Christmas as Religion: When movies create an idealized world and watching them becomes a holiday ritual
By S. Brent Rodriguez-Plate, Associate Professor of Religious Studies and Cinema and Media Studies, by special appointment, Hamilton College If you are one of those people who will settle in this evening with a hot cup of apple cider to watch a holiday movie, you are...
The original energy bar: A magnificent history of the much maligned holiday fruitcake
By Jeffrey Miller, Associate Professor of Hospitality Management, Colorado State University Nothing says Christmas quite like a fruitcake – or, at the very least, a fruitcake joke. A quip attributed to former “Tonight Show” host Johnny Carson has it that “There is...
The Rittenhouse Rule: Why White Supremacists are overjoyed to welcome their new Conservative hero
In the East Africa Protectorate, the white-ruled settler-colony that would become Kenya, a white settler was tried for causing “simple hurt” in September 1918, after killing an African “native” said to have tried to loot a flour mill. The settler sent for the “thief”...
Since Sandy Hook: How a new breed of conspiracy theories has became more mainstream and cruel
By Amanda J. Crawford, Assistant Professor of Journalism, University of Connecticut Conspiracy theories are powerful forces in the United States. They have damaged public health amid a global pandemic, shaken faith in the democratic process, and helped spark a violent...
MATC offers free tuition and debt forgiveness to make college more available to diverse student population
MATC offers 200 programs that can help prepare students for careers in one or two years and provides a more affordable avenue for students who transfer to other schools to pursue four-year degrees. Jasmin Treske had planned to go to college after graduating from South...
Technology is never neutral: Why Black people will struggle to find a place in the Metaverse
By Breigha Adeyemo, Doctoral Candidate in Communication, University of Illinois at Chicago Marginalized people often suffer the most harm from unintended consequences of new technologies. For example, the algorithms that automatically make decisions about who gets to...
Feeling Undervalued: 50 percent of Wisconsin’s working women are considering leaving their jobs
Half of Wisconsin’s working women are considering quitting their current jobs, according to new research released on December 9 by Milwaukee-based Kane Communications Group. The number of dissatisfied working women in Wisconsin is at 60 percent for those working in...
Remote vs. In-Office: How the pandemic is accelerating the transition to a hybrid workplace
By Alanah Mitchell, Associate Professor and Chair of Information Management and Business Analytics, Drake University COVID-19 has changed the way we work. Even before the pandemic, the U.S. workforce increasingly relied on remote collaboration technologies like...
America’s anger problem: Lessons from a decade of political rage when delusion stood in place of reality
By Maurizio Valsania, Professor of American History, Università di Torino People rage at each other. They are angry at public officials for shutting down parts of society. Or for the opposite reason because they aren’t doing enough to curb the virus. Democrats vent...
A National Divorce: Why the American military could not withstand an insurgency by White Supremacists
...
Generating unusual harm: What recent high-profile criminal trials say about America’s flawed gun laws
By John Donohue, C. Wendell and Edith M. Carlsmith Professor of Law, Stanford University As the country awaits a U.S. Supreme Court decision in a New York state case that may create a federal constitutional right to carry guns outside the home, there are several...
Sleepwalking into another insurrection: America’s Anti-Democratic movement is quietly taking hold
Even as the mob ran screaming and smashing through the capitol on 6 January, it was clear this was a coup attempt. It was equally clear that it had been instigated by the then president and his circle, much of whose audience in the “stop the steal” rally would become...
