Bye Bye AEPi [JewSchool]
The Gamma chapter of international Jewish fraternity AEPi is being shut down, amidst reports of repeated hazing. The chapter, located at the University of Pennsylvania, is not the only chapter of AEPi whose bad behavior has been making ripples lately. The virtues of the fraternity with the highest national GPA are debated below, and contrasted with the stereotypical fraternity, above.
“Yes, they are bastions of male objectification of the female, yes, a source of aggravation and lack of academic seriousness, yes they throw great parties (and sometimes bad ones) but they’re not all bad, and they’ve come a long way since the Animal house era and even the 1990′s. That’s especially true for AEPi, which is nationally, engaging in leadership training for college men (that phrasing does sound parochial I admit), partnering with Hillels and raising significant funds for important charities. It shouldn’t be painted with the same brush as those undergrands at Penn. In fact, the fraternity has posted very public statements on its website and its President Andy Borans was quoted as having exerted pressure to close the chapters.”
On Technological Illiteracy [Tablet]
Professor Liel Leibovitz argues as to why Jewish students should be leading the battle against technological illiteracy, a major problem, he says, in light of today’s technological era. He cogently states why Judaism and computer programming are compatible, and the problems facing college students everywhere who graduate without use of this vital medium.
“Next month, more than 1.5 million American college students will graduate with bachelor degrees. Nearly all of them will be illiterate. In their offices and in their apartments, they will stare at the key texts that guide their lives in mute horror, unable to understand what they mean. They will come to depend on a small and mighty class of priests to interpret the secret language for them. No matter how successful they become or how many graduate degrees they accumulate, they’ll remain forever ignorant and powerless.
If you think the paragraph above is needlessly alarmist or somehow allegorical, you haven’t been paying attention. Whatever professional path the members of the class of 2012 may take — medicine or marketing or manufacturing — most will lack one area of knowledge essential to all facets of life: the language of machines.”
Benzion Netanyahu, z”l [CBS News]
Benzion Netanyahu, father of Prime Minister Bibi, passed away Monday in Jerusalem. He was 102. He was a professor of Hebrew Literature before coming to Israel, as well as a vehement skeptic of Middle East Peace. Whether or not the loss of his father will have ramifications on Benjamin Netanyahu’s ability to broker peace is something that has been speculated over by analysts, some of whom claim:
“Several analysts speculated that Benjamin Netanyahu was emotionally unable to sign off on a comprehensive peace deal with Israel’s Arabs neighbors as long as his father was still alive, a notion the prime minister dismissed as ‘psychobabble.'”
Murdoch deemed ‘Unfit’ to run a global company [Washington Post]
For those who have been following media titan Rupert Murdoch’s struggles after last summer’s News of the World Hacking scandal, the next wave is upon us. An investigation conducted by British Parliament came to the above and other damning conclusions, leaving the future of NewsCorp uncertain.
“News Corp. chief Rupert Murdoch exhibited “willful blindness” toward the behavior of News of the World staffers in the lead-up to the British phone hacking scandal, according to a report released Tuesday by a committee of British legislators.
The cross-party culture, media and sport committee concluded that Murdoch is “not a fit person” to lead a major multinational company, the Guardian reports, although one of the committee’s Conservative members of parliament disagreed with that depiction at a news conference following the report’s release.”
