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The Power of Poetry in a Pandemic and Time of Social Injustice
Amanda Gorman captured hearts and imaginations across the nation when she performed her poem “The Hill We Climb” at the inauguration of President Joe Biden. While Jennifer Lopez’s stirring rendition of “This Land Is Our Land” and Garth Brooks’ “Amazing Grace” were performed to great acclaim, there was something special about the Inaugural Youth Poet Laureate’s recitation. Villanova University professor of Creative Writing and Luckow Family Chair in English, Lisa Sewell, PhD., talks about the cultural impact of poetry in times of turmoil, like the political and social uncertainty brought on by an attack on the US Capitol combined with a global pandemic. “Poetry is something people turn to in times of crisis -- and the pandemic and the ways it has made all of us face the grave inequities of our society has been an extended, seemingly endless crisis” said Dr. Sewell. “Amanda Gorman’s poem was powerful because she put a name to what so many people were feeling about the insurrection that occurred on January 6.” According to Dr. Sewell, poets like Alice Quinn, the former poetry editor of The New Yorker, have already edited a collection of “pandemic” poetry, demonstrating how artists take inspiration from and create art in reaction to what’s going on in their lives—to connect to others who may be experiencing the same complicated emotions. “In my poetry writing class, I talk to my students about how poets often try to say the impossible and write about experiences and ideas that are difficult to understand and difficult to put into words,” says Sewell. “What makes poetry powerful is the gesture, the effort to find the language that is adequate to the uncertainty and ambiguity of experience—and this seems true especially now.” The task of putting experiences into words that connect with a wide audience is not an easy one, especially with so much content competing for attention in 2021. So what it is about poetry in particular that makes it appropriate for this moment? Dr. Sewell suggests that the metaphorical language of poetry, as opposed to the certainty of prose or dialogue, hits home right now. She adds, “when the future is uncertain and the ‘before’ time seems hazier and hazier, poems are somehow both clear and direct with every word deliberately chosen, and also ambiguous and strange enough to speak to our sense of peril and uncertainty. Poems can both express our fears and also gesture towards the ways language is inadequate.” To speak with Dr. Lisa Sewell, email mediaexperts@villanova.edu
Survival analysis: Forecasting lifespans of patients and products
How long will you live? Should you spring for that AppleCare+ warranty for your iPhone? When will your buddy pay you back for that lunch? For centuries, soothsayers have striven to understand the lifespan of things – be they patient longevity, product lifecycles, or even time to loan default. Nowadays, scientists have turned away from reading tea leaves and toward survival analysis – a complex data science method for predicting not only whether an event will happen (the death of a patient, the failure of a product or machine, default on a payment, and so on) but when this event is likely to occur. But it’s problematic. Until now, the tools of survival analysis have only been applicable in certain settings. This is due to the inherent heterogeneity of what is being analyzed: differences in patient lifestyles, demographics, product usage patterns, and so on. New research by Goizueta Business School’s Donald Lee, associate professor of information systems and operations management and of biostatistics and bioinformatics, has yielded a new tool that greatly extends survival analysis to broader use cases. “Historically, scientists have used classic survival analysis tools to predict the lifespan of different things in different fields, from products to patients,” Lee said. “Since the 1950s, the Kaplan-Meier estimator has been the benchmark for analyzing lifetime data, particularly in clinical trials. The next breakthrough came in the 1970s when the Cox proportional hazards model was introduced, which allows researchers to incorporate variables that can affect the predictability of things like patient mortality.” The problem with the existing survival analysis tools, Lee said, is that they make certain assumptions that can skew the predictions if the assumptions are not met. “There are very few existing tools that can incorporate variables without imposing assumptions on how they affect survival, let alone when there are a lot of variables that can also change over time. For example, two iPhones will have different lifespans depending on the temperature at which they are stored, amongst many other factors. But it’s unlikely that storing your phone at 30 degrees will halve its lifespan compared to storing it at 60 degrees. This sort of linear relationship is commonly assumed by existing tools.” Lee’s team developed a new survival methodology based on something called gradient boosting: a machine learning technique that combines decision trees to yield predictions. The method, Lee said, is totally assumption-free (or nonparametric in technical parlance) and can deal with a large number of variables that can change continuously over time, making it significantly more general than existing methods. Nothing like it has been seen until now, he noted. “Calculating the survival rate of anything is super complex because of the variables. Say you want to create an app for a smart watch that monitors the wearer’s vitals and use this information to create a real-time warning indicator for stroke. Doing this accurately is difficult for two reasons,” Lee explained. “First, a large number of variables may be relevant to stroke risk, and the variables can interact in ways that break the assumptions central to existing survival analysis methods. And second, variables like blood pressure vary over time, and it is the recent measurements that are most informative. This introduces an additional time dimension that further complicates things.” The software implementation of Lee’s method, BoXHED, overcomes both issues and allows scientists to develop real-time predictive models for conditions like stroke. The trained model can then be ported to a watch app to tell its wearer if and when they’re likely to have a stroke, a process known as inferencing in machine learning lingo. The implications, Lee said, are huge. “BoXHED now opens the door for modern applications of survival analysis. In previous research, I have looked at the design of early warning mortality indicators for patients with advanced cancer and also for patients in the ICU. These use other methods to make predictions at fixed points in time, but now they can be transformed into real-time warning indicators using BoXHED.” He cited the case of end-stage cancer patients who are often better served by hospice care than by aggressive therapy. “Accurate predictions of survival are absolutely critical for care planning. In previous analyses, we have seen that using existing predictive models to inform end-of-life care planning can potentially avert $1.9 million in medical costs and 1,600 days of unnecessary inpatient care per 1,000 patient visits in the United States. BoXHED is likely to lead to even better results.” Lee’s research paper is forthcoming in the Annals of Statistics. He has also created an open-source software implementation of BoXHED, which can radically improve the accuracy of survival analysis across a breadth of applications. The paper describing BoXHED was published in the International Conference on Machine Learning, and the latest version of the BoXHED software can be found online. If you are a journalist or looking to speak with Donald Lee – simply click on his icon now to arrange an interview or appointment today.
What Does the GameStop Buying Spree Tell Us?
Villanova School of Business assistant professor Keith Wright was in the chat rooms when individual investors were discussing pumping up the GameStop stock and forcing the hedge fund shorts to have to cover, losing millions of dollars. "At the time, David was clearly beating Goliath," says Wright, adding that some of the young people on Reddit had done extremely well. "They made significant money on their investments. Some of them were a little late; you don’t want to be the last one in who takes the position at the top." He adds, "I have a feeling that this may actually be something revolutionary, and we're seeing the bottom of the pyramid—which is Generation Z, the Millennials, the Robin Hood investors—really changing the game." "Going forward, you've got this group that's collaborating, and that makes them extremely powerful," says Wright. "If they all follow each other into a position, they can really move markets in any direction they choose... Are they powerful enough as a group to defeat the hedge funds? Now, maybe they win this battle and they lose the war. Or maybe they win this battle and they decide to try a couple of others. This is not the only occurrence; this is one stock, but it's happening in a couple of other positions as well." As to whether a group of people should have this type of an effect on the stock market, Wright suggests that maybe it's a good thing. "We live in an economy where wealth is very unbalanced. You have a lot of people at the very top who are doing extremely well. But there is some inequity, and these short sellers used to crush the average retail investor, but no longer. Maybe this will create some equity, and maybe it will even the playing field a little bit."
A selection of 30 films celebrating the past 20 years of Japanese cinema streams online throughout the U.S. on Japan Society’s virtual cinema, including films by Hirokazu Kore-eda, Naomi Kawase and Takashi Miike Plus, online U.S. premieres of Sion Sono’s Red Post on Escher Street and Yukiko Mishima’s Shape of Red, a special focus on Kiyoshi Kurosawa and a selection of breakout films by up-and-coming filmmakers Red Post on Escher Street © 2021 “Red Post on Escher Street” Film Partners Japan Society and the Agency for Cultural Affairs, Government of Japan (ACA), in collaboration with the Visual Industry Promotion Organization (VIPO), announce the inaugural ACA Cinema Project online film series 21st Century Japan: Films from 2001-2020, streaming nationwide on Japan Society’s Virtual Cinema from February 5-25, 2021. As Japan’s film industry enters the third decade of the new millennium, this 30-film online series takes a look back at the last 20 years of Japanese cinema to celebrate some of the most remarkable narrative fiction films and filmmakers that define the era. Covering a wide range of production styles and genres—from small budget independent debuts to festival favorites and award-winning major studio releases—this diverse slate of feature and short films offers a guided tour of modern Japanese cinema, including special spotlights dedicated to the work of Kiyoshi Kurosawa and a selection of breakout films by up-and-coming filmmakers. A large majority of the films included are streaming in the U.S. exclusively on Japan Society’s Virtual Cinema. Series highlights include the online U.S. Premiere of Red Post on Escher Street, the latest film by cult favorite director Sion Sono (Love Exposure, 2009)—a comically reflexive, wildly unhinged, return-to-roots feature about a talented young director undergoing the production of a new film. Red Post on Escher Street is co-presented with Grasshopper Film, who will screen the title in tandem with Japan Society as part of the newly launched Projectr Movie Club from February 5-18. In addition, director Yukiko Mishima’s female-driven romantic drama Shape of Red makes its online U.S. premiere—a steamy tearjerker about a tenuous love affair adapted from the novel by Naoki Prize-winning author Rio Shimamoto featuring popular stars Kaho and Satoshi Tsumabuki. Billed as “Special Screenings,” these titles are planned to include pre-recorded video Q&As with the respective film’s director. Other highlights include harder-to-see gems by some of Japan’s most internationally prominent filmmakers, including: Hirokazu Kore-eda’s 2009 Doona Bae-starring fantasy drama Air Doll; Naomi Kawase’s 2014 Cannes competition title and self-proclaimed masterpiece Still the Water; Takashi Miike’s 2005 family-friendly monster adventure film The Great Yokai War; Shinya Tsukamoto’s 2015 adaptation of Shohei Ooka’s famous anti-war novel Fires on the Plain; trailblazing gay director Ryosuke Hashiguchi’s 2001 LGBT-themed comedic drama Hush!; and the award-winning 2006 murder mystery drama Sway by Miwa Nishikawa, whose latest film Under the Open Sky (2020) premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival. “While it’s impossible to really capture the last two decades of Japanese narrative fiction filmmaking in its full breadth, we are excited to share at least the tip of the iceberg for these three weeks in February,” says K. F. Watanabe, Deputy Director of Film at Japan Society. “Online or otherwise, a large majority of these titles remain unavailable to watch with English subtitles in the U.S., so I hope this series provides an opportunity to create new fans of filmmakers such as Naoko Ogigami or Shuichi Okita and expand any preconceptions of what modern Japanese cinema can offer.” Katsura Toda, Senior Specialist for Arts and Culture at the Agency for Cultural Affairs, says, “The ACA Cinema Project was launched with the hope of sharing the diverse appeal of Japanese films to audiences around the world and to create more opportunities for these films to be seen. We are pleased to present U.S. audiences with the works of a great variety of directors—including well-established masters, filmmakers with distinctive voices and rising stars of the 21st century—and hope that many people will be able to encounter Japanese films in a fresh way.” $99 All-Access Passes with a 21-day rental window go on sale January 29 through February 4. $8 individual tickets with a 3-day rental window go on sale February 5. Individual tickets for Red Post on Escher Street and Shape of Red are $12. Japan Society members receive a 20% discount on all tickets via coupon code. All films screen online at japancuts.japansociety.org in Japanese with English subtitles unless otherwise noted. All titles available within the U.S. from February 5-25 unless sold out or otherwise noted. Titles also available beyond the U.S. are noted below. Lineup and other details are subject to change. For complete information visit japansociety.org. View the full film line-up here. Screeners available for most titles. Please send all press inquiries to Michael Lieberman at pr.lieberman@gmail.com. For inquiries regarding Japan Society and its Virtual Cinema, please contact Allison Rodman at arodman@japansociety.org.
Villanova Professor Discusses the Presidency and Future Use of Social Media
During his presidency, Donald Trump heavily utilized Twitter and other social media platforms as a key communication mechanism. But President Joe Biden’s use of social media will likely look very different according to Villanova University political science professor Matt Kerbel, PhD. “I think we’re going to see a return to something resembling normalcy in the way President Biden communicates with the public and runs his office,” says Dr. Kerbel. “President Trump was singular in his ability to use Twitter as a mouthpiece for his unfiltered thoughts because that was his brand and the basis for his campaign and presidency. Social media was an extension of his personality and a forum to amplify his message.” But President Biden’s campaign did not follow the same strategy. Dr. Kerbel predicts his social media use will vastly differ: “I expect President Biden to use social media to communicate his message of unity and publicize his plans and accomplishments. Expect a return to routine press conferences and planned media events along with social media outreach resembling what we’ve seen from the transition team.” Dr. Kerbel is an expert on political communication, including how politicians or political parties utilize traditional and new media. Due to his experience as a television and radio writer, researcher and author, he is frequently interviewed regarding politics and the media. He also writes political analyses for his blog, Wolves and Sheep.
How the Biden Administration Can Help Save the Planet
With the inauguration of Joseph R. Biden as the 46th president of the United States came a slew of executive orders—and perhaps most notably America's reentry into the Paris Climate Accord. After the Obama administration joined the largest global cooperative agreement to limit the emission of dangerously climate-altering greenhouse gasses in 2015, the U.S. withdrew in 2017 under former president Donald Trump. Villanova University biology professor Samantha Chapman, PhD, studies how "blue carbon" solutions, like the restoration of wetlands, can contribute to slowing the harmful impact of climate change on the planet. Recently, Dr. Chapman broke down the top three things the Biden administration must do to save the planet, since we are, as she puts it, "close to some scary tipping points." #1: Pressure Brazil’s President Bolsonaro to stop the devastation of the Amazon. "The Amazon Rainforest regulates our global climate. It is imperative that through diplomacy and aid, we incentivize developing countries to preserve their intact lands and biodiversity. We can't do this without helping local communities incentivize the people living in these places to save these lands. Road building in forests is a huge cause of our planet's downward slope." #2: Invest in restoration of natural ecosystems. "We must invest resources into coastal wetlands and forests, here and abroad. USAID could be partially retooled in partnership with the United Stated Geological Survey (USGS), which already does this. These natural ecosystems will serve as natural climate solutions and be harbors for threatened species and nice places for humans to recreate. We must restore the opportunity for nature to re-invoke the necessary feedbacks that make the ecosystems work. Sometimes this involves complicated engineering, sometimes it is simpler and means giving nature space to restore. We're trying both." #3: Find ways to make people feel connected to land and nature—and value it. "This is a vague one and not one that I'm sure any administration can do. The pandemic has given me hope on this—I see so many more people out hiking, fishing, walking, and hanging out in parks. When time comes for voting on taxes, people have to remember that these state parks and preserves and even neighborhood parks cost money to staff and preserve. The U.S. has incredible land and nature and yet, in my experience, Americans value and understand it less than other countries. Some of that has to do with our frontier history. We can learn from Native Americans. Appointing Representative Deb Haaland as the secretary of the interior is one good step the Biden administration has taken in this direction." Dr. Chapman emphasizes that despite the uphill battle ahead, she remains hopeful. "Left to heal and helped to heal, the ecosystem processes that sustain our lives and those of the other amazing organisms on our planet can be restored," she notes. "Good things are happening. They just need to happen at a much larger scale."
Last Friday, Georgia Southern officially opened its new Engineering and Research Building for students and researchers, a facility that will serve as the epicenter for engineering excellence and innovation in southeast Georgia. The building is designed to facilitate academic and institutional partnerships, inspire creative engineering and accelerate academic success for students in the College of Engineering and Computing. Through the instructional research labs and academic spaces that bridge theory and practice, students will be prepared to solve today’s challenges and to make tomorrow’s discoveries. “Today marks the culmination of years of forethought and investment from a number of state leaders, industry leaders and local advocates, who paved the way for us to be here,” said Georgia Southern President Kyle Marrero. “Leaders who, dating back to the 90s, could see the future of a growing industry, a state on the precipice of being a national leader in technology and innovation, and a critical need to develop talent in applied engineering across south Georgia.” The Engineering and Research Building’s sleek, contemporary environment defined by glass and natural light, soaring high-bay ceilings and modern, industrial feel is strengthened by new, industry-relevant equipment, instrumentation and technology that encourage active learning and sustainability. The highly efficient facility includes sustainable features that complements existing spaces on campus. The three-story building houses applied research spaces with a strong focus on manufacturing engineering, civil engineering, electrical and computer engineering, and mechanical engineering. The workspaces can be easily reconfigured for various uses, projects and applications and provide students with access to industry-grade equipment as well as expanded opportunities for undergraduate research. “The investment of the Engineering and Research Building solidifies Georgia Southern University’s commitment to students in providing a world-class education in the engineering field, while providing the space and resources necessary to facilitate such,” said student Kristifer Bell. “I am enthusiastic to continue my research work and look forward to the interdepartmental collaboration that will be encouraged through the housing of new student and faculty labs under one roof.” The full media release about this historic occasion is attached – and if you are a journalist looking to know more about this facility or Southern Georgia University -- simply reach out to Georgia Southern Director of Communications Jennifer Wise at jwise@georgiasouthern.edu to set and time and date.
Welcoming 2021: The Year of Resiliency
Happy New Year to all — may 2021 be a better and brighter year for everyone. It has been just over a year since I came to Japan Society as President and CEO, with a mandate to take the Society into the future while preserving its 113-year-old mission of building bridges between the U.S. and Japan. The pandemic has accelerated the pace of change for everyone, globally, nationally, locally, and within our own workplaces and households. Change is hard, but it is also necessary. In a recent email, my friend Parag Khanna wrote, “Our global system evolves the way humanity does, not through grand design or random accident but by adaptation to changing realities. The faster we react to an accelerating world, the better our chances of shaping the future to our benefit.” I’d like to speak to Parag’s point personally rather than geopolitically. The experience of leading a New York nonprofit during this time — an institution that is both deeply and historically embedded in onsite programming and tradition — has both clarified and strengthened my vision for Japan Society’s future. Bending Adversity If 2020 has forced us to prioritize, 2021 will be the year of resiliency. 2021 represents the year of the Ox in Japan, where the ox is considered an industrious, cautious, and faithful friend that is always glad to offer help. After the 2020 we’ve all had, we could use more faithful friends like the ox in 2021. We are looking toward 2021 as a year in which we as a society ultimately overcome COVID-19 through the efforts of scientists, frontline workers, and governments around the globe. We hope to see the world come together in a big way for the first time at the rescheduled Summer Olympics in Tokyo. In some ways, we have already seen the future in Japan and in Asia more broadly, with its successful response to the COVID pandemic. Japan also represents a recent example of how to bend adversity and bounce back, as it did from the Great East Japan Earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster of 3/11/2011. The entire country came together in solidarity to support the affected Tohoku region, including concrete measures such as limiting electricity usage at a national level to avoid rolling regional blackouts. A decade on, Japan still remembers, with the Olympic flame set to depart from Fukushima Prefecture in the torch relay that will cross the country before arriving in Tokyo for the Opening Ceremony. Out of Crisis: Opportunity Optimism and positivity are necessary to move forward. I’m optimistic not because I’m naïve about the challenges ahead as we continue to navigate these wild currents, but I am confident that we will find safe passage because of what we have learned collectively and adapted to over the past months. Japan Society’s Language Center had a record year in 2020 despite the pandemic as our teachers reached beyond our physical classrooms to virtual ones; more people joined us than ever before for our first-ever digital JAPAN CUTS, the largest festival of Japanese cinema in North America. We have opened possibilities far beyond our physical building, the original Japan House, designed by Japanese modernist architect Junzo Yoshimura 50 years ago, and named New York City’s youngest landmark in 2011. In crisis comes opportunity, and from opportunity come the possibilities for our collective future. While we are hurting without our physical programs and admissions revenue, we’ve literally been able to connect across the world, and even beyond — from Japanese astronaut Soichi Noguchi, who is currently on the International Space Station, to countless leading voices in Japan such as Olympics Director Nomura Mansai — to create unique experiences for our members. In this time, I return to the Japanese concept of kaizen (改善), continual self-improvement and change for the better. Regardless of the next challenges on the horizon, I’m committed to ensuring that we continuously improve and adapt in this spirit. I believe that our mission has never been more critical than in 2021 as we strengthen U.S.-Japan relations with new administrations in both capitals and seek opportunities to engage, explore, and educate our societies about our collective resiliency as we welcome the new year. Joshua Walker (@drjwalk) is president and CEO of Japan Society. Follow @japansociety. The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.
Lockdown teleworking impacts productivity of women more than men
When the COVID-19 pandemic led countries all over the world to lock down their economies in early 2020, there was an unprecedented global shift to teleworking in white collar sectors. A trend that had been gathering traction was suddenly and exponentially accelerated and many of the world’s largest corporations, Google and Facebook among them, have announced plans allowing employees to work from home well into 2021 or indefinitely. Remote working not only appears to work, but it appears to have a number of advantages—savings in office maintenance costs and time spent commuting, not to mention enabling organizations to safeguard productivity when there’s a major shock or crisis. But is it all good news? Or good news for all? A new paper by Ruomeng Cui, assistant professor of information systems and operations management at Emory’s Goizueta Business School, reveals an important drop in the productivity of female academics around the world in the wake of the COVID-19 lockdowns. In fact, in the ten weeks following the initial lockdown in the United States, their productivity fell by a stunning 13.9 percent relative to that of male colleagues. And it’s likely to do with the disproportionate burden of responsibility for household needs and childcare that persistently falls on women, Cui said. “We know that gender inequality persists both in the workplace and at home, and we were curious to see how the lockdown scenario would attenuate or exacerbate the situation for women,” Cui said. Anecdotal evidence from her own field—academia—showed that in the weeks following the stay at home mandate in March, there was an upswing of around 20 to 30 percent of papers submitted to journals. However, the overwhelming majority of these were being authored by men. Intrigued, Cui teamed up with Goizueta doctoral student Hao Ding and Feng Zhu from Harvard Business School to conduct a systematic study of female academics’ productivity and output during this period. “We knew that the lockdown had disrupted life for everyone, including academics. With schools and kindergartens closed and people taking care of work and household obligations at home, we intuited that women would be affected more than men as they are disproportionately burdened with domestic and childcare duties,” Cui said. For female academics this would theoretically be particularly acute, as the critical thinking that goes into research calls for quiet, interruption-free environments. To put this to the test, Cui and her co-authors created a large data set covering all the new social science research papers produced by men and women, across 18 disciplines and submitted to SSRN, a research repository, between December 2018 to May 2019 and then from December 2019 to May 2020. From this set, they were able to extract information on titles, authors’ names, affiliations, and addresses to identify their countries and institutions, as well as faculty pages to distinguish between men and women. In total they collected just under 43,000 papers written by more than 76,000 authors in 25 countries. Looking at the data, Cui and her colleagues were able to compute the total number of papers produced by male and female academics each week and then compare the productivity of both before and after the start of the lockdown. Prior to the pandemic, the 2019 period showed no significant changes in productivity in either gender. But in the 10 weeks following the shock of lockdown, a clear gap emerges between men and women, with female academics’ productivity falling by just under 14 percent in comparison to their male colleagues. Interestingly the effect was more pronounced in top-ranked research universities. This is likely because top schools require faculty to publish research as the primary requisite for promotion, so men would be motivated to continue authoring papers before and after the lockdown. These findings lend solid, empirical clout to the notion that women do take a hit to productivity when care and work time are reorganized, Cui noted. “We see clearly that women are producing less work as a consequence of working from home. In the field of academia, that has huge implications as achieving a permanent position, or tenure, is generally linked to your research output,” she said. “So, there is a serious fairness issue there. If women are producing less because the burden of household responsibility is greater for them than for men, then you’re likely to see fewer female academics get tenure through no fault of their own.” Indeed, one of the other findings of the study shows that while productivity fell, the quality of female-authored research measured by downloads and citations did not. Then there’s the issue of teleworking and gender. With a significant proportion of the world’s white-collar organizations still working from home and unlikely to head back to the office any time soon—and as many schools and childcare facilities remain closed due to the pandemic—Cui is concerned that productivity as a measure of value and a marker of success might mean the odds are further stacked against women. And not just in academia. “We looked at universities in particular, but our findings can really be externalized to any other industry because the underlying issues here are universal. So, with remote working becoming normalized, I think there’s a real onus on organizations of every type to think about how to mitigate these unintended consequences,” she said. “There needs to be more thought about how we measure value or potential of employees.” Cui calls for organizations and institutions to consider these factors when they evaluate male and female workers in the present context and looking to the future. Among the kinds of proactive moves they might consider are to make training programs for male and female employees that explore fairness and encourage a more even distribution of responsibility in the home and for children. “There’s nothing to be gained in prioritizing productivity as a tool for evaluation and just giving women more time, say, to produce as much,” Cui warned. “You’re just left with the same scenario of women doing more than their fair share. Solving this issue is really much more about being aware of it, getting educated about it, and changing your mindset.” If you are a journalist looking to cover this research or speak with Professor Ciu about the subjects of telework and productivity, simply click on her icon now to arrange an interview today.
After four years of scandals, gaffes, hearings, indictments and even an impeachment – President Donald Trump seemed to be coasting on a coating of Teflon that kept him virtually unscathed as nothing ever stuck or shook his grasp on evading trouble. But that might have come to an end this week as The Washington Post dropped a bombshell of a story that including a recording of Trump allegedly seeking to interfere with the results in the recent election. President Trump urged fellow Republican Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state, to “find” enough votes to overturn his defeat in an extraordinary one-hour phone call Saturday that legal scholars described as a flagrant abuse of power and a potential criminal act. The Washington Post obtained a recording of the conversation in which Trump alternately berated Raffensperger, tried to flatter him, begged him to act and threatened him with vague criminal consequences if the secretary of state refused to pursue his false claims, at one point warning that Raffensperger was taking “a big risk.” January 03 - The Washington Post No doubt the president was passionate – but did he cross the line? And if so – what are the consequences? There’s a lot of questions to be asked about what is next and that’s where our experts can help if you are covering. The University of Mary Washington has one of the foremost political experts in the country who can help with your stories. Dr. Stephen Farnsworth is a sought-after political commentator on presidential politics. He has been widely featured in national media, including The Washington Post, Reuters, The Chicago Tribune and MSNBC. Dr. Farnsworth is available to speak with media any time regarding the election and its aftermath – simply click on his icon to arrange an interview today.
