The Conversation

Small business owners are getting a new incentive to sell to their employees

Written by Joseph Blasi, Director of the Institute for the Study of Employee Ownership and Profit Sharing, Rutgers University

A bartender pours drafts at Harpoon's beer hall in Boston. Harpoon became partially employee-owned in 2014. AP Photo/Charles Krupa

The federal government just made it a lot easier to form an employee-owned business.

In an increasingly rare example of bipartisan cooperation, President Donald Trump on Aug. 13 signed a defense bill into law that...

Why Jewish giving to Israel is losing ground

Written by Hanna Shaul Bar Nissim, Postdoctoral Fellow, Maurice and Marilyn Cohen Center for Modern Jewish Studies, Brandeis University

American Jews donate at high levels to charity. One way they support causes in the U.S., Israel and other places is collective, often through large grant-making organizations.

In researching this organized philanthropy, I’ve observed that the proportion of Jewish institutional giving to Israeli causes has fallen since 2009. I believe that...

As a young reporter, I went undercover to expose the Ku Klux Klan

Written by Dick Lehr, Professor of Journalism, Boston University

Connecticut members of the Ku Klux Klan, escorted by Meriden, Conn. police, run for shelter as protesters pelt them in March 1981.AP Photo

Spike Lee’s powerful new film, “BlacKkKlansman,” tells the true story of Ron Stallworth, an African-American police officer who infiltrates a local branch the Ku Klux Klan in 1979.

That same...

Following Alfred Russel Wallace's footsteps to Borneo, where he penned his seminal evolution paper

Written by Giacomo Bernardi, Professor of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, University of California, Santa Cruz

Some of the 'remarkable beetles' Wallace collected in Borneo.A. R. Wallace, CC BY

The chirping of cicadas is deafening, my clothes are sticky and heavy with heat and sweat, my right hand is swollen from ant bites, I am panting, almost passing out from exhaustion – and I have a big grin on my face. At last I’ve reached my goal, Rajah...

Finding nostalgia in the pixelated video games of decades past

Written by Nicholas Bowman, Associate Professor of Communication Studies, West Virginia University

Instruments of nostalgia and psychological well-being?Brian Kenney/Shutterstock.com

Every day, it seems, new ultra-high-resolution video games are released, syncing with players’ social media accounts and ready for virtual reality headsets. Yet old games from the 1970s and 1980s are still in high demand. The Nintendo Corporation has moved...

Cuatro cosas que puedes hacer para protegerte de la gripe

Written by Arnold Monto, Professor, Epidemiology, University of Michigan

Donnie Cárdenas, en la cama, espera con su compañero de cuarto Torrey Jewett en el Palomar Medical Center en Escondido, California, el 10 de enero de 2018. Cárdenas tuvo gripe.AP Photo/Greg Bull

Esta temporada de gripe o influenza ha sido particularmente seria, habiendo provocado varios muertes en México, Brasil y otros...

¿Por qué los abogados representan a los immigrantes de manera gratuita?

Written by Eduardo Capulong, Associate Dean for Clinical and Experiential Education; Professor of Law, The University of Montana

Una madre hondureña y su hijo con un agente de la Patrulla Fronteriza. AP/David J. Phillip

Muchos abogados, asistentes legales y estudiantes de derecho se ofrecen como voluntarios para ayudar a familias inmigrantes que se encuentran en el punto de mira de la propuesta de la administración Trump de reducir drásticamente el...

Short-term health plans: A junk solution to a real problem

Written by Simon F. Haeder, Assistant Professor of Political Science, West Virginia University

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R.-S.C., left, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell pictured Sept. 26, 2017 before the vote on Graham's bill to gut Obamacare. Like others before it, the bill failed.Andrew Harnik/AP

After failing to overturn most of the Affordable Care Act in a very public fight, President Donald Trump has been steadily working behind...

A Texas city discovered a mass grave of prison laborers. What should it do with the bodies?

Written by Andrea Roberts, Assistant Professor, Texas A&M University

After the Civil War, Texas's sugar cane plantations were still farmed by unpaid black laborers – prisoners forced to work for free in a system called 'convict leasing.' Author provided

When archaeologists discovered the intact skeletons of 15,000 free and enslaved Africans at a construction site in lower Manhattan in 1991, the federal...

Keeping the electricity grid running – 4 essential reads

Written by Jeff Inglis, Science + Technology Editor, The Conversation US

A man reads the newspaper by flashlight during the Northeast Blackout in August 2003.AP Photo/Joe Kohen

On Aug. 14, 2003, a software bug contributed to a blackout that left 50 million people across nine U.S. northeastern states and a Canadian province without power. The outage lasted for as long as four days, with rolling blackouts in some areas...