Author: TheConversation

By Jerald Podair, Professor of History, Lawrence University As I began writing “Bayard Rustin: American Dreamer,” my biography of the 20th-century radical leader and activist, one of my colleagues cautioned me not to “fall in love.” This, of course, is good advice for any biographer, and I tried to follow it. But it was not easy, because Bayard Rustin was America’s signature radical voice during the 20th century, and yes, I believe those voices includes that of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., whom Rustin trained and mentored. His vision of nonviolence was breathtakingly broad. He was a civil...

By Stephen P. Leatherman, Professor of Coastal Science, Florida International University An unwelcome visitor is headed for Florida and the Caribbean: huge floating mats of sargassum, or free-floating brown seaweed. Nearly every year since 2011, sargassum has inundated Caribbean, Gulf of Mexico and Florida coastlines in warm months, peaking in June and July. This brown tide rots on the beach, driving away tourists, harming local fishing industries and requiring costly cleanups. According to scientists who monitor the formation of sargassum in the Atlantic Ocean, 2023 could produce the largest bloom ever recorded. That’s bad news for destinations like Miami...

By Eduardo Gamarra, Professor of Politics and International Relations, Florida International University; and Valeriia Popova, Professor of Politics and International Relations, Florida International University Corruption has long been a scourge in parts of Latin America. Traditionally, it has funneled down domestic routes, with local politicians, business interests and drug lords benefiting from graft and dodgy dealings. Indeed, a 2022 report from Transparency International found that 27 out of 30 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean have shown stagnant corruption levels with no improvement in recent years. But over the last two decades, a new form of corruption has...

By Roger J. Kreuz, Associate Dean and Professor of Psychology, University of Memphis A linguistic arms race is raging online, and it is not clear who is winning. On one side are social networks like Facebook, Instagram and TikTok. These sites have become better and better at identifying and removing language and content that violates their community standards. Social media users are on the other side, and they’ve come up with coded terminology designed to evade algorithmic detection. These expressions are collectively referred to as “algospeak.” New terms like these are just the latest development in the history of...