Category: Academic Reportage

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Michael A. Little, Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Anthropology, Binghamton University, State University of New York

Curious Kids is a series for children of all ages. If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, send it to CuriousKidsUS@theconversation.com.

If evolution is real, then why is it not happening now? – Dee, Memphis, Tennessee

Many people believe that we humans have conquered nature through the wonders of civilization and technology. Some also believe that because we are different from other creatures, we have complete control over our destiny and have no need to evolve. Even though lots of people believe this, it’s not true.

Like other living creatures, humans have been shaped by evolution. Over time, we have developed – and continue to develop – the traits that help us survive and flourish in the environments where we live.

I’m an anthropologist. I study how humans adapt to different environments. Adaptation is an important part of evolution. Adaptations are traits that give someone an advantage in their environment. People with those traits are more likely to survive and pass those traits on to their children. Over many generations, those traits become widespread in the population.

The role of culture

We humans have two hands that help us skillfully use tools and other objects. We are able to walk and run on two legs, which frees our hands for these skilled tasks. And we have large brains that let us reason, create ideas and live successfully with other people in social groups.

All of these traits have helped humans develop culture. Culture includes all of our ideas and beliefs and our abilities to plan and think about the present and the future. It also includes our ability to change our environment, for example by making tools and growing food.

Although we humans have changed our environment in many ways during the past few thousand years, we are still changed by evolution. We have not stopped evolving, but we are evolving right now in different ways than our ancient ancestors. Our environments are often changed by our culture.

We usually think of an environment as the weather, plants and animals in a place. But environments include the foods we eat and the infectious diseases we are exposed to.

A very important part of the environment is the climate and what kinds of conditions we can live in. Our culture helps us change our exposure to the climate. For example, we build houses and put furnaces and air conditioners in them. But culture doesn’t fully protect us from extremes of heat, cold and the sun’s rays.

Here are some examples of how humans have evolved over the past 10,000 years and how we are continuing to evolve today.

The power of the sun’s rays

While the sun’s rays are important for life on our planet, ultraviolet rays can damage human skin. Those of us with pale skin are in danger of serious sunburn and equally dangerous kinds of skin cancer. In contrast, those of us with a lot of skin pigment, called melanin, have some protection against damaging ultraviolet rays from sunshine.

People in the tropics with dark skin are more likely to thrive under frequent bright sunlight. Yet, when ancient humans moved to cloudy, cooler places, the dark skin was not needed. Dark skin in cloudy places blocked the production of vitamin D in the skin, which is necessary for normal bone growth in children and adults.

The amount of melanin pigment in our skin is controlled by our genes. So in this way, human evolution is driven by the environment – sunny or cloudy – in different parts of the world.

The food that we eat

Ten thousand years ago, our human ancestors began to tame or domesticate animals such as cattle and goats to eat their meat. Then about 2,000 years later, they learned how to milk cows and goats for this rich food. Unfortunately, like most other mammals at that time, human adults back then could not digest milk without feeling ill. Yet a few people were able to digest milk because they had genes that let them do so.

Milk was such an important source of food in these societies that the people who could digest milk were better able to survive and have many children. So the genes that allowed them to digest milk increased in the population until nearly everyone could drink milk as adults.

This process, which occurred and spread thousands of years ago, is an example of what is called cultural and biological co-evolution. It was the cultural practice of milking animals that led to these genetic or biological changes.

Other people, such as the Inuit in Greenland, have genes that enable them to digest fats without suffering from heart diseases. The Turkana people herd livestock in Kenya in a very dry part of Africa. They have a gene that allows them to go for long periods without drinking much water. This practice would cause kidney damage in other people because the kidney regulates water in your body.

These examples show how the remarkable diversity of foods that people eat around the world can affect evolution.

Diseases that threaten us

Like all living creatures, humans have been exposed to many infectious diseases. During the 14th century a deadly disease called the bubonic plague struck and spread rapidly throughout Europe and Asia. It killed about one-third of the population in Europe. Many of those who survived had a specific gene that gave them resistance against the disease. Those people and their descendants were better able to survive epidemics that followed for several centuries.

Some diseases have struck quite recently. COVID-19, for instance, swept the globe in 2020. Vaccinations saved many lives. Some people have a natural resistance to the virus based on their genes. It may be that evolution increases this resistance in the population and helps humans fight future virus epidemics.

As human beings, we are exposed to a variety of changing environments. And so evolution in many human populations continues across generations, including right now.

Hello, curious kids! Do you have a question you’d like an expert to answer? Ask an adult to send your question to CuriousKidsUS@theconversation.com. Please tell us your name, age and the city where you live.

And since curiosity has no age limit – adults, let us know what you’re wondering, too. We won’t be able to answer every question, but we will do our best.

Michael A. Little 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. If evolution is real, then why isn’t it happening now? An anthropologist explains that humans actually are still evolving – https://theconversation.com/if-evolution-is-real-then-why-isnt-it-happening-now-an-anthropologist-explains-that-humans-actually-are-still-evolving-266669

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Murat Haner, Assistant Professor, School of Criminology & Criminal Justice, Arizona State University

Political violence among rival partisans has been a deadly and destabilizing force throughout history and across the globe. It has claimed countless lives, deepened social divisions and even led to the collapse of democratic systems.

In recent history, political violence and its deadly consequences were seen in Italy after World War I when thousands of fascist supporters marched on Rome, the capital, threatening to overthrow the government unless Benito Mussolini was appointed prime minister. That kind of violence and its effects were also seen in 1930s Germany, where Adolf Hitler suppressed opposition and suspended civil liberties amid widespread unrest and factional violence.

Similar patterns occurred elsewhere in the decades that followed. Fascist movements used political violence and intimidation to seize or consolidate power, as seen in Spain under Francisco Franco, in Portugal under António de Oliveira Salazar and in Romania under the Iron Guard.

Today, many scholars, journalists, commentators and elected officials across the political spectrum have voiced alarm over escalating acts of violence in the United States, drawing parallels to Europe’s authoritarian past. Reports of politically motivated violence are distressingly common – ranging from mass shootings, car-ramming attacks and assaults at demonstrations to assassination attempts, kidnappings and threats targeting mayors, governors, political activists and members of Congress.

For example, threats of violence against members of Congress increased by more than 1,400%, from 902 in 2016 to an estimated 14,000 by the end of 2025, according to U.S. Capitol Police reports.

Political violence is certainly not new in American society, but current patterns differ in key ways. We found that, today, white nationalism is a key driver of support for political violence – a sign that white nationalism poses substantial danger to U.S. political stability.

In the 1970s, violence was political theater, aimed at drawing government and public attention to specific policies. Today, it’s personal and deadly, driven by a desire to annihilate.

Changing targets

In the 1970s, radical left-wing groups often targeted government property to send political messages.

Attacks included the anti–Vietnam War bombings carried out by the Weather Underground, as well as actions by groups such as the Symbionese Liberation Army and United Freedom Front. They struck government and corporate targets to protest imperialism, racism and economic inequality. These attacks were generally intended as statements rather than mass-casualty events, with perpetrators often issuing warnings beforehand to minimize harm.

Today, however, much of the violence is aimed directly at individuals, often with the intent to harm or kill political opponents.

These include incidents such as the 2017 shooting targeting Republican lawmakers at a congressional baseball practice, the 2022 hammer attack on Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul Pelosi, and the 2025 killing of Democrat Melissa Hortman, the former speaker of the Minnesota House, and her husband in what authorities described as a politically motivated assassination.

This resurgence of political violence has prompted intense academic and journalistic scrutiny. Numerous public opinion surveys have sought to gauge Americans’ approval of, or concern about, using violence against the government or political adversaries.

Initial estimates suggested nearly 1 in 4 Americans support political violence. But later studies identified flaws in the questions used to measure support for violence. Simply asking about violence in general or the use of force leaves too much room for interpretation.

Using more sophisticated questioning techniques results in lower estimates of public support for political violence.

Understanding what drives individuals to endorse political violence is essential for developing effective strategies to prevent it. As public opinion researchers who have studied Americans’ attitudes toward ideological extremism, political polarization and counterterrorism policy, we sought to advance our understanding of the factors underlying public support for political violence in the United States.

We aimed to do this in two ways: by using more specific questioning techniques and by identifying the factors associated with increased support for violence.

Who justifies political violence?

Our study focused specifically on white nationalism – a growing movement in the U.S. – as a driver of support for violence.

We asked a national sample of 1,300 Americans how justified or unjustified it would be “to take violent action against the U.S. government” in response to a range of government actions. This approach captures both approval of the use of violence and its political motivation.

We included nonpartisan government actions such as “the government violated or took away citizens’ rights and freedoms” and “the government violated the U.S. Constitution” along with hypothetical actions reflecting right or left-wing political causes. For example, a right-wing action would be to ban all abortions while a left-wing action would be to legalize all abortions.

Analyses revealed substantial support for violence against the government in response to the nonpartisan government actions. Half of the respondents indicated that violence would be justified if the government violated citizens’ rights, and 55% supported the use of violence as a response if the U.S. government committed unlawful violence against citizens. Nearly 40% said that violence would be justified if the government censored the news.

When we examined the factors behind these attitudes, a belief in white nationalism stood out above all others. But what, precisely, is white nationalism? It is more than simply identifying as white. Indeed, white nationalism is a sentiment found among some nonwhite Americans as well.

White nationalists are concerned about the increasing diversity of the American population and want to ensure that white citizens maintain a predominant influence in the country. To them, white citizens’ social, cultural and political values are superior to those of nonwhite citizens and immigrants. The perceived need to protect and propagate these values serves as a call to action.

This ideology has motivated several recent acts of mass violence, from synagogue shootings to racially targeted attacks.

Our data revealed that a belief in white nationalism predicted support for political violence as well. In response to both nonpartisan government actions and those that would benefit left-wing causes, the stronger a person’s white nationalist sentiment, the more strongly that individual believed that violence would be justified.

Out of all the variables in our statistical models, including political views and demographic characteristics, white nationalism was the strongest predictor of support for violence in these circumstances.

It did not, however, significantly influence support for violence when the government actions would benefit right-wing causes.

Growing threat to US democracy

Most people who voice support for political violence will never commit violent acts themselves.

Yet such attitudes foster an atmosphere of tolerance, signaling that violence is acceptable and enabling its continuation. Our analyses show that these supportive attitudes are prevalent among white nationalists.

Active white nationalist groups operate in all but two U.S. states, Alaska and Vermont. Decentralized groups, such as Active Clubs, where white nationalists train and network, are also on the rise.

Many more individuals hold white nationalist sentiments without belonging to organized groups. Indeed, in our national sample, one quarter of respondents agreed with the statement “although people won’t admit it, White Americans and their culture are what made America great in the first place.”

The fact that white nationalism is gaining prominence in the U.S., combined with the association between holding white nationalist views and supporting political violence found in our study, indicates that white nationalism poses a serious threat to U.S. political stability.

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. White nationalism fuels tolerance for political violence nationwide – https://theconversation.com/white-nationalism-fuels-tolerance-for-political-violence-nationwide-268480

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Caroline Light, Senior Lecturer on Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality, Harvard University

Twenty years ago, Florida Gov. Jeb Bush signed the first “stand your ground” law, calling it a “good, common-sense, anti-crime issue.”

The law’s creators promised it would protect law-abiding citizens from prosecution if they used force in self-defense. Then-Florida state Rep. Dennis Baxley, who cosponsored the bill, claimed – in the wake of George Zimmerman’s controversial acquittal for the killing of Trayvon Martin – that “we’re really safer if we empower people to stop violent acts.”

I’m a historian who has studied the roots of stand your ground laws. I published a book on the subject in 2017. My ongoing investigation of the laws suggests that, 20 years on, they have not made communities any safer, nor have they helped prevent crime. In fact, there is reliable evidence they have done just the opposite.

In the past 20 years, stand your ground has spread to 38 states.

Then, in September 2025, an appellate court struck down Florida’s long-standing ban on the open carry of firearms.

Florida’s attorney general, James Uthmeier, quickly announced that open carry is now “the law of the state,” directing law enforcement not to arrest people who display handguns in public.

Under the state’s permitless carry law, enacted in 2023, adults without a criminal record also don’t need a permit or any training to carry firearms publicly.

In my view, this combination of stand your ground, open carry and permitless carry is likely to make the Sunshine State far less safe.

Let’s look at the evidence.

What ‘stand your ground’ means

Under traditional self-defense law, a person had a duty to retreat – to try to avoid a violent confrontation if they could safely do so – before resorting to deadly force.

The main exception to the duty to retreat was known as the castle doctrine, whereby people could defend themselves, with force if necessary, if they were attacked in their own homes.

Stand your ground laws effectively expand the boundaries of the castle doctrine to the wider world, removing the duty to retreat and allowing people to use lethal force anywhere they have a legal right to be, as long as they believe it’s necessary to prevent death or serious harm.

On paper, the expansion of the right to self-defense may sound reasonable. But in practice, stand your ground laws have blurred the line between self-defense and aggression by expanding legal immunity for some who claim self-defense and shifting the burden of proof to prosecutors.

While supporters of these laws claim they mitigate crime and make people safer, evidence shows the opposite. The nonpartisan RAND Corp. discovered that states adopting stand your ground laws experienced significant increases in homicide, typically between 8% and 11% higher than before the laws took effect.

A study of violent crime in Florida revealed a 31.6% increase in firearm homicides following the 2005 passage of the stand your ground law. There is no credible evidence that these laws deter crime.

On the contrary, evidence shows that stand your ground laws lower the legal, moral and psychological costs of pulling the trigger.

Stand your ground and race

While the language of stand your ground laws is race-neutral, their enforcement is not. Data from the Urban Institute and the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights show that in states with stand your ground laws, homicides are far more likely to be deemed “justified” when the shooter is white and the victim is Black.

I’ve found that these laws have redefined not only when force is justified but who is justified in using force.

In my assessment, these laws don’t create racial bias. Rather, they magnify the biases already present in our criminal legal system. They give broader discretion to a legal system in which law enforcement officers, judges, prosecutors and juries often hold unacknowledged biases that associate Black men with criminality, while perceiving white people who say they were defending themselves as credible.

That dynamic is visible in a growing multitude of cases, such as the shootings of unarmed teenagers Trayvon Martin, Jordan Davis, Renisha McBride and Ralph Yarl.

Each instance illustrates how stand your ground transforms ordinary mistakes or misunderstandings into lethal outcomes, and how armed citizens’ claims of “reasonable fear” often reflect racial stereotypes more than objective threats.

A dangerous mix

Florida’s legalization of open carry intersects with the state’s permitless carry and stand your ground laws in alarming ways. Open carry increases the visibility – and perceived legitimacy – of guns in everyday life.

Combined with the removal of licensing procedures and training requirements, laws that broaden the right to use deadly force create a permissive environment for opportunistic violence.

When everyone is visibly armed, every encounter can look like a potential threat. And when the law tells you that you don’t have to back down, that perception can turn lethal in seconds.

Florida has become a model for what gun rights advocates call “freedom” but what public health experts see as a recipe for more shootings and more death.

National implications: ‘Reciprocity’ and expansion

Two decades later, stand your ground laws have spread, in various forms, to 38 states. While 30 states have legislatively enacted stand your ground statutes like Florida’s, eight others implement stand your ground through case law and jury instructions that effectively remove the duty to retreat.

On top of this, 29 states have enacted laws allowing permitless carry, and 47 technically allow open carry, though restrictions vary across the states.

President Donald Trump has made clear he wants to take this deregulatory approach nationwide. While on the campaign trail, he promised to sign a “concealed-carry reciprocity” law, which would require all states to allow people from states with permissive laws to exercise those rights in all 50. “Your Second Amendment does not end at the state line,” he announced in a 2023 video.

If that vision becomes reality, it would mean the most permissive state laws will set the standard for the entire country. National reciprocity would allow Floridians, and other gun owners from permitless carry states, to carry their firearms – and potentially claim stand your ground immunity – in any other state, including those with stricter rules and lower rates of firearm death and injury.

This prospect raises deep questions about states’ rights, safety and justice. Research shows that stand your ground laws increase homicide and exacerbate racial disparities. National reciprocity would export those effects nationwide.

In my view, the convergence of stand your ground, open carry and national reciprocity marks the culmination of a 20-year experiment in armed citizenship. The results are clear: more people armed, more shootings and more deaths “justified.”

The question now is whether the rest of the nation will follow Florida’s lead.

Read more stories from The Conversation about Florida.

Caroline Light is affiliated with GVPedia and collaborates with Giffords.

– ref. Florida’s new open carry law combines with ‘stand your ground’ to create new freedoms – and new dangers – https://theconversation.com/floridas-new-open-carry-law-combines-with-stand-your-ground-to-create-new-freedoms-and-new-dangers-267496

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Gerry Lanosga, Associate Professor of Journalism, Indiana University

Long before the first shots were fired in the Civil War, beginning early in the 19th century, Americans had been fighting a protracted war of words over slavery.

On one side, Southern planters and slavery apologists portrayed the practice of human bondage as sanctioned by God and beneficial even to enslaved people.

On the other side, opponents of slavery painted a picture of violence, injustice and the hypocrisy of professed Christians defending the sin of slavery.

But to the abolitionists, it became crucial to transcend mere rhetoric. They wanted to show Americans uncomfortable truths about the practice of slavery – a strategy that is happening again as activists and citizens fight modern-day attempts at historical whitewashing.

As a media scholar who has studied the history of abolitionist journalism, I hear echoes of that two-century-old narrative battle in President Donald Trump’s effort to purge public memorials and markers honoring the suffering and heroism of the enslaved as well as those who championed their freedom.

Celebration vs. reality

Among the materials reportedly flagged for removal from history museums, national parks and other government facilities is a disturbing but powerful photograph known as “The Scourged Back.”

The 1863 image depicts a formerly enslaved man, his back horrifically scarred by whipping. It’s certainly hard to look at, yet to look away or try to forget it means to ignore what it has to say about the complicated and often brutal history of the nation.

In Trump’s view, these memorials are “revisionist” and “driven by ideology rather than truth.” In an executive order named Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History, Trump said public materials should “focus on the greatness of the achievements and progress of the American people.”

Essentially, the president appears to want a history that celebrates American achievement rather than being forced to look at “The Scourged Back” and other historical realities that document aspects of the American story that don’t warrant celebration.

Combating ignorance of slavery’s horrors

Thinking back to the decades leading up to the Civil War, facts were the weapon abolitionists wielded in their fight against the distortions of pro-slavery forces. It was an uphill battle in the face of indifference by many in the North. After a visit to Massachusetts in 1830, abolitionist writer William Lloyd Garrison blamed such attitudes on “exceeding ignorance of the horrors of slavery.”

It is not surprising that in the early 19th century many Americans would have had limited knowledge of slavery. Travel was arduous, time-consuming and expensive, and most Northerners had little firsthand exposure to slave societies. Abolitionists argued that those who did visit the South were often shielded from the harsher realities of slavery. This extended to the media ecosystem, which lacked any real national news organizations.

Moreover, Southern plantation owners carried out a robust propaganda effort to extol the beneficence of their economic system. In letters, pamphlets and books, they argued that slavery was beneficial to all and that the enslaved were happy and well-treated. They also attacked their opponents as evil and dishonest.

As abolitionist Lydia Maria Child wrote in 1838: “The apologists of Southern slavery are accustomed to brand every picture of slavery and its fruits as exaggeration or calumny.”

Don’t look away

Thus, the challenge for abolitionists was to show slavery as it really was – and to compel people to look. An emphasis on hard evidence took firm hold in the wave of abolitionism in the 1830s.

Activists didn’t yet have photography, so they relied on accounts from eyewitnesses and formerly enslaved people, official reports and even some plantation owners’ own words in Southern newspaper advertisements seeking the return of runaways.

“Until the pictures of the slave’s sufferings were drawn up and held up to public gaze, no Northerner had any idea of the cruelty of the system,” abolitionist Angelina Grimké wrote in her famous “Appeal to the Christian Women of the South” in 1836.

“It never entered their minds that such abominations could exist in Christian, Republican America; they never suspected that many of the gentlemen and ladies who came from the South to spend the summer months in travelling among them, were petty tyrants at home,” Grimké wrote.

In pamphlets and newspapers, Grimké and others laid down a documentary record of the abuses of slavery, naming names and emphasizing legal evidence of their claims. In my research, I have argued that while abolitionists didn’t invent the journalistic exposé, they did develop the first fully articulated methodology for confronting abuses of power through carefully documented facts – laying the groundwork for later generations of investigative reporters and fact-checkers.

Most critically, what they did is point a finger at injustice and demand that America not look away. In its first issue, in 1835, the newspaper Human Rights emphasized “the importance of first settling what slavery really is.” Inside, it included a series of advertisements documenting slave sales and rewards for runaways reprinted from Southern newspapers.

The headline: “ LOOK AT THIS!!”

Tried and acquitted

One of the most remarkable efforts in this abolitionist campaign was a 233-page pamphlet called “American Slavery As It Is: Testimony of a Thousand Witnesses.” Published in 1839 by Theodore Dwight Weld along with his wife, Angelina Grimké, and her sister, it was an exhaustively documented exposé of floggings, torture, killings, overwork and undernourishment.

One example involved a wealthy tobacconist who whipped a 15-year-old girl to death: “While he was whipping her, his wife heated a smoothing iron, put it on her body in various places, and burned her severely. The verdict of the coroner’s inquest was, ‘Died of excessive whipping.’ He was tried in Richmond and acquitted.”

It is difficult reading, to be sure, and certainly the kind of material that might foster “a national sense of shame,” as Trump’s executive order claims. But getting rid of the evils of slavery meant first acknowledging them. And the second part – critical to avoiding the mistakes of the past – is remembering them.

‘Consciences shocked’

So how effective was this abolitionist campaign to lay bare the terrible facts about slavery?

At least some readers of “American Slavery As It Is” had their consciences shocked. One New Hampshire newspaper reacted this way: “We thought we knew something of the horrid character of slavery before, but upon looking over the pages of this book, we find that we had no adequate idea of the number and enormity of the cruelties which are constantly being perpetrated under this system of all abominations.”

And one famous reader was Harriet Beecher Stowe, who drew on the book as inspiration for “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” published more than a decade later.

The 1830s reflected the height of the abolitionist movement in books, pamphlets and newspapers. While the activism continued in the 1840s and 1850s, ultimately it took secession and civil war to finally end slavery. But, of course, it didn’t take long for the country to fall into a prolonged period of formal and informal segregation in both the North and the South, many vestiges of which remain.

That reality of a history that doesn’t proceed along a straight path to justice underscores the importance of preserving, remembering and teaching difficult parts of the past such as “The Scourged Back.”

On the title page of “American Slavery As It Is,” Weld and the Grimkés printed a quote from the biblical book of Ezekiel: “Behold the wicked abominations that they do.” It was a command to the nation to look without flinching at what it was, and it is as pertinent today as it was then.

Gerry Lanosga 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. Slavery’s brutal reality shocked Northerners before the Civil War − and is being whitewashed today by the White House – https://theconversation.com/slaverys-brutal-reality-shocked-northerners-before-the-civil-war-and-is-being-whitewashed-today-by-the-white-house-266424

Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By Matthew J. Mayhew, Professor of Higher Education, The Ohio State University

What helps students from all walks of life have a good college experience?

Beyond all the concrete things schools can offer – academics, research opportunities, sports, dining halls – is something both basic and hard to define: a sense of belonging.

Factors such as race and gender can influence how at home a student feels on campus, contributing to their overall well-being. But my research highlights the role of religion and spirituality, too: how support for students’ worldviews – whether they’re deeply religious, atheist or somewhere in between – shapes their campus experience.

My recent scholarship with fellow higher education professor Musbah Shaheen argues that a sense of belonging arises mainly from meaningful relationships and conversations about those topics, not from simply having religious clubs and organizations on campus.

With that in mind, we believe universities can move beyond tolerance toward real appreciation for all students, including religious minorities.

Foundational role of relationships

This recent work builds on results from the Interfaith Diversity Experiences and Attitudes Longitudinal Survey, or IDEALS. In 2014, higher education researcher Alyssa N. Rockenbach and I designed the project in partnership with Interfaith America, a nonprofit that encourages interfaith dialogue on campus. Running from 2015 to 2019, it surveyed 3,486 students across 122 campuses to understand the ways colleges could support students’ well-being when it comes to their worldviews, religious identities and spiritual beliefs.

A main theme emerged in students’ responses: Feeling cared about, accepted and valued on campus was rooted in relationships. But faculty and staff also had an important role to play in modeling respectful relationships and in helping students engage respectively with each other.

Findings from the study also showed that campuses can help foster student friendships across religions by creating opportunities for students to engage with each other authentically. They can try to make sure campus conversations about religion and spirituality are built on trust, not proselytizing or coercion. They can offer opportunities for students from different religious backgrounds to participate in service-learning experiences, leadership opportunities and interfaith programs, to name a few.

Respectful relationships are especially important for religious minorities’ sense of belonging. A campus’s climate is often shaped by Christian heritage in ways many students may not even notice: chapels, sometimes repurposed as classroom space; dining halls that don’t offer halal or kosher meals; and academic calendars that prioritize certain religious holidays over others.

Apart from addressing these issues head-on, there are other ways to help offset these dynamics. In the IDEALS study, students who reported having supportive spaces for challenging but respectful dialogues – where they could share perspectives without feeling coerced or harmed – with peers who hold differing worldviews felt a greater sense of belonging.

The answer is not to avoid tough conversations. Instead, it is to ensure they are guided and productive. In this sense, strong academic engagement matters: involving faculty both in and out of the classroom, as one means of helping students engage with one another respectfully.

Academic support

Thanks to the IDEALS survey, we had a sense of what matters to students in making their worldview feel respected on campus. But how are campuses actually doing at implementing those practices?

To find out, Rockenbach and I then designed the Institutional Norms Supporting Pluralism and Inclusive Religious Engagement Study, or INSPIRES. This ongoing project is a multiyear exploration into the factors institutions have in place to support the well-being of students with a wide range of beliefs.

The sample included data from 318 colleges and universities. Thirty-one percent were public, while 69% were private. Any university can sign up for the assessment, free of cost, so 174 of these schools have participated multiple times to understand how their campus’s climate is changing – whether it’s becoming more welcoming, and for whom.

Our team used student responses to the IDEALS surveys to develop scales, measuring how welcoming campuses are for students from diverse spiritual backgrounds. We then rated schools from 1 to 5 – the highest rating – on several different areas, such as religious accommodations and efforts to combat hate and intolerance.

One of the most important categories is academic engagement – specifically, how institutions formalize practices designed to foster two things. The first is interfaith literacy: knowledge and understanding of diverse religious traditions. The second is dialogue: structured opportunities for interaction among people of different religious, spiritual and secular beliefs.

The data shows that most schools have lots of room for improvement when it comes to academic engagement about religion. Using the 1-5 scale, 19% of institutions scored a 1, and 33% of schools scored just a 2. Another 30% scored a 3. Seventeen percent scored a 4 – and only two out of the 318 received a 5.

More than 52% of institutions are in the lowest two levels, highlighting the lack of campuswide academic initiatives that foster belonging.

5-star standard

The five-star standard includes practices that foster safe, guided interactions among people who hold different worldviews.

In part, that means embedding worldview diversity in the curriculum. Higher-scoring schools offer majors or minors in religious studies. What’s more, they offer courses in many departments that address various spiritual, religious and secular perspectives. Where appropriate, faculty include topics related to students’ identities and worldviews to prompt discussion.

For religious minorities, in particular, seeing their identities reflected in academic offerings helps them feel seen and signals that their traditions are intellectually important.

Five-star schools also make space for academic conversations about religion with faculty outside the classroom. According to IDEALS, students who discussed topics related to personal values or beliefs with faculty outside of class felt a stronger sense of belonging.

Classrooms, office hours and academic group work can be spaces for what we call “provocative encounters,” where students may be uncomfortable being exposed to different perspectives but do not feel coerced or harmed. This turns topics that could leave students feeling marginalized, silenced or preached to into opportunities for meaningful connection.

Students’ sense of religious and spiritual belonging comes from everyday relationships – authentic connections and conversations that faculty and staff can help foster. I believe universities can create an environment where all students, including religious minorities, feel seen, accepted and appreciated.

Matthew J. Mayhew receives funding from the Templeton Religions Trust, the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations, the Pew Charitable Trusts, the Educational Credit Management Corporation (ECMC) Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Merrifield Family Trust, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Fetzer Institute, the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, the Merrifield Family Trust, and the United States Department of Education.

– ref. Most colleges score low on helping students of all faiths – or none – develop a sense of belonging. Faculty can help change that – https://theconversation.com/most-colleges-score-low-on-helping-students-of-all-faiths-or-none-develop-a-sense-of-belonging-faculty-can-help-change-that-267271

Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By Jeffrey C. Dixon, Professor of Sociology, College of the Holy Cross

Debates about generative artificial intelligence on college campuses have largely centered on student cheating. But focusing on cheating overlooks a larger set of ethical concerns that higher education institutions face, from the use of copyrighted material in large language models to student privacy.

As a sociologist who teaches about AI and studies the impact of this technology on work, I am well acquainted with research on the rise of AI and its social consequences. And when one looks at ethical questions from multiple perspectives – those of students, higher education institutions and technology companies – it is clear that the burden of responsible AI use should not fall entirely on students’ shoulders.

I argue that responsibility, more generally, begins with the companies behind this technology and needs to be shouldered by higher education institutions themselves.

To ban or not to ban generative AI

Let’s start where some colleges and universities did: banning generative AI products, such as ChatGPT, partly over student academic integrity concerns.

While there is evidence that students inappropriately use this technology, banning generative AI ignores research indicating it can improve college students’ academic achievement. Studies have also shown generative AI may have other educational benefits, such as for students with disabilities. Furthermore, higher education institutions have a responsibility to make students ready for AI-infused workplaces.

Given generative AI’s benefits and its widespread student use, many colleges and universities today have integrated generative AI into their curricula. Some higher education institutions have even provided students free access to these tools through their school accounts. Yet I believe these strategies involve additional ethical considerations and risks.

As with previous waves of technology, the adoption of generative AI can exacerbate inequalities in education, given that not all students will have access to the same technology. If schools encourage generative AI use without providing students with free access, there will be a divide between students who can pay for a subscription and those who use free tools.

On top of this, students using free tools have few privacy guarantees in the U.S. When they use these tools – even as simple as “Hey ChatGPT, can you help me brainstorm a paper idea?” – students are producing potentially valuable data that companies use to improve their models. By contrast, paid versions can offer more data protections and clearer privacy guidelines.

Higher education institutions can address equity concerns and help protect student data by seeking licenses with vendors that address student privacy. These licenses can provide students with free access to generative AI tools and specify that student data is not to be used to train or improve models. However, they are not panaceas.

Who’s responsible now?

In “Teaching with AI,” José Antonio Bowen and C. Edward Watson argue that higher education institutions need to rethink their approach to academic integrity. I agree with their assessment, but for ethical reasons not covered in their book: Integrating generative AI into the curriculum through vendor agreements involves higher education institutions recognizing tech companies’ transgressions and carefully considering the implications of owning student data.

To begin, I find the practice of penalizing students for “stealing” words from large language models to write papers ethically difficult to reconcile with tech companies’ automated “scraping” of websites, such as Wikipedia and Reddit, without citation. Big tech companies have used copyrighted material – some of it allegedly taken from piracy websites – to train the large language models that power chatbots. Although the two actions – asking a chatbot to write an essay versus training it on copyrighted material – are not exactly the same, they both have a component of ethical responsibility. For technology companies, ethical issues such as this are typically raised only in lawsuits.

For institutions of higher education, I think these issues should be raised prior to signing AI vendor licenses. As a Chronicle of Higher Education article suggests, colleges and universities should vet AI model outputs as they would student papers. If they have not done so prior to signing vendor agreements, I see little basis for them to pursue traditional “academic integrity” violations for alleged student plagiarism. Instead, higher education institutions should consider changes to their academic integrity policies.

Then there is the issue of how student data is handled under AI vendor agreements. One likely source of student concern is whether their school, as a commercial customer and data owner, logs interactions with identifiers and can pursue academic integrity charges and other matters on this basis.

The solution to this is simple: Higher education institutions can prominently display the terms and conditions of such agreements to members of their community. If colleges and universities are unwilling to do so, or if their leaders don’t understand the terms themselves, then maybe institutions need to rethink their AI strategies.

The above data privacy issues take on new meaning given the ways in which generative AI is currently being used, sometimes as “companions” with which people share highly personal information. OpenAI estimates that about 70% of ChatGPT consumer usage is for nonwork purposes. OpenAI’s CEO, Sam Altman, recognizes that people are turning to ChatGPT for “deeply personal decisions that include life advice, coaching and support.”

Although the long-term effects of using chatbots as companions or confidants is unknown, the recent case of a teen committing suicide while interacting with ChatGPT is a tragic reminder of generative AI’s risks and the importance of ensuring people’s personal security along with their privacy.

Formulating explicit statements that generative AI should be used only for academic purposes could help mitigate the risks related to students forming potentially damaging emotional attachments with chatbots. So, too, could reminders about campus mental health and other resources. Training students and faculty on all these matters and more can aid in promoting personally responsible AI use.

But colleges and universities cannot skirt their own responsibilities. At some point, higher education institutions may see that such responsibility is too heavy of a cross to bear and that their risk-mitigation strategies are essentially Band-Aids for a systemic problem.

Jeffrey C. Dixon is a faculty representative on the College of the Holy Cross Institutional Review of Artificial Intelligence Task Force.

– ref. Student cheating dominates talk of generative AI in higher ed, but universities and tech companies face ethical issues too – https://theconversation.com/student-cheating-dominates-talk-of-generative-ai-in-higher-ed-but-universities-and-tech-companies-face-ethical-issues-too-268167