In an article highlighting Redlands Representative Pete Aguilar (D), Prof. Jack Pitney is quoted on Aguilar’s relationship with Republican Congressman Jerry Lewis. At Lewis’ funeral, Pitney recalled Aguilar “talked about their long-standing friendship going back to when he was mayor of Redlands. It’s no coincidence they got along so well, because Jerry was pretty much like that too. He was not a cultural warrior. He had a conservative voting record, but he made a point of befriending people on the Democratic side.”

Prof. Gastón Espinosa is quoted in an article highlighting a recent Pew Research Center report that found about 30 percent of Latino adults are not religiously affiliated. This number has increased significantly since 2010. Espinosa explained that the Latino population may be more religious than the survey shows. “Those that identify as charismatic Pentecostals or evangelicals are sometimes counted as unaffiliated or nonreligious because they don’t belong to traditional denominations, like Catholic or Baptist.”

Pieter van Wingerden, a junior at CMC was named the winner of the Truman Scholarship. Van Wingerden studies government and Asian studies at CMC and is interested in political, economic, and military issues in Asia. He is CMC’s 20th Truman Scholar since Congress established the scholarship in 1975.

China has recently rebuffed attempts by the Biden administration to restart high level talks and lower tensions in Taiwan. Prof. Minxin Pei said it is possible that Beijing will re-engage with Washington once it feels it has more leverage. That could come after Beijing has deepened ties with more nonaligned countries like Brazil or after it has widened splits in Europe over how closely to follow the United States in its tougher stance toward China. “China wants to engage the U.S. from a position of strength, and China is clearly not in that position now.

The Washington Examiner interviewed Prof. Jack Pitney about Gov. Ron DeSantis’s recent TV ad attacking Trump. “Here is the message: ‘Trump is stealing pages from the Biden-Pelosi playbook.’ Do the DeSantis people really think that they can convince Republicans that Trump is too much like Biden and Pelosi? That seems pretty unlikely.”

Prof. Henri Cole’s latest sonnet collection, “Gravity and Center” was reviewed in The New York Times.

“Each of Henri Cole’s sonnets is a little workshop of language,” the Times wrote. “Cole’s sonnet is a form both economical and maximal, which, through both artifice and resistance to artifice, feels and makes you feel, thinks and makes you think.”

Prof. Jack Pitney commented on a claim that the recent Nashville protest is comparable to the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. He stated that the two events in question were not the same due to the January 6 events involving “violence and death.”