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Estate gift from KU alumnus will fund $5.5 million in scholarships
LAWRENCE — A bequest from the estate of University of Kansas alumnus Richard “Dick” Smith will provide $5.5 million to KU for scholarships. The scholarship fund will be divided equally, with half providing scholarships to undergraduate students universitywide and half providing scholarships to students studying geology.
Study finds global media repeated pandemic xenophobia, also global efforts to fight it
LAWRENCE — Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, Chinese and Asian communities have faced violence, harassment and discrimination on top of the threat of the virus itself. China was blamed for the virus with terms such as “Wuhan virus,” “kung flu” used by some in power and repeated in the media. A University of Kansas study has found that media around the world reported such terms but also emphasized global efforts were necessary to fight the pandemic and resulting harassment.
KU nominates 4 juniors for Harry S. Truman Scholarships
LAWRENCE — Four outstanding juniors will be the University of Kansas nominees for Harry S. Truman Scholarships. The students are competing for the prestigious national awards, which provide up to $30,000 for graduate study. The nominees include Kansas students from Lawrence, Pittsburg and Wichita.
Full stories below.
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Contact: Michelle Strickland, KU Endowment, 785-832-7363, [email protected]; Michelle Keller, KU Endowment, 785-832-7336, [email protected]; @KUEndowment
Estate gift from KU alumnus will fund $5.5 million in scholarships
LAWRENCE — A bequest from the estate of University of Kansas alumnus Richard “Dick” Smith will provide $5.5 million to KU for scholarships.
The scholarship fund will be divided equally, with half providing scholarships to undergraduate students universitywide and half providing scholarships to students studying geology.
Smith’s $5.5 million bequest was half of an $11 million estate gift that was shared with Wichita State University. The fund at WSU also will support scholarships. Smith specified that the scholarships at both institutions cover all expenses related to college, including tuition, fees, books and housing.
Smith’s estate also distributed gifts of $200,000 to Spencer Museum of Art and $250,000 to the KU School of Medicine-Wichita.
Smith, a longtime resident of Wichita, earned a bachelor’s degree in geology from KU in 1954 and went on to found Range Oil Co. He died in January 2021 at the age of 87.
KU Chancellor Douglas A. Girod expressed gratitude for the gift and lauded Smith’s legacy of philanthropy and support for higher education.
“This remarkable gift will create opportunities for KU and its students for generations to come,” Girod said. “It also reinforces the educational partnership between Wichita State and KU as both strive to create a stronger Kansas through higher education.”
Sondra Langel, Smith’s wife, said her husband believed strongly in the power of education.
“Dick believed that a college education could have an incomparable impact on the direction an individual’s life could take,” Langel said. “His family and friends join in celebrating the opportunities his scholarships will create for thousands of young Kansas students.”
KU Endowment President Dale Seuferling said Smith had a long history of contributions to KU in the areas of geology, the arts, athletics and medicine.
“He was proud of his alma mater and wanted to provide today’s students the kind of educational opportunities that helped him be successful,” Seuferling said.
KU Endowment is the independent, nonprofit organization serving as the official fundraising and fund-management organization for KU. Founded in 1891, KU Endowment was the first foundation of its kind at a U.S. public university.
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Contact: Mike Krings, KU News Service, 785-864-8860, [email protected], @MikeKrings
Study finds global media repeated pandemic xenophobia, also global efforts to fight it
LAWRENCE — Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, Chinese and Asian communities have faced violence, harassment and discrimination on top of the threat of the virus itself. China was blamed for the virus with terms such as “Wuhan virus,” “kung flu” used by some in power and repeated in the media. A University of Kansas study has found that media around the world reported such terms but also emphasized global efforts were necessary to fight the pandemic and resulting harassment.
KU researchers analyzed 451 news articles from The New York Times, The Guardian and China Daily, chosen for their large readership and for their different international perspectives in COVID-19 coverage during 2020, the first year of the pandemic. The findings show media is very influential in how the public thinks about issues and that care should be taken in cases of naming diseases or threats after regions or people or ethnicities.
“We were interested to examine keywords such as ‘China virus,’ how media represented them and how media constructed these different terms in talking about COVID-19, racism and xenophobia against Chinese and Asian communities in the West,” said Muhammad Ittefaq, doctoral candidate in journalism & mass communications at KU and lead author of the study. “There has been more than a 150 percent increase in cases of assault, either verbal or physical attacks on Chinese or Asian people on the streets, in stores and everywhere. That piqued our interest to understand how media were using these terms in relation to the racism and xenophobia and how different newspapers are overall constructing the pandemic.”
The study, published in the journal Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy, was co-written by Mauryne Abwao, doctoral candidate; Annalise Baines, doctoral student; Genelle Belmas, associate professor of journalism & mass communications; Shafiq Ahmad Kamboh, doctoral candidate; and Ever Josue Figueroa, assistant professor of journalism & mass communications at KU and Bremen University, Germany.
The analyzed news coverage fell into four themes:
1. Portrayal of the virus as a threat
2. Racialization of COVID-19 as a multifaceted threat
3. Calls for collectivization to curb racialization of the virus
4. Speculative solutions to end discrimination against Asians.
Coverage in The New York Times and The Guardian was found to feature the first two themes more prominently, while China Daily more commonly featured themes of collectivizing to curb racialization and speculative solutions. The findings were somewhat expected, as the Western publications reflect Western culture of journalism and China Daily, though an English-language publication, is largely a mirror of the Chinese State, even though it is independently operated, researchers said.
“The Chinese paper represents sentiments from a Chinese government point of view, and then the other two papers, which also have a wide readership, give us a global overview,” Abwao said about the selection of publications. “And these newspapers pay attention to social issues and cover them extensively. Also, they tend to set the agenda about social issues in the world.”
Coverage in the most prominent theme of racialization of the virus as a multifaceted threat included numerous inclusions of terms like “Wuhan virus” or “Chinese virus,” pinning the blame on China, and reporting incidences of violence and harassment of Chinese and Asian communities. Within the theme, there was also significant coverage of the blame attributed to the deteriorating China-U.S. relationship during the Trump administration.
COVID-19 as a threat, the second most prominent theme, not only presented coverage that the virus was a threat to health, economics, politics and other aspects of life, but there was also a subtheme of misinformation. Coverage of politicians and others repeated conspiracy theories that China released the virus to damage other world economies, or that certain countries were happy China was suffering. Such media representation is dangerous, study authors wrote, because even when such information is clearly false, it can potentially bolster such misconceptions in the public mind.
“Broadly, we talk about this as a health crisis, but COVID-19 is not just a health matter. It’s more of a crisis on many different levels. That’s why we also titled the paper ‘a pandemic of hate,’” Ittefaq said. “Pandemics and disease outbreaks have been linked to hate in the past. The COVID-19 crisis emerged as a multifaceted, very complex type of crisis. It is not only financial, cultural, political and social, but also racism has been increased with it and emphasized by right-wing media outlets and politicians. It’s about health, race and xenophobia.”
All newspapers in the sample included coverage in the theme of collectivization to curb racialization of the virus, though it was more prominent in China Daily. That publication even quoted former U.S. Supreme Court Justice John Marshall Harlan who said, “A virus is color blind. It does not discriminate on the basis of skin color, religion or socioeconomic status. It has no ideological bias. It recognizes no national boundaries.” Using the words of Western key individuals was a clear attempt to show that a global crisis was the responsibility of all to address, study authors argue.
The final theme included speculative solutions to end discrimination against people of Asian descent. Coverage therein included calls to support activist groups, harness the power of social media, and hashtags intended to counter discrimination and share messages of solidarity among nations globally.
Study authors used social representations theory to understand media coverage of the selected keywords. SRT is primarily a psychology theory: Messages a person hears prominently are very influential in shaping how a person thinks about a certain topic or issue. It applies to mass media, especially in the case of the pandemic, in that the crisis was being widely reported across media, and in the messages analyzed from the beginning of the pandemic through 2020, many people were isolated at home, and media was the primary source of information, as people no longer had contact with others they normally share information with.
The findings show the potential danger in naming a disease or health crisis after a geographic location, certain ethnicity or blaming it on certain populations. That has happened repeatedly through history, with “Ebola virus” and the “Spanish flu” as two prominent examples. But even when media is merely reporting the words of prominent politicians or leaders who use xenophobic terms, it influences and shapes global discourse on a topic, thereby potentially leading to or reinforcing discrimination, violence and harassment. The data show it is critical for public health officials, politicians, news media and world leaders to exercise caution when naming, labeling and discussing health crises.
“When something is unknown, people will try to name it. With this being unknown, people started trying to name this virus with names of places,” Abwao said. “People understand and share common ideas through social constructions, so what they construct about an issue, they share. We see here, with COVID-19, the popular view or social construction, was this virus is a Chinese virus. This social construction was amplified in the media and in the minds of people, and this is what people tended to believe. SRT suggests the way you name something and anchor it tends to make society think about it in a certain way.”
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KU nominates 4 juniors for Harry S. Truman Scholarships
LAWRENCE — Four outstanding juniors will be the University of Kansas nominees for Harry S. Truman Scholarships.
The students are competing for the prestigious national awards, which provide up to $30,000 for graduate study. The awards are given to college juniors for leadership in public service. They are highly competitive, with only about 60 Truman Scholars named nationwide each year.
This year’s KU nominees:
1. Nathan Do, of Wichita, majoring in biochemistry and minoring in Spanish
2. Ximena Ibarra Quintana, of Pittsburg, majoring in political science and American studies and minoring in Spanish
3. Abeer Iqbal, of Des Moines, Iowa, majoring in behavioral neuroscience and minoring in social justice in the U.S.
4. Max Lillich, of Lawrence, majoring in political science and minoring in Jewish studies, business and sociology.
Criteria for the nominations include an extensive record of campus and community service, commitment to a career in government or the nonprofit and advocacy sectors, communication skills and a high probability of becoming a “change agent,” and a strong academic record with likely acceptance to the graduate school of the candidate’s choice.
The campus nomination process is coordinated by the Office of Fellowships, a unit of Academic Success. Students interested in applying for the Truman Scholarship in future years are encouraged to contact the office, which can nominate a limited number of students each year.
Scholars receive priority admission and supplemental financial aid at some premier graduate institutions, leadership training, career and graduate school counseling, and special internship opportunities within the federal government.
Since 1981, 20 KU students have become Truman scholars. Samuel Steuart was the most recent KU student to receive the honor in 2019.
Congress established the Truman Scholarship Foundation in 1975 as the federal memorial to President Harry S. Truman. A national selection committee reviews applications from more than 800 nominees for the Truman Foundation. Approximately 200 students will be named finalists in late February and invited for regional interviews in March and early April. The scholarship recipients will be announced in late April.
More information about KU’s nominees is below:
Nathan Do, of Wichita, is majoring in biochemistry with a minor in Spanish and is a graduate of Wichita East High School. He is the son of Hien Do and Huong Huynh. After graduation, Do plans to earn a dual degree of Doctor of Medicine and Public Health to pursue his passion in medicine, both at the level of preventative care and community health. He currently serves as president of the KU chapter of Out in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (oSTEM), which was recently awarded 2021 Chapter of the Year by oSTEM Global. Additionally, Do is a recipient of the 2021 oSTEM Undergraduate Award. He serves as co-director of Alternative Breaks to promote and create opportunities for ethical service learning on campus. As a 2021 K-INBRE Scholar, he conducts research regarding host-pathogen relationships in the lab of Brian Ackley, associate professor of molecular biosciences. A member of the University Honors Program, he has also served as a member of the KU Advisory Group of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion & Undergraduate Research. Do’s service experience includes serving as an isolation monitor for the Shawnee County Health Department and volunteering for the Utah Pride Center through Alternative Breaks.
Ximena Ibarra Quintana, of Pittsburg, is double majoring in political science and American studies with a minor in Spanish and is a graduate of Pittsburg High School. She is the daughter of Susana Quintana and Marco Ibarra. After graduation, Ibarra Quintana plans to earn a Juris Doctor focusing on law and social change. She is a member of the University Honors Program and was selected as a 2020-2021 University Scholar. Ibarra Quintana served as the chair of the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee at KU, where she co-organized and moderated a town hall forum that provided students from underrepresented groups the opportunity to voice their concerns. She is also the vice president of the ACLU at KU, was the student representative for Kansas for Constitutional Freedom and is a founding member of Lawrence Freedgin Kansas community food pantry. Additionally, she was a student ambassador for the Center for Sexuality and Gender Diversity and formerly served as the founder and Campus Corps Leader for Jayhawks for Bernie in 2020. Ibarra Quintana also participated in the Bench Builder Summer Internship Program within the Kansas Democratic Party during summer 2021 and is currently serving as an intern at the American Bar Association’s Commission on Immigration in Washington, D.C., throughout spring 2022.
Abeer Iqbal, of Des Moines, Iowa, is majoring in behavioral neuroscience with a minor in social justice in the U.S. and is a graduate of Waukee High School. She is the daughter of Sadia and Sami Iqbal. Iqbal plans to pursue a dual Doctor of Medicine and Master of Public Health to give back to her community by helping underrepresented communities of color have more satisfactory health outcomes and medical experiences. Iqbal is a University Honors Scholar and was recently named KU’s 2022 Newman Civic Fellowship nominee. She also is the current academic chair of Phi Delta Epsilon (PhiDE) Academic Pre-Medical Fraternity and previously held the service chair position. Iqbal is the director of alumni relations for Mortar Board Society, a Family Relations Committee member for KU Dance Marathon and service chair for Sigma Kappa sorority. Iqbal has also volunteered within KU LEAD-UP, Jayhawk Health Initiative Medical Tele-Brigade, Sigma Kappa Campus Clean-Ups and Broadlawns Hospital. Since fall 2021, she has participated in a research recruitment internship at KU Medical Center, where she helps teach and connects minority communities to research opportunities and resources within the KU Alzheimer’s Disease Center.
Max Lillich, of Lawrence, is majoring in political science and minoring in Jewish studies, business and sociology. He is a graduate of Free State High School and the son of Roxanne Rachlin and Shane Lillich. Lillich plans to earn a Juris Doctor to contribute to the field of international law and prosecute crimes of genocide or develop policy to make genocide prosecution easier. A member of the University Honors Program, he was selected as a 2020-2021 University Scholar and is the 2019 Kansas 6A 2 speaker policy debate state champion. He also is a KU Rising Scholar and Brosseau Scholar. Lillich currently works as the internal affairs director for KU’s Student Senate and as an assistant to the mayor of Lawrence. Additionally, Lillich serves on several organizations’ boards, including Legal Services for Students, KJHK and Student Senate Outreach. In fall 2020, he was a research assistant for the Texas Governor’s COVID-19 Taskforce, and he interned at the Texas Hotel and Lodging Association in summer 2018.
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