A graduate student’s delayed return from Iran, an examination of college athletics and a president’s planned retirement are markers of jobs well done on the college campuses in Amherst.
The University of Massachusetts was one of many schools across the country directly affected when President Donald Trump on Jan. 27 banned travel to the United States from seven Muslim-majority countries. Among the students who initially were blocked from getting back to their American campuses was Mohsen Hosseini, an Iranian doctoral student in electrical engineering at UMass.
Hosseini delayed his return from Iran after winter break to get married. Hosseini said he began losing hope of returning to his studies in Amherst during the week after Trump imposed the travel ban. Then a federal judge in Seattle on Feb. 3 suspended Trump’s order nationwide.
The next day, Hosseini arrived at Logan Airport in Boston. Among those greeting him was Ken Reade, the director of international student and scholars services at UMass who had spent many hours working on getting Hosseini back to campus.
“Every email, every lost hour of sleep, is totally worth it,” Reade said at the airport as he fought back tears. “He is part of our community and it doesn’t matter where he is from. I think given the circumstances and the background as to why he was impeded to come here, frankly, just motivates us all the more to stand and to show solidarity and support.”
UMass Amherst Chancellor Kumble Subbaswamy in January pledged “to do everything within our legal and moral authority to protect (the campus community), no matter their national origin, race, religion, socioeconomic status, sexual identity or immigration status.” The commitment by Reade and others at UMass to getting Hosseini back on campus gives weight to the chancellor’s words.
* * *
At Amherst College, an examination of the role played by sports, while largely positive, also suggests some striking differences in the experiences that athletes have on campus, socially and academically, compared to non-athletes.
In releasing the report Jan. 31 after more than two years of study, President Carolyn “Biddy” Martin wrote that Amherst “has a strong, even exemplary, program in athletics, one that enhances the experience of student-athletes, avoids the excesses of college sports at other levels, and contributes positively to the life of the college. … It is a very positive report, but one that also points to areas of concern and makes recommendations for addressing them.”
The report points to a “perceptible ‘divide’ between athletes and non-athletes that inhibits their ability to take full advantage of the educational benefit of living and learning together. … Students report that athletic teams dominate the social life of the college, particularly the dorm ‘party scene,’ leaving some students feeling excluded.”
Also among the report’s findings are that Amherst’s athletic teams do not reflect the racial and socioeconomic diversity of the entire student body, and that “high-profile male athletes tend to major in a small number of departments, take fewer science classes and classes with small enrollments, and are less likely to elect to write a senior thesis.”
We applaud Martin for focusing attention on the proper balance between sports and academics at one of the nation’s most prestigious liberal arts colleges.
* * *
Hampshire College began the search for its seventh president Feb. 10 when Jonathan Lash announced that he will retire in June 2018 after seven years of leadership. Lash, 71, said his decision was prompted by a serious illness last winter, as well as concluding that he had made considerable progress in achieving his goals.
“We have enabled wider access to a Hampshire education to those who will thrive here by increasing financial aid. We have revitalized learner-centered pedagogy, giving fearless scholars new platforms to ignore boundaries by endowing faculty positions and creating innovative programs,” he wrote to the campus community.
Lash’s most visible legacy is the R.W. Kern Center — which produces its own heat, electricity and water and takes care of its wastewater — built at the center of the college during his tenure, and the 15,000 solar panels installed on campus.
Hampshire reached outside the academic world in 2011 when it appointed Lash, a renowned environmental activist, including 18 years as president of the World Resources Institute in Washington, D.C. That unorthodox move paid off for the nontraditional college which always has made thinking outside the box a mission for its students.