Humanities & Society

Leila Sadat, a law professor and founder of the Initiative on Gun Violence & Human Rights at Washington University in St. Louis, equates the U.S. government’s failure to prevent and reduce gun violence with violating children’s human rights. “America’s kids are not okay. As gun violence surges and politicians dither, school shootings are traumatizing a generation of youth,” Sadat wrote in a recent essay. “While only one manifestation of America’s gun violence crisis, school shootings are shocking in their ferocity, the senseless and random nature of the violence, and their impact upon millions of young, captive and vulnerable individuals.”

Voters in this year’s midterm elections, to be held nationwide Nov. 8, will be motivated by a number of hot-button issues, including abortion, climate change, voting rights, the economy and more. Washington University faculty experts weigh in on some of the issues that will be top of voters’ minds as they head to the polls.

Jane Goodall made St. Louis — and Graham Chapel — a stop on her national tour to share her ‘tenacious authenticity’ and empower us to work together on behalf of our planet.

The latest book from Sarah Kendzior dives into the culture of conspiracy that arises when citizens let others do the thinking for them.

The Freedom Suits Memorial in downtown St. Louis honors enslaved men and women who sued for their freedom before the Civil War. Here’s how the WashU community contributed to the decades-long effort.

“Lest We Forget,” a public art installation by noted Italian-German photographer Luigi Toscano, will open Oct. 20 in WashU’s Ann and Andrew Tisch Park. The exhibition will feature nearly 100 contemporary, large-scale portraits of Holocaust survivors — including 12 survivors now living in St. Louis.

HomeGrown STL, a Brown School program aimed at improving community-level capacity to reduce inequality in Black adolescents’ healthy transition to adulthood, has won an inaugural Social Justice Innovation Award from financial firm Morgan Stanley and the nonprofit Centri Tech Foundation.

Public dissatisfaction with the Supreme Court’s rulings and its performance has been growing. New research by political scientist James Gibson in Arts & Sciences suggests the controversial Dobbs decision may have been the straw that broke the camel’s back.

Drawn from more than 20 years of observations at Nouabalé-Ndoki National Park in the Republic of Congo, a long-term study led by primatologist Crickette Sanz in Arts & Sciences documented social ties between individual chimpanzees and gorillas that persisted over years and across different contexts.

Kim Thuy Seelinger, research associate professor at the Brown School, participated in a United Nations General Assembly event, “Ensuring Accountability for Sexual Violence and Other Violations of International Humanitarian Law,” Sept. 21 in New York.