July 31, 2020 by
A&S News
From exploring the meanings of names of sports teams, to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on restaurants across Toronto, 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 A&S scholars had to say this week.
July 24, 2020
- Christopher Parsons, a senior research associate in the Citizen Lab at the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy, speaks about the controversy surrounding a contact tracing app designed to control the spread of COVID-19 in a Radio Canada International story. “When we develop these sorts of tools or applications, we’re entering into a totally new class or form of surveillance. We’ve never had that level of surveillance in this country,” Parsons says.
July 26, 2020
- Department of Philosophy professor Mark Kingwell explores the meanings of the names of sports teams in a Globe and Mail op-ed.
- Melanie Newton, an associate professor in the Department of History, recalls the impact viewing the Montgomery Collection of Caribbean Photographs at the Art Gallery of Ontario had on students in her Caribbean Studies course in the Toronto Star (paywall). “They had been waiting to see themselves in this way,” says Newton.
July 27, 2020
- Professor Scott Schieman in the Department of Sociology speaks about the importance of maintaining a healthy balance between work and home when working from home. In a CBC story, Schieman says, “When the boundaries between work and home are more relaxed and there's increased flexibility when it comes to work hours; that can be good, but there is a downside.”
- Department of English professor George Elliott Clarke reflects on the life of George Elroy Boyd, Canada’s first Black national news anchor, on CBC Radio’s Information Morning.
July 28, 2020
- Mike Reid, an associate professor in the David A. Dunlap Department of Astronomy & Astrophysics and the Dunlap Institute for Astronomy & Astrophysics, comments on reports of UFO sightings in the Toronto Star (paywall).
- John Scott-Railton, a senior researcher at the Citizen Lab, comments on the use of digital fitness trackers for gathering intelligence in Vice in the wake of a hack targeted at devices made by tech company Garmin.
July 29, 2020
- Lynette Ong, an associate professor in the Department of Political Science and the Asian Institute at the Munk School, speaks about escalating tensions between the United States and China in a Voice of America story. “This is fundamentally a question about structural shift in international world order,” Ong says. “You have the rise of China which has a different set of values to the Western liberal order. And the question for the Western world is, how do we accommodate China's rise given its political system structural values which are very different from us?”
July 30, 2020
- Political Science professor Nelson Wiseman comments on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s appearance before the Canadian government’s finance committee in both a CBC News story and in the Washington Post.
- Matti Siemiatycki, an associate professor in the Department of Geography & Planning and interim director of the School of Cities, comments on the loss of local bars and restaurants across Toronto due to the COVID-19 pandemic, in the Toronto Star (paywall).