The Conversation

Teacher turnover is a problem – here's how to fix it

Written by Christopher Redding, Assistant Professor, University of Florida

Teacher turnover causes significant disruptions to the school year, researchers say.Rob Marmion/www.shutterstock.com

Each school year, a good portion of parents find out that their child’s teacher is leaving for a job at another school or a different kind of job all together. An average of 16 percent of public school teachers change schools...

Thousands of mental health professionals agree with Woodward and the New York Times op-ed author: Trump is dangerous

Written by Bandy X. Lee, Assistant Clinical Professor, Yale School of Medicine, Yale University

Bob Woodward’s new book, “Fear,” describes a “nervous breakdown of Trump’s presidency.” Earlier this year, Michael Wolff’s “Fire and Fury” offered a similar portrayal.

Now, an op-ed in The New York Times by an anonymous “senior White House official” describes how deeply the troubles...

What the 25th Amendment says about presidents who are 'unable' to serve

Written by Brian Kalt, Professor of Law and Harold Norris Faculty Scholar, Michigan State University

The 25th Amendment defines what happens if a president is 'unable' to discharge his duties.

A stunning, unsigned op-ed in The New York Times reported on Sept. 5 that members of President Donald Trump’s Cabinet discussed removing him from power by using the 25th Amendment, but decided against it to avoid causing a “constitutional...

Low-income neighborhoods would gain the most from green roofs in cities like Chicago

Written by Ashish Sharma, Research Assistant Professor, University of Notre Dame

The Morris Inn on the University of Notre Dame campus has had a green roof since 2013.Ashish Sharma, CC BY-SA

Heat waves aren’t just a source of discomfort. They’re the nation’s deadliest weather hazard, accounting for a fifth of all deaths caused by natural hazards in the U.S.

Most of the time, low-income people who live in cities...

Designing greener streets starts with finding room for bicycles and trees

Written by Anne Lusk, Research Scientist, Harvard University

Street in Hangzhou, China, with trees separating a cycle track from road traffic and from the sidewalk.Xu Wen, CC BY-ND

City streets and sidewalks in the United States have been engineered for decades to keep vehicle occupants and pedestrians safe. If streets include trees at all, they might be planted in small sidewalk pits, where, if constrained...

El turista humanista: cuando viajar es más que un hobby

Written by Randy Malamud, Regents' Professor of English, Georgia State University

Como dijera Mark Twain, “Viajar es un ejercicio con consecuencias fatales para los prejuicios, la intolerancia y la estrechez de mente”.Jake Simonds-Malamud, CC BY-SA, CC BY-ND

Cuando vencí la fobia a los aviones, decidí recuperar el tiempo perdido recorriendo el mundo todo lo que pude.

De manera que, en el curso de una...

4 ways to defend democracy and protect every voter's ballot

Written by Douglas W. Jones, Associate Professor of Computer Science, University of Iowa

How confident should voters be that their ballots will be counted accurately?AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee

As voters prepare to cast their ballots in the November midterm elections, it’s clear that U.S. voting is under electronic attack. Russian government hackers probed some states’ computer systems in the runup to the 2016 presidential...

Politicians, lies and election legitimacy – it's an old story

Written by Gideon Cohn-Postar, Graduate Student in History, Northwestern University

Lies can help a political campaign be successful.Shutterstock

If you lose an election to an opponent because an interest group runs ads based on false information against you, is the election result legitimate?

The 2016 presidential election featured a Russian troll farm that used fake social media accounts to try to turn voters against Hillary...

Plagiarists or innovators? The Led Zeppelin paradox endures

Written by Aram Sinnreich, Associate Professor of Communication Studies, American University School of Communication

Robert Plant, the lead singer of Led Zeppelin, performs in Hamburg, Germany in 1973.Heinrich Klaffs, CC BY-NC-SA

Fifty years ago – in September 1968 – the legendary rock band Led Zeppelin first performed together, kicking off a Scandinavian tour billed as the New Yardbirds.

The new, better name would come later that fall, while drummer...

4 charts show Venezuela's worsening migrant crisis

Written by Rebecca Hanson, Assistant Professor Department of Sociology and Criminology & Law and Center for Latin American Studies, University of Florida

A few years ago, Venezuela seemed to be setting the standard for social welfare in the region.

In 2015, the United Nations recognized Venezuela as having made the most advances in the fight against hunger in the Latin American and Caribbean region. National rates of poverty and inequality declined under President Hugo Chávez from the early...