The Conversation

The Supreme Court just expanded the 'ministerial exception' shielding religious employers from anti-bias laws

Written by Steven K. Green, Professor of Law, Director of the Center for Religion, Law & Democracy, Willamette University

The ministerial exemptions ruling is one of several cases involving religious employers in front of the Supreme Court.Brooks Kraft LLC/Corbis via Getty Images

Should religious employers be allowed to discriminate?

When it comes to houses of worship selecting spiritual leaders, then the answer from lower courts has long been “yes.” Even...

COVID-19 exposes why the Postal Service needs to get back into the banking business

Written by Melanie G. Long, Assistant Professor of Economics, The College of Wooster

The USPS could do more than deliver mail.AP Photo/Matt Rourke

Financial services play a major role in the economic lives of most Americans, from the moment their paychecks are directly deposited into a bank account to the loan taken out to buy their first home or car.

Yet over 12 million people – about 6% of U.S. adults – cannot access...

Leaders like Trump fail if they cannot speak the truth and earn trust

Written by Kenneth P. Ruscio, Senior Distinguished Lecturer, Jepson School of Leadership Studies, University of Richmond

President Donald Trump at the Tulsa campaign rally, where he said he had slowed down COVID-19 testing to keep the numbers low.Win McNamee/Getty Images

During a recent Senate committee hearing on the COVID-19 crisis, Dr. Anthony Fauci told lawmakers he was concerned about “a lack of trust of authority, a lack of trust in government.”

He...

Srebrenica, 25 years later: Lessons from the massacre that ended the Bosnian conflict and unmasked a genocide

Written by Tom Mockaitis, Professor of History, DePaul University

Bosnia's memorial cemetery of the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, which is still receiving new remains as more genocide victims are identified. Elvis Barukcic/AFP via Getty Images

Europe’s worst massacre since World War II occurred 25 years ago this July. From July 11 to 19, in 1995, Bosnian Serb forces murdered 7,000 to 8,000 Muslim men and boys in...

Sending international students home would sap US influence and hurt the economy

Written by David L. Di Maria, Associate Vice Provost for International Education, University of Maryland, Baltimore County

Some colleges may have to scramble to make plans to keep international students enrolled.Boston Globe/Getty Images

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, made a decision on July 6 regarding international students in the U.S. that will affect far more than just the roughly 870,000 international students themselves.

Based on what I know abou...

COVID-19 makes clear that bioethics must confront health disparities

Written by Joseph J. Fins, The E. William Davis Jr, M.D. Professor of Medical Ethics and Professor of Medicine at Weill Cornell Medicine, Cornell University

The Statue of Liberty.Stock Photo/Getty Images

With some reluctance, I’ve come to the sad realization the COVID-19 pandemic has been a stress test for bioethics, a field of study that intersects medicine, law, the humanities and the social sciences. As both a physician and medical ethicist, I arrived at this conclusion after spending months...

Street vendors make cities livelier, safer and fairer – here's why they belong on the post-COVID-19 urban scene

Written by John Rennie Short, Professor, School of Public Policy, University of Maryland, Baltimore County

Street vending at Eastern Market, Washington, D.C. John Rennie Short, CC BY-ND

Cities around the world are emerging from pandemic shutdowns and gradually allowing activities to resume. National leaders are keen to promote economic recovery, with appropriate public health precautions.

Recently, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang announced economic growth...

Corporate activism is more than a marketing gimmick

Written by Cory Maks-Solomon, Professorial Lecturer of Political Science, George Washington University

A 'Black Lives Matter' billboard hangs above a Modell's in New York.Timothy A. Clary/AFP via Getty Images

In the past month, there’s been an outpouring of support for Black Lives Matter from America’s largest corporations.

You might have noticed Amazon, for example, announcing its support for Black Lives Matter on its homepage. Even...

5 COVID-19 myths politicians have repeated that just aren't true

Written by Geoffrey Joyce, Director of Health Policy, USC Schaeffer Center, and Associate Professor, University of Southern California

The purveyors of these myths aren't doing the country any favors.Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images

The number of new COVID-19 cases in the U.S. has jumped to around 50,000 a day, and the virus has killed more than 130,000 Americans. Yet, I still hear myths about the infection that has created the worst public health crisis in America in a...

Synthetic odors created by activating brain cells help neuroscientists understand how smell works

Written by Edmund Chong, Ph.D. Student in Neuroscience, New York University

When you sniff a particular scent, your brain cells fire in a recognizable pattern.Maskot via Getty Images

When you experience something with your senses, it evokes complex patterns of activity in your brain. One important goal in neuroscience is to decipher how these neural patterns drive the sensory experience.

For example, can the smell of...