Disease Likely Not a Common Cause of Species Extinction, New Amherst Study Finds

August 25, 2010

Challenging the widespread belief that rare and endangered plants and animals are unhealthy, a new study has found they in fact harbor a lower number and diversity of disease-causing parasites than non-threatened, close relatives of the same family, according to Amherst College biology professor Michael Hood and his research team.

Documentary Focusing on India Farmer Suicides Has Amherst Connection

Amherst, Mass.—A political science and women’s and gender studies professor at Amherst College says she hopes a movie her mother produced about a wave of suicides by farmers in the Punjab region of India will shed light on the vexing challenges that farmers and their families face globally and locally, while also raising funds for the affected families.

Law and the Stranger Marks 20th Book in Heralded LJST Series

August 2, 2010

By Peter Rooney

The goal more than 20 years ago was both straightforward and audacious.

Not content with launching a new Amherst program, with planning the first legal studies department at a liberal arts college or with pursuing their individual research, Professor Austin Sarat and then- colleague Thomas Kearns wanted to help shape a national discussion about the place of law in the liberal arts and put their conception of interdisciplinary legal scholarship on the map in a big way.