WFU in the news: Aug. 12-18, 2024

FEATURED NEWS

Shell oil non-profit donated to anti-climate groups behind Project 2025
By Geoff Dembicki | The Guardian
A US foundation associated with oil company Shell has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to religious right and conservative organizations, many of which deny that climate change is a crisis, tax records reveal. “Shell has every reason to want to maintain close relationships with organizations that wield outsize political influence and just happen to reliably support the interests of the fossil fuel industry,” said philosophy professor Adrian Bardon, who has studied the religious right and climate denialism. – 8/15/2024

NATIONAL & INTERNATIONAL

Katy Harriger receives the 2024 APSA Distinguished Teaching Award
By Clarissa Nogueira | Political Science Now
Across her 38-year career, politics professor Katy Harriger has established an impressive record as an innovative and impactful educator, both within and well beyond her own classroom. She has established a legacy of teaching innovation at Wake Forest University by creating institutions that advocate for high-impact teaching and learning practices. – 8/16/2024

US has its first national strategy to reduce plastic pollution − 3 strong points and 1 big gap
By Sarah J. Morath | The Conversation
The U.S. plan calls for developing strategies to “replace, reduce, and phase out unnecessary use and purchase of plastic products by the Federal Government,” including an end to the purchase of single-use plastic items by 2035. Although this action applies only to use by federal agencies, the U.S. government is the largest single purchaser of goods and services in the world, so this step can send a powerful signal in favor of alternative products. – 8/16/2024

Experts alarmed by Trump plot to ‘weaponize’ DOJ by mass firing career officials
By Marina Villeneuve | Salon
Trump’s expected focus on loyalty above all as a requirement for his new administration could weaken the power and competence of federal agencies, according to law professor Sidney Shapiro. “If loyalty really is the watchword, then competence isn’t, and that’s a really scary prospect for everything the government does right now, whether it’s delivering the mail or Social Security,” Shapiro told Salon. – 8/15/2024

‘Hum So the Devil Doesn’t Hear You: Rural Black Southern Political Existences as the Otherwise’
By Clarissa Nogueira | Political Science Now
Claire B. Crawford, assistant professor in the Department of Politics and International Affairs and the Program in African American Studies, has been awarded an APSA Diversity and Inclusion Advancing Research Grant for Early Career Scholars. Her current book project, “Hum So the Devil Doesn’t Hear You: Southern Black Rural Political Existences in the Otherwise,” is an interdisciplinary study that attempts to deeply understand how we can consider possibilities of democratic engagement as practiced in the murmurs, breaks of speech and hums of Black rural Southern life. – 8/13/2024

Eliminate the penny and nickel
By Dan Reider | The Columbia Star
Economics professor Robert Whaples said, “There’s no real lobby to get rid of the penny. There is a lobby to not get rid of the penny.” Whaples has said for many years that the penny should be retired and thought this would have occurred by now adding, “I would not be surprised if it does not go away during my lifetime, at this point.” – 8/15/2024

How to use – and not use – AI in saving for retirement
By Kerry Hannon | Yahoo Finance
“AI could be good for identifying investor blind spots with respect to some financial knowledge, but not specific asset and fund recommendations,” said professor Mark Johnson, an investments and portfolio management fellow. “For example, if you use ChatGPT and ask it ‘attributes of a good mutual fund,’ it will provide some good suggestions for items to look out for,” he said. “But there are many limitations to relying on AI for investment management because ‘one size fits all’ fits no one.” – 8/17/2024

HCA pushed out providers, downgraded care after acquiring Mission Health
By Susanna Vogel | Yahoo Finance
A new working draft study out of Wake Forest University is the most comprehensive analysis of the personnel crisis at Mission Hospital to date. The report, written by law professor Mark Hall, reaches three conclusions about what happened after HCA’s purchase. “I think one question I would have as a member of the community is to what extent HCA and the hospital administration is willing to own up to this accumulation of very troubling indicators,” Hall said. – 8/16/2024

REGIONAL & TRADE

Committee report finds mixed feelings on WFU’s response to pro-Palestine protests
By Amy Diaz | WFDD-FM (Winston-Salem, NC)
The After Action Review Committee, made up of six faculty and staff members, offered four recommendations for the University moving forward. In a letter to the Wake Forest community, President Susan Wente wrote that she accepted the recommendations. “Freedom of expression and academic freedom, including the right to demonstrate, are foundational to our academic mission,” Wente said. “I am confident that the Committee’s recommendations will further improve how the University prepares for and responds to future demonstrations.” – 8/19/2024

LOCAL

Wake Forest releases new policy on protests after pro-Palestine demonstrations
By Connor McNeely | Winston-Salem Journal
More than three months after Wake Forest University administrators cleared a pro-Palestinian encampment on campus and ended a period of small but intense protests, the university has released a new policy that restricts where, when and how anyone working or learning at the university can protest. – 8/18/2024

Learn about African history and see unique artifacts in Winston-Salem this week
By Carolyn Conte | WXII-TV (Winston Salem, NC)
Professor Andrew Gurstelle, director of the Lam Museum at Wake Forest, talks with WXII about the museum’s exhibition, “To Be Seen: Documenting the Art of the Ivory Coast.” The exhibit encourages visitors to consider the role of the curator between the artist and the viewer through the exhibition of objects, unfinished works, tools, and photographs from the Ivory Coast. The exhibition runs through Aug. 24. –  8/12/2024

Innovative approach to affordable housing in Winston-Salem met with skepticism
By Scott Sexton | Winston-Salem Journal
Law professor Steve Vigil and Dan Rose of Housing Justice Now are both members of a new, nonprofit limited liability corporation established to guide the affordable housing project. Each of five residents would pay up to $400 a month, and in exchange, they would build modest (and portable) nest eggs with a ceiling of $2,000 or $3,000. “It looks like equity,” said Vigil, the secretary of the Spring Street Co-op. “So when they can leave with it or have it (go) to someone in their lives. It builds wealth over time.” – 8/16/2024