The Conversation

Is secondhand screen time the new secondhand smoking?

Written by Joelle Renstrom, Lecturer of Rhetoric, Boston University

Babies need to make eye contact with people, not phones.AFP via Getty

The Environmental Protection Agency first warned of secondhand smoke in 1991, some 30 years after scientists determined that smoking cigarettes causes cancer. Today, a growing body of research points toward a new indirect health hazard.

Just as frequently being around other people...

Where are the Hispanic executives?

Written by JD Swerzenski, Ph.D. Candidate in Communication, University of Massachusetts Amherst

American executives only represent a fraction of the workforce.UfaBizPhoto/The Conversation

Many organizations have prioritized workplace equality and access to high-paying, executive level jobs for minority groups in recent years.

Several 2020 presidential candidates are putting forward plans to increase minority executive positions by diversifing...

Is it ethical to show Holocaust images?

Written by Paul Morrow, Human Rights Fellow, University of Dayton

A wall-size image at the Dallas Holocaust and Human Rights Museum that shows Jewish prisoners marching. The Nazis killed prisoners during these marches.AP Photo/Tony Gutierrez

Seventy-five years ago, the world first saw the horrors of Nazi concentration camps.

Shot by photographers Lee Miller, George Rodger and others, and published in Time, the...

Giving is changing as philanthropy faces more scrutiny

Written by Emily Schwartz Greco, Philanthropy + Nonprofits Editor, The Conversation

The foundation Bill and Melinda Gates run has more assets than any other. AP Photo/Elaine Thompson

The more than US$400 billion Americans donate annually to charitable causes of all kinds, such as houses of worship, universities and efforts to cure cancer, add up to around 2% of the economy. The Indiana University Lilly Family School of...

Vital Hasson, the Jew who worked for the Nazis, hunted down refugees and tore apart families in WWII Greece

Written by Sarah Abrevaya Stein, Professor of History, Maurice Amado Chair in Sephardic Studies, Sady and Ludwig Kahn Director, Alan D. Leve Center for Jewish Studies, UCLA, University of California, Los Angeles

Jewish youth on a sailboat in Salonika harbor, 1929,United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Gabriel Albocher

I learned a lesson when conducting research for my recently published book, “Family Papers: a Sephardic Journey Through the Twentieth Century.” I had discovered the story of a young Jewish man forgotten to history...

There's more than one good way to teach kids how to read

Written by Kindel Turner Nash, Associate Professor of Early Childhood Education, University of Maryland, Baltimore County

Phonics emphasizes the sounds letters and groups of letters make.Africa Studio/Shutterstock.com

We are literacy professionals, former reading teachers who now prepare college and graduate students to teach kids how to read.

As scholars, we believe in the study, exchange and debate of ideas. But recently we have become concerned by the direction that...

Iceland didn't hunt any whales in 2019 – and public appetite for whale meat is fading

Written by Joe Roman, Research Affiliate, Gund Institute for Environment, University of Vermont

Whale watching (here, off Húsavík, Iceland) may be better for the local economy than whale hunting. Davide Cantelli/Wikimedia , CC BY

One of the most important global conservation events of the past year was something that didn’t happen. For the first time since 2002, Iceland – one of just three countries that still allow...

Veterans, refugees and victims of war crimes are all vulnerable to PTSD

Written by Arash Javanbakht, Assistant Professor of Psychiatry, Wayne State University

Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), with Rep. Marc Pocan (D.-Wis.) behind her, speaks Jan. 8, 2020 at the Capitol.Jose Luis Magana/AP Photo

Mental health is often used in political discourse and arguments. Post-traumatic stress disorder was the subject Jan. 8, when Rep. Ilhan Omar (D.-Minn.), herself a Somalian refugee who had spent years in a refugee camp...

Even planets have their (size) limits

Written by Natalie Hinkel, Planetary Astrophysicist, Senior Research Scientist at the Southwest Research Institute and Co-Investigator for the Nexus for Exoplanet System Science (NExSS), Arizona State University

A planet-forming disk made from rock and gas surrounds a young star. NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS/ Gerald Eichstädt /Seán Doran

Scientists have discovered over 4,000 exoplanets outside of our Solar System, according to NASA’s Exoplanet Archive.

Some of these planets orbit multiple stars at the same time. Certain planets are so close...

What to think when you're thinking about impeachment: 5 essential reads

Written by Naomi Schalit, Senior Editor, Politics + Society, The Conversation US

Where the action is: The capitol building in Washington, D.C. Aurora Samperio/NurPhoto via Getty Images

If you have a big appetite for politics news, you’re not going to go hungry this week.

The substantive part of the impeachment trial of President Donald Trump now begins, after Democrats from the House of Representatives delivered the...