Humanities & Society

The Gephardt Institute for Public Service is accepting nominations for the Civic Scholars program, which recognizes Washington University in St. Louis undergraduate students who exemplify future potential for civic leadership. Nominate a current sophomore by Friday, Feb. 3, by filling out a brief form on https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/CivicScholarsNominationForm.

Wikipedia and other sites plan to go dark to protest the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the PROTECT IP Act under consideration in Congress. Three law professors from Washington University in St. Louis, Kevin Collins, Gregory Magarian and Neil Richards, signed a letter to Congress in opposition to the PROTECT IP Act. Read Magarian and Richards’ current comments on SOPA and PROTECT IP.

A sedentary lifestyle is associated with greater cerebral amyloid deposition, which is characteristic of Alzheimer’s disease (AD), among cognitively normal individuals with the ε4 allele of the apolipoprotein E (APOE) gene, according to a report published Online First by Archives of Neurology, one of the JAMA/Archives journals.

In remembrance of Martin Luther King Jr., the Society of Black Student Social Workers (SBSSW) at the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis will host the sixth annual “Financial Freedom Seminar: Making Your Money Work for You,” from 9 a.m.- 3:00 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 21, in Brown and Goldfarb halls. The seminar, free and open to the public, is designed for St. Louis community youth and adults interested in building wealth, repairing and maintaining good credit, purchasing a home or starting and expanding a business.

Open Streets Initiatives, a movement growing around the United States, open urban spaces normally reserved for cars to people, providing a safe environment for socializing and other activities. The goal of the events is to promote healthy living and community building. Researchers at the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis, with the support of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, evaluated the 2011 St. Louis Open Streets Initiative to examine participation in the events. “With over 1,800 participants in 2011 and leadership from the mayor’s office, St. Louis has the potential to become a model and leader in the Open Streets movement,” says J. Aaron Hipp, PhD, assistant professor of public health at the Brown School.

Napoleon Bonaparte, the notoriously “short” French emperor, may have stood only 5 feet 6, but being a powerful military and political leader probably made him feel much taller, suggests a new study by an organizational behavior expert at Washington University in St. Louis.

Ralph J. Cicerone, PhD, president of the National Academy of Sciences and chair of the National Research Council, will present a seminar on climate change at Washington University in St. Louis at 4 p.m. Monday, Jan. 23, in Room 300, Laboratory Sciences Building on the Danforth Campus.

The U.S. Supreme Court’s unanimous decision in Hosanna-Tabor v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is an important victory for religious liberty says First Amendment expert John Inazu, JD, associate professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis. “Hosanna-Tabor is a welcome reminder that the Court has not lost sight of ‘the text of the First Amendment itself, which gives special solicitude to the rights of religious organizations.’”

In the case currently before the U.S. Supreme Court, Texas is contesting a federal court’s redrawing of the state’s electoral district lines for the upcoming primary election. Under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, Texas must get preclearance from the U.S. Department of Justice before it can institute any voting changes. “This case gives the Supreme Court an opportunity to weaken or even strike down Section 5,” says Gregory Magarian, JD, election law expert and professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis. “If Texas wins, even if the Court stops short of striking down Section 5 altogether, it will mark a major change in the law. The Supreme Court will essentially be saying that racial voting discrimination by state officials is no longer a problem that justifies a federal remedy.”

U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill will participate in a roundtable discussion with Washington University in St. Louis administrators and energy researchers, and the region’s energy leaders on the nation’s urgent energy needs. The roundtable energy discussion will be held at noon Monday, Jan. 9, at Washington University’s Brauer Hall, Room 3015, followed by a tour of WUSTL’s Ultrafast Laser Facility.