Wesleyan in the News: October 2024

Lin-Manuel Miranda ’05, actor, librettist, and creator of the 2015 musical Hamilton, appeared on comedian Mike Birbiglia’s podcast “Working it Out.” Miranda and Birbiglia discussed the release of Miranda’s new album “Warriors” and the creative process that informed it.

The Washington Post mentioned the work of college students from the northeast canvassing in Pennsylvania for political campaigns. Several of the students received Political Engagement Grants from the Allbritton Center for the Study of Public Life.

Erika Franklin Fowler, professor of government and co-director of the Wesleyan Media Project, joined ABC News’ “FiveThirtyEight Politics” podcast to break down the political ads flooding the nation’s screens as election day nears. “It is the case, generally, that the more dollars that are spent [on advertising], the more citizens do know about the candidates,” said Franklin Fowler in conclusion. “And, at least in a democratically desirable universe, where we would like to have more informed voters going to the ballot box, that’s not necessarily a bad thing – that would be important.”

The Conversation quoted Franklin Fowler in a piece on the scale and efficacy of political advertising. “I think the narrative matters,” said Franklin Fowler with respect to campaigns’ attempts to shape media narratives. “But I think to pin it all on political advertising specifically would be far too great of power to ascribe to this particular medium.”

Franklin Fowler also spoke to Newsweek about the reasons behind Kamala Harris’s appearance on Fox News, suggesting that Harris would want access to Fox’s large audience, an audience Harris herself may otherwise struggle to reach.

She also joined WNPR’s “Where We Live” on Oct. 21 for a conversation on political advertising on television and digital platforms this election cycle and the messages that have grabbed attention.

The cast for a reading of Artist-in-Residence Anna Deavere Smith’s This Ghost of Slavery, which will be presented at Wesleyan on Oct. 27, was revealed by Playbill. The cast includes Okieriete Onaodowan, Sojourner Brown, and Arjun Gupta, among others.

New York Magazine spoke with 57 of the media’s most powerful people, including Emily Greenhouse ’08, for a piece on the future of media.

The Guardian spoke to Suzanne OConnell, professor of Earth and Environmental Sciences, about the JOIDES Resolution, a large research vessel, which has been influential in the scientific community’s understanding of the climate crisis, tectonic plates, and natural events like earthquakes over its 40-year history. Its current voyage to Svalbard, a Norwegian archipelago, will be its last.

John Finn, professor of government, emeritus, has studied and written about sanctuary movements in the United States and he spoke with The 19th for a piece on how the election might affect access to gender-affirming care. Finn said the number of Republicans in Congress will have an impact on former president Donald Trump’s ability to curtail trans rights should he win another term.

Andrews Professor of Economics Richard Grossman appeared on the “Everything Economic History” podcast from Queen’s University Belfast to kick off its second season. Grossman explores the impact of reconstruction on the United States and what could’ve been done to better transition the country to its modern state.

Joe Cacaci, artist-in-residence in film studies, directed a six-episode podcast adaptation of the novel “It Happened Here 2024” by Richard Dresser, which offers a glimpse into what the world could be like if the United States evolves into a fascist state after the upcoming election.

Director Bridget Savage Cole ’05 screened her new movie “The House of Spoils” at the Cabot theater in her hometown of Beverly, Mass. Savage Cole spoke with WBZ about the screening. “Los Angeles and Hollywood is like Mars when you grow up in Massachusetts. It’s just so far away and you’re not even thinking about it, never conceived that that was an actual career path, that filmmakers was even an actual job.”

Other Headlines

The Associated Press interviewed President Michael S. Roth ’78 for a story on campus free speech on the one-year anniversary of the attacks of October 7. He talked about the ways Wesleyan is trying to foster discourse, including new courses on civil disagreement and faculty facilitation of conversation. “It’s challenging for students, as it is for adults — most adults don’t have conversations with people who disagree with them,” Roth said. “We’re so segregated into our bubbles.”  

Roth spoke about how to navigate disagreement on campus, “safe enough spaces,” related campus activity to democratic practice at an event for the New York Institute of the Humanities. His appearance was published as an episode of the New Books Network’s “American Politics” podcast. 

Roth reviewed “No Road Leading Back” by Chris Heath for the Wall Street Journal. The book chronicles the few survivors of the horrors committed in the forest region of Ponar, outside of the now Lithuanian capital of Vilnius, in 1941 during the Holocaust.  

Richard Slotkin, Olin Professor of English, Emeritus wrote a piece for The New York Times about how core American myths help explain the current state of our politics. “In the absence of a unifying national myth, the states are dividing along ideological lines, as they did before the Civil War period and again in the Jim Crow era, with radically different laws on voting, on abortion and public health, on racial discrimination, on gun rights, on fossil fuels and green alternatives, and on the teaching of history,” Slotkin wrote in the Times. 

Sltokin discusses these myths in detail in his new book “A Great Disorder: National Myth and the Battle for America.,” which was reviewed by Los Angeles Review of Books and History Today.The Wesleyan Media Project reported that Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign significantly outspent former President Donald Trump’s on television and digital advertising from Sept. 9 to 22. The Washington Post highlighted their research in a piece on Sept. 27. 

Former U.S. Secretary of Labor Robert Reich mentioned a Wesleyan Media Project report that Trump’s campaign is spending almost nothing on ads that show him in a positive light, instead focusing on negative ads about Harris, in his daily newsletter. 

Franklin Fowler spoke at a panel on voting at Eastern Connecticut State University. “In 2016, the Trump campaign surprised many by revealing post-election that half of its campaign budget was spent on digital advertising,” said Franklin Fowler. “Fast forward to 2024, and the Trump campaign is being outspent on Meta platforms, including Facebook and Instagram, at a ratio of 16-to-1 in the early weeks of September.” 

The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel spoke with Michael Franz, co-director of the Wesleyan Media Project, for a story on ad spending in Wisconsin’s Senate race ahead of this year’s election. More than $100 million has reportedly been spent on the race from outside groups. “The involvement of outside groups makes sense, since the Wisconsin race is critical for both parties and the fight over who will control the Senate,” Franz said. 

Merve Emre, Shapiro-Silverberg Professor of Creative Writing and Criticism and director of the Shapiro Center for Creative Writing and Criticism, explored eight stories by writer Oğuz Atay for The New Yorker. Atay’s stories were collected into a book Waiting for the Fear in 1975 and reissued by the New York Review of Books this month. “There is an aggressive intimacy to Atay’s style, a perverse hospitality to his postmodern tales of indignation and woe. To read these stories is to be forcefully ushered into the home of a friend, to listen to him rant, yet to find his bizarre performance endearing, even lovable.” 

Emre also edited a collection of short stories by author Djuna Barnes. She wrote a foreword for the book that was published in The New York Review of Books. 

Khalilah Brown-Dean, Rob Rosenthal Distinguished Professor of Civic Engagement of Civic Engagement and executive director of the Allbritton Center for the Study of Public Life, is editing a new series, “At Issue,” for Diverse Education. It features engaged scholars who study issues of importance ahead of the upcoming election. The series is centered on policy questions and action-based strategies.

Brown-Dean and Deavere Smith, artist-in-residence at the Center for the Arts, will be keynote speakers at the Artistic Congress, according to BroadwayWorld Connecticut. Wesleyan, The Long Wharf Theatre, and Yale Schwarzman Center are hosting the three-day event focused on fostering collaboration and conversations about the future of theater and its importance to democracy from Oct. 25 to 27. 

Peter Rutland, Colin and Nancy Campbell Professor in Global Issues and Democratic Thought, spoke to Newsweek for a piece on Russian President Vladimir Putin’s recent announcement loosening the country’s nuclear doctrine, which is viewed by some as a threat to potentially use nuclear weapons in the war in the Ukraine. Rutland said the comments did not represent a substantial change in the policy position. “Russia claims that the war is going well for them, with incremental territorial gains in Donbas and a harsh winter looming in Ukraine given the damaged energy infrastructure,” Rutland told Newsweek. 

The Council on Foreign Relations welcomed David Hart ’83, P’24, professor of public policy at George Mason University, to the David Rockefeller Studies Program as senior fellow for climate and energy. Hart has worked to increase funding for federal energy research and development, the establishment of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Clean Energy Demonstrations, and is a lifetime fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science—the largest multidisciplinary scientific society in the world.