Category: Academic Analysis

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Ivis García, Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning, Texas A&M University

Eight years after Hurricane Harvey devastated Houston in 2017, flooding hundreds of thousands of homes, the city still awaits a comprehensive flood protection system. The local flood control district estimates that at least one major flood occurs within its service area every two years.

There are two competing potential options to contain these floods with tunnels to direct excess water out of the city to the coast – one from the local flood control district board and one from Elon Musk’s Boring Company, with the backing of a local member of Congress. The two proposals differ significantly in size, capacity, cost and expected completion time.

And in late August 2025, county commissioners said they would begin to study a third option, combining elements of both – using just two tunnels, like Musk’s proposal, but larger ones than Musk had indicated, with their sizes in line with the local flood control district’s recommendation.

The choice between these three options involves a balancing act between taxpayer dollars, engineering and forecasting about future storms and flooding.

As researchers at Texas A&M University who study disaster resilience – including engineering, community planning, coastal geotechnics and hurricane surge modeling – we bring complementary expertise to analyzing this complex discussion. Here are what we see as the key factors for the city to consider.

The flood control district plan

In 2022, the Harris County Flood Control District released a report describing a US$30 billion system of eight tunnels, totaling about 130 miles in length, buried 40 to 140 feet underground. Construction would take between 10 and 15 years.

Those tunnels would run along existing drainage areas through the city and its surroundings, carrying water from various collection points around the city to the ocean, with discharge points near the Houston Ship Channel and Galveston Bay.

Musk’s plan

The plan from Elon Musk’s Boring Company, with heavy support from U.S. Rep. Wesley Hunt, who represents part of the city and its surrounding suburbs, would involve two tunnels, each 36 miles long and 12 feet in diameter, running from the Addicks and Barker reservoirs to the ocean at the Port of Houston.

They would also be more shallow than the larger proposal, 15 to 30 feet below the surface.

This project would cost an estimated $760 million. The timeline is unclear – the company says it can bore as much as a mile a month, though its fastest boring project to date, in Las Vegas, averaged 49 feet per day, which would be more than three months per mile. The company has previously been contracted to build transportation tunnels, but it has never built flood control tunnels. It seems reasonable to conclude that boring the proposal’s combined 72 miles of tunnels would take several years.

The engineering reality: Size matters

A tunnel’s ability to carry water increases exponentially with its diameter: A tunnel with a 30-foot diameter can carry roughly 39 times as much water as a 12-foot-diameter tunnel. Even two 12-foot-diameter tunnels, combined, would carry less than one-fifth as much water as a single 40-foot-diameter tunnel.

Houston experiences flash flooding multiple times per year from routine storms that drop 4 to 6 inches of rain in a few hours. Even moderate storms cause problems: Storms that statistically occur every two years cause flooding in areas such as the Second Ward and Greater Fifth Ward because of outdated storm sewers. And storm severity is increasing: Rain amounts that once were expected once every 100 years now happen every 25 years.

And Hurricane Harvey dumped 1 trillion gallons in Harris County in four days. Some locations received over 60 inches of rainfall, about 15 inches more than average annual amounts for eastern Texas.

During Harvey, nearly every river, creek and bayou in southeast Texas flooded. About 90% of the area’s waterway monitoring stations recorded some amount of flooding. And nearly half of all waterway stations reported more flooding than ever recorded before.

Our analysis of the projects’ capacities finds that they would all be overwhelmed in a Harvey-scale event delivering over 50 inches of rain, with most of Houston experiencing a 1,000-year storm.

We have calculated that Musk’s two tunnels could handle only about 0.9% of Harvey’s water, while the county’s full eight-tunnel system would handle roughly 39% of Harvey’s rainfall. Without technical details, the best we can say is that the third tunnel option would likely fall in between those two capacities.

All the systems could provide protection against more routine flooding. The price tag for Musk’s proposal is significantly lower and could have some benefits, but it might divert funding from approaches that could handle even more water.

The Harris County Flood Control District’s feasibility study found that the eight large-diameter tunnels could significantly reduce the severity of 120,000 instances of flooding over the next 100 years across 11 of 23 major watersheds in Harris County. The other 12 watersheds would need separate projects to address their vulnerabilities. Smaller tunnels, or fewer of them, would provide proportionally less protection.

Musk’s proposal would primarily benefit areas near the Addicks and Barker reservoirs, helping to drain them quickly during major rain events. But most of Houston’s flooding problems are not a result of reservoir overflows. Rather, they happen in older neighborhoods with storm sewers that are too small to handle the amount of rain Houston regularly receives.

Houston’s geological challenge

While all the projects would have the bulk of the tunnels below utility lines, Houston’s geology still makes tunnel construction complex.

The Gulf Coast region consists of sand, silt, and clay – very young soils that haven’t compacted yet. The ground is already sinking in areas such as Katy, Spring, The Woodlands, Fresno and Mont Belvieu. Any tunnel construction would need to account for continued subsidence over the tunnels’ lifespan.

The area’s high groundwater table would increase water pressure on the tunnels themselves, with more complex soil conditions the deeper a tunnel went. Initial excavation, access shafts from the surface to the tunnels, and pumping stations would all cost more than they would in harder soil with a lower water table.

There are other approaches Houston continues to explore, in addition to the tunnels, including improving early warning systems, expanding basins for holding excess water, improving the flow channels of existing streams, creeks and bayous, and expanding voluntary buyout programs.

The engineering verdict

Musk’s proposal faces several engineering limitations. The 12-foot tunnels cannot handle Harvey-scale flooding due to insufficient capacity. The shallow boring approach through Houston’s unstable soils presents significant geological challenges. The limited scope addresses only two of the county’s 23 watersheds, leaving most flood-prone areas unprotected.

The flood control district’s plan would offer more protection, but not to the whole area nor in a way that would prevent another Harvey-level flooding disaster.

The hybrid option being studied by county commissioners could provide a middle ground, offering better capacity than Musk’s tunnels while potentially being cheaper and faster to build than the full district plan. But its pros and cons remain largely theoretical until detailed engineering studies are completed.

All three options would provide some flood protection, but none would completely solve Houston’s flooding challenges. The question becomes whether to invest in incremental improvements that help with routine flooding or pursue more expensive and more comprehensive solutions that provide greater protection against catastrophic events.

As Houston’s vulnerable communities face intensifying storms, we believe the city needs solutions that work when catastrophe strikes – not just during routine flooding.

Dr. Ivis García has received funding from the National Science Foundation; the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development; the U.S. Department of Transportation’s National Institute for Transportation and Communities; the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention; the Environmental Protection Agency; the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine; JPB Foundation; Ford Foundation, Pritzker Traubert Foundation; Chicago Community Trust, SBAN, Texas Appleseed, Fundación Comunitaria de Puerto Rico, Urban Institute & UNIDOS, and Natural Hazards Center.

James M. Kaihatu received funding from National Academies and Environmental Protection Agency.

Shannon Van Zandt 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.

– ref. Flood-prone Houston faces hard choices for handling too much water – https://theconversation.com/flood-prone-houston-faces-hard-choices-for-handling-too-much-water-265352

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Kui Xie, Dean of College of Education and Human Development, University of Missouri-Columbia

Across the United States, more schools are implementing policies restricting cellphones as concerns about digital distraction, mental health and academic performance rise.

The scale of the issue is significant. According to a 2023 report from Common Sense Media, 97% of students between the ages of 11 and 17 use their cellphones at least once during the school day. These students spend a median of 43 minutes online each day during school hours. Social media, YouTube and gaming were the students’ top cellphone uses.

Schools have already begun taking action. Data from the National Center for Education Statistics published in 2025 shows that 77% of public schools ban cellphones during classes. Thirty-eight percent of schools have cellphone policies that restrict use outside of class as well – including during free periods, between classes or during extracurricular activities.

Policymakers in different states and educators in school districts across the country are putting into place a variety of solutions. Some rely on partial restrictions, while others enforce complete bans.

Many are still searching for the balance between technology access and minimizing distraction.

What is clear, however, is that cellphones have become one of the central issues shaping today’s classroom environment.

The role of technology in the classroom

As researchers and professors who study the integration of technology for teaching and learning – and who are also parents of school-aged children – we firmly believe that digital technologies are no longer optional add-ons. They have become indispensable in modern classrooms, acting as versatile instruments for instruction, collaboration and student engagement.

Take, for example, the ongoing shift from traditional paper textbooks to digital ones. This transformation has broadened access and created new opportunities for interactive, personalized learning. Abundant evidence demonstrates the positive effects of technology in supporting students’ engagement in class and their academic performance.

Students’ access to digital devices has improved significantly as schools across the United States continue investing in technology infrastructure. A 2023 report from the National Center for Education Statisitics indicates that 94% to 95% of public schools now provide devices to students who need them – although disparities exist between states.

A growing number of districts are adopting 1:1 initiatives, ensuring that every student has access to a personal device such as a laptop or tablet. These initiatives accelerated after the COVID-19 pandemic made clear the need for reliable access to learning technologies in schools for all students. They highlight the central role technology now plays in shaping everyday classroom instruction.

These technologies hold great educational potential. Yet, when not integrated thoughtfully and regulated effectively, they can inadvertently reduce focus and undermine learning.

Our recent systematic review on digital distraction in classrooms, which synthesized 26 empirical studies, finds three main drivers of distraction among students:

• Technology-related factors included constant social networking, texting and cellphone addiction. These accounted for over half of the reported distractions.

• Personal needs, such as entertainment, made up more than one-third.

• Instructional environment, including classroom instruction that isn’t engaging, poor classroom management and difficult course content, accounted for the rest.

To address these challenges, the authors of the papers we reviewed suggested strategies such as teaching students how to control their own behavior and focus, silencing notifications, issuing clear device policies or banning devices.

The studies in our review also drew a clear distinction between school-provided and personally owned mobile devices. Devices provided by schools are typically equipped for instructional purposes, enhanced with stronger security and designed to restrict distracting uses. Personal devices are far less regulated and more prone to off-task use.

As schools increasingly provide devices designed for learning, the role of personal cellphones in classrooms becomes harder to justify as they present more risks of distraction than educational benefits.

Laws and policies regarding cellphone use

Several states in the U.S. have passed laws banning or restricting cellphone use in schools, with some notable differences.

States vary in how they define wireless communication devices. In Michigan, Senate Bill 234, passed in May 2025, describes a wireless communication device as an “electronic device capable of, but not limited to, text messaging, voice communication, entertainment, navigation, accessing the internet, or producing email.”

While most of the states have several technology types listed under wireless communication devices, a Colorado bill passed in May 2025 clearly identified that laptops and tablets did not fall under the list of restricted wireless communication devices.

Most state laws don’t specify whether the bans apply to both personally owned devices and school-owned devices. One exception is the bill Missouri passed in July 2025, which clearly specifies its ban refers only to personal devices.

North Carolina made exceptions in a bill approved in July 2025, allowing students to use wireless communication devices for instructional purposes. Other exceptions in the North Carolina bill include an emergency, when students’ individual education programs call for it, and a documented medical condition.

In their bills, most states provide recommendations for school districts to create cellphone use policy for their students. To take one typical example, the policy for Wake County in North Carolina, one of the state’s largest school districts, specifically refers to personal wireless communication devices. For elementary and middle school students, they must be silenced and put away between morning and afternoon bells, either in a backpack or locker. For high school students, teachers may allow them to be used for lessons, but they must otherwise be silenced and put away during instructional time. They can be used on school buses with low volume and headphones.

The authors 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.

– ref. Many US states are rethinking how students use cellphones − but digital tech still has a place in the classroom – https://theconversation.com/many-us-states-are-rethinking-how-students-use-cellphones-but-digital-tech-still-has-a-place-in-the-classroom-256968

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Molly Ryder Granatino, Teaching Assistant Professor, English department, University of Tennessee

Spooky decorations of ghosts and skeletons will soon be returning to people’s doorsteps ahead of Halloween – but year-round, I am thinking about literary representations of death and dying.

I am not alone. For centuries, death has been a topic of fascination for authors and readers alike. My own research focuses on death in the Victorian era, a period of British literature extending from 1837 to 1901, but what is it about the subject of death more broadly that both attracts and repels?

When I had the chance to propose a special topics course in literature in fall 2024, I knew I wanted to craft a course that attempts to unpack why the topic of death is fascinating for people to both write and read about. Happily, my proposal was accepted, and I am currently teaching a course called “Death, Dying, and the Undead.”

What does the course explore?

Grave robbing, premature burial, murder, terror and grief are some of the topics explored through the study of poetry, short stories and novels.

We look at how authors write about death, from the visceral horror of dying in battle depicted by Wilfred Owen in his 1920 poem, “Dulce et Decorum Est,” to the devastating intimacy of loss in Edna St. Vincent Millay’s 1928 poem “Dirge Without Music” – and every death-related theme in between.

Students also explore themes of madness, mayhem and sudden death in 19th century Gothic and 20th century Southern Gothic short stories. In these stories, death is often figured as an interruption, an unexpected event that occurs when characters are busy doing other things.

It is futile to attempt to hide from death, a fact illustrated by Edgar Allan Poe in his 1842 short story “The Masque of the Red Death.” In this story, Prince Prospero, the prince of an unnamed region, tries to evade the “Red Death” by abandoning his people and isolating himself and other noblemen in a fortified abbey. But death finds them there – “And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all,” as the story goes.

Death is inevitable, but cannot always be anticipated. In Flannery O’Connor’s 1953 short story “A Good Man is Hard to Find,” an entire family is murdered by an escaped criminal called The Misfit in the midst of a mundane family road trip. As they are marched into the woods one by one for execution, their disbelief mirrors the reader’s: This can’t really be happening, can it?

Finally, we end the semester with novels about continued bodily animation after death – including Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel, “Frankenstein,” and Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel, “Dracula.” This unit is particularly interesting to my students majoring in forensic anthropology – meaning the recovery and examination of human remains. Some of these students spend time working at the University of Tennessee’s “body farm,” where they study donated human remains.

The students unite their understanding of inevitable bodily decay with literature that imagines the opposite – bodies that either don’t break down or can be reused. Class conversations here range from how bodies are treated after death to 19th century scientific advancements and how authors creatively imagine the possibility that a body could be reanimated after death.

Why is this course relevant now?

As Halloween reminds people annually, everyone is going to die someday. This knowledge, paired with literature attempting to navigate the great unknown that yawns ahead, encourages students to reflect on mortality, personal values, different perspectives and how they want to live. As the poet and novelist D.H. Lawrence writes in his 1932 poem “The Ship of Death,” “We are dying, we are dying, we are all of us dying/and nothing will stay the death-flood rising within us.”

What’s a critical lesson from the course?

While an entire class dedicated to literary representations of death may appear morbid, a focus on death and dying provides an excellent jumping-off point for an exploration of what it means to be human, with all of our worries, hopes, longings and dreads. Ultimately, this dark and foreboding-sounding class is spirited and life-affirming.

What will the course prepare students to do?

This course prepares students to critically think about challenging subjects, like the literary portrayal of the death of a child or suicidal ideation. I facilitate the class, but the students’ incisive reading and observation drives the discussion. Students offer various interpretations and arguments informed by their own unique perspectives on loss, grief, memory and finite lifespans.

The class also prepares students to boldly tackle any literature assigned to them. Prior to each class session, students annotate the designated text. They mark it up with pens and pencils – or the digital equivalent – defining words, drawing in the margins, noting metaphors and themes.

By practicing close reading and annotating in this way, students gain confidence in engaging with a literary work and offering their own critical arguments in their written assignments.

Uncommon Courses is an occasional series from The Conversation U.S. highlighting unconventional approaches to teaching.

Molly Ryder Granatino 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.

– ref. From ‘Frankenstein’ to ‘Dracula,’ exploring the dark world of death and the undead offers a reminder of our mortality – https://theconversation.com/from-frankenstein-to-dracula-exploring-the-dark-world-of-death-and-the-undead-offers-a-reminder-of-our-mortality-265153

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Alex Wermer-Colan, Academic and Research Director, Loretta C. Duckworth Scholars Studio, Temple University Libraries, Temple University

Over the past decade, a growing movement to restrict access to books in public schools and libraries has spread across the country. Every year, there are hundreds of attempts to challenge or ban books, targeting thousands of titles.

According to the nonprofit free speech advocacy group PEN America, there have been nearly 16,000 book bans in U.S. public schools and libraries since 2021, a number not seen since the 1950s under McCarthyism. The actual number of bans likely is much higher, since not every book ban gets officially reported.

During the 2020s, book banning has become a viral phenomenon. Small, conservative nonprofits such as Moms for Liberty, founded in 2021, have developed and expanded their advocacy for book bans at the local, state and national levels. These groups position themselves as defenders of parental rights against obscenity in education, while interpreting “obscenity” broadly enough to include so-called “woke” ideologies.

And while not all efforts to ban books are successful, these groups have been extremely effective. For example, from July 2021 to June 2022 there were 2,532 instances of books being banned across 32 states, affecting 1,648 different books, according to the “Banned in the USA” report by PEN America.

In early 2023, we were part of a team that researched book bans enacted over the course of the 2021-2022 school year. We found that during this period, the books’ covers appeared just as likely to lead to a ban as the words on the page.

Targeting diversity

Many organizations work to protect books that depict the vibrancy of American culture, including PEN America, the American Library Association, the Authors Guild and the Digital Public Library of America. Their scholarship has consistently shown that the contemporary book banning movement is a transparent effort to suppress depictions of cultural, racial, sexual and gender diversity in public education.

Most media coverage has focused on frequently targeted books, such as George M. Johnson’s memoir “All Boys Aren’t Blue” or Maia Kobabe’s “Gender Queer.” Yet these works represent only a small percentage of the wide range of titles that are being banned.

Looking at the broader array of books challenged and banned during the 2021-2022 school year, our research showed that this organized effort has consistently targeted representations of minorities in children’s and young adult books, both fiction and nonfiction.

Judging books by their covers

Our research team purchased more than 1,600 books that PEN America had reported as challenged or banned in the 2021-2022 school year. We digitized physical copies and converted e-books to create a data set for scholarly analysis.

As we examined each book, clear patterns emerged. The vast majority of the books had been published since 2000. Nonfiction titles, which made up one-fourth of the total, were often written to help children engage with complex topics in age-appropriate ways.

For example, “It’s Perfectly Normal: Changing Bodies, Growing Up, Sex, and Sexual Health” featured illustrations and scientific language to teach children about their changing bodies. Another book, “Peaceful Fights for Equal Rights,” used lyrical writing and cut-paper collages to teach children about civil disobedience.

Other books seemed to be targeted for no discernible reason, beyond having narrators or protagonists who were children of color. Typically, these fictional stories explored uncontroversial topics. Examples include “Lola at the Library” and “Cece Loves Science.”

All of these books’ covers depicted racial, gender or sexual diversity. This made us wonder whether book banishers were simply judging books based on their cover art, rather than the content of their stories.

Who’s in the picture?

When we looked at the 1,648 books banned in the 2021-2022 school year, our qualitative analysis found that the book covers most often depicted women, people of color or LGBTQ identities. Over 80% of books targeted for bans included human figures, and roughly two-thirds of the books with figures on the cover featured nonwhite characters and characters who appear female. Even when book covers displayed white characters, one-third placed them beside people of color.

While 30% of banned books with figures on the cover featured only white characters, more than half of these – over 200 books – exhibited only characters who did not look conventionally male and highlighted feminist or LGBTQ topics and perspectives. Less than 10% – only 98 books – presented solely white, male characters on the cover. Of this group, over 10% still depicted some kind of romantic, same-sex relationship.

Based on the book cover designs alone, our research team determined that the vast majority of the books selected for banning explicitly represented racial, gender and sexual minorities in their cover art. The remainder typically focused on mental health issues, broadly speaking.

Across all the books we examined, the cover art consistently reflected the contents of the books. In addition, most of the banned books also contained language in their titles and summaries visible on the back cover that further signaled topics pertaining to issues of diversity.

A broader attack on libraries

Until 2025, book bans were enacted at the local and state levels. Now, however, the Trump administration is attacking public resources more generally, affecting not just youth but anyone who uses public libraries.

In January 2025, the U.S. Department of Education ended its role investigating book bans. For fiscal year 2026, the administration is proposing to eliminate the federal Institute of Museum and Library Services, which provides about US$211 million annually in grants and support for museums and libraries.

By monitoring and censoring the titles that libraries can carry, book bans ultimately serve to discredit these institutions’ authority and justify defunding them.

As the U.S. observes Banned Books Week from Oct. 5-11, 2025, we believe it is more vital than ever for the public to understand the value of public schools and libraries. One promising development occurred in August 2025, when a federal judge overturned a Florida book ban law on First Amendment grounds. This ruling may offer some hope for similar challenges to book bans in other states.

Banning books doesn’t remove cultural, racial, sexual or gender diversity from U.S. communities. But it can remove depictions of a diverse society from public schools and neighborhood libraries.

Bans also undermine the professional authority of teachers, librarians and authors, all of whom work hard to guide young people to find books that will help them develop and broaden their horizons. Removing books from schools and libraries only jeopardizes these institutions’ mission to promote free and open access to information in the communities where Americans live and learn.

Alex Wermer-Colan received funding from the Mellon Foundation.

Alex Wermer-Colan is the Managing Editor of the Programming Historian in English and the Executive Director of Philly Community Wireless.

SaraGrace Stefan received funding from the Mellon Foundation.

– ref. Many book bans could be judging titles mainly by their covers – https://theconversation.com/many-book-bans-could-be-judging-titles-mainly-by-their-covers-255807

Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By Diana Chigas, Professor of the Practice in International Negotiation and Conflict Resolution, Tufts University

For nearly half a century, the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act has made it illegal for U.S. citizens and companies to bribe foreign officials. Since 1998, that has been the case for foreign companies listed on U.S. stock exchanges or acting in the U.S., too.

Under the Trump administration, however, expectations are changing. In February 2025, an executive order froze new investigations for 180 days, arguing that the act has been “stretched beyond proper bounds” and “harms American economic competitiveness.” The president ordered a review of enforcement guidelines to ensure they advance U.S. interests and competitiveness.

The Department of Justice’s revised guidelines, issued in June 2025, prioritize cases that are tied to cartels and other transnational criminal organizations, harm U.S. companies or their “fair access to compete,” or involve “infrastructure or assets” important for national security.

Whatever impact the new guidelines will have on anti-corruption prosecutions globally, which is still unclear, the impact on the actual level of corruption will likely be small. Legal rules and sanctions designed to deter, find and punish “bad apples” have had limited success in many parts of the world. Yet the United States’ retreat from leadership could set back momentum for addressing the root causes of corruption.

New anti-corruption norm, but limited change

In 1977, when the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act was signed into law, the U.S. was alone in criminalizing bribery of foreign officials. Since then, and especially since the end of the Cold War, there’s been a paradigm shift.

Today, a global infrastructure of treaties and institutions obligates countries to criminalize corruption, adopt measures to prevent it and cooperate to recover stolen assets. All but a few members of the United Nations have adopted the U.N. Convention Against Corruption. Substantial amounts of international aid have also been allocated to strengthen anti-corruption efforts. In 2021 alone, the Development Assistance Committee of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development invested over US$7.5 billion for reforms related to fighting corruption, from anti-corruption courts to public financial management.

Yet global trends in corruption, widely defined as the “abuse of entrusted power for personal gain,” are not improving. On the 2024 Corruption Perceptions Index, the most widely used global ranking of public sector corruption, two-thirds of countries scored below 50 on a scale where 0 is “very corrupt” and 100 is “very clean.” And while 32 countries had reduced corruption since 2012, 148 had either stayed the same or gotten worse.

Corruption, it turns out, can be stubbornly resistant to “best practices.”

A few examples illustrate this “whack-a-mole” dynamic. Medical personnel in Ugandan hospitals began to solicit “gifts” and “appreciation” after the government imposed greater oversight and penalties for bribery. A study of World Bank efforts in over 100 developing countries to clean up procurement corruption found that gains in one area were canceled out when government buyers started to use procedures not subject to the new rules. In my own research, my co-authors and I found that civil servants developed innovative ways to avoid enforcing a law requiring public employees convicted of corruption to be fired.

More than ‘bad apples’

I have spent the past 10 years trying to understand this paradox. One key factor we (and many others) found is that most conventional anti-corruption tools are addressing the wrong problem.

The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and similar measures focus on preventing, detecting and punishing individual acts of corruption. Rules requiring reporting and asset declarations, monitoring and oversight, and criminal penalties for corruption belong to this category. These tools try to limit the power people have over decisions and resources and increase accountability and transparency.

This approach works where corrupt acts are sporadic, opportunistic deviations from the norm by “bad apples” acting to enrich themselves. It also assumes that rule of law and robust institutions exist.

This is not the case in much of the world – especially in fragile and conflict-affected states where corruption is endemic. By “endemic,” I mean not just that corruption is widespread, but that it is embedded in politics and the economy – a “team effort” within broad networks, with informal rules of the game. As an Afghan official reportedly told U.S. Embassy officials in 2010, endemic corruption “is not just a problem for the system of governance … it is the system of governance.”

What makes the conventional anti-corruption tool kit so ineffective in contexts of endemic corruption?

#1. It does not pay to follow the rules. Without trusted leaders and institutions to implement the law, it is difficult for people to behave honestly, as they don’t trust that others will do the same. Corruption, in this sense, is a “collective action” problem. If corruption is the norm, not the exception, the short-term costs of sticking to the rules are too high.

#2. Corruption serves a useful function – even when it undermines the public good. Even when people believe it’s wrong, corruption can solve problems that seem unsolvable in their current system. For example, health workers in Nigeria often ask for bribes because their salaries are low and clinics lack needed supplies. The money helps them fulfill family obligations and make clinics work. Similarly, politicians often practice patronage because it helps them redistribute wealth to retain supporters and stabilize conflict. Unless dysfunction is addressed, incentives to bypass the rules remain.

#3. Informal institutions prevail over formal rules. When a government cannot be relied upon to provide security, services or livelihoods, people rely on their personal networks to survive. As a judge in the Central African Republic told our research team, “If someone [within your social network] asks for a service, you are required to do it, even if it goes against your own ethics. To refuse is to put oneself in opposition [to one’s clan] and this can be dangerous.”

Loss of leadership

This does not mean that conventional anti-corruption approaches are completely ineffective or irrelevant.

But they aren’t enough on their own. They work best hand in hand with interventions that address motivating factors – from low pay to a lack of livelihoods not dependent on corruption, to social norms that motivate people to seek bribes or make them hesitate to enforce the rules.

Over the past few years, momentum has built to develop these new approaches – though it is still early to assess their effectiveness. Some focus on fixing government dysfunction. Others help unite people and groups trying to resist corruption. Some projects support “horizontal” monitoring by peer firms or communities, instead of government regulation, or try to “nudge” behaviors or change social norms.

The limitations of existing anti-corruption approaches suggest that more limited enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act is not likely, by itself, to worsen global corruption. But the loss of U.S. leadership may.

The U.S. role in anti-corruption progress cannot be understated – as a leader in “policing” foreign corruption, a model for other countries’ laws and institutions, and a leading donor. It is still unclear whether others – such as the U.K., the most likely and dedicated candidate – can fill the gap.

Equally concerning, in my view, is the danger that the U.S. turn to a more self-serving view of anti-corruption efforts may encourage a corrupt use of anti-corruption enforcement. Many authoritarian governments have weaponized anti-corruption laws to target political opponents through selective prosecutions.

If the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act is used this way, this could not only undermine the legitimacy of global anti-corruption norms but exacerbate conflict and fuel democratic backsliding at home and abroad.

Diana Chigas receives funding for her research from The MacArthur Foundation, Transparency International Canada and the Wellspring Philanthropic Fund through Besa Global, Inc., a social enterprise in Canada dedicated to improving anti-corruption effectiveness in fragile and conflict-affected contexts.

– ref. Conventional anti-corruption tools often fail to address root causes – but loss of US leadership could still spell trouble for efforts abroad – https://theconversation.com/conventional-anti-corruption-tools-often-fail-to-address-root-causes-but-loss-of-us-leadership-could-still-spell-trouble-for-efforts-abroad-263894

Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By James Densley, Professor of Criminal Justice, Metropolitan State University

On Sept. 28, 2025, at least four people were killed and eight others injured during a Sunday service at a Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints chapel in Grand Blanc, Michigan. Just a month earlier, two people died and 21 were injured during a Mass for students at the Catholic Church of the Annunciation in Minneapolis.

These tragedies may feel sudden and senseless, but they are part of a longer pattern that we have been tracking.

We are criminologists who have studied violence for decades. In 2023, we created a public database of homicides that occur in houses of worship across the United States. It now spans nearly 25 years of incidents, documenting how often these attacks happen, who perpetrates them, what weapons are used, when and where they occur, and how deadly they are.

What the numbers show

From 2000 to 2024, the dataset records 379 incidents and 487 deaths at religious congregations and religious community centers. Most involved a single victim, but some – like the recent shootings in Michigan and Minnesota – killed or injured many people.

About 7 in 10 incidents involved firearms, accounting for three-quarters of the deaths. Firearm cases averaged about 1.4 deaths each, compared with 1.1 for nonfirearm cases.

Handguns were the most common weapon, linked to more than 100 incidents and 147 deaths. But semiautomatic rifles, though used in only seven cases, killed 46 people — more than six per attack, on average.

The deadliest year was 2017, when 47 people were killed at places of worship, 42 of them with firearms. Twenty-six of those people were killed in a single catastrophic shooting at First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs, Texas.

‘Mass shootings’

Mass shootings are often defined as attacks that kill four or more people. Using that threshold, the data shows 10 incidents since 2000 at houses of worship. Lower the bar to three killed, and there are 14; at two killed, 40.

Definitions shape perception. Most people associate mass shootings with high-profile tragedies like the massacres at Charleston’s Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in 2015 or Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life Synagogue in 2018. But many other attacks, like the tragedy at Annunciation in Minneapolis, involve two or three deaths. Each represents a profound loss for a community.

In the cases where four or more people were killed, every perpetrator was a man in his 20s to 40s, with an average age of 32. Compared with other homicides at worship sites, these shooters were far more likely to have a history of mental health problems: 60% vs. 18%. They were also far more likely to have been thinking about or planning suicide – 70% vs. 17% – and to die by suicide during or after the attack: 60% vs. 10%.

There were other similarities, too. Among attackers who killed four or more people, 20% had served in the military, and 60% had a criminal background. Among attackers who killed fewer people, those numbers were 4% and 43%. Deadlier shooters more often leaked their plans or showed signs of being in crisis beforehand.

When and where

Violence is most likely to strike on Sundays – a quarter of all cases – followed by Saturdays. That reflects worship patterns: Sundays are the busiest day for most Christian denominations, while Saturdays are common for Jewish services.

Incidents cluster around mornings and nights, with mornings most common — the prime window for weekly services. And despite headlines about shootings inside sanctuaries, 71% of homicides occurred outside – in parking lots, courtyards or on steps – when people were gathering or leaving.

In two-thirds of cases, it was unclear whether the perpetrator had a connection with the congregation. Most of the other cases, though, involved attackers with clear ties, including members, relatives, pastors and employees. In dozens of cases, domestic disputes spilled into worship settings. Because services are routine, predictable gatherings, they can become flash points for private conflicts that turn deadly.

Attacks happened across the nation, but were concentrated in the South. The region tends to have more frequent attendance at religious services and looser firearm laws – a combination that helps explain the South’s overrepresentation, though no region is untouched.

Which faiths are affected

Ninety-seven percent of deadly incidents occurred at Christian churches, reflecting how many there are in the United States.

But, adjusting for the number of congregations, the data underscores other faiths’ vulnerability to targeted violence. Jewish and Muslim houses of worship, community centers and cemeteries, for example, contend with frequent threats and vandalism.

Only one incident at a gurdwara – a Sikh temple – appears in the dataset. Because there are so few in the U.S., though, that single case translates into the highest rate for any faith tradition, once the total number of congregations are taken into account. Stabbings or shootings also occurred at six Jewish synagogues and community centers, further suggesting disproportionate risk.

Two incidents involved mosques. Yet that contrasts with data showing high levels of Islamophobia in the U.S., suggesting that most violence against Muslims may occur in other settings.

Why this research matters

Homicides in houses of worship remain rare, but when they occur, firearms make them deadlier. Victims have included pastors, rabbis, imams, monks, congregants, staff and children.

Numbers cannot capture the grief of families in Grand Blanc or Minneapolis, or the trauma that survivors carry. But they can reveal patterns that ground conversations about safety and prevention.

Houses of worship are meant to be open spaces of peace and refuge. The challenge is balancing this higher purpose with practical security. By studying these past tragedies, Americans may better prepare for the future – and prevent more families from enduring the heartbreak of recent weeks.

James Densley has received funding from the National Institute of Justice, Joyce Foundation, and Sandy Hook Promise Foundation.

Jillian Peterson has received funding from the National Institute of Justice, Joyce Foundation, and Sandy Hook Promise Foundation.

– ref. Violent acts in houses of worship are rare but deadly – here’s what the data shows – https://theconversation.com/violent-acts-in-houses-of-worship-are-rare-but-deadly-heres-what-the-data-shows-266328