Michigan in the news

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  Julian Davis Mortenson, professor of law, who begins his constitutional law course with the infamous Dred Scott case, says that ruling unwittingly “conveys the essence of Critical Race Theory to a person encountering these ideas for the first time: This is the Supreme Court explaining how the United States has been super racist forever and endorsing the racism. It’s a powerful way for students to confront the racism that has been central to the United States.”

  The New Yorker
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  A. Oveta Fuller, associate professor of microbiology and immunology, says that as the country opens up, she fears that unvaccinated children who have been largely insulated from the virus would begin to bear the burden of disease: “We haven’t seen it for the children because they have been isolated, or there are other mitigations. I think we are in an emergency situation, and we will be going into winter.”

  The Washington Post
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  “If it was in trouble, it clearly would have a significant impact on the Chinese housing market and the general economy,” said Lan Deng, professor of urban and regional planning, of Chinese billionaire Hui Ka Yan’s flagship property company. “Not only would it expose its lenders to greater financial risk, there could also be possible chain effects spreading across the different sectors of the Chinese economy.”

  Bloomberg
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  Omolola Eniola-Adefeso, professor of chemical and biomedical engineering, says a new plan by the National Institutes of Health to address funding disparities by increasing support for health equity research is itself siloing. “Health care disparities are important, but Black P.I.s are also interested in robotics, gene therapy and CRISPR. … That’s saying you should tell a young Black girl who wants to study nanotechnology to study health disparities instead.”

  STAT