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Contents contributed and discussions participated by cvanderloo

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cvanderloo

Have you ever wondered how much energy you put in to avoid being assaulted? It may shoc... - 1 views

theconversation.com/saulted-it-may-shock-you-65372

sexism women assault prevention energy science research

shared by cvanderloo on 26 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • A recent article offering men advice about how to proposition a woman wearing headphones – encouraging them to block her path to prevent her from ignoring them – rightfully provoked a major backlash. But the backlash also brought a certain phenomenon to wider public attention – the fact that women sometimes wear headphones as a way to avoid unwanted approaches in public.
  • What was most surprising was how all 50 of the women I interviewed significantly underestimated the amount of work they were putting in to avoid intrusions by men in the street, and the impact this had on them.
  • They recognised that they were making certain decisions about routes home, or where to sit on public transport. They spoke about using sunglasses or headphones in order to create a shield – a way to give the impression that they didn’t hear that man making a sexual comment, or didn’t see that other man touching himself as he walked behind them.
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  • The women I spoke to knew they were doing some of these things but other behaviours were less conscious.
  • The short moments when women are alone in public space, away from commitments at home or at work – the only moments many people have to themselves – are disrupted.
  • This kind of safety work goes largely unnoticed by the women doing it and by the wider world.
  • The trouble is, women are only ever able to count the times when such strategies don’t work – when they are harassed by a man, or assaulted. The work put into the successes – the number of times women’s actions prevent men from intruding – go unnoticed.
  • Challenging this silence means talking about the range and extent of what women experience, from unwanted comments to flashing, following and frottage.
  • Recognising the sheer scale of the effort women are habitually putting in to avoid public sexual harassment could help us to change a culture that makes victims accountable for not preventing assault. We continue to talk about the problem as though women need to take more responsibility for preventing sexual assault. But preventing sexual assault is something women do daily, often without realising it.
cvanderloo

Lockdown, violence and understanding women's anger - 1 views

theconversation.com/erstanding-womens-anger-157180

women violence anger sexism stereotypes

shared by cvanderloo on 26 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • In early March, reports of a white, middle-class missing woman, Sarah Everard, had hit the news. A few days later, a white serving Metropolitan Police officer, Wayne Couzens, was charged with her kidnap and murder.
  • Countless stories have been shared online of women being frightened to walk alone, of holding their keys as a weapon, and of feeling a sense of constant threat and anxiety. At a time when lockdown has curtailed freedom of movement, it felt especially cruel that women felt safe nowhere – in their homes, in the street or online.
  • If there is an image that has come to represent what transpired on the night of the vigil, it is the photo of a young woman, who we now know to be Patsy Stevenson, clad in a face mask and pinned to the ground by a group of male police officers, her head held up, as she stares into the camera.
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  • Much of the searing power of this viral image comes from how it captures what appears to be the aggressive demeanour of the police officers, while also showing the outrage and defiance of Stevenson. Serious questions are now being raised about the Met’s handling of the situation.
  • As a research team, we are not surprised by women’s outrage. But we are surprised at the government’s response of proposing that increased infrastructure alone, like better lighting or CCTV cameras, will make women’s lives any safer.
  • Young people struggle to know how to deal with this kind of online sexual harassment and abuse. The numbers of young people who reported their experiences were staggeringly low with only 6% reporting it to the social media platform, 3% telling parents and a mere 1% reporting it to their school.
  • Rather than teaching women how to protect themselves, our research dating back over a decade shows there is a need for education that tackles the gendered and sexual inequities that normalise violent, predatory forms of masculinit
  • As recent petitions show, there is a demand from young people for better education, regardless of their gender, on issues such as consent, healthy relationships and sexual violence. And in an increasingly digital world, this education must account for everyday online practices, like pestering girls for nudes or sending unwanted dick pics, in addition to offline forms of sexual violence.
  • Education is not just needed for young people, but also for teachers, school leaders and parents.
  • Although our evaluation of these resources is ongoing, our preliminary findings show that schools adopting our training and policies have led to dramatic reductions in online sexual harassment, increased teacher confidence in handling these issues and improved student mental health.
cvanderloo

US has a long history of violence against Asian women - 1 views

theconversation.com/nce-against-asian-women-157533

asian american racism stereotypes bias violence

shared by cvanderloo on 26 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • The shooter himself, Robert Long, has said he was motivated to act violently because of his self-proclaimed “sex addiction.” He allegedly told investigators that the businesses he attacked represented “a temptation for him that he wanted to eliminate.”
  • Rosalind Chou, a sociologist, describes how in 2000, a group of white men kidnapped five Japanese female exchange students in Spokane, Washington, to fulfill their sexual fantasies of Asian female bondage, a subgenre of pornography.
  • The official assumption was that, unless proven otherwise, Chinese women seeking to enter the United States lacked moral character and were prostitutes.
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  • Some soldiers married Asian women and brought them home as war brides, while others primarily viewed Asian women as sexual objects. Both approaches perpetuated stereotypes of Asian women as sexually submissive, either as ideal wives or sexually exotic prostitutes.
  • In online digital pornography, Asian women are disproportionately presented as victims of rape, compared to white women or women of other racial backgrounds.
  • Harmful stereotypes of Asian women in American popular culture date back to at least the 19th century. Back then, American missionaries and military personnel in Asia viewed the women they met there as exotic and submissive.
  • The most recent high-profile example of this dynamic is the 2015 rape of a woman by white Stanford student Brock Turner. Not until 2019 did the woman, Chanel Miller, reveal her name and identity as an Asian American woman.
  • In March 2020, Asian American and Pacific Islander community organizations joined with San Francisco State University’s Asian American Studies Program to document incidents of anti-Asian racism occurring across the country during the COVID-19 pandemic.
  • The group has found that Asian women report hate incidents 2.3 times as often as Asian men.
  • Asian women are not the only targets of racial and sexual violence. Any non-white woman has a greater risk of these perils than white women do.
cvanderloo

Two stereotypes that diminish the humanity of the Atlanta shooting victims - and all As... - 0 views

theconversation.com/and-all-asian-americans-157762

asian american history racism Atlanta stereotypes bias

shared by cvanderloo on 26 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • Since the Atlanta spa shootings, the U.S. media has been working harder than usual to describe and understand Asian Americans.
  • One is that of Asian Americans as the “perpetual foreigner” – immigrants who constantly struggle, never assimilate.
  • Both stereotypes have been levied in tandem against Asian immigrants to the U.S. for centuries.
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  • In the mid-1800s, Chinese laborers made up the first significant wave of Asian immigration to the United States. Recruited during the Gold Rush and to build the Transcontinental Railroad, the men were described by employers like industrialist Leland Stanford as “quiet, peaceable, patient, industrious and economical.”
  • The model-minority myth emerged later. In 1965 the Hart-Celler Act opened immigration quotas that had previously favored Western Europeans.
  • Out-earning all other racial groups, Asian Americans became the “model minority,” a term first coined by sociologist William Petersen in a 1966 New York Times article, “Success Story: Japanese American style.”
  • Without the same educational and professional sponsorships as my father had, many in these later waves founded mom-and-pop businesses and peer lending networks. They gravitated toward blue-collar industries and “pink-collar” jobs in salons, food service or child care.
  • The women who worked and died at Young’s Asian Massage, Gold Spa and Aromatherapy Spa lived in this Asian America – not my father’s or mine.
  • Such workers make up the other side of the high-earning “model minority” statistic. That data masks the fact that Asian Americans have the highest income inequality of any racial group, with the top 10% of this population earning more than 10 times what the bottom 10% earns.
  • When Asian Americans are so easily, and so often, stereotyped, they become categories, not people – not individuals who make lives, raise families and do the best they can in their adopted homeland.
  • “My mother didn’t do anything wrong,” the son of 63-year-old Yong Ae Yue, the fan of Korean soap operas and cooking, told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “And she deserves the recognition that she is a human.”
cvanderloo

Kennewick Man will be reburied, but quandaries around human remains won't - 0 views

theconversation.com/round-human-remains-wont-59219

Kennewick Man research science history

shared by cvanderloo on 26 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • Following bitter disputes, five Native American groups in the Pacific Northwest have come together to facilitate the reburial of an individual they know as “Ancient One.
  • Some anthropologists were eager to scientifically test the bones hoping for clues about who the first Americans were and where they came from. But many Native Americans hesitated to support this scientific scrutiny (including tests which permanently destroy or damage the original bone), arguing it was disrespectful to their ancient ancestor. They wanted him laid to rest.
  • (NAGPRA). It aimed to address the problematic history behind museum human remains collections.
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  • Since NAGPRA passed in 1990, the National Park Service estimates over 50,000 sets of human remains have been repatriated in the United States.
  • Museums in the U.S. and Europe have collected and studied human remains for well over a century, with the practice gaining considerable momentum after the Civil War.
  • . The skeletons provided better data about diseases and migration, as well as information about historic diet, with potential impact for living populations.
  • For them, data gathering was simply not a priority. Instead, they sought to return their ancestors to the earth.
  • Presenting human remains as purely scientific specimens and historical curiosities hurt living descendants by treating entire populations as scientific resources rather than human beings. And by focusing mainly on nonwhite groups, the practice reinforced in subtle and direct ways the scientific racism permeating the era.
  • Hidden away from public view, the prehistoric remains were anything but forgotten. Many indigenous people came to view Kennewick Man as a symbol for the failings of the new NAGPRA law.
  • Last year, genetic testing finally proved something many people had suggested for some time: Kennewick Man is more closely related to Native Americans than any other living human group.
  • By some estimates, museums today house more than half a million individual Native American remains. Probably hundreds if not thousands of sets of skeletal remains will face these big questions in the coming decades.
  • Indicative of changing attitudes and ethical approaches to museum exhibition, recent calls to display Kennewick Man’s remains have largely been rebuked, despite potential for engaging large audiences.
  • Kennewick Man may be among the most high-profile cases of human remains going under the microscope – both in terms of the scientific study he was subject to and the intensity of the debate surrounding him – but he is certainly far from alone.
cvanderloo

US museums hold the remains of thousands of Black people - 1 views

theconversation.com/ousands-of-black-people-156558

racism america history research

shared by cvanderloo on 26 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • Among the human remains in Harvard University’s museum collections are those of 15 people who were probably enslaved African American people.
  • This dehumanizing history of collecting African American bodies as scientific specimens is not a problem just at Harvard.
  • However, scholars and activists across the U.S. are now seeking to recognize and redress the deep history of violence against Black bodies. Museums and society are finally confronting how the desires of science have at times eclipsed the demands of human rights.
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  • By one estimate, the Smithsonian Institution, Cleveland Museum of Natural History and Howard University hold the remains of some 2,000 African Americans among them. The total only increases when considering museums with remains from other populations across the African diaspora.
  • His collection eventually ended up at the University of Pennsylvania. Only last year did the university officially announce the collection had been removed from a shelved display within an archaeology classroom.
  • systematic collection of African American remains, as well as those of people from other marginalized communities, began with the work of Samuel George Morton.
  • Institutions long embraced such collections primarily for the pseudoscientific work of justifying racial hierarchies.
  • The U.S. Senate passed the African American Burial Grounds Network Act in December 2020. This bill would establish a voluntary network to identify and protect often at-risk African American cemeteries.
  • This work is necessary because many of the remains of Black people, like those of Native Americans, were taken without the consent of family, used in ways that contravened spiritual traditions, and treated with less respect than most others in society.
  • Even more importantly, the absence of a coordinated, national effort will mean the delay of justice for thousands of African American ancestors whose bodies have been, and continue to be, desecrated
cvanderloo

Sewage-testing robots process wastewater faster to predict COVID-19 outbreaks sooner - 0 views

theconversation.com/vid-19-outbreaks-sooner-156467

covid testing sewer UCSD robots technology research

shared by cvanderloo on 26 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • By using a sewage-handling robot, our laboratory has been able to detect coronavirus in wastewater 30 times faster than nonautomated large-scale systems.
  • When clinical studies emerged showing that people who test positive for SARS-CoV-2 shed the virus in their stool, the sewer seemed like an obvious place to look for it.
  • Surveillance depends on concentrating the viral particles from the wastewater to detect these low levels.
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  • Wastewater surveillance is especially useful as an early-alert system for high-risk areas, such as communities where undocumented residents may be cautious about individual testing.
  • Our new protocol concentrates 24 samples in a single 40-minute run.
  • The sewage-handling robot is equipped with a specialized magnetic head that snags the magnetic beads, with viruses attached.
  • Overall, our system can process 96 samples in 4.5 hours, dramatically reducing the time from specimen to result.
  • We’re now using the viral genome sequencing part of our system to track the emergence of new SARS-CoV-2 variants.
cvanderloo

Anosmia, the loss of smell caused by COVID-19, doesn't always go away quickly - but sme... - 0 views

theconversation.com/smell-training-may-help-154140

covid smell research impacts knowledge brain science

shared by cvanderloo on 26 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • What’s unique about COVID-19 is that it actually is not nasal congestion or that nasal inflammatory response that is causing the smell loss. The virus actually crosses the blood-brain barrier and gets into the nervous system.
  • Some people recover their ability to smell within a few days or weeks, but for some people it’s been going on for much longer.
    • cvanderloo
      cvanderloo on 26 Mar 21
       
      anosmia
  • Food doesn’t taste good anymore because how you perceive taste is really a combination of smell, taste and even the sense of touch. Some people are reporting weight loss due to loss of appetite, and they’re just not able to take pleasure in the things that they’ve previously found pleasurable.
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  • There’s research that suggests that our sense of smell can influence our attraction to certain people unconsciously.
  • There are also people and organizations doing smell training. Smell training is essentially smelling the same odors over and over so that you can retrain your body’s ability to detect and identify that odor.
  • It wasn’t set up specifically for COVID-19 patients but has been a pioneer in smell training.
cvanderloo

The U.S. wants Costa Rica to host refugees before they cross the border. Here's why - 0 views

theconversation.com/oss-the-border-heres-why-63989

Costa Rica refugee immigration border

shared by cvanderloo on 26 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • In July, the U.S. government announced a plan for Costa Rica to temporarily host up to 200 refugees from Central America while they are processed for placement in the U.S. or elsewhere.
  • The new scale and diversity of refugees is challenging tiny Costa Rica’s capacity to manage these populations and ensure protection of their human rights. The U.S. plan to send more refugees their way will only add to this challenge.
  • The plan for Costa Rica to temporarily house refugees is in addition to an existing program that helps Central American minors gain refugee status in the U.S.
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  • While the plan offers a short-term solution for protecting those most vulnerable to violence, it does not address the magnitude of the migration. In the first six months of the current fiscal year, the U.S. border patrol apprehended 120,700 people from the Northern Triangle countries attempting to enter the U.S. Some of those who cross the border will apply for asylum, but the majority will be sent back to their countries of origin and the violence they were fleeing.
  • Costa Rica is a major destination for migrants and refugees in the region, and immigrants account for 9 percent of the country’s population of 4.8 million. Like the United States, Costa Rica has seen a dramatic increase in arrivals of refugees from Northern Triangle countries, particularly El Salvador, since 2012
  • Central Americans moving to Costa Rica today often already have established social networks in Costa Rica –
  • Immigration officials expect to continue to see around 500 Colombian refugees arriving each year, despite the newly signed peace accord. Costa Rica has also seen a large increase in Venezuelans fleeing economic crisis.
  • Costa Rica has become a popular destination and transit country because of its relatively open borders and policies, its reputation as a champion of human rights and its relatively low levels of crime, violence and poverty. I
  • Over the past 10 years, the country has increased restrictions on immigration, hoping to discourage low-income economic migrants from Nicaragua from entering. These restrictions echo the national security logic of U.S. policies.
  • It neither addresses the underlying conditions of violence that refugees seek to escape nor strengthens regional governments’ abilities to deal with the arrival of these vulnerable populations.
cvanderloo

Incest case attests that, in Costa Rica, abortion is legal in name only - 0 views

theconversation.com/on-is-legal-in-name-only-75766

abortion rights women gender Latin America Costa Rics

shared by cvanderloo on 26 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • In Costa Rica, women have had the right to abortion since 1970. Well, more or less.
  • The concept of the “unpunished abortion”, established in article 121 of the penal code, permits the termination of a pregnancy as long the procedure is consensual, performed by a doctor (or, if necessary, by an authorised obstetrician), and is the only way to protect the life or health of the woman.
    • cvanderloo
      cvanderloo on 26 Mar 21
       
      "therapeutic abortion"
  • For many women whose pregnancies constitute a physical or emotional risk – including women carrying deformed fetuses that will never survive outside the womb, rape victims, and pregnant girls – abortion is never an option.
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  • The case is in question involves a 12-year-old girl known under the pseudonym Andrea, who was impregnated by her father and prevented from terminating her pregnancy.
  • On the other, the majority-Catholic country is not secular. And abortion continues to be taboo for health-care workers.
  • Andrea is depressed, says her mother, barely eating, suffering extreme nausea from the pregnancy and – critically – says she does not want to have the baby.
  • The case demonstrates that even when confronted with a 12-year-old incest victim, who says that she wants to die and to abort her pregnancy, Costa Rica’s legal and medical establishment do not offer legal or medical responses
  • Other Central American countries, including Honduras, El Salvador and Nicaragua also violate women’s rights by outlawing abortion under any circumstances, even when a woman’s life is in danger.
  • The highly visible international cases of Ana and Aurora have compelled the Costa Rican government to write a technical norm that it insists will further enshrine legal protection for medical personnel who perform an abortion to avoid endangering the life and health of a pregnant woman.
  • And none too soon; stories of dangerous clandestine abortions circulate.
cvanderloo

Female presidents don't always help women while in office, study in Latin America finds - 0 views

theconversation.com/y-in-latin-america-finds-91707

women mend gender equality president Latin America study research

shared by cvanderloo on 26 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • Between 2006 and 2018, four women served as presidents in the region.
  • For gender researchers like ourselves, this is a rare chance to assess how the president’s gender influences policy in Latin American countries. Global research has confirmed that having women in the highest echelons of power leads to greater political engagement among women and girls. We wanted to know what Latin America’s four “presidentas” had done to promote gender equality while in power.
  • Latin Americans who have a woman for president are also much less likely than other respondents to say they think men make better political leaders than women.
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  • Take abortion, for example, which is largely outlawed in heavily Catholic Latin America.
  • populists
    • cvanderloo
      cvanderloo on 26 Mar 21
       
      populist: a person, especially a politician, who strives to appeal to ordinary people who feel that their concerns are disregarded by established elite groups
  • Fernández didn’t just uphold Argentina’s harsh abortion restrictions – she actually cut off funding for the country’s universal contraception program, too. Rather than focus on women’s issues, her Justicialist Party expanded social welfare programs, including a hallmark cash-transfer program that subsidizes families with young children.
  • We found they did somewhat better on childcare, which enables women to return to the labor market after becoming mothers.
  • Improvements began in the early 1990s. Back then, nearly every Latin American country adopted some form of gender quota, which requires political parties to nominate a certain percentage of women for legislative office.
  • In every country where women pushed stronger gender quotas through Congress, those initiatives became law.
cvanderloo

Culture matters a lot in successfully managing a pandemic - and many countries that did... - 0 views

theconversation.com/had-one-thing-in-common-152375

research covid pandemic world women egalitarian

shared by cvanderloo on 26 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • Culture matters more than a leader’s gender in how a nation survives a global pandemic, according to a study I conducted on gender and COVID-19 management, which was published in December in the journal PLOS ONE.
  • We identified no statistically significant differences in deaths based on the gender of the country’s leader.
  • We identified two cultural variables with a statistically significant effect on death rate: individualism and “power distance”
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  • Instead, we found that pandemic outcomes hinged primarily on how egalitarian a country is.
    • cvanderloo
      cvanderloo on 26 Mar 21
       
      egalitarian: relating to or believing in the principle that all people are equal and deserve equal rights and opportunities
  • Leaders do have important power during a crisis. They can institute emergency policies – from mask requirements to stay-at-home orders – to halt the virus’s spread. But it takes everyone’s cooperation to make these measures work.
  • Egalitarian countries also tend to reject traditional gender roles, so are more likely to elect women leaders. All 16 women-led countries in our study rated as “egalitarian.”
  • Women leaders enjoyed rare latitude during COVID-19 that allowed them to do everything in their power to manage it.
cvanderloo

What public school students are allowed to say on social media may be about to change - 0 views

theconversation.com/-may-be-about-to-change-154894

school speech education bias psychology research technology social media

shared by cvanderloo on 23 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • schools are increasingly faced with the question of whether they can discipline students for remarks made online about school or school officials.
  • In general, student speech in public schools has less protection than speech by adults in the community at large.
  • Tinker v. Des Moines School District decision
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  • As a result, speech that may be protected for adults outside of the school environment – like offensive or vulgar language – can be restricted for students inside of the school environment.
  • as long as other requirements are met – the speech is lewd, school-sponsored or involves illegal drug use.
  • Some courts have considered other factors to determine whether there was a sufficient connection between the speech and the school before applying Tinker to off-campus speech.
  • They’ve considered whether the speech threatens the school’s obligation to provide a safe learning environment – for example, online bullying – or whether the speech is “reasonably likely” to reach the school or affect the school environment - for example by being directed at the school, school officials or other students.
  • A few courts have ruled that Tinker does not apply to the off-campus speech at issue in their cases because it did not occur in the school environment
  • That the Supreme Court has agreed to hear the case does not provide any indication of how the court may decide the case.
  • Whatever decision the court makes, it will likely provide some guidance to students, parents and school officials about what students can and cannot say on social media.
cvanderloo

3 ways companies could offer more father-friendly policies that will help women - 1 views

theconversation.com/es-that-will-help-women-154155

men women research stigma education brain science

shared by cvanderloo on 23 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • Family-friendly policies such as flextime, telecommuting and a compressed workweek have been seen as supporting women’s traditional roles and hence as more needed for women to take advantage of.
  • some studies show men’s usage has been stigmatized and discouraged – and may even hurt their careers.
  • Companies could overcome these stereotypes and fears by encouraging men to take advantage of these types of family-friendly policies and by proclaiming that there’s no penalty if the reason is to take on more domestic responsibilities.
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  • Yet research shows that men who take parental leave become equal partners in raising their children, beyond the time they take off before or after a baby is born.
  • In many countries where parental leave is mandated, such as Canada and across Europe, leave can be shared between men and women any way parents like. Data show that mothers typically take the majority of that leave, while fathers take very little.
  • Research shows that in nations that foster a culture that rewards overtime work, men do less housework and women do more.
  • Employers need to encourage men to use them, without fear of repercussions, for the policies to be successful.
cvanderloo

3 medical innovations fueled by COVID-19 that will outlast the pandemic - 0 views

theconversation.com/ll-outlast-the-pandemic-156464

COVID innovations science health pandemic medicine knowledge research technology

shared by cvanderloo on 17 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • When COVID-19 struck, mRNA vaccines in particular were ready to be put to a real-world test. The 94% efficacy of the mRNA vaccines surpassed health officials’ highest expectations.
  • DNA and mRNA vaccines offer huge advantages over traditional types of vaccines, since they use only genetic code from a pathogen – rather than the entire virus or bacteria.
  • Gene-based vaccines also produce precise and effective immune responses. They stimulate not only antibodies that block an infection, but also a strong T cell response that can clear an infection if one occurs.
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  • These devices can measure a person’s temperature, heart rate, level of activity and other biometrics. With this information, researchers have been able to track and detect COVID-19 infections even before people notice they have any symptoms.
  • Wearables can detect symptoms of COVID-19 or other illnesses before symptoms are noticeable. While they have proved to be capable of detecting sickness early, the symptoms wearables detect are not unique to COVID-19.
  • So a logical way to look for new drugs to treat a specific disease is to study individual genes and proteins that are directly affected by that disease.
  • But this idea of mapping the protein interactions of diseases to look for novel drug targets doesn’t apply just to the coronavirus. We have now used this approach on other pathogens as well as other diseases including cancer, neurodegenerative and psychiatric disorders.
cvanderloo

When Americans recall their roots, they open up to immigration - 0 views

theconversation.com/-open-up-to-immigration-154685

biden trump USA immigration americans research knowledge bias

shared by cvanderloo on 17 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Vice President Kamala Harris, Attorney General Merrick Garland and Xavier Becerra, nominee for Health and Human Services secretary, have conveyed similar messages about their immigrant roots.
  • Polls suggest 60% of Americans support some of its policies, such as a path to citizenship for immigrants in the country illegally.
  • Yet this history of migration has coexisted with xenophobia: a form of prejudice against people from other countries.
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  • Migration is a key component of the American story. Successive waves of migrants have reshaped the U.S. socially and politically from the 16th century to the present.
  • public opinion toward immigration has also polarized along partisan lines.
  • Respondents – including both Democrats and Republicans – who were randomly assigned to think about their family history before telling us their immigration preferences expressed more favorable feelings toward immigrants.
  • Negativity toward migrants, stoked by factually inaccurate threat narratives – that migrants steal jobs and overrun schools and hospitals – is the norm in many countries. But reminding people what they share with immigrants can help build support for more inclusive policies.
cvanderloo

Colleges are eliminating sports teams - and runners and golfers are paying more of a pr... - 0 views

theconversation.com/l-or-basketball-players-148965

sports NCAA running XC track football basketball economics college US

shared by cvanderloo on 17 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • Since COVID-19 emerged, dozens of colleges and universities have announced the elimination of different intercollegiate athletics teams.
  • But the majority of closures came at regional and local campuses that participate in the NCAA’s Division II and Division III, or the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics. Also, around 30 teams were eliminated by community colleges.
  • The 78 schools we examined spend around $87 million a year to keep all those teams going.
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  • Most university administrators don’t expect their athletics programs to make a lot of money. Only about 25 of the 1,100 NCAA member schools’ athletics departments generate a profit.
  • public universities with NCAA Division I football teams received about 6% more in state funding annually than other institutions.
  • Many colleges and universities depend on varsity sports – like rowing, track and swimming – to attract more students to attend.
  • Most students who play college sports – including all of those at Division III and Ivy League programs – are not on an athletic scholarship.
  • Playing sports can also help with the transition into college. An intercollegiate team provides a ready-made social group that can help the new team member adjust to their new school.
  • Research also shows that hiring managers value college sports experience
  • The financial savings for athletics departments are immediate and obvious. But a longer-term impact will be seen on enrollment, campus life and the communities where colleges are located.
cvanderloo

St Patrick's day: why so many US presidents like to say 'I'm Irish' - 0 views

theconversation.com/ts-like-to-say-im-irish-157181

ireland UK USA biden trump kennedy presidents government

shared by cvanderloo on 17 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • Biden is the most strongly identified Irish-American in the White House since John F Kennedy, the only other Catholic president.
  • rish nationalist sentiments run high in the US, especially among its large diaspora. US presidents frequently indulge these views, at least symbolically. But, in practical terms, they have had little impact on the US-UK relationship.
  • More than 30 million people in the US – about one in ten Americans – identify as “Irish”.
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  • there are over six times as many people in the US who claim to be Irish in the US as those living in the Republic of Ireland itself.
  • If measured by when their last ancestor left Ireland, Joe Biden is no more Irish than Barack Obama
  • Perhaps the most dramatic example of this was shown by Jimmy Carter, who – on St Patrick’s Day 1976 – marched down Fifth Avenue in New York wearing a badge emblazoned with the slogan “England, get out of Ireland”.
  • With Donald Trump being the exception, nearly every president of the last half-century has identified as “Irish”, even when the evidence of such a link has been tenuous.
  • In spite of this, US presidential administrations have sought a more balanced approach. The US considers the UK to be one of its most valuable and important strategic partners. US presidents work closely with British governments, while also offering symbolic affirmation for Ireland.
  • While Biden’s personal affinities are clear, we should expect him to follow his predecessors in placing US security interests before Irish nationalist affections.
cvanderloo

Joe Biden's US$1.9 trillion stimulus won't be enough to reignite world economy on its own - 0 views

theconversation.com/orld-economy-on-its-own-157252

economics biden stimulus covid research

shared by cvanderloo on 17 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • The economic orthodoxy has long been that governments should try to balance their books and leave all the heavy lifting in managing their economies to central banks.
  • The economic orthodoxy has long been that governments should try to balance their books and leave all the heavy lifting in managing their economies to central banks.
    • cvanderloo
      cvanderloo on 17 Mar 21
       
      economic orthodoxy
  • “we are all Keynesians now”
    • cvanderloo
      cvanderloo on 17 Mar 21
       
      Keynes
  • ...6 more annotations...
  • The impact of this fiscal stimulus on the US economy will depend on how consumers and producers respond. Simply, will consumers spend more and not save their extra income, and will producers invest more and not scrap capacity?
  • Other countries will also benefit from the Biden stimulus because of the size of the US economy and its global links.
  • If Americans respond to the opening up of the US economy by spending their income and pent-up savings on consumer services – dining out, trips to the gym, theatre, cinema and so on – then the impact on other countries will be much less, since most of these services are produced locally.
  • But if American consumers buy more imported goods as a result of the stimulus, it will boost other countries’ economies
  • The biggest threat is that a booming US economy could lead to a rising dollar and higher global interest rates. This may stall recovery elsewhere and will be a major burden for emerging economies that have debts denominated in US dollars.
  • Overall, however, the world economy will benefit from the stimulus, and all the more so if other high-income countries spend on the same scale – there is no reason why they cannot do this. B
cvanderloo

Why white supremacists and QAnon enthusiasts are obsessed - but very wrong - about the ... - 0 views

theconversation.com/ut-the-byzantine-empire-154994

quanon rome byzantine history research knowledge

shared by cvanderloo on 17 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • Byzantium – or more properly, the medieval Roman Empire – controlled much of the Mediterranean at the height of its territorial rule in the mid-sixth century.
  • His premise is that when Rome fell, the Byzantine Empire went on to preserve a white-European civilization. This isn’t true.
  • Mentions of Byzantium are scattered across message boards frequented by both white supremacists and QAnon enthusiasts – who spout conspiracy theories about a deep-state cabal of Satan-worshipping, blood-drinking pedophiles running the world.
  • ...5 more annotations...
  • “It all makes sense when you learn that the books of the bible are plagiarized copies of the chronology of Byzantium, and so is the mythical Roman Empire, that never existed in Italy but was in fact centered in Constantinople.”
  • In some renditions, Byzantium is, by way of some hazy illuminati connections, the origins of the “deep state” –
  • For many on the far right, talk of Byzantium is cloaked in Islamophobia – both online and in tragic real-life events.
  • This “reconquest” of Constantinople had even been tied in some online posts to the presidency of Donald Trump, with images circulated online seemingly prophesying that it would happen under his tenure.
  • No matter the provenance of the recent interest in Byzantium from America’s white supremacists and conspiracy theorists, one thing is clear: It is based on a very warped idea of the Byzantine Empire that has emerged out of the empire’s fraught place in our histories, caught between ancient and medieval, spirituality and bureaucracy.
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