Newsroom Stories

A commitment to free speech doesn’t justify us in lashing out at innocent people, says Greg Magarian, JD, professor of law and a First Amendment expert at Washington University in St. Louis, in the wake of the terrorist attack on the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in France.

​Meredith Evans, PhD, has been named associate university librarian for University Libraries at Washington University in St. Louis. She oversees the Department of Special Collections, which includes the Film and Media Archive, Manuscripts, the Modern Graphic History Library, Preservation, Rare Books, and University Archives.

Does the recent decision by President Barack Obama to restore diplomatic relations with Cuba truly represent fresh opportunity? Or is it merely the latest chapter in a long, tortuous narrative of manipulation and misunderstanding? At 6 p.m. Tuesday, Jan. 20, Cuban novelist Orlando Luis Pardo Lazo will discuss “U.S.-Cuba: A New Era or a New Ire?” in the Danforth University Center.

​A dance may begin with a thought or gesture but making art requires more than mere inspiration. On Jan. 23 and 24, Doug Varone and Dancers, one of today’s most celebrated companies, will visit Edison Theatre on the campus of Washington University in St. Louis for an intimate, behind-the-scenes look at the creative process.

It was big news this week when Nature published the discovery of a new antibiotic, teixobactin. Teixobactin, which kills bacteria by a different pathway than other antibiotics, represented the first new class of antibiotics to be discovered in 30 years. But, says, Michael S. Kinch of Washington University in St. Louis, the drug itself may be less important than the way it was found.

The secular, anti-immigration and Islamophobic divisions now gripping France have their roots in the nation’s 200-year history of close interaction with Algeria and its strong 19th century tradition of opposing organized religion of any form, suggests John R. Bowen, PhD, a sociocultural anthropologist at Washington University in St. Louis who has written four books on Islam’s interaction with Western societies.

“Sam Durant: Proposal for White and Indian Dead Monument Transpositions, Washington, D.C.” opens Friday, Jan. 23, at the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum on the campus of Washington University in St. Louis. The large-scale installation consists of 30 minimalist sculptures, each appropriating the form of an existing monument to white and Indian victims killed between the 17th century and the end of the so-called Indian Wars in 1890.

Enzymes linked to diabetes and obesity appear to play key roles in arthritis and leukemia, potentially opening up new avenues for treating these diverse diseases, according to researchers Clay Semenkovich, MD, (left) and Irfan Lodhi, PhD, at the School of Medicine.

Before Twitter and Facebook, message boards and the Internet, the backyard clothesline was a universal destination for news, gossip, work and socializing. On Friday, Jan. 16, Grammy-nominated jazz vocalist Nnenna Freelon will bring “The Clothesline Muse,” a multidisciplinary performance celebrating domestic labor and community empowerment, to Edison Theatre as part of the Edison Ovations Series.

New work shows that bacteria (and probably other cells as well) don’t  double in mass before dividing. Instead they add a constant volume (or mass) no matter what their initial size. A small cell adds the same volume as a large cell. By following this rule a cell population quickly converges on a common size.