“This is one of the most unsettling, tragic pieces of news yet,” says Sean O’Keefe, University Professor and member of the presidential management program’s inaugural class. “This is a firing of convenience. They are looking for a headcount reduction; there is nothing qualitative about this.”

 “You have to have social promotion. You have no choice. And the only place I would be in favor of making them repeat is if they can't read,” says Bill Coplin, professor of policy studies.

“Self-Reported ADHD Diagnosis Status Among Working-Age Adults in the United States: Evidence From the 2023 National Wellbeing Survey,” co-authored by Maxwell professors Andrew London, Shannon Monnat and Iliya Gutin, was published in the Journal of Attention Disorders.

Scientific expertise itself is now being billed as a political liability, which opens the door to “a populist approach to what counts as valid scientific knowledge,” says University Professor Amy Fairchild.

Shannon Novak, professor of anthropology, has contributed to “The Routledge Handbook of Feminist Anthropology” (Routledge, 2025). Her chapter, “Blood, mud, and mucking around with waste,” examines the materiality and logic of separation practices involved in the gendering of landscapes, bodies and subjectivities at a mother goddess (Mariamma) temple in the industrial outskirts of Toronto, Canada. 

“Syracuse University professor Brian Taylor, author of ‘Russian Politics: A Very Short Introduction,’ packs a wealth of analysis and interesting facts into a compact book,” writes Stuart Anderson, senior contributor at Forbes.

Ryan Monarch, assistant professor of economics, says that it is “clear” tariffs on products like steel and aluminum will increase the cost of building housing and developments and, therefore, drive up the prices of housing in the U.S.

“Patchy Internalization: Transnational Migration and Local Buildings in the Bosnian Borderland,” authored by Associate Professor of Anthropology Azra Hromadžić, was published in Society.

“Bankrolling the Belgrade Bandits? Civil Society, NGOs, and Foreign Aid Localization in Serbia,” authored by Catherine Herrold, associate professor of public administration and international affairs, was published in Public Administration and Development.

“Fighting to Survive: Collective Action, Trusted Messengers, and UNITE HERE's Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic,” co-authored by Associate Professor of Sociology Gretchen Purser, was published in Labor Studies.

“What Mr. Trump is doing with tariffs is a result of a lost consensus about how the United States should interact with other countries in the global economy. He is stepping into that vacuum, filling it with the unrestrained and autocratic use of import taxes, moves that appear to be based on personal whim rather than on U.S. trade law,” says Mary Lovely, professor emerita of economics.

“Lots of the fights that they have picked—especially Musk’s out-of-control, rampant destruction of federal agencies from within—a lot of those fights they are not going to win in court,” says Thomas Keck, Michael O. Sawyer Chair of Constitutional Law and Politics.

Text reminders and mailed flyers with behaviorally informed messages are regularly used in public sector communication. This study uses a randomized controlled trial to examine which email format, a letter with university logos signed by a university official or an informational flyer with a photograph, is the more salient option when recruiting for a teacher training program designed for diverse, underrepresented students. 

An estimated 6.4 million U.S. children and adolescents have an ADHD diagnosis. This pilot study tested the efficacy of behavioral interventions aimed at encouraging daily physical activity (i.e., steps measured with an activity tracker) among adolescents with ADHD. 

Valerie earned a bachelor’s degree in policy studies in the spring of 2024 after just three years and with a 4.0 GPA, and was in her first year with the organization Teach for America. She passed away on Dec. 23, 2024.

“Military and surveillance tech aren’t bad or unethical as such. Instead, supporting national security and doing so in the right way is incredibly important. And supporting national security is, in fact, arguably the ethical thing to do," says Johannes Himmelreich, assistant professor of public administration and international affairs. 

Townsend joined the faculty in 1973, and through the decades served as a professor, mentor, writer and researcher in the Anthropology Department. He faced long-term health conditions but, so devoted to his craft and his students, he continued to teach through the spring of 2024. He passed away on Jan. 22, 2025, at the age of 83. 

“ I thought that [Pete] Hegseth, the defense secretary, was the most problematic overall, of all the ones that stayed in the process. I think given that Hegseth has made it through, that tells me that the other ones are likely to make it as well,” says Grant Reeher, professor of political science.