Wesleyan in the News: September 2024

President Michael S. Roth ’78 joined WAMC’s “The Roundtable” on Sept. 13 to discuss his book “The Student: A Short History,” which maps out the way learning has changed over time.

The Wesleyan Media Project (WMP) reported estimated that former President Donald Trump’s campaign has spent nearly nothing on ads that promote him in a positive light in research released on Sept. 12. New York Times Opinion contributor Kristen Soltis Anderson cited the Wesleyan Media Project’s research in a piece for The Times on Sept. 24. 

The Washington Post mentioned the Wesleyan Media Project’s research into the tone of the ads run by the two Presidential campaigns. The Wesleyan Media Project found that since April, most ads in support of the Trump campaign have been attacking Vice President Kamala Harris. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette also referenced the Wesleyan Media Project’s data in its reporting. 

Travis Ridout, co-director of the Wesleyan Media Project, spoke with the Pennsylvania Capital-Star on the prevalence of immigration-related messaging among Republican-supporting advertisements and the Democratic focus on health care, education, and Social Security. 

John E. Andrus Professor of Government James McGuire wrote that Vice President Kamala Harris should focus on voter-participation efforts over securing a second debate with former President Donald Trump in a letter to the editors of The New York Times. “There is a strong likelihood that Ms. Harris will not perform as well in a second debate as she did in the first debate, and that Mr. Trump will perform ‘better,’ the more so given the lowness of the bar he set for himself in the first debate,” McGuire wrote.

Peter Rutland, professor of government and Colin and Nancy Campbell Chair for Global Issues and Democratic Thought, spoke to Newsweek about a batch of fighter jets delivered to Ukraine to intercept Russian drones by Denmark. “It will take several years before Ukraine will have trained up enough pilots and maintenance crews for the expected 80 aircraft,” Rutland said. 

Rob Rosenthal Distinguished Professor of Civic Engagement Khalilah Brown-Dean, appeared on WAMU for a story on the National Pan-Hellenic Council and its potential impact in the upcoming election. 

PBS aired an episode of American Masters on Julia Alvarez, an influential Dominican-American poet and novelist, edited by University Professor of Film Studies Randall MacLowry on Sept. 17. 

Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins, assistant professor of in the College of Social Studies, interviewed author and professor Melinda Cooper about her book Counterrevolution: Extravagance and Austerity in Public Finance on neoliberalism economic discourse in the 1980s for his series for The Nation. 

Retired Connecticut Superior Court Judge John Moore ’75, MALS’80 wrote a piece on navigating mediations for Bloomberg Law. 

Thomas Sabatino ’80, former executive for multiple major health care companies and current member of the Humane Society Board of Directors, was appointed to Florida Gov. Ron DeScantis’ Health Care Innovation Council.  

Other Headlines

With an election that serves as an inflection point in American democracy just months away, Roth encouraged students to engage in political discussion and listen to opposing viewpoints in a piece for The New York Times on Sept. 2. “This fall we can all learn to be better students and better citizens by collaborating with others, being open to experimentation and calling for inclusion rather than segregation — and participating in the electoral process.”

He also wrote about how students can practice freedom better in a piece for The New Republic. “Practicing freedom can be messy, as it surely will be on many campuses this fall. Thinking for yourself in the company of others, especially when the coals are hot, is not easy. But our disagreements will teach us lessons that will serve us well long after the coals have cooled.”

Roth then appeared on NPR’s “Morning Edition” with Steve Inskeep on Sept. 5 to discuss why he supports political activism on campus. He highlighted the Jewett Center for Community Partnership’s Political Engagement Fund grants and said, “we should be activating the political energies of our students so that they go out there and work on the elections.”

“The university shouldn’t be neutral about the electoral system or democracy,” Roth said on “Fast Politics” with Molly Jong-Fast. “We should be encouraging our students and our faculty to be engaged in the public sphere.”

Roth also spoke to The Boston Globe for a piece on how U.S. colleges are putting a focus on dialogue ahead of expected protests this semester.

Associate Professor of Sociology Robyn Autry wrote about why political candidates chose to identify where they’re from for MSNBC after media outlets drew attention to Presidential candidate Vice President Kamala Harris’ claim that she is from Oakland, Calif. — despite being born in the adjacent Berkeley, Calif. “Instead of asking whether it’s technically true that she’s from Oakland and whether she ought to be corrected for slighting Berkeley, we ought to be asking whether we put more demands on Black candidates to authenticate who they say they are, and whether their answers are more closely scrutinized,” Autry wrote.

WNPR announced that “Disrupted,” hosted by Brown-Dean will move to the 9 a.m. time slot on Fridays in a shake-up of the network’s programming schedule. “’Disrupted’ is about navigating both the extraordinary and mundane changes we all encounter whether personally, professionally, politically, or culturally,” Brown-Dean said. “Those disruptions provide important moments to learn with and from one another while building community. That search for understanding is crucial in these divided times.”

Jennifer Tucker, professor of history and director of the Center for the Study of Guns and Society, was named a commissioner of the first-ever Commission on Global Gun Violence and Health from the respected medical journal The Lancet. “Gun violence is a global health emergency. Around the world, it contributes to hundreds of thousands of deaths, millions of injuries, and billions of dollars in economic costs. Yet, the scale of gun violence—from the individual to the international level—is still poorly understood,” Tucker said. “…By shining a light on the drivers and impacts of gun violence, the Commission hopes to encourage investment in evidence-based strategies to save and prolong lives.”

Actress Beanie Feldstein ’15 will play Logan Schwartzandgrubenierre in the Broadway Center Stage production of The 25^th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee at the Kennedy Center’s Eisenhower Theater from Oct. 11 to 20, according to Broadway World.

The Library of Congress appointed Karen Donfried ’84 as the new director of the Congressional Research Service, which supports Congress with the research, analysis, information, and consultation they need to legislate. Donfried served over 10 years in the Congressional Research Service as an analyst and specialist in European affairs. She has also served on the White House National Security Council.

Professor of Biology Michael Singer spoke with National Geographic for a story on animals that treat and prevent their own illnesses. Singer researches caterpillars and found that when the small insects are infected with a parasite, they will eat plants containing certain chemicals to try to kill the parasite.

Professor of African American Studies Khalil Johnson spoke with CBS News for a story on a private school honoring the history of its first two Black students, who were admitted a decade after the Brown v. Board of Education decision that desegregated schools in 1954. “For the students, their very presence on these campuses changed what these campuses were like,” Johnson said.

Product designer Max Gunawan ’02 founded the lighting company Lumio in 2013 and its products are now in 200 retail stores across 30 countries. The New York Times profiled Gunawan and his efforts to renovate his Paris apartment. He fell in love with Paris while studying abroad in the city as an undergraduate at Wesleyan, he told the Times.

Matthew Tyrnauer ’91 is now on a short list of filmmakers to have more than one film screened at Telluride in the same year, according to The Hollywood Reporter. He debuted Carville: Winning is Everything, Stupid, about longtime Democratic political strategist James Carville, and Nobu, about famed sushi chef and restauranteur Nobu Matsuhisa, at the festival this year.

Attorney Victoria Santoro ’07 was elected president of the Massachusetts Bar Association for the 2024-25 membership year. Santoro said she plans to advance reproductive justice, diversity, and inclusion, and mentorship efforts for members of marginalized communities. “I firmly believe that our legal community benefits from more involvement, more discussion, more participation and more community,” said Santoro.

Kim-Frank Fellow in Creative Writing Oliver Egger ’23 had two pieces published in The Boston Globe in August. Egger wrote a story on an exhibition at the Museo degli Innocenti featuring tokens left by parents who abandoned their children at the Ospedale degli Innocenti, a centuries-old foundling hospital. He also broke down what he loves about Bob Dylan’s “Ballad in Plain D”, which Dylan said he regretted recording in an interview in 1985.