NIH Grant Awarded for Multiple Sclerosis Research

Sounds of joyful singing could be heard coming from Oscar Ritchie Hall, when a group of nine students and their professor from the University of Fort Hare in Alice, Eastern Cape, South Africa, were welcomed to Kent State University as part of an exchange program sponsored by the U.S. Embassy in South Africa. 

Testing Your Faith Act (H.B. 353) was enacted in the Spring 2023 semester. In ordinance with this bill, Kent State University created a new administrative policy for religious and spiritual accommodations. This administrative policy allows students to report up to three days of unexcused absences to participate in religious holidays or community-held events in alignment with their spirituality. Professors are required to accommodate these students given that the students notify instructors within 14 days of the start of a semester. All syllabi are required to include this policy. The enforcement of post-secondary holiday accommodations is a huge part of an ongoing debate between the importance of equity versus equality in education. This bill allows students of minority, under-recognized beliefs to freely practice their religion and spirituality without penalty.

Jennifer MacLure's

book, The Feeling of Letting Die: Necroeconomics and Victorian Fiction, was released in hardcover and digital on Nov. 2. In this book, MacLure examines the works of authors George Eliot, Elizabeth Gaskell, Harriet Martineau, Charles Dickens and William Morris through the lens of Achille Mbembe’s theorization of necropolitics, a theory that discussed how social and political power dictated the value of people’s lives. This book is meant to examine how Victorian authors discussed and critiqued various systems of thought that discriminated against certain groups of people during the time they were writing.