Author: TheConversation

By Andreas Hoffrichter, Executive Director of the Center for Railway Research and Education, Michigan State University “When society is itself the tyrant, society collectively over the separate individuals who compose it – its means of terrorizing are not restricted to the acts which it may do by the hands of its political functionaries. Society can and does execute its own mandate; and if it issues wrong mandates instead of right, or any mandates at all in things with which it ought not to meddle, it practices a social tyranny more formidable than many kinds of political oppression, since, though...

By Christian Weller, Professor of Public Policy and Public Affairs, University of Massachusetts Boston Four hundred years ago, America’s first enslaved Africans arrived in Virginia. Centuries later, black Americans have managed to accumulate some wealth, but it still pales in comparison to that of whites. This racial wealth gap is a result not only of the horrors of slavery but also policies – such as Jim Crow laws, redlining and modern-day mass incarceration – that followed. The average white family with at least one working adult over 25 years old owned more than nine times as much total wealth...

By Jane Bolin, Professor of Health Policy + Management, Deputy Director of the Southwest Rural Health Research Center; Associate Dean of Research, College of Nursing; Bree Watzak, Clinical Assistant Professor, Pharmacy; Nancy Dickey, Professor, Executive Director, Texas A&M Rural and Community Health Initiative – Texas A&M University Presidential candidates and other politicians have talked about the rural health crisis in the U.S., but they are not telling rural Americans anything new. Rural Americans know all too well what it feels like to have no hospital and emergency care when they break a leg, go into early labor, or have...

By Geoffrey Jones and Sudev Sheth; Isidor Straus Professor of Business History, Harvard Business School; Senior Lecturer, The Lauder Institute, University of Pennsylvania Mahatma Gandhi is celebrated across the globe as an idealist who used civil disobedience to frustrate and overthrow British colonialists in India. The popularity of his nonviolent teachings – which inspired civil rights activists such as Martin Luther King Jr. and Nelson Mandela – has obscured another important facet of his teachings: the proper role of business in society. Gandhi argued that companies should act as trusteeships, valuing social responsibility alongside profits, a view recently echoed...

By Ramsi Woodcock, Assistant Professor of Law, University of Kentucky Since it first became clear that Russian agents spent thousands of dollars a month on political advertising on social media in the runup to the 2016 presidential election, Americans have been asking how the powerful advertising infrastructure run by Google and Facebook could have been thrown open to foreign agents. But fewer have stopped to ask whether there is a good reason for this infrastructure to exist at all. Why, exactly, is it a good thing for Facebook and Google to be selling advertising to anyone, let alone Russian...

By Nathaniel Geiger, Assistant Professor of Communication Science, Indiana University Climate activists walked out of classrooms and workplaces in more than 150 countries on September 20 to demand stronger action on climate change. Mass mobilizations like this have become increasingly common in recent years. I’m a scholar of environmental communication who examines how people become engaged with solving dilemmas such as climate change, and how activism motivates others to take action. A new study I worked on suggests that large rallies, such as this youth-led Climate Strike, could be influencing public opinion. Conflicting signs For anyone in the U.S....