Category: Academic Reportage

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Brian Herman, Vice President for Research, University of Minnesota

Yale University, Columbia University and the University of California, Los Angeles are among the schools that have recently placed professors on leave, seen faculty resign or made other changes over faculty members’ ties to Jeffrey Epstein.

The University of Arizona, for example, canceled a science conference scheduled for April 2026, following the news that several speakers and organizers were named in the Epstein files. Astrobiologist Stuart Hameroff, for example, wrote on the social platform X on Feb. 6, 2026, that he “obtained one-time funding” for a conference from Epstein.

Bard College’s president, Leon Botstein, is among other academic leaders and researchers who have said that they met with Epstein for fundraising purposes – though, as The New York Times reports, Epstein rarely delivered on the money he promised for research and other purposes.

“There is a tremendous drive to acquire money to support the work of faculty and staff. The pressure has always been there – but you can still approach that in an ethically and morally acceptable way,” said Brian Herman, a former vice president for research at the University of Minnesota, in an interview that has been edited for length and clarity.

Amy Lieberman, the education editor at The Conversation U.S., spoke with Herman to understand how philanthropy for colleges and universities works, and what standards and safeguards are in place to help ensure that this money is given in an ethical manner.

How is research at universities typically funded?

Funding to support university research comes from a variety of different sources.

Most university research funding – approximately 53%-55% of that support – comes from the federal government, like the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation.

About 8% of total funding comes from a number of private foundations and nonprofits, like the American Cancer Society.

Universities can also request that state and federal legislators allocate funding in their yearly appropriations bills for research. This involves negotiations between universities and their state and federal legislators. State and local agencies provide about 5% of total university research funding.

Universities themselves fund between 25%-26% of research, and businesses give 6%.

Other sources of funding, including individual donors, account for about 3% of the money that funds university research.

These individuals might be alumni of the university, have another kind of connection to the school or are personally interested in a specific area of expertise of the university. Or, they could be grateful patients who had medical issues solved by the university’s medical school.

How do universities connect with private donors?

Universities typically have fundraising offices that oversee relationships with donors.

Donor and university partnerships involve significant negotiations about how the money will be invested. Universities typically will work with faculty members with expertise in the area of research a donor wants to support and put together a research proposal. The prospective donor then reviews the plan and decides whether they want to support the research.

After universities receive and invest a donation, they give donors a progress report on the investment.

Private donors give money to the university, and not to an individual faculty member. This allows proper accounting and controls on how the money is used, to make sure they support the intended research and adhere to university policies.

How do universities screen donors for conflicts of interest, for example?

All universities have compliance offices that set up a compendium of policies that guide how they accept private funding.

The schools try to make sure there is no financial conflict of interest for the donor, researcher or institution – or a conflict of interest between people performing the research and those providing the funding.

There is practically always a need to strike a balance between managing potential conflicts appropriately and being able to obtain the resources necessary for a university to conduct its work.

Do universities typically screen for donors who have committed a crime?

Most universities screen potential donors.

The larger the dollar amount in question, the more substantive the screening is. Many universities have policies on this issue. It is likely that universities will strengthen these policies based on recent events related to the Epstein case. They will want to become more stringent with screening to make sure that their donors are not morally compromised.

For example, universities can conduct background checks on potential donors.

But if the donation is small, it is possible that a university would not conduct a background check. So, a faculty member could seek $5,000 for a conference and approach a donor individually and not involve the rest of the university in the donation.

How could the Epstein case influence how universities screen donors?

I expect that universities will enact more policies and procedures that guard against a situation like what we are seeing in the Epstein files. Universities may require more substantive checks on all donations independent of size and source. They are also likely to carry out more training of faculty, staff and administrators on how to secure individual donor support.

If universities have not already done so, I think they should instruct faculty members not to directly contact a donor or legislator on behalf of the university. They should also increase the penalties for university employees who do not comply with this policy.

In some cases, researchers may have an idea that is not aligned strategically with how the university is raising philanthropic funds. They may go looking for their own money. This doesn’t happen a lot, but it does happen, and universities will have to become more vigilant about these types of situations.

In reality, money is necessary to do most everything at universities, including paying faculty and staff, purchasing research supplies and even keeping the lights on in the research labs. Money is also a metric that is used as a measure of success and the ranking of a university – meaning, getting more money can lead to a higher ranking.

University leaders are facing natural pressure to raise money. There is a tremendous drive to acquire money to support the work of faculty and staff. This can create significant pressure to acquire funding – but this must always be done in an ethically and morally appropriate way.

Brian Herman 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. Individual donors provide only a small slice of university research funding – but Jeffrey Epstein’s ties with academics show why screening matters – https://theconversation.com/individual-donors-provide-only-a-small-slice-of-university-research-funding-but-jeffrey-epsteins-ties-with-academics-show-why-screening-matters-276345

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Stanley Stepanic, Assistant Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures, University of Virginia

The Lord of Vampires. The King of the Undead. The Ultimate Lover. All refer to the immortal Count Dracula, who originally appeared in Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel.

Yet the character’s fame has sprung more from his 200-plus cinematic resurrections, beginning with “Dracula’s Death” in 1921 and, most recently, in Luc Besson’s “Dracula,” which premiered in the U.S. in February 2026.

Besson’s rendition has received particular attention for its focus on personal passion. Originally titled “Dracula: A Love Tale,” the film features a protagonist who is not simply a monster, but a lover. The New York Times called the movie “extravagantly silly” and described actor Caleb Landry Jones’ performance of the classic monster as “deliciously operatic: less villain, more virtuoso in love.”

Meanwhile, in London, Dracula as lover also features as a theme in Cynthia Erivo’s new West End production, in which she plays the Count and 22 other characters. A smaller, recent production out of Washington, D.C., titled “Dracula: A Comedy of Terrors” presents the Count similarly, though with a hilariously deviant LGBTQ+ bite.

In other words, Dracula has come a long way from his days as a lecherous, old creep, a shift that can be attributed, in part, to evolving attitudes on love, gender and sexuality.

‘Even his breath was rank’

When Stoker first published “Dracula,” the character appeared at the end of a long line of literary vampires, from Lord Ruthven in John Polidori’s “The Vampyre” (1819) to Sir Francis Varney in “Varney the Vampire” (1845-1847).

These vampires were all decrepit, revolting and predatory old men, and Stoker’s Count Dracula was no different. In the novel, one character notes Dracula’s “course” hands, the “extraordinary pallor” of his skin and his “extremely pointed” ears; atop his “lofty domed forehead,” his hair grew “scantily” upon his head. Even his “breath was rank.”

Another character describes Dracula as possessing “not a good face,” adding that it was “hard, and cruel.”

The first surviving feature-length film adaptation of “Dracula” was the 1922 German film “Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror,” which cribs the plot and characters from Stoker’s novel. In it, Count Orlok – essentially a bootleg version of Dracula – looks ratlike, emaciated and pallid.

Seduction game

Little about Stoker’s Dracula or Count Orlok screamed “lover,” though there’s arguably an implicit sexuality in the way he attacks and stalks his victims.

Instead, Dracula gained his “lover” label from later appearances on screen.

The earliest example appears in the 1944 film “House of Frankenstein,” where Rita (Anne Gwynne) is initially concerned by Dracula’s presence. Later, however, she finds herself “no longer afraid” after he places a ring onto her index finger, which magically fits to her precise shape.

At the end of this scene, as she longingly looks into his eyes, he announces he will come for her the next day, as if it were all a budding tryst.

The evolution of Dracula’s character mirrored changes in more general perceptions of gender, sexuality and violence that occurred after World War II, when popular culture started to chip away at the centrality of the nuclear family. As books, films and TV shows explored themes like lust, infidelity, same-sex relationships and divorce, images of vampires became more complex.

In the 1958 film “Dracula,” for example – titled “Horror of Dracula” in the U.S. – Dracula (Christopher Lee) is a predator who breaks into the homes of married women.

Yet there’s also a hint of romance. In one particular scene, he assaults Mina Holmwood (Melissa Stribling). But Mina appears to eventually give in, and they share a brief, passionate kiss. The British Board of Film Classification even censored the scene, seeing it as a step too far in a film already replete with sexual overtones.

Director Terence Fisher later recalled telling Stribling to depict her character as though she “had one whale of a sexual night, the one of your whole sexual experience. Give me that in your face!”

Lover or monster?

By the 1970s, sexuality became even more of a pronounced theme in vampire-related media, mirroring broader cultural changes in views of human sexuality.

Comic books such as “Vampirella” presented the vampire as a hypersexualized, feminine, erotic symbol of power, while films such as “The Vampire Lovers” explored themes like lesbianism, though not in a way that was entirely explicit.

In the film “Count Dracula’s Great Love” (1973), Dracula falls head over heels for a young girl named Karen, who ends up rejecting his advances. Near the end of the film, the lovesick vampire bemoans, “For the first time, love brings a finish to the life of Dracula,” before driving a stake into his heart with his own hands.

Shortly thereafter, a made-for-TV “Dracula” features Dracula’s search for his dead wife.

The “search for a dead lover” would become a central theme in future films. For example, in Francis Ford Coppola’s “Bram Stoker’s Dracula” (1992), viewers learn that Dracula leaves Transylvania for England to pursue a reincarnation of his dead wife.

This yearning was a borrowed concept. In the Gothic soap opera “Dark Shadows” (1966-1971), the character Barnabas Collins (Jonathan Frid) tries to replicate his romance with his long-dead lover, Josette, by attempting to supernaturally control the living body of a girl named Maggie Evans (Kathryn Leigh Scott) so that she mimics Josette.

The concept of a vampire pining for a lost love – especially one from a lost era – marked a significant evolution in vampire media.

In the 1970s comic book series “The Tomb of Dracula,” the Count has a human wife named Domini; through magical means, he’s even able to conceive a child with her. Thanks to his romance, he can now “understand things such as peace and rest and love.”

Despite Dracula-as-lover now being such a well-worn trope, the ever-adaptable Count is also ready for his traditional scare duties, most recently in Robert Egger’s “Nosferatu” (2024). Whether he’s a lover, a monster or both, Dracula represents the idea of the vampire as a mirror of human experience. Romance can sometimes teeter between love and pain. Passion can sometimes be scary. So when you next see him on stage or screen, don’t be surprised if his fervent love also comes with a sharp bite.

Stanley Stepanic 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. How Dracula became a red-hot lover – https://theconversation.com/how-dracula-became-a-red-hot-lover-275789

Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By Jenni Shearston, Assistant Professor of Integrative Physiology, University of Colorado Boulder

About half of the global population menstruates at some point in their lives. Disposable products, such as tampons and pads, are some of the most popular products used around the globe to manage menstrual flow.

Unfortunately, studies have shown that many personal care products, including shampoo, lotion, nail polish and menstrual products, contain hazardous chemicals. Items used in or near the vagina are of particular concern because they are in contact with vaginal mucous membranes – the moist tissue lining the inside of the vagina that secretes mucus. These tissues can absorb some chemicals very efficiently.

People use menstrual products 24 hours a day for multiple days monthly, over the course of many years. Tampons, which are used internally, are surrounded by the permeable vaginal mucous membrane for up to eight hours at a time.

I am an environmental epidemiologist, and I study chemical exposure, its sources and its health effects. As a person who menstruates, I also must make my own decisions around menstrual products and manage the challenge of finding accurate information about women’s health risks, which receive less research attention and funding than men’s health.

In 2024, I co-authored the first paper that detected metals in tampons, including toxic metals like lead and arsenic. My colleagues and I also wrote a review paper that surveyed the scientific literature and found about two dozen studies measuring chemicals in menstrual products.

The various chemicals that these studies detected were typically at concentrations low enough to make their health impact unclear. However, they included chemicals known to disrupt the endocrine system, which makes and controls hormones that are essential for bodies to function.

How contaminants get into menstrual products

The first modern tampon in the U.S. was patented in 1931. Nearly a century later, tampons still are made primarily from cotton, rayon or a blend of the two.

Chemicals may get into tampons and other menstrual products in a number of ways. Some chemicals, like heavy metals, are present in soil, either naturally or due to pollution, and may be absorbed by cotton plants.

Other chemicals, such as zinc, may be intentionally added to menstrual products to prevent the growth of harmful bacteria. Still others, such as phthalates – synthetic chemicals used to manufacture plastics – may leach into menstrual products from plastic packaging or be added as part of a fragrance.

Research suggests that these chemicals are present in a large proportion of menstrual products – we found lead present in all 30 tampons we tested. What we don’t yet know is if these chemicals can get into people’s bodies in a high enough concentration to cause health effects in either the reproductive system or elsewhere in the body.

Limited federal regulations

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration regulates tampons, menstrual cups and scented menstrual pads as Class II medical devices, which carry moderate to medium risk. Unscented menstrual pads are Class I medical devices, which are considered low-risk. These categories are based on the risk the device may present to a consumer who uses it in the intended way.

FDA guidance for Class II devices offers only a few general guidelines with respect to chemicals. For menstrual tampons and pads, it recommends – but does not require – that products should not contain two specific dioxin products or “any pesticide and herbicide residues.” Dioxins are a chemical by-product of the bleaching process to whiten cotton, and they are associated with cancer and endocrine disruption. Using non-chlorine bleaching methods can reduce dioxin formation.

The most stringent regulation of tampons in the U.S. occurred after an illness called toxic shock syndrome became a public concern in the 1970s and 1980s. Menstrual toxic shock syndrome occurs when the bacteria Staphlococcus aureus grows in the vagina on inserted menstrual products and releases a toxin called TSST-1. This substance can be absorbed through the vaginal mucosa and cause a variety of symptoms, including fever, high blood pressure, shock and even death.

During this epidemic, in which at least 52 cases were recorded and seven people died over a period of eight months, tampons were associated with the syndrome – especially a highly absorbent tampon called Rely, which was pulled from the market.

In response, the FDA created a task force that recommended standardizing the tampon absorbencies and advised consumers to use the lowest absorbency for their flow. This is why tampons in the U.S. now come in a range of absorbencies, from light through regular to super and ultra, so that users can choose the level they need while minimizing risk of toxic shock.

Living in a ‘soup of chemicals’

Just because a chemical is present in a menstrual product doesn’t mean it can get into the body. However, chemicals like lead and arsenic are known threats to human health. So it’s important to study whether harmful chemicals present in menstrual products could contribute to health problems.

Humans in the modern world live in what expert toxicologist Linda Birnbaum, former director of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, calls a “soup of chemicals.” Simply being present on Earth means being exposed to many chemicals, at different concentrations, all at once. This makes it difficult to unravel the relationship between a single chemical exposure and health.

Nonetheless, science has shown that chemical exposure from at least one menstrual product – vaginal douches – does affect health. Vaginal douching is the process of washing or cleaning the inside of the vagina with water or other fluids.

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists recommends avoiding this process, which can harm healthy bacteria in the vagina, increasing the risk of vaginal infections and other diseases.

In addition, a 2015 study found that women who use vaginal douches have higher concentrations of a chemical called monoethyl phthalate in their urine. Exposure to this substance is associated with reproductive health problems, such as reduced fertility and increased pregnancy risk.

Can these chemicals be absorbed?

Scientists are working now to determine what concentrations of metals and other chemicals can leach out of tampons and other menstrual products. One 2025 study estimated that volatile organic compounds, a group of chemicals that vaporize quickly, can be absorbed through the vaginal mucosa. Volatile organic compounds may be added to menstrual products as part of fragrances, adhesives or other product components.

My team and I are now shifting our focus to the relationship between menstrual product use, various chemicals, and menstrual pain and bleeding severity. We want to see whether some chemicals will be elevated in menstrual blood, whether these chemical levels are higher in people who use tampons, and whether the chemicals are associated with greater menstrual pain and bleeding.

States are starting to act on this issue. For example, in 2024, Vermont became the first U.S. state to ban multiple chemicals from disposable menstrual products. California bans PFAS, a widely used group of highly persistent chemicals, from menstrual products. New York adopted a law in December 2025 barring multiple toxic chemicals from menstrual products.

California also enacted a law in October 2025 that requires manufacturers of disposable tampons and pads to measure concentrations of arsenic, cadmium, lead and zinc in their products, and to share those measurements with the state, which can publish them. More information like this will help support informed choices for millions of consumers who rely on menstrual products every month.

Jenni Shearston receives funding from the United States National Institutes of Health.

– ref. Menstrual pads and tampons can contain toxic substances – here’s what to know about this emerging health issue – https://theconversation.com/menstrual-pads-and-tampons-can-contain-toxic-substances-heres-what-to-know-about-this-emerging-health-issue-268470

Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By Jan Lowery, Professor of Epidemiology, Colorado School of Public Health, University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus

In Colorado, as of 2025, about 500 people a year die from lung cancer as the result of radon gas exposure. Nationally, the number of lung cancer deaths attributed to radon is about 21,000 per year.

Radon is present nearly everywhere outdoors, yet typically at levels that are not harmful. It becomes dangerous when it gets trapped and accumulates inside homes, schools and other buildings.

Radon is a naturally occurring radioactive gas that is produced by the breakdown of uranium, a heavy metal present in the soil. People cannot smell it or see it, which makes radon particularly dangerous. When radon gas forms in the soil, it rises and finds its way into homes old and new through cracked foundations, gaps around sump pumps and drains, and crawl spaces.

Many people are unaware of the radon levels in their home. In Colorado, it is estimated that only 50% of homes have been tested. Thus, many Coloradans may be exposed to elevated radon levels and not know it.

Though tobacco use is the most significant risk factor for lung cancer, accounting for approximately 86% of all lung cancer cases, radon is the leading cause of lung cancer among people who have never used tobacco. Radon also has a compounding effect with tobacco that further increases lung cancer risk among tobacco users. About 7 in 1,000 nontobacco users with prolonged exposure to elevated radon levels may develop lung cancer in their lifetime.

Exposure to radon is preventable. As a cancer epidemiologist, I aim to help all Colorado residents be aware of their home’s radon level and take appropriate actions to mitigate exposure and reduce their and their family’s risk of lung cancer.

Radon in your home

Because of Colorado’s unique geology, including mountainous regions that consist heavily of granite rock that contains uranium, radon levels are higher in Colorado than in other states.

Colorado is among the top 10 states with the highest radon levels across the country. About 50% of Colorado homes tested for radon have levels higher than the recommended threshold set by the Environmental Protection Agency, which is 4 picocuries per liter (pCi/L). The average level of radon in Colorado homes is 6.4 pCi/L, which is equivalent to having 200 chest X-rays each year. Radon levels differ across the 64 counties in Colorado based on their geography and makeup of the soil.

If a home is not adequately vented, radon can build up indoors. When radon decays, it releases radioactive particles that, once inhaled, can damage lung cells. More specifically, these particles can break chemical bonds in the cell’s DNA that, if not repaired, can lead to cancer. Prolonged exposure to high levels of radon, over several years, can cause lung cancer. Similar to tobacco use, it is the cumulative exposure to radon that increases risk for cancer.

Fortunately, there are ways to prevent radon from entering and accumulating inside our homes. Radon mitigation systems use fans and pipes to pull radon gas from below the foundation of the home and vent it outside. These systems can reduce radon levels inside the home by up to 99%.

Know your risk: Testing and mitigating

Testing your home for radon is simple and relatively inexpensive. Test kits are placed in the lowest living area of your house, apartment, condominium or townhome and left for a period of time. The EPA recommends testing for all residential units below the third floor.

There are short-term tests, which take from two to 90 days, and long-term tests, which take 90 days or more. Long-term tests are more accurate for estimating annual average radon levels. Once complete, tests can be mailed directly to a lab for processing.

Test kits typically cost less than US$50 or may be obtained for free from many sources, including the University of Colorado Anschutz Cancer Center. As of February 2026, the cancer center has distributed more than 1,600 test kits to people in 55 Colorado counties. Nearly 40% of the tests distributed thus far show radon levels above the EPA threshold.

The EPA recommends testing over multiple months, including colder months when windows and doors to the outside are typically closed and radon can become trapped indoors. Testing over several months provides a better understanding of the average annual radon level in the home.

Reduce your risk: Radon mitigation

People with radon levels in their home that are at or above 4 pCi/L are recommended to seek mitigation measures. This may involve sealing cracks in basement walls and foundations and installing a fan and vent pipe to pull radon gas from underneath the home and vent it outside. Mitigation can cost between $1,000 and $3,000 depending on home structure and location.

There are resources available for people who need radon mitigation and can’t afford it. Colorado’s state health department has a low-income radon mitigation assistance program that can pay for radon mitigation for people who are eligible based on income requirements.

Radon may be invisible, but its impact on human health is unmistakably real – and largely preventable. By taking action today – testing your home, sharing this knowledge and seeking help when needed – you are investing in a healthier future for yourself and your community.

Jan Lowery 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. Colorado has high levels of radon, which can cause lung cancer – here’s how to lower your risk – https://theconversation.com/colorado-has-high-levels-of-radon-which-can-cause-lung-cancer-heres-how-to-lower-your-risk-273666

Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By Mark Schroeder, Professor of Philosophy, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences

Understanding one another can be hard. There is a big difference between someone snapping at you out of contempt, and calling you out for a mistake because they believe in you and know you can do better. One of these cases calls for anger, but the other for humility or even embarrassment. Or maybe they are only snapping because they’re “hangry” – they might just need a Snickers bar.

And that’s just with people we know. What about strangers, people across the political divide, or even those with very different backgrounds and cultures than your own?

My field, philosophy, offers a tried-and-true answer to what we need to do in order to understand people and texts from very different backgrounds and cultural assumptions than our own. We need to be charitable.

Charity in this sense isn’t a matter of giving money to those who need it more. Instead, it’s seeing others in a favorable light – of seeing the best in them. In my work, I think of this as seeing other people as protagonists: characters who “do their best” with the predicament in which they find themselves. Interpreting someone charitably doesn’t require agreeing with them. But it does require doing our best to find merit in their point of view.

Of course, people and ideas don’t have unlimited merit. We can err by failing to see the merit of someone’s point of view – or we can err by finding merit that isn’t really there.

But the idea of charity is that it’s worse to make the first kind of error because it prevents us from getting along and learning from one another. By seeing the best in someone else and in their ideas, we can learn productively from engaging with them. Protagonists are people we can learn from and cooperate with.

Taking them seriously

It doesn’t take a genius to observe that we are all better at seeing the best in the people we agree with – and worse with those across the political divide. Political discussions on social media are often dominated by competing attributions of more and more insidious motives to people on the other side. We see them not as protagonists, but as antagonists.

By seeing the worst in someone else’s ideas, we let ourselves off easy. We dismiss them when instead we need to be taking them seriously.

So why, if charity requires seeing the best in others, are we so often tempted to see the worst in them?

A better understanding of charity provides the answer. Seeing the best and the worst in others are not opposite ways of interpreting someone, but simply two sides of the same coin. Here’s why:

Interpretation trade-offs

Interpreting someone isn’t all about figuring out their motives. Sometimes it’s about sorting out what is signal and what is noise. If I snap at you, you could spend a lot of time fixating over whether to be angry or embarrassed. But sometimes the right move is just to pass me a Snickers bar and move on. Our moods and actions are influenced by hunger, hormones, alcohol and lack of sleep, just to name a few. Overinterpreting a snap after I missed breakfast treats as signal what is really just noise.

Overlooking a thing or two when I am hangry can be the best way to see the best in me. When you interpret my snap as merely the result of missing a meal, you don’t really see it as coming from me, the protagonist; but as the result of my predicament. You will judge me, not by whether I am hangry, but by how I overcome that. Your interpretation sees me in a more positive light, by taking away some of my agency.

By “agency,” I mean the extent to which someone gets credit for what they do. You have greater agency over something that you do on purpose, and less if was a foreseen but accepted side effect of your plan. You have less agency if it was an accident, but more if the accident was negligent; less agency if you just snapped because you’re hangry, but more if you know you get hangry and chose to skip lunch anyway.

A perfect agent wouldn’t be affected by hormones and hunger. They would simply make rational choices that advance their goals. But humans aren’t like that. We are imperfectly embodied agents, at best. So interpreting one another well sometimes requires seeing the good in one another, at the cost of agency. In other words, it has to balance agency against the good, as I have argued in my recent work.

But you can’t find the best in someone by just ignoring more and more until all the bad things are trimmed away and only something good is left. Your interpretation has to fit with the facts of what they do and say.

And sometimes the trade-offs between agency and the good go the other way – we interpret each other in ways that attribute more agency but less good. If passing me a Snickers bar seems to calm me down, you might try it again the next time I snap. But one day you realize that you have started carrying extra Snickers bars everywhere you go in case you run into me, and a different interpretation presents itself: Maybe instead of being a decent but mood-challenged friend, I have just been using you for your candy bars.

This creates tipping points for charitable interpretation. When we cross the tipping point, you switch from seeing someone as an imperfectly embodied protagonist to seeing them as an antagonist.

Charity without a cost

All of this is a way of arguing that it is sometimes right to see the worst in others. Sometimes other people really are the worst, and understanding them requires understanding their agency, not what is good about them. Protagonists and antagonists are just two sides of the same coin: The very same interpretive process can lead us in either direction.

Unfortunately, this means there is no simple test for when you are doing well enough at seeing the best in others. In particular, there is no test that we can agree about across our political differences. Interpreting someone charitably requires looking hard enough for good in them, but part of what we disagree with one another about is precisely what is good. So we are bound to disagree with one another about who is being sufficiently charitable.

But as a personal aspiration, a little more charity can go a long way. We can be generous not just with money, but in how we interpret others. But unlike giving money away, we don’t lose anything when we try harder to see the best in someone else.

Mark Schroeder 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. I’m a philosopher who tries to see the best in others – but I know there are limits – https://theconversation.com/im-a-philosopher-who-tries-to-see-the-best-in-others-but-i-know-there-are-limits-273446

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Diane Cress, Associate Professor of Nutrition and Food Science, Wayne State University

If the government had found a way to save US$10 for every dollar it spent helping low-income people get healthier, wouldn’t it make sense for it to keep doing that?

Well, that’s exactly what the U.S. government did when it piloted the SNAP-Ed program in 1977. This U.S. Department of Agriculture program persisted for nearly 50 years until the Trump administration shuttered it in 2025.

SNAP-Ed served as the nutrition education arm of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which helps more than 40 million Americans buy groceries.

SNAP-Ed complemented SNAP by teaching people who get those benefits how best to use that government assistance. It paid for nutrition educators to teach lessons at schools, community centers and university extension offices. The educators led grocery store tours, taught label reading and budget comparisons, and taught cooking classes. And they offered a mix of printed and online resources to support good nutrition in the home.

While the federal government fully funded the program, the states, along with Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico, administered and implemented SNAP-Ed through local community programs, often partnering with nonprofits. It cost only one penny for every SNAP dollar spent, and it worked.

But as of Oct. 1, 2025, SNAP-Ed ceased to exist due to spending cuts that were part of the big tax reform and budget package President Donald Trump signed into law three months earlier.

Dealing with the aftermath

To see why focusing on teaching food preparation skills is so critical, imagine discovering a flat tire. Do you need someone to tell you to fix it or someone to show you how? Nutrition works the same way.

We’ve all left the doctor’s office with instructions to “eat better,” which is essentially useless without the tools to do so. SNAP-Ed taught people how to identify healthy food patterns, keep food safe and navigate a complex food environment.

It also taught low-income Americans how to improve their budgeting and planning for meals that balance cost and nutrition. It’s nearly impossible to meet your basic nutritional needs if you are relying on SNAP dollars alone to fill your grocery cart. Skills are required.

States are getting creative to find ways to preserve aspects of the SNAP-Ed program. In Georgia, alternative funding sources might keep programs running for about a year. In Wyoming, a less local, more regional model has helped allow for the continuation of some programs previously funded by the SNAP-Ed program.

In my own state, Michigan State University Extension, which served as Michigan’s statewide implementing partner for SNAP-Ed, lost over $10 million in federal support when SNAP-Ed was defunded. The extension’s staff is working to keep its curricula, lesson plans, recipes and other training materials available online to the public in an effort to sustain its work.

Educating 1.2 million people

Because SNAP-Ed funding has been eliminated, the programs it supported are disappearing or shrinking. As a result, every SNAP dollar may not be spent as wisely as before.

In 2025, SNAP spending was over $100 billion, while SNAP-Ed operated on a $536 million budget, educating over 1.2 million people on how best to spend their SNAP dollars and improve their health.

SNAP-Ed’s benefits persist today, but without continued training and support its impact will diminish, decades of trust built in communities will be lost, and the health of communities no longer served will suffer.

But for now, at least, SNAP-Ed’s online resources remain freely available.

Reducing diabetes risks

As a dietitian and a professor, I often conduct community-based participatory research aimed at improving health in low-income populations, especially those at risk for developing Type 2 diabetes.

In a pilot study my research team helped conduct in Detroit in 2018, we paired the Centers for Disease Control’s National Diabetes Prevention Program with Cooking Matters, a course funded by SNAP-Ed that taught meal planning, hands-on meal prep and food resource management.

We wanted to see whether SNAP-Ed skills training would amplify the benefits of the National Diabetes Prevention Program in a low-income community.

It did.

All 23 participants in this Detroit pilot lost weight and lowered their hemoglobin A1c, a key marker of diabetes risk.

All but one participant moved from prediabetic to nondiabetic sugar levels, effectively reversing prediabetes.

The National Diabetes Prevention Program often has trouble retaining study participants in low-income communities where Type 2 diabetes risk and health care costs are significant problems.

Not only did our findings show how SNAP-ED was boosting health in several at-risk communities, but they also provided evidence for the economic benefits of the program.

To estimate how much money the government saved through SNAP-Ed, the USDA compiled data from multiple studies like ours, finding that every dollar spent in community health education ultimately saved $10.64 in Medicaid spending by the government.

If a drugmaker invented a pill that cut diabetes risk by 40% and reduced a key diabetes marker like HbA1c by nearly one percentage point, I have no doubt that it would be hailed as a miracle.

Our study achieved exactly these outcomes through inexpensive, skills-based education. And yet the Trump administration ended the education program that funding this kind of work.

Conflicting with the administration’s own goals

The Make America Healthy Again movement has both embraced Trump and a core principle: Healthy habits prevent chronic disease. It doesn’t make sense to me, in light of that movement, for the Trump administration to stop funding SNAP-Ed.

The program has helped reduce the prevalence of many chronic diseases, and this could have been expected to yield up to $1 trillion in health care savings by 2030.

As the popular proverb goes: “Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime.” SNAP-Ed taught over 1.2 million people how to fish every year, all for a little more than the latest estimates of what it’s going to cost to build the White House ballroom.

Diane Cress previously received funding from Gleaners Community Food Bank.

– ref. Trump administration axed nutrition education program that saved more money than it cost, even as government encourages healthier eating – https://theconversation.com/trump-administration-axed-nutrition-education-program-that-saved-more-money-than-it-cost-even-as-government-encourages-healthier-eating-272002