Humanities & Society

Michael Sherraden, PhD, the Benjamin E. Youngdahl Professor of Social Development at the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis, moderated a panel discussion April 6 at the sixth annual meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative University (CGI U). The session was titled “Poverty and Promise in America’s Rust Belt” and was held in Umrath Hall on the Danforth Campus. Kailey Burger, third-year law student, served as a panelist.

The closing session of CGI U at Washington University has just concluded and the enthusiasm and passion in the room is still very much on my mind. We ended CGI U with a rousing, entertaining and deeply inspirational session featuring Comedy’s Central’s Stephen Colbert and CGI U’s namesake, President Bill Clinton.

The Clinton Global Initiative University opens at Washington University in St. Louis with inspiring words from President Bill Clinton, Chelsea Clinton and a panel of innovative thinkers. Chancellor Mark S. Wrighton offers his thoughts on the first day.

International development economist John W. McArthur, will speak on the Washington University in St. Louis campus at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, April 11, in Brown Hall Lounge on the Danforth Campus. McArthur will appear on behalf of the Brown School’s Policy Forum. The event is free and open to the public. ​

An outdoor chess park. Cargo containers transformed into compact restaurants. A sustainable urban farm. On April 11, Washington University in St. Louis and the City of St. Louis will announce which of these or several other concepts will win the inaugural Sustainable Land Lab Competition, the first of its kind in St. Louis.

Author and political scientist Cathy Cohen studies American politics and particularly how they affect African-Americans, women and the LGBTQ community – never ignoring the intersections between these identity categories. She will be on campus April 9 to give a lecture titled “Race, Sex and Neoliberalism in the Age of Obama.”

A team of four WUSTL students, including sophmores, Grace Kuo and Amy Patterson, shown to left accepting a trophy, won the College Nationals in the Rube Goldberg Machine Contest on March 30. Click here for a video of a rolling ball bearing setting off a chain reaction in “Rube Goldberg’s office” that eventually drop a hammer on a nail–the assigned task.

Why is it so hard for some people to resist the least little temptation, while others seem to possess incredible patience, passing up immediate gratification for a greater long-term good? The answer, suggests a new study from Washington University in St. Louis, is that patient people focus on future rewards in a way that makes the waiting process seem much more pleasurable.

“The anthropological concept of culture is extremely important and often misunderstood because many of the things that are assumed to be biologically determined, like criminality or homosexuality or IQ, are really behaviorally and societally defined,” says WUSTL physical anthropologist Robert W. Sussman, and it forms the basis for his Phi Beta Kappa/Sigma Xi Lecture, “The Importance of the Concept of Culture to Science and Society,” the next Assembly Series program held at 4 p.m. Tuesday, April 9.

As the U.S. Supreme Court hearings on the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) conclude, it looks like the justices are ready to strike down the law, says Gregory P. Magarian, JD, constitutional law expert and professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis. “The crucial thing about this case is that the Court can strike down DOMA without impacting the right or lack thereof of someone to marry,” he says.