Javed Ali provided national security analysis for ABC News, CNN, BBC News, LiveNOW from FOX, NewsNation, The National News Desk, WJR, and Michigan News. His commentary addressed U.S.-Iran diplomacy and conflict, security in the Strait of Hormuz, shifting regional alliances, North Korea, and threats surrounding the FIFA World Cup.
John Ayanian co-authored a U-M report finding that Michigan's Medicaid expansion through the Healthy Michigan Plan produced long-term benefits for enrollees, hospitals, and primary care clinics.
Sam Bagenstos published "The Crisis of Appropriations Law" in the Washington University Law Review and "Entrenching Incumbent Power: Medicare Advantage, Part D, and the Politics of Health Reform" through the Empowering Democracy Initiative. He also discussed the Supreme Court's recent term on Slate's Amicus podcast.
Kamissa Camara successfully defended her doctoral dissertation, "When Coups Return: Militarism and the Politics of Intervention in Burkina Faso and Mali, 2020–2022," at the University of Oxford, earning her PhD in politics. She also discussed the United States' evolving relationship with the United Nations at the 11th America's Role in the World Conference.
Sarah Cohodes co-authored "Diversifying the STEM Pipeline" in the Journal of Human Resources. The first randomized study of STEM-focused summer programs found that participants were more likely to attend and graduate from highly selective colleges with STEM-related degrees, raising their predicted earnings by 3% to 15%.
Amy Harris delivered leadership training for the City of Ann Arbor's inaugural Emerging Leaders Program. During the winter semester, she also presented at the American Society for Public Administration's annual conference with Wulan Kencana Adjani (MPP/SEAS '26).
Ben Green's new book, Algorithmic Realism: Data Science Practices to Promote Social Justice, will be published by MIT Press in October. He also provided expert commentary about data centers on CNN, BBC News, and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC).
Catherine Hausman co-authored an NBER working paper, "Cutting Costs or Cutting Corners: Asset Reallocation in Oil and Gas Production," which examines how transfers of oil and gas assets affect production costs and environmental performance.
Morela Hernandez presented research on political polarization, organizational diversity initiatives, and institutional decision-making at New York University, Cornell University, Harvard University, the International Association for Conflict Management, and the Academy of Management Annual Meeting. Her paper with doctoral students, "From Progress to Backlash: A Cyclical Process Theory of Organizational Diversity Initiatives," was nominated for the Academy of Management's Phillips and Nadkarni Award for Outstanding Paper on Diversity and Cognition.
Yusuf Neggers co-authored "From Delay to Payday: Easing Bureaucrat Access to Implementation Information Strengthens Social Protection Delivery," a working paper examining how better access to program information can help government officials reduce payment delays and improve the delivery of social benefits.
Former Ambassador Susan D. Page discussed South Sudan's unfinished political transition and peace mediation amid geopolitical change at public events hosted by the Partnership for Effective Peacekeeping, Fordham University, and ETH Zurich. She also discussed the war in Sudan on Zeteo with Mehdi Hasan. She delivered keynote remarks for the Sudanese American Physicians Association at the National Press Club on protecting Sudanese health workers, documenting attacks, and pursuing accountability.
Shobita Parthasarathy published "'Sacrifice Subjects' and a Proposal for People-First Technology Regulation" in Science and was elected the next president of the Society for Social Studies of Science.
Kaitlin Raimi co-authored "Naturalness Catalyzes Public Support for Carbon Dioxide Removal and Low-Carbon Energy Technologies" in Communications Earth & Environment.
Kevin Stange co-authored Talent in Motion, a report released by Strada Education Foundation and the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research that examines talent migration and how education and employment opportunities shape where workers live and move.
Megan Stewart published "Revolutionizing Time, Reforging Social Order" in International Organization. The article explores how revolutionaries change calendars, holidays, and other ways of organizing time to break with the past and establish a new social and political order.
Christina Weiland, with students Tiffany Wu and Jonas Xie, created a public online tracker of school closures and consolidations in West Virginia. The tool documents closures and enrollment trends by county from 2011 to 2026, showing that 139 public schools have closed since 2011 and that 70% of the closures affected elementary schools.
Justin Wolfers launched Platypus Economics, a public education platform designed to help people understand the economic choices, trade-offs, and policy debates shaping their lives.
Dean Yang was elected founding president of the International Development Economics Association, the first global, open, and democratically governed professional association for development economists.
In Memoriam
Reynolds (Ren) Farley, a sociologist and demographer who used Census data to illuminate the persistence of racial segregation in American cities, died on September 12, at 87. He was the Otis Dudley Duncan Professor Emeritus of Sociology and Research Professor Emeritus at the Population Studies Center at the University of Michigan, where he taught and conducted research for nearly four decades.
The city of Detroit served as Farley's great case study. His work with the Detroit Area Study, and later Detroit Divided (2000, with Sheldon Danziger and Harry Holzer), traced how the city's racial geography had been shaped by discrimination, disinvestment, and the suburbanization of its Black middle class.
Farley's rigor and warmth ran through his long-running course on Detroit's history and future at the Ford School, capped each term by a daylong bus tour he narrated himself, from the Ford Rouge plant downtown, up Woodward, and through neighborhoods from Boston-Edison to Brightmoor.
Congratulations
Pamela Herd was selected to deliver the 18th NIH Matilda White Riley Distinguished Lecture in Behavioral and Social Sciences, focused on the life course, aging, and health disparities. She and Donald Moynihan received the 2026 Riccucci-O'Leary Award from the Public Management Research Association for the best article on diversity in public management.
Catherine Hausman, Katherine Michelmore, and Natasha Pilkauskas were each promoted to professor of public policy, with tenure.
Professor emeritus Paula Lantz received the J. Michael McGinnis Leadership Excellence Award from the Interdisciplinary Association for Population Health Science. Lantz recently retired from U-M.
A 2026 Guggenheim Fellowship will support Donald Moynihan's research on how the Trump Administration's management of public services affects government capacity and democratic accountability. He also received the George Fredrickson Award for Career Contributions from the Public Management Research Association.
Five Ford School-related projects received U-M Strategic Initiative Fund grants:
- Jenna Bednar will lead the new Center for Democracy & Civic Empowerment that will build an evidence-based understanding of what it takes to establish and sustain democracy through interdisciplinary projects and student and public engagement.
- Catherine Hausman is part of the Michigan Automotive, Grid, and Energy Transition Initiative (MAGNET), which will track Michigan's clean energy and mobility transformation.
- Helen Levy and Natasha Pilkauskas will collect monthly data on food insufficiency nationally, release quarterly issue briefs, and make microdata publicly available through Poverty Solutions.
- The Detroit Metro Areas Community Study (DMACS), led by Jeff Morenoff and Mara Ostfeld, will expand into a Detroit-centered civic data platform providing reliable, timely, representative information to residents, organizations, funders, and policymakers.
- As a member of the Great Lakes Maritime Initiative team, Alton Worthington aims to revitalize the American shipbuilding and maritime industry.
Related Fall 2026 State & Hill stories
People of the machine 
Evidence about school cell phone bans 
A safety net that keeps its promise 
Whose voices count? 
How mental health crisis response became police work ← Read all stories in the fall 2026 edition State & Hill