Humanities & Society

Several key provisions of the Patriot Act ended this week, after the Senate let them expire. As a result, the National Security Agency has, at least temporarily, halted the bulk data collection program used to amass phone data for millions of Americans. Neil Richards, JD, professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis and one of the country’s foremost academic experts on privacy law, said the fact that expiration of these powers hasn’t provoked mass outrage shows Americans deeply value privacy.

Studies show that despite demonstrating high interest, African-American girls have fewer support systems, less exposure to, and lower academic achievement in STEM fields than their Caucasian counterparts. Sheretta Butler-Barnes, PhD, assistant professor at the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis, is working to change that.

Transgender and non-transgender lesbian, gay and bisexual students are at greater risk for eating disorders, finds a new study from the Brown School and Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. The study used data from 289,024 students at 223 U.S. universities participating in the American College Health Association–National College Health Assessment. Alexis Duncan, PhD, assistant professor at the Brown School, was senior author on the study.

More than 50 international organizations and global experts signed The Hague Declaration on Knowledge Discovery in the Digital Age May 6. The declaration calls for immediate changes to intellectual property (IP) law and the removal of other barriers preventing larger and more equal access to data. The document is based in part on the work of Neil Richards, JD, professor of law. Richards is a noted expert on data ethics and intellectual freedom and has published widely on issues related to privacy in the digital age.

Carrie Pettus-Davis, PhD, assistant professor at the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis, has been tapped to serve as executive director for the Concordance Institute for Advancing Social Justice, the research initiative of a new public, private and academic partnership aimed at lowering incarceration rates in the United States.

Tax-time savings programs help low- and moderate-income families save significantly more of their refunds than those who choose not to participate, finds an analysis of such a program called $aveNYC. The study was co-authored by Michal Grinstein-Weiss, PhD, associate professor at Washington University in St. Louis, Brown School and associate director of the Center for Social Development.

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.