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T h e I n d e p e n d e n t S t u d e n t N e w s p a p e r o f B r a n d e is U n i v e r sit y S i n c e 1 9 4 9 Volume LXXVII, Number 17
Tuesday, March 25, 2025
STRING QUARTET FUNDRAISES
Waltham, Mass.
MUSHROOMS
Fun fungi with naturalist Jonathan Kranz ■ The Waltham Public Library
hosted naturalist Jonathan Kranz, who led a small audience through the joys and practicalities of foraging for mushrooms in New England. By ZOE ZACHARY JUSTICE EDITOR
Photo courtesy of ROBERT MATTSON
MUSIC: The Lydian String Quartet poses with their instruments.
The Lydian String Quartet fights to remain as fundraiser begins ■ The Brandeis Music Department
now houses a webpage encouraging community members to donate to the Lydian String Quartet. By ANNA MARTIN
JUSTICE EDITOR IN CHIEF
The Brandeis Division of the Creative Arts is stepping up and launching a fundraising campaign in an attempt to save the beloved Lydian String Quartet. Founded in 1980, the Lydian has been a staple of the Brandeis arts community for the past 45 years. In addition to performing all over the world, the musicians serve as Brandeis professors, imparting their knowledge onto the next generation of creatives at the University. Recently, a page appeared on the Department of Music website titled “Help Support the Lydian String Quartet!” The website begins with a quote from an alumnus, “if you think about it, the idea of having a world-class professional string quartet in residence at a small university is radical. But for all of us it was normal. I never stopped to ponder what a luxury it was to have them guiding our education - until today.” In an Oct. 22, 2024 article, The Justice shared a statement from an interview with Head of the Music Department Prof. Yu-Hui Chang (MUS) after a “quarter” of her faculty was cut for the 2025-2026 academic year. Chang explained, “On [Sep. 30], I was informed that both the Lydian and another member of my department will not have their contracts renewed next year, and that they planned to notify them the next day. I was asked not to discuss the matter with these faculty beforehand.” The members of the quartet themselves shared a statement with The Justice on Oct. 21, explaining “On September 30 we were given 24 hours’ notice of a zoom meeting with Provost Carol A. Fierke and Senior Assistant Provost Joel Christensen, where we were informed that Brandeis University will not be renewing the contracts for the Lydian String Quartet. We are shocked and saddened by this decision, which will have a devastating impact on the
arts culture of Brandeis and the quality of arts education for students.” In addition to disappointment from members of the music department, this decision was met with outrage from the wider Brandeis staff. At the Oct. 18 faculty meeting, one of the topics on the agenda was faculty and hiring contracts, presented by Senior Assistant Provost for Faculty Affairs Joel Christensen. Following his brief presentation, a question and answer session began and meeting attendees expressed their dissatisfaction with the elimination of the Lydian. Chang was the first to approach the microphone, stating “I have to publicly question the wisdom of this kind of decision making,” as well as expressing her belief that “this administration has greatly underestimated the value of the music department and what the department has done for Brandeis.” She further explained the negative impact this cut will have on the music department, sharing that, “given the Lydian’s national reputation, we dread the negative impact this will bring to Brandeis’ already tarnished public image.” The Justice article covering the Oct. 18 faculty meeting became a place of conversation, as readers took to the comments on The Justice website to express dissatisfaction. User “KSC” applied their experience in higher education leadership to the environment at Brandeis, sharing “Wow - there is clearly a leadership vacuum here. The school seems to be run by middle managers who lack visionary thinking and are making decisions that are pennywise and pound-foolish.” They continued their statement by sharing that Brandeis University administration “are discarding the very aspects of the college experience that are irreplaceable by [Artificial Intelligence], virtual school, etc. I say this as a university admin at another school that is admittedly in a better position, and know that higher ed is at a crossroads in many ways. Still, Brandeis has been taking many misguided steps recently - what a shame.” This disappointment at Brandeis was shared by University alumni, with user “Caroline Rains” writing “I am a Brandeis ’70 graduate, magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa. Though not my major, the music department was the most important part of my life at Brandeis, providing a wonderful class by Robert Koff and practice rooms in which I could
On Thursday, March 20, around 25 Waltham residents, a small but eclectic crowd, gathered in the lecture hall of the Waltham Public Library for guest speaker Jonathan Kranz’s presentation on mushrooms. More specifically, the process of foraging, identifying and generally appreciating the fungal life forms that appear in the state of Massachusetts. Upon entering the lecture hall, participants’ attention was drawn to a table set up at the front of the room where Kranz had laid out a variety of dried mushrooms and spore prints. Spore prints, as Kranz explained, are an imprint of the spores dropped by a mushroom cap — kind of like the mushroom’s fingerprint. They reveal the shape of the mushroom’s spore-bearing surface as well as the color of its spores, both of which are important for identification. Before Kranz started his presentation, he briefly introduced himself and shared his credentials. Kranz is a Mass Audubon certified naturalist, Vice President of the Boston Mycological Club and board member of the Pioneer Valley Mycological Association. The BMC, as Kranz noted, is the oldest mushroom club in North America. Kranz, who often leads foraging walks for the BMC, began his presentation by broadly exploring what a mushroom actually is. He explained
See FUNGI, 5 ☛
BRIEF
Brandeis community targeted in two cyberattacks Late last week, some community members received an email containing a malicious link sent from a compromised Brandeis University address. If clicked, users were asked to provide sensitive login credentials, including their Brandeis username and password. Chief Information Security Officer David Albrecht explained in an email on March 18 that “over 5,000 fraudulent emails were sent” in this attack and 267 people clicked on the malicious links. As a result, “direct deposit pay information” was altered by the attacker for three accounts. The security department temporarily locked the accounts of those who clicked on the link. In a March 23 interview with The Justice, Lior Baker '28 said he recently received two phishing emails, one of which purportedly regarded paycheck information. Baker knew it was a phishing attempt because he was not owed a paycheck. He also said he is “generally suspicious of any email that asks for login info.” Others, however, did not immediately identify the emails as phishing. He acknowledged that the email was crafted well enough to “probably” fool an average student. In a second recent incident, a University professor was targeted in a more sophisticated spearphishing attack conducted by the Iran-backed hacking group TA453. Spearphishing is more targeted than regular phishing, intending to attack specific people, organizations or other entities. According to Albrecht’s Mar. 18 email, the attacker pretended to be a journalist, requested an interview with the professor and sent emails
with malware-laden attachments. Also per the aforementioned statement, the school’s security system successfully detected the malware. According to Proofpoint, a U.S.-based cybersecurity company, TA453 tends to target ideological enemies of Iran with highly complex and persistent spearphishing attacks, including journalists, U.S. officials and academics. TA453 often attempts to exfiltrate emails or other data using harvested credentials or malware. In 2019, the U.S. Department of Justice indicted several individuals on charges related to TA453-aligned cybercriminal activity. Carolyn Assa, Director of Communications Strategy and Media Relations at Brandeis, told The Justice in a March 24 email that the school’s cybersecurity team will “continue to monitor” and “work with local, state, and federal authorities as needed to protect the University.” Experts in the U.S. federal government recommend you use strong unique passwords for each service, enable multi-factor authentication whenever possible and don’t click on links you weren’t expecting to receive. Albrecht affirmed in his email that the University “will never ask you for your username and password in a form.” Suspicious cyber-related activity affecting the Brandeis University community should be reported to security@brandeis.edu. — Isaac Birkental
See LYDIAN, 5☛
"Argonautika" performance
Brandeis Strangers Brandeis students have
New engineering program
By ANNA MARTIN
By MAEVE COAKLEY
FEATURES 6
Photo courtesy of CREATIVE COMMONS
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ARTS AND CULTURE 15
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NEWS 3
By JUSTIN RUBENSTEIN
Brandeis' Hold Thy Peace performed "Argonautika" for their spring semester show.
crafted a site aimed at making new friends in the community.
Photo courtesy of CREATIVE COMMONS
that the pictures on his slides, displaying several images of New England fungi, were all considered to be mushrooms despite their vast diversity in shapes and color. Though it is common to think of mushrooms as having a prototypical stem and cap, they actually have a lot of structural diversity. Kranz pointed out the black trumpet mushroom, a concave fungus that looks like a shriveled tube, and lion’s mane, a type of tooth fungus made of hundreds of small white filaments as well as several types of fungi that resemble corals. But the word “mushroom” doesn’t tell the whole story. As Kranz explained, the mushroom is just the above-ground fruiting body of a larger organism. Picking a mushroom is “like taking an apple off a tree,” as Kranz put it. Most of the fungus exists underground as vast networks of thin, white filaments called hyphae. Hyphae are microscopic, as each strand is the width of a single cell. When bunched together, these hyphae form mycelium, which are the thin white strands that are visible when digging through soil. While they may be tiny, these networks of mycelium are not to be underestimated, Kranz explained. Fungi have the ability to direct water pressure through their mycelia, allowing them to achieve the force necessary to penetrate hard surfaces. For example, any fungus growing on a tree contains mycelial networks which have managed to grow through several layers of bark and wood. Fungi have also been known to break other hard surfaces, like concrete. Additionally, mushrooms are decomposers, beings that Kranz described as “inside-out” animals. He elaborated that when humans eat enzymes, the digestive system breaks down food into nutrients. Fungi, on the other hand, secrete digestive enzymes that break down the material around them, allowing them to absorb the nutrients they need from their environment.
Advice for Brandeis underclassmen By THE JUSTICE EDITORIAL BOARD
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FORUM 8 SPORTS 11