Wellesley in the News
As the leading women’s college, Wellesley’s faculty, students, and alumnae are featured in national and international media on a daily basis. Below is just a sampling of the extensive press coverage generated by Wellesley.
Mathematics professor Ismar Volic pens an op-ed about how immigrants are ambassadors for values of tolerance and diversity, and what impact that has on the rest of the world. "President Trump and his administration on immigration are shortsighted and fundamentally ignorant of the world and all that ails it. The planned border wall, travel bans, the separation of immigrant children from parents ... these are not only designed to condition generations of immigrants to subservience and fear, but are also poised to suffocate the voice of multiculturalism that so many of us have acquired here and carry back to our countries."
President Paula A. Johnson joins Deqo Mohamed, a Somali doctor who helps run a 400-bed hospital in a refugee camp west of Mogadishu, on the BBC's The Conversation to discuss women's health and wellbeing, and how it is central to women's equality.
In an op-ed, Stacie E. Goddard discusses the tensions and game of chicken between China and the United States this past week in the South China Sea, and what may be next for China and current global institutions.
As part of an article on why people are delaying retirement and claiming their Social Security benefits later in life, Courtney Coile's research is cited, which found that the percent of those aged 62 to 64 were working in 1990, 38 percent, rose in 2017 to 53 percent.
Leigh Gilmore pens an op-ed about the confirmation hearings for Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, and in the wake of sexual assault allegations, the echoes of Anita Hill's testimony against Justice Clarence Thomas in 1991. "Imagine if Anita Hill or Christine Blasey Ford expressed anger? What if they had behaved with the same sense of aggrieved entitlement?" she asks.
Vertebrate paleontologist Emily Buchholtz recent research on how the evolution of the spine fueled the rise of mammals—and human back problems. "It shows how mammals ended up with a backbone that 'can evolve in pieces and respond to different selective pressures at different places along the column,' Buchholtz discussed.
Wellesley College joined the New School's New University in Exile Consortium, which seeks to build intellectual links among refugee scholars and their host institutions. Professor Nazan Bedirhanoglu shares her story of being banned from public service in Turkey after signing a petition calling on the government to resume peace talks with Kurdish groups. "Speaking truth in Turkey means you are going to end up in jail," Bedirhanoglu told NPR.
Julie Norem discusses how people enjoy being optimistic more than pessimistic. “They enjoy the confidence of thinking that everything is going to work, and so that can be motivating. It can lead people to potentially try something they might not try otherwise, because they’re so positive and sure that it’s going to work.”
Research from economics professor Kristin Butcher found that work requirements on low-income benefits will hurt poor families, citing that it would be difficult for many low-income adults to find steady work under the new rules, thanks to instability in the low-skill job market.
