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In the News
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28 August 1998 |
Vol. II, No. 4 |
In the News
Recent publicity surrounding the switch in the hospital of two infant girls has raised troubling issues of security, both physical and emotional, says George J. Annas in the August 9 Boston Globe. Annas is chairman of the health law department at the School of Public Health and the author of the recently published book Some Choice: Law, Medicine and the Market. "Surprisingly, there is no standard method hospitals in the United States employ to prevent baby switches," says Annas. "While baby switching is a rare event, better precautions should be taken to avoid such mistakes."
Ronald Cass, dean of the School of Law and immediate past president of the Law Deans Association, speaks out on the American Bar Association's approach to the accreditation of law schools in the Christian Science Monitor of August 18. "I'd like to see the ABA told in no uncertain terms to scale back," Cass says. "They need to make it easy to distinguish between schools that are achieving educational quality instead of focusing on dollars spent on buildings."
"Our way of life -- the free-market economy and participatory democracy -- is dominant right now, and some people see that as a threat," says Michael Corgan, CAS professor of international relations, in an article on the nature of terrorism today in the Boston Herald of August 24. "In a sense, it's not a problem that has a solution," he adds. "It's a long-term condition that has to be lived with. Our way of life is an insult to large groups of people, and terrorism is not going to go away."
In light of the recent political scandal involving President Clinton and former White House intern Monica Lewinsky, CAS Professor of History Robert Dallek, author of Hail to the Chief: The Making and Unmaking of American Presidents, reviews the history of the presidency, Clinton's scandals, and the public perception of prestige in an editorial in the Wall Street Journal August 18. Remarking on the resiliency of the office, he states, "One need only recall how low the presidency had sunk under Herbert Hoover to see how quickly the institution can revive in the hands of a leader like FDR."
Citing a recent book by sociologist and University Professor Alan Wolfe that presents data showing that America is a remarkably tolerant nation, an article in the Boston Globe of August 19 suggests that President Clinton may well be able to weather the current sex scandal. "The American people are a forgiving people," Wolfe, author of One Nation, After All, tells the Globe. "We like to give people a second chance." He adds, however, that he has been surprised by the sustained support for Clinton throughout the scandal. "When this all started, I thought we were living in Nathaniel Hawthorne's Massachusetts," he says.
"In the News" is compiled by Shauna LaFauci, Office of Public Relations.