[Chronicle]

April 12, 2001
Vol. 20 No. 14

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    In the News

    The Chronicle’s biweekly column In the News offers a digest of commentary and quotations by a few of the University faculty members, students and alumni who have been headlining the news in recent weeks. Chicago faculty members are some of the most frequently quoted experts; however, space does not allow the Chronicle to print all of the quoted material published or interviews broadcast by media outlets. To read many of the full newspaper articles mentioned in this column, visit the In the News column at the University News Office Web site at: http://www-news.uchicago.edu/.

    Dali Yang, Associate Professor in Political Science, was interviewed by several media outlets during the past few weeks about U.S.-Chinese relations and how they are being affected by the recent downing of an American spy plane in China. Yang was a guest on WBEZ-FM’s World View program on Thursday, March 22; CNN international newscast and WBBM-AM radio on Monday, April 2; Channel 7 News in Chicago on Wednesday, April 4; and he was interviewed by The New York Times for a story that was published Sunday, April 1.

    The recent move of the Oriental Institute Museum’s Assyrian reliefs, which once adorned the palace entrance of King Sargon II, was the subject of a Monday, March 26 story published by the Chicago Tribune.

    Neil Shubin, Professor and Chairman of Organismal Biology & Anatomy, who has studied the more than 500 salamander fossils that were recently discovered in petrified volcanic ash in northern China, was quoted in several news stories that appeared in The Daily Telegraph, The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post and Agence France-Presse.

    Michael Turner, the Bruce V. and Diana M. Rauner Distinguished Service Professor and Chairman of Astronomy & Astrophysics, was quoted in several stories about the most distant supernova, which the Hubble Space Telescope captured in images in 1997. Scientists announced the evidence at a NASA news conference in Washington. Stories appeared Tuesday, April 3, in USA Today, The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times and The Washington Post. “If Einstein were around today, he would get another Nobel Prize for his prediction of repulsive gravity,” said Turner in The New York Times article.

    Robert Sampson, the Lucy Flower Professor in Sociology, was quoted in a Washington Post story published Tuesday, March 22. The story reported on the Maryland HotSpot Homeownership Initiative, a program designed to encourage low- to middle-income people to buy homes in neighborhoods at the risk of succumbing to crime and urban blight. Sampson has led one of the most comprehensive studies on the link between crime and factors like homeownership within neighborhoods in the Chicago area.

    John Mearsheimer, the R. Wendell Harrison Distinguished Service Professor in Political Science, discussed the new Bush administration’s foreign policy in an interview for a Friday, March 23 story published in the Christian Science Monitor. “Historically, the U.S. doesn’t deploy troops unless there is a hegemon in the region–a Nazi Germany or an Imperial Japan. Otherwise, we just tend to stay out.”

    Anthony Bryk, the Marshall Field IV Professor in Sociology, was quoted and pictured for a story that appeared in Crain’s Chicago Business on Monday, March 19. Bryk, who led a study of Chicago Public Schools, which was conducted by the Consortium on Chicago School Research, explained some of the study’s findings in the article.

    Rashid Khalidi, Director of the Center for International Studies and Professor in Near Eastern Languages & Civilizations, was a guest on National Public Radio’s Morning Edition program on Monday, April 2. Khalidi spoke about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as well as a recent Arab summit that took place in Amman.

    Eve Van Cauter, Professor in Medicine, appeared as a guest on NBC’s Dateline news-magazine program on Friday, March 30, to discuss the research she and her team of colleagues have been conducting on sleep deprivation and its effects on physically fit young men. Van Cauter also was quoted in a story about sleep deprivation and its impact on health in the Wednesday, March 28 issue of USA Today.

    Edward Laumann, the George Herbert Mead Distinguished Service Professor in Sociology, was quoted in a Wednesday, March 21 Chicago Tribune story that reported on women’s sexual dysfunction. Laumann is a co-author of Sex, Love and Health in America: Private Choices and Public Policies.

    The State of the Child in Illinois: 2000, a report recently released by the Chapin Hall Center for Children at the University, was the subject of numerous stories that were carried by the Associated Press Newswires, the Chicago Tribune and the Daily Southtown. Reports on the study also were broadcast on WBEZ-FM radio, the Illinois Radio Network and WCIA-TV in Champaign, Ill. Robert Goerge, a Research Fellow at Chapin Hall Center for Children, was quoted in the newspaper stories. “Things have improved as a result of a great deal of effort from both public and private agencies to improve the well-being of children. But the continuing and sometimes increasing racial disparities exist.”