MAY 15, 2017 The Independent Student Newspaper of Yeshiva College, Sy Syms School of Business, and Yeshiva University Volume LXXXI Issue 10 INSIDE: SPECIAL PRESIDENTIAL SECTION Interview with The Joel Years from the Perspective of Outgoing President One YC Faculty Member Richard Joel By Dr. Will Lee By Doron Levine Ever since Richard Joel delivered his investiture address on September 21, 2003, I have regarded him as the heir of YC’s founding president Bernard Revel. Both men eloquently expressed and furthered the mission For this year’s final issue of The Commentator, we sat of Yeshiva College, now Yeshiva University: the mutually reinforcing harmony of Torah Studies, Jewish down with outgoing YU President Richard Joel and asked Studies, and the liberal arts. Both men recognized and nurtured the historic uniqueness of the institution him to reflect on his fourteen as president. President Joel will they loved. Both men realized step down on June 5, and will that for the education they be succeeded by Rabbi Dr. Ari supported to succeed, they had Berman. to encourage the strengthening and multiplication of modern Doron Levine: What Orthodox Jewish communities are some of the most by training rabbis and leading a important changes you’ve religious movement. Both men made to YU during your reached out beyond Centrist presidency? Orthodoxy to other religious President Joel: First of all, Jews, all Jews, America, Israel, nothing was me. It was we. I and beyond. think maybe one of the most I have been asked to represent important changes was that it the faculty of YC through this became a place of “we.” In other article on the Joel era. Although words, the people I worked I serve on the Manhattan with bought into a vision. It Campus Faculty Council as one was a time of really going to of the representatives from YC, next. The first appointment and although I have thought I made before I even started long and hard about YC and YU was Dr. Hillel Davis, who was since arriving on campus over to serve as Vice President for thirty-three years ago, I will be Kavod HaBriyos. Because my presenting my own perspective mandate was to increase the on issues especially relevant warmth, friendliness, and to faculty members. No doubt student-service orientation of many of my colleagues will our community. disagree with many of my points. A small cultural example is, Thanks go to several colleagues when I arrived, the entrances who responded to earlier drafts to all the buildings read and guided me toward some either “enter only” or “exit beneficial revisions. only.” And within a month Full disclosure: I have enjoyed every door said “Welcome to a good personal and working Yeshiva University.” From the relationship with President beginning, the aspiration was Joel, though of course I have not to make YU an environment supported all of his practices, that ennobles and enables. positions, and decisions, as you That’s not a slogan. The will see. As the director of the quality of the education would Jay and Jeanie Schottenstein be premier, both Torah and Honors Program in its early secular, and the quality of the years, I asked him to host one environment would be noble, of our annual dinners, at which would be kodesh. If there’s one graduates of YC and the program briefly present their research each year. He and his wife acted as wonderful thing that yeshiva is supposed to do, it’s to have us develop hosts for an especially memorable evening in their home. My longest and most substantive interaction with a sacred self consciousness, a consciousness of kedusha; the him helped prepare both of us for the almost entirely successful visit by the Reaccreditation Team of the notion of being mekadesh the chol – that’s why we’re here. And Middle States Commission on Higher Education in 2012. I say “almost” because the visiting team concluded I think that’s the most important thing that we needed to professionalize and systematize our assessment of academic programs, a goal we have It has been fourteen plus years, and I think the faculty is accomplished thanks to Rachel Ebner, Director of Student Learning Assessment, and the cooperative efforts far stronger than it was, there’s a larger tenured faculty than of deans and faculty members. there was, the yeshiva has never been more formidable and in The financial recession that struck the country in September of 2008 divides the Richard Joel years into its own way diverse, and I think the degree to which yeshiva his first six versus his last eight plus. After a long search process, the Board of Trustees elected him on lives beyond its walls, the degree to which the community sees December 5, 2002 as the fourth president of Yeshiva University. He lacked rabbinic qualifications, but he YU as the vouchsafer of a movement, is better than it ever had served early in his career as a YU administrator, he had successfully expanded Hillel on campuses across was. This is manifest by who the musmachim are, how they’re America, and they considered him highly qualified in ways they valued. In his investiture address he called for SEE JOEL, CONTINUED ON PAGE 14 SEE JOEL YEARS, CONTINUED ON PAGE 18 NEWS PAGE 7 FEATURES PAGE 9 OPINIONS PAGE 23 BUSINESS PAGE 26 Student Court Holds its First An Analysis of Intercampus Authorship in A Socio-Economic Critique of Israeli A Look at YU's most Recent Trial of the Year YU Student Newspapers Society from the Perspective of an Ole Financial Statements Hadash WWW.YUCOMMENTATOR.ORG 2 Editorial Monday, May 15, 2017 - 19 Iyyar 5777 Monday, May 15, 2017 - 17 Iyyar 5777 The DITORIAL Editor-in-Chief DORON LEVINE E Managing Editor She Did Not Give Me Wasabi TZVI LEVITIN Senior News Editor By Doron Levine are restricted in countless ways – by our social and economic DAVID RUBINSTEIN circumstances, by our religious values, by our skills and by our Junior News Editor Alas, my college years are fading and my dream of becoming shortcomings, and by the crushing obligation to make money. EITAN LIPSKY a published poet remains tragically unrealized. Glory has Reality sets in, and objective considerations overwhelm our Junior News Editor rebuffed my repeated advances. Literary fame eludes me; my subjective aspirations. stomach is famished of that fickle food, satiated instead on In other words, in college we learn the limits of that thing SHOSHY CIMENT wormwood and gall. And it’s not for lack of trying. we call self-expression. The cloudy implication behind this Senior Opinions Editor Twice during my years at YU I submitted a poem to YU’s idea, the suggestion that we are able to say and do and think AVI STRAUSS Journal of Fine Arts, and twice my work was rejected. I also and become what we want, that we have the ability to live Junior Opinions Editor entered a poem into Yeshiva College’s writing contest, only our lives in a way that maximizes personal fulfillment and YITZCHAK FRIED to learn that the faculty judges value my poetry as little as the happiness, contradicts much of what we know about how the Junior Opinions Editor world functions. Journal’s staff does. My career as a balladeer lay in shambles SAM GELMAN and I wept. This is the idea conveyed in my poem and mirrored by my Seeking solace, I recalled the normative epistemic principle experience attempting to have it published. The story it tells Senior Features Editor that my professor taught me in First Year Writing: be skeptical is factual, a simple but harrowing tale of desire and denial: I HILLEL FIELD of everything. The only heresy is certainty – we must ruthlessly wanted wasabi, but she did not give me wasabi. The story of Junior Features Editor interrogate every last one of our beliefs, no matter how dearly its publication is similarly heartbreaking: I wanted to publish BENJAMIN KOSLOWE it, but the Journal of Fine Arts did not publish it. I wished to held. I was young and credulous, so I trusted my professor’s Senior Business Editor advice and was quickly converted, baptized in the sweet waters express myself publicly through the medium of poetry, but the ADAM KRAMER of uncertainty. In the inquisition of doubt, no creed was safe powers that be determined that my self-expression was not from the auto-da-fé. I zealously adhered to my newfound worth expressing. I’m lucky to have this editorial platform to Junior Business Editor disbelief, becoming devoutly skeptical of everything. (This of self-publish my work; others are not so fortunate. EVAN AXELROD course included being skeptical of the idea that I should be What if writing poetry is what gives my life meaning? Must I Senior Layout Editor forgo fulfillment merely because my calling happens to involve skeptical of everything, skeptical of my teacher’s motivation for SHIRA FEEN producing this maxim, and skeptical of the selective manner in something I am bad at? which people tend to adhere to this sort of imperative.) Though college is full of frustration and disillusion, this Senior Programmer Three years older now but no less dubious, I am skeptical of episode is particularly striking because it revolves around MICHAEL PERES the Journal’s decision. How can anyone be certain of anything, poetry. The introduction to this year’s Journal of Fine Arts says: Junior Programmer let alone the poor quality of a poem? But you can judge for “Art is the expression of the most inexpressible emotions and JUSTIN SAFIER observations, tragically and elegantly, sometimes grotesquely yourself -- here is the poem I submitted to the Journal of Fine Senior Business Manager Arts this year: portrayed, all for the basic goal of humanizing ourselves.” YONI FLEISCHMANN Poetry is supposed to express deeply personal reflections, to She asked if I wanted wasabi bare a piece of the poet’s soul.