Michigan in the news

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  A New York City plan to give kindergartners as much as $3,000 toward college would transform how children and families think about their futures, said William Elliott III, professor of social work: “There’s going to be more and more need for us to think about how we redistribute wealth to maintain the meritocracy that we aspire to achieve. It’s going to require programs like this that don’t just think about income as a way out of solving poverty but think about wealth as an important part of shaping kids’ futures.”

  The New York Times
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  American Muslims who lose loved ones to violence are victims of “a soft violence of dehumanization. They’re not allowed to just deal with the grief of such a horrible tragedy in their lives,” said Nancy Khalil, assistant professor of American culture. “They have to face the public and give press conferences in just the right tone and using just the right words so they can convince the world they did not deserve for their loved ones to be killed. They are just like everyone else … they, too, want to live in peace.”

  Religion News Service
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  “This is so closely aligned with no buffer between the donor and administration. It’s very much tied directly to the president in a way that we haven’t seen … there’s no longer even a concern about the appearance of impropriety,” said Megan Tompkins-Stange, associate professor of public policy, about businessman Michael Dell’s $6.25 billion personal gift to fund Trump Accounts, the new tax-advantaged IRA for kids — and whose company was just awarded a $9.7 billion Pentagon software contract.

  Business Insider
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  AI can be “a really powerful tool” to help narrow down the candidate pool, “but it absolutely has to be used carefully, and it absolutely has to be disclosed that you’re using it,” said Sarah Zearfoss, senior assistant dean at the Law School, which recently added an optional AI essay to give students a chance to showcase their AI-prompting skills. “Using AI exclusively is to absolutely forgo the human element of it — the sense of judgment — which is so key to what we do in admissions.”

  Inside Higher Ed
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  New research by Lauren Hart, recent Ph.D. graduate in chemical biology, and Greg Dick, professor and director of the Cooperative Institute for Great Lakes Research, shows that harmful algae blooms in Lake Erie produce a greater range of toxic compounds than previously known. “We now know that these toxins can aerosolize and get into the air, so it’s not just the water you are drinking or swimming in, it’s the air that you’re breathing,” Dick said. 

  Detroit Free Press