Penn in the News

Research by Jessica Martucci and Anne Barnhill of the Perelman School of Medicine about the implications of public-health campaigns on breastfeeding as the “natural” way to nourish infants is featured.

Chutian Shao moved from China to the Midwest college town of Champaign, Ill., a few years ago. Some days, he says, it feels as if he hasn’t traveled very far at all. On a recent Monday, the 22-year-old woke up in the apartment he shares with three Chinese friends. He walked to an engineering class at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, where he sat with Chinese students. Then, he hit the gym with a Chinese pal before studying in the library until late into the night. He recalls uttering two fragments in English all day.

Maxwell C. Little wasn’t in a good place last fall. Many days he stayed up until 3 a.m. to meet with fellow founding members of Concerned Student 1950, the student group protesting racism at the University of Missouri at Columbia, going home for just a few hours and regrouping in the morning. He was tired all the time — physically, mentally, and emotionally. As the campus protests escalated, it became harder for Mr. Little to juggle being an activist and a full-time student.

Vice President Maureen Rush of Public Safety comments on the re-opening of the Tucker PAL Center.

In a large brick building that once housed a hospital for freed slaves, a group of Howard University seniors is rehearsing for a newscast. It’s their first time in the studio, and their first story is about dating in the age of smartphones. "Basically, it’s about how you go to a restaurant, and you see a couple scrolling on their phones instead of talking to each other," says Erin Winters, 21, who wrote the script. Ms. Winters sits at a computer, controlling the teleprompter. Husain Murad, a lecturer and doctoral candidate in communications, stands nearby, guiding the students.

Shaun Harper of the Graduate School of Education is cited for studying black male student-athletes and racial inequities in NCAA Division I college sports.

Fourth-year medical student Rebekah Lucien of the Perelman School of Medicine shares her passion for medicine and her journey to Match Day.

The University of California System is trying again to adopt a policy that addresses intolerance on campus. After a draft policy was rejected last year amid First Amendment concerns, the new draft appears to be attracting more support. Last year, a series of incidents led many to fear anti-Semitism on UC campuses was on the rise. A Jewish fraternity at UC Davis was defaced with swastikas, for example.

Colleges often pride themselves on admitting low-income students, but many of those schools expect the neediest families to cover an outsized portion of the cost of attendance, according to a report released Wednesday by the New America Foundation. Policy analysts at the think tank found that hundreds of schools expect families making $30,000 or less to pay an amount that equals more than half of their annual earnings to send their children to college.

About one year, almost to the day, after Christina H. Paxson was inaugurated as the 19th president of Brown University, the institution became the latest site in a string of battles on campuses nationwide that boiled down to two questions: Should a college disinvite a controversial speaker, and if so, when? At Brown in the fall of 2013, the speaker was the commissioner of the New York Police Department, Raymond W. Kelly, who oversaw its controversial "stop and frisk" policy, which was widely viewed as racial profiling. Students pushed for Mr.