Black people in early America used July Fourth to argue that they should be freed from enslavement and had as much right to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” as white people.
Lindsay France/Cornell University
Jamila Michener, associate professor of government, says when enslaved people gained their freedom, they lacked the political and socioeconomic power to influence their lives. In many ways, Black people still lack that power, she says.
The holiday celebrates the day enslaved people gained their freedom. But they lacked political power then, as Black people too often do today, says associate professor Jamila Michener.
The university’s acknowledgment states that the Ithaca campus is located on the traditional homelands of the Gayogo̱hó꞉nǫ', also known as the Cayuga Nation.
Jeff Palmer grew up taking long walks with his father in the Wichita Mountains of southwestern Oklahoma. Palmer’s father, a linguist and a native Kiowa speaker, told him ancient Kiowa stories about the granite-capped peaks and rolling hills around them.
Nicholas Sturgeon, Susan Linn Sage Professor Emeritus in the Sage School of Philosophy and an expert in the foundations of ethics, died Aug. 24 of complications from Parkinson’s disease at a local hospice. He was 77.
Sturgeon was a professor in the Department of Philosophy, in the College of Arts and Sciences, from 1967 until his retirement in 2013.
Navy Ensign Emily Ortwein ’20 had “one of the most special and exciting experiences of her life” May 22, the culmination of four years of rigorous military training.
Historian Barry Strauss, who specializes in ancient and military history, notes that plagues and epidemics have often been linked to wars. The current pandemic will accelerate the use of computer models and big data in the field of history; however, he says, COVID-19 has taught us that models are only as good as the assumptions on which they’re based.
In February, Longsha Liu ’21 was well aware that COVID-19 was coursing through China and around the world.
His mother had been giving him regular updates about the virus’s spread in China, where most of his immediate family live – including his 77-year old grandmother, who continued to practice as a physician.
Rachel Beatty Riedl, an expert in international studies, says Africa is the first place to look for an effective response to the COVID-19 pandemic, given Africa’s success in dealing with the Ebola virus.
Historian Lawrence Glickman says the simultaneous public health disaster and economic meltdown may lead us to rethink the country’s values. However, “given … how rare it is for fundamental transformations to happen, my money would be on this pandemic not fundamentally altering our basic structures of society,” he says.
Political scientist Gustavo A. Flores-Macías compares the economic consequences of COVID-19 to the 2008-09 recession. The pandemic, he says, will result in a poorer and more unequal U.S. society, and it highlights the importance of solutions that require collaboration across borders.
Interdisciplinary scholar Noliwe Rooks discusses how people curate their home spaces, now that much of work and school is conducted from home via video conferencing. The pandemic has also underlined our need for human contact, she says. Rooks is the W.E.B. Du Bois Professor of Literature in the College of Arts and Sciences.
Jamila Michener, assistant professor of government in the College of Arts and Sciences, discusses COVID-19 and potential changes in the role of the federal government. The pandemic may prompt people to re-examine investments in institutions, such as the public health system, on which we now rely, she says. Disinvestments in these institutions include the steady closure of rural hospitals for the past five years, she says.
Fresh off winning a Guggenheim fellowship, democracy scholar Suzanne Mettler, Ph.D. ’94, has just received another honor: a Radcliffe Institute fellowship.
