Author: TheConversation

By Simran Purewal, Research Associate, Health Sciences, Simon Fraser University; Kaylee Byers, Regional Deputy Director, BC Node of the Canadian Wildlife Health Cooperative; Senior Scientist, Pacific Institute on Pathogens, Pandemics and Society, Simon Fraser University; Kayli Jamieson, Master’s Student in Communication, Research Assistant for Pacific Institute on Pathogens, Pandemics and Society, Simon Fraser University; and Neda Zolfaghari, Project Coordinator, Pacific Institute on Pathogens, Pandemics and Society, and the Pandemics & Borders Project, Simon Fraser University It is increasingly clear that the SARS-CoV-2 virus itself is not going away any time soon. And for some patients, their symptoms have not gone away...

By Maha Nassar, Associate Professor in the School of Middle Eastern and North African Studies, University of Arizona On May 15, 2023, the United Nations will stage a high-level special meeting to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the Nakba, the mass displacement of around 750,000 Palestinians from their homeland in 1948. It is the first time that the international body has commemorated the date, which organizers said serves “as a reminder of the historic injustice suffered by the Palestinian people.” Not everyone is behind the U.N.‘s marking of the day, however. The United States and the United Kingdom were...

By Arie Kruglanski, Professor of Psychology, University of Maryland An acutely troubling aspect of life in contemporary America is the growing proliferation of mass shootings that claim thousands of innocent lives year after painful year and make everyone feel unsafe. The year 2023 is still young, and already there have been at least 146 mass shooting events in the U.S. on record, including the killing of five people in a Louisville, Kentucky, bank that the shooter livestreamed. There were 647 mass shootings in 2022 and 693 in 2021, resulting in 859 and 920 deaths, respectively, with no respite in...

By John C. Watson, Associate Professor of Journalism, American University Headlines in early March 2023 implied Fox News mogul Rupert Murdoch had made a damning confession. He had affirmed that some of his most important journalists were reporting that the 2020 presidential election was a fraud, even though they knew they were propagating a lie. It was an admission during pretrial testimony in a libel lawsuit filed against Fox by a voting machine company that says it was defamed by the lie. For journalism practitioners and devotees, the admission should signal the end of the Fox News empire. Nope....