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It’s tenth week. Welcome back from Thanksgiving break. Today is Giving Tuesday, an international day of charitable giving.
Daniel Epstein (J.D. ’15), a progressive Chicago-native running for the Illinois Supreme Court, discussed his plans to expand the Court’s involvement in determining rules for the state judicial system and his ambitions to enforce higher ethical standards among judges in a wide-ranging interview with The Maroon.
- “We’ve turned our system into this kind of conveyor-belt system of justice, where its goal is to produce a resolution, but we’ve lost this other really important function, which is to provide information,” Epstein said, discussing why he wants to allow depositions to be taken even in criminal cases that do not reach trial.
$$$: STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) majors are rumored to earn more than their peers in the humanities and social sciences, but new data from the Department of Education topple that received wisdom.
- UChicago philosophy majors can expect to earn higher starting salaries than physics majors and biology majors.
- Computer science and economics majors, less surprisingly, see the highest earnings immediately out of UChicago.
Dr. Vinh-Kim Nguyen, a physician and medical anthropologist at the Graduate Institute Geneva, discussed the link between epidemics and warfare with students as part of the Medicine and its Objects seminar series.
- The American invasion of Iraq and the global rise of antibiotic-resistant bacteria are closely linked, Nguyen argued. “The typical [wounded] Iraqi serviceman just dies, while the American servicemen get top-notch medical care. So it makes sense that this multi-drug-resistant bacteria arose in the American population,” he said.
Ecofeminism, Oil Refineries, and Yiddish Euphemisms: With arguments ranging from the latke’s complicity in environmental destruction to the ecofeminist significance of the hamantash cookie, UChicago professors debated the relative merits of two staples of Jewish cuisine in Hillel’s 73rd Annual Latke-Hamantash Debate.
- Psychology professor Marc Berman, representing Team Hamantasch, cautioned the audience that “the latke celebrates oil.” He warned the audience that “this stuff has downstream consequences,” and went on to explain how another Hanukkah tradition, the children’s game of dreidel, instills capitalistic values that prioritize profit over environmental well-being.
- Jessica Kirzane, who lectures on Yiddish in the Department of Germanic Studies, pointed out that the word “hamantash” is also a Yiddish euphemism for a woman’s vulva. Her goal, she explained, was “not to scandalize this esteemed audience with a Yiddish vulgarism,” but instead “to place the hamantash in an ecofeminist context,” suggesting that “we celebrate female anatomy and the power of women as a way of resisting the exploitative dominance between men and nature.”
In Viewpoints
Editor Meera Santhanam writes in:
#CareNotCops urges the University to support Charles Thomas, improve mental health resources, and address the underlying culture of stress on campus.
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