Campus News

‘Tolerant of Debate’

In a post on the blog “Lawfare,” scholar Benjamin Wittes praised the way Kenyon students interacted with FBI Director James B. Comey P’16 during his keynote speech at “The Expectation of Privacy: Encryption, Surveillance and Big Data” conference, hosted by the Center for the Study of American Democracy. Wittes’ post is reprinted below with permission from Lawfare. A Shoutout to Kenyon College By Benjamin WittesIt's been a bad few years for the free exchange of ideas on campuses around the country…

Unlocking Answers

Editor’s note: Collegian editors Gabe Brison-Trezise ’16, a political science major from Thetford, Vermont, and Henri Gendreau ’16, an English major from Bainbridge Island, Washington, interviewed FBI Director James B. Comey P’16 before Comey’s keynote speech at “The Expectation of Privacy: Encryption, Surveillance and Big Data” conference, hosted by the Center for the Study of American Democracy. The following is a transcript of their interview. Henri Gendreau: Director of the FBI James Comey…

Arresting Research

Yes, presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) has a history of involvement in the civil rights protest movement — and Rachel Dickson ’08 has the evidence to prove it. In the course of helping produce the historical documentary ’63 Boycott about the largest civil rights march in Chicago history, Dickson uncovered archival footage of Sanders, then 21, being arrested at a school desegregation demonstration in 1963 on the South Side of Chicago. The discovery seemed to refute a frequent…

Porphyrins and High-Impact Experiences

By Sean Decatur

I trace the starting point of my intellectual maturity to my first undergraduate research experience in my junior year at Swarthmore College. I remember the project details vividly (for the curious, the title of my summer project was “Measuring the chemical properties of water-soluble porphyrins encapsulated in liposomes with varying lipid compositions”).  Clearer in my memory is my mindset on the first day in lab. Up to that point, I had only done lab experiments in the context of courses, and…

Perceptions of Privacy

Just a week after the FBI announced it found a way into the iPhone of a terrorist slain after the December 2015 mass shooting in San Bernardino, California, FBI Director James B. Comey Jr. P’16 visited Kenyon to address privacy and security issues. "I am grateful to all of you for fighting to find a space to talk about privacy and encryption," said Comey, who gave a livestreamed keynote speech at “The Expectation of Privacy: Encryption, Surveillance and Big Data” conference to a packed house on…