Professors on the Election

Several of our professors have been called upon by the mainstream media in the past few weeks to talk about the election:

• Anthropology/AFAM Professor Gina Ulysse on Michelle Obama as an exceptional model of a professional black woman in the Hartford Courant.
• Psychology Professor Scott Plous on how biases affect perception, as evidenced in this year's election season, in the Philadelphia Inquirer.
• Government Professor Elvin Lim and History/American Studies Professor Claire Potter suggesting what President-elect Obama should add to his reading list, in Inside Higher Ed.

Profs Price and Foyle on the VP Debates

Government Professors Douglas Foyle and Melanye Price comment in the Hartford Courant on the performances of Senator Joe Biden and Governor Sarah Palin in last night's VP debates:

Wesleyan's Douglas Foyle said Biden "gave an excellent statement on the Wall Street bailout plan ... showing off his experience. He was able to effectively weave in Obama's clear criteria for the bailout, criticism of the Bush administration and a strong indication of his knowledge on the subject."

..."Joe Biden knows foreign policy much better than Palin, and you could tell that in the debate," Wesleyan's Melanye Price said.

..."Palin was very effective" on the economy, Douglas Foyle said, by "hitting themes of the McCain message: greed and corruption on Wall Street, reform and their positions as mavericks."

...But her answer on nuclear weapons and intervention "started to become confused and began to take her down the path of her previous stumbles in recent interviews," Wesleyan's Douglas Foyle said.

...There's no 'Saturday Night Live' gold here," said Wesleyan University's Douglas Foyle. "Palin performed well above expectations. Her performance should quiet concerns about her credibility among voters leaning toward the Republicans."

..."Palin won in terms of style," Wesleyan's Melanye Price said. "She has a real ability to deliver points that sound positive, and she does it with a smile."

Read the full commentary here:
Hartford Courant: Judging the Delivery

Professor Lim on Anti-Intellectualism in Politics

Professor Elvin Lim, author of The Anti-Intellectual Presidency, explores the appeal of anti-intellectual politicians in America, along with Professor Daniel Drezner of Tufts:

Professor Striegel-Moore on Eating Disorders

Psychology Professor Ruth Striegel-Moore's study on eating disorders was cited in a Newsweek article on the topic last week:

Of the 10 million women and 1 million men who do cope with anorexia and bulimia in this country, it is true that the majority of those documented are white. But in some cases, minorities have been excluded from samples because of this assumption—and experts say the "white girl" stereotype discourages men and minorities from coming forward. One study, by Wesleyan psychologist Ruth Striegel-Moore, found that black girls who do suffer from eating disorders are less likely to seek treatment. "I know stories of African-American women who've gone in to see a physician, with all the symptoms of an eating disorder, and the doctor says, 'That's a white girl's disease'," says Cynthia Bulik, an eating-disorder specialist at the University of North Carolina. "That persisting stigma can make people uncomfortable."

Yohe on Greening the Global Economy

Economics professor Gary Yohe was quoted in the NY Times in an article about how rising fuel costs are muzzling the globalized economy and long-distance trade:

"If we think about the Wal-Mart model, it is incredibly fuel-intensive at every stage, and at every one of those stages we are now seeing an inflation of the costs for boats, trucks, cars,” said Naomi Klein, the author of “The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism.”

“That is necessarily leading to a rethinking of this emissions-intensive model, whether the increased interest in growing foods locally, producing locally or shopping locally, and I think that’s great.”

...“Being green is in their best interests not so much in making money as saving money,” said Gary Yohe, an environmental economist at Wesleyan University. “Green companies are likely to be a permanent trend, as these vulnerabilities continue, but it’s going to take a long time for all this to settle down.”

NY Times: Shipping Costs Start to Crimp Globalization

Basinger on Godard

Well-published Film Studies chairwoman Jeanine Basinger reviewed a new book in the NY Times this week about the legacy of seminal French filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard - a good read for film buffs/people who want to sound educated about the French New Wave and such.

NYTimes: Creating a Wave and Riding it to Film's Pantheon: The Life and Work of Jean-Luc Godard

Slotkin on Gun Ownership

The Atlantic Monthly looks into its archives for some context on the Supreme Court's monumental decision this past week on gun ownership in D.C. v. Heller. In case you missed it, the Supreme Court ruled that Washington, D.C.'s longtime strict ban on private handgun ownership, meant to combat gun violence, violates the Second Amendment right to bear arms. Big deal!

One of the relevant articles dredged up is our own Professor Richard Slotkin's important 2000 review of Arming America, a book about the cultural significance of America's historical relationship with guns. Blogger Andrew Sullivan excerpts a section on his blog:

The militia issue highlights a critical difference in the way American and European cultures permit violence. American culture has tended, from the eighteenth century on, to assign an extraordinary value to individual rights, desires, and property. So we came to treat weapons, and the right to use them, as we treat all forms of private property—granting the widest possible latitude of action to the owner.

Our self-defense statutes are more permissive than those of any other industrialized nation. Under English law if a person menaced with deadly force is able to flee, he is obliged to do so. American laws since the Jacksonian period have typically declared that a man may defend himself with deadly force when he has a credible belief that he is menaced with deadly force. Under this rule a Louisiana man was acquitted in 1993 after having shot an unarmed Japanese exchange student who came to his door looking for a Halloween party.

I doubt that many Wesleyan students are gun owners, but this is an interesting read regardless of your NRA status.

Links
- Atlantic: Guns Out of Control- Ashley Johnson
- Atlantic: The Fall Into Guns - Richard Slotkin

Prof. Potter featured in Inside Higher Ed blog

The sharp eyes of Ben Cohen '10 noticed that Professor and Chair of the American Studies Department, Claire Potter, was featured today in an article on the Inside Higher Ed blog. In "Tenure as a Tarnished Brass Ring," Scott Jaschik refers to Potter's recent blog posting on the troubles of the tenure system:

Claire B. Potter has a level of academic success many young Ph.D.’s these days can only dream about. A professor of history and chair of American studies at Wesleyan University, she has tenure at an elite college. Tenure provides her not only with job security, but with part of her identity as the blogger Tenured Radical, where she shares views on a range of topics, writing with the freedom that tenure is supposed to protect.

So why would Potter recently have approached her provost to inquire about the possibility of trading in tenure for a renewable contract?

Why, indeed? Read the article and find out some things about tenure that you've probably never thought about.

Wesleyan professors' books reviewed in NYT

The New York Times is good for more than telling us how rich Yale is. As Ashik Siddique '10 noticed, the Times also reviewed two books by Wesleyan professors this weekend.

Chair of the Film Department Jeanine Basinger's recent book The Star Machine appeared twice this weekend:

• Hot Properties
• When the Studios Called the Shots, and the Close-Ups

Also, an article called Cartoon Villains reviewed Islamophobia: Making Muslims the Enemy, by Professor of Religion Peter Gottschalk and Wes alumnus Gabriel Greenberg (see right).

While checking out these reviews for myself, I also came across the Times' Education Life section. I haven't read any of it yet, but it looks interesting and has features on campus protests, summer internships, and S.D.S..