The Conversation

After Supreme Court decision, gerrymandering fix is up to voters

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

The Supreme Court is empty days before the justices vote to on the U.S. gerrymandering case.AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite

In a 5-4 decision the Supreme Court has ruled that partisan gerrymandering is not unconstitutional.

The majority ruled that gerrymandering is outside the scope and power of the federal courts to adjudicate. The issue is a...

Supreme Court says gerrymandering fix up to voters, not judges

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

The Supreme Court is empty days before the justices vote to on the U.S. gerrymandering case.AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite

In a 5-4 decision the Supreme Court has ruled that partisan gerrymandering is not unconstitutional.

The majority ruled that gerrymandering is outside the scope and power of the federal courts to adjudicate. The issue is a...

The Flores settlement: A 1985 case that sets the rules for how government can treat migrant children

Written by Kevin Johnson, Dean and Professor of Public Interest Law and Chicana/o Studies, University of California, Davis

Migrant children outside a temporary shelter for unaccompanied children in Florida, May 2019.AP/Wilfredo Lee

What are the basic rules that determine how immigrant children are treated in U.S. immigration detention?

The Trump administration’s detention of migrant children in poor conditions along the U.S./Mexico border has repeatedly raised...

Why lead is dangerous, and the damage it does

Written by Christopher P. Holstege, Professor of Emergency Medicine and Pediatrics, University of Virginia

Two house painters in hazmat suits remove lead paint from an old house. Jamie Hooper/Shutterstock.com

Everything is a toxin, or has the potential to be, in the field of toxicology. In the 1500s, Swiss physician Paracelsus, the father of toxicology, coined his famous dictum: “What is there that is not poison? All things are poison and nothing...

I've started acknowledging the people who lived on this land first – and you should too

Written by Chip Colwell, Lecturer on Anthropology, University of Colorado Denver

It's unlikely your ancestors were the first to set foot here.Fred Harvey, Kansas City/ Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division

In Toronto, before singing “O Canada,” students and teachers in public schools begin their day by acknowledging that they are on the traditional lands of the Anishinaabe, Haundenosaunee Confederacy...

How the Flint water crisis set students back

Written by Marilynne R Wood, Professor, University of Toledo

When the Flint water crisis took place in 2014 and 2015, one of my graduate nursing students decided to get involved.

Having already worked with me in the Greater Toledo area to screen children at risk for lead poisoning, my student helped conduct blood lead level screenings of the children exposed to the water. Test results later showed that the...

Should you be tested for HIV? Why June 27 is a good day to do it

Written by Jodi Sutherland, Clinical assistant professor, Binghamton University, State University of New York

A woman whose blood is being drawn to test for HIV.U.S. Dept. of Housing and Urban Development/flickr

June 27 is National HIV Testing Day. Have you been tested?

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report that of the estimated 1.1 million people in the United States who have the HIV infection, 1 in 7 don’t know their status.

That is...

Should Southern Baptist women be preachers? A centuries old controversy finds new life

Written by Susan M. Shaw, Professor of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Oregon State University

Members at the Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting in 2017, in PhoenixAP Photo/Ross D. Franklin

Southern Baptists are arguing again over the role women should play in the church.

Following a tweet from popular Southern Baptist speaker, teacher and writer Beth Moore that suggested she was preaching at a Southern Baptist church, many Baptist...

Here's a 1918 role model for Sarah Sanders' successor as White House press secretary

Written by Meghan Menard McCune, Ph.D. candidate, Manship School of Mass Communication, Louisiana State University

Ray Stannard Baker joins Woodrow Wilson at the lectern in front of Congress.Library of Congress

Stephanie Grisham, communications director for Melania Trump, will replace Sarah Huckabee Sanders as White House press secretary. Sanders’ controversial tenure will end June 30.

Critics claim Sanders rejected the public service aspect of her...

How much power can one image actually have?

Written by Nicole Smith Dahmen, Associate Professor, School of Journalism and Communication, University of Oregon

The bodies of Salvadoran migrant Oscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez and his daughter lie on the bank of the Rio Grande in Matamoros, Mexico.AP Photo/Julia Le Duc

When the Associated Press published Julia Le Duc’s photograph of a drowned Salvadoran man, Óscar Alberto Martínez Ramírez, and his 23-month old...