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Duke in the News: Faculty on the Election, COVID-Testing and Ecosystem Collapse

Duke Faculty in the News

Duke scholars daily share their expertise with the media on stories of major global, state and local importance, including the COVID-19 pandemic and the election. Scholars this week appeared in news outlets including Bloomberg, Forbes and The Guardian.

Read the daily media coverage featuring Duke’s people and research on the university’s news site.

Here are highlights from the past week:

 

Forbes

The Ugliness of Racism, White Identity Politics and the Current Election

Features the work of Ashley Jardina, a white identity scholar and political scientist at Duke. The story quotes from Jardina’s 2019 book “White Identity Politics,” in which she found that about 40 percent of white Americans felt that their white identity is important to them and that this group partly overlaps with the group of white Americans who hold racist views.

 

Seattle Times

As Election Nears, Pentagon Leaders’ Goal of Staying Out of Elections Is Tested

Features comments by political science professor Peter Feaver, a scholar on civil-military relations. He said the Trump campaign’s decision to run its recent advertisement showing the president with senior uniformed officers was problematic. “I’m sure (the officers) are uncomfortable with this and don’t like the appearance, even though they’re not allowed to say it,” Feaver said.

 

Bloomberg

Rapid COVID Test Effort Stumbles Over Risk of False Positives

Quotes Dr. Mark McClellan, director of the Duke-Margolis Center for Health Policy and a former top official at the FDA. McClellan pointed out that Nevada antigen tests had detected many true positives, which could have sparked outbreaks and might not otherwise have been detected in time. “Averting even one nursing home outbreak is a huge economic and health benefit,” he said.

 

The Guardian

Fifth of Nations at Risk of Ecosystem Collapse, Analysis Finds

Quotes Alexander Pfaff, a professor in the Sanford School of Public Policy. “Societies, from local to global, can do much better when we not only acknowledge the importance of contributions from nature – as this index is doing – but also take that into account in our actions, private and public,” he says.

 

American Psychological Association

The Best Way to Promote Your Research

Quotes professor Gary G. Bennett, a professor of psychology and neuroscience and vice provost for undergraduate education. “In my professional organization, there are many folks on Twitter, and I followed all of them and they followed me,” says Bennett. “That was a built-in audience.”