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For young queer pop fans, this summer was a dream come true. As Kaleb Goldschmitt, ethnomusicologist and popular-music scholar, says: “Boy, I wish I had something like that when I was young.”

Americans agree politics is broken − surveys show Americans do not believe the political system is serving them. Wellesley College professor Ismar Volić, a mathematician of democracy, highlights evidence-based changes that could improve matters without tearing the nation apart.

Phil Levine, a professor of economics at Wellesley College, said that the decreases in Indiana state aid are likely to be especially felt by lower-income students, who saw no substantial increases to their Pell awards with the changes to FAFSA. Meanwhile, the increases to Pell for middle-income students will essentially be canceled out by the proposed cuts.

“It’s OK to work for a dream, and it’s OK to cry and lament when that dream is deferred. But we never stop working toward a goal of justice and liberation,” writes Africana studies professor Kellie Carter Jackson about talking to her kids about the election.

Jocelyn Benson '99, Michigan’s secretary of state, fought to restore trust in an election system Trump attacked, only to see it lead to the restoration of a man and a movement that seemed the opposite of almost everything she believes in. As disappointed as she might have been by the national result, her faith in democracy compelled her to accept it. “The will of the people will stand,” she said. “Whatever it is.”

4B is a radical feminist movement that started in South Korea and encourages the rejection of heterosexual dating, marriage and sex, as well as childbirth. According to Katharine Moon, a political science professor emerita at Wellesley College, the biggest difference between budding ideas for what the 4B movement could look like in the United States and what has already existed in South Korea is the centrality of marriage.

At the intersection of education and democracy, college presidents are leading efforts to empower the next generation of engaged citizens... This fall, Wellesley College will offer all sophomores a yearlong program focused on active citizenship and global challenges through the College’s new Hillary Rodham Clinton Center for Citizenship, Leadership, and Democracy.

The Boston Globe gives an outstanding review of the first play in The Ufot Family Cycle by Mfoniso Udofia '06: "It‘s impossible to watch 'Sojourners' without thinking of the late August Wilson, who had a strong working relationship with the Huntington... Wilson’s goal was to capture the complexity and variety of the Black experience. I think he’d find a lot to admire in 'Sojourners,' and in Udofia."

The Ufot Family Cycle is a story of family, spanning generations, cultures and continents, and a production bringing together many partners, including greater Boston theater companies and the Prior Performance Arts Center at the College of the Holy Cross. And it begins with the pen and life experience of Mfoniso Udofia ’06, award-winning playwright, first-generation Nigerian-American raised in the Worcester area.