The Vanderbilt Torch

Drinking Gee's Global Kool-Aid

On a non-descript Thursday afternoon in early April, Chancellor Gordon Gee told a more-empty-than-full Student Life Center-audience that Vanderbilt was going global, whether they liked it or not.

The Chancellor’s semesterly address to faculy and staff began with an awards ceremony, but soon escalated into an international Magna Carta for the University. The charge was not surprising in light of Gee’s track record with trans-departmental initiatives and “big idea” thinking. Through the Academic Venture Capital Fund (which has recently been recapitalized) and other such initiatives, Gee has forced departments into one sandbox and withheld funding unless they played nicely together. His love-affair with working together did not begin in Nashville; faculty and board members at Brown University scoffed at Gee’s proposed “Brain Sciences” initiative during his short tenure in Providence.   

On the Brink: The War for Oil on the Niger Delta

Chaos reigns on the overcrowded streets. Foreign workers risk kidnapping, ransom, and death. A corrupt and fledgling government attempts to maintain control while well-armed militias gain more and more control each passing day, threatening America’s vital fossil fuel interests in the region.

The setting for this turmoil is not Baghdad or Basra or Mosul in Iraq, but Nigeria’s southern urban center of Port Harcourt and the surrounding jungle and river tributaries of the Niger Delta. As petroleum-exporting nations such as Venezuela, Saudi Arabia, and Iran have continued on a dangerous path toward further instability, the United States and other Western nations have looked more and more toward African sources for fossil fuels. 

Another War of Peace?

History never repeats itself.

Causes and results at one moment are never identical to those of another. This does not imply, however, that history does not present patterns of similarity with modern events. Evaluations of the current conflict in Iraq have led many pundits and casual observers alike to parallel the war with the conflict in Vietnam a generation ago. However, few have realized, that a conflict between another Western power and an underdeveloped Islamic territory may show a closer resemblance. 

 

John Kerry: Meteorologist or Stateman?

“I will be voting to give the President of the United States the authority to use force if necessary to disarm Saddam Hussein because I believe that a deadly arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in his hands is a real and grave threat to our security.”

The words above would seem to have been articulated by an elected official standing alongside President Bush in the war on terror, a conservative hawk convinced that Saddam must be stopped and his stockpiles of weapons taken away.

Housing to Limit Choices, Promote Forced Diversity

On August 26, 2003, 1546 freshmen marched through the Vanderbilt gates under the watchful eye of the Commodore at the Founder’s Walk, officially becoming the newest members of the community.

Little did they know of the changes in store for their class at the hands of the Office of Housing and Residential Education (OHARE). Rising sophomores selecting a single or double room will be allowed only to select that aspect of their residential preference. What OHARE’s website described as “a system based upon personal choice” has now been replaced by a system of what I call “forced diversity.”