1.23
Penn in the News
A round-up of Penn mentions in local, national, and international media.
Filter Stories
Penn In the News
Dr. Seuss books are pulled, and a ‘cancel culture’ controversy erupts
Ebony Elizabeth Thomas of the Graduate School of Education spoke about perceptions of the Seuss estate’s decision to stop selling books with racist imagery. “Folks are not remembering the text itself; they are remembering the affective experiences they had around those texts,” said Thomas. “White children or parents might not have noticed the offensive anti-Asian stereotyping in ‘Mulberry Street.’ I certainly didn’t.”
Penn In the News
Race and medical curricula
Jaya Aysola of the Perelman School of Medicine co-authored a paper that found that medical education often reinforces the idea that race is a biological category, rather than a social one. “Medical schools are training the next cadre of not only physicians that serve on the front lines, but physician scientists that are generating the medical knowledge that we’re going to use in the future,” she said. “Medical schools define the individuals that are going to define the institutional structures, policies and practices of medicine tomorrow.”
Penn In the News
Philly’s biggest employers spend billions outside the city. Inside a new effort to bring that money home
Penn strives to contract with diverse businesses, including SUPRA EMSCO, a Black-owned office and lab equipment supplier. “As we’ve grown, there is a sense that we can do more to leverage our buying clout to basically engage and bring in and help other firms grow,” said Executive Vice President Craig Carnaroli.
Penn In the News
The website Findashot.org may be a better way to get a COVID-19 vaccine appointment
David Newell, an MBA student in the Wharton School, built a website that finds available COVID-19 vaccine appointments. “The idea is to aggregate appointment availability, not just inventory availability, which a lot of the projects out there and even the CDC’s partner vaccinefinder.org are focused on,” he said.
Penn In the News
This L.A. start-up is building tiny injectable robots to attack tumors
Marc Miskin of the School of Engineering and Applied Science commented on a new startup that is developing remote-control medical microrobots. “I would give them a lot of credit for figuring out a space where they can make an impact and justify how they’ll be competitive with traditional pharmaceutical approaches,” he said.
Penn In the News
Stockton’s basic-income experiment pays off
Research by Amy Castro Baker of the School of Social Policy & Practice found that guaranteed income did not dissuade recipients from working, instead enabling stability and helping people get out of the cycle of poverty.
Penn In the News
High ground, high prices
Benjamin Keys of the Wharton School spoke about climate gentrification, in which higher-ground neighborhoods will become more desirable due to rising sea levels. “You don’t need to see bars opening up with bartenders wearing suspenders and handlebar mustaches to be seeing gentrification,” he said.
Penn In the News
The reckoning with Dr. Seuss’ racist imagery has been years in the making
Ebony Elizabeth Thomas of the Graduate School of Education spoke about a decision by Dr. Seuss Enterprises to stop publishing six of the late author’s books which contain racist imagery. “We know now that there are anti-Asian stereotypes in ‘And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street.’ ‘The Cat in the Hat’ is minstrelsy,’” she said. “When we know better, we can do better.”
Penn In the News
What to know about at-home tests for colorectal cancers
Shivan Mehta of the Perelman School of Medicine spoke about take-at-home tests as a convenient way to screen patients for colon cancer. “The FIT test has been around for a very long time,” he said. “It’s a lot easier to do than a colonoscopy. But in order to have similar effectiveness to colonoscopies, it has to be done every year. Both have pros and cons. Ultimately, the best test is the one that someone completes.”
Penn In the News
Privacy or planet—The tough choice of doing away with paper receipts
John Zhang of the Wharton School said that for businesses, digital receipts are “a cheap way to get your email address and to build their database to track your shopping habits. As a result, firms can do all kinds of targeted promotions on the cheap, and you will receive all kinds of junk emails.”