In the News

Williams professors and others weigh in on the issues of the day. For a complete listing of media appearances, visit www.williams.edu/admin/ news/inthenews

A Feb. 1 New York Times Magazine article on the growing number of women who choose to be single mothers includes research by economics professor Lucie Schmidt, who says, “What’s striking is how fast the birthrate to the college-educated group has increased.”

“I think we have come almost full circle,” economics professor Ken Kuttner says in a Jan. 16 American Public Media Marketplace report on a proposal for the U.S. Department of the Treasury to buy up billions in troubled assets from banks—an idea that had been rejected last fall.

As foreign language programs are undergoing serious reviews of their missions, requirements and offerings, it’s important to ask “controversial and difficult” questions, such as whether new media ought to be taken seriously and how to balance language, literature and culture, says chair and Stanfield Professor of Asian Studies Neil Kubler in the Dec. 29, 2008, edition of Inside Higher Education.

A birdsong is “a behavior frozen in time,” says biology professor Heather Williams in a Jan. 31 ScienceDaily article on how research in that field may lead to refinements of Darwinian theory.

“A lot of people arrive in Africa [only] to assume that it’s a blank empty space and their goodwill and desire and guilt will fix it,” says Binyavanga Wainaina, Sterling Brown ’22 Visiting Professor of Africana Studies, in the Dec. 4, 2008, broadcast of American Public Media’s Speaking of Faith, which discussed the .