Blog / Our America

To Our Five College Colleagues

January 30, 2019 - By The Hampshire College Chapter of the AAUP

The Hampshire College Seal and Motto ("to know is not enough")

Hampshire College faculty and staff are very grateful for the outpouring of support we have received from our colleagues in the Five Colleges. This support is enormously important to us and gives us strength to weather this storm. Statements of support from Five College colleagues have also been accompanied by bewilderment at the situation at Hampshire and the inability to separate fact from rumor and speculation. We’d like to clarify the situation, as we see it right now.

As a tuition-driven institution, Hampshire is accustomed to financial pressures, which in recent years have grown due to ...

Peace, Love, and Understanding

January 20, 2019 - By Jim Hicks, for the editors

The Hampshire College Seal and Motto ("to know is not enough")

Frankly, when I read the shocking news from Hampshire College this week, it brought back memories. Shortly after I got anointed or conned into taking the job as MR editor, I received an email from my Dean at UMass, asking me to give her a few talking points about the history and importance of the magazine, in order to prep the Provost for a meeting with the Deans Council. Oh shit, I thought, this is trouble. I quickly cobbled something together, of course, but also immediately began doing some serious spadework. Eventually, with the help of our friends, we put...

Beyond Maternal Instinct

December 31, 2018 - By Erri De Luca, translated by Jim Hicks

Matthais Grünewald, detail from the Isenheim Altarpiece, Musée d'Unterlinden, Colmar

During my days at sea with Médicins Sans Frontières, I brought the Aeneid with me to read. As is true of the Odyssey, I was more taken by the maritime crossings than the episodes on land. It’s the unfavorable, not the fair, winds that determine their voyages.

A tempest lands Aeneas on the Libyan coast, where he is welcomed as a hero by Dido, Queen of Carthage.

At her request, Aeneas tells the story of the fall of Troy, of its last valiant resistance, of his own salvation, the voyage at sea and losing their way.

One of the lines Virgil has Aeneas speak is so extreme it seems paradoxical: Una salus victis, nullam sperare salutem. For...

Insects

December 25, 2018 - By Erri De Luca, translated by Jim Hicks

Photo by Nicole Parson, from Buzzfeed and The Hill.

I report here testimony gathered by the French journalist Jean Hatzfeld. Hatzfeld managed to interview in prison numerous perpetrators of the massacres in Rwanda, nearly entirely done with machetes. During the 90s, the Tutsi population was hunted down by Hutus and the killing was everywhere.

One of these exterminators said that, “During the time of the killings I never...

The Anthem in My Stomach

November 4, 2018 - By James Janko

Jasper Johns, Poster, (Flag) Moratorium, 1969
USA lithograph on paper; 52.2 × 72.4 cm (20 9/16 × 28 1/2 in.)
Gift of Various Donors; 1981-29-52
Cooper Hewitt collection

At Soldier Field, Home of the Chicago Bears
 

If I had really good eyes, I might see the threads that join me to the crowd, or even to one old man, this fellow next to me, for example, his cheeks as flush as a Christmas card Santa, his eyes moist, his hand over his heart as he gazes at the flag and sings. He is, by all accounts, normal. He sings like a patriot, as do 40,000 or more others, all of them as normal as football on a Sunday afternoon....