The stigma of treatment: Why refugees dealing with trauma often face obstacles to mental health care
As a young boy living in what was then Zaire, Bertine Bahige remembers watching refugees flee from the Rwandan genocide in 1994 by crossing a river that forms the two Central African nations’ border. Bahige’s harrowing refugee journey began when he was kidnapped and...
The Matthew Effect: How even middle class families face growing inequality after natural disasters
By Anna Rhodes, Assistant Professor of Sociology, Rice University; and Max Besbris, Assistant Professor of Sociology, University of Wisconsin-Madison Friendswood, Texas, is the type of community that one might think of as a “best case scenario” when it comes to...
Overwhelming State Mandates: Milwaukee County will face future budget issues without sales tax increase
On the day he proposed his $1.37 billion budget, Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley once again called for the state to allow the county to raise its sales tax. It was a move Crowley said could decrease property taxes and maintain critical services for Milwaukee...
Economic Shock: Putin’s global Energy War continues to falter after sabotage of Nord Stream pipelines
By Amy Myers Jaffe, Research professor, Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University Russia’s effort to conscript 300,000 reservists to counter Ukraine’s military advances in Kharkiv has drawn a lot of attention from military and political analysts. But...
A need for systemic change: Why Black girls are four times more likely to get suspended than White girls
By Andrea Joseph-McCatty, Assistant Professor of Social Work, University of Tennessee Andrea Joseph-McCatty is an assistant professor at the College of Social Work at the University of Tennessee. Her research examines disproportional school suspensions and, in...
Forced Labor: New report says millions of vulnerable people worldwide remain trapped in modern slavery
Nearly 50 million people were trapped in forced labor or forced marriage on any given day in 2021, according to a new report published on September 12, the latest reminder that “the scourge of modern slavery has by no means been relegated to history.” The...
Deadly Driving: Milwaukee works at overcoming state bureaucratic barriers to make urban highways safer
Tristain Thomas remembers seeing plenty of reckless driving while living along Milwaukee’s West Fond du Lac Avenue during his childhood. A police officer would park just blocks away from Thomas’ home in the Grasslyn Manor neighborhood to catch drivers barreling down...
Where to plug in? Why people of color face more barriers to adopt e-vehicles than White consumers
By Andrea Marpillero-Colomina, Adjunct Lecturer in Urban Studies, The New School A nationally representative survey of 8,027 Americans shows that across all racial demographics, overall interest in purchasing electric vehicles is high. Among those surveyed, 33% of...
A skeptical Corn Belt: Researchers seek methods to unobtrusively install solar stations on farmland
Extensive land across the Midwest could be used for solar power, but instead is tied up in row crops. Researchers have examined how to build solar panels without taking out that cropland. Sprouting out of the corn like a super crop are four arrays of solar panels...
Declining Democracy: How the United States is turning into a “developing country” like Cuba and Bulgaria
By Kathleen Frydl, Sachs Lecturer, Johns Hopkins University The United States may regard itself as a “leader of the free world,” but an index of development released in July 2022 places the country much farther down the list. In its global rankings, the United Nations...
Jail-to-deportation pipeline: ACLU report details the thriving collaborating of Wisconsin sheriffs with ICE
Relationships, both formal and informal, between Wisconsin sheriff’s offices and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) cause immigrants to be deported for even minor offenses such as traffic violations while making immigrant communities more fearful of law...
Perpetuating elitism: Why using “Latine” as an alternative “Latinx” is considered more inclusive
By Melissa K. Ochoa, Assistant Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies, Saint Louis University Most of the debates on the usage of “Latinx,” pronounced “la-teen-ex,” have taken place in the United States. But the word has begun to spread into Spanish-speaking...
