Professor Kara Swanson has been named as the 2020 Arthur Molella Distinguished Fellow by the Smithsonian's Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation. While in residence at the Lemelson Center in early 2021, she will work on her project, “Inventing Citizens: Race, Gender, and Patents.”
“The pandemic’s not going to last forever, but the data that’s collected from the pandemic might," Professor Woodrow Hartzog tells News@Northeastern. "Until they feel protected, people are going to be reluctant to participate and share—and rightfully so.”
“It seems fair to say that we might try and regulate an intentional attempt to expose another person to an infectious disease,” Professor Aziza Ahmed tells Northeastern News. “But, is there a good way to hold someone accountable that can recognize the complexity of our moment in which confusion reigns? Not really.”
“The troubling thing about these public health emergencies is it does give governments really wide latitude to enact and enforce laws that we might otherwise see as violations of privacy or civil liberties,” Professor Aziza Ahmed tells TIME.
If we need to triage law enforcement activity, I’d say ‘low-level drug crimes’ are at the top of that list of things we need to take a much more flexible approach on,” Professor Leo Beletsky tells The Appeal.
Sharing research and discoveries among various pharmaceutical companies—trade secrets that are typically closely guarded and legally protected—would enable scientists to work together and build upon their collective knowledge, says Professor Brook Baker.
In an op-ed co-authored for CommonWealth, Professor Carol Steinberg writes about the need for more adaptable housing highlighted by the COVID-19 crisis.
With water, as with access to education, the tragedies of the pandemic are making clear how interconnected we are, and how deeply societal inequality hurts us all,"" writes Professor Martha Davis in a blog for the Raoul Wallenberg Institute of Human Rights.
Cassandra Dechaine JD/MPH ’21 has joined a coalition of volunteers helping health departments across Massachusetts handle the COVID-19 crisis. “It’s really hard, as someone who’s in school to try to help people as much as possible, to feel like I’m not doing anything actively,” she tells News@Northeastern. “I know the local health departments are just super, super overloaded right now, so to help mitigate and help with that as much as possible really interested me.”
Earlier this year, the US House of Representatives passed a bill that labels conspiracies to commit hate crimes as lynchings, which would make them a federal crime if the measure is signed into law. Professors Margaret Burnham and Jonathan Kahn say it will be noteworthy to watch how the case proceeds amid a news coverage cycle that is dominated by the COVID-19 pandemic.