Posted: May 24, 2018 Holyoke Community College reaffirms commitment to educating underserved Hispanic students

At Holyoke Community College, 27 percent of students identify as Hispanic, many of them Puerto Rican.  Designated a Hispanic Serving Institution since 2016, the college took a moment Wednesday to reflect on the ways it serves its Latinx students and to reaffirm its commitment to providing strong education to all students, and especially those underserved, first generation, low-income Latinx students.

Latinx (pronounced “La-teen-ex”) is a gender-neutral term used by some in place of Latino or Latina.

“Hispanic Serving Institution” is a federal designation for colleges and universities where more than 25 percent of the student population is Hispanic and can open up opportunities for designated schools to apply for specialized grants.  An afternoon panel discussion by professors at the college touched on a sampling of the initiatives that have helped improve the success of Latinx students over the last few years.

Spanish professor Raúl D. Gutiérrez showed a video illustrating the ways in which Latinx studies have been integrated into the college’s curriculum with a Bridging Cultures Grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. The college, in collaboration with the Center for Latin American and Latino Studies at the University of Massachusetts, received a three-year, $120,000 award to enhance courses with Latino studies content in 2015.

Gutiérrez also shared letters from students that spoke of the value of diversity in the classroom, not just in students but in learning materials.

“Why not read Latinx authors in English class and learn about Puerto Rico’s debt crisis in economics class?” Gutiérrez said.

Spanish professor Mónica Torregrosa asked the crowd to consider two questions: Does the college’s designation as a Hispanic Serving Institution mean it focuses only on the 27 percent of the school that is Latinx? What about the other 73 percent?

“Diversifying and strengthening the ways we serve Latinx students actually helps HCC serve all students,” Torregrosa said.

Posted: May 23, 2018 Philip Roth, fearless and celebrated author, dies at 85

NEH 2010 National Humanities Medal Winner

Philip Roth, the prize-winning novelist and fearless narrator of sex, death, assimilation and fate, from the comic madness of "Portnoy's Complaint" to the elegiac lyricism of "American Pastoral," died Tuesday night at age 85.

Roth's literary agent, Andrew Wylie, said the author died in a New York City hospital of congestive heart failure.

The author of more than 25 books, Roth was a fierce satirist and uncompromising realist, confronting readers in a bold, direct style that scorned false sentiment or hopes for heavenly reward. He was an atheist who swore allegiance to earthly imagination, whether devising pornographic functions for raw liver or indulging romantic fantasies about Anne Frank. In "The Plot Against America," published in 2004, he placed his own family under the anti-Semitic reign of President Charles Lindbergh. In 2010, in "Nemesis," he subjected his native New Jersey to a polio epidemic.

He was among the greatest writers never to win the Nobel Prize. But he received virtually every other literary honor, including two National Book Awards, two National Book Critics Circle prizes and, in 1998, the Pulitzer for "American Pastoral." He was in his 20s when he won his first award and awed critics and fellow writers by producing some of his most acclaimed novels in his 60s and 70s, including "The Human Stain" and "Sabbath's Theater," a savage narrative of lust and mortality he considered his finest work.