Professor Katz alone in criticism of MaciasDear Editor: You should receive many letters protesting Professor Jonathan Katz’s opinion headlined “Dean Macias wrong choice for provost” (Student Life, April 9, 2008). Professor Katz claims to speak for “the faculty” in calling Dean Macias a “bullying autocrat” who has done Washington University “much damage.
The American gloom about the economy is misplaced: The greatest danger our country faces is not a recession, but the Bush administration’s zealous desire to extend our foray in the Middle East, out of Baghdad and into Tehran. If our government, or one we support, attacks Iran, the little international respect we still have will all but vanish along with any hope for regional stability.
If the financial turmoil of the past few months taught us anything, it is this: government matters. In a strong rebuke to libertarian economists and ideologues on the right, our government has demonstrated its role as the foundation of all-market action. Whereas rich bankers and their political puppets clamored for government withdrawal from economic life-”Privatization! No regulation! No taxes!”-these same figures now find themselves being saved by it.
Despite progress in gender relations over the last 50 years, women still earn less than men, roughly 80 cents to every dollar men earn. This is an improvement, however, as women earned 62 cents to every male dollar in 1979. Unfortunately, this climb seems to have stalled and recent data suggests that the upward trend in female earning power has reached a ceiling.
I went to Barack Obama’s rally last Saturday night, and it was spectacular. Whatever one thinks about his policies, he is an electric speaker who may be the most exciting candidate since John F. Kennedy.
But I am not writing this to talk about Obama appearing at the Edward Jones Dome, I’m writing to talk about him not appearing at Washington University.
Along with life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, add fame. Andy Warhol first stated, in 1968, that in the future, everyone would have 15 minutes of fame, a cute allusion to the then-novel power of television to broadcast to a general audience. Said tongue-in-cheek, his witticism rings more true every year.
America’s primary election system has fatal flaws. If the Election of 2008 has revealed anything, it is that the staggered primary system, where a few states have their primaries before everyone else, needs to be changed.
It is morally indefensible that a miniscule segment of the electorate disproportionally influences the race for president because some state legislatures declare it so.
It is a common misconception that America has a free press. Our talking heads love to point out that Hugo Chavez recently closed Venezuela’s last independent television station or Vladimir Putin has slowly expropriated the last of Russia’s non-state media.
Monday night, Sigma Iota Rho, the International & Area Studies honorary, hosted four panelists presenting different stories around the theme “South America: Untold Stories.” Professor Gustafson, the only academic on the panel, opened his speech-the last of the four-explaining the similarities between academia and journalism.
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