I posted this for M, but I need to add this here as well,
I need to post this here, but I'll probably quote it in many other threads on this site. I dearly hope Brandeis has changed, but as a 2nd year grad student it was the place of one of the darkest days of my life.
It was March 1981 and Reagan had just been shot. Granted that the young Jewish community was not an ally of Reagan. Carter had secured the treaty with Egypt. Reagan stood for many anti-NewDeal thoughts. He seemed a potential warmonger when the Cold War was still reality. But I was not prepared for what I saw.
I had a number of friends in the undergraduate dorms and I was on my way to vist them. To my horror, in room after room, young students were cheering for the death of the President. They were totally unable to separate the policies that were their right to disregard from the very human fact that a life was in grave danger. I cannot come close to conveying the disgust I felt that day.
As a native midwesterner I held a certain innate optimism and sense of the basic goodness of my fellow human being. I still largely feel that way. But on that day I saw the hatred that transcended humanity. I hope that 25 years later the classes that M will meet are far different from the classes I saw in 1981.
