COMMENTARY, 11

Kelly reactionsThe community responds to Tuesday’s canceled lecture by Ray Kelly

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 30, 2013 since 1891vol. cxlviii, no. 100Daily HeraldTHE BROWN

63 / 56

t o m o r r o w

56 / 39

t o d ay

wea

ther

insi

de

SCIENCE, 4 COMMENTARY, 9

Divest goalsJacqueline Ho ’14 argues for reframing the decision not to divest

Gift of voiceSpeakYourMind works to restore communication to paralyzed individuals

By CAROLYNN CONG AND JILLIAN LANNEYCONTRIBUTING WRITER

AND SENIOR STAFF WRITER

A lecture by New York City Police Department Commissioner Raymond Kelly scheduled for Tuesday afternoon was canceled after protesters halted Kelly’s speech and would not yield the floor.

Controversy preceded the talk — titled, “Proactive Policing in America’s Biggest City” — due to its speaker’s staunch support for the

contentious stop-and-frisk policy. The event was presented by the Taub-man Center for Public Policy and American Institutions as part of the Noah Krieger ’93 Memorial Lecture series.

Student protest actions leading up to the event included creating a peti-tion and holding a vigil in honor of victims of racial profiling, The Herald previously reported. After adminis-trators rejected demands laid out in the petition, protest efforts expanded, according to a press release distrib-uted by the event’s protesters.

Around 100 students and commu-nity members gathered outside List Art Center about an hour before the lecture was scheduled to start, chant-ing phrases such as, “Ray Kelly, you

Ray Kelly lecture canceled amidst community protestThe event was canceled half an hour in, following heated remarks by audience members

By ANDREW JONESSTAFF WRITER

While ethnic and racial groups that have historically comprised a mi-nority of the U.S. population are growing in size and influence, they remain un-derrepresented

in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics both nationally and at Brown.

Administrators and higher educa-tion experts said this gap in repre-sentation poses an alarming problem not only to universities but also to the nation as a whole.

According to 2010 data from the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Census Bureau, underrepresented minorities earned 18.6 percent of total undergraduate degrees from 4-year colleges, but only 16.4 percent of the degrees in science fields and less than 13 percent of degrees in physical sci-ences and engineering.

The University’s statistics reflect this trend. Groups traditionally

underrepresented in the sciences in-clude students who identify as Ameri-can Indian or Alaska Native, black, Hispanic or Latino, Native Hawaiian or other Pacific Islander. At Brown, these students received 13.5 percent of undergraduate degrees in spring of 2013 but only 5.6 percent of the degrees in the physical sciences and 9 percent of the degrees in engineering, according to data provided by the Of-fice of Institutional Research.

“STEM has the toughest time keep-ing pace with changing demograph-ics. If you look at the business world, the sports world, the arts and poli-tics — they seem to be doing a good job of keeping pace, but we haven’t

Minority groups underrepresented in STEM fieldsThis gap in representation has both economic and social implications, education experts say

GREG JORDAN-DETAMORE / HERALD

More than 100 students and community members protested the scheduled lecture by New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly, resulting in the event’s cancelation.

DAVID DECKEY / HERALD

Enrollment data indicated higher attrition rates for underrepresented minorities than for other students in STEM disciplines at Brown. » See STEM, page 3

By ANDREW JONESSTAFF WRITER

The $1 million Moshe Mirilashvili Me-morial Fund Breakthrough Research and Innovation in Neurotechnology

Prize was award-ed to BrainGate researchers for their creation

of a brain-computer interface that could aid people with paralysis. Israeli President Shimon Peres presented the award to Professor of Neuroscience John Donoghue PhD ’79 and Profes-sor of Engineering Arto Nurmikko at a technology conference Oct. 15 in Tel Aviv.

The interface is composed of a small patch of electrodes that receives and transmits neural signals to a com-puter that interprets patterns and sends commands to operative assistive de-vices. Most famously, in May 2012, the team released a video of a woman with severe paralysis grabbing and drinking from a bottle with a robotic arm simply by thinking about moving her arm.

BrainGate is a “team of physicians, scientists and engineers working to-gether to study the brain and develop neurotechnologies for people with neurologic disease, injury, or limb loss,” according to the group’s web-site. While based at Brown, the team also collaborates with the Providence Department of Veterans Affairs, Mas-sachusetts General Hospital, Stanford University and Case Western Reserve University.

The prize came as a surprise to

BrainGate researchers win major prize for neuro technologyU. scientists will use the $1 million prize to defray the costs of the neural electrode technology

COURTESY OF CHEN GALILI

Professor of Engineering Arto Nurmikko and Professor of Neuroscience John Donoghue received the B.R.A.I.N. Prize from Israeli President Shimon Peres at a technology conference in Tel Aviv.» See BRAIN, page 2

» See KELLY, page 7

Missing ScientistsAn exploration of minority

underrepresentation in STEM fields

First in a three-part series

SCIENCE & RESEARCH

science & research2 THE BROWN DAILY HERALDWEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 30, 2013

ACROSS1 Big name in big

trucks5 Gunk9 TV’s Dick Van

__13 When doubled, a

Northwest city14 Give a makeover15 Line holder16 Home sound

system18 Texts: Abbr.19 Decline from

disuse20 Some

Beethovenworks

22 “Veni, vidi, vici”man

23 Memorable“Rocky” line

26 Little Leaguer,say

27 Automated intro?29 __ del Fuego30 Stay a step

ahead of32 Many millennia33 Eloquent38 “__ baby!”39 Zapped40 Rapper who

played Left Earin “The ItalianJob”

43 Software testversion

44 Agnus __47 Reason to pile

onto the team bus49 Promoting51 Botanist’s study52 Nostalgic

souvenir53 River in a 1957

Best Picture title55 Hero whose

catchphrasebegins 16-, 23-,33- and 47-Across

57 Work on, as apopsicle

58 Q.E.D. part59 Levels60 Tiny arachnid61 “Gadzooks!”62 Puts the kibosh

on

DOWN1 Fruity cocktail2 Butler in the

Batcave3 Awards for ads4 “How Life

Imitates Chess”author Garry

5 Earl with a tea6 Above, to Keats7 Start of some

Keats titles8 Having little

talent for9 H.G. Wells’

islandphysiologist

10 “Darn tootin’!”11 Small cask12 Golf star Ernie13 Off, in

mobspeak17 Royal seat21 Exiled Amin23 Google-owned

video site24 Yank since 200425 Bert Bobbsey’s

sis28 Hot-sounding

Europeancapital

31 Elbow

33 Tuck away34 “I’ve got proof!”35 Elegantly

feminine36 Infernal37 Greeting from

Down Under38 Physicians’ org.41 Id controller42 Chris of “Tommy

Boy”44 Dented

45 Keys in46 Stravinsky and

Sikorsky48 Native New

Zealander50 Enclose, as pigs52 Parcel (out)53 Airline to

Amsterdam54 Xbox 360

competitor56 Quick snooze

By Jeff Chen(c)2013 Tribune Content Agency, LLC 10/30/13

10/30/13

ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:

RELEASE DATE– Wednesday, October 30, 2013

Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword PuzzleEdited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis

xwordeditor@aol.com

12 P.M.

Big Transparency for the NSA

Taubman Center, Seminar Room

4 P.M.

Pumpkin Carving Contest

Sharpe Refectory

1:30 P.M.

SHAG Halloween

Petteruti Lounge, Campus Center

11:55 P.M.

Midnight Halloween Organ Concert

Sayles Hall Auditorium

SHARPE REFECTORY VERNEY-WOOLLEY

LUNCH

DINNER

Chicken Pot Pie, Pork Loin with Apple Dressing and Apple Sauce, Black Bean and Sweet Potato Rogout

Savory Chicken Stew, Mexican Cornbread Casserole, Egg Noodles with Olive Oil, Frosted Cupcakes

Spiced Chicken Wings, BBQ Chicken Sandwich, Sundried Tomato Calzone, Texas BBQ Baked Beans

Mediterranean Eggplant Saute, Shaved Steak Sandwich, Falafel, Potato Salad, Italian Meatballs

TODAY OCTOBER 30 TOMORROW OCTOBER 31

c r o s s w o r d

s u d o k u

m e n u

c a l e n d a rthe researchers, Donoghue said. He recalled his disbelief just before Peres announced the winners.

“Just then I said, ‘What if he says it’s us?’” Donoghue said.

The prize money will help ease the burden of cost associated with the in-terface development.

“Medical devices cost $100, $150 million to develop, so this is a very important piece to help accelerate that development,” Donoghue said.

Fellow team members expressed similar excitement about the award.

“I’m extremely happy for John and Arto. … This is a remarkable project spanning many years, and it promises to advance our understanding of the brain while bringing new therapies to people with impaired movement,” wrote Michael Black, professor of

computer science, in an email to The Herald. Black contributed to the proj-ect by decoding the neural signals.

In February 2013, the team re-vealed a wireless version of the inter-face that would grant users greater mobility and freedom. The team hopes to eventually create a version of the device that is fully implantable in a human body, Donoghue said.

“Our goal is to take the whole cart of electronics and put it inside of something the size of a smartphone. … We want to see this through so that it actually gets out to help people in the real world,” Donoghue said.

The brain-computer interface can also be used to study brain activity “at a level that’s never been done before,” said Donoghue.

The interface may eventually be used to detect potential seizures be-fore they occur. The implanted device

would warn the patient of an oncom-ing seizure and then automatically in-ject him or her with a drug that would prevent the seizure. This treatment could be applied to depression and other psychiatric disorders, Dono-ghue said.

Though the award specifically rec-ognized Donoghue, Nurmikko and Leigh Hochberg ’90, associate profes-sor of engineering, as world leaders in the development of neurotechnology, BrainGate is a collaboration among many more faculty members and stu-dents, Donoghue said.

“The prize recognizes the collec-tion of an extraordinary group of Brown University scientists across multiple disciplines which I have been privileged to be associated with,” Nur-mikko said in an Oct. 15 University press release. “We work as a team un-like any other place I know.”

» BRAIN, from page 1

science & research 3THE BROWN DAILY HERALDWEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 30, 2013

5

10

15

20 % of total degrees awarded

Other students

Underrepresented minorities

Life SciencesEngineeringPhysical Sciences

Racial disparities in STEM disciplinesThe disparity in the racial and ethnic degree completion rates varies between STEM disciplines, with underrepresentation occurring in the physical sciences and engineering.

For example, 4 percent of underrepresented minorities are awarded degrees in the physical sciences, while 12 percent of other students are awarded degrees in the �eld. (Data include 2009 through 2013.)

Data source: O�ce of Institutional Research

seen that kind of change,” said An-drew Campbell, as-sociate professor of medical science and program director of Brown’s Initiative to Maximize Student Development.

Reinforcing inequity

The dispropor-tional representation of certain minorities in science disciplines grows increasingly problemat ic as greater portions of the country become “majority minority,” said Charles Lu, director of academic advancement and innovation at the University of Texas at Austin.

“You have a big change in demo-graphics, yet our people of color are not getting into STEM fields, or they’re getting pushed out. And that poses a big problem, not only for the educa-tion system but also down the road,” Lu said.

Racial minorities may be cognizant of particular societal, health and po-litical issues that the majority of STEM students would not normally consider, said Mitchell Chang, a professor of higher education and organizational change at the University of California

Los Angeles. “You see those inequities in soci-

ety reinforced in part because ... the members of those communities . . . aren’t entering these fields that can either help them or prevent them from being ex-ploited,” he said.

Science relies on individuals with diverse perspectives working together, Lu said. Many students in STEM disciplines aspire to careers in medicine, which require empathy for a wide array of pa-tients.

If the underrepresentation of mi-nority groups in STEM fields perpetu-ates, “We’re not going to have scientists and medical practitioners who are re-sponsive to those demographics,” Lu said.

The dispar-ity in STEM fields also has economic implications, Lu said. “We’re going to have to keep outsourcing more and more jobs, so our economy is going to suffer.”

Students tended to agree that the representation gap is a serious problem

that necessitates University action.“Historically people from my back-

ground don’t go into science a lot,” said Jesus Leyva ’16, a student from Mexico concentrating in applied math and biology. We should “encourage students to keep going with the field they were in,” he said.

Leaving the fieldAttrition from STEM disciplines

during students’ undergraduate years accounts for some of the disparities in STEM fields.

Nationally, underrepresented mi-norities who initially pursue STEM degrees are about 40 percent less likely to complete them than are their white and Asian-American counterparts, Chang said.

The University also sees higher attrition rates in underrepresented minority student populations in STEM fields. A 2007 report released by the Undergraduate Science Education

Committee at Brown found the University’s undergraduate reten-tion rate for underrep-resented students in STEM concentrations to be 56 percent, while the overall retention rate in STEM fields was 64 percent.

This gap grew even more pronounced in the physical sci-ences, which include chemistry and physics. While the overall retention

rate was found to be 51 percent, only 31 percent of students from under-represented groups who began to pur-sue degrees in these fields completed them.

While it used to be the case that fewer underrep-resented minority students entered college intending to pursue STEM degrees, “that gap has closed in the last 20 years,” Chang said. “What we’re seeing now is almost the same proportion of un-derrepresented mi-norities interested in pursuing those degrees as entering college freshmen as whites and Asians,” Chang said.

Liza Cariaga-Lo, associate provost for academic development and di-versity, said not all attrition should necessarily be viewed negatively.

“There is nothing wrong with at-trition if the attrition has to do with where people decide to pursue their life goals, but it is an issue if we’re not providing the support and resources they need if they do want to stay in the sciences,” Cariaga-Lo said.

What’s needed at Brown Closing the gap in the ethnic

and racial composition of students in STEM disciplines is an arduous but manageable and necessary task,

education experts agreed. Increasing the number of role

models for minority students, ex-panding opportunities for research experience and ensuring adequate high school preparation would help

to alleviate the current disparities in STEM disciplines, profes-sors, administrators and students noted.

Though programs exist to help underrep-resented minority stu-dents succeed in the sciences, students, fac-ulty members and ad-ministrators expressed that the problem of underrepresentation still deserves more attention.

“Simply put, there aren’t enough under-represented students

in STEM fields,” said Abi Kulshreshtha ’15, an Indian-American student con-centrating in physics and economics.

“The ethos at Brown is that we are a community of scholars who engage one another in ... these ways that bring different perspectives to the table,” Cariaga-Lo said. STEM fields “can benefit more fully from the talents of these underrepresented students who we may not really be tapping for work in the sciences.”

Tomorrow’s story will explore the experience of underrepresented minority students in STEM classes, featuring first-hand accounts of the challenges they have faced at Brown.

HAILY TRAN / HERALD

DAVID DECKEY / HERALD

Members of minority ethnic and racial groups can contribute crucial insights to various STEM fields, in part because they may bring unique sensitivities to certain demographics and political issues, Charles Lu said.

“You have a big change in

demographics, yet our people of color

are not getting into STEM fields, or they’re getting

pushed out.”

Charles Lu DIRECTOR OF ACADEMIC AD-

VANCEMENT AND INNOVATION AT U. OF TEXAS AUSTIN

“What we’re seeing now is almost the

same proportion of underrepresented

minorites interested in

puruing those degrees as entering college freshman as whites and Asians.”

Mitchell ChangHIGHER ED EXPERT AT UCLA

“Simply put, there aren’t enough

underrepresented students in STEM

fields.”

Abi Kulshreshtha ’15

This series will investigate the underrepresentation of certain racial minorities in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) disciplines, probing the cause, breadth and ramifications of the disparity, as well as its impact on individual students and University efforts to combat the problem. Read it online at: thebdh.org/ms.Today: Part one analyzes the scope of STEM underrepresentation of certain racial minorities on the national and University levels, honing in on the broad social and economic consequences. Tomorrow: Part two explores the personal experience of underrepresented minority students in STEM fields, highlighting lack of high school preparation, stereotyping and academic support issues as major contributors to the gap. Friday: Part three critically examines current efforts and future plans of University administrators to address the underrepresentation of certain minorities in STEM fields.

Missing ScientistsAn exploration of minority

underrepresentation in STEM fields

A three-part series

Interested in learning more about STEM education at Brown?Check out our spring series “STEM 0010: An examination of introductory

science courses at Brown” at thebdh.org/stem.

» STEM, from page 1

science & research4 THE BROWN DAILY HERALDWEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 30, 2013

By JASON NADBOYCONTRIBUTING WRITER

Paralyzed individuals who feel trapped in their bodies may soon have the op-portunity to communicate more easily, thanks to a new non-profit organiza-tion inspired by University research.

The organization SpeakYourMind was founded earlier this year by Dan Bacher, a researcher on the Univer-sity’s BrainGate team that also works to restore communication to paralyzed individuals.

Paralyzed individuals “all had the same fundamental problem,” said Bacher, who is also SpeakYourMind’s executive director. “They couldn’t communicate. ... They couldn’t ex-press themselves.”

Current communication devices designed for paralyzed individuals are prohibitively expensive, and the

companies that make them don’t pro-vide substantial customer support, Bacher said.

Bacher said he recognized the need for cheaper and more efficient com-munication devices through working as a BrainGate researcher for the past decade. The BrainGate team is cur-rently investigating communication devices controlled by neural signals, but that technology is not yet widely available. Bacher said he wanted to create something that incorporated technology already available.

“I started building low cost proto-types,” he said. He would develop them on an individual basis for the specific client, working to “ultra-personalize” each solution, he said.

“SpeakYourMind is just a scaled up version of that” process, he said, adding that the organization relies

on volunteers who create individual solutions for each client.

SpeakYourMind uses off-the-shelf hardware such as tablets and inex-pensive cameras to build products, Bacher said. This makes them very cheap compared to traditional devices, which can cost around $15,000.

One of the devices the organiza-tion created enables people who could only move their eyes to type. The de-vice consists of a small, inexpensive camera attached to a cheap pair of glasses, Bacher said. The camera sends information about eye movements into a computer program, enabling people’s eyes to act like a finger on a touch-screen.

Many Brown and RISD students, in addition to corporate professionals who want to make a difference, cur-rently volunteer for SpeakYourMind, Bacher said.

“I got involved with developing technologies to help people communi-cate when I was still an undergraduate

at Brown,” said Anish Sarma ’12, lead engineer for SpeakYourMind. “And that was probably the most education-al experience of my time at Brown.”

Having Brown students work at SpeakYourMind is enriching because it shows them how to organize and structure a non-profit, said Brendan McNally, president and board mem-ber of SpeakYourMind and associate director of the C.V. Starr Program in Business, Entrepreneurship and Or-ganizations. It teaches students how to collaborate in teams, find funding and work with volunteers, he added.

Brown students also enjoy seeing the “immediate real world impact” of their work, Bacher said.

Elizabeth Weber ’14 chose to work for SpeakYourMind as her senior capstone project for her Business, Entrepreneurship and Organizations concentration.

“It’s neat to be in the action when this company is just starting up,” We-ber said, adding that she is gaining

firsthand business experience as she works on crowd-funding campaigns for the company.

“These are the sort of puzzles that make science interesting,” said Mark St. Louis ’15, referring to the problems and design challenges he works on.

Right now, the organization is still in its early start-up phase, serving only a small number of eager clients, Bacher said. In the future, members of the company hope to acquire more funding and reach out to more people, he said.

Their long-term goal is to “build a huge network and organization around personalized technology cre-ation and support” that could serve people all over the country, Bacher added.

“Figuring out how to build this scalable model is our challenge,” he said. “But the success we’ve had from a few of our clients is really promising, and we know if we can do this right, it’s going to grow and help a lot of people.”

SpeakYourMind creates low-cost aids for communication disabilitiesVolunteers from the U. and RISD develop personalized communication prototypes for paralyzed clients

T R I C K S A N D T R E AT S O N CO L L E G E H I L L

SOPHIE PUTKA / HERALD

Eli Sharf ’16 and other members of the fraternity Alpha Epsilon Pi played musical chairs with local children as part of the annual Halloween on Wriston.

SOPHIE PUTKA / HERALD

Trick-or-treaters from William D’Abate Elementary School walked through Wriston Quad in search of candy Tuesday.

science & research 5THE BROWN DAILY HERALDWEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 30, 2013

By EMILY WOOLDRIDGECONTRIBUTING WRITER

When neuroscientist Sheila Niren-berg received a call from a mysterious number a month ago, she did not expect to hear from the MacArthur Foundation, announcing she’d won the prestigious $625,000 MacArthur Fellowship.

“I thought the call was from a guy I’d gone on a date with,” said Niren-berg, a professor at the Weill Medical College of Cornell.

Nirenberg’s past work on neu-ral coding has led to the creation of prosthetics that have helped blind mice see and could potentially treat blindness in humans.

Yesterday Nirenberg explained her past and current research in this field at a lecture hosted by the Center for Vision Research at the Brown Insti-tute for Brain Science.

Students, faculty and community members filled Marcuvitz Audito-rium in Sidney Frank Hall to hear Nirenberg speak.

Nirenberg said her research could benefit more than 2 million people in America with advanced-stage blind-ness and others from around the world suffering from retinal diseases such as macular degeneration and retinitis pigmentosa. Current treat-ments, such as drug therapy, only help a small fraction of the population and current prosthetics offer nothing close to normal vision. The current technology provides blind people with very limited perception — they are able to see bright lights and high contrast edges but are unable to dis-tinguish faces or landscapes, Niren-berg said.

In contrast, Nirenberg’s prosthetic device creates nearly normal vision and allows for the perception of de-tail. The prosthetic accomplishes this by translating visual informa-tion from the outside world into a language the brain can understand.

In normal eyes, visual signals are translated into electrical pulses that

serve as a code that the brain inter-prets. In many cases of blindness the ganglion cells — the cells that com-municate the visual information from

the retina to the brain — remain in-tact. The circuitry that provides these cells with input, however, is rendered non-functional. Because the ganglion

cells do not receive any signals, the brain receives no visual information.

The prosthetic device created by

Lecture explores potential cure for blindness through prosthetic devicesResearch could benefit more than 2 million people with advanced stage blindness

SOPHIE PUTKA / HERALD

At the lecture, hosted by the Center for Vision Research at the Brown Institute for Brain Science, students discussed Sheila Nirenberg’s research and her devices’ ability to create nearly normal vision in blind mice.

» See BLINDNESS, page 8

university news6 THE BROWN DAILY HERALDWEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 30, 2013

GREG JORDAN-DETAMORE / HERALD

Margaret Klawunn, vice president for campus life and student services, warned the lecture would be canceled if protests continued.

GREG JORDAN-DETAMORE / HERALD

During the opening of Kelly’s lecture in List 120, a succession of individual audience members stood up and interrupted the speakers.

Got something to say? Leave a comment online!Visit browndailyherald.com to comment on any content.

university news 7THE BROWN DAILY HERALDWEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 30, 2013

can’t hide, we charge you with homi-cide” and holding signs reading “Stop police brutality,” “Systemic Racism,” “Brown is complicit” and “Ray(cist) Kelly,” among others.

The event took place in a packed List 120, forcing some to watch from an overflow room in List 110.

Marion Orr, director of the Taub-man Center, introduced Kelly and acknowledged the protesters’ pres-ence. He said that while “protest is a necessary and ac-ceptable means of demonstration at Brown University,” interrupting the lec-ture would be inap-propriate because it would hinder oth-ers’ ability to listen and engage with Kelly.

Protesters reacted vocally to mentions of Kelly and his policies throughout Orr’s introduction. When Kelly himself took the stage, protest-ers’ boos mixed with applause. As soon as he began to speak, many protesters stood with their fists in the air and began shouting in unison, after which neither Kelly nor Vice President for Campus Life and Stu-dent Services Margaret Klawunn and Vice President for Public Affairs and University Relations Marisa Quinn — two administrators present — could regain control of the auditorium.

“People felt very passionately and they wanted to share those stories,” said Esteban Ronancio ’15, who was not present in the auditorium but participated in the broader protest.

Protesters shouted various chants, including, “No justice, no peace, no racist police.” Others shouted that Kelly’s policies have been responsible for suppressing the voices of people of

color and that Kelly did not deserve a platform at Brown.

“I have never seen in my 15 years at Brown the inability to have a dia-logue,” Quinn said as she attempted to quiet the auditorium and resume.

After about a half-hour of at-tempts to continue the lecture, ad-ministrators decided to cancel the event.

Many individuals involved in the protest said they were pleased with

the turnout and the results.

“Our goal was for the lecture to be canceled from the beginning,” said Irene Rojas-Carroll ’15, one of the mo-bilizers behind the protest. Rojas-Car-roll previously told The Herald she felt there was no format

in which Kelly would be an appropri-ate speaker at Brown.

Among the protesters were mem-bers of organizations in the greater Providence community, including Di-rect Action for Right and Equality, a group that seeks social, economic and political justice for people of color.

As the protest filtered into the building, some re-enacted a 2006 demonstration by the now-defunct Coalition for Police Accountabil-ity and Institutional Transparency, which had been formed in response to allegations of institutionalized rac-ism and abuse by the Department of Public Safety and the Providence Police Department. Protestors read emotionally charged accounts of ra-cial discrimination by police officers, which were originally shared at the 2006 rally.

After the event, protesters gath-ered in front of List and gave speeches in celebration and commitment to continuing efforts against racial

profiling. “I think it was very clear that a

huge number of students support” the protest, Rojas-Carroll said.

Protesters voiced concerns that the event, and in extension the Taub-man Center and the University, had condoned racial profiling.

“Presenting him in this place of honor is not just upsetting, but frus-trating and angering,” said Camila Pacheco-Fores ’14, who attended the event in protest.

Many other students expressed frustration that Kelly was denied the opportunity to speak.

“It would have been more ef-fective to take part in a discussion rather than flat out refuse to have him speak,” said Denise Yoon ’17.

At one point during the dis-ruption, Chris Piette ’14 stood up to counter the protesters and was quickly interrupted.

“You’re angry for a good reason,” he said, “but your volume and your inability to listen is quieting my voice.”

Piette later told The Herald that though he identifies as a racial mi-nority and is “no stranger to racial discrimination,” the way to reach progress is not through anger.

The protest-ers “were too loud and angry to realize their voices were not the only ones that matter,” Piette said.

Jamelle Watson-Daniels ’15 said she has found a lack of acceptance for op-posing perspectives at Brown. She ar-rived at the lecture in protest after hearing about it at a Black Student Union meeting but said she felt the protest’s organizers had misrepresented the event to make the Taubman Center seem completely un-responsive to student concerns about the “racial implications” of Kelly’s policies.

She said she was surprised to learn the lecture would have a question-and-answer portion that would allow students to engage with Kelly.

“Open-mindedness runs both ways. You have to be able to hear both sides of the coin. It’s disappointing if we can’t, and then we can’t have a dia-logue,” said Torin Collier-Mark ’17.

Orr said the Taubman Center had made efforts to respond to student concerns about lack of dialogue by creating an expanded time period for audience members to ask the commissioner questions. Kelly was slated to speak for around 20 to 25 minutes and spend the rest of his time responding to questions.

“I think it’s a crying shame that people didn’t get to hear Raymond Kelly respond to his critics,” said Ross Cheit, a professor of political science and public policy at the Taubman Center.

Various University officials and administrators expressed surprise and disappointment with the lecture’s cancellation.

“I don’t recall in my years here a time when a lecture was stopped based on the crowd disrupting the speaker,” said Mark Porter, chief of police for DPS.

Deputy Chief of Police for DPS Paul Shanley added that though DPS was there to make sure the protest did not get out of control, the shutdown was not for fear of a public safety risk. DPS does not “take sides,” he said.

“The conduct of disruptive members of the audience is indefensible and an affront both to civil democratic society and to the University’s core values of dia-logue and the free exchange of views,” President Christina Paxson wrote in a statement.

In an email to the community, Paxson wrote that she has asked Klawunn to organize a forum to “discuss our values and expectations as a community.” Paxson also wrote that she would reach out to Kelly “to convey (her) deepest regret for the manner in which he was treated.”

Klawunn said the University does not plan to pursue disciplinary action against the students who disrupted the lecture.

Following the cancelation, Quinn said the University might have to re-view its policy of allowing all mem-bers of the community, as opposed to only individuals with Brown IDs, into the event.

Orr said it is unclear at this time what, if any, impact this event will have on future lectures at Brown.

— With reporting by Mathias Heller, Emmajean Holley, Elizabeth Koh and Andrew Smyth

JUSTINA LEE / HERALD

Following the cancelation of Kelly’s lecture, protesters gathered in front of the List Art Center and gave speeches against racial profiling.

GREG JORDAN-DETAMORE / HERALD

Protesters continued demonstrating outside the building after the auditorium was cleared.

“Presenting him in this place of

honor is not just upsetting, but

frustrating and angering.”

Camila Pacheco-Flores ’14

“It would have been more effective

to take part in a discussion rather

than flat our refuse to have him speak.”

Denise Yoon ’17

» KELLY, from page 1

Check thebdh.org/kelly for a video and photo gallery.

science & research8 THE BROWN DAILY HERALDWEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 30, 2013

Nirenberg and her team stands in for this dysfunctional circuitry in a blind eye. The prosthetic has two parts: an encoder and a transducer. The encoder is a chip implemented with a set of equations that translate visual information from the outside world into patterns of electrical im-pulses similar to those produced by a normal retina. The transducer then drives ganglion cells to fire as the code dictates, relaying information to the brain.

In this way, the prosthetic has been used to produce nearly nor-mal vision in blind mice. Mice with the prosthetics could discern facial features and visually track images, according to a previous study con-ducted by Nirenberg. The prosthetic was also tested on monkeys with in-duced blindness and achieved the same result.

The human version of the pros-thetic would consist of a pair of glasses serving as the encoder and a channelrhodopsin virus injected in the eye serving as the transducer. Nirenberg warns that the glasses are not slim and fashionable like her lec-ture graphic suggests, “they are more

like ski goggles.” There are a lot of hoops, such as

Food and Drug Administration ap-proval, that Nirenberg has to jump through before her human-based research can launch and prosthetics are made available to the public, she said. She predicts clinical trials on humans will begin in two years.

Nirenberg’s research also opens other doors. Increased understanding of the neural code may help address dysfunction within the motor and auditory system as well, she said.

Though Nirenberg is now a re-cipient of a “Genius” award, Senior Lecturer in Neuroscience John Stein described Nirenberg’s modesty while introducing at the beginning of the lecture. Ivana Petrovic GS, a student from Siberia who studies applied math, said she was willing to skip an important class to attend the talk.

When Nirenberg is not conduct-ing research, she has dinner at fancy restaurants in New York City with possible investors, she said. There may never be a cure for blindness and it may take time for prosthet-ics to become readily available, but Nirenberg has already found a cure for sadness — watching movies on Netflix.

» BLINDNESS, from page 5

Let’s Talk | Nava Winkler and Regine Rosas

Eric & Eliot | Willa Tracy

c o m i c s

commentary 9THE BROWN DAILY HERALDWEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 30, 2013

Within half an hour after Presi-dent Christina Paxson announced the Corporation’s decision not to divest from coal on Sunday, my Facebook News Feed was overrun with criticisms of Paxson’s letter.

Despite rallying alongside more than 100 other student ac-tivists last Friday in support of divestment, I did not “like” any of these Facebook posts. While I agree that, as the School for In-ternational Training’s Christian Parenti said, it is “morally uncon-scionable and ir-responsible for Brown to vote no to divestment,” I am uncomfortable with the way stu-dents framed the decision not to di-vest. I find it prob-lematic that stu-dents equate it with the Univer-sity refusing to take action on cli-mate change and ignoring student opinion. The premises underlying that logic are, first, that divestment is an effective strategy for tackling climate change, and second, that the University is not taking other steps to address climate change. The first premise is questionable, and the second is false.

Consider the best-case sce-nario: The Corporation votes to divest. The Huffington Post and the Nation congratulate Brown on taking a courageous stance against one of the most polluting indus-tries in the world. Brown is held up as the first Ivy League institu-tion to divest, leading the way for Cornell and Harvard to revoke their earlier decisions not to di-vest. And then what? The coal industry continues to profit until the day that the U.S. Environmen-tal Protection Agency succeeds in enforcing carbon limits on coal plants and until the technical and financial barriers to integrating renewable energy into the grid are lowered. Transitioning away from coal has been made only margin-ally easier as a result of universi-ties’ divestment decisions.

The obvious counter-argu-

ment to this is that divestment is meant to be symbolic rather than instrumental. Divestment is an ethical choice, an opportunity for the University to stand against op-pressive structures and to call for the morals of our society to be re-aligned.

But that realignment is already happening. Divest or not, few Americans today would argue that the coal industry is not environ-mentally and socially destructive. Yet still the barriers to building the energy system we desire are enor-mous. Building a just energy sys-tem is as much an economic, tech-nical, political and legal project as it is a moral one. Divestment is but one — as yet unproven — method

of contributing to this project.

If divestment is not a prov-en strategy for addressing cli-mate change, then there are two ways we can read the Cor-

poration’s decision. Arguing that the Corporation has aligned itself with corporate interests over stu-dent opinion is one. The other, less popular but equally plausible, is that Paxson and the Corporation have listened to students’ propos-al that the University divest from coal as a means of addressing cli-mate change and have determined it is not the most effective or re-sponsible strategy. Simply assum-ing the validity of the former with-out leaving room to consider the latter further widens the divide between students and administra-tors.

I urge students to see the Cor-poration’s decision as merely one outcome of the campaign that by no means takes away from ev-erything that Brown Divest Coal achieved to date. Amongst other tremendous successes, BDC has amassed over 3,000 signatures, spoken at a meeting with the Cor-poration and most importantly, galvanized a vast group of stu-dents to strive for the moral vi-sion of a just energy system. Stu-dents do have power — power that should be leveraged not just to protest the Corporation’s deci-sion, but more importantly, to fur-ther other University strategies for

addressing climate change.Rather than view divestment as

the priority strategy for address-ing climate change, recognize that there is a whole suite of other strategies that Brown can employ. Rather than cast the Corporation’s decision as an attack on student power, respect the conversation space that has been created as a re-sult of the campaign: the Provost’s Task Force on Brown’s Response to Climate Change. This conver-sation will not be as sexy as cam-paigning for divestment. It will not make national headlines. It will look like Brown’s equivalent of corporate greenwashing. But it is a conversation the administration is willing to have and a leverage point for students to hold Paxson to her promise to “identify bold and aggressive ways that Brown … can contribute to the societal response to climate change.”

A set of recommendations needs to be presented to the task force — anything from funding more climate change-related in-ternships, to reexamining the pos-sibility of hiring tenured environ-mental studies faculty members, to asking that the president host an open forum to discuss how the divestment decision was reached. The results that emerge may de-liver more concrete impacts than singularly demanding divestment from coal.

I find it deeply troubling that all the letters to the editor in Monday’s edition of The Herald assumed the “common sense” that not divesting is the equiva-lent of ignoring student opin-ion and sidelining action on cli-mate change. I cannot emphasize enough how important I think it is for us to reexamine the assump-tions underlying our rhetorical ar-guments. Failing to do so will crip-ple us from having respectful and productive conversations about the multiple roles that Brown can play in tackling climate and envi-ronmental injustice.

Jacqueline Ho ’14 would never want to be a university

administrator. She invites you to help her get a better

understanding of either side of the debate at

jacqueline_ho@brown.edu.

Reframing the divestment decision

“Building a just energy system is as much an economic, technical, political and legal project as it is a moral one.”

JACQUELINEHO

guest columnist

Students respond to coal divestment decision

To the Editor:

In the wake of the coal divestment dispute, it is important to remember the history of coal. Coal, for all the destruction it brings, is what propelled the industrial revolution. In fact, with-out the aid of coal, many of us would not be here. Many of our families, peasant farmers and tradesmen for generations, were only allowed for-ward by the choking scent of burnt coal.

In exchange for economic fuel, coal destroyed landscapes across Britain and the United States. This is an old story, not a new one. And while many Americans are no longer forced to subsist among plumes of fly ash, the mainland Chinese are only now being brought into this narrative of indus-trialization. They too have made this deal and are emblematic of the dual nature of coal: From it many former peasants may derive employment and wealth, but they are also infected with lung problems, poisoned water and watery eyes.

It is in this context that I support the decision not to divest from coal. I believe it is imperative to look at the big picture. All industries have both benefits and harms. Coal mining and burning is not inherently more harm-ful than most other industries. Let one look at the technology industry, which tends to have a clean, cool image. Not only is most production of technologi-cal goods like mobile phones and tablet

computers fueled by coal, but it also relies on the destructive extraction of rare earth metals. These goods, once produced, leave behind trails of “e-waste” in developing countries like the P.R. China, poisoning water, soil and air. Yet, no one seems to be call-ing for divestment from any compa-nies that either produce or use these devices, nor does anyone call for the abandonment of the use of the devices themselves.

Coal is an easy, dirty target. One can argue the Corporation made its de-cision only because of the its members’ “interests” and “privileges.” But the fact of the matter is that no industry is free of harm. Whether it is intensive agri-culture, coal mining, textile produc-tion or whatever else, there will always be harm. Unless the Corporation was to divest from all industry, divesting from coal would be hypocritical and pointless. Of course, if that were done, there would be no University of which to speak. Our world runs on industry, whether one wants it to or not. We can change industries, we can make them less harmful and we can nation-alize them to ensure that they run for public gain rather than profit. How-ever, we cannot eliminate them. Given this circumstance, the politicization of coal divestment makes very little sense. Let us save the power of divest-ment for meaningful moments, as was previously done with regard to South African interests during Apartheid.

Max Guerrera-Sapone ’14

To the Editor:

I am so incredibly ashamed of the University’s decision this past weekend. The Corporation took on the responsi-bility of deciding about this deeply un-ethical investment after going directly over the heads of the Advisory Com-mittee on Corporate Responsibility in Investment Policies, an organization that was established for the sole rea-son of assessing the ethicality of the investments of Brown’s endowment.

ACCRIP even submitted a follow-up letter showing incredible support for divestment, something the University decided to ignore. With a majority of the student body in favor of divestment, it is equally apparent the University has absolutely no regard for the views of the student body of which it governs. It turns out that Brown might not be the progressive institution that cares deeply about its student body that I thought it was.

Samuel Sander Effron ’17

DYL AN PL AT T AND RICHARD WHITEHEAD

An article in Monday’s Herald (“Alum duo releases first original album,” Oct. 28, 2013) incorrectly listed the opening track of Nicolas Jaar ’12 and David Har-rington’s ’09 album “Psychic” as “Green Arrow.” In fact, the title of the track is “Golden Arrow.” The Herald regrets the error.

C O R R E C T I O N

An article in Tuesday’s Herald (“Kelly lecture spurs student, community back-lash,” Oct. 29, 2013) implied that Sophie Soloway ’14.5 said the format of the Ray Kelly lecture sponsored by the Taubman Center for Public Policy and American Institutions should have allowed for debate. Soloway said she believes future lectures featuring controversial speakers should be structured as debates but that the Kelly event would not have benefited from a debate format.

C L A R I F I C A T I O N

Q U O T E O F T H E D A Y

“I thought the call was from a guy I’d gone on a date with.”

— Sheila Niremberg

See blindness, page 8.

commentary10 THE BROWN DAILY HERALDWEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 30, 2013

Yesterday, as almost the entire community is aware, New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly was scheduled to give the Noah Krieger ’93 Memorial Lecture — a privately funded lecture sponsored by the Taubman Center for Public Policy and American Institutions. The lecture was abruptly cancelled after students and community members would not yield the floor, even after pleas by students in the audience and University administrators. The speech was cancelled, while students of all backgrounds were denied the opportunity to question Ray Kelly. While student organizers pat themselves on the back, voices were silenced yesterday — and it’s not the voices they think.

Virtually everyone at Brown thinks stop-and-frisk is an absurd, racist and certainly illegal policy. We were heartened when federal judge Shira Sheindlin ruled the policy unconstitutional, and there were students who looked forward to challenging Kelly on these grounds. The summer ruling was a profound embarrassment for Kelly and for New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, and pointed questioning would have quickly revealed the extent of the city’s loss in this court ruling. Unfortunately, while Kelly walked away satisfied that he tried his best to engage in civil discourse, he was not rigorously questioned on the merits of his tried-and-proven-illegal policy.

Every now and then, we have a campus-wide discussion about the diver-sity and strength of campus debate. It is evident at this point that there is an incredibly vocal minority of students who feel compelled to shut off all streams of debate with which they disagree. There is perhaps a majority of students who find themselves frustrated with with the narrow scope of debate that occurs in person or now, more than ever, on forums like Facebook. There are students — students from diverse backgrounds — who are afraid to state their opinion, and that is a profound loss for this campus.

We have heard from students who identified as students of color, who wished to question Kelly directly but were denied this opportunity. These students deserve an apology from organizers who apparently felt that they knew what was best for them, and we hope that these students are given the forum to express their opinion. We have heard from students of Jewish descent who felt personally hurt by posters that superimposed New York City Police Department badges with the image of a swastika, but these concerns were brushed off by protest organizers who dismissed the action as done by students “unaffiliated with their official protest”— though, of course, this protest was far from official. Evidently, discrimination against minority students is only worthy of their concern if it focuses on particular groups.

In an email to the community, President Christina Paxson called this “a sad day for the Brown community” and “simply unacceptable.” We agree that the tone with which this protest was held was inappropriate, and ultimately fruitless. Specifically, we urge students to focus on her argument that “mem-bers of our community were denied their right to challenge (Kelly).” This is the strongest possible condemnation of today’s actions.

We can argue for free speech or civility or the importance of intellectual discourse. We have in the past, and we will continue to do so in the future. But the voices of students — particularly of students of color — that were silenced deserve a voice. We hope that all students who are so moved will continue to write in to The Herald, where we can continue a debate that was unfortunately shut down yesterday.

Editorials are written by The Herald’s editorial page board: its editor, Rachel Occhiogrosso, and its members, Daniel Jeon, Hannah Loewentheil and Thomas Nath. Send comments to editorials@browndailyherald.com.

Silencing the wrong voices

facebook.com/browndailyherald @the_herald browndailyherald.comEditors-in-ChiefLucy FeldmanShefali Luthra

Managing EditorsElizabeth CarrJordan Hendricks

Senior EditorsAparna BansalAlexa Pugh

Strategic DirectorGreg Jordan-Detamore

BLOG DAILY HERALD

Editor-in-ChiefMeredith Bilski

Managing EditorDavid Oyer

POST- MAGAZINE

Editor-in-ChiefBen Resnik

Arts & Culture EditorsHannah AbelowMaddie Berg

City & State EditorsSona MkrttchianAdam Toobin

Features EditorsJennifer KaplanElizabeth Koh

Science & Research EditorsPhoebe DraperKate Nussenbaum

Sports EditorsJames BlumConnor Grealy

University News EditorsDavid ChungMathias HellerEli Okun

Editorial Page EditorRachel Occhiogrosso

Opinions EditorsGabby CorveseGarret JohnsonMaggie Tennis

Head Photo EditorEmily Gilbert

Photo EditorsBrittany ComunaleDavid DeckeySamuel Kase

Sports Photo EditorJesse Schwimmer

Video EditorsHenry ChaissonAssistant: Danny Garfield

Data Science EditorAndersen Chen

Web ProducerJoseph Stein

Design EditorsKyle McNamaraMie MorikuboJulia ShubeAssistant: Sandra Yan

Copy Desk ChiefSara Palasits

Illustrations EditorAngelia Wang

General ManagersJulia KuwaharaSamuel Plotner

DirectorsSales: Eliza CooganFinance: Nicole ShimerAlumni Relations: Emily ChuBusiness Dev.: Justin Lee

Office ManagerShawn Reilly

Sales ManagersRegional: Jennifer AitkenRegional: Jaqueline ChangRegional: Leslie ChenRegional: Wenli ShaoRegional: Carolyn StichnothStudent Group: Anisa Holmes

Finance ManagersCollections: Sameer SarkarCollections: Timothy SharngOperations: Sarah Levine

Alumni Relations ManagerEngagement: Alison Pruzan

Business Dev. ManagersProject Leader: Melody Cao Project Leader: Kaden Lee

Editorial Leadership Sections Visuals & Production Business

Corrections: The Brown Daily Herald is committed to providing the Brown University community with the most accurate information possible. Corrections may be submitted up to seven calendar days after publication.

Commentary: The editorial is the majority opinion of the editorial page board of The Brown Daily Herald. The editorial viewpoint does not necessarily reflect the views of The Brown Daily Herald, Inc. Columns, letters and comics reflect the opinions of their authors only.

Letters to the Editor: Send letters to letters@browndailyherald.com. Include a telephone number with all letters. The Herald reserves the right to edit all letters for length and clarity and cannot assure the publication of any letter. Please limit letters to 250 words. Under special circumstances writers may request anonymity, but no letter will be printed if the author’s identity is unknown to the editors. Announcements of events will not be printed.

Advertising: The Brown Daily Herald, Inc. reserves the right to accept or decline any advertisement at its discretion.

The Brown Daily Herald (USPS 067.740) is an independent newspaper serving the Brown University community daily since 1891. It is published Monday through Friday during the academic year, excluding vacations, once during Com-mencement and once during Orientation by The Brown Daily Herald, Inc. Single copy free for each member of the community. Subscription prices: $280 one year daily, $140 one semester daily.

Copyright 2013 by The Brown Daily Herald, Inc. All rights reserved.

Periodicals postage paid at Providence, R.I. Postmaster: Please send corrections to P.O. Box 2538, Providence, RI 02906.

Location:195 Angell St., Providence, R.I.www.browndailyherald.com

Editorial contact:401-351-3372

herald@browndailyherald.com

Business contact:401-351-3260

gm@browndailyherald.com

E D I T O R I A L

In 2012, 55 percent of those stopped and frisked were black, 32 percent were Hispanic and only 10 percent were white. In the same year, 89 percent of stops and frisks involved citizens not guilty of any crime. It would take significant convincing to demonstrate to me that this type of policy does not do social harm.

That said, stop-and-frisk has supporters — not only among political extremities, but among mainstream voices. New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg is an outspoken advocate for the policy. Bloomberg and others argue the policy has reduced crime, though the causal link between stop-and-frisk and crime reduction is tenu-ous, as crime rates were dropping prior to Bloomberg’s tenure.

Revulsion among Brown stu-dents does not reflect the political landscape at large, and preventing New York City Police Commis-sioner Ray Kelly from speaking on campus exacerbated the problem it aimed to solve. Debates are more productive than echo chambers.

In academic writing, weak con-cession paragraphs often draw into question the strength of the thesis, sometimes likened to “dueling a straw man.” Kelly is no straw man, and his “defeat” would have been a more powerful gesture than his exclusion.

I hope to offer several ar-guments on behalf of allowing speakers like Ray Kelly to come to Brown’s campus, not to encourage their policies, but to most effec-tively oppose them.

Inversion Scenario: Imagine we were on a campus that believed unanimously that stop-and-frisk is a good policy. Would it be ad-visable to prohibit someone to speak against stop-and-frisk? The fact that people have the ability to be convinced that they know with certainty that something is the correct answer even when it may not be underscores the idea that

the world’s complexity renders ev-erything debatable.

Morality of Intention vs. Mo-rality of Outcome: If we ask Ray Kelly whether his agenda is racist, he will likely say he is only trying to do what is best for NYC. Im-moral outcome does not prove immoral intent.

Stop-and-Frisk is Up for De-bate: Some have made the claim that Ray Kelly’s bigotry and prac-tices of policing are not up for de-bate. The obvious pushback is that if this were not a debate, Kelly’s policies would not exist.

The Larger Debate: It should not be surprising that we are not allowed to engage in a direct de-bate with a speaker as high-profile as Kelly. Instead it is advantageous to consider Kel-ly’s talk as part of the “larger debate” — that is, the na-tionwide discus-sion on stop-and-frisk. In allowing Kelly to speak, we are hearing the other side make its case.

Moral Relativism: The post-ers depicting Kelly with a Ku Klux Klan member and swastika were disrespectful and lazy sym-bolism — a simplistic attempt to smear through absurd exaggera-tion and fabrication. If I called George W. Bush a jabroni, you might not disagree, but my resort to such a childish critique would draw into question the merits of my argument. If students needed to take advantage of the sonic re-semblance of Ray to “Ray-cist” in order to make the point that he shouldn’t speak, then I am left to wonder how strong the case for his exclusion really was.

It is also worth acknowledging, and responding to, some of the most prevalent arguments circu-lating campus as to why Kelly was not entitled to speak:

“Do we draw the line some-where? Would it be permissible to allow a KKK spokesman?”

Stop-and-frisk has dispropor-tionate racial effects, but this is a laughably unrestrictive criterion

for equating Kelly with a KKK member. Kelly’s talk falls in the same category as many others — a universally sought goal, crime re-duction, with a polarizing meth-od. An actual member of a hate group might not only have contro-versial policy suggestions with ob-jectionable goals.

“Giving Kelly a platform sug-gests that the University condones his behavior.”

Arguing that listening implies agreement undercuts the entire idea of discourse. Part of being an intelligent adult and a basic tenet of liberalism is respecting the right of others to hold views that depart from your own. Giving Kelly a platform does not suggest agree-

ment. It suggests maturity.

“White people have no right to participate in the debate on Kelly.”

Imagine you have two policy options concern-ing the betterment

of a minority community: The first is suggested by an individu-al who is white, the second by an individual of color. Suspend dis-belief and assume that we can say with certainty that the first poli-cy will have a more positive effect than the latter. Which policy do you choose?

Marginalized groups may be closer to several issues and bet-ter equipped to make contribu-tions in many cases, but it is un-productive to assume that people from other backgrounds cannot be valuable partners.

So, to those who opposed Kel-ly’s presence: Did derailing Kel-ly’s talk on campus advance your goals of opposition to stop-and-frisk? Or, like in the case of the Tea Party in the recent government shutdown, will your demonization of discourse be the lasting echo of your efforts?

Adam Katz ’14 would be happy to discuss one or several of these ar-

guments and can be reached at adam_katz@brown.edu.

Tea Party on the left

“Did your success in derailing Kelly’s

talk on campus advance your goals

of opposition to stop and frisk?”

ADAM KATZguest columnist

browndailyherald.com/opinions

letters 11THE BROWN DAILY HERALDWEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 30, 2013

Community weighs in on protest, cancellation of Ray Kelly lecture

You could excuse an observer to the spectacle at Ray Kelly’s talk this afternoon for confusing it with a Tea Party rally. For a university that claims to hold sacrosanct the values of free speech, open dialogue and exchange of opposing ideas, we put on a display which left the distinct impression that those are little more than hollow talk-ing points masking an unwillingness to hear out anyone who holds a different opinion.

But more than that, this afternoon was a supreme showing of disrespect — primarily for our administration (members of whom were repeatedly shouted down), the large numbers of Providence police officers (who no doubt were interested in hearing from a leading officer in their field) and Kelly’s right to speak. I disagree with his stop-and-frisk policy. But he is unquestionably one of the most in-fluential and important people in the country, and I would have very much liked to hear him express his thoughts.

Surely a liberal education must in-clude engaging meaningfully and civilly with those whose views differ from yours, and surely being open-minded means more than only interacting with ideas in accordance with your own.

Nihaal Mehta ’14

The protestors succeeded in dis-playing close-mindedness and sup-pression of free speech. The Taubman Center invited Ray Kelly to speak about a controversial public policy is-sue. Brown prides itself on providing an open environment conducive to free speech and diverse perspectives. Whether or not people agree with Kelly’s policies, the proper forum for voicing opinions would have been in the question-and-answer session or by protesting outside the building. Disrupting his lecture resulted in the following:

A) Preventing students seeking to learn from Kelly’s lecture from doing so.

B) Precluding a factual presenta-tion from a knowledgeable source on the topic.

C) Contradicting Brown’s mission to support diversity in perspective.

This issue has made me embar-rassed to be a Brown student.

Daniel Boulanger ’17

The behavior of Brown students during Ray Kelly’s address was in very poor taste. Brown students of my generation were respectful of all guests invited to speak, even when it was George Lincoln Rockwell.

Freedom of speech means free-dom to speak! How embarrassing to our great university.

Steve Liebmann ’60

I transferred to Brown two years ago in order to find an open-minded and vibrant intellectual community. Unfor-tunately, I have instead found far too often an overwhelming homogeneity of opinion in campus discourse and, more troubling, demagoguery of the worst kind by a minority of radical thinkers. I rec-ognize many of our students are proudly progressive and gravely concerned with questions of social identity and equity. But when students — in the name of creating a “safe space” — deem some voices so outside the bounds of accepted discourse that they cannot even be heard, our com-munity ceases to be one of ideas. After what happened to Ray Kelly, which other speakers of an even remotely non-leftist stripe would ever consider coming to Brown? Instead, we are creating an echo chamber in which we only host thinkers espousing our own narrow set of accepted views on politics, gender identity, race and social equality. I wish I could say this intolerance did not represent student conduct here, but unfortunately I think we all know it is not. I am profoundly embarrassed to attend this institution.

Ross Lerner ’14

I was disappointed to learn a public forum at Brown was canceled because some students opposed the ideas they expected would be expressed. Muscling opposing views, even reprehensible ones, into silence is coercive and in-timidating. A basic commitment of principled liberalism is tolerating the expression of unpopular or disliked views. To those who decided to use your vocal and numerical superiority to stifle expression: No one was asking you to host Ray Kelly in your home. We’re talking about a private entity, using its own resources, sponsoring expression it wanted to sponsor. If you only believe in freedom of speech with respect to your own beliefs, you don’t believe in it at all. In the future, do not complain if others silence you. By your conduct, you endorse the legitimacy of such silencing.

Bradley Silverman ’13

The student body and administra-tion should be embarrassed by the behavior of the intolerant goons who prevented the speech. They should also be disappointed the administra-tion tolerated such boorish behavior.

Despite all the proclamations of the liberal Brown University as a place of tolerance and diversity, modern liberalism rears its ugly head of truth: It only tolerates those who think “correctly.”

It amazes me that conservatives are called intolerant, yet one never hears of liberal speakers being over-run by conservative hecklers. The reverse seems standard.

Jonathan Bastian ’89

The positive reactions from several students to the cancelation of the lecture are unwarranted. While I have seen many students express pride in the student body for having their voices heard and for raising the voices of the oppressed, those students are mistaken in what message was primarily portrayed this afternoon. The message delivered in List was not only dictated by what was shouted, but by the shouting itself. Through the uncivil and disrespectful manner in which this group of students chose to communicate with Ray Kelly, Vice President for Campus Life and Student Services Margaret Klawunn, Vice President for Public Affairs and University Relations Marisa Quinn, and Taubman Center Director Marion Orr, the message that Kelly’s policies are racially charged was overshadowed by the message that a population of Brown students are unable to, at the very least, listen to views that do not correspond with their own. The most upsetting aspect of this situation is the fact that I agree with the messages, in relation to Kelly, that these students wished to present. But the methods with which they were communicated were ineffective and immature. If we as Brown students wish to be regarded as an intellectual community, then we must express our opinions in a manner in which we will be perceived as such. What occurred today only moved us further away from that goal.

Duane Barksdale ’17

The goal of a liberal education is to give students access to a range of views on topics of the day. It is especially important to expose students to a range of differ-ent beliefs. Giving students exposure to different beliefs gives them a chance to make informed decisions about what they themselves believe. The people who silenced Ray Kelly at Tuesday’s lecture appear to be arguing it is wrong to let someone with whom you disagree speak. Censorship does not suggest moral au-thority to me so much as it does fear: a fear that letting an opposing viewpoint speak might make that viewpoint seem more understandable. The protesters who sought to defeat Kelly’s ideas by silenc-ing him achieved the opposite of their intended goal: Their unintellectual ag-gression merely magnified the idea that he had something meaningful to say.

Elisha Anderson ’98Associate Director of College

Admission

The Taubman Center’s full name is “The Taubman Center for Public Policy and American Institutions.” It follows that invited speaker Ray Kelly is indeed a high-profile individual working directly on public policy in an American politi-cal institution (shocker!). Therefore, it makes me uncomfortable that so many students participated in preventing Kelly from speaking and thus prevented this usually eloquent community from “light-ing the fire under his unconstitutional ass with tough questions,” so to speak. This would have been a more peaceful, more constructive way to engage in discourse in the spirit of free inquiry.

As a highly liberal, LGBTQ woman of color who has spent more than enough time living in New York City to get a taste of the unsavory effects of Kelly’s policies, the whole incident underscores something bigger that I haven’t been able to adequately express. Yes, Kelly’s policies blatantly violate the Fourth Amendment. But the discourse on campus claiming that because the oppressed are never given adequate opportunities to speak, it is okay to belligerently prevent voices who challenge their so-called oppression

an equally valid chance to speak is unac-ceptable.

This instance has made it clear we need to stop engaging in radical, bipo-lar discourse that pits a homogenous, “privileged” group against a homogenous, “oppressed” group. The “identities” and “histories” of individuals who do not fit the description of a stereotypical white male status quo comprise a multitude of experiences, and feeling unrecognized by the larger political and social bodies in our world is no excuse for bullying some-one with opposing views into silence.

I have never felt compelled to write anything of this nature before because, while I certainly don’t fit into the het-erosexual, white male status quo, I also don’t feel comfortable aligning myself with a constructed, unified group of in-dividuals who differ from the majority due to various identity characteristics that may include, race, gender and sexual orientation, amongst other things. Let it be known that there are more than two voices at stake here. Until we acknowl-edge that, we cannot have productive discourse about anything on this campus.

Sheila Sitaram ’15

I don’t understand what denying Ray Kelly the ability to speak accomplishes, besides denying fellow students the right to hear him. Was it just an attempt by the protesters to stroke their own egos by shouting down someone they disagree with — someone big and powerful, someone more successful than them? Or do they believe their fellow students are so juvenile and impressionable that they can’t listen critically and form their own opinions? Are they afraid Kelly might somehow be so convincing and trick us all into supporting racial profiling? My classmates and I are intelligent enough to make up our own minds. I don’t need to simply buy into what one side tells me. I have the right to form my own educated opinions based on multiple perspectives. I realize that because I’m white some might deem my opinion invalid. I am Jewish though, and if a neo-Nazi came to speak, while I would certainly protest against his beliefs, I would never infringe on his right to speak. I know what freedom means. It’s ironic that some of these so called fighters for it don’t.

Zachary Fredman ’17

I find the use of free speech to deny others the opportunity to speak offensive and unconscionable anywhere, but par-ticularly on a university campus. I came to Brown almost 45 years ago because Brown was a place where people were able to listen to others and respected their rights.

Maurice Glicksman Professor and Provost Emeritus

Since coming to Brown last fall, I have attended countless lectures and presenta-tions on a range of issues. Some I agreed with, and some I did not. But for me, this opportunity has been the core of my education at Brown, offering exposure and the opportunity to learn more — the possibility of challenging my way of thinking. I thought this was the campus I was choosing to engage with.

Today, that engagement was shut down. There was no dialogue or conversation. There was no chance to learn the thoughts of another person. I strongly believe every story has multiple sides — it is important to be open-minded and to not only hear, but to listen. What is the harm in hearing a story through and then questioning what it is worth? What is the value of intentionally shutting off ideas? By shutting down Ray Kelly’s lecture today, protesters engaged in a “silencing” of their own. The few prevented the many students who wanted to hear from absorbing. Where is the civil disobedience in that? I had always thought two wrongs don’t make a right.

Jason Ginsberg ’16

In response to the protest of Ray Kelly’s lecture, there will be an outcry from academic purists — as well as folks involved in the Political Theory Project — about how we need to engage with all voices and perspectives at Brown. This is a played-out argument, and here is why it doesn’t make sense.

The reason to maintain rigor in an academic environment is to eliminate bias and make sure no one perspective achieves such dominance that it is un-challengeable. We know that when this happens, freedom of speech is compro-mised, ideas are stifled and our conclu-sions become fallacious as a result.

This is exactly what the students pro-testing Kelly’s lecture were trying to pre-serve (among other things). The system Kelly promotes actively disenfranchises people of color. It makes them afraid to be in certain neighborhoods, to wear certain clothes, to be too close to the authorities. It breeds distrust and anger and, most importantly, is antithetical to a free and just society.

Racism is not a valid viewpoint. This much is written directly into Brown law. While racism is certainly wrong, it is also unrigorous. It makes assumptions without evidence. It does not need to be respected, valued or allowed, much like any other perspective which makes assumptions without evidence.

In this case, two wrongs do make a right, much like two negatives make a positive. It is the definition of tolerance to be intolerant of intolerance. As an alum, I am proud to be part of the community that booed Kelly offstage. Nobody needs to entertain arguments that assert this in any way prevents open discourse.

Chris Norris-LeBlanc ’13

There is a great deal of shame circu-lating through the student body: shame for silencing Ray Kelly, shame for silenc-ing the University’s right wing, shame for failing to recognize the importance of dialogue. These feelings are not unwar-ranted. Today marked another tragic moment in that oft-bemoaned history of Brown’s coercively left-leaning discourse.

But this is not the matter at hand. To make Kelly’s talk a matter of intra-

university discourse is an immensely arrogant error. I agree with the critics: I would have loved to hear how Kelly would have defended himself. But this

desire — to engage in a dialogue, to appreciate the full range spectrum of opinions — is a privilege, fundamen-tally failing to recognize the real, tangible horrors of Kelly’s stop-and-frisk policy.

If we believe in the terror of stop-and-frisk, then we have to evaluate critically the best way for the students at this uni-versity to fight against it. Discourse aside, there is no doubt that today’s lecture shut-down was the most effective way to speak out against stop-and-frisk. As a result of today’s protest, the opposition to stop-and-frisk has been bullhorned to an exponential degree: Media outlets from

the Wall Street Journal to the New York Times are paying attention, the Taub-man center is certainly paying attention and administrators have been forced to confront a real, active student voice.

The counterargument here is valid: The anger with which the protest fought today was not particularly conducive to convincing “undecideds”— let alone Kelly himself — to end stop-and-frisk. But the politics of disruption is not civ-il, and it does not abide by traditional rules of respect — for people’s time, for people’s emotional comfort and certainly for the University’s finances. Ray Kelly

was never going to walk away from his question-and-answer session thinking, “Well my gosh, those students are really sumthin.’ Better pony up and ditch that Stop-and-Frisk policy!” Today, students participated in real civil disobedience in support of a real cause of justice.

This is not a matter of principle. When we confront issues of hatred, dis-crimination, violence and evil, we must engage in a strategic politics above all.

Today was a small tragedy for dis-course, to be sure. But it was a big victory for justice.

David Adler ’14

daily heraldTHE BROWNscience & research

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 30, 2013

Link between HIV and HPV risk confirmed in men

While the link between human papillomavirus infection and human immunodeficiency virus has been studied in females in the past, a new study by University researchers in the Department of Epidemiology has found this link in males as well.

Examining data on 2,519 circumcised and uncircumcised men, researchers found HPV infection was associated with increased risk of HIV infection in males. Men who had recently had an HPV infection, or had persistent HPV infection, were at higher risk of HIV. Circumcision status was not found to have an effect.

The findings suggest that HPV should be an integral component of future HIV prevention measures, highlighting the need for future research into the specific mechanism by which HPV augments HIV risk, according to the study’s abstract.

Liver metabolism molecule uncoveredUniversity researchers recently gained insight into the role

of mTORC2 — an important molecular complex found to help regulate liver metabolism.

Studying the molecule’s effect on mice, the researchers concluded that mTORC2 regulates metabolism by communicating between cells and changing how genes are expressed, according to a University press release.

The molecule mTORC2 is of particular interest to the research team because it is the target of a commonly-used cancer drug called rapacmycin, an “FDA-approved anti-cancer agent and immunosuppressant,” according to the release. Rapamycin suppresses the function of mTORC2, and based on the team’s research, affects liver metabolism.

The research, conducted by Professor of Pediatrics Philip Grupposo and Professors of Molecular Biology, Cellular Biology and Biochemistry Arthur Salomon and Nicola Neretti, presents a deeper understanding of the mechanism and consequences of rapamycin inhibiting mTORC2.

Living with Tourette’sAdults with Tourette’s Syndrome — a neurological condition

that causes sufferers to have chronic tics — are better off not restricting their general daily activities and social involvement due to their tics, researchers at the University and Alpert Medical School found in a recent study.

Regardless of tic severity, adults with TS who did not restrict their general or social activity due to tics had better quality of life, according to the study’s abstract, published Oct. 21 in PubMed. Participants who restricted their general and social activity levels due to their tics had lower quality of life.

BY PHOEBE DRAPER, SCIENCE & RESEARCH EDITORSCIENCE & RESEARCH ROUNDUP

By ZACH FREDERICKSCONTRIBUTING WRITER

Humans and rats have cognitive simi-larities when reacting to their own errors, according to new research conducted at Brown and Yale.

The findings could help further research aiming to treat problems involving a brain mechanism known as adaptive control, the authors wrote in the study, published in the journal Nature Neuroscience Oct. 20.

To investigate how people and rats respond to errors, the researchers had both species estimate time intervals — the 12 humans in the study had to es-timate intervals of 1.4 seconds, while the six rats had to estimate intervals of one second. Both species received feedback about their performance on half of the trials before trying to esti-mate the time interval again.

Researchers measured the electri-cal signals of the brain of both species after they had correctly and incor-rectly estimated the intervals.

The study found that when re-acting to errors, both rodents and humans exhibit brain activity in the medial frontal cortex, a region in the front part of the brain. When this part of the was brain turned on in humans and rats, the researchers witnessed

low frequency oscillations.“When we saw the qualitative

similarities it was really just jaw drop-ping,” said James Cavanagh, a former postdoctoral associate at Brown who is now an assistant professor psychol-ogy at the University of New Mexico.

The cross-species cognitive simi-larities the study uncovered “give us the opportunity of taking things we’re observing in humans and (moving) down the evolutionary chain,” Ca-vanagh said. He said it is now more reasonable to test some hypotheses about human adaptive control in rats.

Medical research in rats only yields beneficial results to humans if the rodent model accurately re-sembles human brain activity. With the knowledge that humans and rats show similar neural responses to er-rors, researchers who aspire to treat mental illness in the medial frontal cortex now have the ability to test novel drugs and “mechanistically understand them in the rats,” Cava-nagh said.

Diseases that affect adaptive con-trol include attention deficit hyperac-tivity disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, Parkinson’s disease and schizophrenia, the authors wrote in the study.

Existing literature already shows that the medial frontal cortex is re-sponsible for adaptive control in both rodents and humans, but no prior research had quantitatively compared the neural responses of both species.

“Results coming from different

species have not always aligned very well, and it has not been clear whether this is because of differences in experi-mental methods or real neurobiologi-cal differences between species,” said Matthew Botvinick, a professor of neuroscience at Princeton. “In this sense, the ... paper represents a very satisfying demonstration that paral-lels can be drawn between species,” he added.

Obtaining the data was not easy, Cavanagh said. “There was a big problem in translational cognitive neuroscience,” he said, adding that the rodents and humans did not re-spond the same way physically to the experiment so those involved in the observations had to make sure they were only examining the signals re-lated to adaptive control.

“We know a lot about the proper-ties of these oscillations in human prefrontal cortex in cognitive tasks, but there’s also a lot we don’t know about their causal involvement in regulating adaptive behavior,” wrote Michael Frank, a senior author of the study and an associate professor of cognitive, linguistic and psycho-logical sciences, in an email to The Herald. “The rat studies allowed us to investigate not only whether the same neural signals are present in that species, but to more carefully assess the mechanisms by which these oscil-lations operate,” he added.

“It’s the first step of many in a very promising scientific approach,” Ca-vanagh said.

Study links rat and human brain functioningResearchers at Brown and Yale revealed corresponding cognitive patterns between species

COURTESY OF BROWN UNIVERSITY

The study, published in the journal Nature Neuroscience, demonstrated similar capabilities among rats in responding to error.

TO B E 3 D

BRITTANY COMMUNALE / HERALD

Director of Science and Technology Studies at UC Davis Joseph Dumit spoke on using virtual realities in scientific research.