The Conversation

The ideal female body type is getting even harder to attain

Written by Frances Bozsik, PhD Candidate in Clinical Health Psychology, University of Missouri-Kansas City

Is muscle definition now being added to an already impossibly thin ideal?Mikhaylovskiy/Shutterstock.com

Day after day, we’re bombarded with so many media messages that rarely do we stop to think about what they’re telling us to think, do or feel.

Much has been written about the unrealistic beauty standards women have been held to. Female...

Fewer diplomats, more armed force defines US leadership today

Written by Monica Duffy Toft, Professor of International Politics and Director, Center for Strategic Studies, Fletcher School, Tufts University

Members of the U.S. Army Special Forces on Aug. 30, 2002 in Afghanistan. AP Photo/Wally Santana

A strong legacy of U.S. leadership and engagement in global politics has been reduced today to what I call kinetic diplomacy – diplomacy by armed force.

As of March 2018, the Trump administration has appointed only 70 of 188 U.S. ambassadors. At...

Trump's $60 billion in China tariffs will create more problems than they solve

Written by William Hauk, Associate Professor of Economics, University of South Carolina

Business such as California winemakers could be hurt by the new tariffs as a result of retaliation.AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein

After spending seven months investigating whether China is engaged in unfair trade practices, the Trump administration announced March 22 that it will impose tariffs on as much as US$60 billion in Chinese imports.

The...

Gun control and March for Our Lives: 4 essential reads

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

Editor’s note: The following is a roundup of stories from The Conversation’s archive.

Students from across the country will march in Washington, D.C., on Saturday. Similar marches will take place elsewhere in the U.S. Organized by survivors of the Parkland school shooting in Florida, the protesters want Congress to pass gun control...

March for Our Lives awakens the spirit of student and media activism of the 1960s

Written by Errol Salamon, Postdoctoral Researcher and Visting Scholar in Communication, University of Pennsylvania

Students rally in front of the White House in Washington, March 14, 2018.AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster

A student movement against gun violence is receiving sustained news coverage.

Students are using social and news media to build momentum and advocate for legislation in the wake of a Feb. 14 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland,...

'Big Tech' isn't one big monopoly – it's 5 companies all in different businesses

Written by Amanda Lotz, Professor of Media Studies, University of Michigan

It may seem convenient to think of technology companies as similar, but they're really not.The Conversation, CC BY-NC

Public concern about Facebook’s power in society – and in politics – has skyrocketed in the wake of revelations that users’ data was analyzed by a U.K.-based marketing firm and used to construct highly...

Why Trump will weather Stormy

Written by Monika L. McDermott, Professor of Political Science, Fordham University

Donald Trump’s opponents have long been waiting for some sort of scandal to bring him down, and they may think they have finally found it in pornographic film star Stormy Daniels.

Daniels alleges she had an extramarital affair with Donald Trump in 2006 and was subsequently paid off by a Trump lawyer to stay silent during the presidential...

Why community and not confinement will end TB

Written by Eric Friedman, Researcher, Georgetown University

A prisoner looks out a window on March 26, 2015, from Zhdanivskaya prison in Ukraine, were TB is rampant.AP Photo/Mstyslav Chernov

The global response to tuberculosis has saved millions of lives; TB treatment saved 53 million lives between 2000 and 2016. Yet each year millions still suffer, and often die, from this preventable, treatable and...

Archbishop Oscar Romero was gunned down inside his own church 38 years ago. Soon he'll become El Salvador's first saint

Written by Michael E. Lee, Associate Professor of Theology and Latin American Studies, Fordham University

On March 24, 1980, the archbishop of San Salvador was shot inside his own church in a deliberate, cold-blooded murder that shocked the world.

Now, almost 40 years later, the Catholic Church is preparing to make the slain religious leader a saint. In early March, Pope Francis approved a miracle attributed to Monsignor Oscar Arnulfo Romero –...

Inching closer to a world without polio

Written by Christine Crudo Blackburn, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Scowcroft Institute of International Affairs, Bush School of Government and Public Service, Texas A&M University

What will it take to finish polio off in the last three countries where it persists?AP Photo/B.K. Bangash

At its height in the 1940s and ‘50s, polio paralyzed more than 35,000 Americans every year. But thanks to vaccines as well as good hygiene and sanitation practices, polio has largely been forgotten in the developed world.

Now, even in...