Posted December 19, 2020 5:00 a.m. EST
EDITOR S NOTE: Paul Krugman is a New York Times columnist and also a Distinguished Professor at the City University of New York Graduate Center. He won the 2008 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his work on international trade and economic geography.
Republicans spent most of 2020 rejecting science in the face of a runaway pandemic; now they’re rejecting democracy in the face of a clear election loss.
What do these rejections have in common? In each case, one of America’s two major parties simply refused to accept facts it didn’t like.
I’m not sure it’s right to say Republicans “believe” that, say, wearing face masks is useless or that there was widespread voter fraud. Framing the issue as one of belief suggests that some kind of evidence might change party loyalists’ minds.
Filed in In Memoriam, Uncategorized on December 18, 2020
Leith Mullings, a leading anthropologist who spent much of her career at the City University of New York, died on December 12. She was 75 years old and had suffered from cancer.
A native of Jamaica, Professor Mullings came to the United States at the age of 16 to study at Queens College of the City University of New York. She earned a bachelor’s degree in nursing at Cornell University. She went on to earn a master’s degree and a Ph.D. at the Univerity of Chicago.
Dr. Mullings began her academic career as a lecturer at Yale University. She was appointed an assistant professor of anthropology at Columbia University in 1975 and was promoted to associate professor in 1981. Two years later, she joined the faculty at the City University of New York. There she eventually became a distinguished professor of anthropology at the City University of New York’s Graduate Center.