The Conversation

States pick judges very differently from US Supreme Court appointments

Written by Joshua Holzer, Assistant Professor of Political Science, Westminster College

Political pressure is focusing on the makeup of the U.S. Supreme Court.Stefani Reynolds/Getty Images

The future of the U.S. Supreme Court is politically fraught.

The court’s partisan balance has long been a hot-button issue, and both Democrats and Republicans can correctly claim that the other party bears at least some blame for the politiciza...

Haitians protest their president in English as well as Creole, indicting US for its role in country's political crisis

Written by Tamanisha John, Ph.D. Candidate of International Relations, Florida International University

Protest signs on the ground before a march on March 28, 2021, in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, to denounce President Jovenel Moïse's efforts to stay in office past his term.Valerie Baeriswyl/AFP via Getty Images

Haitian protesters on the nation’s streets have a laundry list of reasons they believe President Jovenel Moïse should resign.

They...

DNA 'Lite-Brite' is a promising way to archive data for decades or longer

Written by Will Hughes, Professor of Materials Science & Engineering, Boise State University

A simple two-dimensional grid can convey a lot of information – whether making pictures with Lite-Brite or storing data in DNA.Justin Day/Flickr, CC BY-SA

The Research Brief is a short take about interesting academic work.

The big idea

We and our colleagues have developed a way to store data using pegs and pegboards made out of DNA and...

Why business school efforts to recruit more diverse faculties are failing

Written by Sonya A. Grier, Professor of Marketing, American University Kogod School of Business

Black and Hispanic business school professors are few in number.nortonrsx/iStock via Getty Images Plus

Despite the increasing diversity among America’s college students, business school professors remain overwhelmingly white.

In U.S. business schools, Black and Hispanic individuals make up 23.2% of students, yet only 6.7% of the faculty.

As a re...

From Rodney King to George Floyd, how video evidence can be differently interpreted in courts

Written by Sandra Ristovska, Assistant Professor in Media Studies, University of Colorado Boulder

Video evidence at trial played a crucial part in the conviction of a police officer for the 2020 murder of George Floyd.AP Photo/Ben Gray

News media coverage of Derek Chauvin’s trial for the murder of George Floyd highlighted the role of video as a “star witness.” Jurors in this trial saw footage from cellphones, police body...

Water wells are at risk of going dry in the US and worldwide

Written by Debra Perrone, Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies, University of California Santa Barbara

An orchard near Kettleman City in California's San Joaquin Valley on April 2, 2021.Frederic J. Brown/AFP via Getty Images

As the drought outlook for the Western U.S. becomes increasingly bleak, attention is turning once again to groundwater – literally, water stored in the ground. It is Earth’s most widespread and reliable source of...

A metropolis arose in medieval Cambodia – new research shows how many people lived in the Angkor Empire over time

Written by Sarah Klassen, Postdoctoral Researcher of Archaeological Sciences, Leiden University

A visualization of daily life around Angkor Wat in the late 12th century. Tom Chandler, Mike Yeates, Chandara Ung and Brent McKee, Monash University, 2021, CC BY-NC-ND

How big were the world’s ancient cities? At its height, the world’s first city of Uruk may have had about 40,000 people about 5,000 years ago. In the medieval period,...

Mary Ball Washington, George’s single mother, often gets overlooked – but she's well worth saluting

Written by Martha Saxton, Professor emerita of History and Sexuality, Women's and Gender Studies, Amherst College

Mary Washington helped her son develop into the leader he became. While her son was the subject of several portrait artists, there is no record that Mary ever was.Stock Montage/Getty Images

It is important and poignant to recall the hard life of Mary Ball Washington, who struggled – mostly alone – to raise our Founding Father....

US prisons hold more than 550,000 people with intellectual disabilities – they face exploitation, harsh treatment

Written by Jennifer Sarrett, Lecturer, Center for Study of Human Health, Emory University

The rate of intellectual disabilities is disproportionately high among incarcerated populations.Spencer Platt/Getty Images

Prison life in the U.S. is tough. But when you have an intellectual, developmental or cognitive disability – as hundreds of thousands of Americans behind bars do – it can make you especially vulnerable.

In March, the...

Lag BaOmer pilgrimage brings Orthodox Jews closer to eternity – I experienced this spiritual bonding in years before the tragedy

Written by Joshua Shanes, Associate Professor of Jewish Studies, College of Charleston

A condolence message and candles for the victims of a stampede during a Jewish ultra-Orthodox mass pilgrimage to Mount Meron, projected on a wall of Jerusalem's Old City.Ilia Yefimovich/picture alliance via Getty Images

The annual Lag BaOmer pilgrimage to Mount Meron in Israel attracts as many as half a million visitors every year. Because of...