The Conversation

In scandal after scandal, NCAA takes fall for complicit colleges

Written by Rick Eckstein, Professor of Sociology, Villanova University

North Carolina head coach Roy Williams looks on during the first half of an NCAA college basketball game agaist Notre Dame.AP Photo/Robert Franklin

College sports fans probably weren’t surprised to learn that the University of North Carolina (UNC) had been engaged in academic fraud for decades. In this particular instance, students,...

Real security requires strong encryption – even if investigators get blocked

Written by Susan Landau, Professor of Computer Science, Law and Diplomacy and Cybersecurity, Tufts University

What's the best way to keep data secure?Victor Moussa/Shutterstock.com

The FBI and the U.S. Department of Justice have been fighting against easy, widespread public access to encryption technologies for 25 years. Since the bureau’s dispute with Apple in 2016 over access to the encrypted iPhone of one of the two people who shot 14 victims in...

California's higher education: From American dream to dilemma

Written by John R. Thelin, University Research Professor, University of Kentucky

Students at Berkeley campusAP Photo/Ben Margot, File

For the Golden State of California, 1960 was a golden year: It was a time of rapid development, when the state chose to use its tax revenues to fund magnificent freeways and other infrastructure.

Part of this massive development was a system of public higher education – a model that put...

Imagining the 'California Dream'

Written by William Deverell, Professor of History, University of Southern California – Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences

Is the California Dream still alive and well?Ivan Aleshin/shutterstock.com

Who gave the world the idea of the California Dream?

One way to answer this question is: “Who didn’t?” Millions of people today and in the past imagined California before ever going there – or without ever going there at all. Their collective vision...

What public transit can learn from Uber and Lyft

Written by Junfeng Jiao, Assistant Professor of Community and Regional Planning and Director, Urban Information Lab, University of Texas at Austin

Riders on San Francisco's Muni light rail system.David Lytle, CC BY

For all of their complaints about it, Americans care about public transit. Surveys show that large majorities support public transit initiatives. Nearly three-quarters of Americans approve of using tax dollars to fund transit initiatives. Every year new transit-focused ballot...

After tax cuts derailed the 'California dream,' is the state getting back on track?

Written by Manuel Pastor, Professor of Sociology, University of Southern California – Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences

While Prop 13 may have saved the California dream for some, it destroyed it for many others. AP Photo/Lennox McLendon

In 1978, the year I graduated from college with a degree in economics, most voters in my state chose to turn their backs on the “California dream.”

Not unlike the American dream, California’s iteration focused on...

Synthetic sex in yeast promises safer medicines for people

Written by Ian Haydon, Doctoral Student in Biochemistry, University of Washington

What can mating yeast tell us about new drugs?Conor Lawless, CC BY

Our old friend Saccharomyces cerevisiae – the yeast that’s helped people bake bread and brew beer for millennia – has just had its sex life upgraded.

Bioengineers at the University of Washington have reprogrammed the mating habits of this single-celled organism,...

What Chinese philosophers can teach us about dealing with our own grief

Written by Alexus McLeod, Associate Professor of Philosophy and Asian/Asian American Studies, University of Connecticut

Confucius sculpture, Nanjing, China.Kevinsmithnyc, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA

November 2 is All Souls’ Day, when many Christians honor the dead. As much as we all know about the inevitability of death, we are often unable to deal with the loss of a loved one.

Our modern-day worldview could also make us believe that loss is something we...

How Lincoln's embrace of embalming birthed the American funeral industry

Written by Brian Walsh, Assistant Professor of Communications, Elon University

An illustrated depiction of a scene of Lincoln lying in state.Internet Archive Book Images

If you died 200 years ago in America, your family would wash and dress your body and place it in a bed surrounded by candles to dampen the smell of decomposition.

Your immediate family and friends would visit your house over the course of the next week, few...

How has air quality been affected by the US fracking boom?

Written by Gunnar W. Schade, Associate Professor of Atmospheric Sciences, Texas A&M University

Fracking has led to an increase in truck traffic, one of the reasons for worsening trends on air quality in areas with oil and gas drilling.AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast

Urban air pollution in the U.S. has been decreasing near continuously since the 1970s.

Federal regulations, notably the Clean Air Act passed by President Nixon, to reduce toxic air...