UA In the News — Aug. 17

UA In the News — Aug. 17

UA receives grant to help with mental health in Walker County
Fox 6 (Birmingham) – Aug. 16
The University of Alabama received a training grant to improve mental and physical health for people living in a more rural area. This one-million-dollar grant will provide behavioral mental health services to the Capstone Rural Health Center in Walker County.
WTVM 9 (Columbus, Georgia) – Aug. 16
NBC 12 (Montgomery) – Aug. 16

UA Move-in underway
WVUA (Tuscaloosa) – Aug. 16
Move-in day for students at The University of Alabama started August 11 and will end on the 20th. The first day of class is August 23.

UA Honors College students take part in Alabama Action
CBS 42 (Birmingham) – Aug. 16
The University of Alabama Honors College continues to be a positive force in West Alabama through its Alabama Action service projects. This week is known as Action Week. Over 160 freshmen and 36 student leaders are spending their week beautifying Huntington Place Elementary School and Echols Middle School with various projects including painting, landscaping and updating outdoor facilities.
WVUA (Tuscaloosa) – Aug. 16
 
UA plans solar eclipse viewing party for Monday
Fox 6 (Birmingham) – Aug. 16
The University of Alabama will have a solar eclipse watch party Monday. The eclipse happens from about 12:15 Monday afternoon to just after 3 p.m. A watch party is set for that time on the Quad at the University of Alabama campus. About three thousand students are expected to show up for the watch party.
WDAM 7 (Moselle, Mississippi) – Aug. 16
 
UA School of Law professor discusses President Trump’s comments about the founding fathers (Live interview)
CNN Newsroom with Brooke Baldwin – Aug. 16
Also with me, Alfred Brophy. He’s a professor at The University of Alabama Law School. Al, why were these historic Confederate monuments erected in the first place? Many of them were put up in the early part of the 20th century as memorials to the Confederacy. I think that’s the problem with them, but I also think that may be the reason it’s important in some ways to contextualize and maybe keep them up so that we remember that once the people in power in Charlottesville and elsewhere in the South celebrated the ideas of the Confederacy and the pro-slavery thought.

Chelsea Clinton Calls Out Trump’s Disgusting Whataboutism With An Elie Wiesel Quote
GOOD – Aug. 16
A common deflection tactic used by President Donald Trump is to blame the other side of an issue with a false-equivalency argument, also known as “whataboutism.” … George Hawley, professor of political science at University of Alabama agrees with Segal. “There is no such movement as the alt-left,” he told CNN. “Obviously, there are left-wing extremists but there is no congruence between the far-left and the alt-right.” Whereas no one considers themselves as “alt-left,” “alt-right” is used by people on the far-right and was coined by white supremacist Richard Spencer.

UA Political Science professor analyzes special election (Live Interview)
Fox 6 (Birmingham) – Aug. 16
The results from the partisan primary for the U.S. Senate seat representing Alabama mostly went according to the recent polling by Raycom, but where does it go from here? Joining us this morning with their analysis is professor of Political Science at The University of Alabama Dr. Allen Linken and Politcal Commentator Chris Reid who recently contributed articles on the Senate race to the Hill and the Washington Examiner.

Mayor continues bold pledge: Mobile will be ‘safest city in America by 2020.’ Is it doable?
Al.com – Aug. 17
In 2013, Sandy Stimpson won the Mobile mayoral election on a campaign platform of “One Mobile” and a promise to establish, among other things, the “safest city in America by 2020.” … Jennifer Kenney, assistant professor in the department of criminology and criminal justice at the University of Alabama, said there remains a distinct lack of trust with police illuminated by cell phone video of footage of whenever questionable police tactics are deployed.

With Doug Jones, Alabama Democrats see potential for ‘Mount Rushmore of political upsets’
Al.com – Aug. 17
The irony of Doug Jones winning the Democratic primary in Alabama’s special Senate election on the same day that President Donald Trump was overwhelmingly criticized for making sympathetic statements toward white supremacists isn’t lost on state Democrats … William Stewart, professor emeritus of political sciences at the University of Alabama, said Democrats also win in having, for once, a “good candidate” in a high-profile statewide race.

Health Matters: Preventive Care
WVUA (Tuscaloosa) – Aug. 16
Over the last few months in the United States there has been a lot of conversation about the health care system. A good deal of that has been focused on what happens when people are sick, when they need to see a doctor or go to a hospital because of an illness or an accident. That’s terribly important for sure. But we also need to be thinking more about preventive care, things that we can do to take care of ourselves to try and avoid illness to stay healthy. Let’s talk for a few minutes with Dr. Pam Foster, one of our experts from the College of Community Health Sciences and a specialist in preventive medicine.

March on Google Organizers Cancel Protest Over ‘Alt Left Terrorist Threats’
Yahoo! – Aug. 16
The “alt-right” March on Google has been cancelled. Event organizer Jack Posobiec posted the announcement on the group’s site Wednesday morning, claiming “Alt Left terrorist threats” the group has received posed safety concerns. Prosobiec also said in the post that the group reported these threats to the relevant authorities … “There is no such movement as the alt-left,” George Hawley, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Alabama told CNN. “Obviously, there are left-wing extremists but there is no congruence between the far-left and the alt-right.”

CNN Wants You to Know the ‘Alt-Left’ Trump Referenced Isn’t Real, Just a ‘Made-Up Term’
Independent Journal Review – Aug. 16
CNN, citing “experts,” reported on Wednesday that the “alt-left” referred to by President Donald Trump on Tuesday is not a real thing. It’s just a “made-up term,” according to the report … George Hawley, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Alabama, said the “alt-left” term has been most aggressively pushed by Fox News Channel’s Sean Hannity, but it’s not a label anyone or group has adopted for themselves.

How to view the solar eclipse
The Randolph Leader – Aug. 16
Although the state of Alabama will not be under a total solar eclipse Aug. 21, there is still the opportunity to view a partial solar eclipse. Astronomers at The University of Alabama urge people to view the phases of the eclipse safely by not looking directly at the sun. “The sun light is just as dangerous during an eclipse as any other day, but we tend not to want to look directly at the sun normally,” said Dr. William C. Keel, UA professor of physics and astronomy.

There Are Still More Than 700 Confederate Monuments In The U.S.
Five Thirty Eight – Aug. 16
Last weekend’s white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, began as a protest against the city’s plan to remove a statue memorializing Confederate general Robert E. Lee … “Charleston was a fulcrum moment,” said Alfred Brophy, a professor at the University of Alabama School of Law. “The steam with which monuments are coming down has accelerated greatly. There’s more public discussion. Where before it was done more quietly, now there’s a sort of celebration.”

Why you see swastikas in America but not Germany
Vox – Aug. 16
German Chancellor Angela Merkel expressed horror at the racist marches that roiled Charlottesville, Virginia, this past weekend. “It is racist, far-right violence, and clear, forceful action must be taken against it, regardless of where in the world it happens,” she said on German television Monday … Alfred Brophy, a law professor at the University of Alabama, wrote me he believes it’s generally not the right idea to remove a statue because “we should not allow our country to forget that there was once a time when the people in power celebrated the Confederacy and its support of slavery.”

70 years of Alabama Bid Day: Looking back at more than seven decades of sorority rush
Al.com – Aug. 16
With another University of Alabama sorority recruitment nearly in the books, we wanted to take a look at rush week and its culmination, Bid Day, as it has looked on campus since the 1940s. We’ve covered the spectacle since 2011, when about 1,700 women participated in “rush” week.

S.C. State University President Grounds Himself On Eclipse Day
Lexington County Chronicle (South Carolina) – Aug. 17
If Monday’s Total Solar Eclipse was a year ago, James Clark may have been aloft. The pilot, businessman and a former trustee of S.C. State University would likely have been flying. Clark was named the historically black univerity’s 12th president in June 2016 … “Coming to our campus to collaborate with our students are students from the University of Alabama,” Clark said.