Wesleyan in the News: April 2026
President Michael S. Roth ’78 was interviewed by The New York Times after the Trump administration filed a new lawsuit against Harvard University, the latest in a yearlong pressure campaign on institutions of higher education under the guise of combatting antisemitism. “It’s just obvious to Jewish Americans and others that this is not about protecting Jews,” said Roth. “This is about attacking institutions with which the president has a beef.”
Roth also appeared on Connecticut Public's The Wheelhouse to discuss how colleges and universities are prioritizing equity and access in education in an age when the Supreme Court says race cannot factor into the admissions decision-making process.
Dean of Social Sciences and Professor of Religion Mary-Jane Rubenstein appeared on WNPR’s Where We Live to discuss the ways philosophy and religion intertwine with humanity’s exploration of the moon. “What has troubled me over the last decade or so as I've come to learn what some of our nations and corporations are up to in outer space, is that increasingly it's harder and harder to think of the moon as something different, as something else, as something outside the fray of human events,” Rubenstein said. “Now we're turning our economic efforts toward it.”
Khalilah Brown-Dean, Rob Rosenthal Distinguished Professor of Civic Engagement and executive director of the Allbritton Center for the Study of Public Life, received the Gracie Award from The Alliance for Women in Media Foundation for hosting WNPR’s Disrupted, according to NPR. The award honors “individual achievement and exemplary programming created by, for, and about women” on media platforms. This is Brown-Dean’s second Gracie Award.
William Armstrong Professor of the Humanities Andrew Curran appeared at Harvard University’s bookstore to discuss how the idea of race as a biological category was developed during the Enlightenment, a topic explored in his new book Biography of a Dangerous Idea: A New History of Race. C-SPAN 2’s BOOKtv showed a recording of the appearance. “I believe wholeheartedly that the story of race, the history of race, remains one of the great untold stories of our time,” Curran said. “It's an untold story because it's very hard to talk about. When you talk about race, you necessarily have to conjure up some of the worst things people say about each other and we don't do that anymore.”
Ahmed Badr, director of the Patricelli Center for Entrepreneurship and assistant professor of the practice in public policy, appeared on a panel at Stanford University’s Institute of Advancing Just Societies. Before the panel, he sat down with Zócalo Public Square for a question-and-answer session on being on family, comedy, social media, and a video he did with actor Ben Stiller making shawarma.
Peter Rutland, Colin and Nancy Campbell Professor in Global Issues and Democratic Thought, was interviewed by The World for a story on how the war in Ukraine has impacted the Russian economy. He said military spending by the Russian government stimulated the nation’s economy and created jobs. However, as their cash reserves have dwindled, so has the economy’s growth. “Living standards were going up, wages were going up,” Ruland said, “but in the past year or so, we've seen that eroding, and the government is running out of money.”
Visiting Professor of Government Rudabeh Shahid wrote about Bangladesh’s election on Feb. 12 and the differing ways the results have been interpreted in two Indian states, Assam and West Bengal, for E-International Relations. “Bangladesh’s electoral result isn’t just being reported in India; it’s being actively manufactured into electoral ammunition, and that process tells us something important about how entangled foreign electoral outcomes and domestic communal politics have become in the borderland states,” Shahid wrote.
Shannon Sampieri ’23, an alumnus of the Center for Prison Education’s program at York Correctional Institute, testified at a public hearing in support of a proposal that would eliminate life sentences for people under the age of 25 and create new rules around parole eligibility for young people in Connecticut. The Connecticut Mirror spoke with Sampieri about the hearing. “To lock children up and think that we can never change, I think, goes against what we as society should stand for when we say, ‘It takes a village’ or, ‘No child should be left behind,’” she said.
Syed Noorweez ’29 wrote an opinion piece for CT News Junkie about a town hearing in Brookfield, Connecticut on whether to allow a fossil fuel company to double the capacity of its compressor station. He said about 50 community members spoke during the hearing, many in opposition to the change. “Growing up in a time where climate protections are fiercely disputed, it is easy to be discouraged by what seems to be a constant stream of bad news,” Noorweez wrote. “This hearing was a critical reminder of the strength of community in uncertain times.”
