Category: Academic Reportage

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Carrie Ann Johnson, Assistant Teaching Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies, Iowa State University

Whisper networks are informal channels that women use to warn each other about sexual harassment, abuse or assault. The reason they work isn’t because they are secret – they work because they are contextual.

The informal protective communication shared in schools, churches, workplaces and other organizations can be communicated and trusted based on the common language and cultural understanding of those giving and receiving the information.

Since 2017 when the MeToo hashtag went viral, people have been trying to create online whisper networks. Projects like the Shitty Media Men list and the Facebook group Are We Dating the Same Guy are both examples of trying to build a larger warning system. The Tea app sells itself as a digital platform that gives women tools to protect themselves and others when dating men.

However, important components of whisper networks get lost when they are moved to anonymous nationwide warning systems.

I’m an organizational communications and gender scholar. My research focuses on whisper networks and how people use them to keep safe in organizations. When this idea moves to a digital platform, the information may still be useful, but it is harder for participants to gauge how reliable it is.

What makes whisper networks work

Whisper networks form when there is an environment of shared risk. Their purpose is protective. In other words, the people in whisper networks do not share information for punitive reasons, but to protect each other and to make sense of their experiences. There is an unspoken expectation that the receiver of information will also share only with people they trust.

In my study of whisper networks, participants talked about how they could assess the information they receive and give through personal interactions in their offices, congregations, schools and other organizations. They felt like they could measure the trustworthiness of the person sharing information and the trustworthiness of the people with whom they share information.

They also talked about cues, including noticing how the person sharing information treats other people in the office and how they talk about other people when they aren’t around. This important component of whisper networks is difficult to translate to an app, even when the app claims to verify people as members.

Women use coded messages and actions in whisper networks to figure out who is safe in any given room, who is in need of whisper network information, and when they decide that whisper network information is worth listening to.

These protective messages tend to be shared either one on one or in small groups. Women know the information is reliable because of how it is shared and who shares it. For example, someone might say, “He is a little creepy toward the undergraduate women.” The person receiving the message uses the surrounding context codes to understand the seriousness of the situation.

Another person might say, “He makes people feel special and then uses information to be unprofessional.” Instead of a warning about actions, it is a warning about the process the harasser uses and what to watch out for. The person sharing the information wants the person they are protecting to understand the ways this perpetrator tends to move in relation to the people they work with.

None of the language is specific, and it is largely coded so that the listener understands, and the person sharing doesn’t need to worry about the repercussions of sharing it.

Interview participants told me that they usually share information in quiet conversations where they already trust the person they are talking to.

When I asked participants about how they knew they were receiving whisper network information, they talked about how the person would lean in, drop to a different tone or volume, or how the vibe would change. It’s difficult to get any of those clues through an online platform.

The risk of faulty information and misinterpretation goes up when information is shared on anonymous platforms or shared widely. When more specific stories are shared, it’s almost always in a trusted, private setting, not shared widely on an anonymous forum. When protective communication is broad, the network loses the very qualities that made it feel safe in the first place. Few of the nonverbal and social reputation signals exist on an app, and that makes the communication feel less trustworthy.

Anonymous platforms can also create potentially volatile situations. Because people can post anonymously, there is more room for sloppiness, exaggeration and even defamation. These apps build on the myth that there is an individual solution and quick fix for sexual harassment and assault instead of acknowledging the underlying structural and cultural issues.

A different safety concern

Online platforms offer users a limited understanding of how their data is used and stored, so the user’s safety takes second place to the platform owners’ and investors’ financial incentives. These apps have largely been created by people who carry less risk and who are concerned with monetization, even if they also care about safety. The risks disproportionately affect those whose safety is already at risk.

In addition to the issues of effectiveness and trust is the question of safety. The Tea app has been in the news because of two separate data breaches, including over 70,00 images that were leaked to online message boards. Data included government-issued IDs, personal information and private messages. A separate breach exposed direct messages on the app.

So while it’s conceivable that some online lists could be created for specific communities that share a common culture and language, no matter how good the intent is, it is unlikely that the creators of apps and websites are at the same risk of exposure as the people who use them. In addition, apps built for specific communities or communication styles would probably be significantly less profitable than those that are promoted nationally or worldwide and so are less likely to be built or sustained.

All of this isn’t to say that apps aren’t useful and necessary. But based on my research, I don’t believe they provide the same safety and protection as in-person, organizational whisper networks.

Carrie Ann Johnson 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. ‘Whisper networks’ don’t work as well online as off − here’s why women are better able to look out for each other in person – https://theconversation.com/whisper-networks-dont-work-as-well-online-as-off-heres-why-women-are-better-able-to-look-out-for-each-other-in-person-265182

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Monica Duffy Toft, Professor of International Politics and Director of the Center for Strategic Studies, The Fletcher School, Tufts University

Hundreds of generals and admirals will converge on Quantico, Virginia, on Sept. 30, 2025, after being summoned from across the globe by their boss, Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth. While Hegseth has not formally announced the purpose of the meeting, The New York Times reports that it will cover “aspects of what he calls a shift toward a ‘warrior ethos’ at the Pentagon.”

The meeting comes soon after President Donald Trump’s Sept. 5 executive order renaming the Department of Defense the “Department of War.” With that change, Trump reverted the department to a name not used since the 1940s.

The change represents far more than rebranding – it signals an escalation in the administration’s embrace of a militaristic mindset that, as long ago as 1961, President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned against in his farewell address, and that the nation’s founders deliberately aimed to constrain.

The timing of this name change feels particularly notable when considered alongside recent reporting revealing secret U.S. military operations. In 2019, a detachment of U.S. Navy SEALs crept ashore in North Korea on a mission to plant a listening device during high-stakes nuclear talks. The risks were enormous: Discovery could have sparked a hostage crisis or even war with a nuclear-armed foe.

That such an operation was approved by Trump in his first term at all exemplifies an increasingly reckless militarism that has defined American foreign policy for decades. That militarism is the very subject of my book, “Dying by the Sword.”

Further, the name change was announced just days after Trump authorized a U.S. military strike on a Venezuelan boat that the administration claimed was carrying drug-laden cargo and linked to the Tren de Aragua cartel. The strike killed 11 people. The administration justified the killings by labeling them “narcoterrorists.”

Abandoning restraint – deliberately

The Department of War existed from 1789 until 1947, when Congress passed the National Security Act reorganizing the armed services into the National Military Establishment. Just two years later, lawmakers amended the act, renaming the institution the Department of Defense.

Officials disliked the “NME” acronym – which sounded uncomfortably like “enemy” – but the change was not only about appearances.

In the aftermath of World War II, U.S. leaders wanted to emphasize a defensive rather than aggressive military posture as they entered the Cold War, a decades-long standoff between the United States and Soviet Union defined by a nuclear arms race, ideological rivalry and proxy wars short of direct great-power conflict.

The new emphasis also dovetailed with the new U.S. grand strategy in foreign affairs – diplomat George F. Kennan’s containment strategy, which aimed to prevent the expansion of Soviet power and communist ideology around the world.

Kennan’s approach narrowly survived a push to a more aggressive “rollback” strategy of the Soviet Union from its occupation and oppression of central and eastern Europe. It evolved instead into a long game: a team effort to keep the adversary from expanding to enslave other peoples, leading to the adversary’s collapse and disintegration without risking World War III.

On the ground, this meant fewer preparations for war and more emphasis on allies and intelligence, and foreign aid and trade, along with the projection of defensive strength. The hope was that shaping the environment rather than launching attacks would cause Moscow’s influence to wither. To make this strategy viable, the U.S. military itself had to be reorganized.

In a 1949 address before Congress, President Harry S. Truman described the reorganization sparked by the 1947 legislation as a “unification” of the armed forces that would bring efficiency and coordination.

But a deeper purpose was philosophical: to project America’s military power as defensive and protective, and for Truman, strengthening civilian oversight.

The wisdom of this restraint is clearest in Eisenhower’s farewell address of January 1961.

In less than 10 minutes, the former five-star general who had commanded Allied forces to victory in World War II cautioned Americans against the rise of a “military-industrial complex.” He acknowledged that the nation’s “arms must be mighty, ready for instant action,” but warned that “the potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”

Creating new enemies, destabilizing regions

The risky North Korean team mission by the Navy SEALs illustrates how America’s militaristic approach often produces the very dangers it aspires to deter.

Rather than enhancing diplomacy, the operation risked derailing talks and escalating conflict. This is the central argument of my book: America’s now-reflexive reliance on armed force doesn’t make America great again or more secure. It makes the country less secure, by creating new enemies, destabilizing regions and diverting resources from the true foundations of security.

It also makes the U.S less admired and respected. The State Department budget continues to be dwarfed by the Department of War’s budget, with the former never reaching more than 5.5% of the latter. And the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID, once the leading arm of U.S. soft power as quiet purveyor development aid around the world, is now shuttered.

Today’s Pentagon budget exceeds anything Eisenhower could have imagined.

Trump’s rebranding of the Department of Defense into the Department of War signals a shift toward framing U.S. power primarily in terms of military force. Such a framing emphasizes the use of violence as the principal means of solving problems and equates hostility and aggression with leadership.

Yet historical experience shows that military dominance alone has not translated into strategic success. That’s the mindset that lost the U.S. endless wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and failed in interventions in Libya and Syria – conflicts that altogether cost trillions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of lives while leaving the country less secure and eroding its international legitimacy.

“Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry,” Eisenhower said, can compel the proper balance between military power and peaceful goals.

The very title of my and my co-author’s book comes from the Gospel of Matthew – Chapter 26, verse 52 – that “to live by the sword is to die by the sword.” Throughout modern history, true security has come from diplomacy, international law, economic development and investments in health care and education. Not from an imaginary “warrior ethos.”

America, I would argue, doesn’t need a Department of War. It needs leaders who understand, as Eisenhower did, that living by the sword will doom us all in the end. Real security comes from the quiet power that builds legitimacy and lasting peace. The U.S. can choose again to embody those strengths, to lead not by fear but by example.

Monica Duffy Toft 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. ‘Warrior ethos’ mistakes military might for true security – and ignores the wisdom of Eisenhower – https://theconversation.com/warrior-ethos-mistakes-military-might-for-true-security-and-ignores-the-wisdom-of-eisenhower-266213

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Amy Werbel, Professor of the History of Art, Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT)

In the first year of President Donald Trump’s second term in office, his administration has made many attempts to suppress speech it disfavors – at universities, on the airwaves, in public school classrooms, in museums, at protests and even in lawyer’s offices.

If past is prologue, these efforts may backfire.

In 2018, I published my book “Lust on Trial: Censorship and the Rise of American Obscenity in the Age of Anthony Comstock.”

A devout evangelical Christian, Comstock hoped to use the powers of the government to impose moral standards on American expression in the late-19th and early-20th centuries. To that end, he and like-minded donors established the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, which successfully lobbied for the creation of the first federal anti-obscenity laws with enforcement provisions.

Later appointed inspector for the Post Office Department, Comstock fought to abolish whatever he deemed blasphemous and sinful: birth control, abortion aids and information about sexual health, along with certain art, books and newspapers. Federal and state laws gave him the power to order law enforcement to seize these materials and have prosecutors bring criminal indictments.

I analyzed thousands of these censorship cases to assess their legal and cultural outcomes.

I found that, over time, Comstock’s censorship regime did lead to a rise in self-censorship, confiscations and prosecutions. However, it also inspired greater support for free speech and due process.

More popular – and more profitable

One effect of Comstock’s censorship campaigns: The materials and speech he disfavored often made headlines, putting them on the public’s radar as a kind of “forbidden fruit.”

For example, prosecutions targeting artwork featuring nude subjects led to both sensational media coverage and a boom in the popularity of nudes on everything from soap advertisements and cigar boxes to photographs and sculptures.

Meanwhile, entrepreneurs of racy forms of entertainment – promoters of belly dancing, publishers of erotic postcards and producers of “living pictures,” which were exhibitions of seminude actors posing as classical statuary – all benefited from Comstock’s complaints. If Comstock wanted it shut down, the public often assumed that it was fun and trendy.

In 1891, Comstock became irate when a young female author proposed paying him to attack her book and “seize a few copies” to “get the newspapers to notice it.” And in October 1906, Comstock threatened to shut down an exhibition of models performing athletic exercises wearing form-fitting union suits. Twenty thousand people showed up to Madison Square Garden for the exhibition – far more than the venue could hold at the time.

The Trump administration’s recent efforts to get comedian Jimmy Kimmel off the air have similarly backfired.

Kimmel had generated controversy for comments he made on his late-night talk show in the wake of conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s assassination. ABC, which is owned by The Walt Disney Co., initially acquiesced to pressure from Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr and announced the show’s “indefinite” suspension. But many viewers, angered over the company’s capitulation, canceled their subscriptions of Disney streaming services. This led to a 3.3% drop in Disney’s share price, which spurred legal actions by shareholders of the publicly traded company.

ABC soon lifted the suspension. Kimmel returned, drawing 6.26 million live viewers – more than four times his normal audience – while over 26 million viewers watched Kimmel’s return monologue on social media. Since then, all network affiliates have resumed airing “Jimmy Kimmel Live!”

‘Comstockery’ and hypocrisy

In the U.S., disfavored political speech and obscenity are different in important ways. The Supreme Court has held that the First Amendment provides broad protections for political expression, whereas speech deemed to be obscene is illegal.

Despite this fundamental difference, social and cultural forces can make it difficult to clearly discern protected and unprotected speech.

In Comstock’s case, the public was happy to see truly explicit pornography removed from circulation. But their own definition of what was “obscene” – and, therefore, criminally liable – was much narrower.

In 1905, Comstock attempted to shut down a theatrical performance of George Bernard Shaw’s “Mrs. Warren’s Profession” because the plot included prostitution. The aging censor was widely ridiculed and became a “laughing stock,” according to The New York Times. Shaw went on to coin the term “Comstockery,” which caught on as a shorthand for overreaching censoriousness.

In a similar manner, when Attorney General Pam Bondi recently threatened Americans that the Department of Justice “will absolutely … go after you, if you are targeting anyone with hate speech,” swift backlash ensued.

Numerous Supreme Court rulings have held that hate speech is constitutionally protected. However, those in power can threaten opponents with punishment even when their speech clearly does not fall within one of the rare exceptions to the First Amendment protection for political speech.

Doing so carries risks.

The old saying “people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones” also applies to censors: The public holds them to higher standards, lest they be exposed as hypocrites.

For critics of the Trump administration, it was jarring to see officials outraged about “hate speech,” only to hear the president announce, at Charlie Kirk’s memorial, “I hate my opponent, and I don’t want the best for them.”

In Comstock’s case, defendants and their attorneys routinely noted that Comstock had seen more illicit materials than any man in the U.S. Criticizing Comstock in 1882, Unitarian minister Octavius Brooks Frothingham quoted Shakespeare: “Who is so virtuous as to be allowed to forbid the distribution of cakes and ale?”

In other words, if you’re going to try to enforce moral standards, you better make sure you’re beyond reproach.

Free speech makes for strange bedfellows

Comstock’s censorship campaign, though self-defeating in the long run, nonetheless caused enormous suffering, just as many people today are suffering from calls to fire and harass those whose viewpoints are legal, but disliked by the Trump administration.

Comstock prosecuted women’s rights advocate Ida Craddock for circulating literature that advocated for female sexual pleasure. After Craddock was convicted in 1902, she died by suicide. She left behind a “letter to the public,” in which she accused Comstock of violating her rights to freedom of religion and speech.

During Craddock’s trial, the jury hadn’t been permitted to see her writings; they were deemed “too harmful.” Incensed by these violations of the First and Fourth amendments, defense attorneys rallied together and were joined by a new coalition in the support of Americans’ constitutional rights. Lincoln Steffens of the nascent Free Speech League wrote, in response to Craddock’s suicide, that “those who believe in the general principle of free speech must make their point by supporting it for some extreme cause. Advocating free speech only for a popular or uncontroversial position would not convey the breadth of the principle.”

Then, as now, the cause of free expression can bring together disparate political factions.

In the wake of the Kimmel saga, many conservative Republicans came out to support the same civil liberties also advocated by liberal Hollywood actors. Two-thirds of Americans in a September 2025 YouGov poll said that it was “unacceptable for government to pressure broadcasters to remove shows it disagrees with.”

My conclusion from studying the 43-year career of America’s most prolific censor?

Government officials may think a campaign of suppression and fear will silence their opponents, but these threats could end up being the biggest impediment to their effort to remake American culture.

Amy Werbel receives funding from the State University of New York.

– ref. Censorship campaigns can have a way of backfiring – look no further than the fate of America’s most prolific censor – https://theconversation.com/censorship-campaigns-can-have-a-way-of-backfiring-look-no-further-than-the-fate-of-americas-most-prolific-censor-266117

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Laura Gail Miller, Ed.D. Candidate in Educational Organizational Learning and Leadership, Seattle University

Texas A&M University announced the resignation of its president, Mark A. Welsh III, on Sept. 18, 2025, following a controversial decision earlier in the month to fire a professor over a classroom exchange with a student about gender identity.

The university – a public school in College Station, Texas – fired Melissa McCoul, a children’s literature professor, on Sept. 9. McCoul’s dismissal happened after a student secretly filmed video as the professor taught a class and discussed a children’s book that includes the image of a purple “gender unicorn,” a cartoon image that is sometimes used to teach about gender identity.

The student questioned whether it was “legal” to be teaching about gender identity, given President Donald Trump’s January 2025 executive order – which is not legally binding – that said there are only two genders, male and female.

The video went viral, triggering backlash from Republican lawmakers who called for McCoul to be fired and praised the fact that the school also demoted the College of Arts and Science’s dean and revoked administrative duties from a department head.

Texas A&M officials have said that McCoul was fired because her course content was not consistent with the published course description. McCoul is appealing her firing and is considering legal action against the school.

Academic freedom advocates have condemned McCoul’s firing and say it raises questions about whether professors should be fired for addressing politically charged topics.

As a history educator researching curriculum design, civics education and generational dynamics, I study how classroom discussions often mirror larger cultural and political conflicts.

The Texas A&M case is far from unprecedented. The Cold War offers an example of another politically contentious time in American history when people questioned if and how politics should influence what gets taught in the classroom – and tried to restrict what teachers say.

Educators under suspicion in the McCarthy era

During the Cold War – a period of geopolitical tension between the U.S. and the Soviet Union that came after World War II and lasted until 1991 – fears of communist infiltration spread widely across American society, including the country’s schools.

One particularly contentious period was in the late 1940s and 1950s, during what is often referred to as the McCarthy era. The era is named after Wisconsin Sen. Joseph McCarthy, a Republican who led the charge on accusing government employees and others – often without evidence – of being communists.

Beginning in the late 1940s, local school boards, state legislatures and Congress launched investigations into teachers and professors across the country accused of harboring communist sympathies. This often led to the teachers being blacklisted and fired.

More than 20 states passed loyalty oath laws requiring public employees, including educators, to swear that they were not members of the Communist Party or affiliated groups.

In California, for example, the 1950 Levering Act mandated a loyalty oath for all state employees, including professors at public universities. Some employees refused to sign the oath, and 31 University of California professors were fired.

And in New York, the Feinberg Law, approved in 1949, authorized school districts to fire teachers who were members of “subversive organizations.” More than 250 educators were fired or forced to resign under the Feinberg Law and related anti-subversion policies between 1948 and 1953.

These laws had a chilling impact on academic life and learning.

Faculty, including those who were not under investigation, and students alike avoided discussing controversial topics, such as labor organizing and civil rights, in the classroom.

This pervasive climate of censorship also made it challenging for educators to fully engage students in critical, meaningful learning.

The Supreme Court steps in

By the mid-1950s, questions about the constitutionality of these laws – and the extent of professors’ academic freedom and First Amendment right to freedom of speech – reached the Supreme Court.

In one such case, 1957’s Sweezy v. New Hampshire, Louis C. Weyman, the New Hampshire attorney general, questioned Paul Sweezy, a Marxist economist, about the content of a university lecture he delivered at the University of New Hampshire.

Weyman wanted to determine whether Sweezy had advocated for Marxism or said that socialism was inevitable in the country. Sweezy refused to answer Weyman’s questions, citing his constitutional rights. The Supreme Court ruled in Sweezy’s favor, emphasizing the importance of academic freedom and the constitutional limits on state interference in university teaching.

The Supreme Court also considered another case, Keyishian v. Board of Regents, in 1967. With the Cold War still ongoing, this case challenged New York’s Feinberg Law, which required educators to disavow membership in communist organizations.

In striking down the law, the court declared that academic freedom is “a special concern of the First Amendment.” The ruling emphasized that vague or broad restrictions on what teachers can say or believe create an unconstitutional, “chilling effect” on the classroom.

While these cases did not remove all political pressures on what teachers could discuss in class, they set significant constitutional limits on state efforts to regulate classroom speech, particularly at public institutions.

Recurring tensions from now and then

There are several important differences between the McCarthy era and current times.

For starters, conservative concern centered primarily on the spread of communism during the McCarthy era. Today, debates often involve conservative critiques of how topics such as gender identity, race and other cultural issues — sometimes grouped under the term “woke” — are addressed in schools and society.

Second, in the 1950s and ‘60s, external pressures on academic freedom often came in the form of legal mandates.

Today, the political landscape in academia is more complex and fast-paced, with pressures emanating from both the public and federal government.

Viral outrage, administrative investigations and threats to cut state or federal funding to schools can all contribute to an intensifying climate of fear of retribution that constrains educators’ ability to teach freely.

Despite these differences, the underlying dynamic between the two time periods is similar – in both cases, political polarization intensifies public scrutiny of educators.

Like loyalty oaths in the 1950s, today’s political controversies create a climate in which many teachers feel pressure to avoid contentious topics altogether. Even when no laws are passed, the possibility of complaints, investigations or firings can shape classroom choices.

Just as Sweezy and Keyishian defined the boundaries of state power in the 1950s and ‘60s, potential legal challenges like the appeal from the fired Texas A&M professor may eventually lead to court rulings that clarify how people’s First Amendment protections apply in today’s disputes over curriculum and teaching.

Whether these foundational protections will endure under the Supreme Court’s current and future makeup remains an open question.

Laura Gail Miller 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. McCarthyism’s shadow looms over controversial firing of Texas professor who taught about gender identity – https://theconversation.com/mccarthyisms-shadow-looms-over-controversial-firing-of-texas-professor-who-taught-about-gender-identity-265554

Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By Neil Marsh, Professor of Chemistry and Biological Chemistry, University of Michigan

You might best know chromium as a bright, shiny metal used in bathroom and kitchen fittings. But is it also essential for your health?

In a form known as trivalent chromium, this metal is included in multivitamin pills and sold as a dietary supplement that companies claim can improve athletic performance and help regulate blood sugar.

I’m a biochemistry professor with a long-standing interest in how metals function in biology. Although health agencies in the United States and other countries recommend chromium as a dietary requirement, eight decades of research have resulted in slim evidence that people derive any significant health benefits from this mineral.

Why, then, did chromium come to be considered essential for human health?

What is an essential trace element?

To stay healthy, people need what are called essential trace elements in their diet. These include metals such as iron, zinc, manganese, cobalt and copper. As the word “trace” implies, you need only tiny amounts of these metals for optimal function.

For most of these trace elements, decades of research have shown they are genuinely essential for health. Iron, for example, is essential for carrying oxygen in your blood, and many proteins – complex molecules that carry out all of the functions necessary for life – require iron to function properly. A deficiency of iron leads to anemia, a condition that results in fatigue, weakness, headaches and brittle nails, among other symptoms. Iron supplements can help reverse these symptoms.

Importantly, biochemists have pinpointed exactly how iron helps proteins perform essential chemical reactions, not just for humans but all living organisms. Researchers know not only that iron is essential but also why it is essential.

Little evidence for chromium’s benefits

However, the same cannot be said for chromium.

Chromium deficiency – having little to no chromium in your body – is extremely rare, and researchers have not identified any clearly defined disease caused by low chromium levels.

Like all food, essential metals must be absorbed by your digestive system. However, the gut absorbs only about 1% of ingested chromium. Other essential metals are absorbed more efficiently – for example, the average person absorbs around 25% of certain forms of ingested iron.

Importantly, despite many studies, scientists have yet to find any protein that requires chromium to carry out its biological function. In fact, only one protein is known to bind chromium, and this protein most likely helps your kidneys remove chromium from your blood. While some studies in people suggest chromium might be involved to some degree in regulating blood glucose levels, research on whether adding extra chromium to your body through supplements can substantially improve your body’s ability to break down and use sugar has been inconclusive.

Thus, based on biochemistry, there is currently no evidence that humans, or other animals, actually require chromium for any particular function.

Flawed research in rats

So how did chromium come to be considered an essential trace metal?

The idea that chromium might be essential for health stems from studies in the 1950s, a time when nutritionists knew very little about what trace metals are required to maintain good health.

One influential study involved feeding lab rats a diet that induced symptoms of Type 2 diabetes. Supplementing their diet with chromium seemed to cure the rats of Type 2 diabetes, and medical researchers were enticed by the suggestion that chromium might provide a treatment for this disease. Today’s widespread claims that chromium is important for regulating blood sugar can be traced to these experiments.

Unfortunately, these early experiments were very flawed by today’s standards. They lacked the statistical analyses needed to show that their results were not due to random chance. Furthermore, they lacked important controls, including measuring how much chromium was in the rats’ diet to start with.

Later studies that were more rigorously designed provided ambiguous results. While some found that rats fed chromium supplements controlled their blood sugar slightly better than rats raised on a chromium-free diet, others found no significant differences. But what was clear was that rats raised on diets that excluded chromium were perfectly healthy.

Experiments on people are much harder to control for than experiments on rats, and there are few well-designed clinical trials investigating the effects of chromium on patients with diabetes. Just as with the rat studies, the results are ambiguous. If there is an effect, it is very small.

Recommendations based on averages

Why, then, is there a recommended dietary intake for chromium despite its lack of documented health benefits?

The idea that chromium is needed for health persists due in large part to a 2001 report from the National Institute of Medicine’s Panel on Micronutrients. This panel of distinguished nutritional researchers and clinicians was formed to evaluate available research on human nutrition and set “adequate intake” levels of vitamins and minerals. Their recommendations form the basis of the recommended daily intake labels found on food and vitamin packaging and the National Institutes of Health guidelines for clinicians.

Despite acknowledging the lack of research demonstrating clear-cut health benefits for chromium, the panel still recommended adults get about 30 micrograms per day of chromium in their diet. This recommendation was not based on science but rather on previous estimates of how much chromium adult Americans already ingest each day. Notably, much of this chromium is leached from stainless steel cookware and food processing equipment, rather than coming from our food.

So, while there may not be confirmed health risks from taking chromium supplements, there’s probably no benefit either.

Neil Marsh receives funding from the NIH and NSF.

– ref. Why chromium is considered an essential nutrient, despite having no proven health benefits – https://theconversation.com/why-chromium-is-considered-an-essential-nutrient-despite-having-no-proven-health-benefits-252867

Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By Konden Smith Hansen, Senior Lecturer of Religious Studies, University of Arizona

Russell M. Nelson, a former heart surgeon and longtime church leader, was 93 years old when he became president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 2018. But anyone who assumed that his tenure would be uneventful, due to his advanced years, was quickly proved wrong. Visiting South America that year, he told members to buckle up: “Eat your vitamin pills. Get your rest. It’s going to be exciting.”

Nelson, who died on Sept. 27, 2025, at age 101, proved a consequential reformer: an energetic leader who streamlined bureaucracy, took steps toward gender equity and ended the church’s century-long relationship with the Boy Scouts, while reaffirming its opposition to LGBTQ+ relationships and identities.

He steered the church unapologetically through storms of public scrutiny, including accusations that the church had concealed the value of its investments. For the faithful, Nelson represented God’s mouthpiece on Earth. The church considers each president to be a “prophet, seer, and revelator.”

Yet one of his initiatives made an impact that rippled far beyond the church. In 2018, he surprised observers by declaring the use of the word “Mormon” a “major victory for Satan,” insisting on the use of the church’s full name. Individuals were to be recognized by their institutional affiliation, as “members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.”

The name of the church was given by God, and shortening it erases “all that Jesus Christ did for us,” Nelson argued. Yet adherents have long self-identified as Mormons, so the rebrand felt like a novelty to some members.

As a university lecturer teaching courses on American religion and Mormonism, I was one of many who wrestled with this change in terminology – and saw the challenges it created for my students and colleagues. For almost two centuries, the word “Mormon” has framed how Americans think about and discuss this faith.

Birth of a church

The name Mormon comes from the title of the Book of Mormon, a religious text unique to the faith. Founder Joseph Smith, who organized the church in 1830, believed he had been instructed by God to restore Jesus’ true church. He claimed that an angel had led him to uncover and translate ancient gold plates that detailed the religious history of an ancient civilization in the Americas, founded by Israelites who fled Jerusalem.

Early critics mockingly attached the word Mormon to the movement, but Smith insisted that in the book’s original language, the word meant “literally, ‘more good.’” By the time Smith was killed by a mob in Illinois in 1844, his followers had embraced the word.

After Smith’s death, Mormons split into different factions, with the largest group traveling by foot and wagon to the far American West. Yet, the group’s evolving practices continued to spark controversy. Polygamy and the church’s political and economic influence contributed to decades of animosity between Mormons and the rest of the nation.

The United States began seizing church property and imprisoning polygamist leaders, coercing church president Wilford Woodruff to end official support for polygamy in 1890.

A new debut

Three years later, at the Chicago World’s Fair, the church rebranded Mormonism, presenting Mormon pioneers as an embodiment of the values of the American frontier.

Woodruff, then 86 years old, spoke of himself as Utah’s oldest living pioneer and of Mormons as a people who built the American West. The Mormon Tabernacle Choir performed at the fair, reintroducing Mormons to the wider public as a sophisticated and artistic people. The crowd shouted, “Three cheers for the Mormons!” The Chicago Herald wrote, “Mormons and gentiles came together as friends.”

Despite this, many Americans still distrusted Mormons. In 1903, high-ranking church official Reed Smoot was elected to the U.S. Senate, which provoked national outcry and led to Senate hearings that lasted until 1907. The hearings substantiated charges that the practice of polygamy persisted but exonerated Smoot as an individual. As Smoot argued, Mormons were independent of the institutional church and thus trustworthy Americans. He convinced his fellow senators that if the church’s teachings came into conflict with his conscience or oath of office, then, as a Mormon, he would uphold the latter.

Following Smoot’s lead, the church embraced the trappings of American patriotism and doubled down against plural marriage. These moves won the Latter-day Saints powerful political allies, including Theodore Roosevelt, who disliked the institutional church but viewed Mormons themselves as intensely moral and patriotic.

‘Meet the Mormons’

Ab Jenkins, a race car driver whose records made him an international celebrity in the 1930s, capitalized on this new image of Mormon individuality and wholesomeness. The “Mormon Boy” credited his clean, church-approved lifestyle for his success. On his car, the Mormon Meteor, Jenkins rejected alcohol and cigarette endorsements and instead brandished a sign that read, “Yes, I’m a Mormon.”

For several decades, other Mormon celebrities like family band The Osmonds and golfer Johnny Miller continued to shape positive public views of Mormons – hitting a high-water mark in 1977, when Gallup found that only 18% of Americans held unfavorable views.

Church efforts to influence social issues, however, such as its decades-long opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment, eventually took a toll. By 1991, public opinion of Mormons had fallen dramatically, with 37% of Americans viewing them unfavorably – and leaders decided that another rebrand was in order.

The previous year, senior leader Gordon B. Hinckley had admonished members to make the word Mormon “shine with added luster.” When he became president in 1995, Hinckley worked to reframe how the public saw Mormons, arguing on the “60 Minutes” TV show that Mormons were “not a weird people.”

The Salt Lake City Olympics in 2002 pushed Mormonism into the national spotlight, and that same year, the church launched its major website, Mormon.org, with stories and headlines liberally using the term “Mormon.” A media campaign followed a decade later, featuring prominent members declaring, “I’m a Mormon.” Ordinary members were then encouraged to upload their own “I’m a Mormon” profiles to this website and share them on their own social media accounts.

Mitt Romney’s Republican nomination for the 2012 presidential election and the popularity of the satirical “Book of Mormon” musical pushed Mormons again into the national spotlight. In 2014, the church produced a documentary titled “Meet the Mormons,” shown in theaters across the U.S., which apostle Jefferey R. Holland explained was to “show people what we’re really like.”

In 2017, a Pew Research Center survey’s “feeling thermometer” found public opinion of Mormons to have risen to the “somewhat warmer” rating of 54, a 6-point increase from 2014.

‘More good’?

That said, the church’s relationship to the word Mormon has always been complex. As far back as 1990, Nelson was already warning fellow Latter-day Saints that Mormon was “not an appropriate alternative” for the church’s full name. During the 2002 Olympics, the church advised media that the nickname was acceptable for individuals but not to refer to the institution itself.

Overall, I would argue the church has used the word Mormon to improve public opinion for more than a century. Part of this branding downplayed popular fears about the church and its influence – allowing outsiders to develop favorable views toward Mormons, even if they disliked the institution itself.

In March 2023, a Pew Research poll reported a low point in public opinion of Mormons, falling for the first time below every other measured group. A quarter of Americans held “unfavorable views of Mormons,” while only 15% held “favorable” ones.

A month later, Nelson pleaded with members to be peacemakers, lamenting that “many people seem to believe that it is completely acceptable to condemn, malign and vilify anyone who does not agree with them.” Nationally, intense polarization and violence have continued since then – including a horrific attack in Michigan on a Latter-day Saints church building on Sept. 28, 2025, just one day after Nelson’s death.

“Mormon” has been an important term in engaging those outside the faith, particularly in countering negative perceptions. Whether or not the word disappears, what may matter more for Nelson’s legacy is whether people outside the church associate it with “more good” – both institutionally and individually.

This is an updated version of an article originally published on Sept. 5, 2024.

Konden Smith Hansen 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. Russell M. Nelson, president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, pushed it away from ‘Mormon’ – a word that has courted controversy for 200 years – https://theconversation.com/russell-m-nelson-president-of-the-church-of-jesus-christ-of-latter-day-saints-pushed-it-away-from-mormon-a-word-that-has-courted-controversy-for-200-years-266229