Author: TheConversation

By Jayur Mehta and Tara Skipton; Assistant Professor of Anthropology, Florida State University; and Graduate Student in Archaeology, Florida State University Native North Americans first arrived in Florida approximately 14,550 years ago. Evidence for these stone-tool-wielding, megafauna-hunting peoples can be found at the bottom of numerous limestone freshwater sinkholes in Florida’s Panhandle and along the ancient shoreline of the Gulf of Mexico. Specialized archaeologists using scuba gear, remote sensing equipment or submersibles can study underwater sites if they are not deeply buried or destroyed by erosion. This is important because Florida’s archaeological resources face significant threats due to sea...

By Anthony P. Carnevale, Research professor and director of the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce; Andrew R. Hanson, Senior Research Analyst at the Center on Education and the Workforce; and Megan Fasules, Research Economist – Georgetown University Unlike old-fashioned vocational education, high school-level Career and technical education (CTE) does not really prepare people for jobs directly after high school. While the stated end goal of K-12 education in America is for students to be “college and career ready,” the reality is the existence of career-ready high school graduates is a myth. The expectation that high school...

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...