News & Events Amherst Voices Archive

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Congratulations, Class of 2022!  A mammoth welcome to the our newly admitted students.

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This weekend, Amherst women′s basketball—currently the No. 1 team in the country—is going for its third national title and second consecutive undefeated season. Live From Rochester : Breaking Down the Final Four

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“This is the cutting edge of academic publishing. I think it has found its feet.” Leah Schmalzbauer, professor of American studies and sociology, chairs the editorial board for Amherst College Press, a pioneer in making scholarly publications freely available to the public.

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“We have these special connections to places where we've lived and visited, and these places have a resonance with us, a sort of blurred memory that evokes emotional ephemera.” Jason Robinson, associate professor of music. Robinson's new album, Resonant Geographies, was released on March 1, 2018, from pfMENTUM.

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“I've found that if you decide to be very truthful as opposed to very factual, you're gonna end up with a better script.” Susannah Grant ’84, screenwriter of Ever After, Pocohontas, Erin Brockovich (for which she was nominated for an Academy Award), The Soloist, Confirmation and the forthcoming biopic of Helen Gurley Brown.

From an interview in No Film School, titled Superheroes to Real Life Heroes: David S. Goyer & Susannah Grant On Screenwriting.

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“In order to write the book you want to write, in the end you have to become the person you need to become to write that book.” Junot Díaz, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, will headline Amherst College’s annual literary festival on March 2 at 7:30 p.m. in Johnson Chapel

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“Amherst is often called a singing college, but I was drawn here, in part, because it’s also known as a writing college.” President Biddy Martin shared this sentiment during Amherst’s inaugural LitFest, which celebrates the College’s extraordinary literary life.

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“It's just a wise move to not have Life-As-We-Know-It's eggs all in one basket.” Elon Musk, the founder of SpaceX, which built the rocket that launched on Feb. 6, on why the Earth can benefit from space exploration, from a talk he gave at Amherst before receiving an honorary degree in 2009.

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“Gorbachev is hard to understand.” Mikhail Gorbachev, speaking about himself to Professor William Taubman, Emeritus. Taubman is the author of Mikhail Gorbachev: His Life and Times, which is reviewed by Paul Statt ’78 in the latest Amherst magazine

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“In less than an hour, I would be on a nationally televised broadcast of ESPN where more than 20 million people would see the name ‘Amherst’ written across my chest.” Reece Foy ’18, football player, political science major and local volunteer, on being honored as a member of the 2017 Allstate AFCA Good Works Team at the Sugar Bowl 

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“Obstinacy. And the fact that, although it's very hard work, I like writing.” Ursula K. Le Guin, answering how she kept going after years of rejections from publishers. The interviewer was Nicholas O’Connell ’80, who edited At the Field’s End: Interviews with 22 Pacific Northwest Writers. Le Guin died on Jan. 22 at age 88. Note: Several classes at Amherst have covered works of Le Guin, including “Religion in Contemporary Fiction” (The Telling) and “Utopia/Dystopia” (The Dispossessed).

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“Simple solutions, even when possible, are seldom useful.” Admiral Stansfield Turner ’45, former director of the CIA, in the introduction to his 1985 book Secrecy and Democracy: The CIA in Transition. Turner died on Jan. 18 at age 94. Note: Turner's obituary in The New York Times: Stansfield Turner, C.I.A. Director Who Confronted Communism Under Carter, Dies at 94.

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“Walked 17 Miles. Climbed 200 feet several times. Patagonia. Upper Cretaceous. Oysters. Shark's teeth.” Diary entry of Waldo Shumway, class of 1911, on a dinosaur-fossil expedition with Professor Frederic Brewster Loomis, who unearthed the mammoth skeleton on display at the Beneski Museum of Natural History.

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“It was bewildering, like having a front-row seat to a play performed in a language I didn't understand.” Jessica Bruder ’00 , writing in Harper’s about how she helped to break one of the biggest news stories of our time. She talks about that article in Amherst magazine. 

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“I feel like I'm revealing to people a world they didn't know was there.” Assistant Professor of Biology Alexandra Purdy, speaking to Amherst magazine about her research into gut bacteria.

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“Now winter downs the dying of the year, / And night is all a settlement of snow;” from "Year's End" by Richard Wilbur who died on Oct. 14, 2017. Amherst remembers the poet in The Splendor of Mere Being.” 

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“Whatever your feelings about the longest night, the winter solstice — transcendent, yet precise; celestial, but very local — is worth pausing to savor. ” 747 Pilot Mark Vanhoenacker ’96, writing in The New York Times in praise of darkness

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“It's truly a reflection of what's needed in our world today.” Leatrice Eiseman, executive director of the Pantone Color Institute, on the color purple (obviously). Pantone chose a purple hue as the 2018 color of the year, saying that it “communicates originality, ingenuity and visionary thinking.”

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“It was awesome, it was awful. That’s the whole military career, I think.” Attila Ujvari ’20, who served as a combat medic, in an interview for the latest Amherst magazine cover story. 

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“Our understandings of race and culture have led us astray.” Kwame Anthonly Appiah. Before speaking on campus this fall, Appiah sat for a video interview with Stefan Yong ’18.

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“Make art that recovers our fragmented, misrepresented and distorted pasts through ordinary people's stories.” Actor, playwright and performance scholar Lisa Biggs ’93 reflects on her time at Amherst and the importance of making theater, then and now.

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“My form of teenage rebellion was contemplating getting a Ph.D. instead of an M.D.” Carolyn Sufrin ’97, From an Amherst magazine profile: “When Med School is Not Enough”

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“Why may we not add Geology to the list of poetical sciences?” Geologist Edward Hitchcock, Amherst’s third president. Amherst’s Beneski Museum of Natural History houses Hitchcock’s collection of fossil dinosaur tracks</a>, which continue to be among the largest and most studied in the world.

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“When power corrupts, poetry cleanses.” President John F. Kennedy, speaking at Amherst on Oct. 26, 1963. The College will honor the 100th anniversary of Kennedy’s birth at an Oct. 28 symposium. U.S. Rep. Joseph Kennedy III will give the keynote address.

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Amherst Mammoths: Est. 2017. Learn more

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“Outside the open window/The morning air is all awash with angels.” Richard Wilbur ’42 in his poem “Love Calls Us to the Things of This World.”Wilbur, an elder statesman of American poetry, died on Saturday, Oct. 14, 2017 at age 96.

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“People not only shared vocabulary with us, but emotions, sensations and stories.” Ha Ram Hwang ’17. For a culminating project in English 490, she teamed up with a fellow student to collect hard-to-translate phrases from people around campus. 

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“No writing is ever wasted.” Katerina Von Campe ’17, giving pointers on thesis writing to current students.students.

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“What does it mean to be a child and have to be separated from your parents and your family, your home country, and to never be able to go back?” Destry Sibley ’09, a Fulbright-National Geographic Digital Storytelling Fellow, is launching a podcast series devoted child refugees fleeing the Spanish Civil War.

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“If parents favored the sons over the daughters, what happens to the families with only a daughter? This is a burning question, and could change everything about what we know about gender in China.” Vanessa Fong ’96, associate professor of anthropology at the College, on why she began her longitudinal study of China’s one-child policy.

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“Reading is a mighty engine, beside which steam and electricity sink into insignificance.” Melvil Dewey, Class of 1874, Dewey was an Amherst student when he devised the decimal classification system that bears his name. 

NOTE: In 2014, a turn-of-the-century building on the Amherst College campus that once provided power to the campus was repurposed to provide space on campus for student activities including live performances, rehearsals, pub nights, panel discussions, art exhibits, food truck nights, cookouts and more. Photo by David Lamb Photography, courtesy of Bruner/Cott.

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“The brain is wider than the sky.” Emily Dickison, poet. The fifth annual Amherst Poetry Festival and Emily Dickinson Poetry Marathon takes place Sept. 14-17. On Friday, poets will read in Bassett Planetarium as the starscapes of the evening of Emily Dickinson’s birth and death are projected. On Saturday, fans will read all 1,789 of Emily Dickinson’s poems at the Emily Dickinson Museum.

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“Bad news is bad news, but it was like I didn’t even feel it, because I heard how hard it was for him to tell me.” Gavin Grimm, speaking about his lawyer Josh Block ‘01, in an Amherst magazine interview.

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“If you sit down and talk to someone you thought you have nothing in common with, in two minutes you’ll find a similarity.” Christopher Lewis ’19, one of the students featured in #AmherstIBelong, an exhibit sponsored by the Office of Diversity & Inclusion. All are invited to the opening reception on Sept. 5 from 4-6 p.m. in the Keefe Campus Center atrium.

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The class of 2021 is known as the bicentennial class, because it will graduate in the College’s bicentennial year. Its 473 members were chosen from a record 9,285 applicants.

Read more about the incoming class: Welcome, New Students

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“It began in my freshman year. A friend asked me, ‘What do you believe?’ And I couldn't answer that question.” Peter Rubinstein ’64 on his path to becoming a rabbi.

NOTE: Rubinstein received an Amherst honorary doctorate this spring. 

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“Nothing I can say/A total eclipse of the heart.” Jim Steinman ’69 Steinman wrote and produced the 1983 hit “Total Eclipse of the Heart.” Find it on the playlist that NASA interns put together for today’s total solar eclipse. 

Note: Read about David Peck Todd, class of 1875, in the latest issue of Amherst magazine: “The Star-Crossed Astronomer” by Julie Dobrow.

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“Music gave me the gift of being connected to the world.” Music major Alex Rodriguez ’07, speaking to the Portland Tribune.

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“All institutions of higher education have the obligation to open the door more widely.” Nelson Mandela in his 2005 address to Amherst College, when he was awarded an honorary degree

NOTE: Mandela would have turned 99 this summer.

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“If a stranger said in sport / ‘I see you're prepared for snow,’/ Our shovel might retort / ‘Out here, you never know.’ ” Richard Wilbur ’42, in a poem about a snow shovel still leaning against a house in July. 

NOTE: Wilbur is the subject of a new biography by Robert Bagg ‘57 and Mary Bagg that is this month’s Amherst Reads featured book. 

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“You′re surrounded by the universe.” Jeffrey Hoffman ’66 on his 1985 spacewalk.

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“We know what we know only because it's been organized and saved in certain ways.” Professor Rick Lopez ’93, talking about a student effort to preserve a part of College history.

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NOTE: Kim, who majored in theater and dance at Amherst, is now a teacher who founded EK Theater.

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This year, 1,097 alumni volunteered their time on behalf of the Amherst Annual Fund. Choose Amherst. Make a gift by June 30. Thank you!

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“There will always be people who are stronger, faster and smarter, but in college I learned that you can excel by learning how to think well, make good decisions and understand your limitations. ” Surgeon James E. Bates ‘86 in the newest Amherst magazine.

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“It pushes past the limits of empathy.” Assistant Professor Khary Polk, in an Amherst magazine Q&A about Moonlight, this year’s best picture Oscar winner.

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“The very core of it all has always been the simple thought of giving credit where credit is due.” David Soliday ’74 on his photographs of Southern rice fields.

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“I look forward to an America which will steadily raise the standards of artistic accomplishment and which will steadily enlarge cultural opportunities for all of our citizens.” President John F. Kennedy, speaking at Amherst on Oct. 26, 1963. He would have been 100 on May 29, 1917.

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In recent years, Amherst Reunion has inspired both a scientific paper and a play.  Reunion is May 24-28

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“Liberal arts education is the form of education best suited to uncertainty and change.” From President Biddy Martin's 2017 Commencement Address.