External Posts

Professor of Government Dan Shea was a guest on the Sept. 22 NPR show On Point titled "How RBG's Death Could Impact Key Senate Races." Boston's NPR station WBUR aired the show, but it's also aired on stations across the country. NECN—New England Cable News—also tapped Shea for their story "Susan Collins Faces Pressure From Right, Left Over Supreme Court Vote." Even though Collins has said she does “not believe that the Senate should vote on the nominee prior to the election,” Shea believes her decision is complicated based on various election scenarios. “We’re in uncharted territory,” Shea fold NECN. “This may well be part of her legacy. I think she’s worried about the legitimacy of the Senate, Congress and the Court.” In a Sept. 20 Wall Street Journal article, Shea said of Collins: “It’s an impossible position that does thrust her into the most important moves that she’ll make in her career. It is about her legacy, a grand statement, a grand move, maybe even her last grand move in a very long public life. And it is an opportunity, it seems to me, for her to calm things down. If she can rally that sense of what’s best for America instead of what’s best for the Republican party, it could be her last grand gesture.”

Tanya Sheehan, the William R. Kenan Jr. Professor of Art, has contributed an essay to a new book published by Harvard’s Peabody Museum and Aperture, To Make Their Own Way in the World: The Enduring Legacy of the Zealy Daguerreotypes (2020). The book focuses on a group of early photographs of Africans and African Americans taken in 1850 by Joseph T. Zealy of South Carolina and commissioned by Swiss scientist Louis Agassiz. Agassiz had hoped the pictures of the enslaved people, who were posed frontally and in profile and in various states of undress, would support his ideas on the origins of human diversity, and specifically the racist theory of polygenesis. The daguerreotypes were rediscovered in the attic of Harvard’s Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology in 1976 and have since inspired much scholarship and controversy. Sheehan was invited to participate in a workshop hosted by the Peabody Museum to stimulate new critical reflections on the photographs, and she contributed an essay to the resulting volume edited by Ilisa Barbash, Molly Rogers, and Deborah Willis. Her essay considers the deep connections between early photography and science and argues that they help account for Agassiz’s selection of a seemingly ordinary portrait photographer to support his work. 

Assistant Professor of Psychology Derek Huffman coauthored a new paper, "Landmarks: A solution for spatial navigation and memory experiments in virtual reality" in Behavior Research Methods. "Research into the behavioral and neural correlates of spatial cognition and navigation has benefited greatly from recent advances in virtual reality (VR) technology," according to the paper's abstract. While there're many solutions for designing two-dimensional (2D) vision-based experiments, the authors write that for research using 3D environments—which has largely relied on video game engines such as Unity to create experiments–lacks the intrinsic flexibility and features necessary for experimental design. "Here, we describe a new custom asset package for building, developing, and deploying navigation-based experiments on desktop and in VR using the Unity game engine, which is freely available for personal use," states the abstract. "This package, called 'Landmarks,' has been integrated with the Unity engine and several Unity asset packages to create a user-friendly suite of tools to facilitate the creation of VR experiments."

Sandy Maisel, the Goldfarb Family Distinguished Professor of American Government, was tapped for a Public News Service article on how Susan Collins's opposition to a Supreme Court vote may impact her chances for reelection. "Many of those undecided people have hesitation about the extent to which she supports Trump. Some of those people are still in play for her," Maisel said.  

In an Associated Press story titled "Walmart, Amazon Donate To QAnon-Promoting Tennessee Politician" that was circulated across the country, Professor of Government Anthony Corrado was quoted about how corporate PAC managers make decisions on which candidates to support. "In many instances, you don’t have any kind of corporate board oversight or any kind of accountability in terms of review of contributions before they’re made,” Corrado said. “Some corporations now have adopted policies about the supervision of PAC contributions because of the reputational risks involved in this.” The Los Angeles Times, Huffington Post, and Houston Chronicle are among the many outlets that ran the story.

Artist Jim Condron '92 was interviewed by The New Criterion magazine for their September issue. The article says that just before the pandemic hit, "Condron began a residency at the New York Studio School’s DUMBO Sculpture Studio and Gallery," so the interviewer and Condron talked "about such disruptions and recent work, but we also discuss longer-standing artistic concerns that transcend the strange circumstances of these past few months." 

Artist Jim Condron '92 was interviewed by The New Criterion magazine for their September issue. The article says that just before the pandemic hit, "Condron began a residency at the New York Studio School’s DUMBO Sculpture Studio and Gallery," so the interviewer and Condron talked "about such disruptions and recent work, but we also discuss longer-standing artistic concerns that transcend the strange circumstances of these past few months." 

Insider magazine included Colby in its story "13 of the most unique colleges in America," highlighting Colby's Jan Plan as an opportunity "to take time off to travel or complete research abroad." 

Professor of Government Anthony Corrado was tapped for a Maine Public story on the high-profile, high-stakes Maine U.S. Senate race and the effects of money flowing into the race. “This is the marquee race in the country for the U.S. Senate,” said Corrado, one of the leading campaign finance experts in the country. "Corrado said the state’s U.S. Senate race reflects the trend of increasingly nationalized contests. 'Fundraising and spending has now become basically a borderless activity,' he said."

Tayo Clyburn, Colby's new dean of diversity, equity, and inclusion, was profiled in Diverse: Issues in Higher Education. The profile chronicles Clyburn's journey to his new position at Colby, recounting his graduate work at The Ohio State University and his previous job at St. Mary’s College of Maryland. At Colby, he's looking forward. "He wants to ensure that those outside of the campus also know about Colby’s efforts to lead in areas of diversity, equity, and inclusion," the journal reports. "Additionally, Clyburn is looking to bring the many separate diversity initiatives that already exist together to work as a cohesive unit. At the same time, Clyburn adds, Colby is working to make college affordable and accessible to all students."