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How to Save the Pandemic Generation

The New Republic

Black young adults hold 10.4 percent less wealth, on average, than their white counterparts due to student debt, according to research by Fenaba Addo at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Black and Latinx borrowers also have higher rates of default than white borrowers, and two in five Native American or Alaska Native borrowers have defaulted on a federal student loan.

Op-Ed: Clerking for Justice Ginsburg, we learned about the law — but also about love

LA Times

With marriage, as with everything else, the justice set a high bar. She tirelessly championed righteous causes and lofty ideals, and also devoted herself to the family she adored. She inspired millions of people she never met and also enriched the lives of those of us who were lucky enough to know her. It is difficult to lose her, especially now. But we know the best way to honor her is to try to live as fully as she did, embracing the values she held dear.

Miriam Seifter and Robert Yablon are associate professors of law at the University of Wisconsin Law School. They clerked for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in 2008-2009.

Law Firms Pay Supreme Court Clerks $400,000 Bonuses. What Are They Buying?

New York Times

Ryan J. Owens, a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the other author of the study, said its basic conclusion was that “knowing your former boss gives you a leg up.”

“When you clerk for a justice for a year, you come to know how that justice thinks very intimately,” he said. “You know the ins and outs of the justice’s thought processes.”

Two leaders urge colleges to encourage student voting

Inside Higher Ed

Chancellor Blank and Harvard University President Lawrence S. Bacow: If you are leading a college or university right now — or if you are making the academic year possible as a member of the faculty or staff at any one of our nation’s institutions of higher education — asking something more of your students in the midst of a global pandemic may seem impractical. But one assignment cannot wait. We urge you to encourage your students to register to vote, to become informed of the issues and the candidates, and to cast a ballot

Black Maternal and Child Health Alliance launched to improve the birth outcomes of Black mothers and babies in Dane County

Noted: The group will be co-chaired by inaugural members Dr. Tiffany Green, assistant professor in the Departments of Population Health Sciences and Obstetrics & Gynecology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Alia Stevenson, Chief Programs Officer with the Foundation for Black Women’s Wellness.

“The Black Maternal & Child Health Alliance is comprised of Black women serving in important roles in health care, our community, and as decision-makers and knowledge experts. Our highest priority is to ensure that the health and wellbeing of Black mothers remains front and center,” says Co-Chairs Green and Stevenson in a statement. “As the Alliance moves forward, we are pleased to join the Dane County Health Council as we work together to advance the health of Black mothers, babies and their families in this county.”

Student debt is fueling the Black-white wealth gap — and pursuing a college degree has become ‘racialized,’ this professor says

MarketWatch

That’s thanks in part to Fenaba Addo, an associate professor of consumer science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who studies debt and its role in racial wealth inequality. Addo’s research has shown, among other things, that the gap in student debt held by Black and white borrowers grows by 6.8% each year. As a result, Black young adults hold 10.4% less wealth on average than their white counterparts due to student debt.

Wisconsin Braces for a Critical Court Ruling on Its Election

The New York Times

“The backers of Jill Stein were young and disaffected from the political system,” said Barry C. Burden, a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “Typically, minor-party voters are looking for somebody that’s different from what the major parties are offering.” (The Libertarian candidate in 2016, Gary Johnson, received more than 106,000 votes in Wisconsin.)

Coronavirus Puts School Cafeteria Workers At Risk, Too

The Atlantic

For as long as federal funding for school lunch programs has existed, the labor that makes those meals possible has been low-paid and underappreciated. “A lot of teachers were forming unions in the 1960s and ’70s, but there was a reluctance for cafeteria workers to do the same,” Jennifer Gaddis, a professor at the University of Wisconsin at Madison and author of The Labor of Lunch: Why We Need Real Food and Real Jobs in American Public Schools, told me. “There was this idea that you’re taking money away from free-lunch programs for kids. But historically, there’s never been a lot of national or state-level support within school nutrition, until recently.”

New York Will Test the Dead More Often for Coronavirus and Flu

The New York Times

Thorough testing can also affect which bodies are autopsied at medical examiners’ offices, where resources and staff have been strained, said Dr. Erin Brooks, a pathologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Someone whose cause of death can be confirmed by a positive test for the coronavirus, for instance, might not need to be investigated further.

In Year of Voting by Mail, a Scramble to Beef Up In-Person Voting, Too

The New York Times

For all of the attention on voting by mail, perhaps four in 10 votes — 60 million ballots — are likely to be cast in person this fall, either early or on Election Day. Overall turnout could well reach 150 million for the first time, up from 137.5 million in 2016, according to Barry C. Burden, the director of the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Digital vote suppression efforts are targeting marginalized groups, report warns

NBC News

“It’s really hard to persuade people … to convert or convince the disinterested, but it’s easy to suppress turnout if you target people who are marginalized, like non-whites and female and younger voters,” said Young Mie Kim, a journalism professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who has studied misinformation networks on social media. “All you need to do is make sure they don’t turn out to vote.”

Commission charts narrow path for editing human embryos

Science Magazine

“I welcome the commission’s report, which continues to add depth to the ongoing global conversation about the science of germline editing,” says Alta Charo, a bioethicist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, who is part of a committee organized by WHO that is examining how to best govern this controversial arena.

Borsuk: In a pandemic-altered school year, educators face challenge tracking student progress

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

How are people going to figure out how students are doing in school this year?

“I can’t imagine how this isn’t going to be the most challenging year that we’ve ever had for answering that question,” said Brad Carl, an expert on the subject who is with the Wisconsin Center for Education Research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “How are we going to tell?”

Coffee, Ketchup and Nike Air Max: It’s the COVID Consumer Economy

Reuters

Michael Collins, a professor at the University of Wisconsin’s consumer science department, calls this a “substitution effect.”

“It’s pretty clear people behave as if they have different pots of money,” he said. “Now I don’t eat out at all, so I have a couple of hundred dollars of new income not allocated to anything. I can substitute that money away from eating out and treat myself to other things.”

Michael Moore says Trump on course for win in presidential election

Business Insider

“In Minnesota, it’s 47-47,” Moore continued. “In Michigan, where Biden had a big lead, Trump has closed the gap to 4 points.” In a poll published on August 20, the GOP-leaning Trafalgar Group found support for Biden and Trump tied at about 47% in Minnesota, while another poll by the University of Wisconsin-Madison found Biden with a 4-point lead over Trump in Michigan.

Twitter deletes Trump’s coronavirus death toll retweet, citing misinformation

The Washington Post

“Comorbidities” reported by the CDC include heart disease, obesity, diabetes and hypertension — conditions that can make a person more vulnerable to the virus. Each would be listed on a person’s death certificate, along with covid-19. Death certificates may also list sepsis, respiratory arrest, kidney failure or other conditions as the immediate cause of death, but those are caused by the infection. The virus remains the reason that they died, said Nasia Safdar, an infectious-disease professor at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

These Scientists Are Giving Themselves D.I.Y. Coronavirus Vaccines

New York Times

There is a long history of scientists openly testing vaccines on themselves and their children, but in recent decades it has become less common, according to Susan E. Lederer, a medical historian at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. What’s ethically and legally acceptable for testing and distributing your own medical product varies by institution and by country.

Police and Race in Kenosha, Beyond the Jacob Blake Shooting

Time

“Midwesterners don’t understand their history of racism, and so these things seem surprising. They seem to come out of nowhere or be new when they’re really a reflection of who we’ve always been,” says Christy Clark-Pujara, associate professor of history at the University of Wisconsin–Madison’s Department of Afro-American Studies. “It’s not terribly surprising to me what happened in Kenosha.”

Hurricane Laura’s rapid intensification is a sign of a warming climate, scientists say

The Washington Post

Jim Kossin, a researcher at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the University of Wisconsin, says the warm ocean waters and exchange of heat between the ocean and atmosphere, plus the lack of dry air or strong upper-level winds, created an ideal environment for Hurricane Laura to rapidly intensify all the way to the Louisiana coastline.

Kenosha shooting victims Anthony Huber and Joseph Rosenbaum are remembered

The Washington Post

“It’s like a funhouse mirror,” said Cecelia Klingele, an associate professor at the University of Wisconsin Law School. “People look at the same facts and have wildly different reactions. It is troubling because when people are having such different reactions, I guess tragedies like this shouldn’t be a surprise. People are afraid of each other and that is a situation that creates danger for everyone.”

The Problem with Implicit Bias Training

Scientific American

While the nation roils with ongoing protests against police violence and persistent societal racism, many organizations have released statements promising to do better. These promises often include improvements to hiring practices; a priority on retaining and promoting people of color; and pledges to better serve those people as customers and clients.

Bruce Arians questions effectiveness of protests; DeMaurice Smith responds

The Washington Post

Athletes today aren’t necessarily risking life and limb by staging protests — if anything, NFL players are sparing themselves some harm by canceling practices — but according to a professor of Law at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, their platforms give them “a unique role to play” in effecting change.

“Their protest reaches ordinary people in the United States and worldwide,” Linda Greene said via email Thursday. “Their protest also touches and concerns the multibillion dollar interests of coaches, franchises, and media and other corporations, including advertisers, who depend on their labor.”

A tiny fish takes on its predators—and wins, transforming the Baltic coast

Science

The work also stands out because it documents such a widespread and lasting ecological shift, adds Steve Carpenter, a limnologist at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. More typically, researchers have observed such shifts in a single location, often a lake, showing how dominance swings back and forth between two species as temperature changes or fishing becomes more intense, he says. The new results “show that regime shifts can spread among connected habitats and transform an entire coastline rather rapidly.”

Bucs Coach Bruce Arians rips protests, prompting an inspiring response from NFLPA head

The Washington Post

Athletes today aren’t necessarily risking life and limb by staging protests — if anything, NFL players are sparing themselves some harm by canceling practices — but according to a professor of Law at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, their platforms give them “a unique role to play” in effecting change.Mets GM apologizes for criticizing MLB commissioner as Mets, Marlins stage silent protest“Their protest reaches ordinary people in the United States and worldwide,” Linda Greene said via email Thursday. “Their protest also touches and concerns the multibillion dollar interests of coaches, franchises, and media and other corporations, including advertisers, who depend on their labor.”

Many Tulsa Massacres: How the Myth of a Liberal North Erases a Long History of White Violence

National Museum of American History

However, African Americans have long known that they have deep roots in all regions of the United States. As the African American Bishop Richard Allen wrote in 1829, affirming that Black people belonged:See the thousands of foreigners emigrating to America every year: and if there be ground sufficient for them to cultivate, and bread for them to eat, why would they wish to send the first tillers of the land away? . . . This land which we have watered with our tears and our blood, is now our mother country.

Christy Clark-Pujara is Associate Professor of History in the Department of Afro-American Studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. She is the author of Dark Work: The Business of Slavery in Rhode Island. Her current book project, Black on the Midwestern Frontier: From Slavery to Suffrage in the Wisconsin Territory, 1725 to 1868, examines how the practice of race-based slavery, black settlement, and debates over abolition and Black rights shaped White-Black race relations in the Midwest.

How a single superspreading event sent coronavirus across Massachusetts and the world – The Washington Post

Washington Post

The findings match what has been observed on a smaller scale in other studies, said Dave O’Connor, a virologist at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Superspreading events, which provide the virus with huge numbers of hosts in a small amount of time, are driving the global outbreak. Delays in returning test results make it much more difficult to mitigate their effects; by the time those infected in such events know they’re sick, they have probably infected many more people

23,000 absentee ballots were rejected in Wisconsin’s April primary. That’s more than Trump won the state by in 2016.

ABC News

Rejected mail-in ballots are unlikely to be the deciding factor in the 2020 election — but they could factor in to the result, according to Mike Wagner, a journalism professor who works with the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.”This is one of those elections where there are probably 19 things that could move a small number of votes in one way or another,” Wagner said.

A safe, healthy path forward from the ravages of the coronavirus

Journal Sentinel

We need consistent tactics to battle this virus. We support national standards for face coverings. Our nation needs uniform criteria for stay-at-home orders, reopening businesses and in-person instruction at K-12 schools. We support the AAMC’s guidance for face coverings. While there are horrible disparities among certain populations, and some location-specific challenges, the biology of the virus does not vary from city to city or state to state. National standards will allow all communities to make informed decisions.

Robert N. Golden, MD, is dean of the  University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health. Joseph E. Kerschner, MD is dean of the Medical College of Wisconsin School of Medicine.See

As Covid-19 cases in prisons climb, data on race remain largely obscured

STAT News

John Eason, a University of Wisconsin-Madison sociologist who studies the effect of prisons on rural communities, argued that “it doesn’t matter who it is” that’s getting worse-hit by Covid-19 behind bars, given how many Black individuals are incarcerated. “If we don’t find a way to decarcerate, Black people are going to lose.”

What if We Worried Less About the Accuracy of Coronavirus Tests?

The New York Times

But such tests face regulatory hurdles before they can be produced widely. Other rapid tests that are available now may need to be refined further before they can be “operationalized,” or used effectively in an actual setting, like a school, according to Dave O’Connor. He and colleagues in the AIDS Vaccine Reseach Laboratory at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, have been piloting what is called a loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP) test, which can be done on saliva, as part of the N.I.H. Rapid Acceleration of Diagnostics initiative. They’re running their project out of a minivan. “The first day we tested five or six people,” he told me. “Today we ran 80.”

‘He Stiffed Our Party’: Bloomberg Doubts Resurface Before D.N.C. Speech

The New York Times

“After spending a billion dollars on his own candidacy in the primary, many in the party thought that would imply spending at least as much on the general election, if not more,” said Eleanor Neff Powell, an associate professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison with a focus on money in politics. “A billion dollars may be an unreasonable expectation, but he set — and in some ways expanded — those expectations during the primary, even if he didn’t outright say how much he planned to spend in the general.”

How Birds Respond to Extreme Weather

Earth Observatory

“For the first time, we can look at how species responded immediately following extreme weather conditions over the scale of an entire continent,” said Jeremy Cohen, who led the research as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Storm Isaias’s Most Damaging Winds Were on Its Right

Wall Street Journal

“If a storm is moving northwards at 10 miles per hour, and the wind’s rotational speed is 90 miles per hour, then to the east, the wind speed will be 100 miles per hour, and to the west, it will be 80 miles per hour,” said Steve Ackerman, director of the Cooperative Institute for Meteorological Satellite Studies at the University of Wisconsin in Madison.

What is used to treat covid-19? Not even doctors are sure.

The Washington Post

For most of April, Marylu Seidel felt like she was starring in a science fiction movie. Her husband of 34 years, Jeff, was sedated in an intensive care unit more than an hour’s drive away in Madison, Wis., and her only window into his world was a daily phone call with his nurses. His doctors, first at a local community hospital and then at the University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics, tried everything to help Jeff defeat the novel coronavirus — a ventilator, an antibiotic, an antimalarial drug, blood thinners, a blood plasma transfusion.

The Recession Is About to Slam Cities. Not Just the Blue-State Ones.

The New York Times

The estimates, to be published in the National Tax Journal by Mr. Chernick, David Copeland at Georgia State University and Andrew Reschovsky at the University of Wisconsin, are based on the mix of local revenue sources, the importance of state aid and the composition of jobs and wages in each city. The researchers predict average revenue shortfalls in the 2021 fiscal year of about 5.5 percent in a less severe scenario, or 9 percent in a more severe one.

Controversial killing of wolves continues in Washington State

National Geographic

Many of those opposed to the state’s actions point to recent research suggesting non-lethal methods, such as guardian dog teams and protected livestock enclosures, which tend to be more successful at preventing future attacks than simply killing predators, says University of Wisconsin-Madison biologist, Adrian Treves. Such killings can actually lead to more livestock losses because it disrupts the pack’s social networks, leading surviving wolves to turn easier prey such as domestic animals, says Treves, who founded Carnivore Coexistence Lab, which conducts research worldwide on conflict between predators and livestock.

UW-Madison researchers working on a faster, simpler COVID-19 test that uses spit, not swabs

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

In a shaded parking lot on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus, so-called spit concierges guide volunteers though giving a saliva sample. On the other side of the parking lot is a pared-down biology lab where scientists test the spit-filled plastic vials for the virus that causes COVID-19.

They’ll have the results within one or two hours.

Senator Tammy Baldwin, former Israel Prime Minister Golda Meir among influential women on Wisconsin list

USA Today

Noted: Vel Phillips was a civil rights activist who smashed racial and gender barriers as the first Black woman to graduate from the University of Wisconsin law school, the first woman to be elected to Milwaukee Common Council, the first appointed female judge in Milwaukee County and the first Black person ever elected to statewide office in Wisconsin.

Born in Keshena, Wisconsin, in 1935, Ada Deer grew up in a log cabin on a Menominee Indian Reservation. She was the first Menominee to earn an undergraduate degree at the University of Wisconsin and the first Native American to receive a master’s in social work from Columbia University. Deer also was the first woman to chair the Menominee Tribe in Wisconsin.

Coronavirus has upended school plans. It will also worsen racial and economic inequalities, experts warn

CNBC

With coronavirus cases still high around the country, half of U.S. elementary and high school students will attend school only virtually this fall, according to a study by Burbio, which aggregates school and community information nationwide.

That will have grave implications for minority and disadvantaged students, said Madeline Hafner, executive director of the Minority Student Achievement Network Consortium at the Wisconsin Center for Education Research.

The past five or six months have “really brought to light these racial disparities that have persisted for generations,” she said.

“With great uncertainty about the new school year, wealthier, predominantly White parents are using their resources to secure educational options for their individual children,” Erica Turner, an associate professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, wrote in her “Equity in Pandemic Schooling” action guide.

Is In-Person Voting Really Unsafe?

The Daily Beast

“We were lucky in April here, I don’t know if we would be that lucky again,” said Malia Jones, an associate scientist in health geography for the applied population laboratory at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In early April, there was “very little disease circulating,” in the state, Jones said, noting that voting by mail “is clearly the safer option.”

How Suffering Farmers May Determine Trump’s Fate

The New Yorker

Katherine Cramer, a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, spent eight years interviewing rural Wisconsinites for her book “The Politics of Resentment,” published months before Trump’s election. “I heard so many complaints about teachers,” she told me. “ ‘How is it that they can get off of work? People who really work hard don’t have time to go out and protest.’ ”