Robert Teranishi, professor of social science and comparative education at the University of California, Los Angeles, gave a talk about diversity in higher education on Tuesday, March 21. Teranishi’s talk, titled “Call to Action: Leveraging the Power of Diversity to Achieve Academic Excellence,” focused on misunderstandings of Asian American and Pacific Islanders due to overgeneralized data.
President Biddy Martin sent an email to the college community on Wednesday, Nov. 16 condemning two unauthorized posters discovered in McGuire Life Sciences Building on the preceding Tuesday. The posters depicted ideas related to phrenology, a study that uses differences in skull shapes and sizes to justify racial disparities. Phrenology has been widely discredited as an obsolete and unscientific defense of racism.
“I condemn the racism and cynical mean-spiritedness of those who hung the posters in the strongest possible terms,” Martin wrote in her statement.
Peter Millard ’76 was once a chemistry and German double major at Amherst, unsure of whether or not medicine was the right path for him. After graduation, he discovered his true passion for helping the poor by using the tools of medicine and public health. Millard’s interests and penchant for adventure have led him to serve patients from Bolivia to Zimbabwe and become the director of a community health center in Maine. His dedication to tackling public health problems has resulted in an invention that could transform the fight against HIV and AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa.
Plans to repurpose the Merrill Science Center, following the completion of the new science center, are currently being discussed. Chief of Campus Operations Jim Brassord said that the development of the new science center will allow the college to use Merrill to accommodate other functions.
“While [Merrill] has extended beyond its design life and no longer adequately serves the programs that it houses, it is a building that represents a great opportunity for adaptive reuse for other pressing needs for the college,” Brassord said.
The Women’s and Gender Center is holding “Reproductive Justice Week,” a series of events aimed toward raising awareness on campus about women’s reproductive health issues, from Thursday, Oct. 20 to Wednesday, Oct. 26.
Samantha O’Brien ’18, a student staff member at the WGC and one of the event series’ coordinators, said that the week’s focus was on educating students about subjects such as abortion and exploring the intersectionality of women’s rights with other forms of social justice.
Chief Student Affairs Officer Suzanne Coffey sent a campuswide email last Thursday addressing a widely shared Facebook post about alleged incidents involving racial bias on campus. In her email, Coffey reminded community members of the college’s processes for responding to “incidents of bias and disrespect.”
The Copeland Colloquium, a biennial event featuring lectures, discussions and other events, will be held this year with the theme “The Social Life of Guns.”
