91st Commencement Address: Not for Profit: Liberal Education and Democratic Citizenship

Martha Nussbaum speaks to the graduates about the role of liberal education in producing democratic citizens, the sort of citizen who can keep democracy alive and realize its promise and asks what does a liberal education that contains a substantial component from the humanities and the arts contribute to the health of democracy

Statement of Karen Nussbaum Before the Commission on the Future of Worker-Management Relations

Testimony_Nussbaum_121593.pdf: 122 downloads, before Oct. 1, 2020

Phylogenetic relationships of African Caecilians (Amphibia: Gymnophiona): insights from mitochondrial rRNA gene sequences

Africa (excluding the Seychelles) has a diverse caecilian fauna, including the endemic family Scolecomorphidae and six endemic genera of the more cosmopolitan Caeciliidae. Previous molecular phylogenetic studies have not included any caecilians from the African mainland. Partial 12S and 16S mitochondrial gene sequences were obtained for two species of the endemic African Scolecomorphidae and five species and four genera of African Caeciliids, aligned against previously reported sequences for 16 caecilian species, and analysed using parsimony, maximum likelihood, Bayesian and distance methods. Results are in agreement with traditional taxonomy in providing support for the monophyly of the African Caeciliid genera Boulengerula and Schistometopum and for the Scolecomorphidae. They disagree in indicating that the Caeciliidae is paraphyletic with respect to the Scolecomorphidae. Although more data from morphology and/or molecules will be required to resolve details of the interrelationships of the African caecilian genera, the data provide strong support for at least two origins of caecilians in which the eye is reduced and covered with bone, and do not support the hypotheses that the caecilian assemblages of Africa, and of East and of West Africa are monophyletic