The Conversation

Fixing US elections

Written by Pippa Norris, ARC Laureate Fellow, Professor of Government and International Relations at the University of Sydney and McGuire Lecturer in Comparative Politics, Harvard University

Experts rate the performance of recent American elections as the worst among two dozen Western democracies. Why?

Some longstanding practices are to blame. Partisan gerrymandering insulates incumbents. Infotainment-dominated commercial news reduce campaigns to spectator sport. Social media amplifies angry trolls. Ballot access laws restrict...

Is it time for a new model to fund science research in higher education?

Written by Brian Herman, Vice President for Research, University of Minnesota

Academic researchers need funding – especially as the federal government devotes less to basic research.Check image via www.shutterstock.com

The United States is at a crossroads with respect to many societal issues – think about the challenges of improving human health, eradicating hunger, protecting human rights. At the same time,...

Donald Trump and the dangerous rhetoric of portraying people as objects

Written by Jennifer Mercieca, Associate Professor of Communication and Director of the Aggie Agora, Texas A&M University

In Donald Trump’s 2005 hot mic conversation with entertainment reporter Billy Bush, he confessed to kissing women and grabbing their genitals without their consent.

I’ve previously noted how Trump, on the campaign trail, will often use the rhetorical strategy of reification (which comes from the Latin word for thing, res, and in this...

Donald Trump is taking a page from Reconstruction-era white supremacists

Written by Donald Nieman, Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost, Binghamton University, State University of New York

Donald Trump has a lot in common with former Confederates – white southerners who “redeemed” the South by bringing an end to Reconstruction 140 years ago. Like the “Redeemers,” Trump fears that electoral fraud threatens the republic. And like them, Trump equates electoral fraud with black and brown voters.

Trump has...

Where the parties stand on environmental regulation: Six essential reads

Written by Jennifer Weeks, Editor, Environment and Energy, The Conversation

www.shutterstock.com

Editor’s note: The following is a roundup of archival stories related to environmental regulation and the presidential campaign.

Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump have taken starkly opposing positions on environmental regulation. During their second debate on Oct. 9, Trump stated,

“The EPA is so restrictive that they...

Getting to yes in Colombia: What it would take to reintegrate the FARC

Written by Kimberly Theidon, Professor of International Humanitarian Studies, Tufts University

The Nobel Committee has awarded Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos the Nobel Peace Prize.

His key accomplishment was the Sept. 26 signing of the Colombian peace agreement between the government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, as known as FARC. The signing marked the formal end of 52 years of civil war. In the words of Humberto...

Love it or hate it, Obamacare has expanded coverage for millions

Written by Jim Marton, Associate Professor, Economics, Georgia State University

The most significant pieces of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), or “Obamacare,” were implemented in 2014. These include expanding Medicaid in many states, the establishment of insurance exchanges with subsidized coverage and the individual mandate, which requires individuals to purchase health insurance.

One aim of the law was to expand...

Do we swear too much?

Written by Michael Adams, Professor of English, Indiana University, Bloomington

Go ahead, just let off some steam.'Swearing' via www.shutterstock.com

Some people love to swear and can’t get enough of it. But you’ll occasionally hear complaints that if we’re not careful, we might overuse profanity and wear it out, forcing us then to come up with new swear words or – worse yet – do without swearing...

After our universe's cosmic dawn, what happened to all its original hydrogen?

Written by Aaron Parsons, Associate Professor of Astronomy, University of California, Berkeley

Light from the universe's first galaxies destroyed the hydrogen atoms that formed during the Big Bang.NASA, ESA, R. Ellis (Caltech), and the UDF 2012 Team, CC BY

When our universe first blasted into existence with a Big Bang almost 14 billion years ago, it looked much different than it does today. Instead of planets, stars and galaxies, there was...

Beyond Olympic gold: US kids getting lapped in aerobic fitness

Written by Grant Tomkinson, Associate Professor, University of North Dakota

While the U.S. brings home more Olympic gold than any other country, many, if not most, American school kids wouldn’t even bring home a tin, if there were such a low-ranking medal.

Recently, colleagues and I set out to see how the fitness of American kids stacked up relative to other countries. Our findings were surprising. Not only did the...