How can Minnesotans face the truth about racism, past and present?  Columnist Myron Medcalf explored that subject recently in the Star Tribune and interviewed Augsburg History Professor William Green.

Green said reading a wide range of material about Black history is the key to knowing the steps that have led to this critical moment.  Many Minnesotans were surprised that George Floyd could happen here in part because so many hadn’t grappled with the state’s true history of race relations. “Some people throw their hands up and say, ‘What am I supposed to do?’ ” Green said. “The conclusion is they do nothing. But that’s not the solution.”

Read the full article at the Star Tribune website.

Mill City Times recently interviewed Augsburg Professor Joseph Underhill about River Semester. Underhill teaches courses in Environmental Politics, International Relations, and Political Methodology, and regularly takes students off campus for experiential and interdisciplinary learning. An experiential education is a hallmark of an Augsburg education and Undehill has been key to helping Augsburg live it out. He has directed the International Relations Program and Model United Nations programs at Augsburg since 1998 and taken students to New Zealand, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Egypt, and Tanzania.

For the past fifteen years, Underhill has taken students out on the Mississippi River to study the impact of human activity on the river ecosystem. Students in the program earn a full semester of college credits with a customized curriculum focused on environmental justice and social change in the Mississippi watershed. The River Semester is a regular part of the programming offered by Augsburg University’s Center for Global Education and Experience (CGEE).

Read the interview at the Mill City Times website.

For more details about River Semester, visit the River Semester site.

Augsburg Psychology Professor Bridget Robinson-Riegler was recently featured on WCCO to discuss the psychology of voting and how can we filter out false claims, conspiracies, misinformation, and lies.

“I don’t think that we do,” said Robinson-Riegler about filtering out false claims.

“So even if it’s inaccurate, there’s research that’s shown the more we hear it regardless of even if we know it’s true or not, the more likely we are to have it influence our behavior,” she said.

Watch the full report at WCCO’s website.

After recently sharing his historical expertise on racial injustice in Minneapolis with several news outlets, Professor Michael J. Lansing, chair of Augsburg University’s Department of History, has been cited in “The Infuriating History of Why Police Unions Have So Much Power,” a story in the September/October 2020 issue of Mother Jones. 

In the article, Lansing shares historical information about the conflict between Minneapolis Mayor Arthur Naftalin and the Police Officers’ Federation of Minneapolis in 1967. The story ends on a note of hope that in the future police unions will no longer hamper the push for police reforms. In Lansing’s words: “Anything that can be created can be uncreated.”

MinnPost recently ran an opinion piece on gun violence by Lindsay Starck, assistant professor of English and associate director of Augsburg University’s MFA program. In her August 13 commentary, “Defund the guns: They do not make us safer,” she notes that gun sales have gone up since people have been calling to defund the police and asks readers to reconsider the best ways to protect themselves. She points to findings that people are actually less safe when they bring guns into their homes. Instead she suggests that we “support community-led anti-violence programs that are proven to work.”