Brown and White Vol. 131 no. 16

              The Brown and White Vol. 131 No. 16
Friday, November 4, 2016 ‘All the Lehigh News First’
Eddie Glaude
talks racial
inequality in
America
South Mountain to Capitol Hill
Green Action, administration to discuss divestment
By ERIK THOMAS
Associate Visuals Editor
The Brown and White conducted an
interview with Republican congress-man
Charles Dent, ’93G, whose dis-trict
covers the entire Lehigh Valley,
including Lehigh University. Dent,
who received his master’s degree in
public administration from Lehigh,
discussed his time at the university,
as well as and the differences between
state and national politics. He is cur-rently
up for re-election.
Q: You were born and raised
in Allentown. Did that influence
you to come to Lehigh?
A: My grandfather was class of
1906 at Lehigh. My father was class
of ’52, my father-in-law was class of
’64, my brother was class of ’81, I had
three uncles’ classes of ’37, ’39 and
’42, and my sister and I each have our
master’s degrees from Lehigh. I was
working at Lehigh University in the
late ‘80s up until 1990. When I was
at Lehigh, I then pursued my mas-ter’s
degree in public administration
at night.
Q: Looking into your political
career, you were elected to the
Pennsylvania state legislature in
1990, correct?
A: I was elected in 1990 to
the Pennsylvania legislature,
Pennsylvania house of representa-tives,
that’s correct.
Q: What drove you to get into pol-itics,
especially the Pennsylvania
legislature?
A: I always had an interest in
public policy and politics. I studied
foreign service and international pol-itics
at Penn State as my undergrad-uate
degree. At Lehigh I earned my
masters in public administration or
an MPA. So I always had a genuine
interest in these types of things and
public policy. I saw an opportunity
to run for the state house in a pretty
heavily Democratic district at the
time. I worked my tail off, knocked on
20,000 doors and won.
Q: Did your experience at Lehigh
help push you at all to try and
run for this position?
A: Yeah, it did actually. I had
a very good experience at Lehigh,
working there. One thing we did,
Lehigh had a fair amount of interac-tion
with the state government, you
know the Ben Franklin partnership
and manufacturers resources cen-ter
were established at Lehigh, and
those were really state-funded enti-ties
designed to facilitate interaction
between industry, higher education
and state government. One focused
on more traditional manufacturers,
Courtesy of Charlie Dent’s website
Charlie Dent is a Lehigh alumnus who got his master’s degree at the university in 1993. He has
served since 2005 as the U.S. Representative for Pennsylvania’s 15th congressional district.
By CHRISTOPHER GAETANO
B&W Staff
Eddie Glaude, the chair of
Princeton University’s African-
American studies department,
remembers an incident of racism he
experienced as child growing up in
Mississippi.
Glaude, who had just moved with
his family to a predominantly white
neighborhood, was playing outside
with his neighbor, a white boy. When
the neighbor’s father saw the two
boys playing together, he instructed
his son to stop and called Glaude a
racial slur. Glaude said though he
was young, he still understood the
incident was racism.
He spoke about the value gap and
current issues in democracy Monday
at the Global Commons in Williams
Hall. Glaude said the value gap is
prevalent in many ways, specifically
in the way in which white people
speak to black people.
“(Glaude) is someone who is think-ing
deeply about very important
issues, and I know that’s what we
are doing at Lehigh,” said Saladin
Ambar, an associate professor and
the chair of the political science
department. “To have others from
other institutions come and share
their thoughts is always a welcomed
thing.”
The event was sponsored by a
variety of departments at Lehigh,
including the political science,
Africana studies and philosophy
departments.
By SAM TOPP
Assistant News Editor
The Green Action club will meet
with President John Simon and
Lehigh’s administration later this
month to discuss establishing more
ethical policies regarding the univer-sity’s
investments.
“Right now, there is little to no
policy on ethical investments,” said
Justin Landowne, ’18, the Green
Action club’s programming coordina-tor.
“There is no language at all about
ethics.”
According to Lehigh’s current pub-lic
endowment allocations, roughly
4 percent, or $48 million, of its $1.2
billion endowment is invested in nat-ural
resources, which include fossil
fuels and natural gas.
Green Action met with the admin-istration
last semester to discuss
divesting from all fossil fuels and nat-ural
gas. Andrew Goldman, ’19, the
activism chairperson of Green Action,
said the divestment plan, once in
action, would put an immediate
freeze on fossil fuel investments fol-lowed
by a gradual five-year removal.
“Divestment from fossil fuels is a
campaign that exists at thousands
of universities across the world,”
Goldman said. “It’s already been suc-cessful
at over 600 (schools). Our
goal here is to have Lehigh join those
ranks as a climate leader.”
Over $3.4 trillion in assets have
been divested worldwide as of
December 2015.
Albert Wurth, a professor of polit-ical
science and the adviser of Green
Action, said there seems to be a wall
between the ethical and philosophi-cal
mission of the university and its
financial decisions.
“We know we don’t want there to
be lucrative possibilities in the illegal
drug trade,” Wurth said. “But we
don’t consider that to be within the
realm of viable investment.”
The previous financial investment
officer told Wurth Lehigh would
invest in anything but illegal trades.
“There should be no climate change
deniers in the university’s adminis-tration,”
Wurth said. “To behave as
if business as usual will not lead to
See GLAUDE Page 4 See DENT Page 4
Courtesy of the Green Action Facebook page
Members of the Green Action club hold a rally Oct. 20 on the front lawn. Green Action wants
Lehigh to divest from fossil fuel companies and instead invest in renewable energy companies.
See GREEN Page 3