The Conversation

With waning US leadership on climate, nonstate actors to play outsize role

Written by Kenneth Shockley, Associate Professor and Holmes Rolston III Professor of Environmental Ethics and Philosophy, Colorado State University

Civil society and other groups, such as academics and businesses, stand to play a bigger role in how the countries of the world address climate change.Photo by IISD/ENB | Liz Rubin

Until recently, the international climate negotiation process revolved strictly around high-level conversations between nation states. However, this is changing in a way...

How much should air traffic controllers trust new flight management systems?

Written by Tannaz Mirchi, Human Factors Engineer, Lecturer in Psychology, California State University, Long Beach

With airfares at their lowest point in seven years and airlines adding capacity, this year’s Thanksgiving air travel is slated to be 2.5 percent busier than last year. Between Nov. 18 and 29, 27.3 million Americans are expected to take to the skies.

The system we use to coordinate all those flights carrying all those Thanksgiving travelers...

The two men who almost derailed New England's first colonies

Written by Peter C. Mancall, Andrew W. Mellon Professor of the Humanities, University of Southern California – Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences

Jennie A. Brownscombe's 'The First Thanksgiving at Plymouth' (1914).Wikimedia Commons

There is no holiday more American than Thanksgiving – and perhaps none with origins so shrouded in comforting myths.

The story is simple enough. In 1620 a group of English Protestant dissenters known as Pilgrims arrived in what’s now Massachusetts to...

It wasn't just 'fake news' presenting a fake Hillary Clinton

Written by Leigh Gilmore, Distinguished Visiting Professor of Women's and Gender Studies, Wellesley College

Did we hold Clinton to an unreasonably high standard?AP Photo/Matt Rourke

Despite Hillary Clinton’s long and demonstrable commitment to public service and liberal reform, many voters in the 2016 presidential election were persuaded that she was corrupt, mercenary and even murderous. A sinister Hillary Clinton dominated conservative media, but...

Trump may reverse US climate policy but will have trouble dismantling EPA

Written by Sarah Anderson, Associate Professor of Environmental Politics, University of California, Santa Barbara

EPA personnel collect water samples along the Louisiana coast after the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spillEric Vance, US EPA/Flickr

During the Republican primary debates, President-elect Trump threatened to gut the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), saying, “We are going to get rid of it in almost every form. We’re going to have...

Confirmation bias: A psychological phenomenon that helps explain why pundits got it wrong

Written by Ray Nickerson, Research Professor of Psychology, Tufts University

Like wearing psychological blinders.Horse image via www.shutterstock.com.

As post mortems of the 2016 presidential election began to roll in, fingers started pointing to what psychologists call the confirmation bias as one reason many of the polls and pundits were wrong in their predictions of which candidate would end up victorious.

Confirmation...

Cyber Monday gives a big boost to mobile commerce

Written by A. Ant Ozok, Associate Professor of Information Systems, University of Maryland, Baltimore County

Shopping by smartphone is taking off.Credit card and mobile phone via shutterstock.com

Here is an accurate prediction for a change: No matter how Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales turn out, one big winner of the Thanksgiving shopping extravaganza will be mobile commerce.

Mobile users accounted for half of all product browsing last Cyber Monday....

Remembering the US soldiers who refused orders to murder Native Americans at Sand Creek

Written by Billy J. Stratton, Professor of Native American studies/contemporary American literature, University of Denver

Every Thanksgiving weekend for the past 17 years, Arapaho and Cheyenne youth lead a 180-mile relay from the Sand Creek Massacre National Historic Site to Denver.

The annual Sand Creek Massacre Spiritual Healing Run opens at the site of the Sand Creek Massacre near Eads, Colorado, with a sunrise ceremony honoring some 200 Arapaho and Cheyenne people...

Do conservatives value 'moral purity' more than liberals?

Written by Kate Johnson, Doctoral Candidate, Psychology, University of Southern California

Signs of satisfaction after Donald Trump was elected. Jeff Karoub/AP

In the wake of Donald Trump’s election, the overwhelming response among progressives was “how in the world did this happen?” Those of us who study the rise of political and moral polarization in the United States, however, were less surprised.

Think of the...

How to bridge the political divide at the holiday dinner table

Written by Andrew J. Hoffman, Holcim (US) Professor at the Ross School of Business and Education Director at the Graham Sustainability Institute, University of Michigan

A time to join with close ones and, perhaps, open a dialogue?quinn/flickr, CC BY-NC

We are a divided nation; that is an understatement. What’s more, we increasingly hear we are living in our own “bubble” or echo chamber that differing views cannot penetrate. To correct the problem, many are calling for people to reach out, to talk...