Wesleyan in the News: April 2026
President Michael S. Roth ’78 wrote a guest essay for The New York Times reflecting on Yale University’s recent report on restoring public confidence in higher education institutions. Roth criticizes one of the recommendations, which was to shrink the mission of the university. “A lack of public engagement and an air of cloistered privilege are a big part of why so many people now view universities with suspicion,” Roth said. “Retreating further behind the gates will make a bad situation much worse.”
The work of Tammy Nguyen, assistant professor of art, will be featured in a new exhibition at Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Ridgefield, Connecticut, reports The New York Times. Nguyen, who explores the relationship between man and the environment in her work, moved to rural Connecticut from New York City in 2021. “I didn’t know how much nature was going to give me,” Nguyen said about her move. “I now know things like when tomatoes are about to be perfect. You become aware of the planet in orbit out here.”
The Atlantic interviewed Professor of Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Victoria Pitts-Taylor for an article about the new playbook for celebrities undergoing plastic surgery. While in the 1990s and 2000s, American society tended to praise the “natural body” and cosmetic operations were often considered shameful, celebrities now are opting to be more honest about going under the knife in an effort to “cultivate a likability based on authenticity,” she said.
Associate Professor of Computer Science Sebastian Zimmeck wrote a piece for The Hill discussing the future of internet privacy in an increasingly artificial intelligence-powered world. “In the new agentic web, as much as possible, we should build privacy into its technical infrastructure from the outset,” Zimmeck writes. “In addition, we need privacy laws that give users a right to prevent AI companies from sharing their personal information.”
The Wall Street Journal profiled Robert Allbritton ’92, co-founder of POLITICO, as he sets out to build the “Next Great Washington Newsroom” with the newly renamed Washington Star. “We are a factory town. Detroit makes cars, we make government,” Allbritton said of the nation’s capital. “There needs to be a paper around here that is focused on what we do.”
The Boston Globe spotlighted Ian Coss ’11 and his award-winning podcast, “The Big Dig,” which focuses on Massachusetts’ ongoing central role in major questions of infrastructure and social policy. “We’re not used to audio as something you return to,” Coss told the Globe. “But I want to believe that podcasting has that potential.”
Ethan Norton ’26 wrote an op-ed for The Washington Post about the Democratic Party’s difficulties in attracting the attention of Gen-Z voters. “I study film and digital media, and as a young voter, I’ve scrolled past lifeless Democratic content, noticing how much more engaging posts from conservatives feel,” Norton writes. “It’s like eyeing your dinner companion’s unhealthy meal—you know it’s not good for you, but it looks so much better than what’s on your plate.”
Katherine Greenridge ’96 spoke with BroadwayWorld about her experience writing English dialogue for Boston Lyric Opera production of Gaetano Donizetti’s Daughter of the Regiment as a comedic piece. “As a writer for a live stage performance, you’re hoping, obviously, to elicit a response from an audience,” Greenidge said. “I love it when my plays make people laugh, but I also love it when people are moved in other ways. I think I’ve been surprised how much I just like that my writing can be a foundation to push the jokes farther and faster.”
Amby Burfoot ’68 wrote a tribute to the late running pioneer Jeff Galloway ’67 for Marathon Handbook. Burfoot ran on the Wesleyan cross country team with Galloway, inventor of the run-walk-run method, and likes to say, exaggeratedly, that he ran a million miles alongside Galloway. “There is no way I can fully explain how much those million miles with Jeff meant to me at that stage of my life,” Burfoot said. “They meant everything. We all need role models and training partners. Jeff Galloway was mine.”
Other headlines
Roth appeared on MeidasTouch’s Katie Phang to discuss Wesleyan’s effort to encourage civic engagement among college students throughout the summer and fall leading up to the midterm elections. “We want to educate voters and we want to give them the confidence to participate in the system, whatever their political preferences,” Roth said.
Roth spoke about the state of higher education at Ideastream Public Media’s The City Club Forum in Cleveland, Ohio on April 10. “Government intrusion is now dampening free speech on campus in the name of free speech—that’s what’s so strange about it,” Roth said. “…right now, at colleges and universities across the country, there’s this fear of speaking out because the government might not like what you say.”
Roth wrote about the celebration of Passover and Wesleyan’s efforts to promote student participation in democracy this summer in a piece for The Forward. “When we do contribute, we are participating in history, learning about ourselves and the world around us,” Roth wrote.
Roth 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.
WNPR published a story on a project to turn the former Manresa Island power plant in Norwalk into a public park. Courtney Fullilove, professor of history, and her students recently toured the island since they are putting together an archive about the island’s history, called The Manresa Island History Project. Since it’s decommissioned the plant is now quiet, but it was once a bustling enterprise. “It’s hard to imagine now, but when this plant was running, it would have been deafening,” Fullilove said.
For The Conversation, Ioana Emy Matesan, associate professor of government and expert in Middle East politics, wrote about the strategic difficulties the United States faces in coming to a lasting deal with Iran following a recent short-term ceasefire agreement. “While it is difficult to predict whether the ceasefire between the U.S. and Iran will hold or how events will unfold, the dynamics of the conflict so far reveal multiple vulnerabilities in the short term and numerous detrimental effects on the region in the medium to long term,” Matesan wrote.
Peter Rutland, Colin and Nancy Campbell Professor in Global Issues and Democratic Thought, spoke with Asahi Shimbun in Japan for a story on how frequently President Donald Trump’s name and likeness are placed on public property. Rutland called it a “very new phenomenon” for politicians to do this, but it is not just for vanity’s sake. He said self-promotion generates support and he is concerned that “image-making and policy justify each other.”
Lin-Manuel Miranda ’02, Hon.’15 will direct a film adaptation of “Octet,” an a capella musical that explores internet addiction, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The film's cast will include Amanda Seyfried, Rachel Zegler, Tramell Tillman, Jonathan Groff, and Sheryl Lee Ralph, among others, according to Variety. “I haven’t stopped thinking about Octet since I saw Annie Tippe’s premiere production in November of 2019. Dave Malloy’s score is versatile, brilliant and grows more relevant with each passing year. It won’t leave me alone so here we are,” Miranda said.
BroadwayWorld interviewed musical theater orchestrator and arranger Bill Sherman ’02 about his work, training, and the score of Safety Not Guaranteed, a new musical at Signature Theatre in New York City. “Orchestrating gives you the ability to manipulate all the different sounds and dimensions that contribute to the overall sound of the piece,” Sherman said. “It’s not just about the piano or the voice or the bass. What interests me most about orchestrating is finding a way for all the instruments and voices to co-exist while also contributing to the overall tone and dynamic of the music.”
Shakur Collins ’26 attended the 15th annual National Conference on Higher Education in Prison in Cleveland and spoke with WYSU about the difficulties of reintegrating back into society after being released from incarceration. "When you come home, you have to worry about how do I feed myself, how do I clothe myself, and how do I get housing?" Collins said.
Scholar and writer Mara Naaman ’96 did a question-and-answer interview with Business Matters on studying Cairo, her career, and a success-driven mindset. “I think the language of success, efficiency, and outcomes can be limiting,” Naaman said. “It pushes people to focus on results and self-optimization rather than process. For me, the process is where learning happens. It’s where growth happens. If we lose that, we lose something important.”
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.
Rutland 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.”
