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Multiple studies on the bias of Western, and specifically American, media have been released in recent years, including one by WSU professor of English and researcher Susan Ross.
Her study, which examined more than a year’s worth of New York Times editorial coverage of the Israel-Palestine conflict, found most often Israelis were presented as victims and Palestinians as aggressors. Ross said she’s disappointed her study, now more than a decade old, is still largely accurate.
One explanation she offered is that this attitude was created in the United States during the past 70 years. Since the end of World War II, three generations of Americans have grown up with the belief that the preservation of Israel is all important, she said.
“It’s difficult to question Israeli practices or advocate for Palestinian causes,” Ross said.
Read more about Ross’s study and a WSU doctoral student’s activisim for peace in the Moscow-Pullman Daily News (subscription required)
Self-published books are on the rise, to the dismay of onlookers who wonder what to expect from a sector where E.L. James’s Fifty Shades of Grey—originally published as online fan fiction by a tiny Australian e-book company—appears to be the best of the lot. More than 391,000 self-published titles appeared in 2012, according to Bowker, the official ISBN-issuing agency for the United States.
Academics, meanwhile, inhabit a parallel publishing ecosystem: a constellation of university presses and journals that publish slowly, offer few economic returns, and subject all work to painstaking peer review. Scholars and publishing experts in the United States and Britain say self-publishing by academics remains a rarity.
Roger Whitson, an assistant professor of English at WSU, said he thought self-publishing books was an undertaking only tenured professors could afford. “Part of the reason why academics publish pre-tenure is that they want to receive credit for becoming a specialist in the field, and one of the main ways they see that happening is through peer review,” Whitson said. “For pre-tenure people who haven’t established a name in the field, academic publishing is really important.”
After receiving tenure, more academics are in a position “to experiment and demand more from different publishing models,” he said.
Whitson has self-published a book of his own: a collection of writing from his postdoctoral program at Georgia Tech. “I would never consider it a major publication of mine,” he said. “It was just something that was fun.” Whitson does not list the book on his CV.
Grace Reed, a sophomore from University Place, Wash., majoring in English, is headed for Nottingham Trent University to study “Creativity, Culture, History and Heritage” for four weeks this summer.
Reed is one of three WSU undergraduates going to England and Scotland as the University’s first recipients of Fulbright UK Summer Institute awards.
“It is quite an accomplishment for WSU to have three students accepted for the Fulbright UK,” said Sarah Ann Hones, director of the Distinguished Scholarships Program, part of the WSU Office of Undergraduate Education.
The students will experience the UK; develop their research, communication and presentation skills; and perform community service. The Fulbright program will cover most of their costs.
Twelve WSU undergraduates went through the rigorous process of applying for the awards.
Thirty-nine awards were presented recently to 45 WSU students—many in the College of Arts and Sciences—at the third annual Showcase for Undergraduate Research and Creative Activities (SURCA) 2014.
The work of 192 students University-wide was detailed in 11 oral and 145 poster presentations open to faculty, staff, students, and guests. More than 100 judges evaluated the presentations. The judges included WSU emeriti faculty and retirees, faculty, staff, and post-doctoral students as well as experts from companies outside of WSU.
While many students from urban campuses traveled to participate, SURCA was made available to two place-bound students thanks to web conferencing provided by the Global Campus. A Pullman student studying abroad in Mexico and a WSU Vancouver student who was unable to attend SURCA in person talked “live” to their judges who were in the senior ballroom of the Compton Union Building.