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With the Israel-Hamas war escalating, local advocates for American citizens trapped in southern Gaza are expanding efforts to get them out as humanitarian conditions deteriorate. Among them is Ramona Okumura, who has dedicated her life to designing and building prosthetic limbs for children. She volunteered as part of a relief program in Gaza the day Hamas attacked Israel, said her niece, Leah Okumura, professor of biology.  

The new federal aid form coincides with a revised funding formula, which is expected to increase aid to most students, especially those from lower-income families, according to a recent report from the Brookings Institution, a nonprofit research organization. The formula expands eligibility to families who earned more than the previous threshold and will provide more funds for students who were eligible for less than the maximum amount, said Phillip Levine, a Wellesley College economics professor who co-authored the Brookings report.

Selwyn Cudjoe, professor of Africana studies, spoke about art and culture in West Africa and the Caribbean at a lecture delivered at the Pa Gya! A Literary Festival in Accra, Ghana.

During an interview on the Jimmy Fallon, Fallon and Bad Bunny mentioned American studies professor Petra Rivera-Rideau's seminar on Bad Bunny (which he would like to take!). Wellesley mention begins at approximately 4:00.

When war broke out in Ukraine last year, Federal Reserve officials were quick to speak about it. “Many of the impacts of the horrific events and what we’re seeing at the moment are beyond the economic ones,” Susan Collins, the current president and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, said during an event hosted at Wellesley College earlier this month. Nevertheless, the conflict is something the Fed will take into account in its models that help officials make policy decisions, she said.

This year marks two decades since the Boston Women's Memorial was installed. Visitors are now able to scan a QR code on each of the statues and hear the words written by the three women read aloud by three local women leaders. It's called the Talking Statues project and Nancy Hall, senior lecturer emerita in Spanish, did a translation for the project. 

"We need more Black biographies....Yale University Press’s new “Black Lives” series seeks to address this hard truth. Over time, it plans to publish a set of biographies of remarkable but overlooked Black figures. Fittingly, the first in this series is R.J.M. Blackett’s book on the abolitionist, newspaper editor, and minister Samuel Ringgold Ward," writes Kellie Carter Jackson, professor of Africana studies.

Is Taylor Swift about to be in her ‘overexposed’ era? Tracy Gleason, the chair and professor of psychology at Wellesley College and an author of a paper on parasocial relationships thinks the fans at the Giants game who booed her ad, for instance, might have done so because she’s dating a player on a rival team. “Who knows, though,” she added. “Maybe they are Swifties but just want to keep each of the things they enjoy in their own lane: Taylor belongs on the stage and football belongs in the arena.” 

Seminars have been dedicated to Bad Bunny at Wellesley College, the City University of New York, and Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. You can consult part of its teaching program, compiled by the professors of the genre Vanessa Diaz and Petra Rivera-Rideau.