Skip to main content
Loading
In the News

Liberal Arts In The News - Summer 2026

  • August 12, 2026

The following are clips from media mentions and articles in May, June and July 2026.

May

  • ‘A ghost that lives with us’: Death Cafes take the sting out of the inevitable end
    • CNN
    • Taylor Borgelt, a graduate student and Ph.D. candidate in the anthropology department, has attended several Death Cafes as she finishes her research on cultural death care in the American South. “With the social taboo around death,” Borgelt said, “it’s important to make space for these conversations, regardless of age.”
  • 10 meaningful things to tell your mom while you still can
    • Time Magazine
    • Jill Suitor, a distinguished professor of sociology, has spent 25 years studying the same group of more than 500 mothers and their adult children, investigating how maternal favoritism and disfavoritism affect adult children’s and grandchildren’s psychological well-being and sibling relationships. According to Suitor, the explanation behind favoritism and disfavoritism lies greatly in whether mothers and adult children share the same core values. “Patterns of favoritism and disfavoritism are remarkably stable across decades and have powerful effects on members of both generations,” she said.
  • Nuisance no more: Korean political parties embrace AI ahead of local elections
    • Naver
    • Daniel Schiff, a professor of political science, told Reuters that the growing use of AI and deepfakes in political content risks further eroding U.S. voter trust in institutions. “I think that the types of damage that we can do to the rigor and credibility of elections and democratic systems — and the ability to misinform people about candidates or social issues — very much risks being supercharged," he said.
  • Marianne Boruch wins $100,000 Jackson Poetry Prize as judges hail human genius in AI age
    • Associated Press, Lafayette Journal & Courier (200+ placements)
    • Marianne Boruch taught English as a full professor for decades at Purdue and founded the school’s MFA creative writing program. Today, she is a winner of the Jackson Poetry Prize for “exceptional talent,” an honor recognizing human presence amid the rise of AI.
  • Here's how AI can misinform voters - especially this year
  • State media control impacts the output of U.S.-based LLMs
    • Good Authority
    • Eddie Yang, a professor of political science, co-authored a Nature study examining how institutions shape large language models (LLMs). It concludes that government-controlled media may subtly influence the output of chatbots, creating a risk of institutional influence. “Our work suggests a need for greater transparency on LLMs' training data,” the authors say, noting that “social scientists have an important role to play in LLM alignment/evaluation going forward.”
  • Something is going right at universities
    • The Atlantic
    • When Germaine Seelye Oesterle Professor of History and Director, Cornerstone Integrated Liberal Arts Melinda Zook realized that only a tiny percentage of Purdue students had ever taken a literature or history course, she introduced the Cornerstone In 2017, about 100 students enrolled. Now, nearly 10,000 Purdue students per year are reading what she calls “transformative texts.”
  • AP Video: Where you live can impact your brain health
    • WTVT (Fox Tampa) 50+ placements
    • Kenneth Ferraro, a sociology professor emeritus and researcher, says that active communities can keep a person’s brain healthy as they age. Through analysis of national data, he found that people 60 to 80 years old who lived in a cognitively stimulating neighborhood were more likely to preserve their cognition in their later years. “The most important factors in cognitively stimulating neighborhoods were museums, libraries, college-educated neighbors, as well as fitness centers and organizations for the creative arts,” he said.
  • Ohio voters will see more AI political content this election cycle
  • Weather Authority NOW: The forecast behind D-Day and the film ‘Pressure’
    • WXIN (Fox Indianapolis)
    • Randy Roberts, a distinguished professor of history, sat down with meteorologists Kendall Wilson and Ethan Rosuck in the latest episode of Weather Authority NOW to discuss one of the most important weather forecasts in history. That June 1944 forecast serves as the inspiration behind the movie "Pressure.”
  • AI warfare is already here
    • The Verge
    • Artificial intelligence warfare is no longer theoretical — it is actively reshaping US military operations. According to Sorin Adam Matei, a communication professor at Purdue, “you cannot fight a war only in defense.”
  • Lawsuits challenging embryo disposal could hinder IVF
    • Miami Herald, The Conversation
    • Lawsuits have emerged in states with fetal personhood laws or wrongful death statutes that include frozen embryos. Risa Cromer, an associate anthropology professor who focuses on medicine and reproductive politics, believes personhood language is "a threat for broad swaths of reproductive healthcare needs that remain highly popular, IVF being one of them."
  • Blonde, fervent and fake: Can AI-generated Trump fans boost him in the midterms?
    • AFP
    • In recent months, US media have detected hundreds of AI-generated pro-Trump influencers commenting on political issues. As election season approaches, Daniel Schiff, a co-director of the Governance and Responsible AI Lab (GRAIL) and professor of political science, said he expects a rise in AI-generated messaging. Despite the political themes, he says "financial profit" will likely be the primary goal behind generating digital influencers.”
  • Trump allies push for government testing, approval of 'potentially dangerous' AI systems
    • WKRC (CBS Cincinnati)
    • A self-described conservative social movement sent a letter to President Trump urging him to ensure cutting-edge AI systems are fully vetted by the government before being released to the public. Daniel Schiff, a co-director of the Governance and Responsible AI Lab (GRAIL) and professor of political science, believes only time will tell which concerns will resonate most with conservatives. “Will this letter by itself move things? That’s another question,” he said. "But these kinds of groups and their messaging can start to push back from the local to the national levels.”

 

JUNE

  • Purdue startup launches Virtual D-Day learning simulation June 2
    • NewsBreak, WBIW (AM Bedford)
    • On June 2, FORCES launched Virtual D-Day, an immersive historical and educational simulation of the 1944 Normandy invasion, on the gaming platform Steam. Led by Sorin Adam Matei, a communication professor at Purdue, the project translates humanities scholarship and physics-based fluid modeling into an interactive training tool for students and military educators.
  • From the beginning, politics triggered broadcasting
    • BroadbandBreakfast
    • At a BroadbandLive event, media scholars argued that politics, not technology, shaped American broadcasting from 1927 on. Kathryn Cramer Brownell, a professor of history, noted that television executives have long lobbied "regulators to make decisions that are going to benefit their pocketbook,” and that broadcasting concentrated power in the executive branch, allowing the president "to assume a much more prominent public role."
  • SCOTUS speaks, what did it say?
    • WIBC (FM Indianapolis)
    • Martin Sweet, a limited term lecturer of political science, discussed the U.S. Supreme Court rulings allowing the president to fire heads of independent agencies at will, except for the Federal Reserve. “It’s a decision giving President Trump much broader power today than he had yesterday,” said Sweet. “But they switched that and said, well, there is one part of the government that's truly independent, and that's the Fed.”
  • ‘This is a very winnable race to us’: Former Indy Mayor Greg Ballard talks independent bid for Indiana Secretary of State
    • WXIN (Fox Indianapolis)
    • Independent candidate and former Indianapolis Mayor Greg Ballard said he believes he will get the roughly 40,000 petition signatures necessary to appear on the ballot. “We’re not really sure he has the money or the time to get that done just yet,” said Martin Sweet, a limited term lecturer of political science at Purdue. According to Sweet, Ballard will most likely need closer to 50,000 verified signatures to avoid challenges to his candidacy.

 

JULY

  • Indivisible 250: Understanding America's founding values and what's changed over 250 years
    • WBND (ABC South Bend)
    • Sebastian Graham, an assistant professor in the Cornerstone program and assistant director of the Cornerstone Institute for Civic Thought, says that the American founders were an important part of the Enlightenment movement and “were really capitalizing on this idea that government should not be based on things like the divine right of kings, but that it should be a consent-based government” dedicated to protecting individual rights and liberties. Kathryn Cramer Brownell, the director of the Center for American Political History, Media, and Technology (CAPT) and a professor of history, says that the vision for the country was narrowly “constructed by and for elite white men who own property.” However, people pushed to expand these parameters. “So, the democratic experiment, if you will, has become more inclusive and more democratic over the course of the past 250 years,” she said.
  • Michigan childcare workers say 'daycare' label hurts their profession
    • Detroit Free Press
    • Robin Clair, a professor of communication, shares how terms like “babysitter” or “daycare” overshadow other words that should be used in many cases to describe the profession, like “education.” Beyond being inaccurate, some providers say these terms have an impact on how their jobs are perceived by parents and policymakers. “I think titles are a good example of how some careers are treated as more special,” Clair says.

Read More

In the News

College News Home