University Honors Program Blog
Intellectual Omnivores Unite
…the holiday season here at the townhouse! Join us this Friday, 12/13 from 2-4 PM for our annual Townhouse Decorating Party! We’ll be putting up snowflakes, our Menorah, our Christmas tree, decorating gingerbread houses, creating ornaments…the whole shebang! We’ll have candy, we’ll have cupcakes – there’s no real reason you *shouldn’t* be here.
Hope to see you all there!
Finals are fast approaching, and the UHP has you covered. We will be hosting extended study hours at the Townhouse (in addition to our normal hours, Monday – Friday 9AM – 5PM) at the following times:
December 11, 7PM-10PM December 12-13, 5PM-10PM December 14-15, 12PM-10PM December 16-17, 5PM-10PM
We will have snacks from Trader Joe’s and we will have the beauty of being with community in the context of difficulty. Also, on Friday, December 13 at 2PM we will be decorating the Townhouse for the holidays! Come by and join us to help spread holiday cheer during finals!
Have you ever wondered about the environmental impacts of your fashion choices? If you’re like me, you’ve thought about it a couple times and immediately dismissed it – that all feels too tough to think through! And so the question lingers and festers just beneath the surface.
But no longer! Thanks to GW Sustainable and the UHP, there is a *free* talk available for you this Friday, 12-1:30PM, in the Hammer Auditorium at the Corcoran School building. The talk will be moderated by Bibiana Obler, who is currently teaching a course for us: HONR 2054, Fast Fashion / Slow Art. Also, there will be *free* lunch provided! If you’d like to come, RSVP here. Come on by!
Note: an earlier version of this post stated that the dinner would take place on 12/4. This is incorrect, the dinner is on 12/11, from 5-7 PM.
Dear UHPers, the end of the semester is nigh. I know, it seems unbelievable. But here it is. The exams, the papers, the presentations…it can all seem like too much.
But fear not! Fortunately for us UHPers, semester’s end also marks the arrival of the always-anticipated Student Faculty Dinner. Join us on Wednesday, December 11th from 5pm to 7pm at Chalin’s Chinese to gorge on Crab Rangoons and other delectable treats. Tickets are $7 – that’s cheaper than Chipotle, even without the guac! For less than the cost of a burrito, you can enjoy mountains of Chinese food and stimulating conversation with your favorite students, faculty and staff of the UHP. A win-win situation!
Tickets will be on sale beginning THIS Wednesday, 11/20, in the UHP Townhouse. In order to get a ticket, you will need to come to the Townhouse and give us $7 in cash. Tickets will be on sale until 4 PM on Wednesday, 12/11 – if you plan to attend, PLEASE make sure you sign up! We want to give the folks at Chalins the best number of attendees we can. Will you still be able to purchase your ticket at the door? Yes. But will your doing so make me sad inside? Absolutely.
This year, we’re also adding a new element to the dinner – students will be able to invite their own favorite non-UHP professor along with them! This isn’t required, but if you’d like to bring someone along, you can print out or send them the invitation at the bottom of this post. We also have printed copies of the invitation in the UHP townhouse. If you don’t use this invitation, please be sure to tell them to RSVP! They can RSVP by emailing the UHP email.
A couple further notes: you will not need to come to the event together with the faculty you invite, they just need to RSVP to the UHP email. Invited faculty are also not required to pay.
Finally, some orange chicken:
Oh, and also the invitation:
Are you looking to read more in the new year? Do you wish you could read more contemporary literature outside of the classroom? Consider joining The Review, the UHP’s book club! We are a small group of individuals who share a love for reading, yet find it challenging to find time to read for fun in our busy college schedules. In The Review, we will be reading a piece of contemporary literature each month, and will be reviewing each book and share our thoughts with the rest of the UHP.
Our first meeting with be in January 2020 where we will be discussing the novel The Great Alone by Kristin Hannah. Winter break is a great time to get ahead on some reading!
If you are interested in joining and would like to hear more before our first meeting, please add your email to our interest form here!
The following is a research story from one of our 2019 grads who went above and beyond with her Honors Thesis and presented it at a conference in North Carolina. Interested in sharing your research with the Honors community? Send an email to uhp@gwu.edu or submit a blog post here.
Greenville, North Carolina isn’t a typical Spring Break destination. Without knowing more about it, I would assume it was like any other small town: surrounded by farmland, stretches of unlit country road, and “watch for deer” signs around every corner. Indeed, this was my first impression of the place. But Greenville now holds a special place in my heart, because it is where I had the privilege of presenting my Honors senior thesis research at the 2019 Southeastern Commission for the Study of Religion (SECSOR) on the campus of East Carolina University.
My research is titled A Buddhist Perspective on Organisms. It is a marriage of two seemingly unrelated fields: Buddhist philosophy and biology. Biology has a largely unanswered question: what is an organism? It may be odd to consider that this question is unanswered, as the answer seems like common sense. To quote Nicholson and Dupré (2010), “to the average mushroom collector a single mushroom is an organism.” However, it is known that a mushroom is just the fruiting body of a much larger organism. While scientists don’t debate this fact, they fall into the same trap of essentialist thinking as the mushroom collector. Most organism definitions rely on ideas of an essential, independent self. While neuroscience is starting to reject ideas of intrinsic selfhood, organism definitions haven’t quite caught up. And this is where Buddhist philosophy comes in. Buddhists have preached the doctrines of no-self (anātman) and interdependence (dependent origination or pratītyasamutpāda) for millennia. These ideas can help us create a non-essentialist organism definition that better matches the realities being uncovered by neuroscience, but might not seem common-sense to us. Overall, Buddhism and neuroscience reach the same conclusion about organisms: any organism is simply a concentration of processes connected by some causal power, that cannot be separated from its environment.
Buddhism can also help us find where our scientific methods are flawed. Outside of attaining enlightenment or pathological experiences, it is almost impossible to think outside of a first-person view. Humans like to think of themselves as autonomous. And because we view ourselves as autonomous, we tend to impart that autonomy onto other beings, namely organisms. However, this sense of self is just that: a sense. Buddhism shows that if a person looks inward using meditation, no self is found. So, altogether, Buddhist philosophy can show us how erroneous methods can lead to false conclusions, and can help us draw better conclusions from our methods.
At the conference, my paper struck a chord. I learned that the intersection of Buddhism and biology is a growing field, and many people were genuinely interested to hear what I had to say. I am so grateful for this experience. As a biology major, I wasn’t expecting my senior thesis to be through the religions department. Much less did I expect to be discussing the technicalities of Buddhist philosophy with peers and professors over a beer at a small dive in downtown Greenville. Such is the beauty of the Honors Program.
Midterm season is here, and it weighs on all of our souls. So take some time for yourself! On Tuesday, October 15th, Professor Aviv is taking students to see David Sedaris at the Kennedy Center! Sedaris is a humorist, an award-winning author, and one of America’s finest storytellers- and you can see him live for just $15 (a *huge* discount)!
See more of the details about the event here: https://www.kennedy-center.org/calendar/event/XUCCD. (To be clear: that’s not the sign-up link, that’s just for info).
We only have 8 tickets left (in the orchestra section!), which will cost $15 per person. The tickets will be given on a first-come, first-serve basis. If you are interested, email uhp@gwu.edu expressing your interest by 4pm 10/15. Payment must be brought *IN CASH* to the Honors Townhouse (714 21st St NW) for a valid sign-up.
UPDATE: We now only have *3 tickets left* – get your tickets today!
Join us for an evening of fun!
Hi UHP friends!
I am an honors alum who graduated last year. Being in Honors was one of my highlights of college years. I now work for J Street, a pro-Israel, pro-peace, pro-diplomacy advocacy organization and non-profit and we’re having our National Conference in D.C. October 26-29th! Attending J Street’s conference is a really excellent opportunity to learn about Middle East diplomacy and network with regional and issue experts.
Students can go to the entire conference for $36, and I have a number of discounted ‘friends and family’ tickets for professors and alum for only $50 (regularly $475). Please just reach out to me before registering at jordannewmark@jstreet.org so I can keep track of the UHP Community delegation!
See below for more detailed information:
The J Street Conference constitutes the most significant global gathering of pro-Israel, pro-peace, pro-democracy advocates and activists and has grown to become the third largest gathering of American Jews. Programming will focus not only on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but also address broader challenges in American politics, foreign policy and the changing landscape of the American Jewish community. There are already dozens of Members of Congress confirmed, as well as Members of the Israeli Knesset. Plus, we have invited all 2020 presidential candidates to join.
J Street believes it is vital for the next generation of pro-diplomacy leaders and experts to join us in Washington.
Highlights include:
– In conjunction with Crooked Media, our opening night will feature a live podcast taping of Pod Save the World, with hosts Tommy Vietor and Ben Rhodes
– Hear the ideas that will shape the foreign policy debates that will dominate the 2020 presidential and congressional elections
– Learn from and network with top experts in American foreign policy and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
– Attend trainings and workshops on messaging, online tools and political advocacy
Past speakers include: Ambassador Susan Rice, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, Secretary of State John Kerry, Speaker Nancy Pelosi
Do you want to meet Professor Kung, the UHP’s new director? Do you have questions or suggestions about where we’re going as a program? Do you just want free food? Come eat breakfast with Professor Kung, the UHP’s new Director, this Friday from 9-10am!
Seats are limited, so don’t hesitate to RSVP here!
Hope to see you all there!
The Association of Professional Schools of International Affairs (APSIA) invites you to an
International Affairs and Public Policy
Graduate School Fair
September 19, 2019
6:00 – 8:00pm
Marvin Center, George Washington University, 800 21st St NW
Register today at bit.ly/dcfair-19 and answer your questions about application requirements, curricula and joint degrees, financial aid, and career opportunities.
Representatives of 26 APSIA members will be available to connect with prospective students. You can learn about master’s and PhD programs around the world.
