Wesleyan in the News: October 2025
In The Wall Street Journal, President Michael S. Roth ’78 spoke out against President Donald Trump’s proposal to reform campus operations in exchange for priority access to federal funds. “Federal funding for universities should never depend on a loyalty oath,” Roth said. “The health of our democracy depends on the freedom to work with the federal government without having to follow the ideological dictates of those in power.”
Bozoma Saint John ’99 was profiled by NBC as she steps into her role as chief marketing officer who mentors contestants in the new competition reality show On Brand with Jimmy Fallon.
Forbes featured Herriot Tabuteau ’89 and his work building Axsome Therapeutics, a drug development company that currently trades on the Nasdaq with a market cap of $6.1 billion. “There is so much ahead of us right now in terms of the pipeline and the number of patients we’re able to address,” Tabuteau says. “We might be a small company in terms of size, but we’re not a small company in terms of fundamentals or in terms of ambition.”
Zachary Fine, postdoctoral fellow in criticism, wrote about the career and legacy of photographer Man Ray for The New Yorker. A new exhibition of Man Ray’s work focusing on his rayograph technique, Man Ray: When Objects Dream, recently opened at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Peter Rutland, professor of government and Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies, spoke to CNN about the rise in the practice of sending political messages through bullet casings. “These folks are kind of learning from each other,” Rutland said. “They’re watching through social media, on the dark web, what these other killers did, and they’re trying to emulate them and kind of advance the cause.”
The late Alvin Lucier, emeritus professor of music, is still composing music years after his death. The Scientific American wrote about a recent exhibition in an Australian museum that allowed visitors to hear sounds generated by neurons derived from Lucier’s blood.
Tan Siyou ’12 spoke to Deadline as her award-winning feature Amoeba appears in film festivals around the world. Tan said she aimed to unpack some of the “Chinese-ness of Singapore” in her film, which is set against the backdrop of a Singaporean girls’ school.
Barn Raiser tapped Joseph Slaughter, assistant professor of history and religion for his expertise on the blurring of the boundaries between capitalism and Christianity in the United States. Slaughter researched businesses that emulate American Christian entities for his book, Faith in Markets: Christian Capitalism in the Early American Republic (Columbia University Press, 2023).
Pedro Bermudez, assistant professor of the practice in video and audio production, was featured on FOX61 as he prepares to adapt Carmen Maria Machado’s short story, Mary When You Follow Her, for the screen. The project will be filmed in his hometown of Hartford, Connecticut, as well as in Bridgeport. “I love the city in which I was raised, in which I continue to live, and I've always been looking for opportunities to tell stories that were relatable to my community, where people could see themselves represented on the big screen,” Bermudez said.
