With regional pandemic policies being dismantled, Hong Kong is reemerging from behind a zero-COVID-19 curtain to reveal a city in transformation Let’s paint a picture of Hong Kong Island from a distance. By day, mountains are visible rising up from behind a dense configuration of buildings, recalling the contemporary proverb, ‘after mountains, more mountains.’ By...
In the United States, publicly traded companies are required to report their recent financial performance, whether good or bad, to the public. The accuracy of these reports is critical for investors, analysts and regulators. A new study, conducted at the University of Missouri and Indiana University, suggests that when businesses submit misleading financial statements, it...
Gallery 400 at the University of Illinois Chicago will host “Reckless Rolodex,” a group exhibition from Jan. 13 until March 18 that celebrates the influence of the Chicago-based performance artist Lawrence Steger. Steger, who was born in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1961 and died in Chicago in 1999, will be honored by the work of...
As a religion professor, I’ve come to know many students from other countries who identify as Christian. I realized they were puzzled at some of the things Americans often bundled into their faith – things these international Christians didn’t consider relevant to their own religious identity. One issue in particular sparked a question from a...
Do you think that creativity is an innate gift? Think again. Many people believe that creative thinking is difficult – that the ability to come up with ideas in novel and interesting ways graces only some talented individuals and not most others. The media often portrays creatives as those with quirky personalities and unique talent....
What obligation does a portrait photographer have to their subject? Is it their duty to cast that person in the best light, or the most revealing light? As chief curator at the University of Arizona’s Center for Creative Photography, I have worked with the images of fashion and portrait photographer Richard Avedon on a handful...
1 January 2023 marked the centenary of the birth of Ousmane Sembène, the Senegalese novelist and filmmaker hailed as the “father of African cinema”. Over the course of five decades Sembène published 10 books and directed 12 films across three distinct periods. He has been celebrated for his beautifully crafted political works, which range in...
Hamline University in St. Paul, Minnesota, recently dismissed Erika López Prater, an adjunct faculty member, for showing two historical Islamic paintings of the Prophet Muhammad in her global survey of art history. Following complaints from some Muslim students, university administrators described such images as disrespectful and Islamophobic. While many Muslims today believe it is inappropriate...
New research finds that corporate executives are more likely to increase their profits from insider trading when individual state income taxes go up, presumably because the executives are attempting to offset the increased taxes they will be paying. By the same token, executives are more likely to engage in less profitable insider trading when their...
With the world’s population topping 8 billion last year, it’s clear that humans have achieved a unique status in Earth’s history. We are the only creature that dominate all other organisms on the planet, from animals and fungi to plants and microbes. It remains to be seen whether humans can retain this dominance as we...
