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Africa News: CAS prof says capitalism has entrenched racism

At a United Nations Research Institute for Social Development debate on racism and public policy on September 5, the question arose whether "a new economic world" was possible only without capitalism, since that system was based on the unequal access to scarce resources. Even when governments implement policies to stamp out poverty and bring social equality, reports the September 6 Africa News, the dynamics of capitalism ensure divisions along racial or class lines. Glenn Loury, a CAS economics professor and UNI professor and director of BU's Institute on Race and Social Division, admits that capitalism has entrenched racism throughout history, "but reversing the system is not the solution. Apartheid was not capitalism, as the state [South Africa] intervened to prevent capitalism from flowing among most people."

New York Daily News and Boston Globe: Wiesel slams Durban conference

Nobel Laureate and BU's Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the Humanities Elie Wiesel reacted strongly to the anti-Israel and anti-Semitic turn taken by the United Nations World Conference Against Racism in Durban. According to the September 5 New York Daily News, he saw a "conference against hatred" becoming a "conference of hatred. There was so much hatred there," Wiesel says, "that I was frightened, literally frightened."

"The Durban conference will remain a day of shame," Wiesel says the same day in the Boston Globe. "Shame on those who organized it that way, shame on those who prepared it that way, shame on those who did not follow the United States and Israel in protesting and giving protest a physical expression by leaving."

Capitol Hill Hearing Testimony: SPH prof advocates Canadian prices for prescriptions

In testimony presented in a Capitol Hill hearing on September 5 before the Senate Commerce Committee on Science and Transportation and the Consumer Affairs Subcommittee on Foreign Commerce and Tourism, Alan Sager, an SPH professor of health services, proposed that Americans would save $38 billion in 2001 if they paid Canadian prices for brand-name prescription drugs. "Importing drugs from Canada has the potential to provide a measure of relief from high prices to some or even many individuals," says Sager, "so it should be tried until more effective price relief can be obtained. I expect that individual citizens will be able to continue to pursue retail importing solutions that lower their costs, but drug makers will continue to block effective wholesale importing solutions. If, indeed, importing drugs probably cannot do enough to make all needed medications affordable, then more direct techniques will be necessary to give Americans the benefits of low brand-name prices that Canadians now enjoy."

"In The News" is compiled by Mark Toth in the Office of Public Relations.

14 September 2001
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