Author: TheConversation

By Murat Haner, Assistant Professor, School of Criminology & Criminal Justice, Arizona State University; Justin Pickett, Professor, School of Criminal Justice, University at Albany, State University of New York; and Melissa Sloan, Professor, Department of Sociology & Interdisciplinary Social Sciences, University of South Florida Political violence among rival partisans has been a deadly and destabilizing force throughout history and across the globe. It has claimed countless lives, deepened social divisions and even led to the collapse of democratic systems. In recent history, political violence and its deadly consequences were seen in Italy after World War I, when thousands of...

By Art Jipson, Associate Professor of Sociology, University of Dayton Vance Boelter, who allegedly shot Melissa Hortman, a Democratic Minnesota state representative, and her husband, Mark Hortman, on June 14, 2025, studied at Christ for the Nations Institute in Dallas. The group is a Bible school linked to the New Apostolic Reformation, or NAR. The NAR is a loosely organized but influential charismatic Christian movement that shares similarities with Pentecostalism, especially in its belief that God actively communicates with believers through the Holy Spirit. Unlike traditional Pentecostalism, however, the organization emphasizes modern-day apostles and prophets as authoritative leaders tasked...

By Helen Kingstone, Senior Lecturer in English Literature, Royal Holloway University of London Sally Rooney, author of Normal People and now Intermezzo, keeps being called “the voice of a generation.” And she is just the latest in a sequence of authors to get this accolade. In 1991, Douglas Coupland’s novel Generation X supposedly made him the “voice of” that generation. Looking further back, J.D. Salinger’s first and only novel, Catcher in the Rye (1951), seemed to capture the voice of a generation at the time, and has resonated with successive generations of awkward and disaffected teenagers ever since. What...

By David Sella-Villa, Assistant Professor of Law, University of South Carolina Some unusual witnesses helped convict Alex Murdaugh of the murders of his wife, Maggie, and son, Paul. The first was Bubba, Maggie’s yellow Labrador retriever. Prosecutors used a recording of Bubba to place Alex at the site of the murders. Given Alex’s presence at the crime scene, other witnesses then revealed his movements, tracked his speed, and explained what he had in his hands. Those other witnesses were a 2021 Chevy Suburban and Maggie, Paul and Alex’s cellphones, which all provided data. They’re all part of the Internet...

By Jack Dongarra, Emeritus Professor of Computer Science, University of Tennessee High-performance computing, or HPC for short, might sound like something only scientists use in secret labs, but it is actually one of the most important technologies in the world today. From predicting the weather to finding new medicines and even training artificial intelligence, high-performance computing systems help solve problems that are too hard or too big for regular computers. This technology has helped make huge discoveries in science and engineering over the past 40 years. But now, high-performance computing is at a turning point, and the choices the...