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Africana studies professor Selwyn Cudjoe reflects on Trinidad and Tobago's Chief Justice Ivor Archie's comments on public sector reform.

Sari Kerr, senior research scientist at Wellesley Centers for Women and lecturer in economics, is interviewed on BBC's World Business Report about women and the wage gap starting at 17:00.

Claudia Goldin has illuminated issues like the gender gap in pay, child and elder care and the lack of women economists... These impacts persist, according to Sari Kerr, senior research scientist at Wellesley Centers for Women and lecturer in economics, who co-authored a working paper with Goldin on women in the workforce and the career gap. “We still have the perpetual question of how to afford day care, child care and elder care,” Kerr said. “And since that care burden is so unevenly distributed still between men and women, and how to manage that are big questions, certainly.”

That's a gap that can follow women throughout their careers even when their kids get older, Goldin and economists Sari Pekkala Kerr and Claudia Olivetti found. Women do make up some ground once their kids are out of high school; they clock in for more hours, and their "motherhood penalty" is chipped away at. But that doesn't mean they're commensurate with their male counterparts. "By the time that women reach their mid fifties — I'm thinking especially about the college-educated women — the gains that men and fathers in particular have made in the labor market are so large that no matter what you do at that point, you can't make that ground up," Kerr, senior research scientist at Wellesley Centers for Women and lecturer in economics, who co-authored that paper with Goldin on the "parental gender gap," told Insider. Mothers can make up ground relative to non-mothers, Kerr said, but "the gender gap is just way too large between parents."

Just last year, Paul Fisher, a professor of American Studies, published “The Grand Affair: John Singer Sargent in His World,” speculating on his private life and motivations. Fisher works hard to pull the loose ends of Sargent’s private life together. He posits that Sargent’s hidden agendas were to lionize the nascent female empowerment of the Belle Époque, and the “ever-more-complex modernity” and cultural change of the late 18th century.

"Carlos Alberto Vega’s mirror art draws in the viewer for a closer examination as they hold glimpses of their own reflection amidst the vibrant and colorful symbols and icons imprinted on vintage, mixed-media mirrors," writesMarjorie Agosin, professor in the humanities and Spanish. 

The course is called “Bad Bunny and Resistance in Puerto Rico,” which highlights the superstar’s impact on politics, music and society as a whole. Loyola Marymount University has also launched the Bad Bunny Syllabus with Petra Rivera-Rideau, an associate professor of American Studies. It's described as an open educational project that provides resources for other professors and Bad Bunny fans from around the world.

Reflecting on recently retired Trinidadian politican, Ashton Ford, Africana studies professor Selwyn Cudojoe writes, "I am always elated with seemingly little, obscure people—that is, people who are not in the spotlight—when they are recognised for the contributions they make to the civic, social and political development of our society. I felt that way when Ashton Ford was honoured with Hummingbird Silver last Sunday. He thoroughly deserved it."

Nina Tumarkin, Director of the Russian Area Studies Program at Wellesley College, continued the discussion by examining the evolution of Russian war memory and the cult of the Great Patriotic War. Tumarkin noted that celebrations of the war during the Brezhnev era were both genuinely popular and orchestrated by authorities as a source of legitimacy. She traced the ebbs and flows of the event’s popularity through different regimes, from Stalin’s denial to Brezhnev’s exultation, Yeltsin’s rejection, and Putin’s revival. Tumarkin posited that the idealization of history allowed the Kremlin to claim moral superiority, which legitimized its military activity in its successor states. She concluded by discussing this year’s Victory Day under quarantine, where attempts to generate virtual patriotism are contrasted with the toll of the pandemic.