Soundbites: Faculty in the News

Our annual Soundbites segment in the Developments newsletter gives you a sample of how our faculty have contributed to the public understanding of some of the year’s most pressing issues, from COVID and global warming to Afghanistan and the nation’s political divides.

“If we understand trauma as social, psychological and physical responses to experiences that cannot be assimilated into an individual’s existing understandings of themselves and the world around them, then gun trauma goes far beyond the roughly 40,000 lives taken by gun violence every year and the approximately 115,000 people harmed by guns.” - Jennifer Carlson, School of Sociology (with graduate student Madison Armstrong) | “We Have Spent Over a Decade Researching Guns in America. This is What We Learned.” | The New York Times, 3/26/21

“We’ve seen more and more undocumented border crossers being pushed into particularly remote and dangerous areas of southern Arizona. This is a direct consequence of increased border enforcement and border militarization.” - Daniel Martinez, School of Sociology and Department of Mexican American Studies | “Migrant Border Deaths Surge with ‘Increased Enforcement and Militarization’” | Newsweek, 5/4/21

“The current protests suggest that Israeli government attempts to isolate Palestinian citizens of Israel from Palestinians in the occupied territories and in exile and to integrate them into the Israeli state have failed.” - Maha Nassar, School of Middle Eastern and North African Studies | “Protests by Palestinian Citizens in Israel Signal Growing Sense of a Common Struggle” | The Conversation, 5/13/21

“Maintaining a language isn’t just maintaining a form of communication, it’s maintaining a group of people or a people’s world view or social organization.” - Ofelia Zepeda, Department of Linguistics | “UA Linguistics Prof: Role of Language Goes Beyond Communication” | Arizona Daily Star, 5/29/21

“When you try to disrupt the status quo, you are doing something un-American without understanding that America is nothing without all the people that make it up. Who is against learning about the full history of this country?” - Sonja Lanehart, Department of Linguistics | “Tulsa Race Massacre Leads to Conversation about Critical Race Theory Education” | KOLD-13, 6/1/21

“If an athlete won, even if he won illegally, he could still remain an Olympic victor, but his city-state paid a huge fine. There were statues of Zeus set up in the sanctuary paid for by these fines, with the story of the infraction on them so that everybody would know what happened.” - David Gilman Romano, School of Anthropology | “Olympics Then and Now” | UANews, 7/21/21

“Most people don’t identify with the extremist, ideological views that they see in the media. That can push them away from the parties and drive them to identify as independents even though they truly prefer one of the parties.” - Samara Klar, School of Government and Public Policy | “Political Spotlight Pushes Arizona Voters Into Independents” | Arizona Public Media, 7/27/21

“The Biden administration is likely celebrating a better-than-expected jobs report, which showed surging employment and wages. However, for millions of working Americans, being employed doesn’t guarantee a living income.” - Jeffrey Kucik, School of Government and Public Policy | “Forget the American Dream – Millions of Working Americans Still Can’t Afford Food and Rent” | The Conversation, 8/6/21

“The only thing that kept the government in power was U.S. troops which, as they were being withdrawn, led to an instantaneous disintegration of the government and victory of the Taliban. Based on past history one would expect a highly repressive regime in Afghanistan.” - David Gibbs, Department of History | “UArizona Professor Gives Perspective about Chaos in Afghanistan” | KGUN-9, 8/16/21

“Even in normal times, “touch hunger” is associated with greater stress, anxiety and loneliness; lower-quality sleep; and reduced satisfaction and closeness in romantic relationships. Add to that the restrictions on touch introduced by COVID-19 and it makes sense why so many are suffering.” - Kory Floyd, Department of Communication | “Why We Missed Hugs” | The Conversation, 8/16/21

“The government had created these schools to teach Indian students, some as young as four or five years old, industrial trades so that they could be ‘useful members of American society’ and take that training back to their communities, or take that training into predominantly white communities that surrounded the Indian school.” - Matthew Sakiestewa Gilbert, Department of American Indian Studies | “Indian Boarding Schools’ Traumatic Legacy, And the Fight To Get Native Ancestors Back” | NPR Code Switch, 8/28/21

“We need to understand why people are moving into floodplains and what ways we can support flood mitigation. I think satellite and Earth observations can be transformative in how we think about building resilience in a world marked by climate change.” - Beth Tellman, School of Geography, Development & Environment | “Research Shows More People Living in Floodplains” | NASA Earth Observatory, 9/27/21

“Staying out of a ‘dangerous situation’ would actually mean disallowing women to participate in activities of daily life.” - Elise Lopez, Consortium on Gender-Based Violence | “My Dad is Clueless About Sexual Assault Because I Haven’t Told Him About It” | Fatherly, 10/10/21

“We think that people were still somehow mobile, because they had just begun to use ceramics and lived in ephemeral structures on the ground level. People were in transition to more settled lifeways, and many of those areas probably didn’t have much hierarchical organization. But still, they could make this kind of very well-organized center.” - Takeshi Inomata, School of Anthropology | “Lidar Uncovers Hundreds of Lost Maya and Olmec Ruins” | Wired, 11/7/21