Perspectives

The best argument for eliminating qualified immunity is less about deterrence and more about symbolism. Qualified immunity routinely requires courts to say that there will be no penalty for a police officer who has violated the Constitution. That sends the message — to officers and the public — that the police are above the law, writes Daniel Epps.

So, perhaps 2020 really is different. After three years of unapologetic, in-your-face racism, perpetrated at the highest levels of government, Americans can no longer deny the evidence of their own eyes. They can no longer deny the pervasiveness of structural racism, writes Kimberly Norwood.

After a decade of suffering from a still-raging opioid epidemic an overreaction to the treatment of addiction—mobile treatment, treatment guided by real-time data, treatment that follows patients back to their community—is very much overdue, writes David Patterson Silver Wolf.

Otolaryngologist Jay Piccirillo, MD, professor of otolaryngology at the School of Medicine, discusses the loss of smell and/or taste that is sometimes associated with the virus that causes COVID-19.

In sadness, grief, anger, outrage and hope, university leaders have shared messages of our commitment and goals for action. Hear from Chancellor Andrew D. Martin, school deans, vice chancellors and more, in their own words.

Implicit bias is one component in the broader system of historical, cultural, and structural racism that perpetuates racial inequalities in U.S. society. Discussions of racial inequalities should neither begin nor end with implicit bias, writes Calvin Lai.

This spring, amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, 76 musicians from ensembles representing all seven schools joined forces for the Chancellor’s Concert, celebrating the 250th anniversary of Beethoven’s birth by remotely recording an excerpt from his 1808 “Choral Fantasy.”

Psychiatrist Jessica Gold, MD, at the School of Medicine, talks in this video about the impact the COVID-19 crisis has been having on mental health.

Gary Parker and Atia Thurman, of the Clark-Fox Policy Institute at the Brown School, write an op-ed published in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, warning that many child care centers are struggling financially and may not survive the COVID-19 pandemic, a key concern for working parents and their employers.

Members of the Friedman Center for Aging write on the Institute for Public Health’s blog about media coverage of COVID-19 and how it lumps people in their 60s and older into one monolithic group. But older adults are a diverse group, few of whom live in long-term care facilities, they write.