Tag Archives: Higher Education
Funding the News: Summary of Shorenstein Center study on foundations and nonprofit media
June 18, 2018–In a new Shorenstein Center study conducted with colleagues at Northeastern University, we assess major patterns in foundation support for nonprofit journalism and media in the half decade leading up to the 2016 election, focusing specifically on support for digital news nonprofits. Launched over the past fifteen years, digital news nonprofits at the Continue Reading »
The gene editing conversation: Public dialogue will require major investments
In 2014 biochemist Jennifer Doudna of the University of California at Berkeley awoke from a nightmare that would shift the focus of her world-class scientific career. Two years earlier, with her colleague Emmanuelle Charpentier, now director of the Max Planck Unit for the Science of Pathogens in Berlin, Doudna had achieved one of the most Continue Reading »
Divided expectations: Why we need a new dialogue about science, inequality, and society
If you are reading this column, you have likely benefited from the scientific and technological advances that have transformed the world’s economy. For well-educated professionals who form the core audience for popular science magazines, these innovations have created new wealth and career opportunities. Yet paradoxically, the very success of the science and engineering sector has Continue Reading »
Evolution in the college classroom: Facilitating conversations about science and religion
Sept. 1, 2017 — For most American college students, their first serious encounter with the theory of evolution may come as part of an introductory biology course. As surprising as this might sound, the unfortunate reality is that in many high schools across the country evolution is often avoided or covered superficially as part of Continue Reading »
MIT rejects fossil fuel divestment but is still a leader on climate change
October 23, 2015 —The Massachusetts Institute of Technology announced this week a new climate change action plan that rejects calls from activists to divest its endowment from the fossil fuel industry. The best way for the university to tackle climate change, argued MIT senior leaders, is through active engagement of “fossil fuel giants that have mastered Continue Reading »
A call for greater diversity of thought in Environmental Studies courses
May 15, 2015 —Even before Jacqueline Ho enrolled in her first environmental studies course at college, her thinking about climate change had been shaped during her years growing up in Singapore reading books by the environmental writer and activist Bill McKibben. At college, ideas first planted by McKibben were reinforced in courses where she read classics Continue Reading »