Author: TheConversation

By Frank V. Zerunyan, Professor of the Practice of Governance, University of Southern California The vast majority of anti-racism protests over the past two months in Portland, Oregon have reportedly been peaceful, and any damage was due to a small minority of rioters who fought police and federal agents around federal property. I recently visited the city and saw the destruction around the federal courthouse – walls defaced with graffiti, fences vandalized, and the remains of garbage fires that had been set. President Donald Trump sent in federal agents, falsely claiming that Portland was no longer able to maintain...

By Melissa Hawkins, Professor of Public Health, Director of Public Health Scholars Program, American University Researchers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and other institutions recently published a study which estimated that the true number of people infected by COVID-19 could be six to 24 times higher than the number of confirmed cases. Melissa Hawkins, professor of public health at American University, explains what this large undercount means and why insufficient data is hampering the U.S.‘s ability to control the pandemic. What are some reasons for the large disparity between the true number of infected cases and...

By Katy Ramsey Mason, Assistant Professor of Law & Director, Medical-Legal Partnership Clinic, University of Memphis The United States is on the verge of a potentially devastating eviction crisis right in the middle of a deadly pandemic. Federal, state and local eviction moratoriums had put most of the pending cases on hold. But as the moratoriums expire and eviction hearings resume, millions of people are at risk of losing their homes. That is because the court process is heavily skewed towards the needs of landlords and offers few protections for tenants – a problem that has been going on...