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In the News
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Week of 17 September 1999 |
Vol. III, No. 6 |
In the News
"Broken bones can heal, ruptured spleens you can fix, but not these brain injuries," says Dr. Erwin Hirsch, BUSM professor and director of trauma surgery at Boston Medical Center, in an editorial in the August 28 Boston Globe. He is speaking of damage commonly suffered by traffic accident victims who don't wear seat belts, and he adds, "Even if they survive, the brain injuries can cause a lifelong disability, cognitive and physical. It's the mother, the father, the entire family that suffers."
In a September 1 Christian Science Monitor article about a recent cease-fire agreement in the Congo, Edouard Bustin, a CAS political science professor who specializes in Africa, says, "They've got to come up with a means to make the agreement hold. Troops are the only way to enforce what's on paper."
Neither Republican presidential aspirant George W. Bush "nor anyone else seeking public office should be given a pass on the question of past drug use," says Glenn Loury, CAS economics professor and director of BU's Institute on Race and Social Division, in an essay in the August 24 New York Times. "Mr. Bush's cavalier dismissal of inquiries about past behavior and his vague references to youthful indiscretions," Loury continues, "provide a striking contrast to the tough-on-crime image he has cultivated throughout his political career in Texas." Such a policy "imposes the bulk of its cost on our most marginal citizens. We make 'them' the site of the moral struggle, when in fact this is really a fight for our own soul," he concludes.
"It appears to me there's got to be a fusion between popular culture and language -- as there always has been in fact for the past 150 years," says Joseph Boskin, a CAS professor of history who often takes the long view on popular culture. He was speaking on a September 2 WHDH-TV newscast about the new Encarta dictionary published by Microsoft, some of whose entries have been criticized for being aggressively ephemeral. "Social change is connected to American popular culture," he adds. "It is one of the great engines of American culture."
Former Massachusetts Governor William Weld "just seemed to be enjoying himself all the time. Whether it was a crisis or an opportunity, Weld always seemed to be having a decent time of it," says Tobe Berkovitz, a COM associate professor who comments frequently on politics, in the Boston Globe August 28. Describing the differing reactions of Weld and his successor Paul Cellucci to political scandals, Berkovitz says the current governor is "intense, wound up really tight. It's almost the flip side of the coin. It's a huge stylistic difference."
"In the News" is compiled by Alexander Crouch in the Office of Public Relations.