Experts in the News

Fellow Kirstin Matthews joined Houston Public Media’s Town Square this week to talk about the state of COVID-19 in Houston, false positives on the Rice campus and more.

In the months before his murder, Khashoggi had "a sense of regret about the direction things were going in, and ... disillusionment, because at the end of the day, he saw himself as a Saudi patriot," said Middle East fellow Kristian Coates Ulrichsen. 

What does Venezuela's government do when sanctions leave no cash for supplies? Barter crude for food and other essentials — with allegedly criminal results. Sanctions are “making Venezuela's oil trade increasingly opaque,” said fellow Francisco Monaldi.

The Biden administration recently said it will hold back federal funds to compel states like Texas and Florida to enact or enforce mask mandates. In Texas, "most of the [education] funding is from state taxpayer dollars," but the federal government might hold more leverage in health care, said fellow Vivian Ho.

Health economics fellow Vivian Ho joined a team of top experts to tackle pressing policy issues that arose during the pandemic. They worked to improve the nation’s social insurance infrastructure — including unemployment insurance, workers’ compensation, social security and Medicare — particularly for those hardest hit by COVID-19.