Faculty Tackle Today’s Urgent Issues in National Media

Over spring break, UMBC’s social sciences faculty were hard at work offering insight to media on pressing issues, from emergency preparedness and disaster response following Japan’s earthquake and tsunami (see Richard A. Bissell, emergency health services, on CNN) to democratization in Egypt and Tunisia (listen to Brian Grodsky, political science, on Voice of America). Also in response to the situation in Japan, Zeynep Tufekci, sociology/anthropology, wrote “If We Built a Safer Nuclear Reactor, How Would We Know?” for the Atlantic. She was later quoted in an LA Times article on smart phones and privacy issues, and on the WSJ Tech Europe blog and GigaOM regarding the power of social media. Sunil Dasgupta, director of UMBC’s political science program at Shady Grove, also co-authored “Is India Ending its Strategic Restraint Doctrine?” for the Washington Quarterly.