Author: TheConversation

By Christine Leibbrand, Acting Assistant Professor of Sociology, University of Washington Where someone grows up is profoundly important for their life chances. It influences things like the schools they attend, the jobs, parks and community resources they have access to and the peers they interact with. Because of this comprehensive influence, one might conclude that where you grow up affects your ability to move up the residential ladder and into a better neighborhood than the one you grew up in. In a new study, my co-authors and I show that for many children, where they grow up is profoundly...

By Gordon Adams, Professor Emeritus, American University School of International Service The Washington Post has, after more than two years of investigation, revealed that senior foreign policy officials in the White House, State and Defense departments have known for some time that the U.S. intervention in Afghanistan was failing. Interview transcripts from the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, obtained by the Post after many lawsuits, show that for 18 years these same officials have told the public the intervention was succeeding. In other words, government officials have been lying. Few people are shocked. That’s a stark contrast to...

By Alan Avery-Peck, Kraft-Hiatt Professor in Judaic Studies, College of the Holy Cross Every December Jews celebrate the eight-day festival of Hanukkah, perhaps the best-known and certainly the most visible Jewish holiday. While critics sometimes identify Christmas as promoting the prevalence in America today of what one might refer to as Hanukkah kitsch, this assessment misses the social and theological significance of Hanukkah within Judaism itself. Early history Though it is 2,200 years old, Hanukkah is one of Judaism’s newest holidays, an annual Jewish celebration that does not even appear in the Hebrew Bible. The historical event that is...

By F. Chris Curran, Associate Professor of Educational Leadership and Policy, University of Florida The presence of law enforcement in schools – better known as school resource officers – has become increasingly common. These officers, who have full law enforcement powers, are supposed to keep students safe. Earlier this year, however, a former Michigan school resource officer was convicted and sentenced to one year in jail for doing just the opposite. Instead of protecting students from threats, the officer had been sexually preying on female students, using his power as a school police officer to engage in inappropriate and...

By Jason Loviglio, Chair and Associate Professor of Media and Communication Studies, University of Maryland, Baltimore County From its start half a century ago, National Public Radio heralded a new approach to the sound of radio in the United States. NPR “would speak with many voices and many dialects,” according to “Purposes,” its founding document. Written in 1970, this blueprint rang with emotional immediacy. NPR would go on the air for the first time a year later, on April 20, 1971. NPR is sometimes mocked, perhaps most memorably in a 1998 “Saturday Night Live” sketch starring actor Alec Baldwin,...

By Antino Kim, Assistant Professor of Operations and Decision Technologies, Indiana University, Alan R. Dennis, Professor of Internet Systems, Indiana University; Patricia L. Moravec, Assistant Professor of Information, Risk and Operations Management, University of Texas at Austin; and Randall K. Minas, Associate Professor of Information Technology Management, University of Hawaii Online misinformation has significant real-life consequences, such as measles outbreaks and encouraging racist mass murderers. Online misinformation can have political consequences as well. The problem of disinformation and propaganda misleading social media users was serious in 2016, continued unabated in 2018 and is expected to be even more severe...