Author: TheConversation

By Jack Schneider, Assistant Professor of Education, University of Massachusetts Lowell Five decades after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., many carry on his legacy through the struggle for racially integrated schools. Yet as King put it in a 1968 speech, the deeper struggle was “for genuine equality, which means economic equality.” Justice in education would demand not just racially integrated schools, but also economically integrated schools. The fight for racial integration meant overturning state laws and a century of history – it was an uphill battle from the start. But economic integration should have been easier. In...

By Deana Rohlinger, Professor of Sociology, Florida State University Over nine decades, efforts to amend the U.S. Constitution to recognize women’s rights have faced major challenges. Congress finally passed such legislation, known as the Equal Rights Amendment, in 1972. The amendment would recognize women’s equal rights to men under the law. Despite concerted campaigns by women’s rights groups, it fell short of the 38 states that needed to ratify it in order for it to become part of the Constitution. The original deadline for states to ratify was 1979. Congress extended the deadline to 1982, but even then it...

By Felipe A. Filomeno, Assistant Professor of Political Science and Global Studies, University of Maryland, Baltimore The extreme violence, environmental disasters and grinding poverty that drive people from places like Guatemala, Honduras, and Afghanistan are largely the result of global phenomena like colonialism, climate change, and trade. President Donald Trump tends to portray migrants as a foreign problem that has suddenly – and unfairly – been “dumped” at America’s doorstep. Migration “is a way they get certain people out of their country and dump in U.S.,” he wrote on November 25 about a caravan of mostly Honduran women, children...

By Christopher Beem, Managing Director of the McCourtney Institute of Democracy, Co-host of Democracy Works Podcast, Pennsylvania State University “When the rich rob the poor, it’s called business. When the poor fight back it’s called violence.” – Mark Twain In Wisconsin, Democratic candidates won the 2018 elections for governor and attorney general. But the Republican-controlled legislature quickly introduced and passed lame-duck legislation that takes power away from these incoming officeholders and hands it to the state legislature, which will remain in GOP control. Outgoing Republican Governor Scott Walker signed these bills into law on December 14. The Wisconsin GOP’s...

By Lisa Bitel, Professor of History & Religion, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences Santa has several aliases, depending on the part of the world you live in. The English call him Father Christmas, the French know him as Père Noël, and Kris Kringle seems be a version of the Christkind, or Christ Child, who leaves treats for good German Lutherans. In the Netherlands, he arrives in town on a steamboat or horse from Spain. On the night of Dec. 5, Dutch children put their shoes on the hearth – these days near the central heating duct...