“Outlaw architecture” installations by visiting artist Oscar Tauzon will be on exhibit through Oct. 15 in the Fine Arts Gallery at Washington State University. The works have been created with help from WSU fine arts students.
An opening reception will be 5-7 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 29, and a talk by the artist will be at 5 p.m. Friday, Sept. 30, in Fine Arts 5062. All are free to the public. » More …
In the wake of police-involved shootings that left two black men dead in two cities, Washington State University hosted an expert panel discussion on race and policing in America.
The event, held Tuesday afternoon in the CUB auditorium, drew a large crowd of students and community members. Put on by WSU’s Thomas S. Foley Institute for Public Policy and Public Service, the panel addressed the growing outrage over police use of force against minority members.
If the name John Birch sounds familiar, it’s probably because of the John Birch Society, a far-right group founded more than a decade after his death in 1945. Less has been written about the man himself: a missionary-turned-spy who built a formidable intelligence network in China during World War II.
“He actually flew with the bombers so he could visually point out where to drop the bombs,” said Matthew Sutton, a history professor at Washington State University. “He hated the Japanese. They had destroyed the churches he had built. They were punishing the Chinese Christians. So he was doing everything he could to support the war.”
According to Sutton, Birch was one in “a small army” of Christian missionaries who were aggressively recruited to conduct clandestine operations during Franklin Roosevelt’s presidency. This little-known practice, Sutton said, “made Americans aware of the importance of religion” in gathering intelligence.
The professor recently won a $50,000 federal grant to research and write a book on the topic, tentatively titled “(Un)Holy Spies: Religion and Espionage in World War II.”
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Dual-career programs have become widely seen as vital in faculty recruiting. To get one half of a faculty couple, a college needs to offer a good opportunity to the spouse, the theory goes. Colleges do this in a variety of ways, sometimes going so far as to authorize new lines in some departments so that both halves of a couple have a reason to move. But other institutions do relatively little to help.
Julie Kmec, a professor of sociology at Washington State University, and Hong Zhang, a doctoral student there, used survey data from faculty couples at seven universities to examine dual-career issues in academe. » More …
The nondescript building sits on the very edge of Washington State University’s campus in Pullman. An anonymous front door leads visitors through a metal detector and into a sparsely decorated reception area. Everyone must sign in. The first clue to what’s inside the building is the familiar Cougar logo emblazoned on top of a door-size international sign for radiation. And the lit “Reactor On” sign. This is the Dodgen Research Facility, home of WSU’s nuclear reactor and the university’s radiation center.
Dr. Ken Nash is a professor of chemistry who works on more efficiently managing nuclear waste. He said the campus reactor makes it possible for him to work with elements that are heavier than uranium.
“These are man-made elements that only exist because we know about nuclear science,” Nash said.