Peter Benson

At recent Board of Trustees meetings, the following faculty members were appointed with tenure, promoted with tenure or granted tenure effective July 1, 2012, unless otherwise noted.

WUSTL anthropologist Peter Benson’s new book, Tobacco Capitalism, examines the impact of the transformation of the U.S. tobacco industry on farmers, workers and the American public. The book reveals public health threats, the impact of off-shoring, and the immigration issues related to tobacco production, specifically in the rural, traditional tobacco-growing areas of North Carolina. “There are whole groups of people — farmers and farm workers — in our society who dedicate themselves to growing a crop that is vilified,” Benson says.

A quick glance through history books and today’s news headlines seems to support the idea that humans by nature are aggressive, selfish and antagonistic. But this view simply doesn’t fit with scientific facts, write researchers featured in the new book Origins of Altruism and Cooperation, edited by WUSTL professors Robert W. Sussman, PhD, and C. Robert Cloninger, MD. The book’s authors argue that humans are naturally cooperative, altruistic and social, only reverting to violence when stressed, abused, neglected or mentally ill.

In an attempt to reinvent itself as a “responsible corporate citizen,” tobacco company Philip Morris has begun an unlikely support of regulation of tobacco products by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. However, a new study by Peter Benson, Ph.D., assistant professor of anthropology in Arts & Sciences, shows that proposed FDA regulation fails to address the suffering of migrant tobacco workers, the prevalence of smoking and the redistribution of leaf production to the developing world.