Author: TheConversation

By Adrian Bardon, Professor of Philosophy, Wake Forest University Something is rotten in the state of American political life. The U.S. (among other nations) is increasingly characterized by highly polarized, informationally insulated ideological communities occupying their own factual universes. Within the conservative political blogosphere, global warming is either a hoax or so uncertain as to be unworthy of response. Within other geographic or online communities, vaccines, fluoridated water and genetically modified foods are known to be dangerous. Right-wing media outlets paint a detailed picture of how Donald Trump is the victim of a fabricated conspiracy. None of that is...

By Rogelio Sáenz, Professor of Demography, The University of Texas at San Antonio; and Dudley L. Poston, Jr., Professor of Sociology, Texas A&M University Demographers project that whites will become a minority in the U.S. in around 2045, dropping below 50% of the population. That is a quarter-century from now – still a long way away, right? Not if you focus on children. White children right now are on the eve of becoming a numerical minority. The U.S. Census Bureau projects that, by the middle of 2020, nonwhites will account for the majority of the nation’s 74 million children....

By Emily Schwartz Greco, Philanthropy + Nonprofits Editor, The Conversation The more than US$400 billion Americans donate annually to charitable causes of all kinds, such as houses of worship, universities and efforts to cure cancer, add up to around 2% of the economy. The Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy, the only school of its kind, brings together scholars of sociology, history, economics, religious studies and other disciplines to explore what drives all this giving. In an interview, which has been edited for length and clarity, Lilly School Dean Amir Pasic, explains why he believes public debate over...

By Andrew Joseph Pegoda, Lecturer in Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies; Religious Studies; and First Year Writing, University of Houston At least 40% to 90% of American voters stay home during elections, evidence that low voter turnout for both national and local elections is a serious problem throughout the United States. With the 2020 presidential election approaching, directives for people to “get out and vote” will be firing up again. Some people might be indifferent or simply not care, but many who forgo voting have legitimate reasons. Over the past decade, through my extensive research on civil rights and...

By Helen Norton, Rothgerber Chair in Constitutional Law, University of Colorado Boulder When regular people lie, sometimes their lies are detected, sometimes they are not. Legally speaking, sometimes they are protected by the First Amendment – and sometimes not, like when they commit fraud or perjury. But what about when government officials lie? I take up this question in my recent book, “The Government’s Speech and the Constitution.” It’s not that surprising that public servants lie – they are human, after all. But when an agency or official backed by the power and resources of the government tells a...

By Ken Hughes, Research Specialist, the Miller Center, University of Virginia Once, not so long ago, congressional Republicans were impeachment’s constitutional stalwarts. They stood up for the House of Representatives’ “sole power of impeachment,” a power granted in the Constitution, including the right to subpoena witnesses and evidence. Even when the president under investigation was a Republican. Even when the Republican political base threatened to turn against them. But that was when the president was Richard Nixon, not Donald Trump. Impeachment: 1974 vs. today I wrote a book on the origins of Watergate, Chasing Shadows: The Nixon Tapes, the...