January 2009

A note to the College community from the Middlebury College Islamic Society:

As some of you may know, Amer Shurrab, a member of the Middlebury Class of 2009 who completed his degree in December 2008, and his family recently suffered a horrible tragedy. On January 16 and 17 in Gaza, Amer’s brothers Kassab, 28, and Ibrahim, 18, died from gunshot wounds and his father Mohammed was injured.

The Middlebury College Islamic Society will host an interfaith prayer service for Amer’s family on Thursday, January 29, at 7:30 p.m., in the Abernethy Reading Room of the Axinn Center. Amer, who now lives in Washington, D.C., will return to campus to participate.

The service will be led by Wasim Rahman, Middlebury Class of 2002, and is sponsored by the Islamic Society, the Scott Center for Spiritual and Religious Life, and the Office of International Student & Scholar Services.

For more information on this event, contact Laurie Jordan, Middlebury College chaplain, at 802.443.5626.

[ Read earlier stories ... ]

Students at Middlebury College perform juggling acts three times a day, navigating through crowded dining halls with cups, plates and cutlery in hand. A sign by the servery explains it all: In an effort to conserve energy, Middlebury banished trays from its dining halls in the summer of 2007.

Without a tray, students are less likely to take more food than they can consume in one sitting, reducing the quantity of waste — or so the theory goes. Eliminating trays also decreases the amount of water and chemicals used in washing the trays.

. . .

Matthew Biette, the director of Middlebury Dining, reported that since implementing trayless dining at Middlebury, waste has decreased by about .75 ounces per meal. Students, he said, are doing a better job of selecting only what they are going to eat.

[ Read more ... ]

By the time he heard what had happened, Amro Shurrab said his relatives had already spent half a day bleeding by the side of the road.

Shurrab, 24, who graduated from Middlebury College in December and lives in Washington, D.C., is a Palestinian with relatives in Gaza. He said two of his brothers were killed and his father was wounded there Friday by Israeli forces. Israel declared a cease-fire in Gaza Sunday.

One of his brothers might have been saved, he said, had Israeli troops allowed him to seek medical attention, rather than forcing him to remain at the family’s vehicle until he bled to death.

[ Read more ... ]

[ See a video on Democracy Now ... ]

Francois Clemmons is a Middlebury College artist-in-residence and founder and director of the Harlem Spiritual Ensemble. He speaks with VPR’s Jane Lindholm about his life and the connection between the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and tomorrow’s inauguration of Barack Obama.

[ Hear the interview with Vermont Edition's Jane Lindholm ... ]

A little more than two years ago, bestselling author Bill McKibben’s life was filled with canoe trips, mountaineering, writing, and teaching. The author of a dozen books and a scholar in residence at Vermont’s Middlebury College, McKibben lived at a relatively slow pace with his wife, writer Sue Halpern, and daughter, Sophie.

But the author who made his reputation in 1989 with the first general audience book on global warming, The End of Nature, would soon organize his first protest. That would lead to the creation of one activist organization and then another. His goal? End the global lethargy on climate change.

[ Read more ... ]

MONTEREY, California — These are interesting times for an economist, said Sunder Ramaswamy, president of Monterey Institute of International Studies.

“I regret not being in the classroom,” he said.

Ramaswamy took over management of MIIS this week from retiring president Clara Yu at a time when his academic specialty — international economics and development — is at the forefront of the public’s consciousness.

He’d like to be talking to students, he said, about “how this mess happened and how we can get out of it.”

The international financial collapse is like nothing seen in 80 years, Ramaswamy said. There have been localized financial crises, but nothing of the current situation’s global scope since the stock market crash of 1929 that set off the Great Depression of the 1930s.

“It’s the age-old mix of greed and lack of confidence,” he said. Recovery will require re-establishing confidence in the economy — “a very ethereal concept” — and the recent bailouts of banks and businesses, as well as investment in public infrastructure, could be the mechanisms that will turn it around.

Ramaswamy, 44, comes to Monterey after serving as dean for faculty development and research, and professor of international economics, at Middlebury College in Vermont. He helped oversee part of the integration of Middlebury and MIIS after the two schools announced a partnership in 2005.

[ Read more ... ]

SALTILLO, Mexico — Until recently, before a customer was abducted outside its front door, El Mesón Principal del Norte was known simply as a great place to get meat, usually roasted on a spit in northern Mexican style.  

But ask a hotel concierge in this industrial city about El Mesón these days and the gastronomy may not come up first. “Be careful,” one whispered conspiratorially last month. “That’s where they got the gringo.”

It was outside El Mesón that Felix Batista, an American security consultant who specialized in resolving kidnappings, was himself abducted on the evening of Dec. 10. He has not been heard from since. [Batista received a B.A. from Middlebury in 1977 and an M.A. in Spanish in 1991.]

After weeks of silence, his wife and sister held a news conference in Miami on Wednesday, urging his captors to release him and providing an e-mail address, infofelixbatista@gmail.com, for those with information about the case. “I don’t understand how a man who has always loved Mexico and its people so dearly can be made to suffer in this manner,” said his wife of 31 years, Lourdes Batista [who also received a masters in Spanish from Middlebury, in 1981]. “My heart is broken.”

[ Read more ... ]

[ Read a story from the Washington Post, 12/27/08 ]

[ Read a CNN story and watch video of Lourdes Batista appealing for husband's release ]