Penn Arts & Sciences in the News

Marcia Chatelain, Presidential Penn Compact Professor of Africana Studies and author of the book Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America, that Red Lobster attracted both working-class and affluent Black diners at a time during the 1970s and ’80s when many sit-down restaurants were unwelcoming of Black patrons.

Professor of Political Science Daniel Hopkins discusses the volatility of the current election cycle. “We used to expect that the marginal non-voter, the next voter who turned out if an election was very engaging, didn’t look different from people who did vote.” he says. “In this case, the crowd that hasn’t gotten engaged looks very, very different.”
 

Beth Linker, Samuel H. Preston Endowed Term Professor in the Social Sciences and author of Slouch: Posture Panic in Modern America, recommends asking yourself whether your posture really needs fixing in the first place before shelling out big bucks.

“Higher education is fundamentally misunderstood,” wrote Harun Küçük, Associate Professor of History and Sociology of Science, and Ezekiel Emanuel, Vice Provost for Global Initiatives, in a New York Times op-ed. The answer, they say, is for colleges and universities to reassert the liberal arts ideals that made them great.

An analysis by The New York Times revealed that the number of people living close to fatal violence grew drastically during the pandemic years. Professor of Criminology John MacDonald reviewed the findings. “You don’t want people to think that everywhere is so dangerous in a way that it’s not,” he says. “On the other hand, you don’t want people to think that, oh, this is just somebody else’s problem. It’s not happening in my neighborhood.”

Jesús Fernández-Villaverde, Howard Marks Presidential Professor of Economics, estimates that global fertility fell to between 2.1 and 2.2 last year, which he says would be below global replacement for the first time in human history. “The demographic winter is coming,” he notes.

Ali Ali-Dinar, a senior lecturer in the Department of Africana Studies, is one of four guests on the Forum podcast with journalist Mina Kim discussing the tensions in North Darfur. 

In a conversation about her new book Slouch, Beth Linker, Samuel H. Preston Endowed Term Professor in the Social Sciences, talks about why the actual science doesn’t support the conventional wisdom about proper posture. “We use posture to judge character, intelligence and physical ability,” she says. “It’s shallow and ableist to estimate what another person can or cannot do based on their posture.”

Political Science Professor Matthew Levendusky thinks the erosion of trust in the  high court is partly due to a perception of partisanship. “If it seems like it’s just  another conservative institution, then that will further erode trust,” he says. “But if  they can combat that perception, that will help to go a long way toward restoring at  least some of that.”

Michael Mann, Vice Provost for Climate Science, Policy, and Action, and Presidential Distinguished Professor of Earth and Environmental Science, notes that calling the rain “cloud seeding”—a weather modifier that aims to increase rainfall—ignores three low-pressure systems that were slowly moving along the jet stream toward the Persian Gulf.

Professor Beth Linker of History and Sociology of Science is featured in the New Yorker for her new book, Slouch: Posture Panic in Modern America, that explores fears of a “poor-posture epidemic.”

The Associated Press interviewed sociologist Camille Charles in an article about how O.J. Simpson still reflects America’s racial divides.