University of Arizona in the News

Arizona Football letter winner and longtime University of Arizona supporter Douglas Allred has given gifts totaling $4.8 million to Arizona Athletics. The funds will support program enhancements for the football and men's basketball programs as well as the Lute Olson Endowment for Excellence in Men's Basketball.

An unprecedented drought has created a national security issue as more than half of Chile's 19 million population live in areas deemed to be experiencing "severe water scarcity." In hundreds of rural communities in the center and north of the country, Chileans must rely on emergency tankers to deliver drinking water. "Water has become a national security issue – it's that serious," said Pablo García-Chevesich, a Chilean hydrologist working at the University of Arizona.

In recent decades Americans have been living in a time of decreased belonging, as confidence diminishes in religious organizations, community groups and institutions broadly. University of Arizona associate professor of clinical psychology and psychiatry Mary-Frances O'Connor says human brains grieve the death of a loved one differently from the deaths of people we don't know, and in crisis, grief is not our only feeling. "You can't underestimate the need for belonging," she said.

Art critic Christopher Knight writes about the restoration of Willem de Kooning's "Woman-Ochre," which was stolen from the University of Arizona Museum of Art in 1985.

Following the Texas elementary school shooting, some people may be experiencing "learned helplessness" – a mental state where people believe nothing they do matters. The antidote is to show people what they do does matter. "We talk a lot about how we are exhausted and overwhelmed and overburdened, but we don't talk about how we can imagine our own everyday political culture to be a healthier one," said University of Arizona professor of sociology Jennifer Carlson, who studies guns, trauma and the law.

For the seventh year in a row, University of Arizona hurricane forecasters say to prepare for an above-average hurricane season, which runs from June 1 through Nov. 30. However, this year isn't expected to be as active as recent years. The forecast, released this month, shows 14 named storms and seven hurricanes developing over the Atlantic Ocean, three of them expected to develop into major storms.

Nearly four decades after a Willem de Kooning painting was cut from its frame at a museum and kept in a couple's bedroom, the newly restored work, likely worth well above $100 million, will go on view publicly for the first time.

This column examines the current polarized state of politics and culture in the U.S. University of Arizona associate professor of government and public policy Samara Klar co-authored a paper on partisan responses to the COVID-19 pandemic that found "(i)ncreases in animus are statistically significant only for Republicans in counties with low cases, suggesting that, for worry and support, partisan gaps are largely a function of Republicans with considerable animus towards Democrats."

University of Arizona associate professor of law Shefali Milczarek-Desai, director of the Workers' Rights Clinic and co-chair of the Bacon Immigration Law and Policy Program, writes that rather than simply replicating existing state and local paid sick leave policies in a federal proposal, lawmakers need to focus on the vulnerable workers routinely left out of sick leave policy.

This story profiles the research and accomplishments of University of Arizona associate professor of environmental science Karletta Chief, among other National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences grant recipients.