Author: TheConversation

By Ernesto Castañeda, Associate Professor of Sociology, American University A key component of the Trump administration’s anti-immigration policies is currently set to expire on December 21, 2022. Officially called Title 42 of the U.S. Code, the little-known law was established initially in 1944 to prevent the spread of influenza and allow authorities to bar entry to foreigners deemed to be at risk of spreading the disease. In March 2020, on the recommendation of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, then-President Donald Trump invoked the law to minimize the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. But Trump and his advisers...

By Alec Stubbs, Postdoctoral Fellow of Philosophy, UMass Boston First it was the “Great Resignation.” Then it was “nobody wants to work anymore.” Now it is “quiet quitting.” Yet it seems like no one wants to talk about what I see as the root cause of America’s economic malaise – work under contemporary capitalism is fundamentally flawed. As a political philosopher studying the effects of contemporary capitalism on the future of work, I believe that the inability to dictate and meaningfully control one’s own working life is the problem. Democratizing work is the solution. The problem of work What...

By Manfred Laubichler, Global Futures Professor and President’s Professor of Theoretical Biology and History of Biology, Arizona State University At first glance, the connections between the world’s growing population and climate change seem obvious. The more people we have on this planet, the larger their collective impact on the climate. However, a closer look with a longer time horizon reveals relationships between population size and climate change that can help us better understand both humanity’s predicament as the global population hits 8 billion people – a milestone the United Nations marked on November 15, 2022. Looking back to the...

By Robin Bartram, Assistant Professor of Sociology, Tulane University Yolanda owns a home in the predominantly Black 7th Ward neighborhood in New Orleans at the age of 61. To fix her leaking roof in 2020, she had to borrow money. “It’s one of them credit card loans,” she said. “Like interest of 30% and all that, you know. I was kind of backed up against the wall, so I just went on and made the loan, a high-interest loan.” As a sociologist who has spent the past 10 years studying housing conditions in the U.S., I led a research...

By Clara G. Zundel, Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Psychiatry and Behavioral Neurosciences, Wayne State University People who breathe polluted air experience changes within the brain regions that control emotions, and as a result, they may be more likely to develop anxiety and depression than those who breathe cleaner air. These are the key findings of a systematic review that my colleagues and I recently published in the journal NeuroToxicology. Our interdisciplinary team reviewed more than 100 research articles from both animal and human studies that focused on the effects of outdoor air pollution on mental health and regions of...