Wesleyan in the News: November 2024

By: Phuc Ngo ’27

As Election Day neared, the Wesleyan Media Project’s reports on political advertising and their expert commentary were frequently cited in national media.

Erika Franklin Fowler, professor of government and co-director of the Wesleyan Media Project, spoke with CBS Morning News about the impact of television ads. “Negative ads tend to be more policy-based, more issue-focused,” said Fowler, “and those details actually are very important for citizens who don’t otherwise pay a lot of attention to politics.”

A Washington Post piece on the presidential race in Virginia cited Wesleyan Media Project data on the relatively low number of ads airing in Virginia as compared to Pennsylvania and Georgia.

A Slate piece on advertising related to the Montana senate race cited Wesleyan Media Project data. “Montana saw 43,774 political ads in August, the most of any state in the country. Second place: Ohio, at 25,000, In September, Montana saw 85,392, the most again.”

POLITICO quoted Fowler in a piece on drug policy in the 2024 campaign. With respect to both campaigns’ highlighting of anti-trafficking efforts over treatment policies, Fowler commented, “It’s an easy shortcut in a 30-second commercial to tie a broader issue to one that has an easy explanation.”

A New York Times opinion piece cited Wesleyan Media Project data comparing spending on radio and social media advertisements. The piece also quoted Fowler on advertising for House candidates: “Often, advertising is the only way that voters will hear about those candidates,” she said.

A piece in New York Magazine’s Intelligencer highlighted Wesleyan Media Project data on social media advertising.

Wesleyan Media Project research also appeared in the campaign roundup section of The Hill’s daily report.

Reuters interviewed Michael Franz, co-director of Wesleyan Media Project, for a piece on immigration messaging in the final weeks of the presidential campaign. “Even though immigration may not seem as salient and directly relevant to the lives of some voters in these congressional districts, the issue is resonating because the topic has become tied to both parties’ brands,” explained Franz.

Fowler joined WBUR’s “On Point” Podcast to discuss advertising in seven swing states: Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Georgia, North Carolina, Arizona, and Nevada. “Barack Obama, for example, had a national strategy one of the years that he ran for office,” noted Fowler on different strategic focuses for advertising spending. “But I think at least in the past several years, it definitely has been concentrated in the battlegrounds, because the race is just simply that close.”

Other headlines

President Michael S. Roth ’78 wrote a piece on the crucial relationship between education and democracy for Inside Higher Ed. Roth discussed the history of the university, academic freedom, and the dangers to education in the current political climate. “In the coming days, we must reject the cultivated ignorance that is used to fan the flames of hatred,” wrote Roth. “Instead, we must defend the freedom to learn together in our schools, colleges and universities so that as a nation we can continue our democratic experiment.”

Wesleyan sophomore Celeste McKenzie ’27 wrote about her fall break canvassing trip to Philadelphia for Harper’s Bazaar. Speaking directly with disaffected voters disrupted McKenzie’s perceptions of “Trump supporters, […] ignorant undecided voters, [and] disgruntled Democrats.” McKenzie came to understand the importance voters place on feeling seen and heard. “When I speak to people, I no longer see them as separate from myself. Instead, I search for the thing that grounds us together, connects our very beings. I search for the desire to be recognized.”

For a story about fascism in America, POLITICO interviewed Daniel Steinmetz-Jenkins, assistant professor in the College of Social Studies and History. Steinmetz-Jenkins discussed the historical characteristics of fascism, the implications of the economy on the rise of fascism, and whether Trump can correctly be labeled ‘fascist.’ “I think this so-called fascism debate centers on this very issue,” began Steinmetz-Jenkins. “How much do we need to be replicating the past in order to call what we’re seeing today fascist? Or do we need to do that at all? Can we just say, well, there is a timeless essence that can be downloaded on any period, and that’s what we’re seeing right now.”

Steinmetz-Jenkins recently edited Did It Happen Here? Perspectives on Fascism and America, a collection of essays by leading scholars of fascism.

Nick Hallett, M.A. student in Music Composition, organized a performance of Philip Glass’s String Quartet No. 4 at the NYC AIDS Memorial. Glass wrote the piece in tribute to artist Brian Buczak, who died of complications from AIDS in 1987. The New York Times spoke to Hallett at the concert, who said of the piece, “any listener can feel its weight: It tells a story of life and memory and humanity, communicated through sound.”

Eric Weiskott ’09 reviewed Elizabeth Willis’ literary epic “Liontaming in America” for Los Angeles Review of Books. Weiskott, who studied under Willis during the latter’s tenure as Shapiro-Silverberg Professor of Literature and Creative Writing, calls the work “as sprawling as the country it addresses”—at once an anatomy, a biography, and a cartography.

Merve Emre, Shapiro-Silverberg Professor of Creative Writing and Criticism, appeared on “The Great Women Artists” podcast to discuss the life and work of Vanessa Bell and Virginia Woolf. “They both share a kind of fearlessness,” said Emre of the sisters. “It was about having the bravery, the courage, the discipline, to come back to that page over and over and over again, and try to think about the right form in which to represent a feeling, or a relationship, especially if that form had not yet been invented.”

Caleb T. Winchester University Librarian Andrew White joined WNPR’s “Where We Live” to discuss the recent cyberattack on the Internet Archive. White spoke about the importance of the Archive as a history of the Internet.

The Hartford Courant published an article on “Black Voices and Visionaries in Cinema,” the 2024–25 Shasha Seminar for Human Concerns, scheduled for Nov. 8–9 at Wesleyan. Following screenings of their films “The Annihilation of Fish” (Burnett, 1999) and “Judas and the Black Messiah” (King, 2021), major independent filmmakers Charles Burnett and Shaka King will hold Q&A sessions.

Balasz Zelity, assistant professor of Economics, spoke with the CT Mirror for a piece on immigration in the labor force. “Wages have grown relatively more in the U.S. for high-skilled people than in other rich countries, and that might have attracted more people on the high-skilled end of the spectrum,” said Zelity of Connecticut’s foreign labor force.

Scott Plous, professor of Psychology, spoke to the San Francisco Chronicle on death of Philip Zimbardo, creator of the Stanford Prison Experiment. “Phil was endlessly interested in students and exciting them about psychology,” said Plous of Zimbardo, under whom Plous studied as a graduate student at Stanford.