Mark Satta, assistant professor of philosophy at Wayne State University, wrote an article explaining and analyzing the Supreme Court’s Shurtleff v. Boston case ruling, in which the court unanimously held that the City of Boston violated the First Amendment’s free speech rights of a group that promotes the appreciation of “God, home, and country” by denying its request to raise a Christian flag at the site, given that the city had previously allowed secular groups to temporarily use the flagpole. Satta writes that “the key question, which determined the outcome in the case, was whether raising a flag on City Hall’s third flagpole was an act of government speech or private expression: categories covered by two different free speech doctrines…” 

By Kim Russell  The Consumer Price Index is out for March, putting the inflation we are seeing into numbers. First, the bad news: If you are one of the 1% of Michiganders who use fuel oil to heat your home, turn down your thermostat or you will be spending 70.1% more than a year ago. The cost of filling up your gas tank in March was 48% more than a year ago, and food prices are up about 8.8%. Overall, in the last year, the all items index increased 8.5%, the largest spike since 1981. “It is a little bit scary,” said professor Kevin D. Cotter, Wayne State University department of economics chair. Cotter says while there is reason to be concerned, it is not all bad news. “Food and energy costs have been bumping up largely because of the war and they almost certainly are going to come back down,” said Cotter. If you exclude historically volatile food and energy prices, inflation has moderated. “If you look at, for example, medical costs, those go up but they don’t go down, so the fact those aren’t going up so much is good news. The things that are going up the most are the things that go down just as easily,” said Cotter. Cotter says the pandemic continues to cause inflation, but there is also reason for some optimism that the Federal Reserve might be able to manage inflation without causing a recession. “The things that would lead to a recession, a drop in consumer demand or job losses, we are seeing the opposite right now,” Cotter said.  

By Meryl Davids Landau Figures suggest a form of chronic pain afflicts between a third and half of the UK population, and in the U.S., the figure is 20%, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The devastating consequences of addiction to opioid painkillers have motivated researchers to look for innovative treatments beyond new drugs. One promising area of new research is looking at the way “catastrophizing” about pain – thinking it will never get better, that it’s worse than ever, or that it will ruin your life – plays a central role in whether these predictions come true. Pain doctors who do recognize the importance of quelling catastrophizing generally refer patients for cognitive behavioral therapy, says Mark Lumley, a psychology professor at Wayne State University. This psychological practice is often used to treat depression, eating disorders, and even PTSD, Lumley says.  

By Kim Russell Our leaders want to lower gas prices, but could their efforts have unintended consequences? At the national level, U. S. Congress is considering waiving the 18 cents federal gas tax. The Michigan House passed a bill that would waive the state gas tax for six months. The gas tax holiday still needs approval from the Senate and the Governor to become law. If it does pass, gas stations in Michigan would no longer have to pay just over 27 cents per gallon to the state in motor fuel tax used to fund road repairs. The idea of a tax holiday sounds great, but, the question is: who actually would get the holiday? Professor Kevin Cotter, chair of Wayne State University’s economics department, warns that while the idea of a gas holiday sounds great for stations and drivers, in the situation we are in now, everything would not remain equal. “A cut in the pump price, that is going to result in an increase in gas purchases that the market can’t accommodate,” Cotter said. He said that we have to remember what is causing the spike in pricing: a global shortage of oil due to the war in Ukraine. Russia is facing sanctions, and tankers don’t want to carry Russian oil through a war zone. “You either have a shortage or the price goes up,” said Cotter. “The alternative would be, if you look back to the 1970s, when we had price controls after the oil embargo there were long gas lines. Because people wanted to buy gas, but gas wasn’t available. The fact is we are going to continue to see the price go up, and I don’t think a tax holiday is going to make much of a difference.”

By Mark Hicks  As the Russian invasion of Ukraine sparks more bloodshed and alarms people around the world, Wayne State University at a rally Thursday heard messages about the global implications of war. Wayne State University professor Alisa Moldavanova teaches a course on ethics, and she said the conflict helped underscore the concepts for her students in real time. “Ethical leadership is about doing the right thing,” she told a crowd gathered on campus. “And I think the world should be doing the right thing. All of us here should be doing the right thing. Much like my family and other people in Ukraine are doing the right thing.” The importance of speaking up, helping and taking action anchored the peace vigil Moldavanova helped lead to support Ukrainians. The event came as Russian forces battled for control of a crucial energy-producing city in Ukraine’s south on Thursday and gained ground in their bid to cut off the country from the sea, as Ukrainian leaders called on citizens to rise up and wage guerrilla war against the invaders. The fighting came as another round of talks between the two sides yielded a tentative agreement to set up safe corridors inside Ukraine to evacuate citizens and deliver humanitarian aid. “We pray for peace and an immediate end to the violence,” said Ahmad Ezzeddine, Wayne State’s vice president for academic student affairs and global engagement. Viktor Burlaka, who teaches in the WSU School of Social Work and has ties to Ukraine, described the situation as pivotal and galvanizing. “Ukraine did not cease to exist and we are still alive,” he said. “Ukraine is magnified, and today it’s in the heart of the people around the world. We are united and organized as never before.” 

By Kim Russell   The invasion of Ukraine is causing concerns for people around the globe. The human toll of war is heartbreaking. It has also caused a worldwide economic impact. “It’s really destabilized the Russian economy. You will see the ruble continue to collapse and prices in Russia continue to rise,” said Aaron B. Retish, a Russian history professor at Wayne State University. “It affects the economy obviously most drastically in Ukraine and Russia. It will affect the economy in Europe, especially those that border Russia and are most dependent on Russian goods such as the Netherlands, and then us least of all.” 

Ukrainian-Americans say they want harsher actions from the United States and NATO countries in order to prevent Russia from overtaking Ukraine. Sanctions have been issued against Russia in hopes that its government will be encouraged to back down; however, Russian and Belarusian forces continue. Aaron Retish is a history professor at Wayne State University with a specialization in Soviet and Russian history. Retish said many scholars did not believe Russian President Vladimir Putin was being serious when he threatened to invade Ukraine. “We thought this was all kind of smoke and mirrors or a big bluff,” Retish said. “Clearly, that was not the case.”

Hannah L. Schacter, assistant professor of psychology at Wayne State University, authored an article about the reduction in bullying that occurred when schooling was online. She says that online school during the pandemic was hard on many teens, but new research has found that students were bullied less during online instruction than while attending classes in person. Bullied teens reported heightened anxiety when they were attending in-person school, but not when they were attending online school. The higher proportion of the year a teen spent in online school, the less likely they were to report being bullied.  

There are dozens of apps for finding friends, but none of them prioritize couples who are seeking to befriend other couples. The app Cuplr addresses this problem in an innovative, yet familiar way, by combining a familiar swipe-style social media interface with the goal of driving couples to meet up in real life to get to know each other and socialize. Richard Slatcher, an assistant professor of psychology at Wayne State University found that couples indicated feeling more positive about their own relationships after befriending a new couple.  

A new report from the nonprofit Zinn Education Project found that 45 states have insufficient or non-existent lesson coverage of Reconstruction in schools. Kidada Williams, a history professor at Wayne State University and host of the podcast Seizing Freedom, joins a panel of experts in a discussion about the legacy of Reconstruction in America, as the Smithsonian Museum presents the exhibition “Make Good on the Promises: Reconstruction and Its Legacies.” Williams and her fellow historians warn that eclipsing the aftermath of the Civil War will lead students to be uninformed about the seeds of racial inequality today. Williams’ essay “Legacies of Violence” is part of the companion book to the Smithsonian exhibition. “…the violence that we experience in the present day, like the killing of George Floyd or even the massacre at Mother Emmanuel Church, has a deep history that traces back to Reconstruction and this moment where African Americans are trying to be free, equal, and secure, and they’re experiencing what essentially amounts to a war on freedom – specifically Black peoples’ freedom. The essay talks a lot about how they’re trying to figure out how to live within this system while also communicating the horrors they’re enduring…”  

Dallas is known as a diverse city filled with people of different races, nationalities, religions and socio-economic backgrounds. In an effort the educate the community, celebrate the right attributes of its residents and help the community and nation heal from racial and political unrest, several religious organizations joined together to present the Faiths in Conversation: Religion, Race and Justice conference. The event featured R. Khari Brown, associate professor of sociology at Wayne State University and president of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion. Brown began the discussion focusing on the connections between the Black Lives Matter movement and how race and religion have played a role in people’s views of the topic. “Like other human rights movements on this nation’s past, religious groups are also among the demonstrators,” Brown said. “For example, on June 4, 2020, people marched with hundreds of others in Detroit to demand an end to police brutality. The march began with Christian and Jewish and Muslim leaders praying for guidance. It ended with religious leaders and elected officials calling legislators to support policies aimed at reducing police violence and encouraging marchers to vote their conscience for the 2020 general election…” 

By Lily Bohlke  More than 2.5 million Americans stutter at some point in their lives, and a Michigan researcher is among those learning more about the genetics of stuttering. There is no known cure for it, but experts say newly identified genes associated with stuttering can help them find out if there are links to other conditions or possible treatments. Shelly Jo Kraft, who directs the Behavior, Speech and Genetics lab at Wayne State University, said the new genes are helping researchers learn more about the factors that contribute to stuttering, or protect people from risk. “We’ve known stuttering is inherited for a long time,” she said. “But there’s been a lot of community misinformation about stuttering, a lot of stigma, a lot of misconception about why someone stutters.” Having more information about how the genes operate that lead people to stutter can help push back against those misconceptions – to show that stuttering isn’t a personality trait, or caused by a traumatic event. 

There was big news from NASA recently with the Christmas Day launch of the new James Webb Space Telescope, which that could reveal some of the most fundamental information about the origins of our universe. Astrophysicist Edward Cackett, who is an associate professor of astronomy and chair of the planetarium advisory board at Wayne State University, says the new telescope will give us a glimpse of some of the universe’s earliest galaxies, as well as give us hints about where extraterrestrial life might be abundant on other planets. “We’ll actually be able to see the signature, for instance, of water vapor around planets around other stars and potentially see the signatures of life on distant planets,” Cackett said.  

Mark Satta, assistant professor of philosophy at Wayne State University, wrote an article analyzing an upcoming case that the Supreme Court will hear, Shurtleff v. Boston, which addresses whether the city violated the First Amendment by denying a request to temporarily raise the Christian flag on a flagpole outside City Hall, where Boston has temporarily displayed many secular organizations’ flags. Satta writes that the case raises important questions about free speech at a time when many members of the Supreme Court seem concerned about restrictions on religion. The court’s decision will likely clarify one or more free speech doctrines, impacting how courts nationwide interpret the First Amendment’s guarantees. 

By Paul Vachon  Lars Johnson, assistant professor of psychology at Wayne State University, participated in an interview about the future of the workplace. He said the most effective way for employers to address the current labor circumstances is to listen closely to the personal concerns of workers and potential hires. In his view, the post-pandemic economy presents an opportunity for employers to rewrite the traditional social contract between management and worker. These include concerns over workplace safety, flexible scheduling, adequate compensation, and greater respect for employee work-life balance. “The pandemic forced people into their homes and out of their normal work routines, due to either remote work, layoff, or termination, so people had to find alternate modes of work,” he said. “The pandemic shifted the labor market in ways we couldn’t account for. People realized the conditions in which they worked were problematic.”  

By R. Khari Brown, assoicate professor of sociology, and Ronald Brown, associate professor of political science.  On June 5, 2020, it had been just over a week since a white Minnesota police officer, Derek Chauvin, killed George Floyd, an unarmed, African American man. Protests were underway outside Central United Methodist Church, an interracial church in downtown Detroit with a long history of activism on civil rights, peace, immigrant rights and poverty issues. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the church was no longer holding in-person worship services. But anyone walking into its sanctuary that day would have seen long red flags behind the pastor’s lectern, displaying the words “peace” and “love.” A banner reading “Michigan Says No! To War” hung alongside pictures of civil rights icons Fannie Lou Hamer and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., as well as labor-rights activist Cesar Chavez. In line with her church’s activist tradition, senior pastor Jill Hardt Zundell stood outside the building and preached about her church’s commitment to eradicating anti-Black racism to her congregants and all that passed by.

The Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit partnered with Wayne State University's anthropology department to conduct an excavation on the museum's grounds as part of an ongoing art exhibit entitled "All Monsters" by Chicago native Jan Tichy. Random household items, including pieces of a clay pot and an old medicine bottle, were unearthed by Wayne State students and will be transformed into works of art. The exhibit is located in artist Mike Kelley's "Mobile Homestead," a full-scale replica of Kelley's 1950's ranch-style home in Detroit, which sits on a plot adjacent to the archeological site that was once a women's prison and a place that housed homeless women and children. Wayne State University professor of anthropology Krysta Ryzewski said the team wanted to incorporate the land's history into the exhibit. "He (Tichy) though that archaeology might be a really interesting way to connect with the art that's on display in his part of the homestead," she said. "So we thought it might be a way to dig underground and bring up the stories of this property and the people who used to live here and utilize the space and many of those people are not known to Detroit's history...We are literally excavating other histories that have been rendered inaccessible because of the changes to the landscape and Detroit over time." 

These days, public health crises are common. The Flint water crisis made global news, highlighting how attempts to cut costs on basic services like clean water led to high levels of led in the water. Crisis lead levels in water, breathing unclean air and not having access to safe areas to play are a daily reality for many. And when the COVID-19 pandemic first hit, many public officials were caught off guard. According to some recent scholarship, public health programs once focused more on public infrastructure and the health of the most vulnerable in society. Tricia Miranda-Hartsuff, a public health associate professor at Wayne State University, says the public health field is now changing to focus on larger structural issues, including institutional racism and poverty that can help create trauma. “What we saw with COVID was this exaggeration of health disparities that had already been prevalent,” she said. “We already knew that certain populations had less access to care, had poorer quality of care.”

By Lily Bohlke  Michigan researchers have received a $3.1 million grant to study potential new sources of rare earth metals and how to process them. Rare earth metals are a set of 17 elements found in the earth’s crust, and are a key component of many high-tech processes from military technology to electronic devices, batteries for electric cars and magnets in wind turbines. The U.S. relies on China for 80% of our rare earth metals, and the prices have spiked over the last year. The lead researchers for the project are Matthew Allen, chair and professor of chemistry in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and Timothy Dittrich, assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering in the College of Engineering at Wayne State University. “After we recover the rare earth elements, instead of just putting them in a hazardous-waste landfill, we’re also looking at ways to use those for building materials and other uses so that we don’t have these other problems that we’re creating as we’re recovering rare earth elements,” said Dittrich. 

A multidisciplinary team of researchers at Wayne State University have been awarded a $3.1 million grant from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers ERCD program to seek alternative sources of rare earth elements critical to advanced military and consumer technologies. The project, Rare Earths from U.S. Extractions – or REUSE – will focus on both basic and related applied research in science and engineering with the goal of developing a U.S. rare earth element supply chain as well as a process of handling waste streams. REUSE is led by two principal investigators, Matthew J. Allen, chair and professor of chemistry in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, and Timothy M. Dittrich, assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering in the College of Engineering.