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May 11, 2021

Campus life

Fasting and Finals: How Wisconsin’s universities help Muslim students cope

Wisconsin Muslim Journal

Ramadan is coinciding with the end of the university academic year. That means many Muslim students are under pressure to perform on exams, presentations and class projects while fasting from any food or drink for more than 15 hours a day.

Their parents and grandparents remember what it was like for them. Telling the Muslim equivalent of “walking 10 miles to school, barefoot in the snow,” the older generations talk about a time when their professors had never heard of Ramadan. If they had, the idea of adjusting exam schedules or making other accommodations for a handful of students practicing an obscure religion was out of the question.

Health

In the 608: “Hero Wall” honoring nurses at UW Health

WISC-TV 3

A Wisconsin man is looking to honor local nurses for all their hard work over the last year, and it’s now spreading positivity throughout this medical community. Curtis Crain calls it his “Hero Wall.” You’ll find the work of art in a hallway of UW Hospital. It features portraits of some of the many nurses.

UW Experts in the News

FDA clears the way for adolescents ages 12 to 15 to get vaccinated

National Geographic

According to 2019 U.S. Census Bureau estimates, people younger than 18 account for about 22 percent of the American population. That’s why “it is really important for kids to be included” in vaccination efforts, says Malia Jones, an associate scientist in health geography at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Applied Population Laboratory. Their inclusion is “good news for herd immunity.”

The True Meaning of the Afghan ‘Withdrawal’

The Nation

Or put another way, there should be no mistake after those nearly 20 years in Afghanistan. Victory is no longer in the American bloodstream (a lesson that Vietnam somehow did not bring home), though drugs are. The loss of the ultimate drug war was a special kind of imperial disaster, giving withdrawal more than one meaning in 2021. So, it won’t be surprising if the departure from that country under such conditions is a signal to allies and enemies alike that Washington hasn’t a hope of ordering the world as it wishes anymore and that its once-formidable global hegemony is truly waning.

Alfred McCoyAlfred McCoy is the J.R.W. Smail Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. A TomDispatch regular, he is the author of In the Shadows of the American Century: The Rise and Decline of US Global Power and Policing America’s Empire: The United States, the Philippines, and the Rise of the Surveillance State.