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A sitting Boston mayor was last unseated in 1949. How unusual is a seven-decade stretch of incumbency dominance? A Boston Globe review of 18 of the nation’s most populous municipalities found a mixed bag when it comes to the reelection success of sitting mayors. Margaret O’Mara, professor of history at the UW, is quoted.

U.S. News & World Report, the global authority in education rankings, today released the 2021 edition of the Best Global Universities rankings. With data on nearly 1,500 schools, the rankings evaluate universities from dozens of countries on academic research and reputation. The UW is ranked No. 8.

“You face failure every day as a writer,” says writer and professor Shawn Wong. In this wide-ranging conversation, Wong cracks open the door to the creative process and lets us peek in to understand the importance of representation in literature and why he teaches his students to tell the truth, not the facts.

A psychology course on human sexuality is the largest UW class — ever. Revising the content has been a journey.

Concerned about the lack of health coverage for undocumented individuals, UW senior Marium Raza is taking action.

Think voting is simple? A new course co-taught by statistics and philosophy faculty explores the many complexities of the voting process. 

“Many scholars have studied various aspects of mail-in voting, looking at how secure it is, how susceptible to fraud it might be, and what voting officials need to do to handle an influx of ballots arriving by mail,” writes Jeff Inglis, The Conversation’s politics + society editor. Jake Grumbach, assistant professor of political science at the UW, and Charlotte Hill, of the University of California Berkeley, are referenced.

The p-adics form an infinite collection of number systems based on prime numbers. They’re at the heart of modern number theory. Bianca Viray, associate professor of mathematics at the UW, is quoted.

Daniel Bessner, who holds the Joff Hanauer Honors Professorship in Western Civilization, is the featured commentator in a CNN story about whether the U.S. should impose age limits on elected leaders.

The national Alcohol and Drugs History Society has established an annual book prize in the name of longtime University of Washington history professor William Rorabaugh, who died this spring, calling him “a pioneer in the social history of alcohol.”