TheConversation, Author at Milwaukee Independent

Decades of promised police reforms have failed to alter a culture of abuse and racism

Posted by TheConversation | Jul 15, 2020 |

By Stephen M. Underhill, Associate Professor of Communication, Marshall University Police brutality has a long history of being protected, reinforced and even redoubled for more than a century in the U.S. through a combination of political expediency and racism. President Donald Trump’s executive order and the stalled bills in Congress to curb police misconduct are, at best, attempts to retune an instrument that was orchestrated for abuse. As a former archivist in charge of the National Archives records for the Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation and Bureau of Prisons, it is clear to me that the history...

Close to a million international students could be expelled under Trump’s new college attendance policy

Posted by TheConversation | Jul 14, 2020 |

By David L. Di Maria, Associate Vice Provost for International Education, University of Maryland, Baltimore County U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, made a decision on July 6 regarding international students in the U.S. that will affect far more than just the roughly 970,000 international students themselves. Based on what I know about the power and influence of higher education in the U.S., this decision could increase the tuition American students pay, cost thousands of jobs throughout the nation and erode America’s stature in the world. Under this new rule, international students may stay in the country only...

At the doorstep of Muslim America: Finding unity of purpose within a diverse faith community

Posted by TheConversation | Jul 13, 2020 |

By Amir Hussain, Professor of Theological Studies, Loyola Marymount University The death of George Floyd took place at the doorstep of Muslim America. He was killed in front of Cup Foods, a store owned by an Arab American Muslim, whose teenage employee – also a Muslim – had earlier reported to police that Floyd tried to use a counterfeit $20 bill to buy cigarettes. Muslim American businesses are common in lower-income areas, such as the part of Minneapolis where Floyd died after a police officer knelt on his neck. And as the writer Moustafa Bayoumi has noted, this puts...

Plague and Punishment: When religion sided with science as a lesson for enduring COVID-19

Posted by TheConversation | Jul 12, 2020 |

By Phillip I. Lieberman, Associate Professor, Vanderbilt University Faced with a range of serious patient reactions to the COVID-19 disease, doctors and nurses have sometimes struggled to find viable treatment options. But when we examine faith-based responses to the virus, spiritual guidance has proved even more elusive. Guidelines for faith leaders from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention encourage groups to clean surfaces and limit meetings or gatherings. But they do not address the emotional effects that COVID-19 victims, and those of us who live in fear of contracting it, might experience. Religious figures such as Pope Francis...

Motivated Reasoning and COVID-19: What science says about science denial

Posted by TheConversation | Jul 12, 2020 |

By Adrian Bardon, Professor of Philosophy, Wake Forest University Americans increasingly exist in highly polarized, informationally insulated ideological communities occupying their own information universes. Within segments of the political blogosphere, global warming is dismissed as either a hoax or so uncertain as to be unworthy of response. Within other geographic or online communities, the science of vaccine safety, fluoridated drinking water and genetically modified foods is distorted or ignored. There is a marked gap in expressed concern over the coronavirus depending on political party affiliation, apparently based in part on partisan disagreements over factual issues like the effectiveness of...

White Silence: Why most parents fail to talk about racism with their children

Posted by TheConversation | Jul 11, 2020 |

By David Chae, Human Sciences Associate Professor & Director, Society, Health, and Racial Equity Lab, Auburn University; Leoandra Onnie Rogers, Assistant Professor of Psychology, Northwestern University; and Tiffany Yip, Professor of Psychology, Fordham University Though race and racism are at the top of Americans’ public discussion, most white parents don’t talk about those issues with their kids. Research on how white parents discuss race with their children is sparse. However, past research has shown that conversations about race, much less racism, are rare, even when these issues are highly visible – for example, during the Ferguson protests in 2014....