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KU Debate qualifies third team for National Debate Tournament
LAWRENCE — The University of Kansas debate team of Ethan Harris and Jacob Wilkus, both graduates of Free State High School in Lawrence, have qualified for the National Debate Tournament set for April 4-7 in Spokane, Washington. The duo joins the KU teams of John Marshall, Lawrence, with Graham Revare, Prairie Village, and Rose Larson, Milwaukee, with Luna Schultz, Houston, who had already qualified. This is the 10th straight year that KU has qualified three teams for the NDT.
KU Wind Ensemble to tour central and western Kansas
LAWRENCE — The University of Kansas School of Music will take part in an outreach tour March 31 and April 1 in central and western Kansas, featuring the KU Wind Ensemble under the direction of Matt Smith. The band will perform in Clay Center, Dodge City, Garden City, Hays and Junction City.
Third pharmacy dean candidate to present March 6, schedule updated
LAWRENCE – Chrissa Kioussi, a professor and chair of pharmaceutical sciences at Oregon State University, will be the third candidate for the School of Pharmacy dean position to present her vision for the school. Her public presentation is set for 4-5 p.m. March 6 in Room 1020 of the School of Pharmacy building and will be livestreamed. The fourth and final candidate’s presentation also has been rescheduled to 4-5 p.m. March 13.
Embrace of authoritarianism in US fueled by culture wars more than economy, study finds
LAWRENCE — Two University of Kansas sociologists have contributed a chapter titled “Authoritarianism From Below: Why and How Donald Trump Follows His Followers” to a new publication in the “Current Perspectives in Social Theory” series from Emerald Publishing Limited. “What we’re witnessing, and what we have witnessed for quite some time, is an active wish for domineering leaders who will fight the culture war on behalf of their supporters,” said co-author David Norman Smith.
Full stories below.
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Contact: Scott Harris, KU Debate, 785-864-9878, sharris@ku.edu, @KansasDebate
KU Debate qualifies third team for National Debate Tournament
LAWRENCE — The University of Kansas debate team of Ethan Harris and Jacob Wilkus, both alumni of Free State High School in Lawrence, have qualified for the National Debate Tournament set for April 4-7 in Spokane, Washington.
Harris and Wilkus were selected as at-large qualifiers for the National Debate Tournament by the NDT Selection Committee based on their record over the course of the season. They are the third KU pair to qualify for the national tournament this year. The duo joins the KU teams of John Marshall, Lawrence, with Graham Revare, Prairie Village, and Rose Larson, Milwaukee, with Luna Schultz, Houston, who had already qualified for the NDT.
To qualify as a third team, a pair must be one of the six best third teams in the country over the season.
“Qualifying for the NDT as a third team is very difficult, and Ethan and Jacob earned it with an excellent season,” said Brett Bricker, KU associate director of debate.
The five other schools who qualified three teams to the NDT are Emory University, the University of Kentucky, the University of Michigan, Michigan State University and Northwestern University.
This is the 10th straight year that KU has qualified three teams for the NDT and the 58th consecutive year of qualifying one or more teams to compete at the NDT. KU has won the National Debate Tournament six times and reached the final four 21 times, including a second-place finish in 2024.
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Contact: Fally Afani, School of Music, fally.afani@ku.edu
KU Wind Ensemble to tour central and western Kansas
LAWRENCE — The University of Kansas School of Music will take part in an outreach tour featuring the KU Wind Ensemble under the direction of Matt Smith. The band will embark on a two-day tour across central and western Kansas, performing five concerts for students and the public.
The tour will take place March 31 and April 1, with performances at high schools in Clay Center, Junction City, Hays, Garden City and Dodge City. These concerts will provide students and community members with an opportunity to foster a connection with the university and experience one of the nation’s premier collegiate wind ensembles.
“We are thrilled to share the joy of live music with students and audiences across Kansas,” said Smith, co-conductor of the KU Wind Ensemble. “Music has the power to inspire, educate and connect us, and we look forward to engaging with these communities and nurturing a love for the arts.”
The tour schedule is as follows:
March 31
9:45 a.m. – Clay Center Community High School
1:15 p.m. – Junction City High School
7:30 p.m. – Hays High School
April 1
10 a.m. – Garden City High School
2 p.m. – Dodge City High School.
The “School of Music Across Kansas” initiative is part of the School of Music’s ongoing commitment to expanding access to high-quality musical experiences and fostering connections between KU musicians and students across the state.
For more information, please contact the KU Band Office at kuband@ku.edu.
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Contact: Savannah Rattanavong, Office of the Provost, 785-864-6402, s.rattanavong@ku.edu
Third pharmacy dean candidate to present March 6, schedule updated
LAWRENCE – Chrissa Kioussi, a professor and chair of pharmaceutical sciences at Oregon State University, will be the third candidate for the School of Pharmacy dean position to present her vision for the school.
The presentation is set for 4-5 p.m. March 6 in Room 1020 of the School of Pharmacy building. The event will be livestreamed, and the passcode is 932064.
The fourth and final candidate’s presentation also has been rescheduled to 4-5 p.m. March 13 in Room 1020 in the School of Pharmacy building. They will be announced approximately two business days before the visit.
Members of the KU community are encouraged to attend the presentations and provide feedback to the search committee. Presentation recordings and the online feedback form will remain available on the search page through March 18.
Additional search information, including Kioussi’s CV, is also available on the search page.
As chair of OSU’s pharmaceutical sciences department, Kioussi leads a team of faculty, students, trainees and staff, promoting the research portfolio of the College of Pharmacy and advocating for teaching and research needs.
Her research is related to developmental biology and molecular genetics, focusing on how genes and cells work cooperatively and systematically to generate and regenerate organs, with funding provided by numerous entities, including the National Institutes of Health (NIH), American Heart Association and March of Dimes.
Kioussi has previously served as an American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy Academic Leadership Fellow and Provost Fellow, the chair of the College of Pharmacy Promotion and Tenure Committee and the Research Office’s Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee and a member of the Center for Quantitative Life Sciences Scientific Advisory Board and Faculty Senate Graduate Council.
She is an editor and reviewer of multiple scientific journals and book series as well as a reviewer in NIH study sections, U.S. research foundations and European research agencies.
Kioussi earned her doctorate in molecular and cellular biology from the Hellenic Pasteur Institute and a bachelor’s degree in biology from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, both in Athens, Greece. She previously trained at Pasteur Institute, University College London, the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry, the Scripps Research Institute and the University of California San Diego School of Medicine.
The School of Pharmacy Dean search committee includes representatives from faculty, staff, students and alumni and is being led by Michelle Carney, dean of the School of Social Welfare, and Candan Tamerler, associate vice chancellor for research and professor of mechanical engineering.
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Don’t miss new episodes of “When Experts Attack!,”
a KU News Service podcast hosted by Kansas Public Radio.
https://kansaspublicradio.org/podcast/when-experts-attack
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Contact: Jon Niccum, KU News Service, 785-864-7633, jniccum@ku.edu
Embrace of authoritarianism in US fueled by culture wars more than economy, study finds
LAWRENCE — Donald Trump famously announced his intention in 2023 to be a dictator “on day one” of his second term in office. Despite the statement’s seeming affront to democracy, a majority of voters were not repelled by it. Many instead embraced it.
“Words like dictatorship and democracy are formal. They’re not beside the point, but they don’t necessarily get to the crux of what’s happening,” said David Norman Smith, professor of sociology at the University of Kansas.
“It isn’t that people are saying, ‘Oh, we don’t need democracy.’ They’re saying, ‘We do need to fight the culture war.’ If fighting the culture war in a domineering way tramples some of the established traditions, that’s a consequence. But that’s not generally the object.”
Smith and Eric Hanley, KU associate professor of sociology, have contributed a chapter titled “Authoritarianism From Below: Why and How Donald Trump Follows His Followers.” They scrutinize Trump’s assertion that many individuals “like” his talk of dictatorship. And if true, what does it mean empirically? The chapter appears in “The Future of Agency: Between Autonomy and Heteronomy,” which is Vol. 41 of the “Current Perspectives in Social Theory” series published by Emerald Publishing Limited.
“I think it’s better to try to actually understand what’s going on beneath the surface of traditional terms like ‘dictatorship.’ What we’re witnessing, and what we have witnessed for quite some time, is an active wish for domineering leaders who will fight the culture war on behalf of their supporters,” Smith said.
Many of these political tendencies emerged prior to Trump’s presidency. Some are found in the results of the 2012 and 2016 American National Election Studies (ANES), which included survey questions Smith and Hanley proposed that were drawn from the Right-wing Authoritarianism Scale. They learned from this survey that most of Trump’s voters supported him not because they were hurting economically, but because they shared his prejudices and enemies.
“If you scroll through countless Trump speeches over a decade, you will find very few comments that directly address economic issues,” Smith said. “It’s rarely a talking point for him. It’s the culture war. That’s what has really resonated.”
It used to be routinely said that people vote their pocketbook. Democratic Party leadership often echoed such sentiments. Bill Clinton staffers James Carville and George Stephanopoulos became household names in 1992 for introducing the phrase, “It’s the economy, stupid.”
“The recurring misunderstanding, which was most recently shown by all the discussion about inflation in the latter stages of the last election, is this idea that the economy is number one,” Smith said.
“That was largely the result of a single poll. And polls are fine, but one small poll amid everything else that was happening at that moment gave people who were so disposed an opportunity to cling to an economy narrative. What we found way back in 2012 was that the economy matters greatly, but it matters to everyone. So if you’re trying to distinguish yourself (as a candidate) by voting for or against something, pocketbook issues don’t get you very far.”
What most Trump voters have wanted, Smith said, is Donald Trump and what he represents culturally. That was clear in the 2016 data, and it has been clear in subsequent surveys by the Monmouth University Polling Institute and Morning Consult.
Smith’s interest in this topic goes back a long way. He said he recalled reading a poll concerning Ronald Reagan in the 1980s. Voters were asked, “Do you think Ronald Reagan cares about people like you?” Under 10% of the public said yes. They were then asked, “Do you like Ronald Reagan and what he’s doing?” Around 70% of those same people answered yes, and mainly because they saw him as a strong leader.
“The striking fact that Reagan could be 70% popular in a moment when most people did not really feel he cared about them raised a big question for me,” he said.
A professor at KU since 1990, Smith specializes in the political intersections of sociology, psychology and economy. His work often explores the question, “Why do people differ in their attitudes toward democracy and equality?”
While he is quick to discuss the reasons behind Trump’s support, he is not currently predicting how the man’s presidency and legacy will play out.
Smith said, “I’m reminded of something I heard Trump tell TV journalist Megyn Kelly in an interview back in early 2016. She asked him, ‘If there’s one thing we should know about you, what would you say it is?’ He said, ‘I go hard.’ I think we know by now that he is charging ahead, and he’s waiting to see what the consequences will be. He’s always had a gambler’s mentality.”
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