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Whose University?

by From the Editor

Know­ing is not enough; we must apply. Will­ing is not enough; we must do.”
—Johann Wolf­gang von Goethe
Last Novem­ber, as many of you will no doubt remem­ber, stu­dents and fac­ulty at the Uni­ver­sity of Cal­i­for­nia staged a series of protests and build­ing takeovers in response to the UC Regents’ deci­sion on Novem­ber 19 to increase under­grad­u­ate tuition by […]

Education Uber Alles

by The Editor

To sin by silence when they should protest makes cow­ards of men.” —Abra­ham Lin­coln
The recent round of stu­dent protests and build­ing take-overs at cam­puses across the Uni­ver­sity of Cal­i­for­nia sys­tem this week have been both inspir­ing and heart-breaking. The dev­as­tat­ing and unprece­dented 32 per­cent increase in stu­dent “fees” (the UC system’s way of getting […]

Back to Basics: Resisting the Allure of Technology in the Classroom

by The Editor

I’d like to make the argu­ment that, despite our increas­ingly tech­no­log­i­cal lives, or per­haps because of them, the cre­ation and con­ser­va­tion of technology-free spaces where peo­ple can, and are encour­aged, to com­mu­ni­cate face-to-face, free of dis­trac­tion, with noth­ing more than their unique tem­pera­ments and their pri­vate store of knowl­edge and elo­quence, seems more and more impor­tant to me. Our stu­dents are already attention-deprived and over­loaded. The idea of forc­ing them back onto the Inter­net, espe­cially to pri­vately owned, for-profit web­sites like Face­book and YouTube, as part of their school­work, seems at best coun­ter­pro­duc­tive, and at worst incred­i­bly irre­spon­si­ble, even unethical.

Writer’s Block

by Advocate Staff

You don’t know what it is to stay a whole day with your head in your hands try­ing to squeeze your unfor­tu­nate brain so as to find a word.” –Gus­tave Flaubert
“The imag­i­na­tion is man’s power over nature.” –Wal­lace Stevens
It hap­pens to all of us at one time or another. The blank page, the blink­ing cur­sor, the creeping […]

Give it Back! Getting New York’s Wealthiest to Pay Their Fair Share

by Advocate Staff

From the Edi­tor “Expe­ri­ence demands that man is the only ani­mal which devours his own kind, for I can apply no milder term to the gen­eral prey of the rich on the poor.” –Thomas Jef­fer­son
“Hey baby, nobody suf­fers like the poor!” –Charles Bukowski
I know it’s dif­fi­cult, espe­cially for the major­ity of GC stu­dents fac­ing sev­eral years […]

The General’s Labyrinth Revealed

by PInglis

Guest Edi­to­r­ial Patrick Inglis
Thomas Weiss, Pres­i­den­tial Pro­fes­sor of Polit­i­cal Sci­ence at the Grad­u­ate Cen­ter, and mod­er­a­tor of the recent panel dis­cus­sion enti­tled “Mil­i­tary Power,” held in the Proshan­sky Audi­to­rium, had asked Gen­eral Barry McCaf­frey (ret.) his thoughts on for­mer mil­i­tary offi­cers act­ing as ana­lysts in the media. “I’m a deter­minably non-partisan com­men­ta­tor,” McCaf­frey responded. As if […]

Putting Away Childish Things

by Advocate Staff

When I was a child, I spake as a child, I under­stood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away child­ish things.”
—Corinthi­ans 13:11 “In the epoch in which we now live, civ­i­liza­tion is not an ideal or an aspi­ra­tion, it is a video game.”
—Ben­jamin R. Bar­ber
I am not one to gush, espe­cially when it comes […]

Shut it Down

by Advocate Staff

Those who pro­fess to favor free­dom and yet depre­ci­ate agi­ta­tion are peo­ple who want crops with­out plough­ing the ground; they want rain with­out thun­der and light­ning; they want the ocean with­out the roar of its many waters. The strug­gle may be a moral one, or it may be a phys­i­cal one, or it may be both. But […]

The Road ahead: Obama in 2008

by Advocate Staff

Despite the bit­ter acri­mony, the racist mobs, the comic dis­trac­tions, and the absurd lack of sub­stance that has defined the 2008 pres­i­den­tial cam­paign, one of the most fas­ci­nat­ing and unex­pected devel­op­ments of this elec­tion cycle is the recent and sur­pris­ingly pal­pa­ble feel­ing among so many vot­ers that some­thing mean­ing­ful and poten­tially momen­tous is on the […]

The Other November Election

by MBusch

As Venezuela pre­pares to mark the tenth anniver­sary of its Boli­var­ian Rev­o­lu­tion, Hugo Chávez has lit­tle cause for cel­e­bra­tion. His stew­ard­ship of the state econ­omy has largely resulted in fail­ure: income inequal­ity is on the rise while poverty reduc­tion has not kept pace with the country’s unprece­dented oil returns. Basic food sta­ples — such as milk, eggs, […]