In the News

Asian woman looking out car window
“There’s been a lot of coverage about elderly Asians being attacked, but it’s affecting the young generation too. My students are people who care deeply about their families, they’re very protective of their parents and grandparents, so I’ve heard a lot of students’ stories. [They say] ‘I’m afraid to let my grandmother go out of the house,’ and that’s pretty heartbreaking.”
—Lecturer of English Language & Literature Maureen Fitzgerald 
KPIX-TV, March 8, 2021
“The culture of denialism and rugged individualism in the United States is really, really entrenched and that makes people optimistic in ways that sometimes are not very realistic.”
—Assistant Professor of Anthropology Martha Lincoln on the nation’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic
The San Francisco Chronicle, March 14, 2021
“The greatest tragedy really is that most parents who are engaging in these rejecting behaviors think that they are helping their children. They are trying to help them fit in, have a good life, be accepted by others. They’re trying to keep their family together in the present and in the afterlife. They believe that this is a way of caring for their child.”
—Caitlin Ryan, director of SF State’s Family Acceptance Project, on parents who reject their LGBTQ children
“Think,” KERA-FM, Dec. 7, 2020
illustration for intellectual curiosity
“Younger people are already very intellectually curious and are often seeking resources for making sense of the world around them, and we believe philosophy can help in that regard. Perhaps because we are educators, we see it as our mission to reach out to younger people. It’s just that we want to do it in a new, more personal, less formal way.”
—Assistant Professor of Humanities and Liberal Studies David Peña-Guzmán, co-host of the new, philosophy-themed podcast “Overthink”
SF State News (news.sfsu.edu), Feb. 8, 2021