In the News
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December 2, 2020
“This summer was different than any other than I’ve seen before. Colleagues I know and respect, this was maybe the first time I’ve heard them talk about systemic racism,” said Odest Chadwicke Jenkins, professor of electrical engineering and computer science, one of the lead organizers and writers of a manifesto that describes Black scholars’ personal experience of “the structural and institutional racism and bias that is integrated into society, professional networks, expert communities and industries.”
The New York Times -
November 24, 2020
The number of women with suicidal thoughts after giving birth has dramatically increased since 2006, with the biggest spikes among mothers who are Black, lower income or younger, according to research by Lindsay Admon, assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology, and Kara Zivin, professor of psychiatry, and health management and policy, and colleagues. “This is more important than ever in the COVID-19 era. The postpartum isolation people feel will have been compounded by this epidemic,” Admon said.
USA Today -
November 24, 2020
“It’s interesting to think about how this would potentially impact the survival of these caterpillars, when they’re crowded onto plants. The amount of milkweed is decreasing. This may become a bigger issue,” said D. André Green, assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, commenting on research that found that before metamorphosis, monarch butterflies will aggressively head butt each other for access to their favorite food.
The New York Times -
November 24, 2020
Research by Daphna Stroumsa, clinical lecturer in obstetrics and gynecology, and colleagues found that close to 1 in 10 of the estimated 1.4 million transgender adults in the U.S. are likely using hormones that weren’t prescribed because they’re uninsured or their insurance won’t cover it: “Health care systems and physicians and health care providers have so often failed trans people, either with direct discrimination or ignorance of trans people’s health care needs. We need to fix that.”
CNN -
November 23, 2020
“Higher education … costs more for students in the U.S. versus many of our peer countries. I think that we would need to have a long national conversation about college costs first,” Hoyt Bleakley, professor of economics. “If the result of that dialogue were to be that college should be more heavily subsidized for current and future students, then perhaps we could talk about the unfairness to all the people who already paid the old, high prices. Talking about student debt first puts the cart before the horse.”
Newsweek -
November 23, 2020
“Many people with mental illness, ranging from mild depression to alcohol dependence, to serious illnesses such as schizophrenia, smoke more when they’re stressed, and smoke more when they’re getting more sick,” said Laura Hirshbein, professor of psychiatry, on the pandemic-fueled rise in smoking — a long-time central coping mechanism for people with mental illness or in stressful situations.
Reuters -
November 23, 2020
“It’s not that people suddenly start grinding their teeth when they’re stressed. It’s usually that they have an underlying habit that’s minor and then when they’re stressed it becomes more severe and it starts affecting their life in different ways,” said Romesh Nalliah, clinical professor of dentistry, on the uptick in dental patients nationwide experiencing pain from grinding or clenching their teeth during the pandemic.
MarketWatch -
November 20, 2020
“They’ve got to give some rational explanation for why change … is okay. So that makes it a little bit more challenging,” said Oday Salim, director of the Environmental Law and Sustainability Clinic, on Joe Biden’s plan to restore environmental protections gutted by Donald Trump. “You read descriptions of the process and it sounds like flipping a switch,” said Barry Rabe, professor of public policy and the environment. “But the quick things tend to be somewhat superficial. The deeper and more significant the action, the more likely you are going to bat a hornet’s nest.”
Grist -
November 20, 2020
Richard Primus, professor of law, commended Michigan’s Republican legislative leaders for not trying to appoint their own slate of electors after the popular election was held, saying to do so would be an “enormous affront to American democracy”: “It would produce outrage in the streets of a kind that Americans have usually been spared. It would provoke an enormous crisis because it would be just so inappropriate.”
The Detroit News -
November 20, 2020
“The reality is that Michigan, and the west side of Michigan especially, never got close enough to (COVID-19) containment over the summer, and so every region still had enough embers around to restart a fire as soon as behavior changed,” said Emily Toth Martin, associate professor of epidemiology.
HuffPost
