In the News
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January 13, 2021
“Biden’s criminal justice plan focuses on community crime prevention and expanding accountability of officer misconduct, but if he wants to help eradicate the excessive enforcement tactics we witnessed police using this summer, he need not look further than the 1970s,” co-wrote Christian Davenport, professor of political science. “Police in this period were less aggressive toward protesters, and pre-emptively engaged them such that force could be prevented before it even started.”
Business Insider -
January 13, 2021
Local officials administering COVID-19 vaccines would have been helped by better planning and coordination from state and federal officials, says Kayte Spector-Bagdady, assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology: “Now individual counties and institutions are really left to catch as catch can — to try and vaccinate the population in fair ways while trying to get more product from the feds to the states, and then use all the product they have.”
The New York Times -
January 12, 2021
Jonathan Hanson, lecturer in public policy, and Josh Pasek, associate professor of communication and media, believe that the armed statehouse protests in Michigan last May set the tone for the insurgents at the U.S. Capitol last week. “Seeing that you could march into the Capitol building in Michigan probably did give them ideas and those people went to D.C. with the intent that they could do the same thing,” Hanson said. Pasek added that “in neither case did the police really do what you would hope and expect them to do, to defend the institutions they were ostensibly defending. There’s discussion that maybe the police don’t view these folks as potentially dangerous, which is itself a misunderstanding of American history.”
MLive -
January 12, 2021
Celeste Watkins-Hayes, professor of sociology and public policy, believes that the HIV safety net that has been in place since the 1980s can serve as a roadmap for rolling out an equitable and successful national vaccination for COVID-19: “The HIV community … has spent the last 40 years honing a holistic approach to public health that takes seriously the inequities that drive epidemics. By shoring up and expanding the HIV safety net, we have the opportunity to fight two of the most impactful infectious diseases of the present day by targeting the health disparities that drive both.”
Detroit Free Press -
January 12, 2021
Research by Leah Richmond-Rakerd, assistant professor of psychology, suggests that kids who are goal-oriented and better able to restrain their thoughts, behavior and emotions are healthier by the time they hit middle age: “We found that as adults, at age 45, children with better self-control aged more slowly. … We also found that they had developed more health, financial and social reserves for old age.”
U.S. News & World Report -
January 11, 2021
“The ‘Stop the Steal’ message is not only about the election. It’s about how this group feels aggrieved about what they think has been taken away from them, kind of their God-given right to possess and to have dominion over certain aspects of American society. … I think that’s a motif we’re going to see playing out after Biden becomes president,” said Alexandra Minna Stern, professor of American culture, history and women’s studies.Michigan Radio
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January 11, 2021
“The action of the mob in Washington, incited by President Trump, is an unprecedented affront to the peaceful transfer of power on which our democracy is based. It is a seditious act unlike anything since the Civil War,” said Michael Traugott, professor emeritus of communication and political science, and research professor emeritus at the Institute for Social Research’s Center for Political Studies.
USA Today -
January 11, 2021
“If this was a group of people of color who had taken to the Capitol and had damaged property and done any of the things that these white folks had done, we would talk about it in very different terms,” said Charles H. Davis III, assistant professor of education. “When we see people that are peacefully protesting based on the injustice of police violence against people of color and Black people specifically and anything happens — usually escalated by police — we don’t get the same language and the same treatment.”
Diverse Issues in Higher Education -
December 14, 2020
Prisons are an obvious setting to look at in trying to understand COVID-19 reinfection because of the potential for re-exposure, says Adam Lauring, associate professor of microbiology and immunology: “If there really are a bunch of reinfections in prisons, it highlights just how high-risk prisons are for COVID spread. I think it’s just another reemphasis on what a big problem this is.”
Detroit Free Press -
December 14, 2020
“If we are going to achieve these goals, the health care system will need to be intentional about reducing racial disparities. That will require listening to women of color and community organizations that can provide direction on how to improve the care that is provided,” said Elizabeth Langen, associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology, on a government plan to combat maternal mortality among Black mothers.
ABC News
