The Science, Technology, and Society 20th Anniversary Conference, held from Nov. 3 to Nov. 5, was supposed to start promptly at 5 p.m. in Paine Hall, so I rushed there — but I shouldn’t have worried.

With so much attention focused on U.S.-China trade tensions and the threat by the State Department to “aggressively revoke” the visas of students from China, the publication in April of the updated ...