On a dark, cold Monday evening nearly a hundred students, faculty member, and union organizers sat together at Barnard in the group’s first sign of solidarity. The struggle, pitting Barnard President Debora Spar against 130 of the lowest paid employees on campus, will determine whether these workers get to maintain basic labor rights ranging from serious cuts to healthcare and maternity leave to controversial proposals like the elimination of sexual harassment claims and child care leave.

This week President Obama and Mitt Romney will come together, face-to-face, for the first time in front of the national audience. They will debate domestic policy at the University of Denver, moderated by PBS’ Jim Lehrer.

This past Thursday, Her Excellency Madam Ellen Johnson Sirleaf spoke under Low Rotunda, in an event titled “Challenges of Transformation in a Fragile State; The Case of Liberia.”

Mind-boggingly, last week Barnard President Debora Spar herself wrote, “Of course, companies should strive to create generous maternity leaves,” and “…keep fighting the proverbial fights—better day care, better family leaves, more flex time at work and co-parenting at home. These are important goals.” Yet she is in charge of demanding huge cuts to maternity leave and flex time.

Under the rotunda of Low, four of the biggest names in the fight against HIV/AIDS all voiced the opinion that the tide has turned in the struggle against the disease.

But being an elite is expensive. Fortunately, Spar and her Wall St. affiliated Barnard board members realized the best way to keep Barnard solvent would be to slash the health, pension, and tuition benefits of the lowest paid employees at the college-the clerical workers. And in order to empower women, Spar decided to drastically cut from the most basic female employment victories — maternity leave and flex time.

Even in the face of an overwhelming wave of evidence that soundly contradicts their claim, they remain resolute in their conviction, undeterred by any well-grounded facts or presented documentation. They do so because their belief in this claim is based not on rational argument but rather on a deep hatred of the associated presidential candidate and what he stands for.

Within the story of the MEK lies the greater story of the ways in which the ideology and activity of a given entity can change, sometimes for worse and sometimes for better.

The future lies in “two vital principles,” which he delineated as good governance and the allowance of political freedoms ingrained in established rules of human rights. This, warned Ihsanoglu, “is no easy undertaking,” especially in a world with such a diverse scale of polities and ideological landscapes. Some Muslim regimes have the “strictest possible” interpretation of Islam, while others deny its role, and others seek a middle way.