December 11, 2020 by
A&S News
From continuing interest in jigsaw puzzles during the COVID-19 pandemic to varying perspectives on the notion of defunding police organizations, 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.
December 4, 2020
- The Globe and Mail names War: How Conflict Shaped Us by Department of History and Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy professor emerita Margaret MacMillan among its 100 favourite books of 2020.
December 7, 2020
- Department of Anthropology professor Marcel Danesi explains the increased popularity of jigsaw puzzles during the COVID-19 pandemic in the Toronto Sun.
- Department of Economics professor Michael Smart comments in Maclean’s on the management of Canada’s national debt in 2021 and the potential impact on inflation amid efforts to recover from the economic effects caused by the pandemic.
- John Scott-Railton, a senior researcher at the Citizen Lab at the Munk School, speaks about the growing use of digital spyware in Mexico, including by drug cartels, in The Guardian.
December 8, 2020
- Christopher Parsons, a senior research associate in the Citizen Lab, speaks in the Globe and Mail about a new report in which he and his colleagues urge the Canadian government to develop a comprehensive national security policy in its acquisition of technology used to build a cross-country, high-speed 5G wireless network.
December 9, 2020
- The Citizen Lab report calling on the Canadian government to develop a national strategy for the construction of a 5G wireless network across Canada is cited in a Toronto Sun editorial.
- Munk School associate professor Rajshri Jayaraman comments on a new law regarding farming in India in Global News.
December 10, 2020
- Robyn Maynard, a PhD student in the Women & Gender Studies Institute and the author of Policing Black Lives, offers her interpretation of the phrase “defund the police” in the Toronto Star (paywall).
- Department of Political Science PhD candidate Aden Dur-e-Aden comments in a Global News story about the involvement of right-wing extremists in anti-mask demonstrations across Canada.
- Michael Smart comments in a CBC News story reporting on several Canadian corporations that have continued to record significant profits throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, while collecting payments from the Canadian Emergency Wage Subsidy program meant to protect the jobs of their employees.
- José Eduardo Villalobos Graillet, a PhD student in the Department of Spanish & Portuguese, comments on the cancellation of the TV series “One Day at a Time” — one of the few representations of Latinos on mainstream English television — in the New York Times.
- Enid Slack, director of the Institute on Municipal Finance & Governance at the Munk School, explains how the ability of governments at all levels to collect tax revenues will determine Canada’s economic recovery in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic in Maclean’s.