News and Events

A new UB study is helping researchers understand how women in their early college years can use friends-based strategies to help avoid unwanted sexual experiences. Friends are protective by nature, but this study looked specifically at something called “capable guardianship” — one aspect of friendship that can be especially helpful.

The journalists on the front lines of digital media didn’t embrace Lyu’s technical innovations. They knew that identifying fakes wasn’t enough. Users could unwittingly spread sensationalized fiction and bogus accounts with curatorial algorithms amplified fakery by targeting those who (turning the aphorism on its head) might find fiction stranger (more entertaining or believable) than truth — and it doesn’t take much to turn a fundamental truth into a spicy, online falsehood.

Who is a Muslim woman? What is it really like for women who live in the Middle East? How are they using their voices for efforts of resistance and empowerment? Naila Sahar is answering these questions while breaking down barriers and stereotypes through her research and a course she is teaching — “Women in the Middle East” — in the Department of Global Gender and Sexuality Studies.

Abigail Tweedale’s group embodied the genetic information that’s in charge of the development and function of living organisms. They danced as if they were one, instead of parts of a whole, to “We’re All in This Together” from “High School Musical.” “You’re dancing and I’m killing Keira,” Tweedale said as she directed the others during their recent rehearsal in 190 Alumni Arena.

Elizabeth Otto, professor of art history and visual studies, College of Arts and Sciences, who previously served five years as HI’s executive director, is the institute’s new director. Her three-year term, however, will begin in fall 2023 following completion of a fellowship from Germany’s Gerda Henkel Foundation, which supports research and scholarship in the humanities.

A new study is providing an enhanced look at the intertwined evolutionary histories of polar bears and brown bears. Becoming separate species did not completely stop these animals from mating with each other. Scientists have known this for some time, but the new research draws on an expanded data set — including DNA from an ancient polar bear tooth — to tease out more detail.

Since 1946, Hillel of Buffalo has been a center for Jewish life at UB, serving as a nurturing community for generations of Jewish students. To commemorate its 75th anniversary, Hillel hosted a gala in the Center for the Arts in the closing weeks of the spring semester.

Juneteenth celebrates the freedom of enslaved people in the United States at the end of the Civil War. In 1863, during the Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln issues the Emancipation Proclamation, which declared more than three million slaves living in the Confederate States to be free. In 1865, after two years, the news of the freedom of enslaved people reach Texas. It was not until June 19, 1865, did the state hear of the news that slavery had been abolished.