gym’s operation.

However, pragmatism cannot resolve the philosophical issue, and I’m not sure that my position would allow me to object to Sullivan’s hypothetical.

Bill is a senior in Arts & Sciences and a Forum editor. He can be reached via e-mail at forum@studlife.com.

Waterboarding, the most controversial of the so-called “enhanced interrogation techniques” employed by the Bush administration, is often called “simulated drowning.” This is misleading, however. It is “simulated” in the sense that the victim will not actually “drown” (read: “die”). The goal of waterboarding is not to kill but to cause suffering, and the suffering induced by waterboarding is not simulated at all. I’ve never experienced the feeling of drowning, but I suspect that it is agonizing. If it weren’t, why would the government expect that it would produce information from suspected terrorists? Torture is thought to be so effective precisely because it is so unbearable. If waterboarding merely makes a person “uncomfortable,” as Deroy Murdock of the National Review has claimed, it is absurd to think that it would force a fanatical terrorist who does not fear death to betray his or her cause.

Some might say that even if waterboarding is torture, it has happened so rarely that it should not be a major concern. After all, CIA Director Michael Hayden has claimed that the government has only used waterboarding on three prisoners. If we assume Hayden is telling the truth, this objection has some merit. It is indeed a mistake to focus exclusively on waterboarding, because the U.S. has been complicit in many other forms of torture. When former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld approved a memorandum authorizing the forced standing of detainees, he glibly declared, “I stand for eight to 10 hours a day. Why is standing limited to four hours?” Perhaps it is because, in the words of torture expert Darius Rejali, “forced standing causes the ankles and feet to swell to twice their size within 24 hours. Moving becomes agonizing and large blisters develop. The heart rate increases, and some people faint. The kidneys eventually shut down.” Many are not even aware that U.S. personnel have tortured some detainees to death. I know of three: Habibullah and Dilawar at Bagram prison in Afghanistan and Manadel al-Jamadi at Abu Ghraib. This does not even take into account the “extraordinary rendition” of suspected terrorists to other countries, where they are tortured on our behalf.

Even when faced with this horrifying information, some might still insist that the war on terror demands that we torture. Without the information procured by torture, the argument goes, the U.S. is unacceptably vulnerable to terrorist attacks. The logic of this argument culminates in the “ticking time bomb” thought experiment often cited as a justification for torture. In this scenario, the authorities have captured a terrorist who has planted a bomb in a populated area. They somehow know that the explosion is imminent and that the suspect knows the bomb’s location (though for some reason, this knowledge will not help them find the bomb itself). The only option, then, is to torture the suspect. This situation, however, is sheer fantasy. It is not merely unlikely, but logically incoherent. Any attack which is imminent enough to justify the torture in the first place cannot be stopped by torture. Torture apologists take for granted that the torture will force the prisoner to confess, that the prisoner will not lie and that the information, if true, will allow the authorities to act quickly enough to prevent disaster. This type of scenario may occur weekly on episodes of “24,” but I have never heard anyone produce an example of it occurring in the real world.

I don’t believe that torture is an effective way to stop terrorism, but that’s almost beside the point. It’s depressing that our public debate over torture is now largely about the outcome of a consequentialist calculus. During World War II, America distributed posters which declared that torture was “the method of the enemy.” That we could not do the same today is a shocking and tragic state of affairs.

Bill is a senior in Arts & Sciences. He can be reached via e-mail at william.howard.hoffman.iii@gmail.com.

Even if we could grow enough, it would still be a bad idea. Corn is a notoriously inefficient energy source-growing it, transporting it and converting it into ethanol requires a great deal of energy consumption and carbon emissions. Ethanol from Brazilian sugarcane is a much better alternative, and ethanol now accounts for 30 percent of Brazilian automotive fuel. However, Americans are prevented from taking advantage of this clean-burning and efficient energy source due to a senseless 54 cent-per-gallon tariff on imported ethanol.

Using corn to produce ethanol has plenty of unintended costs as well. A recent study published in the prestigious journal Science has argued that corn ethanol production actually increases carbon emissions because it encourages the destruction of carbon fixing forests and grasslands as farmers clear them to grow more corn.

Although ethanol (if produced efficiently) will no doubt play a role in slowing the effects of global warming, those who focus on it are missing the forest for the trees. The problem of global warming can only be solved by reducing activity that emits carbon into the atmosphere, namely the burning of fossil fuels. The only way to reduce this activity is to make it more costly for individuals and corporations. And the only way to make it more costly is a carbon tax.

The most obvious manifestation of such a tax would be a significantly larger tax on gasoline used in automobiles. The benefits of such a tax would be enormous and not only to decrease carbon emissions. With the national debt soaring to over nine trillion dollars under the Bush administration, and the looming prospect of budget-busting entitlement spending increases, a tax on gasoline could serve as an important source of revenue. In addition, because a gas tax is a tax on consumption, it does not discourage saving the way income taxes do. Other benefits of a gas tax include reduced traffic congestion and, as suggested by Charles Courtemanche, a graduate student in economics here at Wash. U., a decrease in obesity due to increased bicycling and walking and less eating out at restaurants.

If a large enough gas tax were implemented, it could also lower the global price of oil, decreasing the revenues of the despotic governments of oil-producing nations such as Saudi Arabia and Venezuela. According to Thomas Friedman’s First Law of Petropolitics, there is a direct relationship between the price of oil and the ability of oil-rich dictators to remain in power. As long as these autocrats can count on large oil revenues, it is difficult to hold them accountable for their bad behavior. If the price of oil were to drop sufficiently, domestic unrest and the need to trade would leave Hugo Chavez and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in quite a pickle.

Some might object that a gas tax would be regressive and that it is better to just force automobile companies to make more fuel-efficient cars. If this is a concern, it would be easy to cut other taxes, like the regressive payroll tax, to help out those with lower incomes. Furthermore, requirements on automakers to make more fuel-efficient vehicles are very costly, and these costs will be passed onto consumers in the form of higher car prices and fewer jobs in the automotive industry.

One of the greatest challenges the world faces in the 21st century will be a reduction in carbon emissions. As the world’s richest nation and one of its worst emitters, the United States has an opportunity and an obligation to lead the fight against global warming. If we don’t pass a large carbon tax, it is unlikely that anyone else will.

Bill is a senior in Arts & Sciences. He can be reached via e-mail at william.howard.hoffman.iii@gmail.com.

Mr. Winograd claims that we should not be concerned with the firing of eight U.S. Attorneys by Gonzales’ Justice Department. After all, Bill Clinton fired all 93 U.S. Attorneys during his first term, so what’s wrong with Gonzales firing only eight? The problem with this argument is that it is standard practice for the president-elect to replace the appointed attorneys of the previous administration. According to David G. Savage of the Los Angeles Times, “historical data compiled by the Senate show the pattern going back to President Reagan. Reagan replaced 89 of the 93 U.S. Attorneys in his first two years in office. President Clinton had 89 new U.S. Attorneys in his first two years, and President Bush had 88 new U.S. Attorneys in his first two years.” However, it is not standard practice to fire U.S. attorneys once they have been appointed.

This is what happened in the case of Gonzales: all eight of the fired U.S. Attorneys were Bush appointments. Furthermore, many of the attorneys appear to have been fired not because they were incompetent, but because they were insufficiently loyal to the Republican Party. Paul Charlton, for example, was in the process of investigating Republican congressman Rick Renzi for corruption when he was dismissed. The childish “but Bill Clinton did it first” defense cannot withstand scrutiny.

Mr. Winograd does not even attempt to defend Gonzales’ complicity in illegal warrantless wiretapping-he only points out that Democrats have capitulated to the Bush administration by allowing this disastrous legislation to pass through Congress. This is a fantastic argument for explaining why congressional Democrats are failing in their civic duties, but it is hardly a compelling defense of Gonzales. Mr. Winograd writes, “A lot of Democrats must think that listening in on the conversations of terrorists is a good idea.” I think it is more likely that they are afraid of the common accusation that they are soft on terror. Furthermore, just because the cowardly congressional Democrats fail to outlaw warrantless wiretapping does not mean that all liberals suddenly have to agree with it. The argument against this power is simple: governments will abuse the power of unlimited surveillance of their citizens.

Finally, and most importantly, we have the issue of torture. Once again, Mr. Winograd attempts to dodge the issue by claiming that if waterboarding is so bad, then Democrats in Congress should pass a law to ban it. I’ve already shown that the behavior of the Democrats is irrelevant. More importantly, it is absurd to expect Congress to outlaw each specific act of torture. Under U.S. law, torture is defined as “an act committed by a person acting under the color of law specifically intended to inflict severe physical or mental pain or suffering.” Is it OK for U.S. military personnel to pull out the fingernails of detainees or administer painful electric shocks because these specific acts are not prohibited by this law? Based on his previous reasoning, it would be hard for Mr. Winograd to refute this. It is simply undeniable at this point that the U.S. has committed acts of torture (the head of the CIA recently admitted this) and that Gonzales has been one of the most egregious enablers.

Gonzales is not merely immoral; he is also hopelessly incompetent. The Senate hearings regarding the attorney firing scandal revealed to us a man so clueless that he couldn’t even remember why he had authorized his staff to fire the attorneys in the first place. In a single day of testimony, Gonzales insisted no fewer than 71 times that he could not recall what had happened. It’s a miracle that he remembered his name. And who would have ever thought they would live to see the day when the Attorney General of the United States would claim that the writ of habeas corpus is not protected by the Constitution, as Gonzales has?

Alberto “I don’t recall” Gonzales is an embarrassing disgrace to the Justice Department and the United States. That such an incompetent clown could occupy the most prestigious legal position in the country is a testament to the cronyism and indifference to the rule of law that has become the hallmark of the Bush administration. Protest away, “left-leaning organizations on campus.”

Bill is a senior in Arts & Sciences. He can be reached via e-mail at william.howard.hoffman.iii@gmail.com.