Janine Lanza, an associate professor in the Department of History and director of the Gender, Sexuality & Women's Studies Program, wrote an opinion piece about the growing influence of women in sports. “Women historically had few opportunities to engage in sports, whether at the amateur or professional levels. The opening up of opportunities for girls and women was the product of a long and often controversial campaign. When Katherine Switzer defied the ban on women running the Boston Marathon in 1975 organizers attempted to physically remove her from the course. The real game changer for female athletics was the passage of Title IX in 1972. Part of a broader educational reform bill, this section guaranteed equal funding for male and female sporting activities at all levels of education. Before this legislation, few girls played sports in school, and those who did were underfunded and ignored. The passage of that legislation created skyrocketing numbers of girls and women who participated in sports at all levels. In 1972 only 1 in 27 girls played any sport in school. By 2000 that number was 1 in 3. On the level of Olympic and other national sports organizations, only after the passage of the 1978 Amateur Sports Act did women’s sports get funding and representation in national sports organizations. Since the passage of that law, female athletes have had a much larger presence, and greater success, in international athletic competitions. But women and girls continue to struggle for support and equality with male athletes.”

Kevin Cotter, Wayne State University Department of Economics chair, joined host Craig Fahle in a discussion about the proposed revisions to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

At the end of a marathon day in Balocco, Italy, in June, Sergio Marchionne was still going strong. Marchionne, the CEO of Fiat Chrysler Automobiles, died less than two months later. In the days after his death, the Swiss hospital where he died said Marchionne had been treated over the previous year for an undisclosed serious illness, and questions were being raised about what company officials knew. But if the FCA board knew of Marchionne's struggles — and that's not a certainty — is there a requirement to share more? Professor Sudip Datta, finance department chair at Wayne State University's Mike Ilitch School of Business, said the issue goes to privacy. "There's no requirement per se about disclosing the health of the CEO to investors," Datta said, "Just because someone is a CEO, it doesn't mean someone checks all his privacy at the door." The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission "doesn’t say you have to disclose the private lives of the CEO or for that matter any employee," Datta said.

If you’re living with a chronic illness—as half of all Americans are—then you may want to check any unnecessary bickering. According to a recent study published in the Annals of Behavioral Medicine, the only thing worse than living with a chronic condition is fighting with your partner while living with a chronic condition. Researchers were interested in getting a better understanding of how the day-to-day interactions in a marriage impact the health of a person living with a chronic disease.

As a young psychologist in the 1980s who had researched treatment of the mentally ill, I was concerned by many reports suggesting that the growing number of homeless people may be due to deinstitutionalization.

This week, the U.S. Supreme Court issued its long awaited decision in Janus v. AFSCME, Council 31 and invalidated what's known as agency shop in the public sector. 

Suicide now ranks in the top 10 leading causes of death in the U.S. In 2015, 44,193 Americans died by their own hand. That was more than the number killed in motor vehicle accidents (37,757) and over twice the number who died through homicide (17,793).

On June 26, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of pro-life crisis pregnancy centers by holding that a 2015 California law regulating them, the Reproductive FACT Act, violates the First Amendment. I am a constitutional law professor who has written extensively on the First Amendment.

Forty years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a state could require nonmembers of a public employee union to pay an “agency fee,” otherwise known as costs of collective bargaining, for their representation by the union.

Unless you’ve fallen into the sinkhole on the White House lawn, you’re well aware of President Trump’s Twitter declaration that he can pardon himself just like he would anyone else.

The Supreme Court has handed down a landmark privacy decision in a case about cellphone location data, suggesting there should be stronger protections against government searches for the increasing amount of private information that’s stored online.

The U.S. government declared a national public health emergency in October 2017 to address the opioid addiction crisis. More than six months later, the country is still in the throes of the crisis, with no sight in end.

June 19 marks Juneteenth, a celebration of the de facto end of slavery in the United States. For hundreds of thousands of African-Americans stuck in pretrial detention – accused but not convicted of a crime, and unable to leave because of bail – that promise remains unfulfilled. And coming immediately after Father’s Day, it’s also a reminder of the loss associated with the forced separation of families.

Europe’s new data privacy rules, the General Data Protection Regulation, have taken effect, but what they actually mean remains to be discovered. And whether the GDPR, as it’s known, really helps protect your private data may depend on complaints that Max Schrems, an Austrian privacy activist, filed against Google, Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp on the day the regulation went into effect.

Nick Schroeck with the Environmental Law Clinic at Wayne State University, says it used to be common for manufacturers to dispose of chemicals with little thought of long-term ramifications. “Back, pre-environmental law, think pre-1970s, you may have had chemicals that were just dumped out back behind the factory,” says Schroeck. ”Now we know these PFAS chemicals are very persistent in the environment, meaning they don’t break down. They’re in the environment for a very, very long time… They would accumulate over time in the groundwater plume under the soil.”

Imagine you are the captain of a ship and you are being told that you can have a million dollars if you complete your voyage. All you have to do is navigate an unknown ocean, with unknown rules with no prior sailing experience. Then you hit a storm, get lost, and take on water. Not only do you fail to complete the journey but you also sink the ship.

As a society, we often wax eloquent about how important it is to nurture, support and protect our children. The sad reality, however, is that all too often major, life-changing decisions are made without any consideration of their potential lifelong and devastating impact on kids.

Our research team, Stress, Trauma, and Anxiety Research Clinic STARC at Wayne State University, has been exploring the psychological impact of traumatic experiences in Syrian adult and children refugees.