UAlbany in the News

by Michael Parker (May 6, 2005)

Thomas Bass, professor of journalism and English, was one of 110 international correspondents invited by the Vietnamese government to help commemorate the 30th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War. Bass was featured in several newspapers in Vietnam, including Nhan Dan, Tuoi Tre, and Thanh Nien, and an online journal, VNExpress, especially for a book he wrote called Vietnamerica. The work concerns the airlift of 100,000 Amerasian children and their family members out of Vietnam and their resettlement in the U.S.

Kermit L. Hall, president and professor of history, was quoted as an expert on constitutional law in two Associated Press stories about privacy issues and the Archdiocese of Milwaukee. The stories appeared April 19-20 in Newsday, the St. Paul Pioneer Press, The Post-Crescent of Appleton, Wis., and the Duluth News Tribune. Hall said he wasn’t surprised a privacy policy raised hackles because it signaled to priests “basically we don’t trust you. I think the solution they came up with to the problem (of sexual abuse by priests) was too insensitive to the professional values of those who would never stray and not sensitive enough at effectively taking care of those who would.”

Eric Hardiman, assistant professor in the School of Social Welfare, was quoted as an expert March 30 in an abcnews.com story about mental health needs following the tsunami that devastated Southeast Asia in December and subsequent earthquake three months later. Many survivors had started to feel safe after reassuring themselves that a tsunami only occurs once in a lifetime, according to Hardiman. But being hit three months later by an earthquake “calls into question the very basis of the belief they were using to sustain themselves,” he said.

Sociology professor Richard Lachmann was quoted as an expert on religion and culture in the April 20 Utica Observer-Dispatch in a story about American reaction to the new pope. Lachmann said the selection likely means the church would stay the course on policies pursued by Pope John Paul II. “There won’t be much change in the role of women in the church, and the Vatican’s stance in areas such as birth control, abortion, stem cell research and artificial insemination would probably remain the same.”