Elements of Surprise

Recent News

• With the deadline for the 2021 FAFSA looming, Elizabeth Tandy Shermer, author of the forthcoming Indentured Students, wrote at the Washington Post about the unfairness and complexity at the heart of the American system of financial aid for higher education.
• William Sturkey, author of Hattiesburg: An American City in Black and White, described at the Atlantic how racism entrenched in the historical record has obscured understanding of past Black American lives—and how advances in technology and new scholarly approaches are helping historians rectify the issue.
• At the Washington Post, How Girls Achieve author Sally Nuamah underscored how the killing of 16-year-old Ma’Khia Bryant in Columbus, Ohio, by police fits a common pattern in which Black girls are perceived to be more dangerous than their age-peers from other racial backgrounds—and are punished at higher rates and more severely for relatively minor infractions.