Recent Press Coverage

Current News and Events

Pharrell Williams, Georgia Tech & Amazon partner on education project

January 20, 2021

EarSketch, a project co-led by Brian Magerko, professor of digital media in the School of Literature, Media, and Communication, was mentioned in the article "Pharrell Williams, Georgia Tech & Amazon partner on education project," published Jan. 20, 2021 in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Subscription required.

Published in: Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The True History Behind 'One Night in MIami'

January 15, 2021

Blood Brothers: The Fatal Friendship Between Muhammad Ali and Malcolm X , written by Johnny Smith, the Julius C. "Bud" Shaw Professor of Sports History in the School of History and Sociology, was mentioned in the article, "The True History Behind ‘One Night in Miami," published Jan. 15, in Smithsonian Magazine.

Excerpt:

As Malcolm saw it, write Randy Roberts and Johnny Smith in Blood Brothers: The Fatal Friendship Between Muhammad Ali and Malcolm X, Clay’s victory had been preordained by Allah. With this win—and Clay’s subsequent elevation in status—the civil rights leader believed his protégé was ready to move on to what was, in his view, a more pressing calling: politics.

“Well, Brown,” Malcolm reportedly asked the football star that night, “don’t you think it’s time for this young man to stop spouting off and get serious?” Brown, for his part, also felt that Clay’s new heavyweight title “was not an end in itself [but] … a platform from which to advance far more urgent matters,” per Blood Brothers.

Read the full article

Published in: Smithsonian
Big Tech's uneasy balance of capitalism, censorship

January 14, 2021

School of Public Policy Professor Milton Mueller and Associate Professor Hans Klein were quoted in the article, "Big Tech's uneasy balance of capitalism, censorship," published Jan. 14 in Tech Target.

Excerpt:

Not everyone agrees that Section 230 should be modified to prevent the kind of speech that led to the events of Jan. 6.

"If I post something that's illegal, like libel or child pornography, the company is not responsible, I am," said Milton Mueller, program director for Cybersecurity Policy at Georgia Institute of Technology.

Common communications carriers like telephone companies are not subject to speech patrol, and social media shouldn't be either, Mueller said.

Hans Klein, an associate professor in the School of Public Policy at the Georgia Institute of Technology, said allowing the government to regulate speech online will narrow the content on social media to what the government finds acceptable. He added that he fears this will, in turn, stifle dissent.

Read the full article.

Published in: Tech Target
Biden to Restore Homeland Security and Cybersecurity Aides to Senior White House Posts

January 13, 2021

Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall, Distinguished Professor of the Practice in the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs, and Senior Fellow at the Strategic Energy Institute, was mentioned in the article "Biden to Restore Homeland Security and Cybersecurity Aides to Senior White House Posts," published Jan. 13 in the New York Times.

Excerpt:

The White House homeland security adviser will be Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall, according to transition officials. She is a longtime aide to Mr. Biden who served under President Barack Obama as senior director for Europe and then deputy secretary of energy, where she oversaw the modernization of the nuclear arsenal.

Read the full article

Published in: The New York Times
Experts Hope Pent-Up Demand Will Revive Pandemic-Hit Industries

January 8, 2021

NPR interviewed Johnny Smith, Julius C. "Bud" Shaw Professor of Sports History in the School of History and Sociology, for a story Jan. 8 on Morning Edition.

Excerpt:

1918 should have been a great year for baseball. A young player named Babe Ruth started the year as a pitcher but began morphing into a home run-hitting powerhouse.

JOHNNY SMITH: And here, what we see is the transformation of Babe Ruth from a dominant pitcher to a slugger just beginning to happen.

ROSALSKY: That's Johnny Smith, a historian at Georgia Tech who recently co-wrote a book that tells this story. It's called War Fever: Boston, Baseball, And America In The Shadow Of The Great War.

Read the full transcript

Published in: NPR
Eviction moratoriums not enough to protect family and child wellbeing

January 4, 2021

Research by Lindsey Bullinger (SPP) and Kelley Fong (HSOC) was cited in "Eviction moratoriums not enough to protect family and child well-being,” published Jan. 4 in the Connecticut Mirror.

Excerpt:

The study sheds light on an alarming facet of economic uncertainty in Connecticut: the link between increasing eviction filings and reports of child maltreatment.

Using data collected by the Connecticut Department of Children and Families (DCF) and state court records of evictions, the researchers found that with every additional eviction filing for every 100 occupied homes, there is a 2 percent increase in reports of child maltreatment. These increases were higher in neighborhoods with more low-income households, people of color, and households with children.

Read the full article

Published in: Connecticut Mirror
Books 2020: How to Understand Global Populism

December 31, 2020

Kirk Bowman, Rise Up & Care Professor of Global Development and Identify in the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs, has reviewed, Populism: A Very Short Introduction in “Books 2020: How to Understand Global Populism.” The article written for Global Atlanta was selected because it was one of Bowman’s most impactful books read in 2020.

Excerpt:

“Populism” tends to pop up in political conversations these days, yet the concept is little understood, and its meaning constantly morphs in the press, in social media and in conversation. How do we make sense of a classification that applies to both leftwing politicians such as Mexico’s AMLO and Venezuela’s Maduro, as well as rightwing leaders such as USA’s Trump, Hungary’s Orban and Brazil’s Bolsonaro? And what is (and should be) the relationship between populism and democracy?

Read the book review on Global Atlanta.

Published in: Global Atlanta
Nuclear Command and Control Session 3 of the Congressional Study Group

December 30, 2020

Senator Sam Nunn, distinguished professor of the practice and namesake of the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs, was mentioned in The Brookings Institute report, “Nuclear Command and Control Session 3 of the Congressional Study Group.” The review provides written pieces to read for background information and one listed was Senator Nunn’s “The President and Nuclear Weapons: Authorities, Limits, and Process,” co-authored with former Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz.

Read the article on The Brookings Institute site.

Published in: The Brookings Institute
Joe Biden Has an Opportunity to Bolster How We View Earth From Space

December 28, 2020

Mariel Borowitz, associate professor in the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs, was quoted in the article, "Joe Biden Has an Opportunity to Bolster How We View Earth From Space," published Dec. 28 in MIT Review.

Excerpt:

The Biden administration could take steps to permanently ensure free and open access to what NASA collects, and it could also look into engaging with the private companies directly. “There’s already a pilot program started where NASA purchases the data from commercial entities under a license that allows them to share that data with researchers or a wider audience,” says Borowitz. It may be a good model for Biden to lean on permanently to help a private industry grow while giving less-wealthy parties access to critical data.

Full article.

Published in: MIT Review
What Has COVID-19 Done to Child Welfare?

December 23, 2020

Lindsey Bullinger (SPP) was interviewed about her research on the impact of Coin "What Has COVID-19 Done to Child Welfare?" published Dec. 23, in MedPage Today.

Excerpt:

Lindsey Bullinger, Ph.D., a child abuse researcher at Georgia Tech in Atlanta, said fewer in-person interactions with CPS in the pandemic can be good for families, especially those at low-risk because CPS (Child Protective Services) has therapeutic responsibilities to help parents get back on track, as well as punitive ones.

"On that hand, this is good for those families -- they are no longer having to go through that process," Bullinger told MedPage Today. "On the other hand, we could be missing out on some very tragic cases."

Read the full article.

Published in: MedPage Today
The Black Sea: How America can avoid a great-power conflict

December 15, 2020

General Phil Breedlove, USAF (ret.), a distinguished professor of the practice in the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs, has co-authored, “The Black Sea: How America can avoid a great-power conflict,” in the National Interest. The article written with Michael O’Hanlon, a senior fellow and director of Research of the Foreign Policy Program at The Brookings Institute, is about how the U.S. can effectively compete in the Black Sea against Chinese and Russian influence during this period of peace.

Find an excerpt:

None of this is to say that America needs to prepare for war against China, or Russia for that matter, in the Black Sea region. The Black Sea is far from the Chinese coasts; the main military concerns are with China in the western Pacific region. Moreover, as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Mark Milley, told a group of people at the Brookings Institution on Dec. 2, America is in a period of great-power competition but it is not in a period of conflict, and the goal should be to keep things that way while competing effectively against Russian and Chinese influence.

Read the article on National Interest.

Published in: National Interest
The Oxford Vaccine’s True Efficacy Remains Uncertain

December 8, 2020

Scott Ganz, assistant professor in the School of Public Policy, co-authored the author "The Oxford Vaccine’s True Efficacy Remains Uncertain," published Dec. 7, 2020 in The Dispatch.

Ganz and co-authors Kieran Allsop and James C. Capretta provide deeper examination of the Covid-19 vaccine developed by the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca, which currently sits behind other vaccine candidates in its proximity to the market.

Excerpt:

The preliminary results from the Oxford-AstraZeneca Phase III trial provided cause for optimism, but left many questions unanswered. While reporting an overall vaccine efficacy rate of 70 percent—a rate that exceeds the minimum 50 percent threshold set by the World Health Organization (WHO) and FDA for approving COVID-19 vaccines—the trial sponsors further announced that the efficacy of their vaccine was 90 percent for a limited subset of participants who received a half dose and then a full dose one month apart.

Just under 1 in 4 participants in the vaccine arm of the trial received the half-dose/full-dose regimen, which was the result of a manufacturing error and not a part of the original trial protocol. The rest, 3 out 4 trial volunteers in the vaccine arm, received two full doses one month apart.

Full article.

Published in: The Dispatch
What Statistics Tells Us About the Efficacy of the Pfizer, Moderna, & Oxford Vaccines

December 8, 2020

Scott Ganz, assistant professor in the School of Public Policy, co-authored the article "What Statistics Tells Us About the Efficacy of the Pfizer, Moderna, & Oxford Vaccines," published Nov. 30, 2020 in RealClearPolicy.

In the article, Ganz and his co-author, James C. Capretta of the American Enterprise Institute, discuss the statistical science that led to Pfizer, BioNTech and Moderna declaring the high efficacy rates of their Covid-19 vaccines.

Excerpt:

A reasonable question for those trying to understand the implications of the trial, however, is whether this impressive result could have occurred by chance, given that the sample size of 170 cases is relatively small. One way to gauge the robustness of the finding is to calculate the range of likely true efficacy rates — i.e., the efficacy rate of the vaccine when given to millions or billions of people — based on the results of the Phase 3 trial.

Here, there is more good news. Statistical modeling of vaccine efficacy in phase 3 trials reveals that, based on the Pfizer-BioNTech test, there is around a 99 in 100 chance that the true vaccine efficacy rate for this vaccine is above 90 percent. In short, in addition to having a high reported efficacy rate from the trial, the results should make us confident that the vaccine will be very effective when widely distributed.

Full article.

Published in: RealClearPolicy
Leaders Aspire to Make Atlanta a Global Hub for Peace Education

December 1, 2020

Anna Westerstahl Stenport, chair of the School of Modern Languages and Professor of Global Studies, was quoted in the article "Leaders Aspire to Make Atlanta a Global Hub for Peace Education," published Nov. 30, 2020 in Saporta Report.

The initiative described in the article is using Atlanta's existing infrastructure of universities and advocacy organizations to advance the city as a destination for peace studies, a field that examines the conditions that can create long-lasting conditions of peace in societies.

Excerpt:

So far, the Peace Education Initiative has captured the imagination of dozens of people throughout metro Atlanta’s institutions of higher learning. At a large, in-person meeting in February at Georgia Tech, representatives from the 10 universities unanimously endorsed the concept of an multi-disciplinary and multi-institutional peace education institute.

“We are right at the starting point,” said Anna Stenport, co-director of the Atlanta Global Studies Center, which is coordinating the education efforts for the Atlanta Peace Initiative. “We are laying the foundation and dreaming big.”

Full article.

Published in: Saporta Report
Can We Make Our Robots Less Biased Than We Are?

November 22, 2020

A report co-authored by Jason Borenstein, Director of Graduate Research Ethics Programs and Associate Director of the Center for Ethics and Technology in the School of Public Policy and Ayanna Howard, chair of the School of Interactive Computing, was mentioned in the article, "Can We Make Our Robots Less Biased Than We Are?" published Nov. 22, 2020 by the New York Times.

Excerpt:

“Given the current tensions arising from police shootings of African-American men from Ferguson to Baton Rouge,” Dr. Howard, a leader of the organization Black in Robotics, and Dr. Borenstein wrote, “it is disconcerting that robot peacekeepers, including police and military robots, will, at some point, be given increased freedom to decide whether to take a human life, especially if problems related to bias have not been resolved.”

Read the full article.

Published in: New York Times
Taiwan Shares Experience of Managing COVID-19 with Georgia Tech

November 18, 2020

Abigail Vaughn, assistant professor in the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs, was featured in the article "Taiwan shares experience of managing COVID-19 with Georgia Tech," published Nov. 14, 2020 in Taiwan News.

Vaughn helped connect her class with the Atlanta branch of the Taipei Economic and Cultural Office (TECO) to learn more about how Taiwan has managed the Covid-19 pandemic.

Excerpt:

In the hour-long exchange, TECO Atlanta Director-General Elliot Wang (王翼龍) explained what constitutes the "Taiwan model" and answered questions from professor Abigail Vaughn and her students in the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs at Georgia Tech. He also highlighted WHA's treatment of Taiwan and how it negatively impacted the global community.

Wang mentioned the Taiwan government has helped more than 80 countries around the world by donating personal protective equipment. He also said Taiwan was one of the first countries to alert the World Health Organization (WHO) to the possibility of human-to-human transmission of COVID-19.

Full article.

Published in: Taiwan News
Are There Child Welfare Practices to Keep From Covid-19?

November 18, 2020

A report by Kelley Fong, assistant professor in the School of History and Sociology, was mentioned in the article "Are there child welfare practices to keep from COVID-19?," published Nov. 5, 2020 in the Deseret News.

The article examines how child welfare practices have adapted to changes imposed by the Covid-19 pandemic and mentions the report that Fong authored as an example of how authorities that monitor child welfare can become conflated with police.

Excerpt:

Others have raised similar points brought up in the panel discussion. In August, a briefing report for the Council on Contemporary Families by assistant professor Kelley Fong of Georgia Tech’s School of History and Sociology highlighted parallels between child protective services and policing. She said that “with the fraying of the social safety net in recent decades, efforts to help families take the form of summoning an agency that can forcibly separate them.” She warned of “fear and mistrust” by families who are not mistreating children.

Professionals required to report what they think might be abuse or neglect usually hope families will be given supportive services, she said, but the power differential between the state and the family can create strain. Families may feel pitted against government employees who have the power to take their children.

Full article.

Published in: Deseret News
Inside The Student-Run Voting Precinct At Georgia Tech

November 18, 2020

Samuel Ellis, an undergraduate student in the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs, was featured in the article "Inside The Student-Run Voting Precinct At Georgia Tech," published Nov. 3, 2020 by WABE 90.1.

Ellis served in October and November as the poll manager for the voting location at McCamish Pavilion, which was one of few completely student-run polls in the country.

Excerpt:

Ellis says he hopes working the polls will serve his fellow students well as they choose their career path after college.

“I hope that you’re going to take something away and put those skills to use that is not necessarily the typical career path of someone who wants to just make apps for the rest of their life or wants to be a really cool software developer,” said Ellis. “Poll technology is not the first thing they think of. Until they get stuck in a line on Election Day.”

Full article.

Published in: WABE 90.1
Sick of Facebook ‘Censorship,’ Georgia Conservatives Flocking to Parler After Election

November 16, 2020

Hans Klein, associate professor in the School of Public Policy, was quoted in the article "Sick of Facebook ‘censorship,’ Georgia conservatives flocking to Parler after election," published Nov. 16, 2020 in the Macon Telegraph.

The article explores how some users of Facebook have become frustrated by the platform's guildelines and posting policies and have transitioned to Parler, a platform with more lenient moderation that promotes a greater commitment to "free speech." Klein, who has studied Internet policy and how it shapes communication patterns, spoke to the fundamental intractability of the problem faced by social media platforms.

Excerpt:

Hans Klein, associate professor in the School of Public Policy at the Georgia Institute of Technology, said that mainstream social media platforms’ efforts to fact check and limit the spread of false information seemed destined to enrage at least some of their users. For example, people on the left have criticized social media platforms like Facebook for not going far enough to control right-wing conspiracy theories.

“Facebook is now tangled up in an impossible task, to filter out ‘bad speech’ or ‘false speech,’” Klein said. “If you don’t censor enough they’re pissed off, and if you do censor they’re pissed off and everybody’s angry. I think it’s actually an insoluble problem. You can’t get it right.”

Full article.

Published in: Macon Telegraph
Sam Nunn on Cold War & nuclear weapons

November 2, 2020

Georgia Tech’s Technique recently wrote an article on our School’s namesake Senator Sam Nunn’s discussion at the Georgia Historical Society event, “Tear Down This Wall: The Cold War at 75.”

Read an excerpt:

‘Having very little decision time in a moment of great crisis is extremely dangerous for the world and that’s, to me, one of the prime goals we should have today, which is to give both U.S. and Russian leaders more time so that we do not move into a nuclear war by blunder,’ said Nunn.

Find the article on the Technique.

Published in: Technique