From 10th-Grade English to Trigger Warnings
Two new books by Penn faculty explore how free expression
on campus became so fraught and what to do about it.
Prophet of Prosperity
Simon Patten, who led the Wharton School during the Progressive Era, was a pioneer of the economics of abundance, theorist of the second industrial revolution, and intellectual godfather of the New Deal. His descent into obscurity poses provocative questions about how the field has evolved.
The ModPo Squad
A MOOC reinvigorates modern American poetry.
Atlas for the End of the World
Auditing the globe’s protected landscapes—and the forces threatening them.
Fathoming Man’s Best Friend
Dog science gets an update.
Identity Cleft
In the age of hybrid cells and genetic medicine, where does human identity lie?
Science and Error
A history of unripe findings and unintended consequences.
Black Box Justice
Richard Berk designs computer algorithms that predict crime. As courts and cops increasingly use his and similar tools to shape everything from parole decisions to street policing, Berk has a warning: accuracy comes at the cost of fairness, and citizens must decide where justice lies.
Social Justice at Children’s Expense
The fatal scourge of child maltreatment has a tragic enabler: the ethical code of professional social workers.
Spreading Safety
Safe Kids Stories promotes “stealth culture change.”
Scanning Sacred Interiors
With his high-tech Baroque Topologies project, associate professor of architecture Andrew Saunders is adding new dimensions to the study of Italian Baroque churches. It’s also serious eye candy.
Mapping the Human Journey
Combining old-school fieldwork and ethnography with up-to-the-minute gene-based analyses, Penn molecular anthropologist Theodore G. Schurr has helped shape our understanding of the movement of ancient peoples into the Americas.
Shakespeare’s Secret Helper
Big data and the Bard: what’s in a the, or and, or with, or or?
Peter Struck’s Odyssey
The classical studies professor—whose scholarship traces how intellectual concepts and literary works were received and interpreted in ancient Greece and Rome—is an ardent champion of the continued vitality and relevance of liberal arts education in our own time.
Witness to a Demolition
Elaine Simon’s photographs “capture the stages of demolition as a way to remember the site and make a statement about cycles of destruction, displacement, and development.”
Block the Vote
Law School’s Sparer Symposium tackles voting rights and gerrymandering.
Star Struck
Looking back—way back—with Penn astrophysicist Bhuvnesh Jain.
Talks About Trump
Panels examine foreign policy, the economy, and “truth” in the Trump era.
Biden Coming to Penn
Biden joins Penn to lead Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement.
Bone Warrior
Dinosaur hunter Edward Drinker Cope studied briefly at Penn in his youth and ended his days as a faculty member at the University. In between, the impulsive and driven scholar churned out more than 1,400 scientific publications—and exchanged many harsh words—in an epic battle with his more methodical rival, Othniel Charles Marsh of Yale, for primacy in the nascent field of paleontology.
A Brief History of Sitting Down
Take a chair.
When Push Comes to Shove
Cultural historian Francesca Ammon deconstructs the bulldozer.
Protecting “Negative Heritage” in Rwanda
In a church where victims were massacred, a team from Penn is helping Rwandan officials develop a plan to conserve the material evidence—bullet-riddled walls, blood-stained clothing—that bears witness to the country’s genocide.
E Pluribus, Polarization?
Political polarization less pronounced than partisans predict.