Professor Elizabeth Saunders was recently quoted in an article about President Trump’s decision to halt retaliatory strikes against Iran. Trump responded to pundits’ struggle to define him as either a “hawk” or “dove.”  Saunders said, “I don’t think he’s looking for a major intervention and a major war. He has in the past been receptive to pinpoint strikes that demonstrate strikes that show strength. Such an option may be completely illusory, but if it could be sold to him that way, that’s what he could grab on to.”

Though NASA’s Curiosity rover has recently detected a potential biological source, some researchers believe it is too early to claim whether there is life on Mars. Professor Sarah Johnson stated that answers to this question may be presented in a statistical form, rather than as a definitive yes or no. “We’re trying to move away from this binary ‘This Is Life / This Is Not Life’ … but really change the approach into something like ‘this is 3-sigma away from what we would expect from abiotic processes,’” Johnson said.

Following his decision not to launch a military airstrike against Iran, President Trump has presented shifting accounts that demonstrate uncertainty within his own administration. In an article by the Los Angeles Times, Saunders said, “The thing in his tweets that’s really alarming is when he says ‘10 minutes before’ the strike he asked how many people would die. An experienced leader would be asking that hours before that.”