In the Media – Page 20

On March 15, Wesleyan's Posse Veteran Scholars program was spotlighted on PBS Newshour, in an episode featuring interviews with President Michael S. Roth and several students. Wesleyan is first mentioned around 3 minutes with Michael Smith '18 speaking. According to the show, more than 1 million vets are using GI benefits, but most attend public or for-profit schools. The number of veterans attending top-tier colleges "is so small, it's not even known." A few years ago, the Posse Foundation—which has a long history of sending groups, or posses, of talented students "who don't fit the mold" to top colleges—started a program focused on…

The Chronicle of Higher Education has published an excerpt from a new memoir by Christina Crosby, professor of English, professor of feminist, gender and sexuality studies. The book, A Body, Undone: Living On After Great Pain, is due out later this month from NYU Press. Crosby tells the story of how her life changed after a bicycle accident in 2003, just after her 50th birthday, left her paralyzed. According to the publisher, "In A Body, Undone, Crosby puts into words a broken body that seems beyond the reach of language and understanding. She writes about a body shot through with neurological pain,…

Are the liberal arts still relevant? President Michael Roth answered this question and more as a guest on "Essential Pittsburgh," a show on Pittsburgh's NPR station. As he argues in his book, Beyond the University: Why Liberal Education Matters, Roth explains, "There's an American tradition of liberal education that goes back as far as the origins of the country and emphasizes the pragmatic dimensions of broad, contextual study. It's not so much that you take Latin and Greek or that you study religion rather than, let's say, biology, it's that whatever you study, you study it in connection to other things, understanding how what you're focused on…

Following an ISIS attack in the heart of Jakarta earlier this month, Assistant Professor of Government Ioana Emy Matesan writes on the blog "Political Violence @ a Glance" why she believes ISIS will not thrive in Indonesia. The ISIS affiliate in Indonesia remains very small, and "varies drastically from its counterpart in Syria in terms of motivations, organization, and perhaps more importantly, ability to challenge the state or claim territory." Matesan notes, "Indonesia has seen its fair share of violence, and even some earlier attempts to build an Islamic state." She provides a history of different groups that over time…

Gina Athena Ulysse, professor of anthropology, professor of feminist, gender and sexuality studies, writes an "Ode to Haiti's Neo-Comedians" in The Huffington Post about Haiti's recently cancelled election runoff. The title of her essay refers to Graham Greene's The Comedians, a book whose description read: "Set in Haiti, amid an atmosphere of brutal force and terror-ridden love, three desperate people work out their strange destinies." Ulysse writes: Relevance of The Comedians is apparent in Haiti's recently cancelled election runoff that was set for this past Sunday. Indeed, until then, the outgoing president Michel Martelly, a chap with dictatorial tendencies who leads the "Bald Headed Haitian Party"—insisted on…

The Los Angeles Times offers a preview of "Circular 14: The Apotheosis of Aristides, a new dramatic oratorio composed by Neely Bruce, the John Spencer Camp Professor of Music, which has its world premiere Jan. 23 at the American Jewish University in Los Angeles. The piece tells the story of Aristides de Sousa Mendes, a diplomat and little-known Portuguese hero to many thousands of Jews during World War II. In June 1940, nearly 120,000 refugees fleeing from Nazi persecution amassed down the road from the Portuguese consulate in Bordeaux, France. Though Portuguese dictator António de Oliveira Salazar issued a vehement directive to deny…

Forbes named Jordyn Lexton ’08 and Guy Marcus ’13 to the 2016 “30 under 30” list for 2016, and the Chronicle of Philanthropy highlighted David Lubell ’98 as one of the “40 Under 40." Under the headline, “Todays Brightest Young Stars and The Future Leaders of Everything” Forbes magazine highlighted two Wesleyan alumni in their fifth annual listings of the top 30 young leaders in 20 different categories. From an initial list of 15,000, Jordyn Lexton ’08 made the listing in entrepreneurs. Lexton is the founder of “Drive Change,” which employs previously incarcerated youth, teaching food preparation as well as providing positions in their award-winning culinary vehicle in…

On the release of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's latest dietary guidelines, The Washington Post looks back at the man responsible for starting it all: William Olin Atwater, Class of 1865 and later a chemistry professor at Wesleyan, who authored the very first dietary guidelines in 1894. According to the Post, at that time, the U.S. government provided basically no funding into nutritional research, and good nutrition meant simply getting enough to eat. But Atwater was a firm believer that nutrition was about more than simply staving off hunger. He framed the effort to figure out what foods are good for you as a moral…

Gary Yohe, the Huffington Foundation Professor of Economics and Environmental Studies, appeared on the RT show "Boom Bust" to discuss the impact of climate change on business and the economy. (Yohe's interview begins at 3:45). He was asked what sectors of the economy are being affected the most by the forces of climate change. "Agriculture comes to mind. It's not just hurricanes and extreme precipitation events—although that seems to be happening along the East Coast. Any [real estate or] infrastructure that's located near the coast line or near a river, for that matter, is in increasing vulnerability. But it's more than that. It's [...] agriculture,…

A hundred years ago, Christmas in Russia looked a lot like Christmas in America, with trees, presents and twinkling lights. All that changed with the Russian revolution, Assistant Professor of History Victoria Smolkin-Rothrock told NPR in an interview about the history of the Yolka, or New Year's tree. "The tree comes to be seen as a symbol of both the bourgeois order, which is one kind of class enemy, and of religion in particular, which is another kind of class enemy," explains Smolkin-Rothrock. "There are very explicit statements that essentially unmask the Christmas tree for the class symbol that it is. It becomes clear that one does not…

The campaign season so far has seen a significant increase in the volume of GOP presidential ads, and an explosion in advertising by super PACs and other outside groups. Outside groups sponsored 81 percent of ads between January 1–December 9, 2015—a 71 percent increase over 2011, and 12,000 percent increase over 2007. This was the finding of an analysis by the Wesleyan Media Project, its first of the 2016 election cycle. The "remarkable growth in campaign activity by independent groups" it found was covered by The Washington Post, NPR, The Wall Street Journal, Reuters, USA Today, Vox and others. Notably, the report found little…

The historic global deal on climate change reached by 190 countries in Paris will help the economy, not hurt it as critics argue, writes Huffington Foundation Professor of Economics and Environmental Studies Gary Yohe in an op-ed in The Hartford Courant. "The evidence in the peer-reviewed economic literature, as well as real experience around the world and in the United States, shows that climate action not only protects public health by reducing pollution, but also protects the economy from extreme weather shocks and other complications that have and will arise from a changing climate. The sooner we act, the more money…

PBS Newshour Features Wesleyan’s Posse Veteran Scholars

Chronicle Publishes Excerpt from Crosby’s New Memoir

President Roth Discusses Liberal Education on Essential Pittsburgh

Matesan Writes on Why ISIS Will Not Thrive in Indonesia

Ulysse: ‘Ode to Haiti’s Neo-Comedians’

LA Times Features New Dramatic Oratorio by Neely Bruce

Lubell ’98, Lexton ’08, Marcus ’13 on Top National Noteworthy Lists

Washington Post Reports on Atwater’s Contributions to U.S. Dietary Guidelines

Gary Yohe Discusses Impact of Climate Change on Economy

Victoria Smolkin-Rothrock on the History of the Russian New Year’s Tree

The Wesleyan Media Project Finds More Campaign Advertising with Little Impact

Yohe Writes: Climate Change Pact Good for Economy