The Conversation

Charter school cap efforts gain momentum

Written by Matthew Gardner Kelly, Assistant Professor of Education, Pennsylvania State University

Students, parents and teachers participate in a school choice rally in Jackson, MississippiRogelio V. Solis/AP

From California to Wisconsin, efforts to stop charter school growth are gaining momentum. In the April 2019 mayoral election in Chicago, both candidates say they want to halt charter school expansion.

Financial issues lie at the core of...

How women wage war – a short history of IS brides, Nazi guards and FARC insurgents

Written by Jessica Trisko Darden, Assistant Professor of International Affairs, American University School of International Service

The names of American-born Hoda Muthana and Brit Shamima Begum have appeared in countless headlines in the United States and Europe since these two female members of the Islamic State group were discovered in a large displaced persons camp weeks ago.

The women were among the holdouts in Islamic State’s last stronghold in Baghouz, Syria. When...

Refugees forced to return to Syria face imprisonment, death at the hands of Assad

Written by Mark Ward, Lecturer, University of Washington

Aid from UNICEF being distributed to Syrian refugees at a flooded camp in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley, Jan. 10, 2019. AP/Bilal Hussein

I worked on the Syrian-Turkish border from 2012-16, leading the U.S. government team that was pushing hundreds of millions of dollars in humanitarian and other aid into northwest Syria. We were helping communities that...

Sex trafficking in the US: 4 questions answered

Written by Monti Datta, Associate Professor of Political Science, University of Richmond

Hotels and motels along major highways are common spots for sex trafficking.Ken Stocker/shutterstock.com

New England Patriots CEO Robert Kraft’s criminal charges in a suspected sex trafficking case in southern Florida draw new attention to this serious problem.

Sex trafficking, as the federal government defines it, is “the recruitment,...

Thoreau's great insight for the Anthropocene: Wildness is an attitude, not a place

Written by Robert M. Thorson, Professor of Geology, University of Connecticut

Henry David Thoreau lived at 255 Main Street in Concord, Massachusetts from 1850 until his death in 1862.John Phelan/Wikimedia, CC BY-SA

When Americans quote writer and naturalist Henry David Thoreau, they often reach for his assertion that “In Wildness is the preservation of the world.” This phrase elicited little response when Thoreau...

3 ways activist kids these days resemble their predecessors

Written by David S. Meyer, Professor of Sociology, University of California, Irvine

Yolanda Renee King, the grandchild of Martin Luther King Jr., alongside Jaclyn Corin, a Parkland survivor and activistAP Photo/Andrew Harnik

A gaggle of young activists recently paid Dianne Feinstein a visit at the senator’s San Francisco office, imploring her to support the Green New Deal framework for confronting climate change. She...

Veterans are concerned about climate change, and that matters

Written by Matthew Motta, Postdoctoral Fellow in the Science of Science Communication at the Annenberg Public Policy Center, University of Pennsylvania

Naval Station Norfolk in Virginia, the Navy's largest base, is endangered by sea level rise.Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Ernest R. Scott

News that the Trump administration plans to create a panel devoted to challenging government warnings about climate change has been met with opposition from members of the U.S. military. Citing concerns...

University of California's break with the biggest academic publisher could shake up scholarly publishing for good

Written by MacKenzie Smith, University Librarian and Vice Provost for Digital Scholarship, University of California, Davis

Libraries subscribe digitally to academic journals – and are left with nothing in the stacks when the contract expires.Eric Chan/Flickr, CC BY

The University of California recently made international headlines when it canceled its subscription with scientific journal publisher Elsevier. The twittersphere lit up. And Elsevier’s parent...

11 things you can do to adjust to losing that 1 hour of sleep this weekend

Written by Deepa Burman, Co- Director Pediatric Sleep Evaluation Center and Associate professor of pediatrics, University of Pittsburgh

The loss of even an hour of sleep is hard on the body, and kids are particularly vulnerable.kornnphoto/Shutterstock.com

As clocks march ahead of time on March 10, 2019 and daylight saving time begins, there is a lot of anxiety around losing the hour of sleep and how to adjust to this change.

Usually an hour seems like an insignificant amount of time...

New AI art has artists, collaborators wondering: Who gets the credit?

Written by Aaron Hertzmann, Affiliate Faculty of Computer Science, University of Washington

An artificial image created on the Ganbreeder sitesgc/Ganbreeder

Over the past few years, many artists have started to use what’s called “neural network software” to create works of art.

Users input existing images into the software, which has been programmed to analyze them, learn a specific aesthetic and spit out new images that...