In the News

  1. June 8, 2022

    “It’s not about sexlessness. It’s all of the infrastructure that goes into the healthy maintenance of a multigenerational household,” said Jennifer Robertson, professor emerita of anthropology and art history, on falling Japanese birthrates. “The state is very conservative and wants to maintain the heteronormativity of marriage and this pink-and-blue, binary system of the sexual and gendered division of labor. Until that changes, they’re going to be suffering from the huge expense of maintaining an elderly population.”

    The Washington Post
  2. June 8, 2022
    • Headshot of Wally Hopp

    Russia’s assault on Ukraine is disrupting the supplies of nitrous oxide and helium, used in millions of medical procedures each day. “The shortages we are experiencing now have been years in the making and are therefore a surprise to no one,” said Wally Hopp, professor of technology and operations, and industrial and operations engineering. “But now (the U.S.) can only scramble to cope with the crisis with the health of American citizens at stake.”

    Fortune
  3. June 8, 2022
    • Betsey Stevenson

    Betsey Stevenson, professor of public policy and economics, says the Federal Reserve will take action to bring inflation down, but “gas is still going to be expensive, relative to other things, until we end this war in Ukraine. … The Fed can’t undo that. What it can do is reduce the rate of price increases on average, but I still think you should be thinking about, you know, is it a good time to get a fuel-efficient car or buy that electric bicycle?”

    CBS News "Face the Nation"
  4. June 1, 2022
    • Photo of Jason Goldstick

    “A lot of the political rhetoric around reducing firearm-related deaths center around gun control and the Second Amendment. But we were able to accomplish huge reductions in motor vehicle crash injuries without banning cars ever. There’s no reason an analogous approach can’t work for firearms,” said Jason Goldstick, research associate professor of emergency medicine.

    ABC News
  5. June 1, 2022
    • Photo of Justin Heinze

    Gun-identification technology could help speed the response during a crisis, but is limited because it does not serve as an active deterrent to school threats and their main causes, says Justin Heinze, associate professor of health behavior and health education: “It might be simple to say, ‘Yes, we’re applying a software that will allow us to identify when a weapon is coming to school.’ But at the same time, there’s a lot about the school culture … the learning environment that needs to be brought into consideration.”

    Bridge Michigan
  6. June 1, 2022
    • Headshot of William Lopez

    “When a gun is present, there’s always the capacity for it to escalate to violence. And no matter how much you want to reduce the odds that might happen, it is still possible when that gun is there and not possible when it is not,” said William Lopez, assistant professor of health behavior and health education, on a Washtenaw County pilot program that involves an unarmed response to public safety calls.

    WXYZ/Detroit
  7. June 1, 2022
    • Sandra Graham-Bermann

    “One of the important ways we can protect ourselves in the aftermath of … gun violence is to reduce exposure to the horrific images and stories about the violence,” said Sandra Graham-Bermann, professor of psychology and psychiatry. “It helps to talk with … other people about how you are feeling. It also helps to track down factual information rather than relying on sensational coverage or extreme and harmful information.”

    Salon
  8. June 1, 2022
    • Rebecca Cunningham

    “Compared to cancer, or any other serious cause of death among kids, it’s still exponentially underfunded, and we’re not even talking about … gun deaths among the rest of our population,” said Rebecca Cunningham, vice president for research, and professor of emergency medicine and public health, on the historic lack of gun violence research in the United States.

    Science
  9. May 25, 2022
    • Photo of Brian Jacob

    “Because water safety is such an important facet of overall health, even the thought of any measurable (lead) contamination can reasonably spark community anxiety and create a stressful learning environment for a community’s youngest residents,” wrote Brian Jacob, professor of education, economics and public policy, and Samuel Owusu, research analyst at the Ford School of Public Policy, whose research shows that Flint students’ math achievement decreased after the city began using the Flint River for drinking water.

    MLive
  10. May 25, 2022
    • Photo of Patricia Hall

    “When I saw these manuscripts, the first thing I thought was, ‘This is a chance to finally hear what this music sounded like,'” said Patricia Hall, professor of music theory, who discovered archived manuscripts of songs performed by prisoner orchestras at Auschwitz-Birkenau during World War II. “This music was punitive, so they had to stay exactly in step to these marches or they would be beaten.”

    Michigan Radio