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Students reflect on Mid-Autumn Festival celebration
by Brown Daily Herald
Jan 01, 2023
“As the sun descended on College Hill Tuesday, Sep. 21, students of Asian heritage celebrated the Mid-Autumn Festival, or Moon Festival, by gathering on the Main Green for mooncakes and community. The holiday falls on the 15th day of the eighth lunar month and is associated with the harvest season and the full moon, according to CNN Travel .
The holiday is celebrated mainly in East and Southeast Asia. Cultural organizations on campus, like the Chinese Students Association, organized community events, including mooncake giveaways.
For the Chinese Students Association’s Mid-Autumn Festival Celebration, students lined up in a long queue to receive their free slices of mooncake at the steps of the Stephen Robert ’62 Campus Center. An extensive selection of mooncakes was offered, including green tea, white lotus, lotus-coconut, pineapple and matcha. The traditional sweets were brought to campus from Chinatown’s Ho Yuen Bakery in Boston.
Students, including a substantial number of first-years, awaited their mooncake portions.
Now that Michael Fu ’25 is in college, he wanted to re-experience the celebrations of home. “At my household, we would always eat mooncakes,” Fu told The Herald. “After the event, I’ll text my parents about it. My mother has sent me a couple of videos” of the festival.
The event ended early after the organization handed out around 300 pieces of mooncake within the first hour, according to their Facebook page .
“It’s a tradition for (the Chinese Students Association) to come to (the) Faunce Steps around sunset time to hand out mooncakes,” said Charles Wang ’22, co-president of CSA. He added that the celebration “had a better attendance this year than any year in the past, maybe because everyone was locked up (due to) COVID for so long.”
The Chinese Students and Scholars Association also organized a Mid-Autumn Festival event Monday. At the CSSA event, fun community-building games accompanied the giveaway of mooncakes.
The Asian-American Heritage Series Welcome Back event, held in Sayles Hall, coincided with the CSA event Tuesday. Although the event was not planned for the holiday, its goal was still to foster community. The event included three student performances of traditional South-Indian-style singing, slam word poetry and a solo musician, as well as dinner and a raffle.
For Alanna Zhang ’25, who attended the Heritage Series, the Mid-Autumn Festival carries cultural significance.
“We usually have dinner with my grandparents and have mooncakes,” she said. “For me, it’s just something my family always does, and it’s a way for us to all gather and eat food together, which is such a big part of Chinese culture,” she said.
“I wish there was more messaging about it because I feel like it’s a big deal for a lot of people” but not well represented on campus, Zhang said.
Another attendee, Kaylen Pak ’24, also celebrates Mid-Autumn Festival, called chuseok in Korean, through dining with her family and eating rice cakes with different fillings. “When I think of chuseok I mostly think of my mom and her cooking,” she said. The holiday is “one of the few times that I reflect (on) and think actively (about) my Korean heritage and background.”
Wang said of the CSA celebration: “It’s just a good time to bring a little bit of what a lot of students might have at home to campus.””

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Simon ’25: We’re failing our female artists
by Brown Daily Herald
Jan 01, 2023
“At the close of every summer, there seems to be a frantic, retrospective search for the music that defined the season. In honor of this tradition, I’d like to take a moment to draw attention to an album that, thus far, has been subject to insufficient analysis. Solar Power is New Zealand singer-songwriter Lorde’s third studio album — and her most understated yet. In a departure from her previous albums Pure Heroine and Melodrama , which tremble from the emotional power of their raw piano and vocal work, Solar Power is a sun-soaked and self-reflective journey. Lorde is so dreamlike here, in fact, that the psychedelic tone of the songs very nearly obscures the bitterness of their lyrics. In the first track, titled “The Path,” Lorde sings:
Now, if you’re looking for a savior
Well that’s not me
And if you need someone to take your pain for you?
Well that’s not me
It’s sung very gently, but the message couldn’t be any more clear: It’s a plea for boundaries. Lorde is asking for a greater degree of separation between herself and her audience’s expectations — something that’s near unattainable for a woman in the performance industry.
Lorde wasn’t the only female artist dropping new music this summer, nor the only one using that music to send messages about her relationship with the public. In July, Lizzo released her single “Rumors” featuring Cardi B. The song, brassy and full of good-humored wit, is ridiculously catchy. However, just like in “The Path,” there’s a bite to its clever lyricism. Lizzo has spoken repeatedly about her experiences with sexism, racism and fatphobia over social media, and the song incorporates her frustration into the melody: They say I should watch the shit I post, oh goddamn / They say I’m turning big girls into hoes, oh goddamn. The “they” she refers to repeatedly throughout the track morphs from one nebulous entity to another. “They” refers to not just the bureaucratic forces of industry and the online haters, but also the larger and less defined sense Lizzo has of being perceived by all of her listeners. Without ever using the term, she’s referring to the parasocial relationships that have defined her career.
A parasocial interaction is defined as a “ psychological relationship experienced by members of an audience in their mediated encounters with certain performers in the mass media.” This relationship between consumer and creator is characterized by its one-sidedness: an imagined sense of closeness that we, as an audience, have with celebrities who have never and will never know us.
What is becoming increasingly clear, in the music industry in particular, is that parasocialism is a woman’s game. Try to think of the defining fan bases of the American music scene over the past 20 years. Beyoncé’s Beyhive, Nicki Minaj’s Barbz, Lady Gaga’s Little Monsters, Ariana Grande’s Arianators and Taylor Swift’s Swifties all come to mind — all are dedicated to female artists. These fandoms are among the most organized, intense and cohesive in the industry. It’s that cohesion that gives them notoriety as well as power. In exchange for their Spotify streams, ticket purchases and unyielding devotion, fans ask for not only content but also the entirety of their idols’ selves. Parasocial relationships are fascinating because they seem, on the surface, to be mutually beneficial; they disguise their deep imbalances as something intimate. Questions of privacy, amenability and commodification — the dynamics that define an artist’s performative experience — have profound parallels to the similarly performative dynamics that everyday women live out in their social and professional lives.
This idea that women be appealing, malleable and constantly available is applied literally when the woman in question is a global superstar — and often with devastating consequences (think of female celebrities from the 2000s, such as Britney Spears or Lindsay Lohan ). However, in the past decade, the existence of social media has heightened both the visibility of artists and the false sense of intimacy perceived by their listeners. And with this shift, feelings of entitlement to these women are growing, born from devotion to beloved stars. For instance, Lizzo’s body has been co-opted as an object of both adoration and vitriol to the point where she cannot post a TikTok of her daily routine without feeding into one narrative or another.
That’s not to say that fans don’t have expectations of male artists as well. But these expectations are typically limited to the more overtly professional aspects of their careers. For instance, there were complaints over Kanye West’s delay in releasing his album “Donda ” — but not over his smoothie cleanse or whether he has contributed sufficiently to climate activism. “Artists” are allowed their eccentricities, solitude and degrees of separation from their fans while “performers” are not. And when the time comes to make a distinction between the two, we still subconsciously expect women to perform for us.
Lizzo and Lorde’s new releases are notable because they don’t just suffer under the weight of these pre-written stories, they give them a name, even if parenthetically and with the good cheer of any hit single. But just that act of acknowledgement calls forward a complicated legacy: one of commodification and expectations of women as subjects for projection. These are issues that have been dissected for decades by feminist thinkers from Butler to Beauvoir, but now they’ve permeated one place we can’t ignore: the Billboard Top 100. Rather than capturing the perfect beats for a rooftop party or a beach trip, this summer’s most impactful music instead provided us with an opportunity to reflect on what it means to love and engage with the women behind the play button.
Alissa Simon ’25 can be reached at alissa_simon@brown.edu. Please send responses to this opinion to letters@browndailyherald.com and other op-eds to opinions@browndailyherald.com.”

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Brown dining halls serve long lines with limited options, students say
by Brown Daily Herald
Jan 01, 2023
“In addition to worrying about his senior seminars and thesis, Leonardo Moraveg ’22 faced an additional stressor at the start of this year — mealtimes. Moraveg, who spoke with The Herald Sept. 14, deliberately pushed his meals hours later than normal to avoid what he called the “record-breaking lines” of the dining halls.
Moraveg is just one of many students whose mealtimes have been affected by the extended wait times at the dining halls. Since University dining halls originally opened for in-person dining at the start of the fall semester, before the University’s recent transition to takeout meals in response to rising COVID-19 case numbers on campus, students experienced overcrowding, prolonged wait times and dissatisfaction with meal options.
“You have to sacrifice not getting food because of classes,” said Fadilatou Toure ’25, as she stood in a Sharpe Refectory line extending all the way up to Wayland Arch. She said she enjoyed sitting with her friends and being in a social environment, but sometimes finds herself standing in queues without knowing what food options await at their end because of the long lines.
The issue is temporary, according to Director of Dining Services George Barboza.
Rita Slaoui ’23.5 stood in a 35-minute line to get a poke bowl from Andrews Commons, all the while lamentingBrown’s two-year meal plan mandate that gave her no option but to purchase a meal plan.
Jessie Curran, director of wellness and nutrition, wrote in an email to The Herald that the two-year meal plan requirement “is in place to ensure the University is addressing concerns of food insecurity among students. That concern has not gone away during the pandemic.”
But Slaoui expressed frustration with the lack of food options at dining halls. “It’s definitely better than last year. But compared to pre-pandemic, it has gotten so much worse,” she said.
“Brown Dining continually introduces new recipes and food items in our planning process,” Curan wrote. “Specifically, menu items are rotated in cycles for variety.”
The fact that the Blue Room does not accept meal credits or flex points anymore further limits Slaoui’soptions. Last Monday, Slaoui’s roommates went to the Ratty, Andrews and the Ivy Room for dinner, but, due to the long wait times, eventually decided to buy pizza from Thayer — “which again is ridiculous when you pay so much for a meal plan that you’re forced to be on,” Slaoui said.
Moraveg pointed out that the long lines are a recurring problem.
“You truly know that it’s a systemic issue when the problem is seen across the entire board,” he said.
Longer lines during peak hours (11:45 am to 1:00 pm and 5:30 pm to 7:00 pm) are common during the first few weeks of the semester because students are still solidifying their schedules, Curran wrote, suggesting that students visit the dining halls during non-peak hours to encounter fewer lines.
“Dining Services continues to evaluate operations and introduce concepts that improve the student experience,” wrote Curran. One of the solutions that Brown provided is the “Meals in a Minute” program that allows students to order a meal online for quicker pick-up. But this program applies only during lunch hours.
Despite the issues students identified, Moraveg has chosen to stay on meal plan because, “for a student like me who has a heavy schedule and is always on the go, it’s better to be on meal plan.”
He added that the cost of his meal plan has increased by more than $300 from his first year. “They’re continuously increasing the price of the meal plans without increasing the quality of the service. For a student on financial aid, or even for regular students who aren’t on financial aid, if there is an increase in price then at least keep the service at the same level. But if the service is decreasing, then what am I paying for?”
In response, Curran wrote, “Brown Dining uses only the highest quality ingredients in our operations” and partners with local farmers and producers. “Our recipes are prepared from scratch and menus are written considering seasonality and availability of regional ingredients.”
“I think the reason why there isn’t a big outrage about this is because people who have to be on meal plan are mostly (first-years)and sophomores. … They don’t really have a reference point,” Slaoui said. “People are so happy to have opportunities to eat in person that they don’t see what’s been taken away.”
Students have taken to social media as an outlet for their frustration and have created several memes about the Ratty lines .
“There might be some people that think students are overblowing it,” Moraveg said, “but at the point where there are clusters of people trying to exit or find a single seat or table, that’s when you know you have an issue.””

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‘Less bad is a good standard’: Watson Institute hosts Juliette Kayyem
by Brown Daily Herald
Jan 01, 2023
“The Watson Institute hosted Juliette Kayyem for a discussion on climate change and disaster management Monday evening. Kayyem talked with Watson Fellow David Polatty about her career, COVID-19, climate change and her upcoming book “The Devil Never Sleeps: How to Prepare When Disasters Are No Longer Random and Rare.”
The event, titled “Managing Disasters in an Age of Climate Change,” was part of Watson’s Distinguished Speaker Series and was hosted in conjunction with the University’s Climate Solutions Lab. The talk began with a conversation between Polatty and Kayyem, who is a professor of international security at the Harvard Kennedy School, later expanding into an open Q&A during which Kayyem fielded questions from students, faculty and members of the University community alike.
Kayyem’s career “really has (focused on) one fundamental thing, which is just risk reduction. It’s just about how societies can reduce risk to themselves,” she said in an interview with The Herald prior to the event. “I like to say I’ve had one career and many jobs.”
Kayyem has held positions in the Obama administration as well as at The Atlantic and CNN. She also founded her own consulting firm.
In both her interview with The Herald and at the event, Kayyem detailed what she believed were the largest crises of our time and how to prepare for them.
“The U.S. is facing two existential crises right now,” Kayyem told The Herald. “One we share with the globe, which is climate change. … Second, I do think that we are in a crisis of democracy here in this country.”
On the climate issue, Kayyem believes the problem is abundantly clear: “Climate change is really going to change the nature of how we live, how we breathe, how we eat, where we live, conflict, everything — and we’re not exactly prepared for it.”
But Kayyem also said she thinks climate disasters can create opportunities to rebuild stronger communities in the wake of disaster. Referring to the example of the devastating tornado that hit Joplin, Missouri in 2011, she said, “the town began to think about things that they didn’t like about themselves the day before the tornado.” The disaster allowed them to begin to address “the segregation (and) the high school that was too small” in their rebuilding efforts.
Kayyem compared climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic, noting that the pandemic contains lessons for the way governments and communities prepare themselves for future climate catastrophes. She added that these include the global scale of the disasters and the shared frustration of lost time.
“Those (first months of 2020) were squandered time, and like with climate change, sometimes a bad decision is simply a good decision made too late,” she said.
Ultimately, Kayyem said an era when disasters are frequent and widespread rather than sporadic and isolated means that disaster response must acknowledge that living in certain areas is simply no longer feasible. “There just have to be places where people are no longer allowed to live, where they’re paid to move away, and that means changing our disaster relief system, which is somewhat sacrosanct in this country,” she said. “We need to start not paying people to go back to normal.”
Kayyem added that this managed retreat strategy is especially necessary for areas that are extremely vulnerable to fires and flooding. Referring to the 2018 Camp Fire that destroyed much of Paradise, California, she said, people are now asking “how Paradise should be redesigned. I’m convinced that we should not rebuild Paradise.”
The democracy problem, on the other hand, she describes as a little less obvious. “Weirdly, we’re in this place where we still treat (our democratic crisis) as a joke. It’s not a joke,” she said.
Whether it’s the climate, COVID-19 or democracy, Kayyem sees one fundamental problem repeating itself in each of society’s biggest challenges: the way we approach disaster management.
“For a long time, it was really hard to get climate activists to talk about anything other than mitigation,” Kayyem said. “Acknowledgement is a good thing … (but) there’s only so much you can do to mitigate the bad thing happening. You have to prepare for it.”
In practice, this means understanding that problems like climate change have already descended upon us — Kayyem argues that the task currently at hand is figuring out how to contain the damage. Disaster management specialists like Kayyem spend their life’s work doing just that.
“My goal in all the ways I communicate is to make my role less scary,” she said. “There’s lots of experts who elevate their importance by talking to the public in a way that makes them seem really important, saying (things like), ‘You don’t get this,’ or ‘This is really scary and technical.’”
The consequences of this intellectual posturing, she argues, are devastating: “What that has meant for the American public is it has made people either tune out or freak out.” What she sees occurring in the American cultural landscape is an attempt to polarize the public.
An element of tackling problems in the current political climate, she added, “is not to accept the polarization as fixed.”
“If you watch cable news or Fox News, you would think that this country is split over things like vaccines and mask mandates,” she said. “They want you to believe it’s split. 70% of eligible Americans have now gotten (their first shot). This is not a split. This is not a culture war. This is a very noisy minority (that) wants to set the conditions of what the debate is.”
To deal with the major global problems at hand, Kayyem noted that all hands on deck are needed at every level of the playing field. She urged students passionate about taking action on these problems to jump in and get involved.
“There’s a tendency for students to think that this game is being played at the national and international level,” she said. “My federal jobs were exciting, but my state job was the most satisfying job I have ever had. You got stuff done, you’re working with localities … it’s not all theoretical.”
“For students interested in this,” she added, “don’t think DC or the UN are the places to be. Go home. My guess is your city or town has really fulfilling work.”
When asked what the average citizen could do to aid community response and preparedness efforts, Kayyem recommended attending emergency preparedness trainings and stocking up on necessities to prevent relief systems from being overwhelmed in the wake of a calamity. “Every household that’s better prepared takes pressure off of public safety,” she said.
Anthony Bishop-Gylys ’24 said the event increased his understanding of both the governmental and personal aspects of disaster preparedness and response. He added that he appreciated how Kayyem recognized the dual importance of both human and non-human ecosystems and their inherent interconnectedness.
“The point she made (to me) was that if you do actually focus on relieving the human consequences of disaster, you can help ecosystems at the same time, because a lot of those resources are indeed shared,” he said.
Ultimately, Kayyem’s hope was that, through both her talk and upcoming book, she could shift the public’s perspective on risk and disasters. After all, she predicts the era the global community has entered into will have no shortage of them in store.”

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Professor John Tomasi to become president of Heterodox Academy
by Brown Daily Herald
Jan 01, 2023
“When John Tomasi, professor of natural theology and political science and founder of Brown’s Political Theory Project, first visited the University where his now-wife was getting her master’s degree in fall 1989, he was struck by the pockets of students sprawled on the campus’s greens.
“There were Brown students sitting around on the green working and also talking with each other and calling to each other, and there was something about it that was so lovely,” he said. “They were obviously intelligent people, but there was a community I felt at the time that just enchanted me.”
Years later, when Tomasi left a position at Stanford University to join Brown’s faculty, his students on the West Coast warned him about the kind of reception he might receive in Rhode Island. “One student told me, ‘They’re going to eat you for lunch at Brown,’” Tomasi said.
Another of his Stanford students, Rachel Maddow, who went on to a career as an MSNBC host, gave Tomasi an eccentric-looking hat and a pack of cigarettes as going-away presents, props to help him fit in at his new gig on College Hill.
But over his 27 years at the University, Tomasi said he has felt welcomed and valued by the Brown community, from which he will be departing come January to enter a new role as the president of a nonpartisan collaborative called Heterodox Academy.
According to the group’s mission statement , the academy was founded in 2015 to “improve the quality of research and education in universities by increasing open inquiry, viewpoint diversity and constructive disagreement.” Its founder Jonathan Haidt is a social psychologist known for his outspokenness, described in his 2018 book “The Coddling of the American Mind,” about the failings of modern college campuses.
Tomasi is giving up his tenured position at Brown to serve as the HxA’s inaugural president, a role that he sees as an opportunity to move a voice that he expresses at Brown onto a larger stage.
“What HxA is really about is this positive mission of not fighting against bad things but rather trying to build good things and trying to support the best aspects of the American educational system,” Tomasi said. “We do that by encouraging critical reasoning, viewpoint diversity and what I think of as something like free curiosity. HxA stands up for those kinds of values and encourages people to look for barriers that are preventing curiosity, that are preventing the free expression of our intellect, that are preventing the free exploration of ideas.”
Tomasi “is a highly respected academic with a passion for academic discourse. He has demonstrated sustained commitment to the values of HxA, and he possesses a track record of successfully envisioning and promoting those values in the university setting,” Jeffrey Flier, chair of the search committee and HxA board member, said in the press release announcing Tomasi’s appointment. “John is the right person, at the right time, for HxA and for higher education.”
In his 27 years at Brown, Tomasi has taught courses in both the political science and philosophy departments, in addition to his work for the Political Theory Project, which seeks “to investigate the ideas and institutions that make societies free, prosperous and fair.”
“ John has contributed a lot to Brown over many years, and I wish him well in his new role,” wrote President Christina Paxson P’19 in an email to The Herald about Tomasi’s departure.
Since arriving at the University in 1994, Tomasi has established himself as a proponent of free speech on college campuses. A political philosopher , Tomasi has authored books on topics such as “Free Market Fairness” and has conducted extensive public policy work in Chile. He and co-author Matt Zwolinski are working on a forthcoming volume on a social justice-minded model of libertarianism.
At the University, Tomasi’s classes are spaces for student-centered discussions on provocative themes. He has led the seminars POLS 0920A: “Bleeding Heart Libertarianism” and POLS 1150: “Prosperity: the Ethics and Economics of Wealth Creation.” He is currently teaching his last Brown course entitled POLS 1825Z: “The University,” in which he encourages students to grapple with the concepts and themes that he hopes to work on in his new position at HxA, he explained.
Tomasi founded the PTP, an interdisciplinary collective on campus, in 2003 as the outgrowth of a Group Independent Study Project of two politically heterodox students eager for more opportunities to have their own viewpoints challenged.
One of these students, Democratic Iowa State Auditor Rob Sand ’05, who met Tomasi in a first-year seminar, sought out a fellow student writer of a controversial conservative column to be his partner for the GISP. “I just thought I came (to Brown) to get an education and that involves me encountering a lot of different ideas, so I can learn what I think about them and learn their ins and outs, and I didn’t feel like that was happening very well,” he said.
Sand was inspired to engage with an ideologically different peer after he heard University President Ruth Simmons speak at his convocation in her first year as president. Sand recounted Simmons saying, “‘If you’re here to be comfortable, there’s the gates’ — meaning we should be willing to examine everything we talk about and everything we say we believe to really have an opportunity to discuss whether or not we believe it’s true or whether or not we might find something out there that has more truth to it,” he said.
Emily Skarbek, an associate research professor at the PTP, said that the research collective brings together faculty and postdoctoral fellows to collaborate on and lead cross-disciplinary initiatives to promote viewpoint diversity and elevate ideological inquiry on campus.
“John has been so formative in terms of the type of programming that we’ve done here at the Political Theory Project,” Skarbek said. “For so long before I joined and before others in the building were here, John was kind of doing a lot of this on his own.”
Skarbek explained that the PTP is responsible for hosting the University’s Philosophy, Politics & Economics student society and large-scale lecture series, like the Janus Forum Lecture Series .
“The idea (of the Janus Lectures) is to bring in scholars from different perspectives on a particular issue to engage with one another and also to engage with students on different topics,” Skarbek said.
The Janus Lectures have been the site of some controversy in years past, including in 2014 when scholars Jessica Valenti and Wendy McElroy were brought onto campus to debate the topic of the existence of a rape culture on college campuses, The Herald previously reported .
“There’s a line to be drawn between open thought and open discussion, and intentionally attempting to upset or trigger people,” Sand said. “Different people are going to draw that line in different places. I think we have to be mindful of that at the same time that we do the work of trying to promote open discussion of ideas.”
The PTP itself has faced backlash in the past for its decision to accept funding from billionaire and conservative political ideologue Charles Koch.
Tomasi himself has pushed the envelope by bringing Koch into his “Prosperity” class to speak directly with students and respond to their queries and criticism.
“Some people see Brown as a place which stands up for a certain set of preconceived notions that they affirm, and they like Brown that way,” Tomasi said. “They prefer that Brown be like that. But that’s not what most people at Brown think. That’s not Brown at its best. Brown at its best is a place that really does celebrate community (and) exploration together.”
Sand looked to Tomasi’s efforts to meld the ideas of political philosophers John Rawls and Friedrich Hayek in his book “Free Market Fairness” as an example of the kind of cutting-edge scholarship he has brought to Brown. “The fact that he wrote a book that said, ‘Look there’s a way to take these ideas and read them together … that actually can be an improvement upon both’ is frankly a little bit courageous, and also I think pretty effective,” he said.
Sand discussed how an impulse of intellectual empathy has proved an asset to him in his own political career after graduating from the University. “I could tell you so many stories when somebody says something that so many people would be eager to jump on and judge, but then if you just listened to them and only asked a single question you can understand that the place that they’re coming from is a place of curiosity and not a place of bigotry,” he said. “We can’t find partners in good-faith conversation without ourselves being willing to engage in that.”
In Tomasi’s opinion, the best of Brown is an “impatience with the status quo, including the status quos of our own making.”
“Brown creates status quos on certain moral issues, but true Brown is impatient even with that,” he said.
Looking ahead to his future at HxA, Tomasi expressed gratitude for his time at the University and the lessons it has taught him.
Brown is about “caring so much that you are never content with what you think you know,” he said. “It means caring so much about justice, caring so much about beauty and truth that you question things for yourself again and again in an ongoing way that doesn’t stop, neither when you walk in nor when you walk out. … The battle for what Brown really is, what it really wants to be … is an ongoing struggle that will go on long after I leave.””

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‘I’m not the same as they are’: Civil rights veteran Ray Rickman runs for state senate
by Brown Daily Herald
Jan 01, 2023
“Ray Rickman never thought he would run for office again after a decades-long career in Rhode Island politics. But in August, the former state representative and civil rights veteran tossed his hat in the ring once more and announced his candidacy in Rhode Island’s District 3 State Senate primary. The vote will feature a slew of progressives, the winner among them ultimately poised to win the general election as well.
It’s not so much the thrill of an election or government that interests Rickman. In fact, it’s far from it. “I hate campaigns,” Rickman said. “Every day, someone calls me and gives me information on candidates, but I’m not doing it.” So, what’s got him on the ballot? Education.
“When I go out, I ask people to vote for Ray Rickman on behalf of the 23,000 schoolchildren of Providence,” Rickman told The Herald in a recent interview. “When I was arrested in 1966 marching for Civil Rights in Mississippi,” he said in his campaign announcement, “it never occurred to me that in 2021, the largest school district in Rhode Island would be failing thousands of students of color.”
Rickman acknowledges that there is work to be done on other issues such as COVID-19, marijuana regulations and the environment, but rather than pour his effort into writing his own bills on those topics, he will instead vow to support his fellow progressives in their efforts. His single mission will be lobbying the caucus on public education reforms.
“When I met Ray, I was not looking for a job on a campaign,” said Alexander Gim-Fain, Rickman’s campaign manager. Gim-Fain initially met Rickman to help him work on a promotional campaign video, but after the project was done felt he wanted to do more.
“As I listened to what he said in the video that I did, it became clear that he was doing this because he cared about one issue more than anything else,” Gim-Fain said. “A candidate who’s running to accomplish one issue is probably going to get it done.”
Rickman’s foray into the world of Providence public schools began when a constituent came to him with the concern that her son’s high school was not taking strong enough action against his bullies. As Rickman looked further into the complaint, he realized the problem was not just bullying but, in essence, chronic neglect of the education system by state legislators.
“People at Hope (High School) have no resources and no choice,” Rickman said. Among a number of other issues, Rickman pointed out in particular property degradation at the school as well as the deteriorating quality of the education within the state’s public school systems.
“I’m going to improve — and I’ll be shocked if I cannot keep my word” — Providence public schools, Rickman said. His plans to keep his promise include creating an educational endowment and integrating Hope High School. While he works on those bigger goals, he plans to ask the legislature for money to “spruce up” the schools.
Driving Rickman’s campaign is his confidence in his ability to return on his promises. “I’m a worker, I’m a doer and I’m structured,” Rickman said when asked about how he compares to his fellow District 3 candidates. “I’m not the same as they are.”
Rickman’s biography reflects that self-assessment. His political career began in Detroit, where his mother signed him up to be a volunteer at a nursing home. He’s been working for his community ever since.
Rickman’s list of community ties runs long and deep. His first state legislature election was, in fact, tied closely to the women of Brown University, whom he relied on to vote for him as a pro-choice candidate. He credits them with his first rise to victory as state representative.
In addition to legislative work, he’s also launched a number of non-profit efforts such as Shape Up R.I., Cornerstone Books and, more recently, Stages of Freedom.
Stages of Freedom in particular does work to aid and educate Black children in Rhode Island. The organization has two main goals: to teach youth of color in Rhode Island how to swim and to promote the history and culture of the Black community.
The first goal arose for Rickman after an incident in which multiple Black children drowned at a nearby lake. He later found out Black children were, nationally, five times more likely to drown than white children. The second goal emerged from Rickman’s work at Cornerstone Books, where they brought Black cultural icons such as James Baldwin, Jamaica Kincaid and Maya Angelou to Providence to help “galvanize both Black and white communities through literature” and “do extensive work in exploring African American history in Rhode Island, which is very deep.”
“Particularly at this time in American life and political life, it’s really important that we elect people who come from a place of incredible understanding … that (they) share the same experiences as the common American,” said Robb Dimmick, a friend of Rickman’s and his co-founder at both Stages of Freedom and Cornerstone. “That’s the kind of experience, passion and commitment Rickman brings because it comes from personal experience, personal commitment, rather than just something to fill time or add to a resume.”
Dimmick has known Rickman for nearly 40 years, and, through it all, has seen his commitment to his work.
“He has a mission. He’s driven. It’s a mission that really comes from his own childhood where he fought for better schools, integrated schools,” said Dimmick. “He marched with James Meredith in 1966 at the March Against Fear and was nearly killed by sheriffs in Santa Clara County.”
Brian Heller, a Providence citizen and longtime friend of Rickman’s, shared similar sentiments.
“There’s nothing in it for him, what he’s been doing all these years,” Heller said. “He sees where there is a need, and then he doesn’t make a big deal about it. He just goes about addressing the problem. That’s the way he’s worked, as far as I can tell, all of his life.””

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Seth Magaziner ’06 runs for R.I. governor
by Brown Daily Herald
Jan 01, 2023
“Rhode Island General Treasurer Seth Magaziner ’06 announced his run for governor Sept. 15, entering an already-crowded Democratic primary with competitors such as R.I. Secretary of State Nellie Gorbea and most likely current Gov. Dan McKee.
With a platform aimed toward “an economy that is built for the 21st century,” Magaziner’s priorities include education, innovation, infrastructure and inclusion, he told The Herald in a recent interview. His platform is underscored by goals to transition Rhode Island to a “100% clean energy economy,” establish universal preschool, support small businesses, focus on climate resilience and build affordable housing.
During Magaziner’s time at Brown, he served as president of both College Democrats of Rhode Island and Brown College Democrats, which won chapter of the year under his leadership.
Fellow College Democrats member and classmate Sean Siperstein ’05 remembers Magaziner as someone who was eager to engage with cutting-edge issues.
When the club debated joining the campus’s anti-war coalition, Siperstein recalls that Magaziner “was definitely one of the more outspoken, more informed voices that shored up everyone’s concerns about possibly joining.”
“He’s always had that aspect of being able to guide people … and he’s always been a great listener,” Siperstein added.
Upon graduating from Brown, Magaziner surprised many of his peers by working as a public school teacher. Magaziner said he believes that his experience teaching in a low-income, predominantly Black community informs many of his campaign priorities today.
“I saw firsthand not only the importance of education, but the barriers and the biases that hold many people, particularly in communities of color, back,” Magaziner said. “Part of what motivates me in public service is breaking down those obstacles to opportunity so that we can have a society that is truly fair, where everyone can have a chance to achieve that pathway to an American dream.”
Magaziner’s focuses on education and infrastructure are also reflected in his initiatives as treasurer, including a school construction program to replace and repair public school buildings, which started in 2017. He also established programs at Rhode Island Infrastructure Bank to invest in more clean energy projects.
To Magaziner, education is especially instrumental in building a strong economy.
“The best jobs go to where the best talent is,” Magaziner said. “If we’re going to build a strong 21st century economy in Rhode Island, we need to have a workforce that is educated and prepared for 21st century jobs.”
Magaziner’s gubernatorial-candidacy announcement was followed by endorsements by many of his peers in the state, including the United Nurses and Allied Professionals, seven state representatives, State Senator Jim Seveney, Cranston City Council Member Aniece Germain, Providence City Council Member Jo-Ann Ryan, RI Board of Education Member Jo Eva Gaines and former Newport School Committee member Aida Neary.
Neary, who is also a mother to children in Newport public schools, has worked with Magaziner on allocating funding for school construction in the city. She appreciated Magaziner’s attendance at school committee and city council meetings to pass the local bond that included the school construction project, she said.
“It was just really nice that the treasurer would come to your little corner of the world and go, ‘Okay, here’s how the numbers are going to work,’” Neary said.
Neary said that, as a mother, she values Magaziner’s vision of securing a strong future economy and infrastructure, encompassing climate change, housing insecurity and inequality.
“What I want for (my children), honestly, is a state that is not physically underwater,” Neary said. “I want a future for them where there is actual affordable housing.”
Magaziner’s platform is geared toward making it possible for Rhode Islanders to achieve the “American dream,” he said.
Neary added that part of this mission involves acknowledging that many communities lack the resources to achieve that dream.
“The fact that (Magaziner) recognizes that the American story has some gaps in it when it comes to Black and brown folks, and that he … acknowledges the big story of America … and that he’s willing to campaign on that,” Neary said, “means to me that he’s going to work on systemic changes, not just superficial ones.”
“If we build an economy that is based on innovation, creativity and inclusivity, we can create a framework here in Rhode Island that will allow everyone, regardless of zip code, regardless of race, or status or income, an opportunity to participate and to thrive in our state,” Magaziner said. “To me, it’s all about laying a foundation for opportunity for everyone.””

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Jabberwocks audition cards reveal racist, sexualizing comments
by Brown Daily Herald
Jan 01, 2023
“Between 2017 and 2019, the Jabberwocks a cappella group wrote comments on the back of audition cards that mocked auditionee’s accents and races, sexualized appearances and made fun of singing abilities. These cards were revealed alongside a 2006 quote book and a personal notebook belonging to one member of the group in a post on Dear Blueno, a student-run Facebook page that solicits and posts anonymous submissions. All of the claims in the post were later verified by the group.
The cards, notebook and quote book, which were reviewed by The Herald, were found in the group’s practice room before being turned into the Office of Student Conduct and Community Standards for investigation.
The post included links to images of some audition cards, which include comments such as “spanish & arabic ← downvote” and “giggles ‘terrorism.’”
OSCCS cannot “disclose information on specific allegations,” Kirsten Wolfe, associate dean and assistant director of student conduct and community standards, wrote in a email to The Herald. But she shared that the office will begin a preliminary review “reaching out to relevant parties and gathering the information required to consider whether or not moving to next steps is warranted.”
This preliminary review will lead to either a “more comprehensive investigative review process” or notification to parties that “no additional action will be taken,” Wolfe wrote.
Current members of the Jabberwocks have since acknowledged the potential harm inflicted on auditionees and have apologized, pledging to change a culture that many have said still benefits from white male privilege and a 70-year legacy of alumni connections.
“We want to demonstrate our commitment to making sure that this kind of harm wouldn’t happen again,” said Sally Zhang ’23, a current member of the Jabberwocks and its business manager.
In response to the allegations, the Jabberwocks have postponed their fall auditions indefinitely.
Revelations spark discussion among groups
After the contents of the notecards were released to the public, the a capella community felt “an overall overwhelming sentiment of hurt and anger,” said Olivia Williams ’22, czar of the Intergalactic Community of A Cappella, which oversees 10 on-campus a capella groups.
Students “from many different identities expressed feeling unsafe knowing that they had auditioned during this time period,” she said, and others expressed discomfort with the prospect of hosting auditions alongside the Jabberwocks only a few days after this information came out.
“The overwhelming emotional sentiment was … sad that it had to come out in this way, that it didn’t come from the group itself,” Williams added.
With input from other a cappella members, Williams put together a town hall meeting for Sept. 11, the Saturday following the release, to “create space for people to open up about their feelings and thoughts and reflections.”
The town hall lasted three and a half hours and hosted roughly 50 attendees on Zoom. The first portion was dedicated to discussion without the Jabberwocks present, before the Jabberwocks were invited to join the Zoom for the second half. The Jabberwocks read a group statement and discussed their own feelings about the situation.
“People started mostly with emotion,” Williams said. “Once those were aired out, then the conversation actually shifted toward, ‘Okay, what are we doing about this?’”
The a cappella community ultimately concluded that the Jabberwocks had a lot of work to do before moving forward, and should “take time to really interrogate their history and their group culture,” Williams said. The community agreed that they should not host auditions during the fall semester to instead focus on “seeking ways to do justice to the folks that were harmed in this” and “reframe their history.” The Jabberwocks complied, agreeing to take the time to reflect and hold off on auditions until futher notice.
Williams asked the Jabberwocks to release an internal statement addressed to the a capella community outlining their next steps by midnight Sept. 12.
“The community was satisfied with that immediate short-term answer,” Williams added, with the Jabberwocks postponing auditions and releasing what was deemed a sufficiently comprehensive statement. Williams plans to hold future meetings with the Jabberwocks and other a capella members to check in on the group’s progress.
“It’s important to recognize that the entire a capella community is hurting,” Williams said. “This also reflects on our community within the context of Brown and the types of cultures that we promote.”
A capella community reacts, responds
Fate Bussey ’23.5, a member of the Bear Necessities, learned about the Jabberwock’s notecards during rehearsal. His initial reaction was that whoever submitted the Dear Blueno post “had gotten something right” based on what he had observed of the Jabberwock’s culture.
Bussey said he thinks it would be “reasonable” to remove the one remaining member who had been a part of the Jabberwocks in 2019 from the group. “They carry this culture with them,” he said. “I don’t see any need for them to continue influencing the new members.”
He also agreed with the Jabberwocks’ decision not to hold auditions for the time being. “I truly do think that they need some time to reexamine themselves and what that group stands for,” Bussey said.
Bussey has already noticed some positive change since the Jabberwocks became co-ed in 2019. “The current female members of that group are victims of this process, not perpetrators of it,” he said.
John Coady ’23, a member of the Higher Keys, believes that this is “a complicated situation because it’s absolutely something that needs to be addressed.” The actions of the Jabberwocks were “completely unacceptable.”
But Coady also acknowledged that very few of the current Jabberwocks were a part of the group that wrote these cards between 2017 and 2019. “It’s really difficult to balance making sure that this issue is being addressed while also understanding that the (current) Jabberwocks are victims of this as well,” he said.
Coady believes a cappella groups, including the Jabberwocks, have been working toward wider changes to culture and inclusivity during the year and a half of virtual operations during the COVID-19 pandemic. He would like to see concrete changes in the future such as cutting ties with the Jabberwock’s alumni network — which has historically provided significant funding to the group.
“The whole root of this problem is not the current Jabberwocks, it’s all of the old ones who saw through this culture the entire time,” Coady said. “I don’t know why (the current Jabberwocks) would want to take their money or want to have their support at this point.”
Based on conversations he has had with the Jabberwocks, he believes that there are “positive” changes being made. “It’s the culture that is the problem, not the people,” he said. “I have absolute faith that … they will do what needs to be done to correct the course of their group.”
Maxime Hendrikse Liu ’23 was “initially horrified” by the news of the notecards. Liu had not auditioned for the Jabberwocks but felt “sick” thinking about what they could have written about her if she had. “It’s an awful sense of relief: realizing that you dodged a bullet, then turning around and seeing your friends who didn’t,” she wrote in an email to The Herald.
Hendrikse Liu immediately reached out to her friends in the a cappella community to check in and learned that some of them thought they recognized cards written about them.
But she was not surprised upon hearing about the notecards. “Any space that is dominated by extremely privileged identities has a high risk of becoming a breeding ground for this sort of behavior,” she wrote. “The Jabberwocks have a history of being an all-cis-male, predominantly-white group, who also had access to a significant amount of wealth from alumni donations (which) accrued over time.”
Liu hopes that future backlash is directed toward the Jabberwocks as a historical institution and not as a group of individuals. Many current Jabberwocks “are as distressed as anyone else by the statements revealed in the Dear Blueno post … some of whom were in fact victims of the audition cards,” she wrote. “The vast majority of current members of the group were victims of (and/or are already actively working to transform) the toxic culture within the Wocks that allowed racism, misogyny and sexualization of auditionees to thrive.”
Jabberwocks consider internal reform
When the Jabberwocks first learned about the Dear Blueno post about their audition cards, many of their members were in “disbelief,” Zhang said.
Zhang, who joined during the 2019 audition cycle and had an audition card comment written about her, was conflicted because she had found the group to be “nothing but warm and welcoming” when she joined as a first-year. Only two senior members, one of whom has since left the group, were present when the cards were written in 2019.
The Jabberwocks first took some time to come to terms with this new information. Zhang, for instance, texted former Jabberwocks members to verify the information. Former members confirmed that the audition cards were real.
“Thinking that the group before we entered it represented itself in this way and acted this way was really, really disappointing and sad for a lot of us, particularly because some of the notecards were written about us as auditionees,” said Jabberwocks member Gus Benson ’24, who auditioned in 2019 before taking a gap year for the 2020-21 school year.
Though the group is used to students speaking out against them, they quickly realized this situation was one that would elicit a stronger reaction than most.
“We have had people speak out against us for various things,” said Jabberwocks member Ethan Asis ’24, who also took a gap year and auditioned in 2019. “Some of those things have been accurate, others have not been.”
Many of the Jabberwocks learned about the post while at rehearsal the night of Sept. 9. Instead of singing, they spent the next several hours discussing what their next steps should be.
“That first rehearsal in particular was very, very heavy,” Asis said. Some members stayed until 2 a.m. to discuss plans and begin drafting a statement.
Many of the Jabberwocks do not yet know for sure if they have cards written about them. They have decided to focus on their next steps for the time being, but are in the process of getting the cards returned to them, Zhang said.
“We’re being held accountable, so regardless of whether or not we are also caught in the crossfire, I think it’s more important that” the group focus on responding, Asis said.
The next day, the Jabberwocks spent many hours in discussion, with members going in and out to shop classes. They posted an initial Facebook statement in the comments of the Dear Blueno post and began researching their own history in depth.
Some of the Jabberwocks’ initial plans include revising the callback pamphlet to make the history section more candid. Instead of just a brief overview, it will now emphasize that new members understand the implications of joining a group with 70 years of history, Asis said.
The Jabberwocks have also begun discussing how to restructure recruitment and are considering the practice of handing back audition cards and feedback to the auditionees. “We want to demonstrate our commitment to making sure that this kind of harm wouldn’t happen again,” Zhang said.
On Sept. 11, the Jabberwocks attended the community town hall. They felt “committed to making sure to listen to exactly how they’ll be affected and how we can help them,” Zhang added.
The Jabberwocks found it difficult to read the room during the meeting because many attendees had their cameras turned off, Benson said. After the meeting ended, the group was given 14 suggestions for internal changes they could make, crafted by their a capella peers from other groups.
“A lot of things that they were asking were huge internal things that would change us fundamentally,” Zhang said. The Jabberwocks decided they needed time to consider the options but could postpone auditions immediately.
The Jabberwocks have spent the past week and a half discussing long-term changes they hope to make as a group. Though these conversations are not yet finished, they have a better idea of their future plans.
“A lot of these bigger discussions we have been having as a group for a while,” said Dorrit Corwin ’24, a member of the Jabberwocks who also auditioned in 2019 but took a gap year. “They’re really big decisions to make (as) the current iteration of a group that’s existed for so long.”
Current Jabberwocks members estimate that the group has not received funding from the alumni association since roughly 2017 or 2018. When they do ask for funding, it is generally to help pay for travel or album production. They often earn that money to pay the alumni association back from performances.
The Jabberwocks are also working to produce a transparency document spanning their 70 years of history, and have had preliminary discussions about potentially rebranding by changing their name.
Despite their plans to make changes, the Jabberwocks feel that both they and the larger a cappella community are missing integral historical context about the group’s legacy at Brown.
“It feels like the nature of this entire discourse in these discussions, and the format in particular, have not really at all been conducive to progress and transparency,” Benson said. “We would really love to have an open conversation.”
The Jabberwocks transitioned from a men-only to an all-voices a capella group in 2019. Current juniors are the first class of auditionees after the transition.
“As a woman in this group, it’s been a really interesting experience,” Corwin said. “For the majority of it, it’s been very empowering.”
As their conversations continue, the Jabberwocks plan to make more concrete plans to address the concerns. These include whether they should keep their practice room — they are the only a capella group on campus to have a dedicated room — and when and how they will next host auditions.
“We really do want accountability for that privilege and we are in the midst of conversations about whether that means relinquishing the room, sharing with other a cappella groups or figuring out (another) way to make that more equitable,” Corwin said.”

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‘It’s not hyperbole to say it’s life or death’: Local organizations work to secure housing for low-income tenants
by Brown Daily Herald
Jan 01, 2023
“After the Supreme Court overturned the Centers for Disease Prevention and Control eviction moratorium on Aug. 26, the George Wiley Center and other organizations began planning eviction clinics to help connect at-risk tenants to Rhode Island rent relief funds and legal representatives.
Rhode Island has not enacted a moratorium to prevent the displacement of low-income residents; other states and municipalities like New York and Boston have introduced their own moratoriums after the termination of federal protection.
The moratorium provided the “important” service of preventing tenants from being moved out of their residence, according to Jennifer Wood, executive director of the Rhode Island Center for Justice. But it did not prevent judges from issuing eviction court orders that could be implemented after the closure of the moratorium—resulting in the eviction of Rhode Islanders from more than 2,000 households already, she said.
Wood added that the number of evictions could rise to somewhere between 15,000 and 100,000 in the next 18 months, due to unemployment rates and the loss of unemployment benefits.
The absence of a state moratorium occurs as COVID-19 cases — many tied to the Delta variant — rise, placing Rhode Island in the CDC’s high transmission category, Wood said. She noted that the CDC’s own research indicates that the movement and residential congregation of people due to eviction poses a danger to public health.
Camillo Viveiros, executive director of the George Wiley Center, said that “unfair evictions” are never appropriate and argued that these evictions should be avoided, especially at a time when COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations are increasing.
“It’s not hyperbole to say it’s life or death,” he said, adding that leaders who don’t act to address these evictions are “responsible for the amplification” of infections.
While Viveiros said that the State’s response to eviction could appear reasonable from “a class-blind or colorblind” perspective on vaccination rates, he stressed that low-income and BIPOC communities are still “disproportionately impacted” by the pandemic.
House Speaker Joe Shekarchi defended the State’s lack of moratorium in an interview with The Herald, describing Rent Relief Rhode Island — a program that provides grants for at-risk tenants to cover rent and utilities back to April 2020 and up to two months forward — as “very robust,” with $170 million still remaining from its original federal endowment of $200 million. He added that RRRI is “a much better alternative to a moratorium, which just delays and compounds the amount (of rent) outstanding.”
“There’s no reason anybody should be evicted for non-payment of rent in Rhode Island,” he said, given the availability of grant funds through RRRI.
Despite the efforts of RRRI, Viveiros noted that barriers preventing low-income and BIPOC communities from accessing rent relief still persist. These barriers include a lack of access to computers and email, computer illiteracy and ID requirements.
To reach out to those who haven’t accessed Rent Relief RI, State Rep. Leonela Felix — in conjunction with the George Wiley Center, Rhode Island Housing and DARE — plans to create eviction clinics in each of Rhode Island’s five counties to facilitate the process of applying for rent relief, as well as to provide tenants with attorneys, if necessary. The first clinic will be held at the George Wiley Center on Sept. 30.
“The pandemic has shown us that we need to take care of our more vulnerable populations,” Felix said.
Rhode Island Legal Services plans to assist with an eviction clinic on Oct. 2, Housing Law Center Director Steve Flores said. He added that his organization has learned to address problems “in new ways” due to the “unprecedented” nature of the pandemic.
For example, RILS, in partnership with the Center for Justice, is launching a lawyer-for-the-day program this week; staff attorneys will be situated in courthouses to assist unrepresented residents who have an eviction hearing that day, Flores said. He added that the organization is assigning a staffer the responsibility of assisting clients with the rent relief application process and has increased its Housing Law Center staff.
The Center for Justice, along with RILS, has also worked to get judges to extend the timeframe for securing payment for the back rent, to prevent tenants from being evicted while their rent relief applications are pending, Wood said.
“The major challenge is that it’s not like anyone has a magic wand” to promptly mobilize the RRRI funds so tenants can immediately pay their landlords, Wood said, adding that the processing of applications requires time, approximately 30 days. While Wood said that judges have been “very responsive” to the needs of the Center’s clients, she maintained that their current approach is not a “systemic solution.” Instead, she believes eviction cases with a pending rent relief application should have their hearing delayed until the application is resolved.
Wood added that the issue of eviction is exacerbated by Rhode Island’s shortage of affordable housing, which is a pre-pandemic issue “lurking behind” the repercussions of the CDC moratorium’s lifting. In some Rhode Island municipalities, such as Little Compton and Scituate, “less than 1% of housing” is affordable.”

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Gaber ’23: Experiencing 9/11’s aftermath as an Egyptian-American
by Brown Daily Herald
Jan 01, 2023
“For months now, I’ve been dreading the coming of September, as I do every year. This year — an anniversary year — I knew would be much worse for me. I was newly one-year-old on Sept. 11, 2001. I don’t remember it. I don’t know where I was. I will never be psychologically affected by watching the towers fall on live TV (or even in-person) as many others have been. I don’t want to take anything away from them or their experiences. 9/11 uniquely affected Black and brown people, an often overlooked fact in our “never forget” and “national unity” rhetoric.
It’s clear that 9/11 was one of our country’s greatest national tragedies. But we are rarely allowed to discuss its less immediately visible consequences. Perhaps some are afraid of offending others or disrespecting the victims or their families. Let me be clear: Those people who lost loved ones on 9/11 deserve their day to grieve in peace. But if you’re someone who is getting sucked into the national unity narrative once again, I challenge you to interrogate the nuances of that narrative and its roots.
I genuinely want to know why the lives lost in Iraq and Afghanistan in the 20 years since 9/11 are simply news noise to us. Are we okay with violence when it’s “them” and not “us”? I want to know why we still use the word “terrorist” primarily for perpetrators of violence who proclaim themselves to be Muslim. I want to know why people in this country and around the world still fail to connect the dots of the rise in hate crimes against Muslim communities since Sept. 11, 2001. I want to know why my Arabic textbook is calibrated to teach me intelligence phrases like “United Nations” and “army officer” before we even learn colors. And I want to know why when I went to a language coordinator with this concern, she said to me: “Who knows, maybe those phrases will be more useful to you.”
9/11 is a day of profound grief for us, too. Who is “us”? Muslims, Arabs, Sikhs, South Asian people or any Black or brown person who was in the wrong place in the wrong outfit in the wrong lighting at the wrong time. Many marginalized groups became an amalgamated target for hate in the wake of 9/11 — but the American mainstream has largely ignored this reality to accommodate a more hopeful post-9/11 national narrative. 9/11 is a day of intense emotion and sadness for all of us. But we — people of color — do not feel welcome to talk about the layers of our sadness nor the reasons for our anger.
I’m not allowed to say that just hearing the words “terrorist attack” gives me a knot in my stomach, not just because it’s a sickening thing to hear in general, but also because whenever it happens, I have to pray that the perpetrator wasn’t an “Islamic” organization. Because when that inevitably happens, people twice my age expect me to explain the attack to them. It’s strange to me that people still don’t understand the inherent racism of asking me, an American-born Egyptian, about it. What more about terrorism am I expected to know than them? Sometimes, it just feels like they want me to rationalize and explain the terrorists’ logic for them. That’s not something I’m willing to do.
It’s been frustrating to grow up in the post-9/11 era. Despite having no recollection of the events, I am nevertheless subject to their consequences. A number of strange and upsetting things happened when I was a little kid and I didn’t know why. That was just the world we lived in, I guessed. I was fortunate enough not to have been personally attacked with violence, but the damage manifested in other ways. Growing up as an Arab-American, the first time I heard about the Arab world, aside from news about my relatives, was when my father showed me the newspaper’s recent accounts of the Iraq War.
I grew up watching a lot of movies and TV. That type of media has made me into who I am. It is what I love. But I never saw an Arab character on TV. I only saw Arab characters in film roles as terrorists. And that made me ashamed to be an Arab because it told me that the only way the people I loved — my family and my relatives — would be seen by the artform I held so dearly was as that awful, awful thing. We couldn’t be inventors, intellectuals, innovators or upstanding citizens of any kind.
So, 20 years after our heartbreaking national tragedy, and 21 years into my life, I’ve started trying to process all of that. It hasn’t been easy. Especially not when your high school choir director announces to a room of 60 students that 9/11 “brought our country together” and you don’t have the strength, the nerve or the comprehension to tell him you have no idea what he’s talking about. Especially not when Paul Krugman tweets that there was no significant rise in hate crimes against Muslims after 9/11. Especially not when a language coordinator tells you that she thinks Arabic is primarily useful to communicate with intelligence officials, not to learn in its own right.
I don’t want it to seem like I don’t think people should be posting “never forget.” Of course they should. Especially the people who lived through it, who will never be able to forget. Everyone has a right to grieve — for their own specific reasons, and in their own specific way. For all Americans, 9/11 was an unspeakable tragedy that shook this country to its core. But many non-white people also have to carry the burden of its racist aftermath. The current 9/11 narrative must not obscure that fact — that’s all I’m asking for.”

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