SINCE 1891
THE BROWN DAILY HERALD VOLUME CLX, ISSUE 23
BROWNDAILYHERALD.COM
FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 7, 2025
METRO
SPORTS
SCIENCE & RESEARCH
OPINIONS
ARTS & CULTURE
Apple Cinemas open at Providence Place, replacing Showcase
With 1-2 loss, women’s soccer barely qualifies for Ivy tournament
Studies help explain overestimations in Greenland Ice Sheet melting
Mooney ’29: Why doing less can help us accomplish more
Brown Ballroom Dance Team helps students find their rhythm
SEE BUSINESS PAGE 4
SEE SOCCER PAGE 7
SEE CLIMATE PAGE 14
SEE MOONEY PAGE 11
SEE FEATURE PAGE 15
Condoleezza Rice encourages civil discourse, reflects on Israel-Hamas, Russia-Ukraine wars at lecture event VALEN GARCIA / HERALD
Former secretary of state Condoleezza Rice was the first female national security advisor.
The Herald sat down with the former secretary of state before the Ogden Memorial Lecture BY MAYA NELSON UNIVERSITY NEWS & METRO EDITOR Assuming the role of national security advisor in 2001 and later becoming secretary of state in 2005, Condoleezza Rice spent eight years shaping American diplomacy. Those years were marked by the Sept. 11 attacks’ impact on American and global security, as well as increased military intervention and high-stakes negotiations in the Middle East.
Now, over a decade after she left her post, Rice — the first female national security advisor and the first African American woman to become secretary of state — visited College Hill on Wednesday to speak at the 105th Stephen A. Ogden Jr. ’60 Memorial Lecture on International Affairs. There — and in an interview with The Herald prior to the event — she reflected on the current state of American diplomacy and provided insight on the obstacles that she says remain in fostering a shared international security. Reflecting on Israel-Hamas, Russia-Ukraine wars During the lecture, Rice spoke with President Christina Paxson P’19 P’MD’20 about a number of today’s most pressing foreign policy issues, including the Is-
UNIVERSITY NEWS
rael-Hamas and the Russia-Ukraine wars. In the wake of the recent ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas, Rice said that “for the first time in a long time, we have a chance” to end the war. As secretary of state, Rice was heavily involved in conflict mediations between Israel and the Palestinian territories and the larger Middle East region. In 2005, she worked to negotiate Israel’s withdrawal from the Gaza border, later assisting in negotiating a ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon the year after. Despite her optimism toward a resolution of the conflict, Rice emphasized that both Israelis and Palestinians must take steps for peace, she argued at the lecture event. Israel needs to acknowledge the potential for Palestinian statehood, and the Palestinian people
need a political authority to “take responsibility for Palestinian affairs,” she said. “Bibi Netanyahu needs to say the words ‘Palestinian state,’” she added. Rice also discussed the Russia-Ukraine War and the challenges of working with Russian President Vladimir Putin — a figure she said is key to ending the war. “You couldn’t let him intimidate you,” she said during the lecture. “I know you had my friend Hillary Clinton here,” Rice added, referencing the fellow former secretary of state’s visit to Brown last week. “She would tell you the same thing: He had two speeds — oppress and
SEE RICE PAGE 16
SPORTS
Brown to reduce PhD admissions by 20% The Woodhalls celebrate diversity, perthis application cycle severance at Brown Lecture Board event Expenditures on graduate programs will still increase BY SAMAH HAMID SENIOR STAFF WRITER Brown will reduce its overall Ph.D. admissions to around 80% of its current targets in an effort to regulate University operating costs, Provost Francis Doyle said at Tuesday’s faculty meeting. When admitting this fall’s doctoral cohort, no Ph.D. program was reduced by more than two admissions slots beneath the program’s typical minimum size. But Doyle
said that this minimal reduction was “unsustainable” for this year’s admissions cycle. If the University continues to admit doctoral students at a rate consistent with recent years, the cost to the University would increase by 7.3%, Doyle said. President Christina Paxson P’19 P’MD’20 explained Brown’s expenditures on graduate programs will still increase, despite the planned reductions to program size, because many graduate students extended their time at Brown during the COVID-19 pandemic. She also attributed the cost to “rapid growth” in Ph.D. stipends.
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Earlier this year, Doyle reported that stipends in the life and physical sciences have grown by 65%, and stipends in the humanities and social sciences have nearly doubled. In preparation for the admissions reduction, the University adjusted doctoral programs’ target sizes for next year’s cohorts, Doyle explained. These reductions in cohort size were distributed “evenly across divisions,” but individual program reductions were distributed based on factors such as the number of applicants, selectivity, yield, student experience and
SEE ADMISSIONS PAGE 3
SEE POST- PAGE 8
Duo discussed athletic success, eightyear relationship BY LYDELL DYER SPORTS EDITOR Attendees at the Brown Lecture Board’s semesterly talk rose to their feet as Tara Davis-Woodhall and Hunter Woodhall strolled, smiling, onto the stage of the Salomon Center’s De Ciccio Family Auditorium on Monday night. Moderated by Brown Lecture Board President Samantha Chambers ’26, the hourlong conversation touched on the Woodhalls’ experiences with athletic success, navigating relationships and overcoming adversity. Last year, the Woodhalls rose to the pinnacle of the track and field world, with Davis-Woodhall winning her first Olympic gold medal at the 2024 Paris Olympic Games, just weeks before Woodhall won his first gold medal at the 2024 Paralympic
Games. Outjumping two-time world champion Malaika Mihambo, Davis-Woodhall clinched the top podium position in the long jump with a 7.10-meter effort. Rounding the lap in only 46.36 seconds, Woodhall took home the gold in the 400-meter event for the T62 class — a World Para Athletics designation for athletes with double below-theknee amputation who compete with prosthetics. “Our prevailing mission isn’t just to bring really influential people to campus, but also to be able to respond to contemporary cultural moments and spark conversation across our student population,” Chambers, a former Herald university news editor, wrote in an email to The Herald. “And I think the Woodhalls are super emblematic of that goal.” Chambers opened the conversation by revisiting one of the defining moments of the 2024 Olympics — when Davis-Woodhall, after securing the gold medal, sprinted off the
field and leapt into the arms of her husband in celebration. “It was a really personal, intimate moment,” Woodhall reflected. “What I didn’t know is that somebody across the stadium was filming, and so that whole moment, that whole experience, we both thought that we were the only ones to experience it.” But the road to becoming Olympic and Paralympic champions was replete with adversity — experiences the duo believes have strengthened their resolve and influenced their lives. Woodhall was born with fibular hemimilia, a condition in which the lower legs do not grow fibulas. “My ankles were fused, I didn’t have a fibula bone and the initial reaction from doctors was that I’d never be able to walk because I had no function of my foot, ankle (or) calf,” Woodhall explained. After a surgery in which both of Woodhall’s legs were amputated,
SEE LECTURE PAGE 6