Departments
In the News
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Week of 12 March 1999 |
Vol. II, No. 26 |
In the News
Boston's bold proposal to go back to neighborhood schools has elicited praise and some misgivings. "Look at Chicago or Philadelphia or New York, none of which have desegregation plans," says SED Professor of Education Charles Glenn, who has studied the results of desegregation efforts, in the February 21 Boston Globe. "Are those neighborhoods working the way [neighborhood school supporters] imagined?"
How Catholic colleges go about meeting the Vatican's challenge to express the faith more explicitly "could have a serious impact on all of American higher education," writes University Professor Alan Wolfe in the Chronicle of Higher Education on February 26. "We would all do well to pay attention." Wolfe praises Catholic colleges and universities, which "have kept alive a classically based, intellectually rigorous commitment to general education in the face of one educational fad after another. Secular universities need to have that model before them as they wrestle with the question of what they should be doing." However, Wolfe writes, "We all would suffer if Catholic universities were to forsake the opportunity to promote pluralism, for secular institutions have much to learn from the current soul-searching among religious institutions."
"Everyone is sick of scandals today. Wait until next Tuesday," says Tobe Berkovitz, COM associate professor of communications and analyst of the current political and entertainment scene, in a February 13 Boston Herald story. "All it will take is the next girl in a beret, and all of a sudden the media and the public will forget how sick they were of all this," he adds. "It's almost an insatiable appetite. You fill up, and all of a sudden you're hungry two days later."
Like a fun house mirror image of his prophecy, a freshly coifed Monica Lewinsky has begun to get on with her celebrity life. "I think a lot of people want to see her out of the context of giving a deposition or running to and from an automobile somewhere," says Jim Thistle, COM professor of journalism and director of the broadcast journalism program. He was interviewed on WCVB-TV March 2, on the eve of Lewinsky's interview with Barbara Walters on ABC's 20/20.
School of Social Work Associate Professor Candace Saunders offers a different take on recent controversy surrounding the seizure of abused or neglected children by the state Department of Social Services. "While removing children may protect them from abuse," she writes in the February 14 Boston Globe, "it also pulls them from all the familiar relationships, places, and objects they depend on for comfort and for trying to maintain a stable sense of self. They can develop psychological scars and destructive behaviors that are separate from -- and in addition to -- those connected with any previous abuse." She suggests "preventive and supportive programs for overwhelmed families" as an alternative.
The reputed health benefits of the Mediterranean Diet are attractive, but some people think that the Mediterranean menu is limited. Joan Salge-Blake, SAR adjunct clinical assistant professor of health sciences, dashes a teaspoon of skeptical castor oil into the sauce of such complacency in the March 1 issue of U.S. News and World Report. "I'm not so sure there's one typical Mediterranean diet," she says, alluding to the variation in the cuisine ranging from abondanza to the most parsimonious nouvelle cuisine.
"In the News" is compiled by Alexander Crouch in the Office of Public Relations.