Author: TheConversation

By Andrew Stokes, Assistant Professor of Global Health, Boston University; Dielle Lundberg, Research Assistant in the Department of Global Health, Boston University; Elizabeth Wrigley-Field, Assistant Professor of Sociology, University of Minnesota; and Yea-Hung Chen, Research Data Specialist in Epidemiology and Biostatistics, University of California, San Francisco Since the COVID-19 pandemic was declared in March 2020, a recurring topic of debate has been whether official COVID-19 death statistics in the U.S. accurately capture the fatalities associated with SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. Some politicians and a few public health practitioners have argued that COVID-19 deaths are overcounted. For instance, a January 2023...

By Julian Maxwell Hayter, Associate Professor of Leadership Studies, University of Richmond For nearly 60 years, conservatives have been trying to gut the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the crowning achievement of the civil rights movement. As a scholar of American voting rights, I believe their long game is finally bearing fruit. The 2013 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Shelby County v. Holder seemed to be the death knell for the Voting Rights Act. In that case, the court struck down a portion of the Voting Rights Act that supervised elections in areas with a history of disenfranchisement. The...

By H. Colleen Sinclair, Associate Research Professor of Social Psychology, Louisiana State University Events like the riots in Brazil, the January 6, 2021, insurrection two years before it and the mass shooting at the Colorado LGBTQ nightclub each occurred after certain groups repeatedly directed dangerous rhetoric against others. It is the reason elected officials in the U.S. have begun examining the role language plays in provoking violence. As a social psychologist who studies dangerous speech and disinformation, I think it’s important for citizens, legislators and law enforcement alike to understand that language can provoke violence between groups. In fact,...

By Christopher H. Evans, Professor of the History of Christianity, Boston University As younger adults opt for “wellness” products, many are practicing alcohol abstinence. Sometimes referred to as “sober curious,” this trend of often forgoing alcohol has forged public conversations on the health benefits of abstinence. Few, however, reflect on its connections to the temperance movement, one of the major social movements of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Its leaders not only believed that alcohol abstinence would lead to better health, but they saw it as a way to create a just society. This movement laid a foundation...

By April M. Zeoli, Associate Professor of Public Health, University of Michigan; and Shannon Frattaroli, Professor of Health Policy and Management, Johns Hopkins University For a large part of the history of the United States, domestic abuse was tolerated under the nation’s legal system. There were few laws criminalizing domestic violence, and enforcement of the existing laws was rare. It was only in the past few decades that laws criminalizing domestic violence came to be widespread and enforced. But now, the U.S. is in danger of backtracking on that legal framework precisely because of the nation’s historical legacy of...