The Rice Thresher, Vol. 94, No. 17, Ed. 1 Friday, January 26, 2007 Page: 3 of 20
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THE RICE THRESHER OPINION FRIDAY, JANUARY 26,2007
Guest column
Anti-Semitism rears its head on campus
"This computer is so Jewish!"
No, the computer did not have
a share in the covenant between
God and Abraham. It was not
one of the chosen pro-
cessors. And no, its
external sixteen-pin,
gold-plated connector
was not circumcised.
Rather, some freshman
was hitting the computer
because it was not work-
ing. Apparently, "Jewish"
is a derogatory term
to some people on the
Rice campus.
Maybe this sort of
discrimination seems
to be nothing new. Already this
year, Rice has had to deal with
the "Hustle and Flo" O-Week
theme and a racially contentious
Backpage. Yet these incidents were
attempts at humor—although failed
and resulting in apologies. But what
I heard last week in the Hanszen
college computer lab full of other
students was nothing more than
sheer anti-Semitism. No one else
spoke up, but I assume that if the
freshman had made a similar racial
remark, that would not have been
the case. Then again, racial sensi-
tivity is continuously addressed on
campus and all for the better.
During O-Week, all incoming
freshmen must undergo diversity
training to ensure they have an
Katherine
Gomer
awareness of demographic minori-
ties on campus. Unfortunately, anti-
Semitism is completely ignored.
This may be because Rice
has not had to deal with
anti-Semitism through-
out its history. At its
founding — at a time
when the Ivy Leagues
were practicing active
anti-Semitism — Rice
had a Jewish board
member. And the Me-
norah Society was one
of Rice's first student
organizations.
Today in America,
anti-Semitism seems
something relegated to an
unenlightened past and is over-
looked as a relevant issue. In fact,
this is probably the reason that iron-
ic humor about Jews has become
so mainstream these days. Sascha
Baron Cohen won a Golden Globe
for his portrayal of an anti-Semite,
and it is hard to find a student on
campus who has not laughed at
South Park's Cartman mocking
Kyle for being a Jew. Despite these
"jokes," the line between ironic hu-
mor and anti-Semitism is there.
And this line is crossed on a
regular basis on campus. "Jew" has
been used as a discriminatory term
and various groups often tell Jew-
ish students on campus that they
are "going to Hell" for their beliefs.
I will not mince words: This is
anti-Semitism.
People who hold such preju-
diced opinions do not belong at
Rice. But the rebuke for such
behavior should not come from
the administration. Rather, it is our
duty as a community of students to
stand up for one another and shout
down those who aim to spread hate.
I know that some students may
be afraid to speak out and make
themselves a target — but calling
out anti-Semitism when one sees
it is not overreacting, it is a just
response to injustice.
I hope that I am the only person at
Rice who has suffered anti-Semitism
and had to stand up to it alone — but
I know that is not the case. Listening
to the experiences of students and
professors, anti-Semitism on cam-
pus is much more widespread than
anyone is willing to admit. Whether
you believe it or not, students do use
"Jew" as a derogatory term.
Anti-Semitism has been ignored
for so long because people assume
that it has disappeared. But the ten-
percent of Rice student body that is
Jewish needs to be heard. ITie stu-
dent body as a whole should consider
the consequences of its words and
not allow others to turn their fellow
students' identity into an insult.
Katherine Gomerisa Hanszen College
sophomore.
Guest column
Cheney cronies "double down" for more war
Already mired in a failing
resource war in Iraq, the same
cliques of discredited liars, war crimi-
nals and corporate profiteers behind
the cynical "Global War on
Terror" are now greasing '
the propaganda organs for
an invasion of Iran.
The Pentagon loyalists
surrounding Vice President
I )ick Cheney are calling this
their "double down" strategy.
The name is quite apt, with
top military leaders behav-
ing like reckless, degenerate
gamblers who continue to
raise the stakes after every
losing bet.
The war machine is already in mo-
tion. The USS Stennis strike group,
with at least 3,200 soldiers and a fleet
of minesweepers, submarines and 80
tighter jets is now moving toward the
Persian Gulf. It will join four other
offensive armadas, the USS Boxer,
USS Bataan, USS Eisenhower and
Expeditionary Strike Group 2.
On Jan. 12, at least sixteen
F-16 lighter jets arrived in Turkey,
further exposing a possible
attack. Speculation is now rampant
in international newspapers that
the United States will use nuclear
"bunker buster" bombs to strike
Iran before May 2007, using Israeli
operational and air support.
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist
Seymour Hersh recently reported in
the New Yorker that Cheney is once
again bypassing the CIA and State
Department, which have argued
that Iran has no nuclear weapons
program. Both groups estimated
that even at Iran's current pace, the
country is at least nine years away
from posesssing a nuclear bomb.
The actual reasons for invad-
ing Iran might be its status as the
world's fourth largest producer of
crude oil, along with its recent deci-
sion to sell its oil in Euros, rather
than dollars. The petroleum-rich
region of Khuzestan — holding
90 percent of Iran's oil fields
along the Iraqi border — has the
oil cartel salivating.
Yet propaganda must triumph
over all. The echo chamber of corpo-
rate media, chiefly owned by seven
transnational conglomerates, will
likely follow its marching orders as
it did prior to the invasion of Iraq.
Claims of an Iranian nuclear bomb
Dan
Abrahamson
will dominate the headlines, once
again frightening Americans into
supporting the latest oil grab.
If this effort fails, a conveniently
timed false-flag terror at-
tack or Gulf ofTonkin style
event would be enough
to crush any dissent. For
example, the now declas-
sified 1962 Joint Chiefs'
document "Operation
Northwoods" suggested
dressing up American
agents as Cubans, then
hijacking commercial air-
liners and crashing them
in order to justify a war
with Cuba.Today, Iraq is
a hopeless hellhole — occupied and
tortured by American forces, exploit-
ed by Halliburton and oil syndicates,
terrorized by death squads and radi-
ated with depleted uranium.
A recent Johns Hopkins estimate,
published in the scientific journal
The Ixincet, claimed over 650,000
Iraqi civilians have died since the
"liberation" in 2003. Meanwhile, at
least 3,000 American troops are dead
while more than 20,000 are seriously
injured for this ill-advised cause.
Now is not the time to "double
down" with more troops in Iraq
and an invasion of Iran. Congress
should exercise subpoena power
and investigate pre-war intelli-
gence manipulation, including a
more thorough examination into
who orchestrated the attacks of
Sept. 11. Yet Democrats, influenced
by the same banking, military, oil and
Israeli lobbies that fund both parties,
seem unwilling to uncover the crimes
of the administration.
Furthermore, the anti-war
movement, dominated by insipid
sloganeering and impotent protests,
appears hesitant to confront the loom-
ing bloodbath in Iran. Regardless of
polities, all sides should be forewarned:
Iran is not a third-rate military power
like Iraq. Iran possesses advanced
conventional missile systems shipped
in by China and Russia, who are back-
ing them economically, militarily and
diplomatically. China has over $100
billion in oil and gas deals with Iran,
while Russia is assisting their nuclear
|x>wer program.
If the United States invades,
Iran will attempt to shut down the
Straits of Hormuz. cutting off 25
percent of the world's oil supplies
and causing a global economic panic.
A larger Middle Eastern war could
immediately ensue, and Russia and
China may find themselves in a reluc-
tant conflict with the United States.
All of this was avoidable. Accord-
ing to Colin Powell, in 2003, Iranian
leaders —including Supreme Lead-
er AyatollaliAli Khomeini — offered
direct negotiations to end support for
Lebanese and Palestinian militant
groups, open up their nuclear pro-
gram, and aid the U.S. occupation in
Iraq. But the White House rejected
those offers. Now the chess pieces
are lining up on both sides. Fueled by
the radical ideologies of Leo Strauss
and Carl Schmidt, the neocons are
planning their next hit.
Should the United States and
Israel strike Iran, it could quickly
escalate toward World War III. TT»e
question on every American's mind
must now become, "How can we
stop Cheney and his network from
unleashing nuclear Armageddon?"
Dan Abrahamson isa Sid Richardson
College junior.
Rice Voices
A computer geek in freshman
music theory: only at Rice
Derek
Ruths
One flute, three sopranos, one
clarinet, one tenor, three violins
and an oboe stared at me, waiting
forme to identify my instrument of
proficiency. It was the
first day of MUSI 211:
Freshman Music The-
ory for Majors. Profes-
sor Richard Uivenda
was taking roll and I
was wondering what
strange, new universe
I had entered where I
was expected to give
an overview of my
musical history.
The fundamental
problem was that,
despite having spent over 17 semes-
ters at Rice, I had no such history.
Whereas my freshman classmates
were able to invoke institutions
such as Julliard and reflect over
a decade of musical study, my
inventory of musical knowledge
would run like a Ritalin-charged
MTV commercial, featuring a rapid
succession of disconnected facts
and culminating in the triumphant
assertion that 'H' is not a letter
used to denote the pitch following
'G'. My list of famous musical gi-
ants would read like a page torn
from who's who of country music.
My favorite classical CD was
Bach for Barbecue.
"Classical Guitar," I said, realiz-
ingthat I might as well have named
the bongo drum, tambourine, or
slide-whistle. Surrounded by this
freshman orchestra, my classical
guitar may as well have been a set
of bagpipes. But it was a classical
guitar. And after spending every
evening of the previous summer
carefully filing the nails on my
plucking hand and learning to
play smooth arpeggios, I enrolled
in music theory because I wanted
to understand the classical music I
was learning. However, all details
taken into account, my only plau-
sible qualification for this class
was a sincere willingness to work
hard to keep up with my freshman
peers. And, because this is Rice,
this qualification sufficed.
The fact that a fourth-year
graduate student in computer
science can join the freshman class
of Rice music majors every Monday,
Wednesday and Friday morning for
music theory instruction makes
Rice both rare and cherishable.
Few schools cater to students who
have an inborn sense of academic
wanderlust—a need to experience
and embrace many disciplines. And
yet, I think that few traits are more
important for success and happi-
ness in our world.
We live in a networked age
in which the shortest
distance between two
points is the hyperlink
on a Web site. With
the democratization of
knowledge, interweav-
ing of disciplines and
feverish pace of cross-cul-
tural exchange, distances
become phrenic rather
than physical. In all of this,
Rice can truly claim that
it anticipated this future
and embraced this new
modality long before its pulsating
rays broke over the horizon and
dawned on our global society.
The college system itself
answers the need for embedding
people in a cross-cultural and
cross-disciplinary environment.
During my undergraduate years
at Jones College Third South, I
shared my floor with a pianist-
turned-mathematician, several
electrical engineers, a flutist, two
football players, three pre-meds
and a huge cast of other characters
who never would have wandered
through my computer science
classes in Duncan Hall.
The college system taken with
Rice's unique brand of academics
truly sets Rice apart. In my experi-
ence, any class at Rice is open to
a student who is willing to work
hard. Declared majors are not used
to discriminate for enrollment,
prerequisites are rarely absolutely
enforced, and classmates are very
encouraging and supportive of
neophytes in their area. 'Hie silos
that segregate knowledge at other
universities are virtually non-exis-
tent for students at Rice.
This means that we students
at Rice have opportunities that
uniquely prepare us for the world
beyond the hedges. Our culture at
Rice not only models die world, it
anticipates it. What you are able to
do at Rice mimics what the world will
increasingly become. Embrace this
diversity that Rice offers. It took me
nine years to walk into a classroom
in the Shepherd School, and now
that I am there, I am very glad that
I came. And while a classical guitar
may not exactly fit with the freshman
orchestra, I have discovered a part of
their world that fits with me.
Derek Ruths is a computer science
graduate student.
the Rice Thresher
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Brown, David. The Rice Thresher, Vol. 94, No. 17, Ed. 1 Friday, January 26, 2007, newspaper, January 26, 2007; Houston, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth443012/m1/3/: accessed June 19, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; crediting Rice University Woodson Research Center.