Brown University (StudentsReview) -

U.’s final transition to Canvas causes controversy
by Brown Daily Herald
Apr 05, 2013
“The end of this semester marks the completion of the University’s two-year transition to replace MyCourses, the Blackboard-based learning management system, with Canvas. The transition to Canvas comes amid concerns from some faculty members and students that the functions of the University’s digital platforms overlap with each other.
Blackboard programs will still be available for professors who choose to use them in the future, but the University will no longer maintain the sites, said Dean of the College Katherine Bergeron.
“The reason why we moved to Canvas is that the Blackboard product was going to have a big (software) upgrade,” and students and faculty members would have had to learn how to use the updated version of MyCourses, Bergeron said. Administrators chose to switch to Canvas, a cloud-based software program, because it automatically updates weekly, Bergeron said. The University will save money that would have been spent on Blackboard updates, Bergeron added.
Canvas joins a host of other digital platforms the University uses for academic and administrative purposes, including Banner, the advising website Advising Sidekick and the syllabus and course information website courses.brown.edu.
Some students and faculty members expressed concern that the University’s multiple web platforms are inefficient and wasteful.
David Weinberger ’16 said he found the multiple websites “annoying” and that he has trouble recalling which of his courses have made the jump to Canvas and which ones continue to use MyCourses.
“Why can’t we have it all in one website?” said Matthew Min ’15, adding that he does not see much value in ASK, an advising website designed by the University.
Yukiko Watanabe ’16 said she rarely uses ASK but accesses Canvas to find assignments’ content and grades. She said that though Canvas is easy to navigate, the site has “too many tabs” and could be simplified.
“I’m less confused and more inconvenienced” by the University’s use of multiple digital platforms, said Audrey Chang ’15. The University should consider expanding its use of Google for interacting with students, since community members already have Brown-run Gmail accounts, Chang said. She added that the multiple websites may benefit faculty members by giving them more flexibility in organizing their courses.
But Bergeron stressed the key differences between the University’s websites. ASK is used by advisers to access student information like Brown ID pictures and internal transcripts, she said, and it is constantly being developed.
Banner serves a distinctly different purpose, Bergeron said. Banner is an information sharing system that addresses all aspects of student life, from meal plans to enrollment details. The site acts like a “physical plant,” Bergeron said. “It helps the University run.”
Some faculty members said they have experienced difficulty using the different platforms.
“ASK is fantastic — the rest suck,” said Professor of Computer Science Shriram Krishnamurthi.
The problem with Canvas is that it “locks down information so people (outside of Brown) can’t use it,” Krishnamurthi said. One of the benefits of posting course material online is the ability to share information with colleagues, he said. Instructors can improve their courses by looking at syllabi for similar courses at other schools, but Canvas makes these resources inaccessible to anyone outside of the University, Krishnamurthi said.
In fact, instructors have the option to make their courses publicly visible under the Settings tab on Canvas.
“It shouldn’t be that complicated,” said Barrett Hazeltine, professor of engineering emeritus, adding that it takes a while to access various course materials on the websites. “Students can find things fairly quickly,” but accessing materials in Canvas “still requires a certain amount of searching,” he said.
“It’s good for posting information,” Hazeltine said. “Just make it a little easier to work through.”
Hazeltine said he currently receives help from a junior in his class to operate Canvas.
“People go off and make bad software decisions,” Krishnamurthi said, adding that he thinks the same set of administrators continue to push through misguided software choices. Krishnamurthi said he currently has his own web page for course material on the computer science department’s website.”

Importance

Alum’s new site targets college-age shoppers
by Brown Daily Herald
Apr 05, 2013
“Jessica Lam ’03 was working at a private investment fund in Hong Kong four years ago when she had the idea for her own company.
“I didn’t think I was really adding value to my work,” Lam said. “I wanted to figure out a way to leverage my finance and consulting experience but still do what I love, which is fashion.”
Feeling as if she was just contributing “numbers in a spreadsheet,” Lam and Bowdoin alum Katie Hernandez launched the startup PandaSundae, an e-commerce brand that targets female college students in the United States and Hong Kong. As the website develops, Lam said, the goal is to make PandaSundae an “interactive brand” that includes blogs and forums students can access to for entrepreneurial tips and to learn about opportunities.
Lam, who grew up in Hong Kong, met Hernandez right after college when they began consulting in a startup company. Since then, Lam has gone to business school in Columbia, worked for SAKS New York and gained experience through different internships in the fashion industry. She said she felt like she gained knowledge participating in different aspects of the business industry, but the difficult part was figuring out a marketing strategy. She decided to work for Gucci to better understand the American consumer pool.
At Gucci, “I finally understood what I wanted to do,” she said. Lam said she learned how to “connect with consumers,” and that inspired her to create her own brand.
The co-founders combined their skills — Lam focused on the merchandising aspect, sourcing products from Asia, while Hernandez provided feedback on what American consumers really value, Lam said.
The name, PandaSundae, represents both the company’s Asian influences and customers’ ability to customize its products, she said.
“One of the most important things about running a successful business is mastering soft skills,” Hernandez said.
These skills include understanding what a customer values and building strong networks with them, Hernandez said, adding that business school helped her build confidence in approaching people and knowing they are willing to offer help and advice.
“The hard skills come more easily,” she said, referring to technical skills such as “crunching numbers” and mastering Microsoft Excel. She added that she didn’t have a lot of guidance in college on working as a woman in the business world and with PandaSundae, she could give back to students what she learned later on in life.
The Hong Kong Students Association hosted a lecture and question-and-answer session with Lam and Hernandez Tuesday, where they spoke about their vision for the company.
“This event was unique in that it had direct Brown/Hong Kong alumni involvement — an aspect HKSA hopes to expand,” said Tiffany Chang ’16, a member of the group’s executive board. “PandaSundae’s products do a good job merging utility with cuteness,” she added.
The co-founders were wearing apparel from their website and had samples of their products arranged on a table, which the audience members were invited to test after the lecture. The items included panda-shaped speakers, studded handbags and an animal-print tablet case. The co-founders also offered free folders, pens and sunglasses featuring the Panda Sundae logo.
“We’re (making) things we wish we had in college,” Lam said.
She said there are few companies that offer functional and fun products for college students, adding that she and Hernandez also hope to share their 20 years of combined experience in the business world by offering internship opportunities.
While students can learn about marketing in the classroom, Lam said she wants to give them a way to translate that knowledge into the real world.
“We want to help put students in contact with mentors,” Lam said at the event.
The co-founders are launching a PandaSundae Collegiate Marketing Challenge that offers up to $2,300 for each team, an additional $1,000 for the winner, internship opportunities and a chance to be featured on the company website.
The competition requires participants to submit a marketing strategy to promote PandaSundae and launch it for a week to see which plan is the most successful in attracting attention to the brand.
Lam said she hopes to get ideas and feedback on her products as she travels around various universities in the United States.”

Importance

Bill proposes support for homeless
by Brown Daily Herald
Apr 05, 2013
“A crowd of nearly 200 students, state residents and state legislators gathered Wednesday to support a bill for housing vouchers at a “Wizard of Oz”-themed rally.
The bill — introduced in the House in February and currently pending review by the House Finance Committee — seeks $3 million for “rental asistance” and an additional $250,000 to increase the number of winter homeless shelters in the state.
Supporters dressed as Dorothy, the Tin Man, the Scarecrow and the Cowardly Lion greeted rally-goers as they entered the State House rotunda. Other protestors handed out signs bearing slogans like “There’s no place like home” and “Home is where the heart is.”
The supporter dressed as Dorothy sang “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” to quiet the crowd before Rhode Island Coalition for the Homeless Executive Director Jim Ryzcek addressed the crowd.
The plan to curb homelessness has already been created and approved but needs government funding to be implemented, Ryzcek said. He said he is frequently asked where the plan’s multimillion dollar budget will come from and that it is not a lack of state funds but a misallocation of those resources that presents an obstacle.
Eric Hirsch, professor of sociology at Providence College, spoke next. Rhode Island’s homeless population increased between 2011 and 2012, he said. “It is about failure. It’s about the failure of our housing market … and our government.”
Housing prices and rent in Rhode Island are too high to afford on welfare or when earning the minimum wage, Hirsch added. To help the homeless, the General Assembly needs to fund the voucher system, he said.
“We can end homelessness in Rhode Island, but it might take a little more than clicking our heels to make it happen,” he said.
Rep. Scott Slater, D-Providence, one of the bill’s sponsors, saidhomelessness is “the most important issue” the state needs to address.
“If you don’t know where you’re going to sleep at night, how can you worry about your math or English test scores?” Slater asked. Having a stable home is a “basic human right,” he said.
“With a multimillion dollar budget,” he added, “we should be ashamed that we can’t find $3 million for this.”
Rhode Island’s government should make homelessness “a priority today,” said Sen. Elizabeth Crowley, D-Central Falls, Pawtucket and Cumberland, another sponsor, to a round of applause from the crowd.
“Isn’t it a shame,” she added, that people in Rhode Island “have to make a choice between a roof over (their) heads or food in (their) bellies?”
“It’s a disease, and we have a vaccine: It’s called a voucher,” she said.
The legislators then stepped down to give Deborah, a state resident who was previously homeless for three years, a chance to tell her story.
Deborah said she has been in and out of shelters around the state, many of which were overcrowded. “There was one with one shower and one toilet for 25 women,” she said.
She now lives a “normal life” because of state housing assistance, she said. “There’s nothing like having your own place, it changes your whole life … I just thank God that I have a home.”
“I feel more like a member of society,” said Scott, a Newport resident who recently emerged from homelessness.
“How are great civilizations judged? By money? Power?” he asked. Sometimes, he said, great civilizations are best judged by “how well they treat their poor.””

Importance

Wes Craven to headline Ivy Film Festival
by Brown Daily Herald
Apr 05, 2013
“Cold-blooded murderers, rock-and-roll has-beens and undercover spies are among the diverse individuals featured in this year’s Ivy Film Festival selections. IFF released its annual screening and event lineup, which will run April 8 to 14, on the group’s website Wednesday.
The keynote speaker this year is Wes Craven, director of iconic horror films such as “Scream,” “A Nightmare on Elm Street” and “The Hills Have Eyes.” A midnight screening of “Scream” — sponsored by the Late Night Fund — will precede the keynote address.
“He is the master of horror, especially for our generation,” said Evan Sumortin ’13, IFF executive director. “He is a visionary.”
Many of the films in this year’s canon are drawn from Sundance Film Festival and were obtained through IFF’s relationship with Fox Searchlight Films, said Mahima Chawla ’13, co-director of IFF. Chawla said she is most excited for “The Way, Way Back,” a coming-of-age comedy to be screened at the Avon Monday. It was well received at Sundance, she said, adding that it should appeal to the Brown community.
The IFF program provides a platform for important documentaries to reach a college audience, Sumortin said. Among these documentaries is the Javier Bardem-narrated “Sons of the Clouds,” which explores the human price of colonialism in the Western Sahara of Africa, a region that now encompasses Morocco.
Another documentary, “Searching for Sugar Man,” recounts the tale of two South African fans who try to track down ’70s rock star Sixto Rodriguez.
“It’s going to be the sort of capstone for our ‘Stories for Change’ series,” Sumortin said. “Stories for Change” is a succession of documentary screenings sponsored by IFF that has been taking place throughout the academic year to inspire debate about contentious films.
“After Tiller” follows the lives and daily struggles of the four currently remaining late-term abortion doctors following the 2009 assassination of physician George Tiller, and demonstrates the role of film in exploring difficult subject matter, Sumortin said. It highlights a controversial topic on which students have strong opinions, making it an ideal festival pick, he added.
This year, a panel discussion will emphasize the role of the producer in development, finance and marketing of a film, he said. “A lot of people don’t really understand what the producer does,” he added.
Speakers will include Christine Vachon ’83, producer of Oscar-nominated “Far From Heaven,” Brad Simpson ’95, producer of “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” and this summer’s “World War Z,” and Michael Shamberg, producer of Oscar-nominated “Django Unchained,” “Garden State” and “Pulp Fiction.”
“This is a heavyweight panel,” Sumortin said.
Among other featured guests is Mira Nair, director of “The Reluctant Fundamentalist,” one of the festival’s documentary screenings, which IFF will co-sponsor with the Brown International Organization. The film, starring Kate Hudson, Kiefer Sutherland and Liev Schreiber, focuses on themes of culture, race and gender, Sumortin said.
Mark Heyman ’02 will lead an hour-long master class in screenwriting for the festival. He will examine particular passages of his first major feature, “Black Swan” and describe the process of translating writing to the screen.
Heyman has a valuable perspective on breaking into the industry to lend to student filmmakers because he is so young, Sumortin said.
“All filmmakers started out somewhere as students,” James said.
The range of speakers this year demonstrates the focus the festival has placed on directors and producers, Chawla said, adding that in the past, the emphasis has instead been placed on actors.
The series of screenings this year focuses on underexposed but deserving independent films, Sumortin said.
The Ivy Film Festival also aims to allow student filmmakers to connect with filmmakers and the film industry, he added.
The official selections of the festival are a series of student films from around the world divided into four viewing blocks over the course of the festival, Chawla said.
Each time block contains a sampling of what submissions were received, and they vary in length and genre, said Erica James ’14, IFF publicity coordinator. They provide a taste of each film category — graduate, animation, experimental, comedy, international, 48-hour, documentary and drama.
The diversity of these films provides a range of perspectives and demonstrates the array of stories that can be told through cinema, Chawla said.
Curated from hundreds of submissions from 80 colleges and universities in 21 countries, the films foster a “creative culture” through networking between student filmmakers, Sumortin said.
IFF’s 25-person programming staff, members of which were all selected for their experience with film selection or film in general, selected 28 films out of the pool of approximately 300 submissions, a record for the festival. This group also picks the winner for each film category, the awards for which are presented at a private awards ceremony following the keynote address Sunday.”

Importance

Student Labor Alliance members rally in Florida
by Brown Daily Herald
Apr 05, 2013
“Five members from the Student Labor Alliance traveled to Florida to take part in a march held March 14-18 to protest corporations’ alleged abuse of farm workers in the state.
The students joined the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, a pro-workers’ rights advocacy group, to walk part of the coalition’s annual March for Rights, Respect and Fair Food, which follows a 200-mile route starting in Fort Myers, Fla. to the corporate headquarters of the supermarket chain Publix in Lakeland, Fla.
Activists targeted Publix for demonstrations this year because they claim the company is involved in a form of “modern-day slavery” by underpaying farm owners for their produce, causing farmers to pay substandard wages to their employees, said Shelby Mack ’14, SLA member and march attendee.
The coalition “works towards improving the lives of their community,” Mack said, adding that the group has made an impact by securing wage increases for farm workers and human rights codes for laborers.
“The SLA had two primary goals with this march,” Mack said. “We wanted to celebrate all the successes that this coalition has held and to continue putting pressure on Publix.”
Students said they wanted to participate in the march because of the need to expose what they deemed Publix’s unfair treatment of workers.
“Publix … claims to treat their employees with respect and dignity,” said Tomas Quinonez-Riegos ’15, an SLA member who took part in the march. He added that though Publix indirectly sets low wages for farm laborers by underpaying their employers, the company unfairly does not consider these laborers to be on their payroll.
Quinonez-Riegos charged Publix, which touts its commitment to ethical business standards, with hypocrisy regarding its labor practices.
“One of its main corporate tenets is that it’s faith-based, which is ironic,” he said.
“These corporations — food service, supermarket and fast food companies — have the power to improve conditions in the fields,” Mack said. “The growers don’t have more money to pay these farm workers unless these corporations pay more for their produce,” she added.
The Coalition of Immokalee Workers aims to increase farm workers’ wages by 75 percent by pressuring their employers to sign what its members call the Fair Food Agreement. The terms of this agreement commit corporations to implementing safer working conditions and giving their workers “a voice,” Quinonez-Riegos said.
Students who attended the march said they felt the experience was emotionally powerful.
“Coming from an institution where we are very much expected to be the leaders and the organizers, it was refreshing and empowering to see the farm workers taking on the responsibility by themselves,” Quinonez-Riegos said.
Mack said she believed the coalition’s actions have been successful, adding that 11 corporations have already signed the Fair Food Agreement. But she noted Publix continues to resist signing the agreement.
“We weren’t even allowed to go on Publix’s property, but we’re going to keep fighting until they sign,” she added.
Marching in Florida has given SLA members a new perspective on organizing activism in the local community, Quinonez-Riegos said.
“Going down really energized and showed us the national scope of the movement,” he said. “It helped us to integrate that into the coalition’s movement in Rhode Island through SLA.”
Mack said the CIW and SLA are now working on a joint campaign in Rhode Island to pressure Wendy’s and Stop & Shop to sign the Fair Food Agreement.
“Wendy’s is the final one of the top five fast food chains in America not to sign on to this agreement,” Mack said, expressing her hope to carry the organizing spirit from Florida to Rhode Island.”

Importance

Dorris ’15: An MRS degree from Brown
by Brown Daily Herald
Apr 05, 2013
“The clock is ticking, ladies.
Susan Patton recently penned a letter to the Daily Princetonian suggesting that female students find a husband before graduation. She claimed couples that share the same socioeconomic status and interests are generally happier.
The letter received severe backlash and was deemed anti-feminist.
But we cannot deny the letter’s relevance. Brown is also an Ivy League school and a few of us — mostly from Perkins Hall — do marry right out of college. In the midst of the Supreme Court’s debate over the constitutional status of same-sex marriage, we have to wonder: Is Brown the best chance we will ever have?
Bestselling books like Lori Gottlieb’s, “Marry Him! Settling for Mr. Good Enough,” emphasize the fact that the dating pool of suitable partners shrinks exponentially as women grow older. The satirical rap video, “The Ivy League Hustle,” claims that men do not want to date women from Ivy League schools.
After all, there is some truth to Patton’s article. Over six thousand intellectual people surround us. Many of them share the same beliefs and values. There will never be another time in our lives like this.
After we are ejected from the Brown bubble, we will realize that not everyone appreciates SexPowerGod and almond milk lattes or recognizes gluten sensitivity as a real disability. Shockingly, some people may even be socially conservative, very religious or less privileged.
Though we fight for marriage equality, many of us feign apathy toward the ultimate commitment. Like most universities, Brown values experimentation and hookup culture. Some would concede that feminists have come a long way. This is the age of sex positivity, bi-curiosity and naked performances, not wedding bells and white dresses.
We forget that part of the reason we change our Facebook profile photos to red and pink equal signs is that there are so many benefits to marriage. In addition to social security and employer benefits, married couples have access to cheaper car insurance, higher credit scores and better loan offers, as well as joint income tax returns.
But despite the benefits, people who marry their college sweethearts often struggle.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the median age of marriage has risen from 23 for men and 20 for women in 1950 to 28 for men and 26 for women in 2009. Andrew Cherlin, a professor of sociology at Johns Hopkins University, claims that the reason the “supposedly liberal East” has a lower divorce rate than the more socially conservative South and West is because couples in the latter areas “have less education and marry earlier, both of which lead to a higher risk of divorce.” In other words, the divorce rates may have hit an all-time low in 2009 because couples are marrying later in life.
College graduates are not financially ready for marriage. Some may argue that once someone is established in a career, it is difficult to find a partner. But it is even more difficult to marry someone straight out of college and then be tied down, unable to pursue even entry-level job opportunities because of a spouse’s location. The glass ceiling is real. Women especially need time to develop their careers, not wallow in collective debt.
More importantly, we are not emotionally ready. Life is hard after college and marriage will not make it any easier. Most of us will change dramatically during our turbulent twenties. There are a million things to experience in the world, and if you have the privilege to explore, you should. Fully committing oneself to another person requires a self-awareness and lack of selfishness that most of us do not possess.
Whether you are a guy or a girl, the best thing you can do is get a career, figure out what you want and pursue good friendships. No, we should not discount potential life partners for small reasons — and if you find someone, then great. But as long as you make deep connections, whether platonic or romantic, you will always have a Brown network to return to. The people we meet now could become spouses much later in life. No, we do not have all the time in the world. But we still have time. An MRS degree is a lot of extra work, especially if you are already double concentrating.

Cara Dorris ’15 can be reached at cara_dorris@brown.edu.”

Importance

GSC supports expansion of ombuds office
by Brown Daily Herald
Apr 05, 2013
“The Graduate Student Council unanimously passed a resolution Thursday evening calling for the expansion of the ombuds office’s jurisdiction to serve all graduate students and for the ombudsperson position to become a full-time post.
The resolution will be given to President Christina Paxson and Provost Mark Schlissel P’15 immediately, said GSC President Matthew Lyddon GS.
Ruth Rosenberg, the current faculty ombudsperson, was hired last spring part-time, The Herald previously reported. The ombudsperson is “an independent, confidential, neutral and informal resource” who serves as a confidant for concerned parties, according to the ombuds office’s mission statement. The ombudsperson now serves faculty members, post-doctoral students and associates exclusively.
Lyddon underscored in the meeting that the Faculty Executive Committee recently passed a resolution supporting the ombuds office expansion and said he hoped that GSC’s passing of a similar resolution would demonstrate the graduate school community’s support for expanding this office.
“This could be an important additional resource that we want for all graduate students,” Lyddon said. “And it’s now being discussed at a very high level, so our support could show how the graduate student body as a whole is behind this.”
Two student representatives of Brown Divest Coal also spoke at the meeting and urged GSC members to pass a resolution supporting University divestment from the “15 filthiest coal companies.”
The Divest Coal members encouraged the Council to create a resolution similar to that recently passed by the Undergraduate Council of Students, which would support divestment due to ethical and environmental concerns.
“Only 0.1 percent of our investments are in these 15 coal companies, so the University can take action immediately against them,” one of the Divest Coal representatives said in his presentation.
The members cited 2,000 student signatures on a petition against University investment in coal companies and said a resolution from the GSC indicates Brown students’ commitment to divestment because graduate students are an “integral part of the Brown community.”
But the Council did not discuss the prospect of passing a resolution at the meeting. Lyddon told The Herald that a busy agenda and the fact that no GSC member has yet drafted a resolution pushed conversation about divestment to next month’s meeting.
Three potential graduate school student commencement speakers delivered their proposed speeches at the meeting, and GSC members then deliberated and voted on whom they deemed the best candidate. Ben Raymond GS, a master’s candidate in education studies and former Master’s Advocate for the Council, was elected speaker by a margin of 30 out of about 34 votes.”

Importance

Study finds age-related differences in autism
by Brown Daily Herald
Apr 04, 2013
“Autism disorders affect children’s brains differently than they do in adults’ brains, according to new research led by Daniel Dickstein, associate professor of psychiatry and human behavior.
The study, published in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry last month, is the first large-scale data analysis concerning age-related changes in brain activity that are associated with autism, he said.
For his research, Dickstein analyzed data from previous studies through a meta-analysis, which he described as “a statistically sound way to pool large sets of data.” This technique allowed Dickstein and his team to compare functional brain images of 535 children with and without autism to a similar set of images of 604 adult brains.
“This type of meta-analysis allows us to specify criteria for comparison,” said Matthew Pescosolido GS, a neuroscience graduate student who worked on the study.
The study found that the neural differences associated with autism may change as individuals age. The data showed that areas of high brain activity in children diagnosed with autism are different from the areas of high activity in adults diagnosed with the disorder.
“When people think about autism, they think about kids — but these kids become adults,” Dickstein said.
A better understanding of autism could lead to more effective treatments for both children and adults by targeting specific areas of the brain, Pescosolido said.
In the past, Dickstein’s research has mainly focused on bipolar disorder, ADHD and anxiety disorders, but he has always been interested in studying autism, he said.
After working at the National Institute of Mental Health, Dickstein returned to Brown, where he started the Pediatric Mood, Imaging and Neurodevelopment Program — Pedi-MIND — at Bradley Hospital in 2007.
“Dr. Dickstein is at the absolute forefront of conducting neuroimaging of children with psychiatric disorders,” Pescosolido said.
Dickstein, who is a trained pediatrician and child psychiatrist, said he hopes Pedi-MIND can help lead the way in identifying biological and behavioral markers of psychiatric illnesses in children to improve diagnoses and treatment of these conditions.”

Importance

Lecture reveals Adam Smith’s take on justice
by Brown Daily Herald
Apr 04, 2013
“The 18th-century philosopher Adam Smith is frequently described as the father of capitalism and is well known for praising what he called the market’s “invisible hand.” But he also developed complex theories of justice, said Daniel Klein, an economics professor at George Mason University, in a lecture Tuesday evening.
“My approach is very Talmudic,” Klein said, promising to deliver an “exegesis of Smith.” He gave the approximately 30 attendees in MacMillan 115 handouts filled with graphs, block quotes and analytical notes to guide attendees through the presentation.
Klein argued that Smith identified multiple facets of justice beyond the well-known idea of “commutative justice,” which was Smith’s term for “rules against not messing with other people’s stuff,” Klein said.
One of the handouts included Smith’s definition of “distributive justice,” which instructs individuals to “conceive for (your neighbor) all that love, respect and esteem, which his character, his situation and his connection with ourselves, render suitable and proper for us to feel.”
Another facet, which Smith never named and Klein called “estimative justice,” explained justice as making an estimation that fully recognizes an object’s value, Klein said. Smith also wrote of a fourth kind of justice stemming from Plato’s theories that is a kind of “comprehensive estimative justice,” Klein said.
“The rules of commutative justice are like the rules of grammar,” Klein said, comparing the other justices to what Smith called “the rules which critics lay down for the attainment of what is sublime and elegant in composition.” In other words, it is clear when one has violated commutative justice but more “loose” or “vague” when one has violated distributive or estimative justice, Klein said.
If Smith were to apply his theories in practice, he would not support a welfare state but would endorse taxation for purposes beyond the protection of private property, Klein said. Smith had ties to his government and for practical reasons might not have wanted to endorse great changes to the status quo, he said. Smith’s writings did not extensively discuss the “poor laws” instituted in his country at the time.
Smith believed that, with certain exceptions allowed to the government, no one should be “messing with other people’s stuff” and thus infringing on commutative justice, Klein said.
An action is unjust only when it violates commutative justice or, in terms of distributive justice and estimative justice, “falls below the point of propriety” — what Smith saw as a middle ground of acceptability, Klein said.
During a question-and-answer session following the presentation, Matt Mettler ’13 raised concerns that Smith’s complex theory of justice and his belief in human equality could be used to justify economic redistribution and “all sorts of things that it seems Smith is not necessarily for.”
Adam Shur ’14, president of Students for Liberty, the student organization that hosted the event, said he understood Mettler’s question. The ambiguity of “the point of propriety” makes putting Smith’s theories into practice challenging, he agreed.
Members of Students for Liberty, a group that aims to promote discussion and education on freedom and rights, invited Klein to speak because they thought he could provide a unique perspective on the “different ways people come to the ideas of libertarianism,” Shur said.”

Importance