News
BU Alumna Wins Upset Primary
Editor's Note: This week The BUlletin brings you the stories of three BU alumnae who are shaking up the political landscape and making headlines.
NOTABLE ALUMNI
BU Alumna Wins Upset Primary
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (CAS '11) is in the national spotlight after defeating an incumbent congressman in New York's Democratic primary. Learn about her time at BU.
A Different Kind of Candidate
If Gina Ortiz Jones (CAS '03, GRS '03) is elected to Congress, she would be the first Filipina American and the first lesbian to hold a U.S. House seat from Texas. See what she has to say.
Delivering the Beltway to Heartland Viewers
Jacqueline Policastro (COM '06) heads the Washington bureau of Gray Television, which reaches more than 10 percent of U.S. households. Find out how she got there.
IN CASE YOU MISSED IT...
The Washington Post reports that BU microbiologist Thomas Kepler has a batty idea to help the U.S. military combat biological weapons... Undergraduate Nicolas Suarez received the Congressional Award Gold Medal for his outstanding public service record... Nicole Huberfield of the BU Schools of Law and Public Health explains how the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is faring in recent court battles in Politico... Robert Buchwaldt of the BU College of Arts & Sciences unearths an ancient volcano underneath a Boston neighborhood with WGBH... BU neuroscientist Lee Goldstein weighs in on the mysterious illnesses among U.S. diplomats in Cuba and China in Science.
CAS Prof Wins Nearly $1M to Study Interaction of Natural and Human Emissions
Jeffrey Geddes gets two federal research awards to examine impact on air quality
Jeffrey Geddes uses remote sensing observations, computer modeling, and targeted field observations to study atmospheric chemistry and air quality. Photo (left) by Jackie Ricciardi.
BU’s Jeffrey Geddes has won two early career federal research awards totaling nearly $1 million to advance his work on atmospheric chemistry and air quality.
Geddes, a College of Arts & Sciences assistant professor of earth and environment, has been awarded $693,000 over five years by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and $280,000 over three years by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). The funding will allow him to expand his use of satellite-based remote sensing observations, computer modeling, and targeted field observations to study the impact on air quality in North America of the interaction between natural emissions from the biosphere and those caused by human activities such as burning fossil fuels.
“I’m investigating what determines how important the biosphere is going to be on any given day or in any given year,” says Geddes. “We need to to be able to predict it, to actually quantify its impact.”
The interaction between biogenic and anthropogenic emissions is not well understood, and the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine has identified it as an important area of research for atmospheric chemists. Geddes says a greater knowledge of how this interaction works will lead to a better understanding of air quality and how best to regulate it.
Air pollution is the world’s biggest environmental health risk, blamed for millions of deaths and trillions of dollars in health and welfare losses. Long-term exposure to polluted air has been linked to respiratory infections, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, stroke, heart attack, and lung cancer. While federal regulations have helped to improve air quality in the United States in the last several decades, there are still parts of the country where pollution is considered a substantial public health hazard.
A 2017 study by the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health found that even at levels below what the EPA deems as safe, day-to-day increases in a pollutant known as fine particulate matter—particles of soot and other materials so small they can easily enter the lungs and bloodstream—are associated with increased deaths among the elderly.
“Jeff is doing exciting and pioneering research in the incredibly important area of air quality,” says Mark Friedl, a CAS professor of earth and environment and interim department chair. “He is trying to understand and characterize better an important part of atmospheric chemistry that is relatively little understood—how forests emit organic molecules, how these emissions are transported in the atmosphere, where they go, and what their impact is.”
Geddes is part of a group of pioneering researchers whose combined use of satellite and field observations, computer modeling, and other tools “allows us to monitor the quality and character of air in a much more robust and comprehensive fashion,” Friedl says. “Any improved data observations and models that help us understand how the chemistry and character of the atmosphere is changing gives us hard evidence for why we need these regulations.”
Geddes says he will use the NSF and NASA grants to investigate the variability of the biosphere, which causes the magnitude of natural emissions to vary from year to year, either because of extreme weather conditions, earlier or later leaf-out of trees, or land use. The changing magnitude of those emissions can have an impact on air quality, he says.
While emissions from forests and other natural ecosystems alone don’t normally cause air pollution, Geddes says, they can interact with emissions caused by human activities to create “a complex air pollution mixture that can determine how effective controlling emissions from human activities will be in improving air quality in any given year.”
How this process works—how it changes seasonally and how it is affected by the weather and by human-caused pollution—is one of the key questions for atmospheric chemists today.
The NSF grant will help Geddes pursue several avenues of research: large-scale chemical modeling of the atmosphere over North America, analysis of publicly accessible long-term air quality data sets, and field observations of urban forests and other vegetation.
The NASA grant will fund his study of air pollution in the city of Boston, with a network of highly sophisticated NASA-designed air quality monitoring instruments placed in congested traffic areas, near the airport, on the BU campus, near an urban park, and elsewhere. He will combine data from these instruments with information from satellite-based observations.
The two awards will also allow Geddes to expand his research group, develop ways to educate BU students—as well as the broader public—in atmospheric chemistry data literacy, and create new atmospheric science courses for his department. He says he will create opportunities for graduate students to work with the city of Boston on issues related to improving air quality.
Author, Sara Rimer can be reached at srimer@bu.edu.
After 50 Years, Tamar Frankel Is “Retiring” from LAW Faculty
At 93, she plans to continue teaching and “shaking up Wall Street”
Tamar Frankel, who has taught at the School of Law for the last 50 years, was given a retirement party recently. Photos by Jackie Ricciardi.
Tamar Frankel served in a Jewish defense paramilitary unit before Israeli statehood, with assignments, she says, from an aborted bridge bombing to illicit radio broadcasts. Having survived such derring-do, the sexist blowback she got as the School of Law’s first woman professor 50 years ago seemed more pesky hot air to her than a confidence-rattling gale.
It was 1968, and LAW’s new professor was shuffled off to a basement office in the school library. Her reaction? “It was perfect,” she says. “I didn’t have to put the books back” after using them. The quiet also helped her complete her doctoral thesis on variable annuities for Harvard Law School. But despite her thick skin, it was irksome when one male colleague described women as average achievers with “no spark of insight or brilliance.” Another, she learned years later, deemed her hiring a mistake.
What a difference living to 93 makes. (Frankel’s birthday is tomorrow, when she’ll “retire” from the faculty, although retirement is relative with this human perpetual motion machine. She’ll continue researching, writing, and teaching as an adjunct in the fall.) During her nine decades-plus, she has seen not only the creation of the state of Israel that she’d hoped for, but the welcome mat rolled out for her gender at LAW: there are now a dozen tenured women on the faculty, plus two others on the tenure track. The current dean and the incoming dean are women.
As for that “mistake” of a hire, longevity has brought Frankel widespread recognition as a pioneering expert on financial regulation and fiduciary obligations.
“The 92-Year-Old Woman Who Is Still Shaking Up Wall Street,” the Wall Street Journal called her last year. Said shaking involves Frankel’s four-decades-and-counting advocacy of the fiduciary rule, requiring retirement investment advisors to act in their clients’ best interests, which was finally codified by President Obama.
The Trump administration has put aspects of that seeming no-brainer on hold. But Frankel isn’t losing sleep over the possible undoing of her life’s work. “I don’t think it will go that far,” she says. “There is quite a bit of a backlash.”
Frankel commutes to BU by taxi or getting a lift; she stopped driving herself about five years ago, after another driver rear-ended her car. Married and with two children, she shies away from discussing her private life; having soldiered through sexist artillery early on to plant her flag as financial law expert, her passion (aside from her seven grandchildren, whose names she’ll proudly tell you) is her work.
“She is a giant in the field,” says Maureen O’Rourke, current LAW dean. “Tamar has for years been the go-to person on mutual fund regulation, securitization, and fiduciary law.” It was not always so, she notes: Frankel “had the audacity to enter the male-dominated field of corporate law and soon outstripped colleagues of all genders in terms of prominence.”
O’Rourke feels a personal debt to Frankel, who with other women pioneers “paved the way for people like me, for whom it has been so very much easier” to enter the law and legal education.
This photo of the LAW faculty in 1968 hangs in Frankel’s office. Guess which one she is.
Indeed, by the time Kathryn Kleiman (LAW’93) took Corporations 1 with Frankel, her teacher was a nationally recognized expert on mutual funds and fiduciary matters.
“It was the way she balanced being a senior professor…and a national and international leader and advisor that showed me that these legal and policy paths were possible for women and lawyers,” says Kleiman, who turned to her former professor after graduation for help with a globally crucial professional task: creating the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, or ICANN, the nonprofit managing the worldwide domain name system.
Helping set up ICANN 20 years ago, Kleiman applied principles of fiduciary duty she’d learned from Frankel, “running the internet for the benefit of the world.” Frankel “actually joined us and took an important leading role in designing ICANN,” Kleiman says, calling both her mentor’s courses and her collaboration on the internet work “pivotal in my career.”
Jennifer Clarke (LAW’93) entered securities law after studying the subject under Frankel, and in her first year of practice, she ran an analysis of a legal point made by her old teacher. Not only was the partner she was working with satisfied with the analysis, Clarke recalls, but “he was impressed that the first-year associate had access to Tamar. Her fundamental principles…still guide my thinking on a daily basis: Whom is the regulation trying to protect? From what risk?”
Developing steely stoicism as member of Haganah
In the late 1940s, Frankel was an attorney for the Israeli Air Force. Photo courtesy of Frankel.
Born in British-controlled Palestine in 1925 to a German father and a Russian mother, Frankel at age 14 joined the Haganah (“defense” in Hebrew), the Zionist paramilitary that defended Jewish settlements against Arabs in the years before Israeli statehood.
“I was brought up with the idea that the Jews need a place that is their own,” she says. “On the other hand, we were friendly with the Bedouins and the Arabs.” She studied Hebrew, Arabic, and English in school, “but Hebrew was the anchor.” Haganah was strictly defensive, she says—“We are not going to attack, but God help those who try to attack us.” But, as the group was banned by the British, membership was risky.
She studied how to shoot a gun and toss a grenade. “I’m lucky. I didn’t kill anyone. And I consider it lucky. But if I had to, I would probably have done it.” One story in her as-yet-unpublished memoir recounts how she was part of a group that put a bomb under a bridge (she and another woman accompanied the two male bombers to make it appear like just a social evening out). The next day, “we were told to take it out. It transpired that other people, people who have nothing to do with the fight, were using the bridge, and we didn’t want to kill others.”
Resentful and despite the risk of discovery, she returned with the team, which removed the bomb. In retrospect, she says, “I think it was a very good lesson that stuck with me—that I’d rather put myself in risk than kill innocents.”
She also participated in illegal radio broadcasts, airing information the British censored about the state of the struggle in various parts of Palestine. These exploits helped forge her steely stoicism later when facing the sexism of BU male colleagues, she says.
“You want to do…what you want to do, more than caring what others think about you. I wanted to teach. I wanted to write. I didn’t want to be part of the group.…I loved what I was doing, and being approved of was not the lifeline.”
Her love of law came in part from her father, who was the first president of Israel’s bar association. She apprenticed at his firm (inheriting it when he died in 1951) and served as the first general counsel of the fledgling Israeli Air Force. In 1963, she came to the United States and Harvard Law School, where she earned a doctorate in juridical science, the school’s most advanced law degree. Five years later, while working on her dissertation (on variable annuities), she joined LAW.
When the Washington-based nonprofit Institute for the Fiduciary Standard created the Tamar Frankel Fiduciary Prize in 2013, recognizing important advocates of fiduciary principles, Brooksley Born, former chair of the Commodities Futures Trading Commission, declared, “No one embodies those principles better.”
Born added, in what could be a retirement farewell if Frankel were ever to really retire: “Almost 50 years of law school graduates—many of them now leading lawyers, judges, academicians, and government officials—have benefited from her wisdom and guidance.”
Author, Rich Barlow can be reached at barlowr@bu.edu.
Supreme Court Upholds Travel Ban
BU IN DC
Astraea Augsberger and Linda Sprague Martinez of the School of Social Work participated in a "Youth Engagement Strategies to Prepare Youth for Successful Adulthood" convening hosted by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services on June 28 and 29.
Kristen Goodell of the School of Medicine attended the National Association of Advisors for the Health Professions National Meeting between June 27 and July 1.
SUPREME COURT UPHOLDS TRAVEL BAN
By a vote of 5-4, the Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday that the third iteration of the Trump Administration's travel ban was constitutional. The ban prohibits visitors from seven countries from entering the United States, with limited exceptions. In an amicus brief submitted during the Trump v. Hawaii proceedings, universities had decried the ban as jeopardizing "the vital contributions made by foreign students, scholars, and faculty by telling the world in the starkest terms that America is no longer receptive to them." Justice Sonia Sotomayor cited the impact on higher education as one reason for her dissent in the case.
POSITIVE SIGNS FOR NIH BUDGET
The Congressional committees responsible for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) budget recently passed spending bills which would increase the agency's budget even further beyond the $3 billion increase signed into law in March. A bill passed by the Senate Appropriations Committee yesterday proposes a $2 billion increase in fiscal year 2019, while a bill passed by a House subcommittee recommends a $1.25 billion increase. A final budget for the agency will be determined once the measures make their way through the full Congressional approval process, which is likely to extend past the November election. The outlook is positive for a fourth straight year of increased funding for the agency, which is currently funded at $37 billion.
BUZZ BITS...
- On Wednesday, the U.S. House of Representatives defeated a bill (H.R. 4760) which would have provided legal status to undocumented young people who were left in legal limbo following the rescission of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program last fall.
- Alumna Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (CAS '11) caught Washington's attention by defeating incumbent Congressman Joe Crowley in the Democratic primary in New York's 14th Congressional District on Tuesday, a significant upset of a member of the House Democratic leadership.
- The White House issued a strategic plan to better respond to near-Earth objects, such as asteroids, possibly striking the planet. The plan calls for new technology to better track and potentially destroy any object that poses a threat.
A NOTE TO OUR READERS... With Congress headed home for the Independence Day District Work Period, Beltway BUzz will not publish next week. Enjoy your Fourth of July! 🇺🇸
LAW Prof: SCOTUS Travel Ban Decision Reflects a “Dark Era”
Karen Pita Loor analyzes Supreme Court’s split decision upholding Trump executive order
Protesters outside the Supreme Court on April 25, when the justices were hearing arguments on whether to uphold the Trump travel ban on several Muslim countries. On June 26, the court upheld the ban in a 5-4 vote. Photo by AP/Andrew Harnik.
The Supreme Court’s decision Tuesday upholding President Trump’s travel ban on several mainly Muslim nations reflects “a dark era in our country,” says a School of Law immigration expert.
Retiring Justice Anthony Kennedy, the court’s swing vote, sided with the majority, but wrote a concurring opinion—Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the main decision—with a message perhaps intended for Trump, says Karen Pita Loor, a clinical associate professor of law.
Kennedy, she says, “reminded executive officials of their oath to uphold the Constitution and urged them to abide by that oath.”
The court’s 5-4 decision OK’d travel restrictions on Iran, Libya, Syria, Yemen, and Somalia—all with Muslim population majorities—as well as Venezuela and North Korea. Legal challenges to the ban, including from the state of Hawaii and a Muslim group, did not object to restrictions on the latter two nations, alleging instead illegal religious discrimination against the Muslim countries.
This is the third version of the administration’s ban, and like its earlier iterations, it had been blocked by lower courts. Tuesday’s decision reversed those rulings and handed Trump a major political victory on an issue he’d campaigned for president on.
BU had opposed the ban, along with 30 other academic institutions, including all 8 Ivy League schools and fellow members of the Association of American Universities.
BU Today asked Loor to analyze the court’s decision.
BU Today: Do you agree with the court’s legal reasoning?
Loor: I disagree with the reasoning upholding the ban, particularly in light of the Establishment Clause challenge. According to the First Amendment, the United States government cannot establish a preferred or an undesirable religion. This third version of this executive order does just that.
It creates a group of noncitizens who are disfavored and not permitted to enter the United States because of who and how they worship. Prior religious discrimination cases have inquired whether a reasonable observer would believe that the state action was prompted by religious animus. As Justice Sotomayor points out when she recounts candidate and then president Trump’s litany of anti-Muslim statements, the record is undeniable.
What factor most governed the court’s thinking—its approach to religious liberty, or the president’s executive authority, or some other ideological position?
I think Justice Roberts’ majority opinion upholding the travel ban was dictated by his view that the judiciary takes a highly deferential role to the executive branch in the regulation of noncitizens—in this case foreign nationals seeking visas at American consular offices. The majority held that the language of Section 1182(f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act governing the entry of foreign nationals “exudes deference to the President” and thus the court may only review the executive order under rational basis, where the government action is justified as long as it is rationally related to a legitimate state interest. In this case, the majority found that refusing to provide visas to foreign nationals from certain Muslim majority countries that the administration claims provide insufficient information for proper vetting was rationally related to national security.
In an unusual move, some of the justices read their dissents from the bench. What does that suggest?
Justice Sotomayor likely wanted to express the passion with which she disagreed with the majority in this case. Of course, all Supreme Court cases are important, but this may be one that we will be most referencing in history as a sign of this dark era in our country. My hope is that history will look at this [decision] with disapproval.
Challenges to the ban focused on the mainly Muslim nations rather than North Korea and Venezuela. Does that distinction make legal sense?
Yes. This distinction makes sense particularly as to the Establishment Clause challenge. It is important to remember that this was the administration’s third attempt at a travel ban.
The two prior versions of the executive order limited the entry of individuals from only Muslim majority nations. Plaintiffs knew that adding North Korea and Venezuela was merely a distraction from the discriminatory impetus for the visa restrictions.
Author, Rich Barlow can be reached at barlowr@bu.edu.
BU Alumna Wins Upset Congressional Primary in New York City
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (CAS’11) in the national spotlight.
BU Alum Named 2019 Massachusetts Teacher of the Year
Jamil Siddiqui inspires his students to love mathematics
The big day: High school math teacher Jamil Siddiqui (ENG’93, Wheelock’94, GRS’98) gives his calculus students some last-minute encouragement before they take their AP exam. Photo by Kelly Davidson.
Just an hour before this year’s Advanced Placement calculus exam, jittery East Bridgewater, Mass., high school students gathered in Jamil Siddiqui’s classroom for breakfast.
Siddiqui had made them homemade French toast to help quell their nerves, then gave them a last-minute pep talk, reminding them of all the effort they had put into preparing for the test: the homework, before and after school meetings, and marathon review sessions, all designed to unlock the intricacies of calculus.
“It’s time to go perform,” said Siddiqui (ENG’93, Wheelock’94, GRS’98). “There is no reason to be nervous or worried, because you are prepared, you have practiced for this day for months.”
The same could be said for their teacher. Siddiqui has been teaching AP calculus for 24 years at East Bridgewater Junior/Senior High School. In that time, he has prepared hundreds of students for the AP test. Typically, 7 out of 10 of those students receive a score of three or higher on the exam. One in three will score a perfect five.
Those results are well above national averages, demonstrating how he has conquered a remarkable challenge: getting high school students to like, and sometimes share his love of, pure mathematics, a subject he calls “the language of love.” He says he still gets excited—even a touch nervous—sending his students into one of the most challenging exams of their high school career.
As part of preparing his students for the AP calculus exam, Siddiqui served his students homemade French toast and a pep talk the morning of the exam. Photo by Kelly Davidson.
Beyond math, colleagues and students talk about Siddiqui’s decades-long commitment to his school. He is the kind of a teacher who hosts barbecues for students, attends their sports games, and routinely stays late as a club advisor or a confidante.
That passion for his subject and dedication to his students has recently earned Siddiqui a singular honor. He has just been named 2019 Massachusetts Teacher of the Year.
“He has this sort of Yoda-like presence,” says East Bridgewater principal Brian Duffey. “He’s the guy kids and other adults go to with things because of his unassuming approach. And there’s always this unstated deal with him that he’s going to be with you the whole ride through, right to the end.
“He really is a master teacher.”
The first step in teaching teenagers math has little to do with numbers. First, Siddiqui says, they need to learn to be wrong. That fear inhibits them from learning and asking the questions they need answered.
“I cannot care less about your final answer,” he tells students. “I want to know what your thought process is.”
Helping students figure out their thought process is where Siddiqui shines. On a recent morning, before most people have sipped coffee, he is moving animatedly about his classroom, searching to find the correct superhero magnet to illustrate a precalculus concept. He throws out a question that advances his theme and becomes suddenly still, waiting for one of his students to venture an answer.
“He’s always way ahead of the kids,” says former student William Pellegrino, who became a math teacher in South Easton, Mass., because of Siddiqui.
“He loves math so much, even if you don’t fully get into it, it starts to rub off on you a little bit—you just can’t resist,” Pellegrino says. “Obviously, I’m a math nerd, but I’ve seen it happen to others who aren’t.”
Passion for teaching began at BU
Siddiqui and his two brothers were raised by a single mother who worked as a nurse in remote Caribou, Maine, near the Canadian border. Distractions were few. Video games and cell phones were a rarity. He says the three frequently challenged one another with science and math problems.
He came to BU to study biomedical engineering, but it was a stint as a tutor in the University’s math lab that proved most formative. Siddiqui was by far the most popular tutor in the lab, says Robert L. Devaney, a College of Arts & Sciences professor emeritus of mathematics and statistics, who later hired him to work in his computer lab. After graduating with an engineering degree, Siddiqui stayed on to earn a master’s degree in math education. A few years later, he returned to BU to get a master’s in pure mathematics.
“In my own career as a student,” he says, “it was the ideas that I struggled with and repeatedly got wrong that became the topics that I understood the most.”
Devaney, past president of the Mathematical Association of America, says he still sees Siddiqui at national math conferences, which typically, few high school math teachers attend. And at a time when most states, including Massachusetts, are facing significant shortages of qualified math teachers, Siddiqui is offering his students a window into higher order mathematical thinking.
“He’s teaching students AP calculus, but he’s also showing them what’s new and interesting and exciting in math,” Devaney says. “And that’s what clearly makes him stand out. East Bridgewater is lucky to have him.”
Siddiqui teaching a class of precalculus students. Other teachers—and not just those in his own department—often observe his class to learn his methods. Photos by Kelly Davidson.
It would be easy to fill an auditorium with all the students that Siddiqui has helped score well on the AP calculus exam. (About 700 by his count.) And that’s exactly what East Bridgewater school officials did earlier this month during a surprise ceremony to announce that Siddiqui had been named Massachusetts Teacher of the Year, a first for the district.
The superintendent of schools was there, along with state and local officials and Siddiqui’s wife, Rebecca, a history teacher, who came with their 17-month-old son. Also on hand were 10 of the 14 former students Siddiqui has inspired to become math teachers, there to celebrate their mentor.
Cheers and applause erupted when Siddiqui, who did not yet know about the award, appeared. Students waved “5” signs from their seats while music blared from the sound system.
“I think he really deserves it,” says 17-year-old Calliope Tarsi. “It’s really easy if you’re having trouble to ask him questions.”
And from rising senior Hunter Dempsey: “He gets you really prepared. And he doesn’t leave anyone behind.”
Siddiqui received the Massachusetts Teacher of the Year award from Lt. Governor Karyn Polito (left) during the Honoring Excellence in Teaching ceremony at the Massachusetts State House Great Hall on June 21. Photo by Jake Belcher.
Siddiqui says he didn’t enter the teaching profession to win accolades, but he is honored to be named Massachusetts’ top teacher and share his love of math. (The official ceremony took place June 21 at the Massachusetts State House.) After nearly two and a half decades as a teacher, he’s been a role model for his colleagues at East Bridgewater, who frequently stop by to observe his teaching methods. He also has a side gig working for the College Board training math teachers. Yet he has no intention of leaving the classroom for an administrative job.
“I always say, you gotta love something, either your subject or your students,” Siddiqui says. “The best teachers, I think, love both.”
Author, Megan Woolhouse can be reached at megwj@bu.edu.
BU Awards Scholarships to Boston Public High School Grads
New Menino and Community Service scholars honored at reception
Thomas M. Menino Scholars and Community Service Award grantees with Jean Morrison, University provost (far left), at last week’s reception. Photo by Jake Belcher.
For many high school seniors, college is a chance to set out far from home. But Melissa Alvarado chose to stay in her hometown and attend BU, in large part because the University enabled her to be the first in her family to attend college, courtesy of a Community Service Award.
Under the decade-old program, BU grants four-year support to Boston public school graduates matriculating at the University, covering all their financial need without their having to resort to loans.
“BU was just a better choice for me” financially and academically, says Alvarado (CGS’20), a graduate of Boston Latin Academy. “And then you get to help out the community after your first semester,” she says, referring to the program’s obligation of 25 hours per semester of community service.
“My mom’s excited for me to stay in Boston,” adds Alvarado, a Dorchester resident and one of six siblings, who will enter the College of General Studies this fall. After that she plans to attend Sargent College of Health & Rehabilitation Sciences.
She was among 38 Community Service Award Scholars and 29 Thomas M. Menino Scholars at the Questrom School of Business for last Wednesday’s annual reception welcoming them to BU. The Menino Scholars program also grants support over four years to the city’s public school graduates matriculating at BU.
Boston Mayor Martin Walsh, addressing the scholars in Questrom’s auditorium, said that the global study programs and other opportunities that BU provides are something “many people don’t experience…in a lifetime.” He recalled his own decision to drop out of Suffolk University after a semester—“It was a mistake,” he said, although “I am the mayor of Boston, so something went right.”—before studying nights and graduating from Boston College.
“You made a lot of right decisions to get here,” Walsh told his audience.
He noted that roughly a quarter of the incoming scholars are immigrants, like his own Irish parents. “I’m not giving a political speech, but what’s happening in the world today, and what’s happening in the United States, in my opinion is sad.…We are incredibly proud of who you are and what you stand for.”
One of those immigrants, Menino scholar Helen Leung (CAS’22), moved to Boston with her family from Hong Kong two years ago. The BU scholarship, the Charlestown High graduate says, is “a big acknowledgement of my high school life and career.
“I did apply to schools that are out of state,” she says, “but BU stands out to me because of its really big community.…And I also want to stay close to my family.”
Provost Jean Morrison told the scholars that “your being here is a reflection of your commitment, not only to academic excellence, but to all of your efforts in your classrooms, your churches, and your communities. And of course, it’s also a terrific reflection on your families and your loved ones.
“Take advantage of our global opportunities,” she advised, while also urging the scholars to make more immediate connections: “You will find that some of your closest friends that you’ll keep for the rest of your life are likely sitting with you in these first few rows.”
More than a third of the incoming Menino and Community Service scholars are the first in their family to attend college, and almost half of those students hail from abroad, including China, Canada, Hong Kong, Albania, Bangladesh, Vietnam, and Pakistan.
The merit-based Menino Scholarships, awarded annually since 1973, cover full tuition. BU will spend $6 million for this year’s coterie over their four years here. Nominated by their high schools, Menino Scholars also get a weeklong orientation to college learning and ongoing support afterward.
Community Service Awards cover recipients’ calculated financial need while assigning them mentors to help with college life. BU will spend $6.5 million on this year’s students over the next four years. Besides community service, they must maintain a 2.0 cumulative grade point average and complete 12 credits each semester.
BU opened the Community Service Awards for the first time to transfer students last year. This fall, in addition to the program’s 38 straight-to-BU freshmen, 25 transfer students (who weren’t at the reception) will attend the University with support from the awards.
Over its 45 years, the Menino Scholars program has provided almost $170 million to 1,946 students. The program was renamed in 2013 for Thomas Menino (Hon.’01), the late Boston mayor and founding director of BU’s Initiative on Cities. The Community Service Awards have totaled $59 million to 466 students since that program began.
Author, Rich Barlow can be reached at barlowr@bu.edu.
What Does Trump’s Immigration Order Mean?
LAW immigration expert says new policy “is legally and morally indefensible”
On June 20, Donald Trump, flanked by Kirstjen Nielsen, Homeland Security secretary (left), and Mike Pence, vice president, signed an executive order that would end the separation of families at the US-Mexico border, but would detain them together indefinitely. AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais.
Bowing to political pressure following a growing public outcry, President Trump signed an executive order on Wednesday reversing a policy that separates parents and children at the US-Mexico border. It was a rare about-face for Trump, who met with mounting condemnation from human rights activists and members of his own party. But Trump said his policy of zero tolerance would continue. “We’re going to have strong—very strong—borders, but we are going to keep the families together,” he said when he signed the new immigration order.
Pressure had increased on Trump to reverse course after journalists and politicians touring the facilities where the children are housed reported seeing traumatized children, and in some instances, metal cages to keep them contained. A video obtained by ProPublica and released to news outlets across the globe played sounds of wailing children and added to the mounting public outrage.
The new order leaves many unanswered questions about the fate of the 2,300 children currently in detention centers, such as if and when they will be reunited with their parents. And the president’s order faces numerous legal obstacles, including whether families can be detained indefinitely. According to the New York Times, a federal judge could refuse to give the Trump administration the authority it wants to hold families in custody for more than 20 days, the current limit as stipulated by a 1997 court order known as the Flores Settlement.
BU Today spoke with Sarah Sherman-Stokes, a School of Law clinical instructor and the associate director of the LAW Immigrants’ Rights and Human Trafficking Program, about the new order and the likelihood of a legal challenge.
Before coming to BU, Sherman-Stokes was an Equal Justice Works Fellow at the Political Asylum/Immigration Representation (PAIR) Project, where she represented noncitizens in removal proceedings, with a special focus on the representation of detained, mentally ill refugees. Her research focuses on the intersections of immigration law and mental health and disability, as well as the interactions between immigration and the criminal justice system. As associate director of the immigrant and trafficking program, she teaches seminars on lawyering skills and trial advocacy and supervises students representing newly unaccompanied children facing deportation, refugees fleeing human rights abuses, and other immigrants in court and administrative proceedings.
BU Today: What does this new executive order mean? Is it a shift away from current immigration policy?
Sherman-Stokes: There’s been a lot of immigration news over the last few days. To lay out what happened, the president set out a policy of his own making, to engage in zero tolerance at the border—that is, to prosecute criminally anyone who entered the United States unlawfully or without authorization. He decided in doing so that he would separate children from their parents. That’s not required by any law, statute, or regulation, but he decided that’s what he would do. More than 2,300 children were separated from their parents in less than two months, and in the face of public outrage over that decision, he signed an executive order June 20, saying that in lieu of family separation, he will now detain families together, indefinitely.
The executive order is not a positive step, not a compromise. I think it is an insidious ploy to make family detention a permanent fixture of our immigration system and offer it up as some kind of compromise or way to prevent family separation. It’s almost equally as bad.
What is the likelihood of an immediate legal challenge to the new executive order?
I imagine there will be a legal challenge, in particular because the president’s executive order suggests that children and families can be held indefinitely, which is a direct violation of the Flores Settlement, the settlement agreement from 1997 that said that children can be held for only a short period of time, even with their parents, up to 20 days. The president’s plan would allow for indefinite detention, so I imagine there would be an immediate legal challenge because it so clearly violates the Flores Settlement.
Do you think the Trump administration can persuade the courts to modify the Flores Settlement to allow for indefinite detention?
I actually think Trump knows exactly what he’s doing, or at least the people around him know what they’re doing. By signing this executive order, he knows his actions are in direct violation of the Flores Settlement. That’s intentional. He wants this to come to a court challenge, because he either wants a judge to modify or amend the Flores Settlement to suit his wishes, or if a judge is unwilling to do that, he wants congress to pass a law doing away with Flores.
There have been people on the right side of the aisle who have long hated this Flores Settlement and have long waited to erode it, chip away from it, or do away with it all together. And I think that’s the goal here.
Right now, there is a negotiated 20-day limit for the amount of time that children can be held in detention with their parents. I don’t know if Trump wants to extend that to a longer period of time, or do away with it all together. You can imagine if people are being held indefinitely, because the conditions are so miserable and abusive, they will end up giving up bona fide claims for release, because they simply can’t tolerate being detained in a jail for such a long period of time. Many people will keep fighting, but we’re talking about the most vulnerable people, who have undergone horrific trauma, who could have mental and physical illnesses, young children. They are inside the pressure cooker, and if they are looking at indefinite detention while they fight their cases or make their case for asylum, they may become so disheartened that they give up.
What is the fate of the 2,300 children currently in detention centers? Do you think they will be reunited in a timely fashion?
I don’t know. The executive order provides no avenue for reunification, which is extremely troubling. The executive order is completely disingenuous. I’ve heard anecdotally, from folks on the ground, that it’s chaos. Parents aren’t able to reunite with their children and the type of information that was needed to provide reunification wasn’t made, and that’s frankly not surprising. I don’t think that this administration’s goal was to provide a path for reunification. So I don’t know what will happen.
What are some of the hurdles these families face in being reunited?
In immigration removal proceedings, you are not entitled to a lawyer unless you can afford a lawyer on your own or unless you can benefit from one of the legal service providers. The demand far outstrips the resources. Many people need lawyers, but there aren’t enough lawyers to represent everyone for free. There are language barriers, there are parents and children who are deeply traumatized. Asking someone up against all those odds to navigate this complex bureaucracy, to find their missing child, when all they are given is a flyer with a 1-800 number, is preposterous.
In previous interviews, you’ve said that you cannot deter families who are fleeing for their lives. Can you talk about this?
At least from my experience, my clients do not typically wake up one day and decide on a whim that they are going to make the treacherous journey to the United States. The journey is fraught with potential horrors—people die, they become very sick, people are assaulted, raped; it’s not a pleasant journey to undertake and it’s expensive. People only make that journey when they feel they have no choice. The president has said that this policy that he instated, although he later denied instating it, is a policy of deterrence. But as I said before, you cannot deter people who are fleeing for their lives. These people are making the only choice they have for the lives of their children.
Anything else you’d like to add?
To be really clear-eyed about what this executive order does and does not do, I’m seeing spin from Republicans in Congress saying, well, Democrats and advocates first didn’t want kids separated, so OK, we stopped separating kids, now they want more. This a crisis of Trump’s own making, and now he is swooping in to change it. It’s morally and legally indefensible, and I believe it was a ploy all along. It is very dangerous and scary.
Immigration is not a criminal matter, it’s a civil one, yet we treat these people like criminals, with jumpsuits and numbers, but they don’t have the right to a lawyer and other rights.
Author, Amy Laskowski can be reached at amlaskow@bu.edu.
BUzz Bits
BU IN DC
Ann McKee of the School of Medicine participated in a Department of Veterans Affairs research fair on Capitol Hill on June 19.
Undergraduate Nicolas Suarez of the College of Arts & Sciences received the Congressional Award for outstanding public service during a Capitol Hill ceremony on June 21.
BUZZ BITS...
- On Thursday, the White House Office of Management and Budget proposed to streamline and reorganize numerous federal agencies and activities, including student loan administration, graduate research fellowships, and applied energy research. The sweeping changes would require Congressional approval and are unlikely in the near term.
- The National Science Foundation is requesting input “on possible future directions for fundamental environmental science and education.” Comments are requested by August 20.
- The Trump Administration called on federal agencies this week to coordinate a space traffic management plan to relieve congestion and minimize space debris. The President also proposed a new Space Force branch of the military, but it will be up to Congress to decide whether to make the change.
SENATE PASSES DEFENSE POLICY BILL
On Monday, the U.S. Senate passed its version of the National Defense Authorization Act, an annual bill that sets policy for the Department of Defense (DOD). Of note, the measure includes two provisions related to China’s espionage and utilization of cultural programs at universities to gather intelligence related to science and technology, demonstrating the bipartisan congressional concern over this issue. The bill also singles out hypersonics, quantum information science, microelectronics, space, and artificial intelligence as research priorities for DOD. The chamber will now conference its bill with the U.S. House of Representatives, which passed its own bill last month, to reach a consensus bill to send to the President for signature.
GRANTS NEWS YOU CAN USE
The National Science Foundation (NSF) recently released a Dear Colleague Letter entitled "STEM Education for the Future" that solicits cross-disciplinary proposals to improve STEM education through technology. Topics of interest include preparing the scientific and technical workforce for the changing nature of work, determining how students learn with technology and the best ways to use technology in education, and ensuring equitable access to education and participation in the STEM workforce as technology advances. Due dates vary depending on the program.