External Posts

Maine's Second Congressional District will be one of the most hotly contested races in 2020, according to Sandy Maisel, the Goldfarb Family Distinguished Professor of American Government, who told the Lewiston Sun Journal that "there is no congressional district that is more competitive in the entire nation.” The article, also aired by WGME-TV13, reported, "People say that races in small states like Maine aren’t that big a deal, Maisel said, 'but here’s a district everyone is going to be paying attention to.'”

Multiple media outlets ran stories on the recently announced milestone of Colby's Dare Northward campaign—raising $500 million, or two-thirds of its goal, in just three years. Outlets that covered Colby's success include: Boston Globe, Nov. 21 U.S. News & World Report, Nov. 24 Washington Times, Nov. 24 WABI-TV5, Nov. 24 Mainebiz, Nov. 22 Portland Press Herald, Nov. 21 Morning Sentinel, Nov. 21

The Chicago Public Library selected Biddy Mason Speaks Up, cowritten by Arisa White, assistant professor of creative writing, as one of it's 2019 Best of the Best in the "Best Informational Books for Older Readers" category. The book, part of the "Fighting for Justice" series, tells the story of healer, midwife, and civil rights champion Biddy Mason, who was born into slavery but eventually wins her freedom in 1856. "The Best of the Best lists represent our choices for the year’s most outstanding titles, books of exceptional quality for a diverse, city-wide readership," the library said in an email to the author. Read more about White and her process of cowriting the book, in this Colby Magazine story, Past-Place and Present Moment.

The Boston Globe ran an extensive story Nov. 21 on the success of Colby's Dare Northward capital campaign, which raised more than $500 million, two-thirds of its goal, in three years. The article includes an interview with President David Greene, who is quoted about many of the dramatic improvements enabled by the campaign thus far—in financial aid, access, diversification of the student body, expansion of the faculty and academic programs, expanded internship and study-abroad opportunities for students, facilities improvements on campus, investments and improvements downtown, civic engagement of students, and more. Greene told the Globe, “We’re well ahead of track, which is a good place to be, but we still have a long way to go.” The campaign's overall goal is $750 million by June 30, 2023.

The Boston Globe ran an extensive story Nov. 21 on the success of Colby's Dare Northward capital campaign, which raised more than $500 million, two-thirds of its goal, in three years. The article includes an interview with President David Greene, who is quoted about many of the dramatic improvements enabled by the campaign thus far—in financial aid, access, diversification of the student body, expansion of the faculty and academic programs, expanded internship and study-abroad opportunities for students, facilities improvements on campus, investments and improvements downtown, civic engagement of students, and more. Greene told the Globe, “We’re well ahead of track, which is a good place to be, but we still have a long way to go.” The campaign's overall goal is $750 million by June 30, 2023.

A November 21 NPR feature headlined "Why Money Can't (Usually) Buy You a Successful Campaign" featured Professor of Government Anthony Corrado, an expert on campaign finance. The story, on scores of stations and websites across the country, discussed wealthy candidates currently seeking the nomination and noted that while President Donald Trump's successful self-funded bid for the White House was unique, it wasn't necessarily his money that secured the election. "Really what drove his campaign was not the money he was spending, but rather the media coverage he was getting and his ability to generate an enormous amount of public attention," Corrado told NPR political reporter Jessica Taylor.

Dean Allbritton, associate professor of Spanish at Colby, spoke about his academic research at Stony Brook University in New York Nov. 6 as part of a distinguished alumni speakers series in the Department of Hispanic Languages and Literature. Allbritton, who earned a Ph.D. at Stony Brook in 2011, presented “Bad Blood: Visions of Hemophilia in the Spanish AIDS Crisis,” discussing his analysis of "representations of illness and health in contemporary Spanish culture and media as focalizing points for larger discourse of national and societal health," the Stony Brook news bureau reported.

On Nov. 9, Associate Professor of Philosophy Keith Peterson presented a paper in Germany on the work of Nicolai Hartmann as part of a conference, "Philosophical Anthropology as an Interdisciplinary Praxis: Historical & Systematic Perspectives." Peterson's lecture, titled "Hartmann’s Contribution to an Ecological Materialist Anthropology," was presented at the University of Cologne. The conference was sponsored by the Graduate School for the Humanities, Cologne, in cooperation with the Hartmann, Plessner, and Scheler societies. Hartmann was an early 20th-century German philosopher known for developing an elaborate realist ontology. The paper that Peterson delivered brought ontological and anthropological ideas to bear on models of the human in environmental philosophy. Peterson argued that Hartmann's stratified model of the human allows us to avoid reductionism and appreciate the ecological asymmetrical dependence of humans on nonhuman nature. The conference program is online here.

Robert Gastaldo, Colby's Whipple-Coddington Professor of Geology, and colleagues recently published an article in the journal PALAIOS, that upsets long-held beliefs about the End-Permian mass extinction 252 million years ago. Gastaldo is coauthor of an article titled “Testing the Daptocephalus and Lystrosaurus Assemblage Zones in a Lithostratographic, Magnetostratigraphic, and Palynological Framework in the Free State, South Africa.” PALAIOS is a journal that emphasizes the impact of life on Earth's history. The abstract of the piece says: "We conclude that the turnover from the Daptocephalus to Lystrosaurus Assemblage Zones is more protracted than envisioned, it is not coincident with the end-Permian event as recognized in the marine realm, and little evidence exists in support of a three-phased extinction model based on vertebrate assemblages in the Karoo Basin." Other articles coauthored by Gastaldo and published this year include “A Multidisciplinary Approach to Review the Vertical and Lateral Facies Relationships of the Purported Vertebrate-defined Terrestrial Boundary Interval at Bethulie, Karoo Basin, South Africa” in Earth Science Reviews, Volume 189; and “Discussion of ‘Permian—Triassic vertebrate footprints from South Africa: Ichnotaxonomy, producers and biostratigraphy through two major faunal crises,’” in Gondwana Research.    

The December issue of National Geographic has an extended feature on the thousands of tigers kept in captivity in the United States, and Associate Professor of Environmental Studies is quoted about the history of the animals in the country. The article is headed, "Captive Tigers in the U.S. Outnumber Those in the Wild. It's a Problem: Some are in roadside zoos. Some are pets. Many are abused. A lack of regulation on big cats is putting animals and humans at risk." Full text of the article was published online Nov. 14