Columns:: Newsmakers

since 12/15/98

Columns::January 13, 2003

$1 million gift will establish endowed chair in public policy
$6.7 million NSF grant funds study of land-use change in southern Applachian Mountains
Adam Cureton is UGA’s newest Rhodes Scholar
Woodruff, Honors Program student, named one of 40 Marshall Scholars
Marine talk
State, nation econmic forecast: Still raining
IRP considers changes in operational procedures
Full of beans
Campus Closeup
Update: Private Giving
A personal philosophy of teaching

Campus News

Newsmakers

Arabic language courses
UGA religion professor Alan Godlas appeared on Voice of America’s Main Street program discussing burgeoning enrollment in Arabic language courses. “Students were aware of the need for translators, the need for people in various positions in government and the media who knew Arabic,” he told the interviewer, “because one of the problems that was constantly reported in the media was that there were not enough translations of reports prior to 9/11, and if you’d had those reports, it’s possible that the events of 9/11 might have been averted.”

Positives from negativity
The Los Angeles Times interviewed UGA public relations professor Ruth Ann Lariscy for its story on a candidate who complained of negative mailers sent by an opponent. Local politicians said they were shocked at the vehemence of the mailers, but Lariscy called them “a stroke of genius.” She told the reporter that the most effective negative campaigns are those that hit very hard, very early, relying on voters’ selective memory to hang on to only the essence of the charges, not the circumstances in which they heard them. “By the time March rolls around, nobody’s going to remember where they heard all this stuff, but they’re very likely to remember the information itself.”

Reopening a wound
The Salt Lake Tribune and several other newspapers around the country quoted UGA political science professor Charles Bullock in their stories on the possible reopening of the divisive question of the state flag, on which Gov. Sonny Perdue was widely believed to have promised a referendum during the campaign. “I think it was a big mistake,” Bullock said of Perdue’s raising of the issue. “I think he just knocked the scab off a wound that’s begun to heal.”

The condition of school mathematics
Jeremy Kilpatrick, Regents Professor of Mathematics Education, was quoted in a story on numbers and the mind on the Nov. 15 edition of The Infinite Mind, a weekly National Public Radio program. Kilpatrick, who led the panel which wrote a 2001 National Research Council report called “Adding It Up,” said that too few students are leaving schools with adequate mathematical skills “for the nation to be satisfied with the condition of school mathematics today.”

Analyzing defense strategy
Law professor Ronald L. Carlson was interviewed by New York Newsday in the course of a report about the confession by anti-abortion militant James Kopp that he did shoot but did not intend to kill a doctor in a Buffalo, N.Y., suburb in 1998. Carlson remarked that it was a “rare and bold move” for a defense attorney to allow a defendant to be interviewed by a reporter, which was the case here. “One potential advantage would be to publicize before trial the shoot-to-wound or accident defense and seize the opportunity to precondition the community to this defense of unintentional homicide,” Carlson said.

From wolf to dog
NPR’s Richard Harris reported on two recent scientific studies about the beginnings of the relationship between humans and dogs on All Things Considered. He interviewed several experts for the story, including Lehr Brisbin of UGA’s Savannah River Ecology Laboratory. “I think you have to rank dogs along with fire and weapons and other things as one of those technologies that primitive man used to make a living,” Brisbin said.

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