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News and Updates

From the VP: My summer reading list

A stack of four books: Arrowsmith, Invisible Man, Eat a Bowl of Tea, and When Pride Still MatteredHistorically, summer has been a season for slowing down, planning for the next academic year and even getting a little time away from the office. Of course, we all know by now this has not been a typical summer. If yours has been like mine, you know work has done anything but slow down and plans for the next academic year continue to be adjusted as the virus persists. Time away from the office mostly entails taking the dog on long walks and the occasional weekend hike. While my social life may be “suffering” from all this physical distancing at home, I have had plenty of time to work through my summer reading list. With everything going on in our world right now, I found myself rethinking the books I might normally pull off the shelf — I wanted to engage with material that is in conversation with our time. I found books by past literary greats that spoke with surprising clarity and discernment about our duel pandemics of racism and novel coronavirus. From my bookshelf to yours, here are just a few books on my summer reading list.

Photo of Invisible Man book coverInvisible Man by Ralph Ellison

“I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me,”

“Invisible Man” is a classic American novel about the Black experience and was recently recommended in The Seattle Times by UW Professor Emeritus Charles Johnson — who incidentally won the National Book Award for fiction in 1990 for the classic “Middle Passage.” I first read “Invisible Man” in high school, but as a white, middle-class male, the novel really did not resonate. I am guessing I might not have been the only white high schooler to feel this way. If this was your experience, I would highly recommend revisiting this work. Ellison’s prose is as relevant today as they were in the 1940s. He chronicles the life of a young, nameless Black man as he attempts to navigate racism, intolerance and cultural blindness in the deep South and New York City.

 

Photo of the cover of ArrowsmithArrowsmith by Sinclair Lewis

Sinclair Lewis’ Pulitzer Prize winning work speaks with an uncanny clarity during a global pandemic almost a century after its publication. The novel follows young Martin Arrowsmith as he struggles to decide whether to embark on a career in research or as a clinical physician. The parallels between the challenges Arrowsmith and his colleagues face (resistance to wearing masks, anti-vaccination, the use of unproven remedies), and those raised by the current pandemic almost a century later are both eerie and confounding.

Interestingly, although Lewis won the Pultizer Prize for “Arrowsmith,” he refused the prize winnings in part because he felt he should have been honored for a previous novel: “Main Street.”

 

Eat a Bowl of Tea by Louis Chu

UW professor of English (and sometimes golfing partner) Shawn Wong recommended this book during a campus lecture on the classic Japanese-American novel “No No Boy” which I attended with my wife Tina just before the COVID-19 shutdown.  Recently republished by the University of Washington Press, “Eat a Bowl of Tea” is praised as the first novel to authentically portray everyday life in an American Chinatown circa mid-20th century New York City. Chu’s novel spotlights the consequences for many Chinese men in the U.S. who were separated from their wives and families due to the 1924 Chinese Exclusion Act and Immigration Act. The story explores intergenerational conflict, gender relations and life in a highly isolated environment through the story of a newlywed couple navigating their tight-knit community’s expectations.

 

Photo of the cover of When Pride Still MatteredHonorable Mention
When Pride Still Mattered: A Life of Vince Lombardi by David Maraniss

Confession: I read this one earlier in the year, but it was such a fascinating read I’m recommending it for your summer reading list anyway.  If you are a professional football fan of a certain age, you might feel that you know plenty about Vince Lombardi. I certainly did. But Maraniss’s work made me rethink much of what I thought I knew about this football legend. He turned out to be a lot more nuanced and frankly ahead of his time than the “old school” stereotype portrayed in sports media.  Even if you aren’t a football fan, this is one of the best biographies I’ve read and the definitive take on the life of the man for whom the Super Bowl trophy is named.

Huskies fighting COVID-19: Dean Hilary Godwin

From the beginning, the University of Washington and UW Medicine have supported our state’s efforts to mitigate the effects of COVID-19. “Huskies fighting COVID-19” is a feature series highlighting individuals who’s work is making an impact from Public Health and Computer Science & Engineering to the Virology Lab and the emergency room.

This week we connected with Hilary Godwin, Dean of the University of Washington School of Public Health and professor in the Department of Environmental & Occupational Health Sciences. She shares her insight on understanding the impact of lagging data, connecting with others safely during the pandemic and preparing for upcoming challenges as we look to 2021.

Q: We keep hearing in the news about case counts going up, particularly among young people. What do you think it will take to get the virus under control enough for counties to continue the reopening process?

A: I think that, to be able to continue the reopening process safely, we will need much broader adoption of social distancing and face-covering guidelines than we currently have. I tend to think of it this way: we have enough public health and healthcare infrastructure to be able to handle a certain number of cases at any given time (without having the number of cases surge out of control) and that basically means that we as a community can tolerate a certain amount of exposure/transmission risk. I think that our top priorities as a society should be to use that “quota” of transmission risk in a way that allows us to open critical segments of the economy and, ideally, to open K-12 schools. What we learned from our early attempts at re-opening (and the resulting uptick in cases) is that doesn’t leave a lot of bandwidth (in terms of transmission risk) for activities that may bring us joy but are not essential, unless we want to risk a new surge in cases. Although “opening schools before bars” may seem like a no-brainer, this is a hard reality for many people to accept, particularly when we may be looking at trying to contain this pandemic for another year or two.

Q: Has the emergence and continuation of the COVID-19 pandemic changed or affirmed how you think about the Public Health field? If so, in what ways?

A: The COVID-19 pandemic has definitely reinforced to me the importance of investing in prevention and making decisions based on data, both of which are core tenets of public health. The pandemic has also really highlighted the need to address social inequities and injustices that are pervasive in our society, including racism, as these are primary sources of the health disparities we see in our country. I have also found the pandemic to be humbling: we in public health need to do a better job of communicating consistently and clearly to policy makers and the public in general; we also need to develop better mechanisms for coordinating with each other and with other stakeholders both nationally and globally.

Q: What is one thing you wish more policymakers understood about the pandemic?

A: I wish more policymakers understood how data lags impact our ability to control the pandemic.  There is a significant lag between when a person gets infected and when they show up as a case, and even greater lags for hospitalizations and deaths. Some of this has to do with access to testing and testing capacity, but a lot of it also has to do with the natural timeline for disease progression for COVID-19. These lags mean that by the time we know we have a problem, we are already a couple of weeks behind (and the problem has most likely be growing exponentially during that time). That means that we are inherently trying to make our best educated guess about how the pandemic is trending so that we can take action proactively before things get out of control. That’s a very hard concept for a lot of folks to grasp. People often would like to wait to be “sure” that action is needed, but by then, it may be that much harder to get the pandemic back under control.

Q: The COVID-19 pandemic has changed how our communities work, eat, play and socialize. Do you have any tips for folks who may find themselves struggling to find connection while following public health guidelines?

A: My husband and I have this conversation all the time: he is more social than I am (I am more of an introvert) and really misses socializing with other people. We also both miss spending time with family, who are all out of town for us. We have implemented weekly Zoom calls with my extended family as one way to cope with not being able to travel to see each other.

For getting together with friends and family that live nearby, I recommend what I call the “Fauci rules” (see this story in the Washington Post): if you get together with people, limit the number of people from outside your household, get together outdoors, maintain 6 foot separation and wear masks (other than when you are eating). If it’s too hot or rainy, then reschedule for another day.

This works now, because we have relatively good weather, but is going to be harder when things get colder. One strategy to consider as we head into the fall and the spring is to form a “pod” with another household that shares your level of commitment to social distancing and agree that both families will forgo interactions with other people so that you can spend time indoors with each other. (This is also a possible strategy for families that want to share childcare and remote school support for their kids.)

Q: When you look into next year and beyond, what challenges do you foresee for our communities as we navigate milestones like vaccine distribution once one becomes available? How can we ensure we navigate these challenges in a way that is equitable to all?

A: I was talking with a friend today who expressed that he can’t wait for 2020 to be over. I think most of us would agree with that sentiment!

One challenge that I foresee is that we haven’t been talking enough (or honestly enough) about what 2021 is likely to look like and how we should be planning for that reality. Because we likely won’t have large numbers of doses of vaccines until mid-2021 at the earliest, and it will likely take months to get those vaccine doses broadly distributed, much of 2021 is likely to look and feel a lot like the last five months have looked.

I anticipate that we will continue experience local surges in cases as we reopen different segments of the economy throughout 2021 and that will mean short-term returns to more restrictive measures to bring those surges under control. I also anticipate that we will continue to experience supply chain issues for testing reagents and supplies and that we will see something similar happen in the realm of vaccines. Because we have never mounted such a large scale vaccine campaign, I anticipate coordination will be challenging, particularly across state lines and globally. We also have a history of vaccine hesitancy in this country that will likely further complicate any vaccine campaigns.

I do think that, the timing is right to collectively lift our gaze up from the chaos of the moment and think constructively about what we can do to better prepare ourselves, our organizations and our communities for the upcoming year. Within my organization, we are having conversations about how we can best support each other in the upcoming year given this reality. I am particularly concerned about how we support our employees who have young children at home and are juggling working, parenting and teaching their kids. This means being flexible both in terms of schedules and in terms of expectations. On a societal level, I am particularly concerned that we continue to maintain the social safeguards that were implemented early in the pandemic (e.g., eviction moratoriums and unemployment benefits) and that we make sure that we are making critical services (including testing and vaccine) broadly available (and ideally free of charge). Finally, we need to make sure that, in the midst of the COVID crisis, we don’t lose sight of the importance of addressing racism and other social injustices now, so that we can emerge from this pandemic stronger and better as a society. We have a lot of work in front of us.

From the VP: Name, image and likeness and the NCAA — a debate far from settled

Football player sitting on the sidelines
It might seem strange to be discussing student-athletes when the pervasive spread of COVID-19 abruptly shut down all college sporting events this spring and the potential for future contests continues to be uncertain. Players may not be on the field, but conversations around student-athlete compensation — particularly the ability to profit from the use of their own name, image and likeness — continue to move forward with an increasing sense of urgency.

For the uninitiated, the phrase “name, image and likeness” refers to a person’s ability to monetize their persona, appearance and/or social status. This can include accepting payment for promoting products, signing autographs, hosting summer camps, modeling and public appearances, as well as newer avenues made possible by social media platforms. While common place for professional athletes, National Collegiate Athletic Association regulations have essentially prohibited college players from monetizing their personas.
Proponents contend that student-athletes are being denied access to sources of income that their non-athlete peers are able to pursue unencumbered. In fact under the NCAA’s current policy, student-athletes can’t even use their own name if they want to create a small business as part of a class project. Allowing student-athletes to have the same opportunities as their peers in the general student body has become an issue of fairness.

The NCAA on the other hand has prohibited players from using NIL to both uphold their definition of amateurism and protect the recruitment process from manipulation. As the NCAA has cautiously opened up to the idea of modernizing their rules around NIL, these issues still drive the conversation. Worried that NIL compensation could be used as an enticement in the recruiting process, giving schools with wealthy boosters an advantage over lesser resourced ones, the NCAA and member universities have stressed the need for strong guardrails to protect both the process and students themselves from outsiders who might want to take advantage of them.

The conversation seemed to be at an impasse until 2019 when the California legislature passed the first bill enabling student-athletes in their state to receive NIL compensation. This put pressure on the NCAA and stoked the NIL fire for public advocates, other state lawmakers and federal officials. In November of that year, the NCAA announced it was pulling together a working group to discuss a national path forward. When in February of 2020 not much had come out of that working group, a Senate hearing was held. The committee strongly advised the NCAA to come up with a solution that addressed the issue nationally without the federal government stepping in. Thus the NCAA found itself, in the middle of a global pandemic, trying to figure out how to satisfy state legislators, federal judges, federal lawmakers and their constituencies.

Fast forward to late April of this year when the NCAA released the long awaited results of their working group’s deliberations. The Board of Governors announced they supported rule changes that would allow student-athletes to receive compensation from third-party endorsements – both those related to their athletic achievements and separate from them. While this might sound like a definitive answer on the subject, this is yet another step in the long, slow process of modernizing its rules. The Board’s 31 pages of recommendations will move to the individual divisions of the NCAA and the divisions are expected to create and adopt new NIL rules by January 2021. These new rules would be put into effect for the 2021-22 academic year.

If you’re thinking this decision and subsequent changes are moving at a glacially slow pace, you are not alone. Legislatures have continued to pass bills to allow college athletes in their state to profit off of NIL. This spring, Colorado and Florida legislatures joined California in passing such laws. Washington state was one of over 28 other states speeding toward passing NIL bills. Washington’s SHB-1080 may have died this past session, but NIL is not going anywhere.

Unfortunately, a patchwork of state laws compounds fairness issues surrounding NIL. NCAA member schools operate in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. If some states have NIL laws in place while others do not or every state has different versions of NIL laws in place, this would create a very confusing – and easily exploited – recruiting environment. The last thing anyone wants is an environment that creates an above-board bidding war for players by outside entities. Feeling the NCAA is not moving fast enough, members of Congress have begun working on national bills. Sens. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) and Mitt Romney (R-Utah) formed a bi-partisan working group on the issue. Sens. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Cory Booker (D-N.J.) also have been active concerning NIL while Rep. Mark Walker (R-N.C.) introduced a NIL bill in the House. A Federal law would preempt the various state laws, but with Congress facing a global pandemic and an election year, there will likely be less bandwidth to push on NIL at least for the present.

No matter how the NIL conversation lands, it is important to remember there is a reason we refer to them as student-athletes — they are students first. While studying to earn their degrees, they choose to play a sport they love against students from other colleges and universities. Yes, a handful will go on to play professionally, but the vast majority will enter the workforce in a role more closely associated with their degree than their position on the field. Remembering and protecting this student first mentality is integral to the mission of college sports within higher education. Only with a cohesive, national approach will we be able to create a system that has the potential to be fair to both students and the schools wanting to recruit them.

From the VP: City Council approves another twelve years of the U District Business Improvement Area

On Monday, June 8, the Seattle City Council unanimously passed a twelve-year renewal of the U District Business Improvement Area. The renewal was the result of a true collaboration between those who care about the area’s future and is a strong win for all who live, work and play in the University District.

Established in 2015, U District BIA assessments help pay for: cleaning and public safety; events and marketing; economic development; planning; and program management. This important work is guided by the U District BIA Ratepayer Advisory Board and The U District Partnership is contracted to manage program implementation.

Throughout the renewal process, businesses, neighbors and non-profits have shared how the programs funded by the U District BIA are making a positive difference in their lives and for the community as a whole. One effective program is REACH, a neighborhood-based outreach program that connects unhoused neighbors to services they need while lessening stress for businesses and responders who are trying to help. REACH’s skilled coordinators are trained to address the specific concerns identified by the community they serve. Clean and Safe is another impactful service established to provide cleaning services and beautification for areas throughout the U District BIA.

These programs are working and community stakeholders made it clear that the University District benefits because of them. Even while facing the challenges brought on by COVID-19, passionate small-business owners took the time to testify before the City Council and share their support for the U District BIA. The process of renewing the BIA was a true partnership between the people and institutions that care deeply about the present and future of the University District. As the area continues to develop, the work of the U District BIA will only become more essential. With its renewal, U District BIA members can continue to work together to fund programs in the U District making it a cleaner, safer and more vibrant neighborhood for all.

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