Perspectives

Leaning on their expertise in history, ethics and religious studies, faculty from the John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics reflect on the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol.

In the latest episode of the podcast “Show Me the Science,” William G. Powderly, MD, the Larry J. Shapiro Director of the Institute for Public Health, says that although COVID-19 vaccine development has been rapid, the search for therapies for patients infected with the novel coronavirus has been less successful.

Earlier this year, the Department of Music in Arts & Sciences created a series of digital postcards to share musical performances amid the pandemic. Now, it is sharing a festive gift with the campus community — students and faculty performing holiday favorites.

Liberty Vittert, at Olin Business School, writes in an opinion piece on Fox News that  technological identification facilitated by the U.S. is “a dangerous tool that tyrannical governments can use against their own people,” such as the Uighur Muslims in northwest China.

Washington University Athletics has launched a podcast, “Outside the Game,” to delve into pressing topics in college athletics.  In the first episode, Anthony J. Azama, the John M. Schael Director of Athletics, visits with Tim Bono, lecturer in psychological and brain sciences and assistant dean in Arts & Sciences, to discuss “positive mindset.” 

In the fall issue of The Common Reader, the university’s online journal, seven WashU faculty members share essays on topics ranging from race and COVID-19 to police brutality and America as the house of pain.

The COVID-19 infection rate among Black and Latinx people and white people remains disproportionate. Looking back at the AIDS epidemic, René Esparza in Arts & Sciences finds a striking similarity in the country’s historical treatment of viruses that disproportionally affect minority communities. 

Psychiatrist Jessica Gold, at the School of Medicine, co-writes an op-ed published on CNN’s website about the strain health-care workers are under as the COVID-19 pandemic rages on. “We, collectively, say that we are ‘tired’ because we have no other, easy words to describe how we are.”

Chancellor Andrew D. Martin reflects in a blog post on the difficulties of this past year and shares a message of hope and gratitude as we head into Thanksgiving.

Robert W. Duffy remembers Chancellor Emeritus William H. Danforth. “In turn, the institution was rewarded by having this exceptional man— this great man — in its midst, a man who stood tall because he was tall, not because he set out to be tall or proclaimed his stature as tall, but because he was tall, and exceptional,” Duffy writes.