In the News
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June 23, 2021
“The Southwest is getting hammered by climate change harder than almost any other part of the country, apart from perhaps coastal cities. And as bad as it might seem today, this is about as good as it’s going to get if we don’t get global warming under control,” said Jonathan Overpeck, dean of the School for Environment and Sustainability, commenting on a combination of the worst drought in two decades and a record-breaking heat wave in the American West.
The New York Times -
June 23, 2021
“George Floyd’s death reminded us that our inability to control what happens means that we’re all vulnerable. … That’s the power and the future of American democracy — our ability to remind one another that we are connected and that democracy in all of its forms is pretty fragile,” said Earl Lewis, professor of history, Afroamerican and African studies, and public policy, and founding director of the Center for Social Solutions.
The Associated Press -
June 16, 2021
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 -
June 16, 2021
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 -
June 16, 2021
“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 -
June 16, 2021
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 -
June 9, 2021
“I see the language in this bill as being very, very strategic and trying to get everybody to talk less about race, racism, and whiteness and white supremacy,” said Maren Oberman, clinical assistant professor of education, commenting on a state bill that would bar Michigan school districts from teaching about the role of systemic racism across society.
Detroit Free Press -
June 9, 2021
“To insist on politicized sexual identity is grating to the ears of people who are more conservative. They may have a friend who has sex with a same-sex partner, but they are not wanting them to be mainstreamed,” said Jennifer Robertson, professor emerita of anthropology and the history of art, on Japan’s lack of political support for equal rights for the LGBTQ community despite evolving cultural acceptance.
The New York Times -
June 9, 2021
“The environment of Jupiter is pretty fierce. So I wouldn’t be terribly thrilled about being the person to land on Ganymede,” said Margaret Kivelson, research professor of climate and space sciences and engineering, who was on the science team of NASA’s Galileo mission to Jupiter — the last one to visit Jupiter’s moon Ganymede close up more than two decades ago.
National Public Radio -
June 9, 2021
“Highly educated urban young women … worry about losing the right to choose not to have children. Rather than seeing the end of (China’s) one-child era as a relief, they fear it would reimpose an obligation to have children, with greater pressure from family members and the government,” wrote Yun Zhou, assistant professor of sociology.
The Washington Post
