News
Secularization in America: The idea that scientific knowledge would replace supernatural explanations
By Phil Zuckerman, Professor of Sociology and Secular Studies, Pitzer College About six months ago, Americans’ belief in God hit an all-time low. According to a 2022 Gallup survey, the percentage of people who believe in God has dropped from 98% in the 1950s to 81%...
Elderly LGBTQ and disabled people hit hardest by caregiver crisis in Wisconsin
Have you heard about the national personal care shortage? If you work in the aging and disability fields or have a friend or loved one who relies on these services daily, I’m sure you have. But most people don’t know about the current crisis. According to the U.S....
World Health Organization’s chief says COVID still an emergency but nearing inflection point
The coronavirus remains a global health emergency, the World Health Organization chief said recently, after a key advisory panel found the pandemic may be nearing an “inflection point” where higher levels of immunity can lower virus-related deaths....
Excessive Deaths: Research shows COVID-19 fatalities continue to be undercounted in the United States
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;...
The new Acorn Way: Street that honored KKK leader finally renamed after students press for change
A street that honored a leader of the Ku Klux Klan in New York has a new name after a yearslong campaign led by high school students. The village board of Malverne, on Long Island, voted last year to rename Lindner Place, named after Paul Lindner, a banker who helped...
Victory and more bigotry: American politics still influenced by the backlash to Civil Rights legislation
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...
Threat Rhetoric: Understanding the language used to stoke violence by those who want to divide society
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...
Why accepting DeSantis’s version of history would be a perversion of our past and our principles
It is commonly understood that Republican Rutherford B. Hayes won the electoral votes from three contested southern states in 1876 and thus took the presidency by promising to remove from the South the U.S. troops that had been protecting Black Americans there. Then,...
Frances Willard: How the legacy of the temperance movement’s founder still influences feminism today
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...
The threat of domestic terrorism: Why the “lone wolf” extremist myth is dangerous to society
By Alexander Hinton, Distinguished Professor of Anthropology; Director, Center for the Study of Genocide and Human Rights, Rutgers University – Newark On February 15, 2023, a judge informed Payton Gendron, a white 19-year-old who killed 10 Black people at a...
Airport security across United States intercepted an alarming number of passenger guns in 2022
The woman flying out of Philadelphia’s airport last year remembered to pack snacks, prescription medicine and a cellphone in her handbag. But what was more important was what she forgot to unpack: a loaded .380-caliber handgun in a black holster. The weapon was...
Violent domestic abusers allowed to keep their guns under interpretation of recent Supreme Court ruling
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...
