BY MAYA HOFFMAN ’20
The Mount Holyoke College Arab Student Union (MHCASU) hosted “Queer Arab Narratives -‑ Past and Present” in the Mead Common Room on Wednesday, April 18. The event was meant to “explore stories, organizations, works and personalities that have dominant, explicit or implicit, queer associations throughout history in Arabic culture, literature and music,” according to the event’s Facebook page.
BY MAYA HOFFMAN ’20
On Wednesday, April 11, Maurice Carney gave a lecture titled, “Conflict in the DR Congo: What Hinders Peace?” which addressed the relatively unrecognized conflict currently happening in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The departments of politics and international relations, as well as the McCulloch Center for Global Initiatives, sponsored Carney, the co-founder and current executive director of Friends of the Congo. The nonprofit organization was formed in 2004 “to work together to bring about peaceful and lasting change in the Democratic Republic of Congo,” according to the organization's website.
BY CASEY ROEPKE ’21
The phenomenon of fake news, spotlighted recently in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, is not a new occurrence. Russia’s alleged interference during the campaign, via Facebook and other social media sites, was not the first time news was fabricated to alter the results of an election. In an episode of “Backstory,” a weekly history podcast, historian Mark Summers discussed the practices of “Gilded Age-era elections” and argued that past politicians consistently published lies about their opponents in newspapers in order to sway public opinion. However, before examining the effects of fake news in the U.S. and around the world, it is important to precisely define “fake news.”
