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18 Mar 19:36

What is the ‘great replacement theory’? A scholar of race relations explains

by Rodney Coates, Professor of Critical Race and Ethnic Studies, Miami University
Members of a white supremacist group demonstrate near the National Archives in Washington on Jan. 21, 2022. AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana

The “great replacement theory,” whose origins date back to the late 19th century, argues that Jews and some Western elites are conspiring to replace white Americans and Europeans with people of non-European descent, particularly Asians and Africans.

The conspiracy evolved from a series of false ideas that, over time, stoked the fears of white people: In 1892, British-Australian author and politician Charles Pearson warned that white people would “wake to find ourselves elbowed and hustled, and perhaps even thrust aside by people whom we looked down.” The massive influx of immigrants into Europe at the time fostered some of these fears and resulted in “white extinction anxiety.” In the U.S., it resulted in policies targeting immigration in the late 19th and early 20th century.

In France, journalist Édouard Drumont, leader of an antisemitic movement, wrote articles in the late 19th century imagining how Jews would destroy French culture. In 1909, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, an Italian poet and supporter of Benito Mussolini, argued that war and fascism were the only cure for the world. Fascism, then and now, worked to ensure white dominance.

This was followed by the eugenics movement, an erroneous and racist theory that supported forced sterilization of Black people, the mentally ill and other marginalized groups, who were all deemed “unfit.”

The 1978 book entitled “The Turner Diaries,” a fictional futuristic account of the overthrow of the United States government, further contributed to white nationalist ideas.

Collectively, these gave rise to a global movement that attracted a wide range of white supremacist, xenophobic and anti-immigration conspiracy theories. These theories were formally codified in the work of Frenchman Renaud Camus, first in his 2010 book “L'Abécédaire de l'in-nocence” and elaborated in his 2011 book “Le Grand Remplacement.”

Camus argued that ethnic French and white Europeans were being replaced physically, culturally and politically by nonwhite people. He believed that liberal immigration policies and the dramatic decline in white birth rates were threatening European civilization and traditions.

Why this conspiracy theory matters

These false ideas promulgated the spread of white supremacy, which has contributed to terrorist attacks, state violence and propaganda campaigns in the U.S and parts of Europe.

On Aug. 11, 2017, during a “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, white nationalists chanted “You will not replace us” and “Jews will not replace us.” In spring 2019, Belgian politician Dries Van Langenhove repeatedly posted on social media, “We are being replaced.”

In recent years, nonwhite immigrants have been the target of xenophobia. Migrants, especially from Mexico, are accused of bringing criminal activities to American cities. Immigrants have also been falsely accused of smuggling fentanyl into the U.S. The reality is that immigrants commit far fewer crimes than those born in the U.S.

Impact of the theory and spread of hate

In less than two decades, the theory has become a major idea, with as many as 60% of the French population believing some aspects of it. According to that survey, they are worried or at least concerned that they might be replaced. In the U.K. and the U.S., close to one-third of those polled believe that white people are systematically being replaced by nonwhite immigrants. Some in the U.S. fear that America might lose its culture and identity as a result.

Being aware of conspiracy theories and standing up to hatred, I argue, can help societies deal with the continuing fallout of extreme xenophobia, racist rants, the rise of white supremacy and the victimization of innocent people.

The Conversation

Rodney Coates does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

18 Mar 19:27

Online wellness content: 3 ways to tell evidence-based health information from pseudoscience

by Michelle Cohen, Adjunct Assistant Professor, Department of Family Medicine, Queen's University, Ontario
Health information is increasingly being shared online, and often the borders between legitimate health expertise and pseudoscience aren't clear. (Shutterstock)

“I drink borax!” proclaims the smiling TikToker. Holding up a box of the laundry additive, she rhymes off a list of its supposed health benefits: “Balances testosterone and estrogen. It’s a powerhouse anti-inflammatory…. It’s amazing for arthritis, osteoporosis…. And obviously it’s great for your gut health.”

Videos like these prompted health authorities to warn the public about the dangers of ingesting this toxic detergent — and away from such viral messaging that promotes unsubstantiated and medically dangerous health claims.


Read more: A new TikTok trend has people drinking toxic borax. An expert explains the risks – and how to read product labels


Health information is increasingly being shared online, and often the borders between legitimate health expertise and pseudoscience aren’t clear. While the internet can be a valuable and accessible way to learn about health, it’s also a place rife with disinformation and grift, as unscrupulous influencers exploit people’s fears about their bodies.

Evidence and influencers

Collage of quotes about drinking borax
Some TikTokers claimed drinking borax had health benefits. In fact, borax is toxic and shouldn’t be ingested. (Michelle Cohen)

In my medical practice, I can usually track online wellness trends, such as a patient refusing a medication because of online claims — many of which are false — that it lowers testosterone, or the several months when it seemed everyone was taking turmeric for joint pain, or the patients who request an ivermectin prescription in case they catch COVID.

So how does someone who simply wants to learn more about the human body sift through the information? How to separate bad-faith grift from good advice?

Wellness influencers tap into a truth about how we process information: it’s more trustworthy when it comes from a person we feel like we know. That’s why a charismatic personality’s Instagram account that uses intimate stories to promote parasocial attachment — the sense of being part of a community — is more memorable than a website offering dry recitations of evidence.

But as social media has become ubiquitous, health experts have caught on that sharing their personal side alongside reliable advice can be a good use of their platform. At first glance, these two groups may seem similar, but the following tips can help determine if the person posting health advice is actually knowledgeable on the topic:

1) Are they selling something?

Rarely do popular wellness influencers post out of the goodness of their hearts. Almost invariably these accounts are trying to profit from the virality of their content.

Whether it’s a supplement store, a diet book, a subscription to a lifestyle community or a Masterclass series, the end goal is the same: transform social media influence into sales. Gushing over life-changing benefits from something the promoter is selling should always prompt skepticism.

Some legitimate health experts also sell advice, usually in the form of newsletters, books or podcasts, and this is worth keeping in mind. However, there’s a big difference between selling a subscription to a health newsletter that discusses evidence and promoting your own supplement shop, where your financial motives shape how you present the information.

2) What are the boundaries of their expertise?

True expertise in a subject requires years of dedicated study and practice. That’s why people are rarely experts in more than one or two domains, and no one is a pan-expert on everything.

If a wellness influencer promotes themselves as erudite on all health topics, that’s actually an excellent indication of their lack of knowledge. A real health expert knows the limitations of their knowledge and can call on others’ expertise when needed. So the podcast host who opines on every health issue is substantially less worthwhile to listen to than the podcast host who brings on guest experts for topics outside their scope.

3) How do they talk about science?

Science is a process of discovery, not a static philosophy, so scientists emphasize talking about current evidence rather than “truth”, which is more of a faith-based concept.

If someone wants to post about their personal wellness philosophy or their spiritual journey and how it makes them feel, that’s fine. But dropping in biology jargon without explanation or name-checking one or two questionable studies without fulsome discussion isn’t a meaningful way to engage with the evidence on a health topic.

Science-based information should acknowledge where data are uncertain and where more research is needed. Using the pretext of science to lend credence to a personal “truth” is a form of pseudoscience and should raise red flags.

These three principles are a good framework for deciding whether an influencer’s health content is worth consuming or whether they’re simply trying to sell a new supplement or spread viral disinformation about something like borax.

As online health information becomes easier to find (or harder to avoid), this framework can help people quickly scan a wellness influencer’s profile and make a more informed decision about engaging with their content. This is an important type of media literacy that anyone spending time online should cultivate — for the sake of their health.

The Conversation

Michelle Cohen does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

18 Mar 19:20

AI vs. elections: 4 essential reads about the threat of high-tech deception in politics

by Eric Smalley, Science + Technology Editor
Like it or not, AI is already playing a role in the 2024 presidential election. kirstypargeter/iStock via Getty Images

It’s official. Joe Biden and Donald Trump have secured the necessary delegates to be their parties’ nominees for president in the 2024 election. Barring unforeseen events, the two will be formally nominated at the party conventions this summer and face off at the ballot box on Nov. 5.

It’s a safe bet that, as in recent elections, this one will play out largely online and feature a potent blend of news and disinformation delivered over social media. New this year are powerful generative artificial intelligence tools such as ChatGPT and Sora that make it easier to “flood the zone” with propaganda and disinformation and produce convincing deepfakes: words coming from the mouths of politicians that they did not actually say and events replaying before our eyes that did not actually happen.

The result is an increased likelihood of voters being deceived and, perhaps as worrisome, a growing sense that you can’t trust anything you see online. Trump is already taking advantage of the so-called liar’s dividend, the opportunity to discount your actual words and deeds as deepfakes. Trump implied on his Truth Social platform on March 12, 2024, that real videos of him shown by Democratic House members were produced or altered using artificial intelligence.

The Conversation has been covering the latest developments in artificial intelligence that have the potential to undermine democracy. The following is a roundup of some of those articles from our archive.

1. Fake events

The ability to use AI to make convincing fakes is particularly troublesome for producing false evidence of events that never happened. Rochester Institute of Technology computer security researcher Christopher Schwartz has dubbed these situation deepfakes.

“The basic idea and technology of a situation deepfake are the same as with any other deepfake, but with a bolder ambition: to manipulate a real event or invent one from thin air,” he wrote.

Situation deepfakes could be used to boost or undermine a candidate or suppress voter turnout. If you encounter reports on social media of events that are surprising or extraordinary, try to learn more about them from reliable sources, such as fact-checked news reports, peer-reviewed academic articles or interviews with credentialed experts, Schwartz said. Also, recognize that deepfakes can take advantage of what you are inclined to believe.


Read more: Events that never happened could influence the 2024 presidential election – a cybersecurity researcher explains situation deepfakes


How AI puts disinformation on steroids.

2. Russia, China and Iran take aim

From the question of what AI-generated disinformation can do follows the question of who has been wielding it. Today’s AI tools put the capacity to produce disinformation in reach for most people, but of particular concern are nations that are adversaries of the United States and other democracies. In particular, Russia, China and Iran have extensive experience with disinformation campaigns and technology.

“There’s a lot more to running a disinformation campaign than generating content,” wrote security expert and Harvard Kennedy School lecturer Bruce Schneier. “The hard part is distribution. A propagandist needs a series of fake accounts on which to post, and others to boost it into the mainstream where it can go viral.”

Russia and China have a history of testing disinformation campaigns on smaller countries, according to Schneier. “Countering new disinformation campaigns requires being able to recognize them, and recognizing them requires looking for and cataloging them now,” he wrote.


Read more: AI disinformation is a threat to elections − learning to spot Russian, Chinese and Iranian meddling in other countries can help the US prepare for 2024


3. Healthy skepticism

But it doesn’t require the resources of shadowy intelligence services in powerful nations to make headlines, as the New Hampshire fake Biden robocall produced and disseminated by two individuals and aimed at dissuading some voters illustrates. That episode prompted the Federal Communications Commission to ban robocalls that use voices generated by artificial intelligence.

AI-powered disinformation campaigns are difficult to counter because they can be delivered over different channels, including robocalls, social media, email, text message and websites, which complicates the digital forensics of tracking down the sources of the disinformation, wrote Joan Donovan, a media and disinformation scholar at Boston University.

“In many ways, AI-enhanced disinformation such as the New Hampshire robocall poses the same problems as every other form of disinformation,” Donovan wrote. “People who use AI to disrupt elections are likely to do what they can to hide their tracks, which is why it’s necessary for the public to remain skeptical about claims that do not come from verified sources, such as local TV news or social media accounts of reputable news organizations.”


Read more: FCC bans robocalls using deepfake voice clones − but AI-generated disinformation still looms over elections


How to spot AI-generated images.

4. A new kind of political machine

AI-powered disinformation campaigns are also difficult to counter because they can include bots – automated social media accounts that pose as real people – and can include online interactions tailored to individuals, potentially over the course of an election and potentially with millions of people.

Harvard political scientist Archon Fung and legal scholar Lawrence Lessig described these capabilities and laid out a hypothetical scenario of national political campaigns wielding these powerful tools.

Attempts to block these machines could run afoul of the free speech protections of the First Amendment, according to Fung and Lessig. “One constitutionally safer, if smaller, step, already adopted in part by European internet regulators and in California, is to prohibit bots from passing themselves off as people,” they wrote. “For example, regulation might require that campaign messages come with disclaimers when the content they contain is generated by machines rather than humans.”


Read more: How AI could take over elections – and undermine democracy


This story is a roundup of articles from The Conversation’s archives.


This article is part of Disinformation 2024: a series examining the science, technology and politics of deception in elections.

You may also be interested in:

Disinformation is rampant on social media – a social psychologist explains the tactics used against you

Misinformation, disinformation and hoaxes: What’s the difference?

Disinformation campaigns are murky blends of truth, lies and sincere beliefs – lessons from the pandemic


The Conversation
06 Mar 20:42

Maria Sibylla Merian’s Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensium (1705)

Set of spectacular engravings of insects and their floral abodes — one of the first natural histories of Suriname.

06 Mar 20:23

The Black history knowledge gap is widening – and GOP politicians are making it worse

by Paul Ringel, Professor of U.S. History, High Point University
Andra Day performs 'Lift Every Voice and Sing' prior to Super Bowl LVIII on Feb. 11, 2024. Perry Knotts/Getty Image

On the day of the Super Bowl, Matt Gaetz, a Republican member of Congress from Florida, publicly announced that he would not watch one of the most popular sporting events in America.

The reason for his boycott?

“They’re desecrating America’s national anthem by playing something called the ‘Black national anthem,’” Gaetz explained.

The song he criticized is “Lift Every Voice and Sing,” which was written by James Weldon Johnson and his brother Rosamond Johnson in 1903. For more than a century, this hymn has celebrated the faith, persistence and hope of Black Americans.

“Lift Every Voice and Sing” was sung at the Super Bowl by Andra Day, after Reba McEntire sang the national anthem.

Whether or not Gaetz’s racist antic was the result of ignorance about the song’s legacy, it is clear that there is a knowledge gap between Black and white students on our nation’s racial history. This gap makes it vital to teach high school and college students more African American history, not less, as Republicans have mandated in many states, including Gaetz’s home state of Florida.

As someone who teaches Black history to mostly white college students, I have seen how learning this subject can create the understanding and empathy needed to bridge America’s racial and political divides.

Who was James Weldon Johnson?

In my Black American Narratives class, we are currently reading James Weldon Johnson’s 1933 autobiography “Along This Way.” Johnson’s life provides a rare example of the opportunities that existed for very few Black Americans after the Civil War and before white Southerners wrested away those possibilities through the creation of Jim Crow laws and social customs that maintained white supremacy.

Man in suit holds hold-fashioned telephone
James Weldon Johnson became the first Black American to head the NAACP in 1920. Library of Congress

Johnson’s parents grew up free – his father in New York and his mother in the Bahamas. Both were literate at a time when 80% of Black Americans were not. These advantages helped them become homeowners when many Southern Black families lacked the money to buy land.

Raised with this rare opportunity, Johnson thrived.

He graduated from Atlanta University in 1894 during an era when only about 2% of 18-to-24-year-olds in the U.S. received any college education. He became a high school principal in his native city of Jacksonville, Florida, the editor of a daily newspaper and the first Black Floridian to pass the state bar exam.

He published poetry and novels, produced musical theater and served as U.S. consul to Venezuela. He was a professor at New York University and Fisk University and the first Black executive secretary of the NAACP. While Johnson’s successes were extraordinary, they illuminate what Black Americans could achieve when provided with even the narrowest avenues for advancement.

An old NAACP poster calls attention to 3,436 people lynched between 1889 and 1922.
The NAACP produced this anti-lynching poster in 1922. National Museum of African American History and Culture

The accomplishments of Johnson and contemporaries such as Moses Fleetwood Walker, Ida B. Wells and George Washington Carver help students today understand that Black Americans’ struggles were predominantly the product of barriers created by white supremacists rather than their own shortcomings.

The knowledge gap

Normally, I play “Lift Every Voice and Sing” for the students when we reach the part of Johnson’s autobiography that covers his writing of the song, but the immediate relevance of Andra Day’s version justified playing it a few classes earlier this semester.

When I asked who knew the song, both Black students in my class said they did, but only two of the 24 white students raised their hands. That gap has remained fairly consistent during the four years I have taught Johnson’s autobiography.

We discussed the importance of the song, then turned to that day’s assignment.

In his book, Johnson discusses his experience as a summer school teacher in rural Georgia during the 1890s. He described those months as his “first tryout with social forces” and “the beginning of my knowledge of my own people as a ‘race.’”

We reviewed his first encounters with “White” and “Colored” signs on bathroom doors, and the laws and unspoken traditions of segregation that this young man learned during his time in the rural South.

Students often regard these “social forces” as ancient history, so I explained that these same traditions caused the murder of 14-year-old Emmett Till in 1955 after he spoke to a white woman while buying candy in a Mississippi store. They were startled to hear Till was born the same year as my father, making him about the same age as many of their grandparents.

Then I mentioned that even in 2012, Trayvon Martin was killed for walking through a predominantly white neighborhood at night while wearing a hoodie.

Silence.

“How many of you know about Trayvon Martin?”

The two Black students raised their hands. The white students looked at me blankly.

A Black woman stands in front of a church and holds a poster of a Black man wearing a hoodie.
A Trayvon Martin supporter displays her sign during a march in Florida on March 31, 2012 . Mario Tama/Getty Images

Stunned, I told them the story of Martin’s death, but in the moment I couldn’t remember his killer’s name.

One of the Black students quietly said “Zimmerman.”

These students were only 6 or 7 when Martin died, so not remembering the event is understandable. Not learning about it since then highlights the continuing racial divide in our children’s education.

When students do learn this history, it can literally improve the culture of a campus and a city.

Students from these classes have helped to strengthen the relationship between the Black Student Union and the Jewish student organization Hillel on our campus. They have also conducted interviews with alumni of the local high school who attended classes during the racially segregated days of Jim Crow.

In another example of gaining firsthand knowledge, students have attended Sunday services at a local historically Black church – a first experience for most of them. These students subsequently helped the congregation build a mobile exhibit about the church’s history.

Despite what Republican politicians have claimed, learning this history does not generate guilt or shame among students. It often inspires them how to reach across cultural divides in ways they have never attempted before.

The value of Black history

Most students enter my class knowing only of Rev. Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, Rosa Parks’ bus protests or Malcolm X’s activism. Some may know about Jim Crow.

But white students tend to know little about the recent history of racial violence in the U.S. They are familiar with George Floyd and the protests that emerged after his murder by a white police officer, but few other recent victims of this kind of violence.

Ferguson, Missouri, where protests led by Black Lives Matter emerged after 18-year-old Michael Brown was shot and killed by a white police officer, means little to them.

The problem is not a general lack of historical knowledge but its disparity along racial lines. Black students do know this history, or at least more of it than their white peers.

Bridging this knowledge gap is made more difficult because today’s young Americans of different races do not sit in the same classrooms as a result of segregated schools in segregated communities – nor do they learn the same history.

Its my belief that schools fail all students when they omit the difficult parts of U.S. history. Teaching Black history can create understanding and spark rare discussions on challenging topics across racial lines.

Those of us who actually teach these subjects recognize these benefits – no matter what the politicians say.

The Conversation

Paul Ringel does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

04 Mar 19:54

Should presidents have immunity from the law? The US Supreme Court is to hear Trump’s case

by Michelle Bentley, Reader in International Relations, Royal Holloway University of London

The US Supreme Court has agreed to hear a ground-breaking legal case that promises to rock the 2024 election. The case relates to former president Donald Trump and presidential immunity, and more specifically whether a former US president has to answer to civil and criminal charges against them.

US presidential immunity is a heavily contested issue. It has been argued that presidents should not face at least some types of legal action for the decisions they make in office. But does this mean that a president gets to run under a different law to everyone else? And under what exact circumstances?

For a country that prides itself on equality, these are difficult questions. And the Supreme Court’s answers will not just potentially change constitutional doctrine, but also what happens in this year’s presidential election.

Trump is currently facing four charges that he interfered with the 2020 election, including his alleged involvement in the controversial 2021 Capitol Hill riots. The charges were brought by the US Department of Justice through the Washington DC court system.

The trial was supposed to start on March 4. Yet Trump is trying to have the charges dismissed on the basis of absolute presidential immunity.

The Supreme Court deliberations will delay the other trial, which alleges electoral interference and could potentially remove Trump’s eligibility to run for president.

Absolute immunity is the idea that a president cannot have legal charges brought against them for actions they undertake while in office. This may seem like common sense. Holding a president legally accountable for their job could see them dragged into court for everything they do in running the country – which is simply unworkable.

On the flip side, why should the president be subject to different legal standards than anyone else? There is nothing in the US constitution that explicitly grants full presidential immunity – but there is a lot about people being equal.

If that sounds messy, it is. There’s no consensus as to when and if immunity should apply. Previous US court decisions have upheld immunity in some cases (for instance 1982 Nixon v Fitzgerald) and denied it in others, such as 1994 Clinton v Jones.

These decisions have often come down to what has been called the “outer perimeter” test. Did the events happen within the context of the president carrying out their official duties? If not, the president is still potentially liable it was ruled.

Testing cases

This test is the key issue for Trump and the upcoming case. Trump’s claim to immunity was turned down by an appeal court earlier this year on such grounds. Three judges said immunity did not apply because Trump was a presidential candidate at the time and not a president acting in line with official duties. No dice.

Yet, the ruling also went into deeper issues concerning what it means to apply a different standard of law to the president. The judges said that immunity in this case would mean Trump had “unbounded authority to commit crimes that would neutralise the most fundamental check on executive power – the recognition and implementation of election results”.

The judges highlighted wider concerns that immunity could be used to abuse the very system it was designed to uphold.

We see these same broader issues come to the fore now the issue of immunity has been kicked up to the Supreme Court, three of whose nine judges were appointed by Trump himself.

The Supreme Court is the final arbiter in the US legal system and they have the ability to set legal precedent as such. The judgement will undoubtedly be a landmark as this issue is not just about Trump but US constitutional politics and executive power.

The court has the opportunity to make a major statement about the status of presidential immunity, or at least to establish clear standards for when immunity applies. The decision could decide whether or not presidents and former presidents can be brought to trial in the future.

Whatever the actual decision, it will be controversial. Former speaker Nancy Pelosi said on X (formerly Twitter) that the Supreme Court “is placing itself on trial” by even agreeing to hear the case. She clearly thinks the court should rule against immunity: “It remains to be seen whether the judges will uphold the fundamental American value that no one is above the law – not even a former president.”

Timing is everything

It is not just the content of the ruling that matters, but the timing. The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in the week of April 22. But they may not announce a decision until this summer.

Every day the Supreme Court does not issue a ruling is another day Trump’s trial does not happen. Even if the justices do rule against the principle of immunity, that trial will not get going again immediately as Trump’s legal team will be given time to prepare.

Trump could also argue that he has a right to campaign in the election without a trial hanging around his neck. The really critical issue here is that Trump’s trial will almost certainly now not happen before the next election.

This delay is not just a way for Trump to protect himself before election day. The Supreme Court case is also a way of keeping himself in the spotlight. What looks to many like negative publicity has only ever bolstered him in the eyes of his supporters. This attention is even greater when associated with a significant constitutional ruling.

The case then is not just a legal landmark, but a major factor in who gets elected president on November 5.

The Conversation

Michelle Bentley does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

04 Mar 19:53

Measles is one of the deadliest and most contagious infectious diseases – and one of the most easily preventable

by David Higgins, Research Fellow and Instructor in Pediatrics, University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus
Young children, pregnant people and the immunocompromised are among the most vulnerable to measles. CHBD/E+ via Getty Images

“You don’t count your children until the measles has passed.” Dr. Samuel Katz, one of the pioneers of the first measles vaccine in the late 1950s to early 1960s, regularly heard this tragic statement from parents in countries where the measles vaccine was not yet available, because they were so accustomed to losing their children to measles.

I am a pediatrician and preventive medicine physician, and I have anxiously watched measles cases rise worldwide while vaccination rates have dropped since the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic due to disruptions in vaccine access and the spread of vaccine misinformation.

In 2022 alone, there were over 9 million measles cases and 136,000 deaths worldwide, an 18% and 43% increase from the year before, respectively. The World Health Organization warned that over half the world’s countries are at high risk of measles outbreaks this year.

The U.S. is no exception. The country is on track to have one of the worst measles years since 2019, when Americans experienced the largest measles outbreak in 30 years. As of mid-February 2024, at least 15 states have reported measles cases and multiple ongoing, uncontained outbreaks.

Measles is on the rise across the U.S. once again, despite being eliminated in 2000.

While this measles crisis unfolds, U.S. measles vaccination rates are at the lowest levels in 10 years. Prominent figures like the Florida surgeon general are responding to local outbreaks in ways that run counter to science and public health recommendations. The spread of misinformation and disinformation from anti-vaccine activists online further promotes misguided ideas that measles is not a serious health threat and measles vaccination is not essential.

However, the evidence is clear: Measles is extremely dangerous for everyone, and especially for young children, pregnant people and people with compromised immune systems. But simple and effective tools are available to prevent it.

Measles is a serious illness

Measles is one of the most deadly infectious diseases in human history. Before a vaccine became available in 1963, around 30 million people were infected with measles and 2.6 million people died from the disease every year worldwide. In the U.S., measles was responsible for an estimated 3 million to 4 million infections. Among reported cases, there were 48,000 hospitalizations, 1,000 cases of encephalitis, or brain swelling, and 500 deaths every year.

Measles is also one of the most contagious infectious diseases. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, up to 9 out of 10 people exposed to an infected person will become infected if they don’t have protection from vaccines. The measles virus can stay in the air and infect others for up to two hours after a contagious person has left the room. Measles can also hide in an unknowing victim for one to two weeks and sometimes up to 21 days before symptoms begin. Infected people can spread measles for up to four days before they develop its characteristic rash, and up to four days after.

Close-up of abdomen with red measles rash
One characteristic measles symptom is a rash that spreads from the face to the rest of the body. CDC/Heinz F. Eichenwald, MD

The initial symptoms of measles are similar to those of many other common viral illnesses in the U.S.: fever, cough, runny nose and red eyes. Several days after symptoms begin, characteristic tiny white spots develop inside the mouth, and a facial rash spreads to the rest of the body.

While most people’s symptoms improve, 1 in 5 unvaccinated children will be hospitalized, 1 out of every 1,000 will develop brain swelling that can lead to brain damage, and up to 3 of every 1,000 will die. For unvaccinated people who are pregnant, measles infection can lead to miscarriage, stillbirth, premature birth and low birth weight.

The risk of severe complications from measles persists even after a person appears to be fully recovered. In rare cases, people can experience a brain disease called subacute sclerosing panencephalitis that develops seven to 10 years after infection and leads to memory loss, involuntary movements, seizures, blindness and eventually death.

Beyond these individual health effects, the financial cost to society for containing measles outbreaks is significant. For example, a 2019 measles outbreak in Washington state is estimated to have cost US$3.4 million. Necessary efforts to control measles outbreaks pull millions of dollars’ worth of critical resources away from other essential public health functions such as ensuring food safety, preventing injuries and chronic diseases, and responding to disasters.

Vaccines protect against measles

Why put communities at risk and allow these societal costs from measles when effective and safe tools are available to protect everyone?

Measles vaccines have been so effective, providing lifelong protection to over 97% of people who receive two vaccine doses, that they are victims of their own success. Initial widespread measles vaccination had reduced measles cases by 99% compared to before the vaccine was available, and consequently, most people in the U.S. are unaware of the seriousness of this disease.

Person looking at Florida Health measles and MMR shot information sheet
Measles is a highly preventable disease. Paul Hennessy/NurPhoto via Getty Images

Despite the success of highly effective vaccination programs in the U.S., anyone can still come into contact with measles in their community. Measles is most often brought into the U.S. by unvaccinated American travelers returning home and sometimes from foreign visitors. For people traveling out of the country, the threat of measles exposure is even greater, with widespread outbreaks occurring in many travel destinations.

Public health leaders who embrace and promote vaccination and follow simple, proven infectious disease containment measures can help prevent measles disease spread. Every single preventable illness, complication, hospitalization or death from measles is one too many.

The Conversation

David Higgins is affiliated with Immunize Colorado, a nonprofit that works to protect Colorado families, schools and communities from vaccine-preventable diseases (volunteer non-paid board of directors member) and American Academy of Pediatrics (volunteer non-paid chapter immunization representative for the Colorado chapter).

04 Mar 19:45

In 2024, we’ll truly find out how robust our democracies are to online disinformation campaigns

by William Dance, Senior Research Associate, Lancaster University
I'm Friday / Shutterstock

Disinformation, sharing false information to deceive and mislead others, can take many forms. From edited “deepfake” videos made on smartphones to vast foreign-led information operations, politics and elections show how varied disinformation can be.

Hailed as “the year of elections”, with the majority of the world’s population going to the polls, 2024 will also be a year of lessons learned, where we will see whether disinformation can truly subvert our political processes or if we are more resilient than we think.

The dissemination of disinformation, as well as misleading content and methods, is not always high-tech. We often think about social networking, manipulated media, and sophisticated espionage in this regard, but sometimes efforts can be very low budget. In 2019, publications with names that sounded like newspapers were posted through letterboxes across the UK. These news publications, however, do not exist.

Bearing headlines such as “90% back remain”, they were imitation newspapers created and disseminated by the UK’s major political parties. These types of publication, which some voters thought were legitimate news publications, led to the Electoral Commission describing this technique as “misleading”.

The News Media Association, the body which represents local and regional media, also wrote to the Electoral Commission calling for the ban of “fake local newspapers”.

Zone flooding

Research has shown that for some topics, such as politics and civil rights, all figures across the political spectrum are often both attacked and supported, in an attempt to cause confusion and to obfuscate who and what can be believed.

This practice often goes hand-in-hand with something called “zone flooding”, where the information environment is deliberately overloaded with any and all information, just to confuse people. The aim of these broad disinformation campaigns is to make it difficult for people to believe any information, leading to a disengaged and potentially uninformed electorate.

Hostile state information operations and disinformation from abroad will continue to threaten countries such as the UK and US. Adversarial countries such as Russia, China and Iran continuously seek to subvert trust in our institutions and processes with the goal of increasing apathy and resentment.

Just two weeks ago, the US congressional Republicans’ impeachment proceedings against President Joe Biden began to fall apart when it was revealed that a witness was supplied with false information by Russian intelligence officials.

President Joe Biden in the foreground with Donald Trump in the background.
Disinformation is certain to feature in 2024 elections. But are some of the risks overstated? Below the Sky / Shutterstock

Disinformation can also be found much closer to home. Although it is often uncomfortable for academics and fact checkers to talk about, disinformation can come from the very top, with members of the political elite embracing and promoting false content knowingly. This is further compounded by the reality that fact checks and corrections may not reach the same audience as the original content, causing some disinformation to go unchecked.

AI-fuelled campaigns

Recently, there has been increased focus on the role of artificial intelligence (AI) in spreading disinformation. AI allows computers to carry out tasks that could previously have only been done by humans. So AI and AI-enabled tools can carry out very sophisticated tasks with low effort from humans and at low cost.

Disinformation can be both mediated and enabled by artificial intelligence. Bad actors can use sophisticated algorithms to identify and target swathes of people with disinformation on social media platforms. One key focus, however, has been on generative AI, the use of this technology to produce text and media that seem as if they were created by a human.

This can vary from using tools such as ChatGPT to write social media posts, to using AI-powered image, video and audio generation tools to create media of politicians in embarrassing, but fabricated situations. This encompasses what are known as “deepfakes”, which can vary from poor to convincing in their quality.

While some say that AI will shape the coming elections in ways we can’t yet understand, others think the effects of disinformation are exaggerated. The simple reality is that, at present, we do not know how AI will affect the year of elections.

We could see vast deception at a scale only previously imagined, or this could be a Y2K moment, where our fears simply do not come to fruition. We are at a pivotal moment and the extent to which these elections are affected, or otherwise, will inform our regulatory and policy decisions for years to come.

If 2024 is the year of elections, then 2025 is likely to be the year of reflections. Reflecting on how susceptible our democracies are to disinformation, whether as societies we are vulnerable to sweeping deception and manipulation, and how we can safeguard our future elections.

Whether it’s profoundly consequential or simply something that bubbles under the surface, disinformation will always exist. But the coming year will determine whether it’s top of the agenda for governments, journalists and educators to tackle, or simply something that we learn to live with.

The Conversation

William Dance does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

04 Mar 19:35

AI bias: the organised struggle against automated discrimination

by Philip Di Salvo, Postdoctoral researcher and lecturer, University of St.Gallen
varuna/Shutterstock

In public administrations across Europe, artificial intelligence (AI) and automated decision making (ADM) systems are already being used extensively.

These systems, often built on opaque “black box” algorithms, recognise our faces in public, organise unemployment programmes, and even forecast exam grades. Their task is to predict human behaviour and to make decisions, even in sensitive areas such as welfare, health and social services.

As seen in the USA, where algorithmic policing has been readily adopted, these decisions are inherently influenced by underlying biases and errors. This can have disastrous consequences: in Michigan in June 2020 a black man was arrested, interrogated and detained overnight for a crime he did not commit. He had been mistakenly identified by an AI system.

These systems are trained on pre-existing human-made data, which is flawed by its very nature. This means they can perpetuate existing forms of discrimination and bias, leading to what Virginia Eubanks has called the “automation of inequality”.

Holding AI responsible

The widespread adoption of these systems begs an urgent question: what would it take to hold an algorithm to account for its decisions?

This was tested recently in Canada, when courts ordered an airline to pay compensation to a customer who had acted on bad advice given by their AI-powered chatbot. The airline tried to rebut the claim by stating that the chatbot was “responsible for its own actions”.

In Europe, there has been an institutional move to regulate the use of AI, in the form of the recently passed Artificial Intelligence Act.

This Act aims to regulate large and powerful AI systems, preventing them from posing systemic threats while also protecting citizens from their potential misuse. The Act’s launch has been accompanied by a wide range of preceding direct actions, initiatives and campaigns launched by civil society organisations across EU member states.

This growing resistance to problematic AI systems has gained momentum and visibility in recent years. It has also influenced regulators’ choices in crucial ways, putting pressure on them to introduce measures that safeguard fundamental rights.


Leer más: AI: the world is finally starting to regulate artificial intelligence – what to expect from US, EU and China's new laws


The Human Error Project

As part of The Human Error Project, based at Universität St. Gallen in Switzerland, we have studied the ways in which civil society actors are resisting the rise of automated discrimination in Europe. Our project focuses on AI errors, an umbrella term that encompasses bias, discrimination and un-accountability of algorithms and AI.

Our latest research report is entitled “Civil Society’s Struggle Against Algorithmic Injustice in Europe”. Based on interviews with activists and representatives of civil society organisations, it explores how European digital rights organisations make sense of AI errors, how they question the use of AI systems, and highlights the urgent need for these debates.

Our research revealed a panorama of concern, as most of the individuals we interviewed shared the now widely accepted view put forward by AI scholars: AI can often be racist, discriminatory and reductionist when it comes to making sense of human beings.

Many of our interviewees also pointed out that we should not consider AI errors as a purely technological issue. Rather, they are symptoms of wider systemic social issues that predate recent technological developments.

Predictive policing is a clear example of this. Because these systems are based on previous, potentially falsified or corrupted police data, they perpetuate existing forms of racialised discrimination, often leading to racial profiling and even unlawful arrests.

AI is already impacting your daily life

For European civil society actors, one key problem is a lack of awareness among the public that AI is being used to make decisions in numerous areas of their lives. Even when people are aware, it is often unclear how these systems operate, or who should be held responsible when they make an unfair decision.

This lack of visibility means the struggle for algorithmic justice is not only a political issue, but also a symbolic one: it calls our very ideas of objectivity and accuracy into question.

AI debates are notoriously dominated by media hype and panic, as our first research report showed. Consequently, European civil society organisations are forced to pursue two goals: speaking clearly about the issue, and challenging the view of AI as a panacea for social problems.

The importance of naming the problem is evident in our new report, where interviewees were hesitant to even use phrases like “AI Ethics,” or did not mention “AI” at all. Instead, they used alternative terms such as “advanced statistics,” “Automated Decision Making,” or “ADM systems”.

Reining in big tech

In addition to raising awareness among the general public, one of the main issues is curbing the dominant power of big tech. Several organisations we contacted have been involved in initiatives connected with the EU’s AI Act and have, in some cases, played a direct part in highlighting issues and closing loopholes that tech firms could exploit.

According to some organisations there are elements, such as biometric facial recognition in public spaces, where nothing short of an outright ban will suffice. Others even take a sceptical view of legislation as a whole, believing that regulation alone cannot solve all the issues presented by the continuing spread of algorithmic systems.

Our research shows that, in order to address the power of algorithmic systems, we have to stop seeing AI error as a technological issue, and start seeing it as a political one. What needs fixing is not a technological bug in the system, but the systemic inequalities that these systems perpetuate.

The Conversation

Las personas firmantes no son asalariadas, ni consultoras, ni poseen acciones, ni reciben financiación de ninguna compañía u organización que pueda obtener beneficio de este artículo, y han declarado carecer de vínculos relevantes más allá del cargo académico citado anteriormente.

04 Mar 19:31

Daily fibre supplement improves older adults’ brain function in just three months – new study

by Mary Ni Lochlainn, Specialist Registrar in Geriatric and General Internal Medicine, and Post Doctoral Research Fellow, King's College London

In just 12 weeks, a daily fibre supplement improved brain function in twins over the age of 65. Could the microbes in our gut hold the key to preventing cognitive decline in our ageing population?

The study my colleagues and I conducted showed that this simple and cheap food supplement can improve performance in memory tests – tests that are used to spot early signs of Alzheimer’s disease.

As populations age globally, the prevalence of age-related conditions such as declining brain and muscle function is on the rise, so we need innovative ways to slow and prevent this.

The number of gut microbiome studies has increased exponentially over the past 15 years. Researchers are recognising the huge potential of this under-explored facet of human health. We know that the gut microbiome can be influenced and changed from the outside, for example, using a prebiotic supplement.

Prebiotics are simple fibres that encourage healthy bacteria to flourish in the gut. They are already widely available to buy.

With this new study, we sought to understand how targeting the microbiota, the diverse community of microorganisms residing in our guts, using two cheap, commercially available plant fibre supplements, inulin and FOS, could affect both brain function and muscle health.

The study comprised 36 twin pairs, with one twin randomly allocated to receive a placebo and the other randomly allocated to receive a prebiotic fibre supplement. The treatments (prebiotic or placebo) were taken every day for three months and none of the participants knew which they were receiving – in other words, the study was “blinded”.

To improve muscle function, all the participants also did resistance exercises and took a daily protein supplement.

We monitored participants remotely via video calls, online questionnaires, and online tests of memory and thinking.


Read more: Gut microbiome: meet Lactobacillus brevis – a fermentation superstar


Beneficial bacteria

When we tested participants’ stool samples, we found the fibre supplement led to significant changes in the participants’ gut microbiome composition. In particular, there was an increase in beneficial bacteria, such as Bifidobacterium.

While there was no significant difference in muscle strength between the groups, the group receiving the fibre supplement performed better in tests assessing memory and thinking, including the Paired Associates Learning Test. This test is able to detect early signs of Alzheimer’s disease. Those who received the prebiotic had half the number of errors on this test compared with the group that received a placebo.

Seeing this positive result in just 12 weeks holds huge promise for enhancing brain health and memory in our ageing population.

We hope that further understanding of the gut-brain connections may unlock new approaches for helping people live more healthily for longer. For example, preventing or delaying frailty and ultimately keeping our ageing population independent and well for as long as possible.

Innovative trial

Another novel aspect of the study was its remote design, which showed the feasibility of conducting trials in older adults without the need for extensive travel or hospital visits, which could be delivered in many settings globally.

Such trial designs aim to improve the representation of older people in research. We acknowledge that challenges to this type of study design exist, including access to the internet and computers, and we aim to address these in future large-scale projects. Ultimately, the aim is to enhance the quality of life for ageing populations worldwide.

We estimate the cost of taking this kind of supplement at 15p a day. They are safe and easy to take. They could benefit a large group of people and the research team plan to go on and test whether these results are sustained over longer periods and in larger groups of people.

Our findings show that targeting the gut bacteria with simple interventions can have significant effects on human function. So how else can we target these microbes to enhance wellbeing as the population gets older? We are planning to carry out further trials, exploring the huge potential of this important question.


Read more: Gut microbiome: meet Bifidobacterium breve, keeping babies healthy


The Conversation

Mary Ni Lochlainn receives funding from the National Institute of Health Research. This study was supported by King’s Centre for Ageing Resilience in a Changing Environment (CARICE) and by grants from the National Institute of Health Research and Wellcome Trust.

27 Feb 20:49

Critics of ‘woke capitalism’ want to return to a time when money was the only value. But it never existed

by Carl Rhodes, Professor of Organization Studies, University of Technology Sydney

“Corporate virtue signalling” is a phrase of our time. Bud Light was accused of it when it hired TikTok personality and trans woman Dylan Mulvaney to promote low-cal beer.

Disney was labelled a virtue signaller for its opposition to the US state of Florida outlawing discussions of gender fluidity and sexual orientation in schools.

When multi-trillion-dollar investment company Black Rock promoted environmental, social and governance (ESG) standards, it too was branded a virtue-signaller.

These are only a few of the many high-profile examples of corporations who have made headlines for publicly supporting progressive social and environmental political positions.


Review: Virtue Capitalists: The Rise and Fall of the Professional Class in the Anglophone World – Hannah Forsyth (Cambridge University Press)


The loudest critics of virtue signalling come from the more vocal end of right-wing politics. Many conservative pundits angrily denounce the “woke” for failing to follow what they see as the real purpose of capitalism.

“Go woke, go broke,” they vent, insisting there is no place in the competitive world of market rivalry for taking sides on social and political issues.

Bud Light was accused of ‘virtue signalling’ when it hired trans TikTok personality Dylan Mulvaney.

Anti-woke critics want to make corporations great again: let’s get back to the old days, where making profits was the only thing harried managers had to worry about! Wheeling out Milton Friedman’s hackneyed 1970 dictum, they censure today’s managers for failing to meet “the social responsibility of business […] to increase its profits”.

If you buy into this rhetoric you might believe that, prior to the 2020s, business leaders were unencumbered by ethical or political concerns.

The problem is the anti-woke mob are nostalgic for a past that never existed. This is borne out in the pages of Hannah Forsyth’s history Virtue Capitalists: The Rise and Fall of the Professional Class in the Anglophone World, 1870-2008.

“Woke capitalism” was first called out by conservative columnist Ross Douthat, who coined the phrase in the New York Times in 2018 – a decade after the period Forsyth spans in her book.

But what she uncovers, with all the specificity and detail to be expected from a historian, is a story of “virtue capitalism” that existed long before the concept of “wokeness” became a political weapon of the recalcitrant right.

In one sense, Forsyth’s book will interest those who want to know more about the history of capitalism and the mixed fortunes of the professional and managerial classes.

In another very important sense, it provides the material for something akin to what French philosopher Michel Foucault once called “a history of the present”: it helps us understand our present situation by tracing its genealogy in the past.


Read more: Explainer: the ideas of Foucault


Forsyth shows that, contrary to the imaginings of anti-woke crusaders, capitalism has always had a relationship with virtue, and a troubled one at that. This goes back to the very beginning of modern industrial capitalism, well before “virtue signalling” became a catch cry for those yearning for an illusory version of a purely economic capitalism.

The long 20th century

Forsyth covers the “long 20th century”. Her book starts in 1870, when the establishment of the gold standard marked the birth of modern capitalism, and the ascendancy of the professional class. It ends in 2008, just before the global financial crisis exposed the world’s vulnerability to capitalist excess.

The book focuses on the professional classes in Anglophone settler colonies: Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States, in particular. In these countries, the process of supposed civilisation was married to economic domination and colonisation, administered by a new professional class of white-collar workers.

With the growth of the new class of professional workers, Forsyth argues, morality became entwined with capitalism. The moral virtues that emerged centred on the value of education and a belief in meritocracy, bolstered by precision, integrity, discipline and efficiency. For workers like nurses, journalists and accountants, professionalism became associated with moral standing, which translated into economic value.


Read more: Global corporate power is 'out of control', but reports of democracy’s death are greatly exaggerated


But the Anglophone colonial world and its capitalist economies were, as Forsyth observes, “founded on violent dispossession, where land theft in the settler colonies was the precondition to property ownership”. The so-called morality of the virtue capitalists was used to justify colonialism’s brutal acquisition and racial oppression.

Professional integrity and virtue may have given colonialism a sense of respectability, but it reflected a moral system that at best regarded Indigenous populations as the benefactors of Western civilisation and assimilation in Western culture. At worst they were seen as impending the natural course of progress, and hence dispensible.

The result was the displacement of the Indigenous moral systems that came before the colonisers. White virtue, cultural domination and capital expansion were inseparable companions.

Hannah Forsyth.

Forsyth portrays professional virtue not so much as a self-serving hypocrisy, but as a culturally narcissistic form of self-deception that masked the brutality of colonial self-interest. Indigenous populations were castigated as “savage” and in need of education. White moral authority was established as the colonial order, and it was all proper.

By the end of the second world war, the virtue capitalists reached their peak power. They designed a new world economic order rooted in their own sense of righteousness. The New Deal was established in the United States, focusing on relief for the needy, economic recovery and financial reform. The “welfare state” was established elsewhere. Education and health were provided to the masses, protecting capitalism from the threat of communist revolutions.

Away from home, virtue translated into international development that was intent on “civilising” and “developing” the once-colonial world in the image of the professional classes.


Read more: 'Greed is amoral': how Wall Street supermen cashed in on pandemic misery and chaos


An economic and moral crisis

The mid-1970s ushered in an economic and moral crisis. Forsyth argues this triggered the downfall of the professional virtue capitalists after a century on the rise. By the 1980s, a new wave of managerialism was sweeping the business world. Economic management became increasingly divorced from the professions.

In the heyday of early neoliberalism, the conservative professional was displaced in favour of a prototypical manager who was showy, entrepreneurial and hypermasculine. The new focus was on financial and economic success, rather than professional morality. Success at all costs was the neoliberal mantra.

A globalising world economy became ripe for new forms of exploitation and Western wealth accumulation. A new elite discarded the old professional virtues as quaint, starchy and old-fashioned. Forsyth characterises this as “moral deskilling”. The market became the solution to all problems.

Virtue Capitalists ends with the managerial class having reached a crescendo of power, as masters of a new world order where “success is the only virtue”. The book leaves us in a world where traditional professional virtues have been all but dismantled and professional expertise has been discredited in favour of can-do capitalism.

There is no happy ending. With the rise of the managerial class came a new political populism characterised by a distrust of professional expertise, and professed hatred of “the elites”. Think, for example, of anti-vaccination campaigns undermining medical expertise, or climate denialists flouting the findings of climate scientists.

“Virtue was, and is, used for power,” writes Forsyth. That power was deployed in the long 20th century, initially to justify colonial exploitation, then to further ransack the world as it opened up to global trade.

Virtue, by this account, is a cloak of respectability that hides the realities of a global economy geared to produce inequality. Perhaps it hides them so well, even the professional workers crunching the gears cannot see them.

Virtue Capitalists is not without fault. At times, the narrative is disjointed, the argument lacks consistency and ideas are presented without being developed. The references to theorists and theories can, at times, appear superficial and unnecessary. But the strength of the work overcomes these faults. It provides us with a historical account of the tight connections between morality and economics that popular narratives have ignored.

Like the virtue capitalism of the past, today’s “woke” capitalism is an act of power, as much as it is an ethical movement. Where would capitalist legitimacy be if, in the wake of the global financial crisis, the 1980s entrepreneurial “success at all costs” attitude returned unvarnished? Surely capitalism’s legitimacy would have come to an end, at last.

While no such end was reached, there was no change to the inequality driving core of capitalism either – it was just woke-washed. The morality of today’s woke corporations serves to re-legitimise capitalism, while leaving its exploitative nature unaltered. History repeats. Virtue is still a way to increase profits.

This will not make the world great again. It will keep us on the same trajectory of inequality and exploitation. History’s lessons are worth learning, so we might imagine a better future. Forsyth’s book provides a valuable means to do that.

The Conversation

Carl Rhodes does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

27 Feb 19:57

What happens when we outsource boring but important work to AI? Research shows we forget how to do it ourselves

by Tapani Rinta-Kahila, Lecturer in Business Information Systems, The University of Queensland
Shutterstock

In 2009, an Air France jet crashed into the ocean, leaving no survivors. The plane’s autopilot system shut down and the pilots, having become reliant on their computerised assistant, were unable to correct the situation manually.

In 2015, a bus driver in Europe typed the wrong destination into his GPS device and cheerfully took a group of Belgian tourists on a 1,200 kilometre detour in the wrong direction.

In 2017, in a decision later overturned on appeal, US prosecutors who had agreed to release a teenager on probation abruptly changed their minds because an algorithm ruled the defendant “high risk”.

These are dramatic examples, but they are far from isolated. When we outsource cognitive tasks to technology – such as flying a plane, navigating, or making a judgement – research shows we may lose the ability to perform those tasks ourselves. There is even a term for our tendency to forget information that is available through online search engines: the Google effect.

As new AI technologies promise to automate an increasing range of activities, the risk of “skill erosion” is growing. Our research shows how it can happen – and suggests ways to keep hold of the expertise you need, even when you don’t need it every day.

Skill erosion can cripple an organisation

My research shows the risk of skill erosion is easily overlooked. In a recent study, my team and I examined skill erosion in an accounting company.

The company had recently stopped using software that automated much of its fixed-asset accounting service. However, the accountants found themselves unable to carry out the task without it. Years of over-reliance on the software had eroded their expertise, and ultimately, they had to relearn their fixed-asset accounting skills.

While the software was rule-based (it did not use machine learning or “AI”), it was “smart” enough to track depreciation and produce reports for many tax and financial purposes. These are tasks that human accountants found very complex and tedious.

The company only became aware of skill erosion after a client found errors in the accounting team’s manual reports. With its accountants lacking sufficient expertise, the company had to commission the software provider to fix the errors.

How skill erosion happens

We found that a lack of mindfulness about the automation-supported task had led to skill erosion. The old saying, “use it or lose it”, applies to cognitively intense work as much as to anything else.

The accountants were not concerned about outsourcing their thinking to the software, since it operated almost flawlessly. In other words, they fell prey to “automation complacency”: the assumption that “all is well” while ignoring potential risks.


Read more: AI is everywhere – including countless applications you've likely never heard of


This had three major consequences:

  1. they lost their awareness of what automation was doing

  2. they lost the incentive to maintain and update relevant knowledge (such as tax legislation), because the vendor and software did that for them

  3. as the software was reliable, they no longer bothered to check the outgoing reports for accuracy.

How to maintain your skills

So, how do you prevent complacency while using AI and other automated systems? Here are three tips:

  1. pay attention to what the system is doing – what inputs are used, for what purpose, and what might affect its suggestions

  2. keep your competence up to date (especially if you are legally accountable for the outcomes)

  3. critically assess the results, even if the final outcomes appear satisfactory.

A photo of two pilots in a plane cockpit.
Keeping your skills sharp while using automated systems requires paying close attention. Shutterstock

What would this look like in practice? Here’s an everyday example: driving with the help of an AI-powered navigation app.

Instead of blindly following the app’s instructions, pay attention to road signs and landmarks, and be aware of what you are doing even when guided by the app.

Study the map and suggested route before driving to increase your “domain knowledge”, or understanding of what is around the route. This helps you relate your specific path to the broader environment, which will be helpful if you get lost or want to find alternative routes.

When you reach your destination, reflect on the route the app suggested: was it fast, was it safe, was it enjoyable? If not, consider taking a different route next time, even if the app suggests otherwise.

Is AI a necessary companion?

The case of the accounting firm also raises a bigger question: what skills are relevant and worth maintaining, and which ones should we relinquish to automation?

There is no universal answer, as professional skills change across time, jurisdictions, industries, cultures and geographical locations. However, it is a question we will have to contend with as AI takes over activities once considered unable to be automated.


Read more: Drowning in 'digital debt'? AI assistants can help – but we must use them carefully


Despite the struggles, the accounting manager in our case study believes the automated software is highly beneficial. In his view, his team just got caught off guard by complacency.

In a world focused on efficiency and annual or quarterly targets, organisations favour solutions that improve things in the short term, even if they have negative long-term side effects. This is what happened in the accounting case: efficiency gains overshadowed abstract concerns about expertise, until problems ensued.

This does not mean that we should avoid AI. Organisations cannot afford to miss out on the opportunities it presents. However, they should also be aware of the risk of skill erosion.

The Conversation

Tapani Rinta-Kahila is a recipient of the Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (project number DE240100269) funded by the Australian Government. His research on this topic has previously been funded by the Jenny and Antti Wihuri Foundation.

22 Feb 20:45

AI and the New Age of the TOS Rights Grab

by Jonathan Bailey

A pair of news stories have drawn new focus on terms of service overreach by companies and the new dangers AI brings to problem.

The post AI and the New Age of the TOS Rights Grab appeared first on Plagiarism Today.

22 Feb 20:36

Outrage culture is a big, toxic problem. Why do we take part? And how can we stop?

by Shane Rogers, Lecturer in Psychology, Edith Cowan University

“Outrage culture” is pervasive in the digital age. It refers to our collective tendency to react, often with intense negativity, to developments around us.

Usually this ire is directed at perceived transgressions. The internet wasted no time in raging at Taylor Swift when she received Album of The Year at the Grammys, seemingly frustrated by her lack of acknowledgement of Celine Dion, who presented the award.

Whether or not Swift’s behaviour could be considered rude isn’t the point. The point is the backlash arguably wasn’t proportionate to the crime. This so-called “snub” incident is, therefore, a good example of how quickly and easily people will jump on the online hate train.

Modern outrage culture, which is also known as call-out culture and is linked to cancel culture, often devolves into a toxic spiral. People wanting clout compete to produce the meanest and most over-the-top commentary, stifling open dialogue and demonising those who make mistakes.


Read more: How news sites' online comments helped build our hateful electorate


A tale as old as time

Collective outrage isn’t a new phenomenon – nor is it necessarily bad. Humans have adapted to become highly sensitive to the threat of social exclusion. Being called out hurts our feelings, which motivates us to change. We learn how this feels for us and we learn how to use it to influence others.

In pre-digital societies, expressing outrage to shame someone as a group served crucial social functions. It reinforced group norms, deterred potential rule-breakers, and fostered a sense of order and accountability within communities.

Expressing outrage can also challenge norms in a way that leads to positive societal change. The women’s liberation movement in the latter part of the 19th century is a good example of this.

The technological innovations of the internet, smartphones and social media have now enabled communal outrage on a global scale. Multiple societies can be affected at once, as witnessed with the #MeToo movement.

When outrage spirals

We’ve all seen it play out. Someone says or does something “controversial”, some posts draw attention to it and soon enough a whirlwind of comments appears, echoing over and over the person in question is fundamentally bad.

The Johnny Depp and Amber Heard defamation trial is an example where, regardless of how you feel about the case, it’s hard to deny the discourse turned toxic.

The collective moral outrage that drives such negativity spirals has parallels with people brandishing their pitchforks during the 1690s Salem witch trials. Sharing similar beliefs helps us feel like we’re part of the group.

Beyond that, the conviction we witness in others’ comments and behaviour on an issue can stir up our own emotions, in what’s called “emotional contagion”. With our own emotions heightened and our convictions strengthened, we may feel compelled to join the choir of negative discourse.

The overall tone and style of language used by others can also influence how we act and feel. Social modelling dictates that if many others are piling on with negative comments, it can make it seem okay for us to do so, too.

And the more exposed we are to one-sided discourse, the more likely we are to resist alternative viewpoints. This is called “groupthink”.

Social media algorithms are also generally set up to feed us more of what we’ve previously clicked on, which further contributes to the one-sidedness of our online experience.

Scholars have suggested algorithms can prioritise certain posts in a way that shapes the overall nature of commentary, essentially fuelling the flames of negativity.


Read more: Feed me: 4 ways to take control of social media algorithms and get the content you actually want


Two sides of speaking up

Unlike Salem in the late 1690s, today’s outrage culture is multiplied in intensity and scale due to changing cultural norms around “speaking up”. Combined with the anonymity and global reach afforded by the internet, the culture of speaking up has likely fuelled the kind of vocalisation we see online.

For example, in the past two decades there has been growing societal recognition that it’s good to speak up against bullying. This can be associated with more education on bullying in schools. There’s also a growing trend of encouraging a speak-up culture in workplaces. So it’s not surprising many people now report feeling confident in voicing their opinions online.

Encouraging speaking up is important in many contexts, but more vocal people online means more opportunity for conflict. Shutterstock

It’s also easier to express negative opinions online since we can remain anonymous. We don’t directly witness the emotional pain inflicted upon our target. Nor do we have to worry about the potential threat to our personal safety that would be associated with saying the same horrible thing to a person’s face. As summed up by Taylor Swift herself in You Need to Calm Down:

Say it in the street, that’s a knock-out. But you say it in a tweet, that’s a cop-out.

How can we combat negativity?

Navigating the pitfalls of outrage culture requires us to adopt a more reflective approach before participating in public condemnation. Consider also that outrage culture runs counter to the moral ideals most of us admire, such as:

  • everyone makes mistakes
  • people are worth more than their worst actions
  • people are capable of growth and change, and deserve second chances
  • it’s okay to have different opinions to others
  • the punishment should fit the crime.

Research suggests positive comments can be a productive counter-influence on negativity spirals. So it’s worth speaking up if you do witness matters getting out of hand online. Before clicking the send button, consider asking yourself:

  • do I really believe what I’m about to say or am I going along with the group?
  • how might this comment affect the person receiving it, and am I okay with that?
  • would I communicate like this if it was a face-to-face situation?

By encouraging reflection, empathy and open dialogue, we can avoid toxic outrage culture – and instead use our collective outrage as a force for positive change.


Read more: We cannot deny the violence of White supremacy any more


The Conversation

Shane Rogers does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

22 Feb 20:25

How you can tell propaganda from journalism − let’s look at Tucker Carlson’s visit to Russia

by Michael J. Socolow, Professor of Communication and Journalism, University of Maine
Tucker Carlson at a Moscow grocery store, praising the bread. Screenshot, Tucker Carlson Network

Tucker Carlson, the conservative former cable TV news pundit, recently traveled to Moscow to interview Russian dictator Vladimir Putin for his Tucker Carlson Network, known as TCN.

The two-hour interview itself proved dull. Even Putin found Carlson’s soft questioning “disappointing.” Very little from the interview was newsworthy.

Other videos Carlson produced while in Russia, however, seemed to spark far more significant commentary. Carlson marveled at the beauty of the Moscow subway and seemed awed by the cheap prices in a Russian supermarket. He found the faux McDonald’s – rebranded “Tasty-period” – cheeseburgers delicious.

As a scholar of broadcast propaganda, I believe Carlson’s work provides an opportunity for public education in distinguishing between propaganda and journalism. Some Americans, primarily Carlson’s fans, will view the videos as accurate reportage. Others, primarily Carlson’s detractors, will reject them as mendacious propaganda.

But closely considering these categories, and evaluating Carlson’s work in context, might deepen public understanding of the distinction between journalism and propaganda in the American context.

Promoting authoritarians

Carlson’s ability to secure the Putin interview was commendable. Interviewing dictators – even the most murderous ones, such as Cambodia’s Pol Pot – can represent a significant journalistic achievement.

Yet, Carlson’s listless approach to the Russian dictator, who droned on endlessly, proved a wasted opportunity. Despite Carlson’s passivity, the interview did, in fact, reveal aspects of Putin’s intentions likely unknown to many Americans. For example, Putin blamed Poland for provoking Hitler’s attack on the country in 1939, which sparked World War II – a statement at odds with the facts. He also seemed to signal his desire to attack Poland, or another neighbor, in the near future. Had Carlson’s trip concluded with the interview, it might have been judged journalistically worthwhile.

Yet, that’s not what Carlson did.

Producing a travelogue, Carlson toured Moscow and made videos extolling the glories of Russian society, culture and governance. The Moscow subway impressed him, while the low prices in a Russian supermarket “radicalized” him “against our American leaders.”

‘Classic case of propaganda’

There are numerous ways to evaluate the truthfulness of Carlson’s reports.

For example, if things are as copacetic in Russia as Carlson claims, then emigration out of the country should be minimal, or at least normal. Yet, since the 2022 Ukraine war mobilization, Russians have fled their country in historically high numbers.

Even those cheap supermarket prices Carlson loved are a mirage. They exist only through subsidies, and with Russia’s continued devaluation of the ruble in 2024, combined with a planned huge increase in military spending, Russia’s government continues to make every Russian poorer to fund its war.

In other words, what’s cheap to Carlson is expensive and getting more expensive for almost all Russians. This trend will continue in 2024, as Putin recently projected Russia’s inflation rate to be 8% in 2024 – more than double the projection for the United States. In fact, a Russian citizen complained directly to Putin in December 2023 about the price of eggs, and Putin uncharacteristically apologized.

But research shows that fact-checking Carlson’s claims is not likely to change many people’s opinions. We know most people don’t appreciate being told their preferred information is inaccurate, and when untruthful reports accord with their perception of reality, they’ll believe them.

Instead of categorizing Carlson’s Russia videos as “reporting,” “journalism,” “information” or “fake news,” we could define it instead as a classic case of propaganda.

Screenshot of a headline that says 'Tucker Carlson: Moscow ‘so much nicer than any city in my country’'
A headline from The Hill about Carlson’s Moscow visit. Screenshot, The Hill

‘Emotionally potent oversimplifications’

Propaganda is communication designed to bypass critical and rational examination in order to provoke intended emotional, attitudinal or behavioral responses from an audience.

Public understanding of propaganda usually links it to lying, but that’s not quite correct. While some propaganda is mendacious, the most effective propaganda will interlace carefully selected verifiable facts with emotional appeals.

For an average American, those Russian supermarket prices really were cheap. But that’s a selected truth presented without context essential for understanding.

Theologian Reinhold Niebuhr once described propaganda in a democracy as “emotionally potent oversimplifications” peddled to the masses, and that’s precisely what Carlson’s videos seem to provide.

That Carlson has evolved into a propagandist is not surprising. In 2022, The New York Times analyzed his Fox News broadcasts between 2016 and 2021. The paper concluded that Carlson’s program became far less interested in rational dialogue and critical exchange – by interviewing people who disagreed with him – as it evolved into a monologue-driven format in which Carlson preached often factually dubious assertions to his audience.

At one time, early in his career, Carlson demonstrated significant journalistic talent, especially in magazine feature writing. But his dedication to accuracy – and even basic truth-telling – was exposed as a sham when his texts from the Dominion voting machine lawsuit were revealed and illustrated his mendacity.

Distinguishing between Gershkovich and Carlson

Carlson is not the first American reporter to travel to a foreign dictatorship and produce propaganda in the guise of journalism.

The New York Times’ Walter Duranty infamously ignored the Stalin dictatorship’s horrific starvation of millions of Ukrainians in the 1930s. The Times’ Berlin correspondent Guido Enderis specialized in “puffy profiles of leading Nazis” while whitewashing the regime’s more evil aspects in the mid-1930s.

More recently, correspondent Peter Arnett was fired from NBC News for appearing on state-controlled Iraqi TV in 2003 and praising the success of “Iraqi resistance” at the outset of the U.S.-Iraq war. Although Arnett’s comments did not originally appear on NBC, they were rebroadcast widely.

But what makes Carlson’s actions particularly galling to some was that his propaganda appeared while Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich remains imprisoned by Putin’s regime for alleged spying, but which was really accurate reporting from Russia. When Carlson questioned Putin about Gershkovich, the dictator replied that a prisoner exchange might be negotiated.

Ultimately, the distinction between journalism and propaganda is the difference between Gershkovich and Carlson.

Gershkovich sits in a Russian prison for investigating the truth about Putin’s Russia in service to the American public and his employer. Carlson flies around the world praising authoritarian leaders such as Hungary’s Viktor Orban, while “rooting” for dictators like Vladimir Putin when they attack their neighbors. “Why shouldn’t I root for Russia? Which I am,” he said in 2019 about the Ukraine-Russian conflict.

To expose abusive governmental power and hold it accountable “to the opinions of mankind” is literally written in America’s Declaration of Independence. To travel abroad praising dictatorships for their subways and cheeseburgers while ignoring their murderousness, and to return “radicalized … against our leaders” because foreign supermarket prices are low, is certainly not journalism. It is propaganda.

Carlson’s videos may have one beneficial result: If enough Americans learn from them how to detect propaganda and distinguish it from ethical and professional reporting, then perhaps Carlson unintentionally provided a valuable media literacy service to the nation.

The Conversation

Michael J. Socolow does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

20 Feb 20:33

What is Sora? A new generative AI tool could transform video production and amplify disinformation risks

by Vahid Pooryousef, PhD candidate in Human Computer Interaction, Monash University
OpenAI

Late last week, OpenAI announced a new generative AI system named Sora, which produces short videos from text prompts. While Sora is not yet available to the public, the high quality of the sample outputs published so far has provoked both excited and concerned reactions.

The sample videos published by OpenAI, which the company says were created directly by Sora without modification, show outputs from prompts like “photorealistic closeup video of two pirate ships battling each other as they sail inside a cup of coffee” and “historical footage of California during the gold rush”.

At first glance, it is often hard to tell they are generated by AI, due to the high quality of the videos, textures, dynamics of scenes, camera movements, and a good level of consistency.

OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman also posted some videos to X (formerly Twitter) generated in response to user-suggested prompts, to demonstrate Sora’s capabilities.

How does Sora work?

Sora combines features of text and image generating tools in what is called a “diffusion transformer model”.

Transformers are a type of neural network first introduced by Google in 2017. They are best known for their use in large language models such as ChatGPT and Google Gemini.

Diffusion models, on the other hand, are the foundation of many AI image generators. They work by starting with random noise and iterating towards a “clean” image that fits an input prompt.

A series of images showing a picture of a castle emerging from static.
Diffusion models (in this case Stable Diffusion) generate images from noise over many iterations. Stable Diffusion / Benlisquare / Wikimedia, CC BY-SA

A video can be made from a sequence of such images. However, in a video, coherence and consistency between frames are essential.

Sora uses the transformer architecture to handle how frames relate to one another. While transformers were initially designed to find patterns in tokens representing text, Sora instead uses tokens representing small patches of space and time.

Leading the pack

Sora is not the first text-to-video model. Earlier models include Emu by Meta, Gen-2 by Runway, Stable Video Diffusion by Stability AI, and recently Lumiere by Google.

Lumiere, released just a few weeks ago, claimed to produce better video than its predecessors. But Sora appears to be more powerful than Lumiere in at least some respects.

Sora can generate videos with a resolution of up to 1920 × 1080 pixels, and in a variety of aspect ratios, while Lumiere is limited to 512 × 512 pixels. Lumiere’s videos are around 5 seconds long, while Sora makes videos up to 60 seconds.

Lumiere cannot make videos composed of multiple shots, while Sora can. Sora, like other models, is also reportedly capable of video-editing tasks such as creating videos from images or other videos, combining elements from different videos, and extending videos in time.

Both models generate broadly realistic videos, but may suffer from hallucinations. Lumiere’s videos may be more easily recognised as AI-generated. Sora’s videos look more dynamic, having more interactions between elements.

However, in many of the example videos inconsistencies become apparent on close inspection.

Promising applications

Video content is currently produced either by filming the real world or by using special effects, both of which can be costly and time consuming. If Sora becomes available at a reasonable price, people may start using it as a prototyping software to visualise ideas at a much lower cost.

Based on what we know of Sora’s capabilities it could even be used to create short videos for some applications in entertainment, advertising and education.

OpenAI’s technical paper about Sora is titled “Video generation models as world simulators”. The paper argues that bigger versions of video generators like Sora may be “capable simulators of the physical and digital world, and the objects, animals and people that live within them”.

If this is correct, future versions may have scientific applications for physical, chemical, and even societal experiments. For example, one might be able to test the impact of tsunamis of different sizes on different kinds of infrastructure – and on the physical and mental health of the people nearby.

Achieving this level of simulation is highly challenging, and some experts say a system like Sora is fundamentally incapable of doing it.

A complete simulator would need to calculate physical and chemical reactions at the most detailed levels of the universe. However, simulating a rough approximation of the world and making realistic videos to human eyes might be within reach in the coming years.

Risks and ethical concerns

The main concerns around tools like Sora revolve around their societal and ethical impact. In a world already plagued by disinformation, tools like Sora may make things worse.

It’s easy to see how the ability to generate realistic video of any scene you can describe could be used to spread convincing fake news or throw doubt on real footage. It may endanger public health measures, be used to influence elections, or even burden the justice system with potential fake evidence.


Read more: Whether of politicians, pop stars or teenage girls, sexualised deepfakes are on the rise. They hold a mirror to our sexist world


Video generators may also enable direct threats to targeted individuals, via deepfakes – particularly pornographic ones. These may have terrible repercussions on the lives of the affected individuals and their families.

Beyond these concerns, there are also questions of copyright and intellectual property. Generative AI tools require vast amounts of data for training, and OpenAI has not revealed where Sora’s training data came from.

Large language models and image generators have also been criticised for this reason. In the United States, a group of famous authors have sued OpenAI over a potential misuse of their materials. The case argues that large language models and the companies who use them are stealing the authors’ work to create new content.


Read more: Two authors are suing OpenAI for training ChatGPT with their books. Could they win?


It is not the first time in recent memory that technology has run ahead of the law. For instance, the question of the obligations of social media platforms in moderating content has created heated debate in the past couple of years – much of it revolving around Section 230 of the US Code.

While these concerns are real, based on past experience we would not expect them to stop the development of video-generating technology. OpenAI says it is “taking several important safety steps” before making Sora available to the public, including working with experts in “misinformation, hateful content, and bias” and “building tools to help detect misleading content”.

The Conversation

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

16 Feb 18:22

New water taxi history tours arrive in Tampa this March

by Andrew Harlan

Take a deep dive into Tampa’s history along the Hillsborough River with a Tampa Bay History Center docent. The Pirate Water Taxi is already one of our favorite ways to explore the city, and this partnership with the History Center just deepens our appreciation for the fun transit alternative.

The 1-hour cruise will feature narration as well as viewing the sights of Downtown Tampa from the Pirate Water Taxi. The cruise will set sail from stop 7 located at the Tampa Convention Center (333 S Franklin St) where guests will cruise north to Armature Works (1910 N Ola Ave). On the return trip, the cruise will catch a glimpse of the Tampa Bay History Center before returning to Stop 7.

multiple yellow water taxis in the water
Pirate Water Taxis, and the Cross-Bay Ferry are among transport hubs right next to the Convention Center

The next upcoming cruise is set for March 22. Docent Mary Jo Shenk, a graduate of Florida State University and a 10-year docent at the Tampa Bay History Center, has lived in Tampa for more than five decades. She has rich, personal memories of early encounters with some of Tampa’s most notorious historical residents, with interesting stories to tell. Mary Jo also volunteers at St. John’s Episcopal Church as well as the Tampa Garden Club.

Boarding time is 6:15pm with opportunities for mingling. Tickets are $34.95 and available for purchase online.

What to read next:

The post New water taxi history tours arrive in Tampa this March appeared first on That's So Tampa.

16 Feb 18:21

Why do Israelis and the rest of the world view the Gaza conflict so differently? And can this disconnect be overcome?

by Eyal Mayroz, Senior Lecturer in Peace and Conflict Studies, University of Sydney

Hamas’ vicious attack on southern Israel on October 7 and Israel’s ruthless response have sparked a global campaign for a ceasefire in Gaza and an end to Palestine’s occupation.

Once the fighting stops, the world’s attention will shift to tough “day after” negotiations, which would necessitate, among other things, painful and risky concessions from both sides.

Given the vast deficits of trust and favour between Israelis and Palestinians, such concessions will be extremely difficult to achieve.

Decades of mutual grievances, tit-for-tat violence, daily rights violations of Palestinians and intergenerational trauma have eroded whatever goodwill may have existed once for the “other side”.

And while learning about the tragedies of others can support healing and reconciliation processes, turning victimhood into a competition has produced polarisation and distrust.

The only hope for peace now is of a plan imposed from the outside.

To encourage faith in the process, mediators will have to demonstrate both fairness and a previously missing commitment to push the parties into making such concessions – on assurances of robust and durable international support.

Even then, changes of leadership will have to take place for any meaningful breakthrough to occur.

How Israelis are viewing the war

The world has largely moved on from the October 7 attacks, with many people’s memories now obscured by the daily footage of the carnage in Gaza. More than 28,000 Palestinians have been killed so far, and many more are still under the rubble.

However, Israelis don’t see on their screens what the rest of the world sees. Rather, they continue to relive — through survivors’ testimonies and other stories — the horrors of October 7. These kinds of reports are rarely watched now by others.

Gaza’s destruction and the mass killings of Palestinians – many of them elderly, women and children – are reported by Israel’s mainstream media very selectively, as “unfortunate” but inevitable collateral damage for which Hamas alone should be held accountable.

While relentlessly thrashing Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his government for their failures before, during and after October 7, the Israeli media continue to shield the public from the images of the unimaginable despair coming out of Gaza.

So long as the fighting continues and Israeli troops remain in harm’s way, rallying around the Star of David is considered the right thing to do.


Read more: Reflections on hope during unprecedented violence in the Israel-Hamas war


A sense of betrayal

The widely reported displays of glee in the hours after the brutal massacres or kidnappings of over 1,400 Israelis – including women, children and elderly people – stunned Israeli society.

In their worst nightmares, Israelis could not imagine or make sense of the support for the Hamas attack, or the widespread denial that atrocities had occurred at all. That it took nearly two months for UN officials and prominent women’s rights organisations to acknowledge the systematic rape that took place during the attack dismayed and enraged the entire country.

Nowhere was the shock felt more acutely than within Israel’s small and now battered peace camp. Some of the victims on October 7 had for years been active members of the peace movement. After years of campaigning, anti-occupation activists felt suddenly betrayed by many progressives in the West who seemed uncaring or oblivious to their pain. In the days following the attack, the pages of the left-leaning Haaretz newspaper were filled with expressions of this anger and raw emotion.

By magnifying old, festering feelings of isolation and victimisation within Jewish society, the callous or insensitive reactions to the October 7 attack ended up inflicting damage on the Palestinian cause, as well.

As emotions in Israel continue to run high, more and more people have been adopting the view that if the world hates us so much (evoking the days of the Holocaust), we will forever have to live by the sword.

Inadvertently fanning the victimisation narrative, the global outrage over Gaza has hardened Israelis’ defiance, as well. Why, many of them are asking, didn’t the same rage manifest over the bloody conflicts in Sudan, Yemen, Ethiopia or Myanmar? Why is Israel being singled out?

These feelings – and the delusional thinking that Hamas could be destroyed and all hostages freed by force – have overwhelmed all other considerations for the Israelis.

For years, public opinion in Israel had significant influence over government policies on the occupied territories. The shock of October 7 may have amplified the importance of these opinions by upending many people’s long-held positions on the Palestinian “problem”. This has been more likely the case on the political left and in the centre, where many people have lost a sense of security and hope.

The arguably more logical lesson of the attack — that peace and security for Israel are inextricably linked to the self-determination of the Palestinian people — has failed to gain many new adherents, at least for now.

As a result, the death toll in Gaza has so far had little impact on the Israeli Jewish public. The only thing animating some calls for a ceasefire deal now is the ongoing risk to the hostages and the sense of national responsibility for their fate.


Read more: Gaza war: Israelis feel angry at their government and abandoned by the international community


The international campaign for Palestine

For much of the world, the never-ending violations of Palestinians’ rights by Jewish settlers, the Israeli state and Israeli security forces have legitimised the struggle for a free Palestine, many times over.

This accumulation of past wrongs – together with the brutality of Israel’s military operation – have succeeded in placing the Palestinian agenda at the forefront of global attention and keeping it there for months.

However, anger at injustices should not lead to support – or even acquiescence – for the killing of civilians, by either side. No amount of violence will bring a resolution to this highly asymmetric conflict. Israel has for decades tried to impose its own solutions on the Palestinians through force and failed. Why would the same means succeed now in the other direction?

The path to a Palestinian state must provide, among other things, a sense of security for the Israelis. Not because this objective is more important than others, but because without it, there will be no end to the horrors of the occupation.

The ‘day after’ solution

In the days and months to come, international leaders have two major tasks to achieve. In addition to bringing an end to the bloodshed in Gaza (to which the US alone holds the key), they must strive to earn trust on both sides of the fence.

Both Palestinians and Israelis should be able to have confidence in the process and the will of the mediators to keep their concerns and interests at heart in the difficult negotiations over inevitably painful and risky solutions.


Read more: Defending space for free discussion, empathy and tolerance on campus is a challenge during Israel-Hamas war


Since the events of October 7 have set the prospects for grassroots peace-building back years, solutions imposed from the top down will be necessary to chart a feasible path forward.

Hate comes easily in the face of injustices, as does empathy for the suffering on one own’s side. It is much harder to empathise with the misfortunes of “others” who may or may not have brought their misery upon themselves.

Selective denunciation of atrocities based on one’s support or rejection of a cause — any cause — is not only morally flawed, but counterproductive as well. Resistance to any, and all, atrocities should be proactive, decisive and resolute.

Those who have been severely aggrieved may struggle to apply the same yardstick to others, but the rest of us could and should. We can do better.

The Conversation

Eyal Mayroz does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

16 Feb 18:14

Truman Capote was ruined when he published his society friends’ secrets. Was Answered Prayers worth it?

by Alexander Howard, Senior Lecturer, Discipline of English and Writing, University of Sydney
Naomi Watts as Babe Paley and Tom Hollander as Truman Capote in Feud: Capote vs the Swans. Binge

In November 1975, Truman Capote, the proudly gay author of Breakfast at Tiffany’s and In Cold Blood, unveiled the hotly anticipated second instalment of his unpublished novel, Answered Prayers. It was published in Esquire magazine.

To say it caused a scandal would be a gross understatement. Reputations were trashed and real harm caused. Capote ended his days a social pariah in his former New York society circles, incapacitated by a lifetime of prodigious substance abuse.

The unprecedented moral and social uproar that stemmed from the scandal has captured the attention of many writers, and is now the subject of the new anthology television series, Feud: Capote vs. The Swans.

The story to blame, La Côte Basque, 1965, takes its title from its setting: an achingly fashionable French restaurant in Manhattan. Industrial quantities of expensive champagne are consumed over lunch. All of a sudden, everyone in the room starts to stare and whisper:

Mrs. Kennedy and her sister had elicited not a murmur, nor had the entrances of Lauren Bacall and Katharine Cornell and Clare Booth Luce. However, Mrs. Hopkins was une autre chose: a sensation to unsettle the suavest Côte Basque client.

As her all-black attire suggests (“black hat with a veil trim, a black Mainbocher suit, black crocodile purse, crocodile shoes”), Mrs. Hopkins is in mourning. This doesn’t go unnoticed:

“Only,” said Lady Ina, “Ann Hopkins would think of that. To advertise your search for spiritual ‘advice’ in the most public possible manner. Once a tramp, always a tramp.”

What, the reader wonders, has Ann Hopkins done to deserve such an admonishment? Lady Ina Coolbirth leaves us in no doubt whatsoever. Ann Hopkins is simply not to be trusted. If Ina is to be believed, we are dealing with someone who once quite literally got away with murder:

But it could have been an accident. If one goes by the papers. As I remember, they’d just come home from a dinner party in Watch Hill and gone to bed in separate rooms. Weren’t there supposed to have been a recent series of burglaries thereabouts? – and she kept a shotgun by her bed, and suddenly in the dark her bedroom door opened and she grabbed the shotgun and shot at what she thought was a prowler. Only it was her husband. David Hopkins. With a hole through his head.

This is a true story. The only difference? Capote changed the names.

The real-life ‘Mrs. Bang-Bang’

Ann Hopkins is a fictional cutout for the socialite Ann Woodward, born Angeline Lucille Crowell on a farm in Kansas in 1915. In 1943, she married one of America’s richest men, William Woodward Jr.

On 30 October 1955, the Woodwards, whose marriage was violent and fractious, were guests at a dinner party held in the honour of Wallis Simpson, the Duchess of Windsor, in Oyster Bay, New York. There was talk of the spate of burglaries that had recently occurred in the area. Ann, who suffered from insecurity and social anxiety, drank more than usual.

Returning home with her husband, she washed down some sleeping pills and went to bed, not long after midnight. At two in the morning, Ann was woken by the sound of her dog growling. Thinking there an intruder in the house, Ann grabbed the shotgun she kept by her bedside. She moved out into the hallway, where she saw the silhouette of a man. She opened fire without issuing a warning. The body crashed to the floor.

Or rather, as the researcher Roseanne Montillo notes, “that is the story she would tell the police, her mother-in-law, and all who asked during the rest of her life. Many would doubt her, including Truman Capote.”

Capote crossed paths with Ann Woodward in the Alpine town of Saint Moritz in the autumn of 1956. Ann did not take kindly to having her meal interrupted. She dismissed Capote with a homophobic slur.

He returned fire, calling her “Mrs. Bang Bang”. The sobriquet stuck to Ann for the remainder of her life. Montillo adds that Capote “would repeat the story of how he had met the notorious Ann Woodward whenever the opportunity presented itself, embellishing his tale and relishing each detail”.


Read more: The Clearing's investigation of The Family invites us to ask: what's the appeal – and risk – of crime stories based on real events?


‘What I’m writing is true’

While they would have been loath to admit it, Truman Capote and Ann Woodward were similar in certain ways.

Both overcame childhood hardship and adversity. And much like Ann, the precocious Capote, who was born Truman Streckfus Persons in New Orleans, Louisiana, in 1924, craved success, stardom and access to the trappings of elite society from a very early age.

Regardless of whether he truly appreciated this, it seems fair to say Capote’s encounter with Ann Woodward made quite the impression on him.

Capote’s authorised biographer, Gerald Clarke, reveals Ann Woodward was on the author’s mind when he came up with the initial idea for Answered Prayers in 1958. Clarke describes how Capote originally “planned to make Ann his central character; in a list of eight names he jotted down in his journal, hers was the only one he had underlined”.

Capote’s conception of Answered Prayers, which he struggled with and talked about for decades, developed over time. Marcel Proust loomed large in Capote’s imagination. In his monumental novel-cycle Remembrance of Things Past, Proust scrutinised the social machinations of the Parisian upper classes at the turn of the 20th century.

Capote conceived of his project – which took shape as a roman à clef – in equivalent terms. Clarke quotes Capote as saying:

I am not Proust. I am not as intelligent or as educated as he was. I am not as sensitive in various ways. But my eye is every bit as good as his. Every bit! I see everything! I don’t miss nothin’! What I’m writing is true, it’s real and it’s done in the very best prose style that I think any American writer could possibly achieve. […] If Proust were an American living now in New York, this is what he would be doing.

Capote clearly wasn’t lacking confidence. Answered Prayers was going to depict “American society in the second half of the twentieth century. This book is about is about you, it’s about me, it’s about them, it’s about everyone.”

Capote was to tell the story of American society via thinly fictionalised versions of some of the wealthiest and most fashionable women in the world. As journalist Laurence Leamer tells it,

everyone knew these characters were based on his closest friends, the coterie of gorgeous, witty, and fabulously rich women he called his “swans”.

Capote coined the term in an essay written for Harper’s Bazaar in October 1959. He claimed that

as is generally conceded, a beautiful girl of twelve or twenty, while she may merit attention, does not deserve admiration. Reserve that laurel for decades hence when, if she has kept buoyant the weight of her gifts, been faithful to the vows a swan must, she will have earned an audience all-kneeling; for her achievement represents discipline, has required the patience of a hippopotamus, the objectivity of a physician combined with the involvement of an artist, one whose sole creation is her perishable self.

There is a lot to unpack in this passage. Capote is essentially suggesting there is more to beauty than youth and looks alone. He considered style and self-presentation to be infinitely more important when it came to determining whether a beautiful women might be elevated to the position of a swan.

Leamer holds that there were probably only “a dozen women who Truman could have deemed true swans. They were all on the International Best-Dressed Lists, they were each celebrated in the fashion press and beyond, and they all knew one another.”

Babe Paley (wife of CBS chairman William S. Paley). Slim Keith, ex-wife of director Howard Hawks and producer Leland Hayward (and the model for Lady Coolbirth). C.Z. Guest, a renowned beauty painted by Diego Rivera and Salvador Dalí. And Lee Radziwill, deemed, in La Côte Basque, 1965, so superior to her sister Jackie Kennedy, she was “not on the same planet” (the sisters are also described as “a pair of Western geisha girls”).

This is a partial list of the world-famous women who counted Capote as their close friend throughout the 1960s and 70s. He dined with them, holidayed with them, and spent countless hours talking with them.

Having earned their trust, the swans told Capote everything. This gave the writer, an outsider and perceived social inferior, unrivalled access to the upper echelons of American aristocracy.

Capote spent years getting to know and understand these women. In Leamer’s retelling, Capote

appreciated the challenges of their star-crossed lives, what they faced, and how they survived. He had everything he needed to write about them with depth and nuance, exploring both the good and the bad, the light and the darkness. Answered Prayers would be his masterpiece, he knew – the book that would give him a place in the literary pantheon alongside the greatest writers of all time.

Capote seems to have genuinely believed this. But things did not go according to plan.

Diane Lane as Slim Keith, one of the ‘swans’ exposed in Answered Prayers, in Feud: Capote vs the Swans. Binge

Masturbation, misogyny, murder

In retrospect, it is clear that the odds were stacked against Capote from the very beginning.

At the start of January 1966, Capote signed a contract with Random House for a novel titled Answered Prayers. The advance was an eye-watering US$25,000 (equivalent to approximately US$240,000 today).

However, by the time he actually sat down to write the book, he was already under a great deal of pressure. Part of the problem had to do with his “real-life novel” In Cold Blood, which appeared in print just two weeks after he signed the paperwork for Answered Prayers.

In Cold Blood is a creative recounting of the brutal Clutter family murders of 15 November 1959, which took place in the small farming community of Holcomb, Kansas. It was a massive hit with American readers, selling over 300,000 copies in 1966 alone.

The book made Capote the most famous writer in America. Everyone now wanted a piece of him. He was interviewed in countless magazines and appeared on numerous television talk shows. An indefatigable self-promoter, he talked up Answered Prayers whenever he possibly could.

In Cold Blood, which took six years to research and write, left Capote physically, mentally and creatively exhausted. He struggled to maintain focus and missed multiple deadlines. Answered Prayers kept getting pushed back. People started to wonder if it would ever see the light of day.

Things came to a head in 1975. Under pressure to deliver the goods, Capote, who had until this point been incredibly secretive about the contents of his book, agreed, against the advice of his editor, to publish four chapters of Answered Prayers in Esquire.

The first excerpt – Mojave – appeared in June, but garnered little attention from readers and critics. In contrast, the October publication of the scabrous, sexually explicit La Cote Basque, 1965 shocked the literati and set the tongues of socialites wagging.

Capote had spent years tantalising friends and readers with the promise of an epoch-defining, Proustian masterpiece, only to deliver something else entirely.

Masturbation, menstruation, misogyny, murder. Adultery, gossip and gallons of alcohol. Readers who thought they were getting a finely wrought piece of social critique were left scratching their heads in bemusement. What on earth could have possessed Capote? What was he hoping to achieve by besmirching the reputations of those closest to him?


Read more: In Killers of the Flower Moon, true crime reveals the paradoxes of the past


Was the book any good?

With the benefit of hindsight, I think the overwhelming majority missed the memo when it came to Answered Prayers.

To be sure, the work is infinitely more explicit and graphic (in terms of tone and subject matter) than many, if not all of Capote’s earlier literary ventures. By the same token, it is clear Answered Prayers responds to (and even builds on) advances made in his earlier work.

Take, for instance, In Cold Blood: Capote’s conceptual breakthrough came when he realised “objective” forms of journalistic inquiry could be brought into productive dialogue with practices more closely associated with creative writing.

My hunch is he thought he could pull off an equivalent trick with Answered Prayers. Only this time, he uses gossip.

As the art historian Gavin Butt reminds us, gossiping is a serious business. Gossip can serve a positive, even joyous function: it is a “social activity which produces and maintains the filiations” of community.

To put this another way: if used in a strategic and appropriate fashion, gossip can bring people together. It can help to build and sustain social groupings predicated on the basis of shared knowledge (of sexual matters).

But when it came to Answered Prayers, Capote took things a step too far. Pretty much all we get is a constant stream of gossip. Characterisation, for one thing, goes entirely out of the window. So does plot. We see this, of course, in La Cote Basque, 1965. But the same is true of the other available sections of the novel.

Consider Unspoiled Monsters, the first chapter in the posthumously published book. Our narrator, P.B. Jones, is an aspiring writer and bisexual gigolo. (His clients include an acclaimed American playwright who is a thinly veiled Tennessee Williams: “a chunky, paunchy boose-puffed runt with a play mustache glued above laconic lips”.)

This is how Capote introduces his narrator to the reader (note, here, the emphasis on journalistic reportage):

“My name is P. B. Jones, and I’m of two minds whether to tell you something about myself right now, or wait and weave the information into the text of the tale. I could just as well tell you nothing, or very little, for I consider myself a reporter in this matter, not a participant, at least not an important one. But maybe it’s easier to start to start with me.

Having offered his greetings, Jones, whose hardscrabble biography reads very much like his creator’s, starts gossiping and name-dropping indiscriminately. He never lets up. Certain of the swans crop up from time to time, as does Capote’s literary touchstone:

Think of Proust. Would Remembrance have the ring that it does if he had made it historically literal, if he hadn’t transposed sexes, altered events and identities? If he had been absolutely factual, it would have been less believable but […] it might have been better.

To which the reader of Answered Prayers might simply reply: touché.

Capote’s swans as portrayed in Feud: Capote vs the Swans. Second from left: Chloe Sevigny as C.Z. Guest. Far right: Diane Lane as Slim Keith and Naomi Watts as Babe Paley. Binge

Settling scores

Be that as it may, Gerald Clarke is surely right to suggest Capote had "more than literature on his mind” when he agreed to publish parts of Answered Prayers. In part, he was looking to settle scores. Answered Prayers represented an opportunity “to get back at some of his rich friends who, for one reason or another, had offended him over the years.”

The psychologist William Todd Schultz concurs. He reasons that with La Côte Basque, 1965 in particular, Capote “bit down hard on the smooth, socialite hands that fed him.”

Capote’s decision to do so came with some unintended, yet disastrous consequences. Having gotten hold of an advance copy of La Cote Basque, 1965, Ann Woodward, who had a long history of depression, overdosed on barbiturates and passed away. She was a few months shy of her 60th birthday.

Schultz makes the point that Ann Woodward’s reaction to Capote’s story “was the first, by far the saddest and most anguished, but hardly the last”. Capote’s swans, having recognised their fictional selves, recoiled in horror and disgust. They immediately cut Capote out of their lives.

Try as he might, Capote, who claimed his intentions had been misunderstood, couldn’t win the swans back over. Many of them never spoke to him again.

Capote never recovered. And he never came close to finishing Answered Prayers. Dulled by a poisonous cocktail of drink and drugs, his literary skills deserted him long before he died on 25 August 1984.

As chance, or maybe fate would have it, he died at exactly the same age as Ann Woodward. From start to tragic finish, it really does seem as if the lives of these two ambitious social outsiders ran along parallel lines. Given how much they despised each other, I can’t help but wonder what Capote and Woodward would have made of such dismal symmetries.

The Conversation

Alexander Howard does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

16 Feb 17:57

As a rabbi, philosopher and physician, Maimonides wrestled with religion and reason – the book he wrote to reconcile them, ‘Guide to the Perplexed,’ has sparked debate ever since

by Randy L. Friedman, Associate Professor of Judaic Studies, Binghamton University, State University of New York
A bas-relief of Maimonides, sculpted by Brenda Putnam, hangs in the U.S. House of Representatives among statues of historical lawmakers. Architect of the Capitol/Wikimedia

I teach a philosophy of religion seminar titled “Faith and Reason.” Most students who register arrive with a mistaken assumption: that the course explores the differences between the two.

“Faith” is often defined as belief in a supernatural God that transcends reason – and belief that science can only go so far to explain the fundamental mysteries of life. Reason, meanwhile, means inquiry that draws on logic and deductive reasoning.

It seems like a stark choice, an either-or – until we read Maimonides. For Maimonides, a 12th century theologian, philosopher, rabbi and physician, there is no true faith without reason.

Maimonides’ full name was Rabbi Moses Ben Maimon, and he is often referred to by the abbreviation “Rambam.” His writings spurred centuries of conflict and were even banned in some Jewish communities. Yet he also penned one of the most famous guides to Jewish law and still stands as one of the most influential rabbis to have ever lived.

It is surprising for many students to learn that Maimonides, who lived in present-day Spain, Morocco and Egypt, embraced reason as the only way to make sense of faith. In this rabbi’s view, the idea of a battle between faith and reason sets boundaries where none need exist.

Faith must be grounded in reason, lest it become superstition. This synthesis is at the heart of Maimonides’ most famous philosophical work, “The Guide for the Perplexed.”

Jerusalem and Athens

Treating faith and reason as if they are at odds is nothing new. Some philosophers have described them as two different cities, as when University of Chicago professor Leo Strauss wrote of “Jerusalem and Athens.”

Both cities love wisdom, Strauss wrote, but attribute it to different things. In “Jerusalem,” where life is grounded by faith in God, “the beginning of wisdom is fear of the Lord,” Strauss wrote in 1967, quoting the biblical books of Proverbs and Job. In “Athens,” on the other hand, symbolized by the ancient Greek philosophers, “the beginning of wisdom is wonder” – the wonder of inquiry and reason.

Almost 800 years before, however, Maimonides was arguing that true religion, true wisdom, requires both.

A bronze-colored statue of a man in robes and golden shoes sitting with an open book in his lap, positioned in a sunny courtyard with plants growing behind it.
A statue of Maimonides in Cordoba, Spain. Education Images/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

Rambam was deeply steeped in Jewish learning. As a doctor, astronomer and philosopher, however, he was just as knowledgeable about the science of his day. He ostensibly wrote “The Guide to the Perplexed” to help his student Joseph Ibn Aknin navigate between the truths of philosophy, natural science and revelation.

Maimonides’ understanding of God and the universe mostly agreed with Aristotle’s . In Part II of his “Guide,” Maimonides credits Aristotle with helping to prove three key principles about God: God is incorporeal, without a physical body; God is one; and God transcends the material world. Yet God created the world and set it in motion, Maimonides asserts, and everything in it depends on God for its existence.

Science and scripture

Throughout these chapters, the rabbi does not turn to scripture to prove or disprove philosophical propositions, although he notes that Aristotle’s opinion may be “in accordance with the words of our prophets and our theologians or Sages.”

This does not mean that Maimonides does not care about sacred texts – far from it. Rather, he argues that the truths of science and philosophy must inform how people interpret the Bible.

Many people of faith have read the Book of Genesis’ story of creation literally. For them, God’s creation of humanity “in our image and likeness” means both that God must have a body and that humanity shares much in common with God.

For Maimonides, however, language like these passages in Genesis was allegorical. If reason teaches that God is incorporeal, this means that God has no body; God does not physically see, nor do people see God. God does not speak, sit on a throne, stretch out an arm, rest or become angry. Reading these passages literally misunderstands the nature of God.

It is hard to overstate the significance of this claim. In Maimonides’ view, saying that God has a body is not just incorrect but blasphemous and idolatrous. He sees God as unique and transcendent, irreducible to anything human or material. And if God does not literally speak, then the Bible cannot be the literal word of God.

A black and white image of an old, worn parchment covered in letters in black ink.
A letter Maimonides wrote around 1172, discovered in the late 1800s. Culture Club/Hulton Archive via Getty Images

Maimonides insists that the Bible be appreciated as an esoteric text. Any part of the revealed text that does not fit with a true understanding of God and the universe must be read allegorically.

Reason does not eliminate his faith in God, or the power of scripture. Instead, reason protects people from believing something incorrect about God’s nature. Maimonides insists that we have faith in reason and that reason ground our faith.

The palace of God

Maimonides’ philosophical writing is filled with debate and disagreement between him, fellow rabbis, Jewish philosophers and the Kalam, a medieval tradition of Islamic theology. Reason was the tool needed to make sense of sacred texts, and philosophical inquiry was the process needed to get it right. The goal was truth, not mere obedience.

Toward the end of his “Guide for the Perplexed,” Maimonides lays out what he believes are different levels of enlightenment. The allegory centers on a king’s palace: Only a select few, those who pursue truest wisdom grounded in philosophy and science, will reach the room where the king – God – resides. People guided by faith alone, who accept scripture literally and unquestioningly, and believe that faith transcends reason, on the other hand, “have their backs turned toward the king’s palace,” moving further and further away from God.

Maimonides is considered one of the greatest rabbinic authorities of all time. And his resolution to the debate between faith and reason could not have been clearer: There should be no true conflict. Both reason and revelation are our guides.

The Conversation

Randy L. Friedman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

15 Feb 20:36

Gold, silver and lithium mining on federal land doesn’t bring in any royalties to the US Treasury – because of an 1872 law

by Sam Kalen, Associate Dean and Professor of Law, University of Wyoming
Aerial view of the Pinto Valley copper mine, located on private and U.S. national forest lands in Gila County, Ariz. Wild Horizon/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

When Congress opened U.S. public lands for mining in 1872, the nation was less than a century old. Miners used picks, shovels and pressurized water hoses to pry loose valuable minerals like gold and silver.

Today, mining is a high-technology industry, but it is still governed by the Mining Law of 1872. As was true 150 years ago, companies can mine valuable mineral deposits from federal lands without paying any royalties to the U.S. Treasury.

Even when lands that formerly were available for mining receive new protected status as national parks or monuments, the 1872 mining law protects existing mining claims on those lands. That’s why a company called Energy Fuels Inc. just started mining uranium in January 2024 at a site in Arizona 10 miles from the Grand Canyon and inside a new national monument.

Men wield shovels and wheelbarrows next to a small timbered opening in a hillside.
Gold prospectors mining at Lake Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, circa 1885. Graphic House/Archive Photos via Getty Images

Minerals like lithium, uranium and copper are essential for shifting from fossil fuels to renewable energy, and for many other uses in our increasingly technological society. The Biden administration wants to produce these materials domestically, rather than relying on foreign sources – especially from countries like the Democratic Republic of Congo, where child labor abuses in the mining industry persist.

As a natural resource and public land scholar, I agree with many others who argue that the 1872 mining law is archaic and overdue for an update. It allows the modern mining industry to develop valuable resources on public lands without returning any value to the American taxpayer, and to mine in areas that have sensitive ecosystems or contain important cultural resources for Indigenous peoples.

Royalty-free development

Allowing citizens to enter, explore and ultimately develop claims on federal lands with valuable mineral deposits was part of a broad push to settle the West. Congress enacted the 1872 mining law just a decade after the Homestead Act, which gave settlers up to 160 acres of public land for a small claim fee if they lived on it and farmed it, and three years after the completion of the transcontinental railroad in 1869.

Today, open federal public lands are managed by either the U.S. Forest Service or the Bureau of Land Management. In either case, they are considered available for hard rock mining.

Companies that want to develop coal, oil, natural gas, geothermal energy and solar or wind power on public lands sign leases and pay royalties in return for using these lands to generate private wealth. For example, the current royalty rate for oil and gas production on federal land is 16.67% of the market value of these fuels.

Not so for mining companies, even if they extract precious metals like gold and silver. According to an Interior Department estimate, the value of gold, silver, copper, molybdenum, lead and zinc mined on federal lands in the West in 2019 was approximately US$4.9 billion. If the companies had paid royalties, they would have returned millions of dollars to the U.S. Treasury.

A miner who locates a valuable mineral deposit on public lands and complies with federal and state law enjoys a right to explore and then develop the land, and can even prevent others from doing so. There are two principal qualifying rules.

First, claims can only be located on open public lands that have not been withdrawn from use for other purposes, such as protecting cultural resources or wilderness areas. Second, the 1872 law only applies to valuable mineral deposits, which it defines as those on lands containing locatable minerals that a prudent person would develop because the minerals can be mined and marketed at a profit.

These materials may include precious minerals, such as gold and silver; metallic minerals, such as uranium, lead, copper or zinc; or nonmetallic minerals, such as some types of limestone, bentonite and asbestos. High-profile mining proposals today include copper mines in Arizona and lithium mines in Nevada.

Native Americans have fought construction of a lithium mine at Thacker Pass in northern Nevada, which they contend sits on their ancestral land. Environmentalists are divided over the project, which would supply material for advanced batteries.

Decades of debate

Calls for reforming the 1872 law first surfaced in the late 19th century and have persisted ever since.

After all, the law transferred valuable public resources to private hands at virtually no cost, while saddling the public with the resulting environmental burdens, such as ponds contaminated with toxic cyanide. Mining on public lands, especially prior to the 1970s, left a multitude of contaminated zones that federal agencies are still working to clean up at taxpayer expense.

Today, mining operations are subject to modern land management and environmental laws, such as the Clean Water Act. But these laws were not written specifically to address mining and do not fully cover issues such as disposal of mine waste.

University of California legal scholar John Leshy, a former solicitor at the Interior Department and the nation’s premier mining law expert, forcefully described in his 1987 book, “The Mining Law: A Study in Perpetual Motion,” how this statute languished for decades, widely understood as ill-suited to modern times yet eluding reform. Former University of Colorado law professor Charles Wilkinson called the law a “lord of yesterday” in his classic 1992 book, “Crossing the Next Meridian: Land, Water, and the Future of the West.”

Reform advocates support adopting the type of traditional leasing model that is used for most other resources on public lands in the U.S. and elsewhere. As an example, for oil and gas production on federal lands and offshore in federal waters, agencies identify areas with development potential and hold competitive auctions to lease parcels for exploration and development.

Reformists also favor tighter environmental safeguards that would address issues such as management and disposal of mining wastes. Finally, they argue that mining should be prohibited in areas that are ecologically sensitive or are important to Indigenous peoples or tribal nations.

Bright orange water flows from a pipe into a plastic-lined settling pond.
Water from a 2015 spill at the abandoned Gold King mine in southwest Colorado flows into a holding pond. The spill released 3 million gallons of water laced with toxic metals, contaminating rivers in three states and the Navajo Nation. AP Photo/Brennan Linsley

In contrast, the mining industry and its supporters complain that existing laws hinder mining activities. In their view, the federal government applies the 1872 mining law in a way that forces companies to spend years securing necessary approvals. A 2015 report prepared for the mining industry estimated that the average time required to secure all permits for a large mine in the U.S. was seven to 10 years, compared with two years in Canada and Australia.

The industry also contends that imposing a royalty requirement would make it hard for companies to produce critical materials profitably, although these companies currently pay royalties to 12 western states for mining on state land.

In September 2023, the Interior Department released a 168-page report making recommendations for improving mining on public lands. It calls for:

– Putting greater emphasis on environmental protection in mine permitting;

– Preventing mining in areas that are important to tribal nations and Indigenous peoples;

– Replacing the 1872 mining law with a more traditional leasing system that would charge royalties of 4% to 8%; and

– Charging mining companies a fee that would be used to help clean up abandoned mine sites, similar to a fee that coal mining companies have paid since 1977.

Bills are pending now in Congress, introduced by legislators from Nevada, a major mineral-producing state. These measures would retain the structure of the 1872 law while taking steps to streamline permitting for large-scale mining activities.

Balancing critical minerals and conservation

Mining conversations are taking on new urgency as the U.S. pursues a clean energy transition and works to secure essential materials for a modern technology-based economy. In my view, focusing myopically on critical minerals and moving forward with a new era of domestic mining should not occur without reforming the 1872 law.

A rewrite of the law could streamline permitting and create a planning process for mining on public land that mirrors the existing process for energy projects. Halting climate change and powering a new green economy may involve some trade-offs between short-term and long-term environmental protection goals.

But these choices can be made thoughtfully, with a focus on protecting America’s treasured public lands. In 1872, our nation’s lands and natural resources may have seemed inexhaustible; today, we know they are finite, and that using them responsibly means balancing development and stewardship.

The Conversation

Sam Kalen served as Special Assistant to the Associate Solicitor for Minerals and Resources at the US Department of the Interior from 1994-1996. Views expressed in this article are solely those of the author.

15 Feb 20:34

Students lose out as cities and states give billions in property tax breaks to businesses − draining school budgets and especially hurting the poorest students

by Christine Wen, Assistant Professor of Landscape Architecture & Urban Planning, Texas A&M University
Exxon Mobil Corp.'s campus in East Baton Rouge Parish, left, received millions in tax abatements to the detriment of local schools, right. Barry Lewis/Getty Images, Tjean314/Wikimedia

Built in 1910, James Elementary is a three-story brick school in Kansas City, Missouri’s historic Northeast neighborhood, with a bright blue front door framed by a sand-colored stone arch adorned with a gargoyle. As bustling students and teachers negotiate a maze of gray stairs with worn wooden handrails, Marjorie Mayes, the school’s principal, escorts a visitor across uneven blue tile floors on the ground floor to a classroom with exposed brick walls and pipes. Bubbling paint mars some walls, evidence of the water leaks spreading inside the aging building.

“It’s living history,” said Mayes during a mid-September tour of the building. “Not the kind of living history we want.”

The district would like to tackle the US$400 million in deferred maintenance needed to create a 21st century learning environment at its 35 schools – including James Elementary – but it can’t. It doesn’t have the money.

Property tax redirect

The lack of funds is a direct result of the property tax breaks that Kansas City lavishes on companies and developers that do business there. The program is supposed to bring in new jobs and business but instead has ended up draining civic coffers and starving schools. Between 2017 and 2023, the Kansas City school district lost $237.3 million through tax abatements.

Kansas City is hardly an anomaly. An estimated 95% of U.S. cities provide economic development tax incentives to woo corporate investors. The upshot is that billions have been diverted from large urban school districts and from a growing number of small suburban and rural districts. The impact is seen in districts as diverse as Chicago and Cleveland, Hillsboro, Oregon, and Storey County, Nevada.

The result? A 2021 review of 2,498 financial statements from school districts across 27 states revealed that, in 2019 alone, at least $2.4 billion was diverted to fund tax incentives. Yet that substantial figure still downplays the magnitude of the problem, because three-quarters of the 10,370 districts analyzed did not provide any information on tax abatement agreements.

Tax abatement programs have long been controversial, pitting states and communities against one another in beggar-thy-neighbor contests. Their economic value is also, at best, unclear: Studies show most companies would have made the same location decision without taxpayer subsidies. Meanwhile, schools make up the largest cost item in these communities, meaning they suffer most when companies are granted breaks in property taxes.

A three-month investigation by The Conversation and three scholars with expertise in economic development, tax laws and education policy shows that the cash drain from these programs is not equally shared by schools in the same communities. At the local level, tax abatements and exemptions often come at the cost of critical funding for school districts that disproportionately serve students from low-income households and who are racial minorities.

In Missouri, for example, in 2022 nearly $1,700 per student was redirected from Kansas City public and charter schools, while between $500 and $900 was redirected from wealthier, whiter Northland schools on the north side of the river in Kansas City and in the suburbs beyond. Other studies have found similar demographic trends elsewhere, including New York state, South Carolina and Columbus, Ohio.

The funding gaps produced by abated money often force schools to delay needed maintenance, increase class sizes, lay off teachers and support staff and even close outright. Schools also struggle to update or replace outdated technology, books and other educational resources. And, amid a nationwide teacher shortage, schools under financial pressures sometimes turn to inexperienced teachers who are not fully certified or rely too heavily on recruits from overseas who have been given special visa status.

Lost funding also prevents teachers and staff, who often feed, clothe and otherwise go above and beyond to help students in need, from earning a living wage. All told, tax abatements can end up harming a community’s value, with constant funding shortfalls creating a cycle of decline.

Incentives, payoffs and guarantees

Perversely, some of the largest beneficiaries of tax abatements are the politicians who publicly boast of handing out the breaks despite the harm to poorer communities. Incumbent governors have used the incentives as a means of taking credit for job creation, even when the jobs were coming anyway.

“We know that subsidies don’t work,” said Elizabeth Marcello, a doctoral lecturer at Hunter College who studies governmental planning and policy and the interactions between state and local governments. “But they are good political stories, and I think that’s why politicians love them so much.”

Academic research shows that economic development incentives are ineffective most of the time – and harm school systems.

While some voters may celebrate abatements, parents can recognize the disparities between school districts that are created by the tax breaks. Fairleigh Jackson pointed out that her daughter’s East Baton Rouge third grade class lacks access to playground equipment.

The class is attending school in a temporary building while their elementary school undergoes a two-year renovation.

The temporary site has some grass and a cement slab where kids can play, but no playground equipment, Jackson said. And parents needed to set up an Amazon wish list to purchase basic equipment such as balls, jump ropes and chalk for students to use. The district told parents there would be no playground equipment due to a lack of funds, then promised to install equipment, Jackson said, but months later, there is none.

Cement surface surrounded by a fence with grass beyond. There's no playground equipment..
The temporary site where Fairleigh Jackson’s daughter goes to school in East Baton Rouge Parish lacks playground equipment. Fairleigh Jackson, CC BY-ND

Jackson said it’s hard to complain when other schools in the district don’t even have needed security measures in place. “When I think about playground equipment, I think that’s a necessary piece of child development,” Jackson said. “Do we even advocate for something that should be a daily part of our kids’ experience when kids’ safety isn’t being funded?”

Meanwhile, the challenges facing administrators 500-odd miles away at Atlanta Public Schools are nothing if not formidable: The district is dealing with chronic absenteeism among half of its Black students, many students are experiencing homelessness, and it’s facing a teacher shortage.

At the same time, Atlanta is showering corporations with tax breaks. The city has two bodies that dole them out: the Development Authority of Fulton County, or DAFC, and Invest Atlanta, the city’s economic development agency. The deals handed out by the two agencies have drained $103.8 million from schools from fiscal 2017 to 2022, according to Atlanta school system financial statements.

What exactly Atlanta and other cities and states are accomplishing with tax abatement programs is hard to discern. Fewer than a quarter of companies that receive breaks in the U.S. needed an incentive to invest, according to a 2018 study by the Upjohn Institute for Employment Research, a nonprofit research organization.

This means that at least 75% of companies received tax abatements when they’re not needed – with communities paying a heavy price for economic development that sometimes provides little benefit.

In Kansas City, for example, there’s no guarantee that the businesses that do set up shop after receiving a tax abatement will remain there long term. That’s significant considering the historic border war between the Missouri and Kansas sides of Kansas City – a competition to be the most generous to the businesses, said Jason Roberts, president of the Kansas City Federation of Teachers and School-Related Personnel. Kansas City, Missouri, has a 1% income tax on people who work in the city, so it competes for as many workers as possible to secure that earnings tax, Roberts said.

Under city and state tax abatement programs, companies that used to be in Kansas City have since relocated. The AMC Theaters headquarters, for example, moved from the city’s downtown to Leawood, Kansas, about a decade ago, garnering some $40 million in Promoting Employment Across Kansas tax incentives.

Roberts said that when one side’s financial largesse runs out, companies often move across the state line – until both states decided in 2019 that enough was enough and declared a cease-fire.

But tax breaks for other businesses continue. “Our mission is to grow the economy of Kansas City, and application of tools such as tax exemptions are vital to achieving that mission, said Jon Stephens, president and CEO of Port KC, the Kansas City Port Authority. The incentives speed development, and providing them "has resulted in growth choosing KC versus other markets,” he added.

In Atlanta, those tax breaks are not going to projects in neighborhoods that need help attracting development. They have largely been handed out to projects that are in high demand areas of the city, said Julian Bene, who served on Invest Atlanta’s board from 2010 to 2018. In 2019, for instance, the Fulton County development authority approved a 10-year, $16 million tax abatement for a 410-foot-tall, 27,000-square-foot tower in Atlanta’s vibrant Midtown business district. The project included hotel space, retail space and office space that is now occupied by Google and Invesco.

In 2021, a developer in Atlanta pulled its request for an $8 million tax break to expand its new massive, mixed-use Ponce City Market development in the trendy Beltline neighborhood with an office tower and apartment building. Because of community pushback, the developer knew it likely did not have enough votes from the commission for approval, Bene said. After a second try for $5 million in lower taxes was also rejected, the developer went ahead and built the project anyway.

Invest Atlanta has also turned down projects in the past, Bene said. Oftentimes, after getting rejected, the developer goes back to the landowner and asks for a better price to buy the property to make their numbers work, because it was overvalued at the start.

Trouble in Philadelphia

On Thursday, Oct. 26, 2023, an environmental team was preparing Southwark School in Philadelphia for the winter cold. While checking an attic fan, members of the team saw loose dust on top of flooring that contained asbestos. The dust that certainly was blowing into the floors below could contain the cancer-causing agent. Within a day, Southwark was closed – the seventh Philadelphia school temporarily shuttered since the previous academic year because of possible asbestos contamination.

A 2019 inspection of the John L Kinsey school in Philadelphia found asbestos in plaster walls, floor tiles, radiator insulation and electrical panels. Asbestos is a major problem for Philadelphia’s public schools. The district needs $430 million to clean up the asbestos, lead, and other environmental hazards that place the health of students, teachers and staff at risk. And that is on top of an additional $2.4 billion to fix failing and damaged buildings.

Yet the money is not available. Matthew Stem, a former district official, testified in a 2023 lawsuit about financing of Pennsylvania schools that the environmental health risks cannot be addressed until an emergency like at Southwark because “existing funding sources are not sufficient to remediate those types of issues.”

Meanwhile, the city keeps doling out abatements, draining money that could have gone toward making Philadelphia schools safer. In the fiscal year ending June 2022, such tax breaks cost the school district $118 million – more than 25% of the total amount needed to remove the asbestos and other health dangers. These abatements take 31 years to break even, according to the city’s own scenario impact analyses.

Huge subsets of the community – primarily Black, Brown, poor or a combination – are being “drastically impacted” by the exemptions and funding shortfalls for the school district, said Kendra Brooks, a Philadelphia City Council member. Schools and students are affected by mold, asbestos and lead, and crumbling infrastructure, as well as teacher and staffing shortages – including support staff, social workers and psychologists.

More than half the district’s schools that lacked adequate air conditioning – 87 schools – had to go to half days during the first week of the 2023 school year because of extreme heat. Poor heating systems also leave the schools cold in the winter. And some schools are overcrowded, resulting in large class sizes, she said.

Front of a four-story brick school building with tall windows, some with air-conditioners
Horace Furness High School in Philadelphia, where hot summers have temporarily closed schools that lack air conditioning. Nick-philly/Wikimedia, CC BY-SA

Teachers and researchers agree that a lack of adequate funding undermines educational opportunities and outcomes. That’s especially true for children living in poverty. A 2016 study found that a 10% increase in per-pupil spending each year for all 12 years of public schooling results in nearly one-third of a year of more education, 7.7% higher wages and a 3.2% reduction in annual incidence of adult poverty. The study estimated that a 21.7% increase could eliminate the high school graduation gap faced by children from low-income families.

More money for schools leads to more education resources for students and their teachers. The same researchers found that spending increases were associated with reductions in student-to-teacher ratios, increases in teacher salaries and longer school years. Other studies yielded similar results: School funding matters, especially for children already suffering the harms of poverty.

While tax abatements themselves are generally linked to rising property values, the benefits are not evenly distributed. In fact, any expansion of the tax base due to new property construction tends to be outside of the county granting the tax abatement. For families in school districts with the lost tax revenues, their neighbors’ good fortune likely comes as little solace. Meanwhile, a poorly funded education system is less likely to yield a skilled and competitive workforce, creating longer-term economic costs that make the region less attractive for businesses and residents.

“There’s a head-on collision here between private gain and the future quality of America’s workforce,” said Greg LeRoy, executive director at Good Jobs First, a Washington, D.C., advocacy group that’s critical of tax abatement and tracks the use of economic development subsidies.

Three-story school building with police officers out front and traffic lights in the foreground
Roxborough High School in Philadelphia. AP Photo/Matt Rourke

As funding dwindles and educational quality declines, additional families with means often opt for alternative educational avenues such as private schooling, home-schooling or moving to a different school district, further weakening the public school system.

Throughout the U.S., parents with the power to do so demand special arrangements, such as selective schools or high-track enclaves that hire experienced, fully prepared teachers. If demands aren’t met, they leave the district’s public schools for private schools or for the suburbs. Some parents even organize to splinter their more advantaged, and generally whiter, neighborhoods away from the larger urban school districts.

Those parental demands – known among scholars as “opportunity hoarding” – may seem unreasonable from the outside, but scarcity breeds very real fears about educational harms inflicted on one’s own children. Regardless of who’s to blame, the children who bear the heaviest burden of the nation’s concentrated poverty and racialized poverty again lose out.

Rethinking in Philadelphia and Riverhead

Americans also ask public schools to accomplish Herculean tasks that go far beyond the education basics, as many parents discovered at the onset of the pandemic when schools closed and their support for families largely disappeared.

A school serving students who endure housing and food insecurity must dedicate resources toward children’s basic needs and trauma. But districts serving more low-income students spend less per student on average, and almost half the states have regressive funding structures.

Facing dwindling resources for schools, several cities have begun to rethink their tax exemption programs.

The Philadelphia City Council recently passed a scale-back on a 10-year property tax abatement by decreasing the percentage of the subsidy over that time. But even with that change, millions will be lost to tax exemptions that could instead be invested in cash-depleted schools. “We could make major changes in our schools’ infrastructure, curriculum, staffing, staffing ratios, support staff, social workers, school psychologists – take your pick,” Brooks said.

Other cities looking to reform tax abatement programs are taking a different approach. In Riverhead, New York, on Long Island, developers or project owners can be granted exemptions on their property tax and allowed instead to shell out a far smaller “payment in lieu of taxes,” or PILOT. When the abatement ends, most commonly after 10 years, the businesses then will pay full property taxes.

At least, that’s the idea, but the system is far from perfect. Beneficiaries of the PILOT program have failed to pay on time, leaving the school board struggling to fill a budget hole. Also, the payments are not equal to the amount they would receive for property taxes, with millions of dollars in potential revenue over a decade being cut to as little as a few hundred thousand. On the back end, if a business that’s subsidized with tax breaks fails after 10 years, the projected benefits never emerge.

And when the time came to start paying taxes, developers have returned to the city’s Industrial Development Agency with hat in hand, asking for more tax breaks. A local for-profit aquarium, for example, was granted a 10-year PILOT program break by Riverhead in 1999; it has received so many extensions that it is not scheduled to start paying full taxes until 2031 – 22 years after originally planned.

Kansas City border politics

Like many cities, Kansas City has a long history of segregation, white flight and racial redlining, said Kathleen Pointer, senior policy strategist for Kansas City Public Schools.

James Elementary in Kansas City, Mo. Danielle McLean, CC BY-ND

Troost Avenue, where the Kansas City Public Schools administrative office is located, serves as the city’s historic racial dividing line, with wealthier white families living in the west and more economically disadvantaged people of color in the east. Most of the district’s schools are located east of Troost, not west.

Students on the west side “pretty much automatically funnel into the college preparatory middle school and high schools,” said The Federation of Teachers’ Roberts. Those schools are considered signature schools that are selective and are better taken care of than the typical neighborhood schools, he added.

The school district’s tax levy was set by voters in 1969 at 3.75%. But successive attempts over the next few decades to increase the levy at the ballot box failed. During a decadeslong desegregation lawsuit that was eventually resolved through a settlement agreement in the 1990s, a court raised the district’s levy rate to 4.96% without voter approval. The levy has remained at the same 4.96% rate since.

Meanwhile, Kansas City is still distributing 20-year tax abatements to companies and developers for projects. The district calculated that about 92% of the money that was abated within the school district’s boundaries was for projects within the whiter west side of the city, Pointer said.

“Unfortunately, we can’t pick or choose where developers build,” said Meredith Hoenes, director of communications for Port KC. “We aren’t planning and zoning. Developers typically have plans in place when they knock on our door.”

In Kansas City, several agencies administer tax incentives, allowing developers to shop around to different bodies to receive one. Pointer said he believes the Port Authority is popular because they don’t do a third-party financial analysis to prove that the developers need the amount that they say they do.

With 20-year abatements, a child will start pre-K and graduate high school before seeing the benefits of a property being fully on the tax rolls, Pointer said. Developers, meanwhile, routinely threaten to build somewhere else if they don’t get the incentive, she said.

In 2020, BlueScope Construction, a company that had received tax incentives for nearly 20 years and was about to roll off its abatement, asked for another 13 years and threatened to move to another state if it didn’t get it. At the time, the U.S. was grappling with a racial reckoning following the murder of George Floyd, who was killed by a Minneapolis police officer.

“That was a moment for Kansas City Public Schools where we really drew a line in the sand and talked about incentives as an equity issue,” Pointer said.

After the district raised the issue – tying the incentives to systemic racism – the City Council rejected BlueScope’s bid and, three years later, it’s still in Kansas City, fully on the tax rolls, she said. BlueScope did not return multiple requests for comment.

Recently, a multifamily housing project was approved for a 20-year tax abatement by the Port Authority of Kansas City at Country Club Plaza, an outdoor shopping center in an affluent part of the city. The housing project included no affordable units. “This project was approved without any independent financial analysis proving that it needed that subsidy,” Pointer said.

All told, the Kansas City Public Schools district faces several shortfalls beyond the $400 million in deferred maintenance, Superintendent Jennifer Collier said. There are staffing shortages at all positions: teachers, paraprofessionals and support staff. As in much of the U.S., the cost of housing is surging. New developments that are being built do not include affordable housing, or when they do, the units are still out of reach for teachers.

That’s making it harder for a district that already loses about 1 in 5 of its teachers each year to keep or recruit new ones, who earn an average of only $46,150 their first year on the job, Collier said.

East Baton Rouge and the industrial corridor

It’s impossible to miss the tanks, towers, pipes and industrial structures that incongruously line Baton Rouge’s Scenic Highway landscape. They’re part of Exxon Mobil Corp.’s campus, home of the oil giant’s refinery in addition to chemical and plastics plants.

Aerial view of industrial buildings along a river
Exxon Mobil Corp.’s Baton Rouge campus occupies 3.28 square miles. AP Photo/Gerald Herbert

Sitting along the Mississippi River, the campus has been a staple of Louisiana’s capital for over 100 years. It’s where 6,000 employees and contractors who collectively earn over $400 million annually produce 522,000 barrels of crude oil per day when at full capacity, as well as the annual production and manufacture of 3 billion pounds of high-density polyethylene and polypropylene and 6.6 billion pounds of petrochemical products. The company posted a record-breaking $55.7 billion in profits in 2022 and $36 billion in 2023.

Across the street are empty fields and roads leading into neighborhoods that have been designated by the U.S. Department of Agriculture as a low-income food desert. A mile drive down the street to Route 67 is a Dollar General, fast-food restaurants, and tiny, rundown food stores. A Hi Nabor Supermarket is 4 miles away.

East Baton Rouge Parish’s McKinley High School, a 12-minute drive from the refinery, serves a student body that is about 80% Black and 85% poor. The school, which boasts famous alums such as rapper Kevin Gates, former NBA player Tyrus Thomas and Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient Gardner C. Taylor, holds a special place in the community, but it has been beset by violence and tragedy lately. Its football team quarterback, who was killed days before graduation in 2017, was among at least four of McKinley’s students who have been shot or murdered over the past six years.

The experience is starkly different at some of the district’s more advantaged schools, including its magnet programs open to high-performing students.

Black-and-white outline of Louisiana showing the parishes, with one, near the bottom right, filled in red
East Baton Rouge Parish, marked in red, includes an Exxon Mobil Corp. campus and the city of Baton Rouge. David Benbennick/Wikimedia

Baton Rouge is a tale of two cities, with some of the worst outcomes in the state for education, income and mortality, and some of the best outcomes. “It was only separated by sometimes a few blocks,” said Edgar Cage, the lead organizer for the advocacy group Together Baton Rouge. Cage, who grew up in the city when it was segregated by Jim Crow laws, said the root cause of that disparity was racism.

“Underserved kids don’t have a path forward” in East Baton Rouge public schools, Cage said.

A 2019 report from the Urban League of Louisiana found that economically disadvantaged African American and Hispanic students are not provided equitable access to high-quality education opportunities. That has contributed to those students underperforming on standardized state assessments, such as the LEAP exam, being unprepared to advance to higher grades and being excluded from high-quality curricula and instruction, as well as the highest-performing schools and magnet schools.

“Baton Rouge is home to some of the highest performing schools in the state,” according to the report. “Yet the highest performing schools and schools that have selective admissions policies often exclude disadvantaged students and African American and Hispanic students.”

Dawn Collins, who served on the district’s school board from 2016 to 2022, said that with more funding, the district could provide more targeted interventions for students who were struggling academically or additional support to staff so they can better assist students with greater needs.

But for decades, Louisiana’s Industrial Ad Valorem Tax Exemption Program, or ITEP, allowed for 100% property tax exemptions for industrial manufacturing facilities, said Erin Hansen, the statewide policy analyst at Together Louisiana, a network of 250 religious and civic organizations across the state that advocates for grassroots issues, including tax fairness.

The ITEP program was created in the 1930s through a state constitutional amendment, allowing companies to bypass a public vote and get approval for the exemption through the governor-appointed Board of Commerce and Industry, Hansen said. For over 80 years, that board approved nearly all applications that it received, she said.

Since 2000, Louisiana has granted a total of $35 billion in corporate property tax breaks for 12,590 projects.

Louisiana’s executive order

A few efforts to reform the program over the years have largely failed. But in 2016, Gov. John Bel Edwards signed an executive order that slightly but importantly tweaked the system. On top of the state board vote, the order gave local taxing bodies – such as school boards, sheriffs and parish or city councils – the ability to vote on their own individual portions of the tax exemptions. And in 2019 the East Baton Rouge Parish School Board exercised its power to vote down an abatement.

Throughout the U.S., school boards’ power over the tax abatements that affect their budgets vary, and in some states, including Georgia, Kansas, Nevada, New Jersey and South Carolina, school boards lack any formal ability to vote or comment on tax abatement deals that affect them.

Edwards’ executive order also capped the maximum exemption at 80% and tightened the rules so routine capital investments and maintenance were no longer eligible, Hansen said. A requirement concerning job creation was also put in place.

Concerned residents and activists, led by Together Louisiana and sister group Together Baton Rouge, rallied around the new rules and pushed back against the billion-dollar corporation taking more tax money from the schools. In 2019, the campaign worked: the school board rejected a $2.9 million property tax break bid by Exxon Mobil.

After the decision, Exxon Mobil reportedly described the city as “unpredictable.”

However, members of the business community have continued to lobby for the tax breaks, and they have pushed back against further rejections. In fact, according to Hansen, loopholes were created during the rulemaking process around the governor’s executive order that allowed companies to weaken its effectiveness.

In total, 223 Exxon Mobil projects worth nearly $580 million in tax abatements have been granted in the state of Louisiana under the ITEP program since 2000.

“ITEP is needed to compete with other states – and, in ExxonMobil’s case, other countries,” according to Exxon Mobil spokesperson Lauren Kight.

She pointed out that Exxon Mobil is the largest property taxpayer for the EBR school system, paying more than $46 million in property taxes in EBR parish in 2022 and another $34 million in sales taxes.

A new ITEP contract won’t decrease this existing tax revenue, Kight added. “Losing out on future projects absolutely will.”

The East Baton Rouge Parish School Board has continued to approve Exxon Mobil abatements, passing $46.9 million between 2020 and 2022. Between 2017 and 2023, the school district has lost $96.3 million.

Taxes are highest when industrial buildings are first built. Industrial property comes onto the tax rolls at 40% to 50% of its original value in Louisiana after the initial 10-year exemption, according to the Ascension Economic Development Corp.

Exxon Mobil received its latest tax exemption, $8.6 million over 10 years – an 80% break – in October 2023 for $250 million to install facilities at the Baton Rouge complex that purify isopropyl alcohol for microchip production and that create a new advanced recycling facility, allowing the company to address plastic waste. The project created zero new jobs.

The school board approved it by a 7-2 vote after a long and occasionally contentious board meeting.

“Does it make sense for Louisiana and other economically disadvantaged states to kind of compete with each other by providing tax incentives to mega corporations like Exxon Mobil?” said EBR School Board Vice President Patrick Martin, who voted for the abatement. “Probably, in a macro sense, it does not make a lot of sense. But it is the program that we have.”

Obviously, Exxon Mobil benefits, he said. “The company gets a benefit in reducing the property taxes that they would otherwise pay on their industrial activity that adds value to that property.” But the community benefits from the 20% of the property taxes that are not exempted, he said.

“I believe if we don’t pass it, over time the investments will not come and our district as a whole will have less money,” he added.

In 2022, a year when Exxon Mobil made a record $55.7 billion, the company asked for a 10-year, 80% property tax break from the cash-starved East Baton Rouge Parish school district. A lively debate ensued.

Meanwhile, the district’s budgetary woes are coming to a head. Bus drivers staged a sickout at the start of the school year, refusing to pick up students – in protest of low pay and not having buses equipped with air conditioning amid a heat wave. The district was forced to release students early, leaving kids stranded without a ride to school, before it acquiesced and provided the drivers and other staff one-time stipends and purchased new buses with air conditioning.

The district also agreed to reestablish transfer points as a temporary response to the shortages. But that transfer-point plan has historically resulted in students riding on the bus for hours and occasionally missing breakfast when the bus arrives late, according to Angela Reams-Brown, president of the East Baton Rouge Federation of Teachers. The district plans to purchase or lease over 160 buses and solve its bus driver shortage next year, but the plan could lead to a budget crisis.

A teacher shortage looms as well, because the district is paying teachers below the regional average. At the school board meeting, Laverne Simoneaux, an ELL specialist at East Baton Rouge’s Woodlawn Elementary, said she was informed that her job was not guaranteed next year since she’s being paid through federal COVID-19 relief funds. By receiving tax exemptions, Exxon Mobil was taking money from her salary to deepen their pockets, she said.

A young student in the district told the school board that the money could provide better internet access or be used to hire someone to pick up the glass and barbed wire in the playground. But at least they have a playground – Hayden Crockett, a seventh grader at Sherwood Middle Academic Magnet School, noted that his sister’s elementary school lacked one.

“If it wasn’t in the budget to fund playground equipment, how can it also be in the budget to give one of the most powerful corporations in the world a tax break?” Crockett said. “The math just ain’t mathing.”

The Conversation

Christine Wen worked for the nonprofit organization Good Jobs First from June 2019 to May 2022 where she helped collect tax abatement data.

Nathan Jensen has received funding from the John and Laura Arnold Foundation, the Smith Richardson Foundation, the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation and the Washington Center for Equitable Growth. He is a Senior Fellow at the Niskanen Center.

Danielle McLean and Kevin Welner do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

14 Feb 20:39

Immigrants do work that might not otherwise get done – bolstering the US economy

by Ramya Vijaya, Professor of Economics, Stockton University
Hundreds protested peacefully in Immokalee, Fla., against a state law enacted in 2023 that imposes restrictions on undocumented immigrants. AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell

Although Congress is failing to pass laws to restrict the number of migrants arriving in the U.S., a majority of Americans – about 6 in 10 – believe there’s an immigration crisis along the Mexico-U.S. border. Politicians who want fewer people to move here often cast those arriving without prior authorization as a burden on the economy.

As an economist who has researched immigration and employment, I’m confident that economic trends and research findings contradict those arguments.

The U.S. is experiencing a labor market shortage that is likely to last well into the future as the U.S.-born population gets older overall, slowing growth in the number of workers.

Rather than a drain on the economy, an uptick in immigration presents an opportunity to alleviate this shortage. Data from my own research and studies conducted by other scholars shows that immigrant workers in the U.S. are more likely to be active in the labor market – either employed or looking for work – and tend to work in professions with the most unmet demand.

Help really wanted

The U.S. had 9 million job openings in December 2023, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The government agency also found that there were 6.1 million unemployed people actively seeking paid work.

Economists generally compare the two numbers to calculate the labor shortage. It currently stands at nearly 3 million workers, and the bureau expects this gap to grow as the population ages and people have fewer children over the next decade.

In other words, the U.S. faces a long-term shortage of people looking for employment.

That shortfall would be much bigger without foreign-born workers, who accounted for a record high of 18.1% of the U.S. civilian labor force in 2022, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

More likely to be active in the workforce

Another reason why immigrants can help fill that big hole in the U.S. labor market is that so many of them tend to be employed or are looking for work.

About 65.9% of all people who were born elsewhere were either employed or actively looking for work as of 2022, in comparison to 61.5% of people born in the U.S.

This difference has been consistent since 2007, according to research by the Peterson Foundation, a think tank that focuses on long-term budget problems.

In a study I conducted a few years ago, I found that immigrants who arrive in the United States as refugees fleeing violence and persecution in their home countries are eventually more likely to be employed or looking for work than people who are born in the U.S.

More home health aides and janitors

Some of the labor market’s biggest shortages are especially acute in professions that tend to attract immigrants, such as home health aides.

The health care and social services sector as a whole has about 1.8 million open jobs, the largest number of job openings currently available.

This is followed by professional and business services with 1.7 million open jobs. This category encompasses everything from legal services to janitorial work, including cleaning and grounds maintenance.

Currently, about 22% of employed immigrants work in one of those two high-demand categories or another service occupation.

Making it easier to age in place

A team of economists has found that the cost of home health care and support services is lower than average in places with large numbers of immigrant service workers. This in turn makes it more likely that older adults can avoid institutionalization and stay in their own homes.

But, to be sure, immigrant workers providing these vital community support services often endure exploitative working conditions.

The labor market data not only makes it clear that the U.S. economy can absorb large numbers of immigrants, but it shows that these newcomers could be a much-needed solution to a labor supply crisis.

And yet people arriving in the U.S. as political asylum applicants are enduring backlogs and facing hurdles in securing employment authorization, which is delaying their entry into the workforce.

Wouldn’t it make more sense for Congress to expand pathways for legal employment access for migrants? From an economic perspective, that seems to be the most prudent course of action.

The Conversation

Ramya Vijaya does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

14 Feb 20:29

Back in the day, being woke meant being smart

by Ronald E. Hall, Professor of Social Work, Michigan State University
Demonstrators march on Jan. 1, 1934, in Washington against the unjust trials of nine Black men falsely accused of raping two white women. Bettmann/Getty Images

If Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis had his way, the word “woke” would be banished from public use and memory.

As he promised in Iowa in December 2023 during his failed presidential campaign, “We will fight the woke in education, we will fight the woke in the corporations, we will fight the woke in the halls of Congress. We will never, ever surrender to the woke mob.”

DeSantis’ war on “woke ideology” has resulted in the banning of an advanced placement class in African American studies and the elimination of diversity, equity and inclusion programs in Florida’s universities and colleges.

Given the origins of the use of the word as a code among Black people, DeSantis has a nearly impossible task, despite his tireless efforts.

For Black people, the modern-day meaning of the word has little to do with school curriculum or political jargon and goes back to the days of Jim Crow and legal, often violent, racial segregation. Back then, the word was used as a warning to be aware of racial injustices in general and Southern white folks in particular.

In my view as a behavioral scientist who studies race, being woke was part of the unwritten vocabulary that Black people established to talk with each other in a way that outsiders could not understand.

The early days of wokeness

It’s unclear when exactly “woke” became a word of Black consciousness. Examples of its use – in various forms of the word “awake” – date back to before the Civil War in Freedom’s Journal, the nation’s first Black-owned newspaper.

In their introductory editorial on April 21, 1827, the editors wrote that their mission was to “plead our own cause.” Part of that mission was offering analysis on the state of educating enslaved Black people who were prohibited from learning how to read and write.

Because education and literacy were “of the highest importance,” the editors wrote, it was “surely time that we should awake from this lethargy of years” during enslavement.

By the turn of the 20th century, the use of versions of the word “woke” by other Black newspaper editors expanded to include the fight for Black voting rights. In a 1904 editorial in the Baltimore Afro-American, for instance, the editors urged Black people to “Wake up, wake up!” and demand full-citizenship rights.

By 1919, Black nationalist Marcus Garvey frequently used a version of the word in his speeches and newspaper, The Negro World, as a clarion call to Black people to become more socially and politically conscious: “Wake up Ethiopia! Wake up Africa!”

At around the same time, blues singers were using the word to hide protest messages in the language of love songs. On the surface, Willard “Ramblin’” Thomas laments a lost love in “Sawmill Moan”:

If I don’t go crazy, I’m sure gonna lose my mind ‘Cause I can’t sleep for dreamin’, sure can’t stay woke for cryin’

But instead of a love song, some historians have suggested that the lyrics were a veiled protest against the atrocious conditions faced by Black workers in Southern sawmills.

The song given the most credit by historians for the use of the word woke was written and performed in 1938 by Huddie Leadbetter, known as Lead Belly. He advises his listeners to “stay woke” lest they run afoul of white authority.

In an archived interview about the song “Scottsboro Boys,” Lead Belly explained how tough it was at the time for Black people in Alabama.

“It’s a hard world down there in Alabama,” Lead Belly said. “I made this little song about down there. … I advise everybody, be a little careful when they go along through there — best stay woke, keep their eyes open.”

Lead Belly explains his “stay woke” advice to Black people at the 4:30 mark.

And that’s the message that came out in the song lyrics:

“Go to Alabama and ya better watch out The landlord’ll get ya, gonna jump and shout Scottsboro Scottsboro Scottsboro boys Tell ya what it all about.”

A miscarriage of justice

On March 25, 1931, in Chattanooga, Tennessee, two white women, Victoria Price and Ruby Bates, falsely accused a group of several Black young men of rape.

Several white men dressed in uniforms and carrying shotguns walk in front of a group of Black men.
National Guard troops protect members of the Scottsboro Boys as they enter an Alabama courtroom on Jan. 1, 1932. Bettmann/GettyImages

Based on their words, the nine Black men – ages 12 to 19 years old – were immediately arrested and in less than two weeks, all were tried, convicted, and with one exception, sentenced to death.

A white woman is sitting on a chair as she answers questions.
One of the alleged victims, Victoria Price, testifies on April 4, 1933, against nine young Black men in the Scottsboro case. Bettmann/GettyImages

All the cases were appealed and eventually reached the U.S. Supreme Court. In its 1932 Powell v. Alabama decision, the court overturned the verdicts in part because prosecutors excluded potential Black jurors from serving during the trial. But instead of freedom, the cases were retried – and each of the “Scottsboro Boys” was found guilty again.

There were four more trials, seven retrials and, in 1935, two landmark Supreme Court decisions – one requiring that defendants be tried by juries of their peers and the other requiring that indigent defendants receive competent counsel.

The nine young men spent a combined total of 130 years in prison. The last was released in 1950. By 2013, all were exonerated.

How woke became a four-letter word

Over the years, the memory of the Scottsboro Boys has remained a part of Black consciousness and of staying woke. During the height of the Civil Rights Movement, Martin Luther King Jr. used a version of woke during his commencement address at Oberlin College in 1965.

“The great challenge facing every individual graduating today is to remain awake through this social revolution,” he said.

In recent times, use of the word has ebbed and flowed throughout Black culture but became popular again in 2014 during the protest marches organized by Black Lives Matter in the wake of the shooting death of Michael Brown by a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri. Two years later, a documentary on the group was called “Stay Woke: The Black Lives Matter Movement.”

A white man waves to a crowd from a stage that has the words awake and not woke in large letters in the background.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis speaks at a conservative political conference on Feb. 24, 2022, in Orlando, Fla. Joe Raedle/Getty Images

But for GOP lawmakers and conservative talk show pundits, such as DeSantis, “woke” is a pejorative word used to describe those who believe that systemic racism exists in America and remains at the heart of the nation’s racial shortcomings.

When asked to define the term in June 2023, DeSantis explained: “It’s a form of cultural Marxism. It’s about putting merit and achievement behind identity politics, and it’s basically a war on the truth.”

Desantis couldn’t be more wrong. The truth is that being aware of America’s racist past cannot be dictated by conservative politicians. Civic literacy requires an understanding of the social causes and consequences of human behavior – the very essence of being woke.

The Conversation

Ronald E. Hall does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

12 Feb 15:39

Welcome to 1928!

by Judy G. Russell

The copyright clock keeps ticking

This is the second day of January and, for many Americans, the first work day of 2024.

For The Legal Genealogist, it’s the second day of 1928.

No, that’s not a typo. I really do mean 1928.

The year that books like D.H Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover and J. M. Barrie’s Peter Pan; or the Boy Who Wouldn’t Grow Up and Erich Maria Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front were all published for the first time.1

The year that “Mack the Knife” and “Makin’ Whoopee!” were first available as sheet music.2

And — sigh — the year that this blankety-blank-blank pesky film was first released to the public:

Yeah, that’s Disney’s Steamboat Willie. And I’m embedding the clip here and spreading it as far and as wide as I can today. Simply because I can.

Because, as of the second the clock ticked over to 2024, that film and everything else legally published in the United States at any time in the year 1928 — thousands and thousands of books, sheet music, films, photos and more — entered the public domain.

A whole year’s worth of materials, wonderfully free for all of us to use in our research, our blogs, our presentations, our publications without having to try to find the copyright owner and secure permission. Remember, that’s what public domain means: when copyright expires and a work goes into the public domain, we’re allowed to use it freely, any way we want, for any purpose (with some limits3), without needing permission from or payment to the creator of the work.4

This really is A Very Big Deal — and it really shouldn’t have been one.

Because of the way the copyright law works, providing protection only for a set number of years, a number of copyrights should have expired every year and we should have been getting a whole year’s worth of materials released into the public domain every year. But that copyright clock stopped ticking in 1998.

There’s a whole long backstory as to why it stopped ticking, and it was all because of that blankety-blank-blank pesky film. The Disney people didn’t want Steamboat Willie — the film where Mickey Mouse made his debut — to become public domain. So it lobbied to get the copyright statute changed to add 20 years of protection to all then-copyrighted works. The amended law provided that the copyright clock would stop, dead, on anything then-copyrighted and wouldn’t start to run again until 12:00.01 a.m. 1 January 2019.5

At that point, the statute said, after those additional 20 years, for most things, the clock would start moving again and, as it ticked over into 2019, the law said we should get an entire year’s worth of published works — everything legally published in the United States during 1923 — transferred into the public domain.6

Of course, since copyright law is a matter of statute, and any statute can always be amended, at any time up until midnight on 31 December 2018 — “the end of the calendar year in which (copyrights) would otherwise expire” — Congress could still have bollixed this up. So, as 2018 drew to a close, all of us who watch copyright issues held our collective breath.

And — somehow, astonishingly — Congress didn’t manage to foul it up. On 1 January 2019, thousands and thousands of items passed from copyright-protected status into the public domain. And we could all then say that the public domain included “everything legally published in the United States before 1924” (instead of the “before 1923” we’d been saying for 20 years).7

And then we started worrying. Because, of course, since copyright law is a matter of statute, and any statute can always be amended…8 Yeah, as of 1 January 2020, we were supposed to get another year’s worth of goodies. But — ulp — Congress could still foul it up.

Amazingly enough, as that year drew to an end, the clock kept right on ticking and, as of 1 January 2020, we began saying that copyright had expired for works published before 1925. Then, as of 1 January 2021, we began saying that copyright had expired for works published before 1926. And as of 1 January 2022, we began saying that copyright had expired for works published before 1927. And as of 1 January 2023, we began saying that copyright had expired for works published before 1928.

And — may miracles never cease — Congress didn’t manage to foul it up last year either. In copyright terms, 1928 finally got here. As of 1 January 2024, we can now say that copyright has expired for works published before 1929. And on 1 January 2025, we can include works published before 1930. And so on.9

For now, at least, that copyright clock is still ticking…

Welcome to 1928 — and the wealth of now-out-of-copyright materials produced that year.


Cite/link to this post: Judy G. Russell, “Welcome to 1928!,” The Legal Genealogist (https://www.legalgenealogist.com/blog : posted 2 Jan 2024).

SOURCES

  1. Public Domain Day 2024,” Center for the Study of the Public Domain, Duke Law School (https://web.law.duke.edu/cspd/ : accessed 2 Jan 2024).
  2. Ibid.
  3. Just as one example, I really wouldn’t use a photo of a living person without that person’s permission, even a photo that’s out of copyright, on a pornography website. Just sayin’…
  4. See generally Judy G. Russell, “Where is the public domain?,” The Legal Genealogist, posted 21 Dec 2015 (https://www.legalgenealogist.com/blog : accessed 2 Jan 2024).
  5. See generally Glenn Fleishman, “For the First Time in More Than 20 Years, Copyrighted Works Will Enter the Public Domain,” Smithsonian Magazine, January 2019 online issue (https://www.smithsonianmag.com/ : accessed 2 Jan 2024).
  6. See generally 17 U.S.C. §305 (“All terms of copyright provided by sections 302 through 304 run to the end of the calendar year in which they would otherwise expire”).
  7. See Judy G. Russell, “Welcome to 1923!,” The Legal Genealogist, posted 2 Jan 2019 (https://www.legalgenealogist.com/blog : accessed 2 Jan 2024).
  8. I did say that, right? It really can happen…
  9. Unless of course Congress changes its mind. I did mention that, right? So keep your fingers crossed… and your eyes on Congress.
12 Feb 15:25

The Hidden Danger I Overlooked in My New Apartment (That Almost Burned It Down)

by Charli Penn
Missing this one little detail nearly cost us everything. READ MORE...
12 Feb 15:09

‘It needs to be talked about earlier’: some children get periods at 8, years before menstruation is taught at school

by Olivia Marie Bellas, PhD Candidate, University of Adelaide
Karolina Grabowska/ AAP, CC BY

Managing menstruation in public can be challenging at the best of times, but imagine being eight years old and having to deal with your period at school. You might need to change your pad during class and explain to your friends why you are not going to the swimming carnival. You might be scared you will bleed through your uniform because there aren’t any sanitary bins in the junior years’ bathroom.

In Australia, the average age of the first period is about 13. But about 12% of children get their period between the ages of eight and 11. Researchers call this “early menarche” or “early onset menstruation”.

But even though a significant proportion of students are getting their first period as early as Year 3 or even Year 2, primary school students are not officially taught about puberty until Years 5 and 6 (when they are aged between 10 and 12).

Our research explores current period education and what support is available for early menstruators. It shows how schools can act as gatekeepers of knowledge about this essential and very normal part of human development.

Period shame exists but is not inevitable

Shame about periods has existed in many parts of the world for centuries. Researchers have noted how children are taught not to talk about menstruation and if they do, it is often negatively (with a focus on pain and discomfort).

A 2021 survey found 29% of 659 menstruating Australian students aged ten to 18 were concerned they would be teased at school for having their period.

Similar issues occur as students grow older. A 2022 Australian survey of 410 university students who menstruate found only 16.2% felt completely confident in managing their periods at university. Just over half believed society thought periods were taboo (and so, not something you talk about).

But the stigma is not inevitable. There are examples of education programs in other countries that celebrate periods and are accessible across ages.

There is a Swedish program that provides information for young people, stories about first periods and advice on how adults can talk to children about menstruation. In the United Kingdom, there are moves to introduce a “period positive” curriculum for school students.


Read more: 'Dirty red': how periods have been stigmatised through history to the modern day


What is taught in Australian schools?

The Australian curriculum does not not explicitly mention “period” or “menstruation” in any of its online health and physical education curriculum resources, for any year levels up to Year 10.

We can assume schools would cover it under topics such as “understand the physical […] changes that are occurring for them”. But without explicit mention to menstruation or periods, it is likely what is being taught across classrooms in Australia is variable and insufficient.

It was last updated in 2022, under the former Morrison government.

Our research

We interviewed 15 staff across government, Catholic and private primary schools in Australia. We asked staff about their awareness of students who have experienced early onset menstruation, how their students are educated about periods, and what support is available to them.

Staff spoke about how students who menstruated early “felt isolated” and voiced the need for earlier “matter-of-fact” menstruation education. As one teacher told us:

I think we’ve got to take it down to Years 3 and 4 and be a lot more specific than we have been, because you are going to get more and more being younger.

However, several participants shared apprehension around having discussions about periods with young students. As one teacher explained:

You don’t want to scare young girls, like seven-and eight-year-olds […] if it is happening earlier, it needs to be talked about earlier. But that’s a hard one because a lot of girls […] aren’t really mature enough to understand […]

Another teacher said that talking about periods in Year 3 was “probably a bit too much […] you don’t want to traumatise the child”.

Gatekeeping knowledge and awareness about periods from younger children is a problem on multiple levels. For one, it can deprive children of vital information about their bodies. For another, it frames menstruation as something inherently inappropriate, scary or crude. This in turn can reinforce stigma and taboo.

Can we tell boys about this?

Staff also spoke about how boys were not necessarily included in lessons about periods, and how male teachers may not have experience talking about these issues. As one teacher told us:

It is a discussion that’s been done where they don’t really include the boys in it […].

School staff also raised concerns that teaching boys about menstruation might present an opportunity for bullying or teasing. One school support officer suggested only girls should be taught about periods, noting:

they [boys] might be like ‘oh, I found your pad!‘

However, separating classrooms by gender for these lessons does not encourage the normalisation of periods. A 2016 study explored the attitudes of 48 Australian men towards menstruation. Participants reported being told little or nothing about periods while growing up, and so they grew up believing it was taboo.

Other teachers in our study noted how important it was for male students to be taught about periods.

I found it really frustrating that we’re giving young men who are eventually going to be in workplaces and potentially in positions of leadership, who are being deprived of these matter-of-fact moments of teaching [about menstruation] where they’re going to sort of pick up these things through like hearsay, through sort of uneducated conversation […]


Read more: First periods can come as a shock. 5 ways to support your kid when they get theirs


What needs to happen instead?

Our study emphasises how a lack of timely and comprehensive education and support for early menstruators in Australian schools is underpinned by menstrual stigma and taboo.

But it also showed how the issue is driven by perceptions of children’s capacity to learn about periods, based on their age and gender.

This research highlights the need for the Australian curriculum to introduce specific menstruation education by at least Year 3 or earlier. The curriculum needs to explain what menstruation is, why it happens, the ways it can be managed and how it will begin happening to their peers and that this is normal.

In the meantime, we encourage all school staff to work towards building menstrual wellbeing by becoming comfortable discussing periods with all students, make period products accessible to all year levels in all bathrooms, and advertise free period product locations to students from Year 3.

This will enable all children who menstruate to manage their periods in school easily and without shame.

The Conversation

Jessica Shipman receives funding from Flinders Foundation.

Olivia Bellas does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

12 Feb 15:07

FCC bans robocalls using deepfake voice clones − but AI-generated disinformation still looms over elections

by Joan Donovan, Assistant Professor of Journalism and Emerging Media Studies, Boston University
The FCC is responding to the threat of deepfakes. AP Photo/Andrew Harnik

The Federal Communications Commission on Feb. 8, 2024, outlawed robocalls that use voices generated by artificial intelligence.

The 1991 Telephone Consumer Protection Act bans artificial voices in robocalls. The FCC’s Feb. 8 ruling declares that AI-generated voices, including clones of real people’s voices, are artificial and therefore banned by law.

The move follows on the heels of a robocall on Jan. 21, 2024, from what sounded like President Joe Biden. The call had Biden’s voice urging voters inclined to support Biden and the Democratic Party not to participate in New Hampshire’s Jan. 23 GOP primary election. The call falsely implied that a registered Democrat could vote in the Republican primary and that a voter who voted in the primary would be ineligible to vote in the general election in November.

The call, two days before the primary, appears to have been an artificial intelligence deepfake. It also appears to have been an attempt to discourage voting.

The FCC and the New Hampshire attorney general’s office are investigating the call. On Feb. 6, 2024, New Hampshire Attorney General John Formella identified two Texas companies, Life Corp. and Lingo Telecom, as the source and transmitter, respectively, of the call.

Injecting confusion

Robocalls in elections are nothing new and not illegal; many are simply efforts to get out the vote. But they have also been used in voter suppression campaigns. Compounding this problem in this case is the application of AI to clone Biden’s voice.

In a media ecosystem full of noise, scrambled signals such as deepfake robocalls make it virtually impossible to tell facts from fakes.

The New Hampshire attorney general’s office is investigating the call.

Recently, a number of companies have popped up online offering impersonation as a service. For users like you and me, it’s as easy as selecting a politician, celebrity or executive like Joe Biden, Donald Trump or Elon Musk from a menu and typing a script of what you want them to appear to say, and the website creates the deepfake automatically.

Though the audio and video output is usually choppy and stilted, when the audio is delivered via a robocall it’s very believable. You could easily think you are hearing a recording of Joe Biden, but really it’s machine-made misinformation.

Context is key

I’m a media and disinformation scholar. In 2019, information scientist Brit Paris and I studied how generative adversarial networks – what most people today think of as AI – would transform the ways institutions assess evidence and make decisions when judging realistic-looking audio and video manipulation. What we found was that no single piece of media is reliable on its face; rather, context matters for making an interpretation.

When it comes to AI-enhanced disinformation, the believability of deepfakes hinges on where you see or hear them or who shares them. Without a valid and confirmed source vouching for it as a fact, a deepfake might be interesting or funny but will never pass muster in a courtroom. However, deepfakes can still be damaging when used in efforts to suppress the vote or shape public opinion on divisive issues.

AI-enhanced disinformation campaigns are difficult to counter because unmasking the source requires tracking the trail of metadata, which is the data about a piece of media. How this is done varies, depending on the method of distribution: robocalls, social media, email, text message or websites. Right now, research on audio and video manipulation is more difficult because many big tech companies have shut down access to their application programming interfaces, which make it possible for researchers to collect data about social media, and the companies have laid off their trust and safety teams.

Timely, accurate, local knowledge

In many ways, AI-enhanced disinformation such as the New Hampshire robocall poses the same problems as every other form of disinformation. People who use AI to disrupt elections are likely to do what they can to hide their tracks, which is why it’s necessary for the public to remain skeptical about claims that do not come from verified sources, such as local TV news or social media accounts of reputable news organizations.

It’s also important for the public to understand what new audio and visual manipulation technology is capable of. Now that the technology has become widely available, and with a pivotal election year ahead, the fake Biden robocall is only the latest of what is likely to be a series of AI-enhanced disinformation campaigns, even though these calls are now explicitly illegal.

I believe society needs to learn to venerate what I call TALK: timely, accurate, local knowledge. I believe that it’s important to design social media systems that value timely, accurate, local knowledge over disruption and divisiveness.

It’s also important to make it more difficult for disinformers to profit from undermining democracy. For example, the malicious use of technology to suppress voter turnout should be vigorously investigated by federal and state law enforcement authorities.

While deepfakes may catch people by surprise, they should not catch us off guard, no matter how slow the truth is compared with the speed of disinformation.

This is an updated version of an article originally published on Jan. 23, 2024.

The Conversation

Joan Donovan is on the board of Free Press and the founder of the Critical Internet Studies Institute.

12 Feb 14:53

Are you seeing news reports of voting problems? 4 essential reads on election disinformation

by Jeff Inglis, Politics + Society Editor, The Conversation US
A voter emerges from a voting booth in New Hampshire in January 2024. AP Photo/David Goldman

In certain circles, the 2020 presidential election isn’t over – and that seems to be at least a little bit true. In recent weeks, official reviews of election records and processes from the 2020 presidential election have reported findings that might be used to spread rumors about voting integrity.

For instance, election officials in Virginia’s Prince William County announced on Jan. 11, 2024, that 4,000 votes from the 2020 presidential election had been miscounted. None of them changed the results. Those miscounts gave Donald Trump 2,327 more votes than he actually got, and Joe Biden 1,648 votes fewer. Errors in counting turned up in other races, too, with both parties’ candidates for U.S. Senate being given fewer votes than they actually received, and a Republican who won a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives actually won by a slightly larger margin than previously reported.

An audit of South Carolina’s 2020 voting records released in mid-January found no fraud and no indication any election results could have been different with the errors that were identified. But the report did recommend election officials cross-check lists of registered voters with other state lists more frequently than they have done in the past. Death reports and prison inmate rolls can help them determine who should remain eligible to voter and who should be removed from voting lists, the report said.

The Conversation U.S. has published several articles about the systems protecting election integrity. Here are four examples from our archives.

A Trump campaign poll watcher films the counting of ballots at the Allegheny County, Pa., elections warehouse
A Trump campaign poll watcher films the counting of ballots at the Allegheny County, Penn., elections warehouse in 2020 in Pittsburgh. Jeff Swensen/Getty Images

1. Changing numbers are evidence of transparency, not fraud

The news reports of election audits came, originally, from election officials themselves, who specified they were below the small margins that would have triggered recounts. The reports also offered explanations for what had happened and how to fix it in the future – and included statements that at least some of the problems had already been fixed for upcoming elections.

That’s an example of what Kristin Kanthak, a political scientist at the University of Pittsburgh, was talking about when she explained that election results that change over time aren’t inherently a problem:

(T)his doesn’t mean the system is ‘rigged.’ Actually, it means the system is transparent to a fault,” she wrote.


Read more: How votes are counted in Pennsylvania: Changing numbers are a sign of transparency, not fraud, during an ongoing process


2. Easier voting is not a threat to election integrity

Erecting obstacles to voting will not prevent the problems that do exist in the election system, for the simple reason that the flaws are not a result of easier voting methods, such as early voting and voting by mail.

Grinnell College political scientist Douglas R. Hess observed that the COVID-19 pandemic was a massive test of whether a secure election could be held with a lot of accommodations that made voting easier, and safer from the spread of disease.

As he wrote,

“(E)arly voting and voting by mail are targeted for restrictions in many states, even though both reforms are popular with the public, worked securely in 2020 and have been expanded in many states for years without increases in fraud. Likewise, the collection of absentee ballots – a necessity for some voters – can be implemented securely.”


Read more: Making it easier to vote does not threaten election integrity


3. It’s possible for election workers to be both partisan and fair-minded

For many years, elections have been run by people who were members of one political party or the other but behaved in good faith to run fair elections, wrote Thom Reilly, a scholar at Arizona State University’s School of Public Affairs.

But both the facts and the rhetoric have changed, he explained, noting that a significant share of the electorate is not a member of either party – so the people who supervise elections, who are typically party members, are “an increasingly partisan set of officials.”

Even so, many of them work hard to conduct fair elections. Yet, he wrote,

(W)idespread misinformation and disinformation on election administration is hobbling the ability of election officials to do their job and has created fertile ground for mistrust.”


Read more: Good faith and the honor of partisan election officials used to be enough to ensure trust in voting results – but not anymore


A woman with gray hair helps a man with gray hair cast a ballot at a voting machine.
A poll worker helps a voter cast a ballot in the Kansas primary election at Merriam Christian Church on Aug. 2, 2022, in Merriam, Kan. Kyle Rivas/Getty Images

4. Beware those who aim to confuse or mislead

Political disinformation efforts are particularly intense around elections, warn scholars of information warfare Kate Starbird and Jevin West at the University of Washington and Renee DiResta at Stanford University.

Situations to watch out for are those in which “lack of understanding and certainty can fuel doubt, fan misinformation and provide opportunities for those seeking to delegitimize the results,” they wrote.

Specifically, look out for:

Politically motivated individuals (who) are likely to cherry-pick and assemble these pieces of digital "evidence” to fit narratives that seek to undermine trust in the results. Much of this evidence is likely to be derived from real events, though taken out of context and exaggerated.“

They provide a reminder to keep your wits about you and be sure to double-check any claims before believing or sharing them.


Read more: 5 types of misinformation to watch out for while ballots are being counted – and after


This story is a roundup of articles from The Conversation’s archives.

The Conversation
08 Feb 19:51

What’s sociology? A sociologist explains why Florida’s college students should get the chance to learn how social forces affect everyone’s lives

by Joya Misra, Provost Professor of Sociology and Public Policy, UMass Amherst
Studying this discipline helps you understand how society works. FG Trade/E+ via Getty Images

In January 2024, Florida officially voted to reduce the number of students enrolled in sociology courses.

That might sound baffling if you haven’t tuned into this cultural skirmish. But for me – I’m the American Sociological Association’s current president and a professor of sociology and public policy at the University of Massachusetts Amherst – it’s both disturbing and an opportunity to help the public better understand my academic discipline.

Sociology is the study of social life, social change and the social causes and consequences of human behavior.

Sociologists analyze how society is structured and how people interact with one another in groups, organizations and society.

A central concept to sociology is the “sociological imagination.” As defined by the scholar C. Wright Mills, it’s the ability to link someone’s experiences to societal forces or historical trends; for example, connecting losing a job to waves of unemployment due to a recession.

Sociology can change how you see the world.

Why does sociology matter?

Because my discipline helps identify how social structures work, it provides insight into how to fix processes that malfunction. Sociological research has helped address questions like why 700 people died during a Chicago heat wave in 1995, or why the space shuttle Challenger exploded in 1986, identifying strategies to avoid such catastrophes in the future.

The research that sociologists conduct can identify better approaches for supporting people with breast cancer. It can explain how social media platforms like X, formerly Twitter, profit from hostility between users.

Sociologists do studies that show that jobs with unpredictable schedules are bad for your health and that homicide rates typically increase as inequality grows.

Sociologists also study inequalities, such as gender or racial inequalities in workplaces. These studies can show how workplaces can create more inclusive cultures that benefit Black workers as well as other employees.

Learning about sociology can help students hone their critical thinking skills by training them to evaluate evidence, analyze data and clearly communicate its meaning – all skills needed in most well-paid jobs.

Sociology also provides students with soft skills, giving them a better understanding of how to work effectively with others, including those with different backgrounds and experiences.

The Medical College Admission Test, or MCAT, an exam required for anyone wishing to attend medical school, emphasizes sociological concepts because they give future doctors tools for how to engage with their patients most effectively.

In 2020, more than 25,000 students earned a bachelor’s degree in sociology, and approximately 1,300 earned a master’s degree, with another 600 earning a Ph.D.

Many people who majored in sociology work as social workers, teachers, school counselors, market research analysts, human resource coordinators, tech workers, paralegals, public relations professionals, urban planners and community health workers.

Curbing sociology in Florida

The boards that oversee the education of hundreds of thousands of students enrolled in Florida’s public colleges and universities voted to reduce the number of students who study sociology on those campuses.

They officially removed principles of sociology from the lists of classes that count as core courses that satisfy requirements for undergraduate degrees.

This change, made in January 2024, was in response to a law that Gov. Ron DeSantis signed in 2023. That measure bans general education college credits for instruction “based on theories that systemic racism, sexism, oppression, and privilege are inherent in the institutions of the United States and were created to maintain social, political, and economic inequities.”

Introductory sociology classes, such as the principles of sociology course taught in Florida’s public colleges and universities, teach students how a variety of social institutions work, such as families, education, religion, health care, the economy, politics, the criminal justice system and the media.

Students also learn about topics such as globalization and inequality – whether it’s tied to wealth, income, race, gender, age or whether people live in urban or rural areas.

Sociology is a major that most students first become acquainted with in college, often through courses that satisfy general education requirements. As a result of this policy change, it is likely that enrollment in sociology classes will drastically drop in Florida, and fewer students will major in sociology.

Sociology courses, by considering inequalities by wealth, income, race, gender, sexuality and age, may seem overly “woke” to conservatives. But sociological findings are based on scientific analysis of data from objective sources, such as the U.S. Census Bureau.

Global history of censorship

U.S. conservatives are not the only ones who have tried to ban the spread of sociological knowledge.

Sociology has been censored for long periods in many countries, including Russia, Hungary and China.

In April 2019, then-president Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil also lashed out at sociology. Since January 2023, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is again serving as Brazil’s president. Because he married sociologist Rosângela Lula da Silva in 2022, sociology is safe for the time being in Brazil.

The Conversation

Joya Misra is currently the president of the American Sociological Association.