January 14, 2022 by
A&S News
From suggestions that the COVID-19 pandemic will leave office towers in downtown Toronto’s financial district empty to the #VeryAsian hashtag being used to combat anti-Asian sentiment on social media, scholars from a range of disciplines across the Faculty of Arts & Science are sharing their expertise on a variety of issues in the media.
Here’s some of what they had to say this week.
January 7, 2022
- Department of Geography & Planning and School of Cities professor Matti Siemiatycki suggests in the Toronto Star that the COVID-19 pandemic will not lead to a hollowing out of Toronto’s downtown financial district as once speculated.
- Department of Philosophy professor Mark Kingwell writes a Globe and Mail op-ed examining the possibility of progressives and conservatives finding common ground in their opposition to Big Tech as a result of individual addictions to technology and digital communication.
- Department of East Asian Studies professor Linda Rui Feng and her novel Swimming Back to Trout River are featured in CBC Books as part of the 2022 Scotiabank Giller Prize monthly book club.
January 8, 2022
- Dimitry Anastakis, a professor in the Department of History and the Rotman School of Management, argues in the Toronto Star against the suggestion that most drivers will be driving electric vehicles in just a few years.
- Department of Sociology professor and chair Scott Schieman writes a Toronto Star op-ed arguing that for all the complaining that people do about their jobs, many workers do like working for a variety of reasons.
January 9, 2022
- Matti Siemiatycki comments in CBC News on the installation of photo radar cameras across Toronto to reduce the speed of vehicles on city streets.
- Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology PhD candidate Lisa Erdle speaks in a ParrySound.com story about her research that demonstrated the effectiveness of adding filters to washing machines in residences across Parry Sound and the surrounding area to reduce microfibre pollution in wastewater.
January 10, 2022
- Noura Al-Jizawi and Siena Anstis, researchers at the Citizen Lab at the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy, comment in the Toronto Star (paywall) on the prevalence of foreign cyber attacks on human rights advocates in Canada.
January 11, 2022
- Ting Li, an assistant professor in the David A. Dunlap Department of Astronomy & Astrophysics and an associate at the Dunlap Institute for Astronomy & Astrophysics, explains in the Globe and Mail how galactic archeology might assist in locating the unidentified dark matter believed to make up most of the Milky Way Galaxy’s mass.
- Hannah Dykaar, an Astronomy & Astrophysics PhD student, comments in Space.com on the violent consumption of a star by a black hole – known as a tidal disruption event – as shown by data collected as much as 35 years ago.
January 12, 2022
- A research report coauthored by Munk School assistant professor Sean Speer is cited in a Globe and Mail op-ed exploring the need for a dedicated agency to oversee advanced research in Canada.
- Ting Li further describes in Sky & Telescope new insights into the histories of 12 streams of stars swirling in and around the Milky Way Galaxy.
January 13, 2022
- John Scott-Railton, a senior researcher at the Citizen Lab, comments in The Guardian, BBC News, Al Jazeera and the Associated Press on the discovery of spyware on devices belonging to dozens of journalists and human rights advocates in El Salvador.
- In the National Post, the Toronto Star and Global News, Citizen Lab senior research associate Christopher Parsons calls for the Government of Canada to update its privacy laws after the Public Health Agency of Canada’s admission that it used data obtained from third parties to track travel patterns of Canadians during the COVID-19 pandemic.
- Michelle Cho, an assistant professor in the Department of East Asian Studies, comments in a CBC News story about the #VeryAsian hashtag being used in social media and other public communication to combat anti-Asian sentiment.