Humanities & Society

Bruce Jenner, former Olympic gold medalist and patriarch of reality television’s Kardashian clan, is bringing national attention to issues of gender transition ahead of his April 24 interview with ABC News’ Diane Sawyer. One reason is that Jenner may finally have found a way to let go of pressures to conform, said Vanessa Fabbre of the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis, an expert on later-in-life gender transitions.

Transit stops close to home and workplace incentives are associated with higher likelihood that commuters will choose public transportation, according to research from the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis and Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. The study is co-authored by Aaron Hipp, PhD, assistant professor at the Brown School.

The Department of Music in Arts & Sciences will honor professor emeritus Harold Blumenfeld, who died last fall at he age of 91, with a Memorial Concert in Graham Chapel April 19. The performance will feature Blumenfeld’s settings of poems by Rainer Maria Rilke and Arthur Rimbaud as well as works by Johann Sebastian Bach, Paul Hindemith and Franz Schubert.

A new study finds that that 1.2 percent of American preschool children on Medicaid are using psychotropic drugs, including antidepressants, mood stabilizers and medications for attention-deficit disorder. Using 2000-2003 Medicaid Analytic Extract data from 36 states, a group of researchers at the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis and at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis found preschoolers are receiving psychotropic medications despite limited evidence supporting safety or efficacy.

As part of her series of Senior Listening Sessions across Missouri, Sen. Claire McCaskill held a roundtable discussion with experts on retirement security, elder justice and healthy aging March 31 at the Brown School’s Goldfarb Hall. Among the roundtable participants were seven from Washington University in St. Louis.

A new project from the Center for Social Development at Washington University in St. Louis shows, among other findings, that girls in developing countries, given equal opportunities, will save as much or more in formal financial institutions than boys. The project was aimed at examining the attitudes and practices of young people in developing economies toward saving money. It has led to new findings that confirm and challenge assumptions about youth saving at formal financial institutions.

Appearing March 12 before the U.S. Senate Special Committe on Aging, Michal Grinstein-Weiss, PhD, associate director of the Center for Social Development (CSD) at Washington University in St. Louis, urged U.S. senators to create long-term asset-building policies and to use such “golden moments” as tax time to urge Americans to save.

With the “Right to Work” movement growing in Wisconsin and other states, a majority of states may soon bar employees and unions from negotiating agreements that require non-members to contribute to the costs of representing them. For unions to survive and thrive, at least two significant changes are necessary, argues Marion Crain, JD, vice provost and the Wiley B. Rutledge Professor of Law at Washington University in St. Louis.

Colorism, the practice of discrimination based on skin tone, even among people of color, is rarely addressed publicly and is uniquely different from racism. The Whitney R. Harris World Law Institute at Washington University in St. Louis School of Law will address this growing international issue in what organizers believe is the first international colorism conference on U.S. soil. The conference, “Global Perspectives on Colorism,” will be held Thursday and Friday, April 2 and 3, in Anheuser-Busch Hall.

While many Americans took a big financial hit during the Great Recession, homeowners were less likely than renters to lose very large proportions of their wealth, finds a new study from Michal Grinstein-Weiss, PhD, associate director of the Center for Social Development in the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis.