August 29, 2016 | WFU News & Communications
The WFU News Center Media Report for Aug. 20-26 is now available online.
August 22, 2016 | Inside Higher Ed
President Nathan O. Hatch wrote this opinion piece to share with the campus audience, but the message was too great not to spread further. America today is similar to 1968, he writes, full of heightened racial tension and repeated incidents of violence against the backdrop of an overheated political season. What can college leaders do?
Hatch describes four call to action points:
He ends with this. “In 1963, Martin Luther King Jr. implored those who would listen. ‘Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that,” he said. “Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.” As we – on our campuses and in America in general – walk through what feels like another dark hour, let us be people who carry the light and let us be people who choose to love.”
August 22, 2016 | The Washington Post
With its use of modern warfare from trenches to submarines, World War I claimed millions of lives and drastically changed the geopolitical structure. But the war also rocked Western culture, from altering the status of women to sparking new artistic movements such as Dada and surrealism. America, which suffered relatively fewer casualties than Europe, was regarded as somewhat impervious to these seismic shifts in the artistic realm. The beginning of a distinctive American art severed from Europe is usually dated to or around World War II, roughly with the rise of Abstraction.
David M. Lubin, a professor of art history at Wake Forest and a curator of a forthcoming exhibition on World War I and American art at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, seeks to upend this narrative. His book, “Grand Illusions,” comes in the wake of a reappraisal of the Great War’s affect on American culture.
August 22, 2016 | TIME
It would seem like a given. After a police officer’s body camera captures a fatal shooting, law enforcement should release the footage of the incident to the public in the interest of transparency and accountability. But rarely does it happen that seamlessly.
“There are all kinds of reasons why a police department might not want to release it right away,” says Kami Chavis, a professor of law who studies police accountability. “The key is to developing a comprehensive policy, because you have to balance all of those competing interests.”
August 22, 2016 | USA Today
Wake Forest gets a mention in this slide show presentation on presidential debates as the site for the first presidential debate between George H. W. Bush and Michael Dukakis on Sept. 25, 1988.
August 22, 2016 | WFU News & Communications
The WFU News Center Media Report for Aug. 6-19 is now available online.
August 8, 2016 | The Huffington Post
We knew it was coming. The runaway hit musical, Hamilton has been popping up everywhere, from Colbert to Carpool Karaoke. Hillary even delivered a line from Lin-Manuel Miranda’s masterpiece at the Democratic National Convention. Now, Hamilton has officially infiltrated the college application process. Launch operation #App4Ham.
Brought to us by North Carolina’s Wake Forest University, whose supplement is available through the recently launched Common Application, the prompt is essentially a refreshed version of the what-prominent-person-in-history-would-you-most-want-to-have-dinner-with concept. The prompt itself reads:
Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Broadway musical Hamilton has become a cultural phenomenon. It weaves together history with rap and hip hop through the often overlooked story of Alexander Hamilton. Choose an unsung historical figure who deserves the “Hamilton” treatment. (75-150 words)
The prompt joins eight other short answer questions on Wake Forest’s 2016-17 supplement. Will this quirky query inspire students to write day and night like they’re running out of time? We’ll see if admissions officers are satisfied with the answers once acceptances are doled out for the Class of 2021.
Gurl.com also covered this story.
August 8, 2016 | The New York Times
In this video, Andy Chan participated in this panel discussion on Planning to Thrive: Find a Job; Make a Difference to talk about transforming career planning services on college campuses.
Black Enterprise also covered this topic, citing the panel discussion and quoting Chan. The number one best practice for using your campus’s Career Services office? Recognize that developing post-graduation plans – whether for work or graduate school – takes time. Chan didn’t say it was number one, but the idea of giving the process time was eye-opening – and it undergirds all of his recommendations.
We live in an instantaneous, need-it-yesterday culture. But is that the way to approach your first job after college? “No,” Chan says, “this is not a transactional process, so don’t expect immediate results.”
August 8, 2016 | The Huffington Post
Wouldn’t you agree that the losing litigant in a trial rife with falsities and error – from an imposter judge to undeniable anti-Semitism – deserves an appeal? U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg does. That’s why at the intersection of the 500th anniversary of the formation of the Jewish Ghetto in Venice and the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death, she was hearing arguments in a mock appeal in the case of Shylock, the hard-hearted moneylender from Shakespeare’s controversial comedy, “The Merchant of Venice.”
The judicial panel hearing the arguments include Justice Ginsburg, Wake Forest Law professor Richard Schneider and U.S. Ambassador to Italy John R. Philips.
“This is the kind of thing that only happens once,” Schneider said in a story original to the School of Law’s website.
The New York Times also covered this story.
August 8, 2016 | Smithsonian Magazine
It’s estimated the Amazon basin holds 16,000 tree species and about 390 billion individual trees. Half of those trees, however come from just 227 hyperdominant species. About 6,000 of those species have only 1,000 individuals or less, which would automatically place them on the endangered list – that is, if researchers could locate them.
It’s a phenomenon Wake Forest researcher Miles Silman dubs “dark bioversity.”
“Just like physicists’ models tell them that dark matter accounts for much of the universe, our models tell us that species too rare to find account for much of the planet’s biodiversity,” Silman said. “That’s a real problem for conservation, because the species at the greatest risk of extinction may disappear before we ever find them.”
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