Wesleyan in the News

In this recurring feature in The Wesleyan Connection, we highlight some of the latest news stories about Wesleyan and our alumni.

Recent Wesleyan News

1. The New York Times: Defending Conservatism, and Seeking Converts

President Michael Roth ’78 reviews Roger Scruton’s new book on Conservatism, which he writes provides an “enlightening” background on a variety of important conservative thinkers, but stoops to scapegoating Muslims to “rally the troops.”

2. Hartford Courant: First Group of Students Graduates from Wesleyan’s Prison Education Program

The first-ever Wesleyan Center for Prison Education Program graduation ceremonies, held in partnership with Middlesex Community College at York and Cheshire correctional institutions on July 24 and Aug. 1, respectively, was also featured in The Washington Post, ABC News, Fox News, among other publications.

3. The Times Literary Supplement: Everyone is a Savage: The Persistence of Christian Belief in Soviet Russia

Associate Professor of History Victoria Smolkin’s book, A Sacred Space is Never Empty: A History of Soviet Atheism, is called “engaging and informative” in this review. Smolkin also is associate professor of Russian, Eastern European, and Eurasian studies, and tutor in the College of Social Studies.

4. Newsweek: Where is Job Growth in the U.S. Happening? Not in Trump’s America

This article cites a new study by the Wesleyan Media Project and quotes project co-director and Associate Professor of Government Erika Franklin Fowler. The project’s research has been widely featured in the media recently, in news outlets such as CNN, ABC News, The Washington Post, Salon, Politico, New England News Collaborative, and many others.

Recent Alumni News

1. The Paris Review: Joan Morgan [’87], Hip-Hop Feminism, and The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill

Danielle A. Jackson, an associate editor at Longreads, interviews “pioneering hip-hop journalist and feminist writer Joan Morgan, author of the new book She Begat This: 20 Years of The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill.” Jackson calls Morgan’s exploration of hip-hop artist Lauryn Hill, “a useful document, a multidimensional map, of the fruitful era that made it happen.”

2. Medium.com: “Can Technology Help Undo the Wrongs of the Past?”

“Rashida Richardson [’08], Director of Policy Research at the AI Now Institute at NYU discusses how tech developers’ own biases and prejudices and the problems with how we remember the past, can result in technologies reproducing prejudices and inequities.“ Richardson also considers whether technology might be “a tool to illuminate and mitigate the existence of social and political stratifications?”

3. Tricycle.org: “Same Old Story in a New World”

“Journalist Katy Butler [’71], who wrote the first exposés on sexual abuse in Buddhist communities in the ’80s and ’90s, discusses what has changed with the #MeToo movement.”

4. GlobeNewsWire.com: “HC2 Announces Pansend Life Sciences Portfolio Company BeneVir Biopharm to be Acquired by Janssen Biotech, Inc. for up to $1.04 Billion”

“‘Our goal at BeneVir has been to develop T-Stealth^TM, an oncolytic immunotherapy platform, to help patients whose tumors do not respond to current therapeutic options including immune checkpoint inhibitors,’ said Matt Mulvey [’97], PhD, founder and chief executive officer of BeneVir. “We are excited to join the Janssen team and continue to innovate in the field of oncolytic viral immunotherapy.’”

5. BroadwayWorld.com (Off-Off-Broadway):  “New Light Theater Project Launches Season with Owen Panettieris’ [’01] Meaningful Conversation”

“Set in a one-bedroom apartment in Queens during the 2006 Astoria blackout, Meaningful Conversations is a quintessential New York play. Through the paper-thin walls, apartment dwellers learn the most personal details of their neighbor’s lives. They coexist as intimate strangers until an unexpected occurrence forces them together.

“Playwright Owen Panettieri, a 2017 Eugene O’Neill Theater Center National Playwrights Conference Finalist, has crafted a play that asks: how do we make a real connection?”

New Light Theater Project presents this work in association with Luis Miranda Jr. P’02, from Sept. 8-22. Also noted is a previous web series that was a collaboration between Panettieri and Lin-Manuel Miranda ’02.