Category: English

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Robin Brewer, Associate Professor of Information, University of Michigan

Artificial intelligence is a lively topic of conversation in schools and workplaces, which could lead you to believe that only younger people use it. However, older Americans are also using AI. This raises the questions of what they’re doing with the technology and what they think of it.

I’m a researcher who studies older age, disability and technology use. I partnered with the University of Michigan’s National Poll on Healthy Aging to survey nearly 3,000 Americans over the age of 50. We asked them whether and how they use AI and what concerns they have about using it.

Of the older people we surveyed, 55% responded that they had used some type of AI technology that they can speak to, like Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant, or type to, like OpenAI’s ChatGPT chatbot. Voice assistants were overwhelmingly more popular than text chatbots: Half of them reported using a voice assistant within the past year, compared to 1 in 4 who used a chatbot.

Popular, among some

Independent living continues to be a major goal of older Americans as they either do not want to or are unable to afford to live in long-term care communities, and AI may be a tool to support this goal. Our findings show that older adults who use AI in their homes find it helpful for living independently and safely.

They mostly used these technologies for entertainment or searching for information, but some of their responses show more creative uses, such as generating text, creating images or planning vacations.

Nearly 1 in 3 older adults reported using AI-powered home security devices, including doorbells, outdoor cameras and alarm systems. Nearly all of those people – 96% – felt safer using them.

While there has been some concern about privacy when using cameras indoors to monitor older people, cameras aimed outdoors seem to provide a sense of security for those who may be aging in their homes alone or without family nearby. Of the 35% of older adults who reported using AI-powered home security systems, 96% said they were beneficial.

However, when we dove into which older adults are using AI, we saw that demographics matter. Specifically, those in better health, with more education and higher incomes were more likely to have used AI-powered voice assistants and home security devices in the past year. This pattern seems to follow adoption trends of other technologies such as smartphones.

Trusting AI is tricky

As more information about AI’s accuracy emerges, so do questions about whether people can trust it. Our survey results show that older Americans are split on whether to trust content that was generated by AI: 54% said they trust AI, and 46% said they do not. People who trusted AI more were more likely to have used some type of AI technology within the past year.

Further, AI-generated content can sometimes look correct but be inaccurate. Being able to identify incorrect information from AI is important for assessing whether and how to use AI-generated search results or chatbots. However, only half of the older people surveyed were confident that they could identify whether content from AI was incorrect.

More educated users were more likely to say they felt confident they could spot inaccuracies. Conversely, older adults who reported lower levels of physical and mental health were less likely to trust AI-generated content.

What to do?

Together, these findings repeat a common cycle of technology adoption that is pervasive even among younger demographics, where more educated and healthy people are among the first to adopt and be aware of newer technologies. This raises questions about how to best reach all older people about the benefits and risks of AI.

How can older people who are not AI users get support for learning more so that they can make informed decisions about whether to use it? How can institutions develop better training and awareness tools so that older people who trust AI avoid trusting it too much or inappropriately using AI to make important decisions without understanding the risks?

Our survey results highlight potential starting points for developing AI literacy tools for older adults. Nine in 10 older people wanted to know when information had been generated by AI. We are starting to see AI labels on search engine results, such as Google search’s AI snippets.

Michigan and other states have adopted policies for disclosing AI content in political ads, but these notices could be made more visible in other contexts, such as nonpolitical advertising and on social media. Further, nearly 80% of older people wanted to learn more about AI risks – where might it go wrong and what to do about it.

Policymakers can focus on enforcing AI notices that signal content was generated by AI, particularly at a critical time when the U.S. is considering revising its AI policies to do just the opposite – removing language about risk, discrimination and misinformation – based on a new executive order.

Overall, our findings show that AI can support healthy aging. However, overtrust and mistrust of AI could be addressed with better training tools and policies to make risks more visible.

Robin Brewer receives funding from the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health. She has previously received funding from Google, the Retirement Research Foundation, and the U.S. Department of Transportation.

– ref. Older Americans are using AI − study shows how and what they think of it – https://theconversation.com/older-americans-are-using-ai-study-shows-how-and-what-they-think-of-it-262411

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Christine Picard, Professor of Biology, Indiana University

Insects are becoming increasingly popular to grow on farms as feed for other animals, pet food and potentially as food for people. The process of bringing a wild animal into an artificial environment, known as domestication, comes with unique challenges. Luckily, there are important lessons to be learned from all the other animals people have domesticated over millennia.

As researchers who study how domesticating animals changes their genes, we believe that recognizing the vulnerabilities that come with domestication is important. Today’s powerful biotechnology tools can help researchers anticipate and head off issues early on.

Domestication is nothing new

From grain domestication starting as far back as 12,000 years ago to today’s high-tech, genome-based breeding strategies, humans have long bent nature to suit their purposes. By selectively breeding individual plants or animals that have desirable traits – be it appearance, size or behavior – humans have domesticated a whole host of species.

The same principle underlies all domestication attempts, from dogs to crops. A breeder identifies an individual with a desired trait – whether that’s a dog’s talent for tracking or a plant’s ability to withstand pests. Then they breed it to confirm that the desired trait can be passed down to offspring. If it works, the breeder can grow lots of descendants in a lineage with the genomic advantage.

People have made crops resilient to disease and environmental challenges, docile cows that yield more milk or meat, large-breasted poultry and cute dogs.

A long history of insects working for people

Insect domestication is also far from new. People have reared silkworms (Bombyx mori) to produce silk for over 5,000 years. But selective breeding and isolation from wild relatives have led to their inability to fly, dependence on one food source and need for assistance to reproduce. As a result, silkworms are wholly reliant on humans for survival, and the original species doesn’t exist anymore.

Similarly, people have maintained colonies of the western honeybee (Apis mellifera) for pollination and honey production for centuries. But bees are at risk due to colony collapse disorder, a phenomenon where worker bees disappear from seemingly healthy hives. The causes of colony collapse disorder are unknown; researchers are investigating disease and pesticides as possible factors.

Now the insect agriculture industry has set its sights on domesticating some other insects as a source of sustainably farmed protein for other animals or people.

Insects such as the black soldier fly (Hermetia illucens) and the mealworm (Tenebrio molitor) can grow on existing organic waste streams. Rearing them on organic farm and food waste circularizes the agricultural system and reduces the environmental footprint of growing proteins.

But these insects will need to be grown at scale. Modern agriculture relies on monocultures of species that allow for uniformity in size and synchronized growth and harvest. Domesticating wild insects will be necessary to turn them into farmed animals.

Domestication has an immunity downside

Chickens today grow faster and bigger than ever. But factory-farmed animals are genetically very homogeneous. Moreover, people take care of everything for these domesticated animals. They have easy access to food and are given antibiotics and vaccines for their health and safety.

Consequently, industrially-farmed chickens have lost a lot of their immune abilities. Building these strong disease-fighting proteins requires a lot of energy. Since their spotless, controlled environments protect them, those immune genes are just not needed. The energy their bodies would typically use to protect themselves can instead be used to grow bigger.

In the wild, individuals with faulty immune genes would likely be killed by pathogens, quickly wiping these bad genes out from the population. But in a domesticated environment, such individuals can survive and pass on potentially terrible genes.

The H5N1 bird flu provides a recent example of what can go wrong when a homogeneous population of domesticated animals encounters a dangerous pathogen. When disease broke out, the poor immune systems of domesticated chickens cracked under the pressure. The disease can spread quickly through large facilities, and eventually all chickens there must be euthanized.

Domestication and the risks of monoculture

Weak immune systems aren’t the only reason the bird flu spread like it did.

Domestication often involves growing large numbers of a single species in small concentrated areas, referred to as a monoculture. All the individuals in a monoculture are roughly the same, both physically and in their genes, so they all have the same susceptibilities.

Banana cultivars are one example. Banana plants grown in the early 1900s were all descendants of a single clone, named Gros Michel. But when the deadly Panama disease fungus swept through, the plants had no defenses and the cultivar was decimated.

Banana growers turned to the Cavendish variety, grown in the largest banana farms today. The banana industry remains vulnerable to the same kind of risk that took down Gros Michel. A new fungal strain is on the rise, and scientists are rushing to head off a global Cavendish banana collapse.

Lessons about weaknesses that come with domestication are important to the relatively new industry advancing insects as the future of sustainable protein production and organic waste recycling.

How genomics can help correct course

Modern genomics can give insect agriculture a new approach to quality control. Technological tools can help researchers learn how an organism’s genes relate to its physical traits. With this knowledge, scientists can help organisms undergoing domestication bypass potential downsides of the process.

For instance, scientists combined data from hundreds of different domesticated tomato genomes, as well as their wild counterparts. They discovered something you’ve probably experienced – while selecting for longer shelf life, tomato flavor genes were unintentionally bred out.

A similar approach of screening genomes has allowed scientists to discover the combination of genes that enhances milk production in dairy cows. Farmers can intentionally breed individuals with the right combinations of milk-producing genes while keeping an eye on what other genes the animals have or lack. This process ensures that breeders don’t lose valuable traits, such as robust immune systems or high fertility rates, while selecting for economically valuable traits during domestication.

Insect breeders can take advantage of these genetic tools from the outset. Tracking an animal population’s genetic markers is like monitoring patients’ vital signs in the hospital. Insect breeders can look at genes to assess colony health and the need for interventions. With regular genetic monitoring of the farmed population, if they begin to see individuals with markers for some “bad” genes, they can intervene right away, instead of waiting for a disaster.

Mechanisms to remedy an emerging disaster include bringing in a new brood from the wild or another colony whose genes can refresh the domesticated population’s inbred and homogeneous genome. Additionally, researchers could use gene-editing techniques such as CRISPR-Cas9 to replicate healthy and productive combinations of genes in a whole new generation of domesticated insects.

Genomics-assisted breeding is a supplement to standard practices and not a replacement. It can help breeders see which traits are at risk, which ones are evolving, and where natural reservoirs of genetic diversity might be found. It allows breeders to make more informed decisions, identify genetic problems and be proactive rather than reactive.

By harnessing the power of genomics, the insect agriculture industry can avoid setting itself up for an accidental future collapse while continuing to make inroads on sustainable protein production and circularizing the agricultural ecosystem.

Christine Picard receives funding in part by the National Science Foundation through the Industry-University Cooperative Research Centers NSF cooperative agreements. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation or the Industry Advisory Board Members of the Center for Insect Biomanufacturing and Innovation. Christine Picard is a member of the North American Coalition of Insect Agriculture, an Associate Editor for the Journal of Insects as Food and Feed, and the Treasurer for the Academic Society of Insects as Food and Feed.

Hector Rosche-Flores receives funding in part by the National Science Foundation through the Industry-University Cooperative Research Centers NSF cooperative agreements. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation or the Industry Advisory Board Members of the Center for Insect Biomanufacturing and Innovation. 

– ref. Genomics can help insect farmers avoid pitfalls of domestication – https://theconversation.com/genomics-can-help-insect-farmers-avoid-pitfalls-of-domestication-261357

Source: The Conversation – USA – By James M. Thomas, Professor of Sociology, University of Mississippi

Historian Nell Painter remarked in 2011, “Being white these days isn’t what it used to be.”

For the past decade, wave upon wave of protests against police violence and mass incarceration have drawn the public’s attention toward the continued significance of America’s color line, the set of formal and informal rules that maintain white Americans’ elevated social and economic advantages.

Meanwhile, an explosion of popular literature scrutinizes those rules and places white people’s elevated status in sharp relief.

How are white people making sense of these tensions?

In his 1935 publication “Black Reconstruction in America,” sociologist W.E.B. Du Bois described the “public and psychological wage” paid to white workers in the post-Reconstruction era on account of their being white. Today those “wages of whiteness” remain durable as ever. Nearly 60 years removed from the high water mark of the Civil Rights movement, its aims have not been met.

White people still enjoy better jobs, health care, housing, schooling and more.

I’m a sociologist of race and racism. My team of graduate student researchers and I have spent the past four years interviewing white people to understand how they make sense of their white racial status today. We concentrated our efforts among white people living in the U.S. South because that region is seen as more responsible for shaping what it means to be white, and the social and economic advantages of being white, than any other.

There is not much research on how white people think about what it means to be white. Meanwhile, popular and scholarly treatments of white Southerners as overwhelmingly conservative and racially regressive abound.

Some white Southerners we spoke with fit those tropes. Many others do not. Overall, we found white Southerners across the political spectrum actively grappling with their white racial status.

As Walter, 38, from Clarksdale, Mississippi, told us, “It’s a complicated time to be a white Southerner.” We use pseudonyms to protect anonymity.

Crises cast a long shadow

The Italian political theorist Antonio Gramsci defined a crisis as a historical period in which “the old is dying and the new cannot be born.” Within this space between, Gramsci argued, “morbid phenomena of the most varied kind come to pass.”

Many people we spoke with lived through the defining ruptures of the 20th century that forever changed the South, and America too: the formal demise of Jim Crow rule, violent and bloody struggles over integration, and the slow, uneven march toward equal rights for all Americans.

Still others came of age against the backdrop of the defining shocks of this new century: 9/11 and the war on terrorism, Hurricane Katrina, the racial backlash to the election of Barack Obama, and the Black Lives Matter movement.

For some, the political rise of Donald Trump and his willingness to traffic in racist rhetoric constituted a crisis, too. “He embodies everything that is immoral,” said Ned, 45, from Vardaman, Mississippi. The town Ned is from is named for James K. Vardaman, former governor of Mississippi who once declared that “if it is necessary every Negro in the state will be lynched; it will be done to maintain white supremacy.”

Taken together, these crises cast a long shadow of uncertainty over white people’s elevated social position and anchor how white Southerners understand their white racial status.

Resistance to desegregation

Miriam, 61, from Natchez, Mississippi, grew up under the last gasps of Jim Crow. She recalled her parents pulling her from public school and sending her to a nearby private school shortly after the Supreme Court’s 1969 Alexander v. Holmes ruling, which ordered the immediate desegregation of Southern schools.

Her new school was one of hundreds of “segregation academies” founded across the South in the aftermath of the court’s ruling.

“You didn’t go over there, by the Black school,” Miriam recalled. “You stayed over by the white school. … I remember as a kid that made quite an impression.”

Reflecting on what it means to be a white Southerner today, Miriam drew from these experiences living under the region’s long shadow of segregation.

“There’s been so much hatred and so much unpleasantness. I want to do everything I can to make relations better,” she said. “I think that is part of being white in the South.”

Daryl, 42, a self-described conservative, lived in several Southern communities as a child, including Charlotte, North Carolina, in the mid-1980s as the city wrestled with its court-ordered school busing program. Daryl recalled his parents and other white people complaining about the poor quality of newly integrated schools, including telling him “stories of things like needles on the playground.”

Daryl rarely, if ever, talked with his own parents about race, but he broaches these topics with his own children today.

A self-described “childhood racist,” Daryl draws from his experiences to frame his conversations with his own children. “I remind them that there used to be this day where this was OK, and this is how things were thought of,” he says.

‘Good reason to be mad’

The region’s history also includes more contemporary crises.

Lorna, 34, is a registered Republican from Marion, Arkansas. She described how recent protests against police violence are affecting her understanding of America’s color line.

“I feel like Black people are mad or angry. They’re tired of violence and, you know, profiling,” she said. “And I don’t think it’s just in the South. I think it’s all over the United States. And they have a good reason to be mad.”

Kenneth, 35, lives in Memphis. Like Lorna and others, Kenneth’s sense of what it means to be white has been shaped by more recent crises, including the racial backlash to Obama’s elections in 2008 and 2012 that motivated Trump’s election in 2016.

Reflecting on these episodes, Kenneth believes he has an obligation as a white Southerner to become more informed about “the legacy of racism in the South and the impact that it still has today.”

Becoming more informed, Kenneth says, “will cause me to reflect on how I should think about that, and what, if anything, I should do differently now.”

Uncovering what’s minimized or ignored

Our interviews reveal a range of beliefs and attitudes among white Southerners often discounted or dismissed altogether by more popular and scholarly treatments of the region.

Contrary to research that finds white people minimizing or ignoring their elevated social status, the white Southerners we spoke with showed a profound awareness of the advantages their white racial status affords them.

“I have to admit I’m glad I’m white,” said Luke, 75, from Melber, Kentucky. “Because in the United States you probably have a little advantage.”

Our research also shows that how white people make sense of who they are is also a matter of where they are.

Places – and not just Southern ones – are imbued with ideas and beliefs that give meaning and significance to the people within them. The region’s history of racial conflict, meanwhile, renders the “wages of whiteness” more plain to see for white Southerners in ways we are only beginning to understand.

Put plainly: Place matters for how race matters.

Emphasizing this more complicated understanding of race and place allows for a more complete account of the South, including how the unfolding racial dramas of the past several decades continue to shape the region and its people.

James M. Thomas’s research has been funded by the National Science Foundation and the Russell Sage Foundation

– ref. ‘It’s a complicated time to be a white Southerner’ − and their views on race reflect that – https://theconversation.com/its-a-complicated-time-to-be-a-white-southerner-and-their-views-on-race-reflect-that-261454

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Kayla Gabehart, Assistant Professor of Environmental Policy, Michigan Technological University

Many rural Coloradans, especially in agricultural communities, feel looked down on by their urban counterparts. One cattle rancher I spoke to put it plainly. “It’s an attitude … we are the idiots … we are the dumb farmers … we don’t really matter.”

The sentiment is also portrayed in popular culture such as the hit TV show “Yellowstone.”

“It’s the one constant in life. You build something worth having, someone’s gonna try to take it,” says patriarch John Dutton. He was facing repeated threats by developers from “the city” to annex his land for a luxury hotel and resort development.

As a policy scholar, I’ve talked to and interviewed many dozens of people in rural areas in Colorado. I’ve also read hundreds of newspaper articles and watched hundreds of hours of legislative testimony that capture the sentiment of rural people being left behind, left out and snubbed by their urban counterparts.

Recently, I studied the divide between rural and urban Coloradans by looking at their responses to four statewide policies. A designated day to forgo eating meat, two political appointees and the ongoing wolf reintroduction.

These policies, while specific to Colorado, are symptoms of something larger. Namely, an ever-urbanizing, globalized world that rural, agricultural citizens feel is leaving them behind.

‘MeatOut’ or misstep?

My expertise doesn’t just come from my research – I’ve lived it.

I grew up in a rural community in Elbert County, Colorado, about an hour- and-a-half southeast of Denver.

In early 2021, Gov. Jared Polis declared via proclamation that March 20 would be a “MeatOut Day.” For health and environmental reasons, Colorado residents were encouraged to forgo meat for a single day.

Supported by the Farm Animal Rights Movement, MeatOuts have been promoted across the U.S. since the 1980s. Typically, gubernatorial proclamations, of which hundreds are passed each year and are completely ceremonial and devoid of any long-term formal policy implications, go largely unnoticed. And in Denver, Colorado’s metropolitan center, this one did too.

Not so in rural Colorado.

My neighbors in Elbert County promptly responded with outrage, flying banners and flags declaring their support for agriculture and a carnivorous diet.

One rancher from Nathrop painted a stack of hay bales to say, “Eat Beef Everyday.”

Communities all over the state, and even in neighboring states, responded with “MeatIns,” where they gathered to eat meat and celebrate agriculture and the rural way of life. They also coupled these events with fundraisers, for various causes, for which hundreds of thousands of dollars were raised across the state. While Polis backed off the MeatOut after 2021, Denver Mayor Mike Johnston has, just this year, supported a similar “Eat Less Meat” campaign, prompting similar rural outrage.

Did I mention there are nearly 36,000 cattle in Elbert County? This is relatively typical of a rural Colorado county, particularly on the Plains.

In Colorado, 2.7 million cattle are raised annually, with a value of US$4.5 billion. The industry is consistently the top agricultural commodity and the second-largest contributor to Colorado’s GDP, at about $7.7 billion per year.

In early March 2021, Polis declared March 22 “Colorado Livestock Proud Day,” in response to the backlash.

Other policies

This came on the heels of several policies supported by Polis prior to the MeatOut controversy that critics considered anti-agriculture.

In 2020, he appointed Ellen Kessler, a vegan and animal rights activist, to the State Veterinary Board. Kessler criticized 4-H programs, designed to educate youth on agriculture and conservation, on her social media, insisting they “don’t teach children that animal lives matter.” Kessler resigned in March 2022, just days before she was cited for 13 counts of animal cruelty. More recently, in May 2025, Polis appointed Nicole Rosmarino to head the State Land Board. Rosmarino has ties to groups that oppose traditional agricultural practices, historically a key component of Colorado State Land Board operations.

Then came wolf reintroduction, passed by urban voters by just under 57,000 votes in the 2020 general election and supported by the governor. Those in support advocated for a return to natural biodiversity; wolves were hunted to extinction in the 1940s.

Rural residents voted decidedly against the initiative. Despite much legislative and grassroots action to oppose it, wolves were reintroduced in December 2023 in various areas along the Western Slope, in close proximity to many ranches. Several cattle have since been killed by wolves. Ever since, rural interests have been working to overturn wolf reintroduction on the 2026 ballot.

An American mess

Rural residents in Colorado have told me they feel excluded. This is not new or exclusive to Colorado, but a story as old as America itself.

University of Wisconsin political scientist Katherine J. Cramer wrote about this rural exclusion in Wisconsin, calling it “rural resentment.” Berkeley sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild called it “stolen pride.” In their book, Tom Schaller, a political scientist at the University of Maryland, and Paul Waldman, a longtime journalist, characterize it as “white rural rage.”

It’s a dynamic that descends from slavery. Isabel Wilkerson, in her book “Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents,” demonstrates that while Black Americans have historically been relegated to the bottom of the hierarchy of an American caste system, poor white people are strategically positioned just above them but below white Americans of higher socioeconomic status. As Wilkerson explains, this is a durable system sustained by norms, laws and cultural expectations that feel “natural.” But they are entirely constructed and designed by the American upper class to intentionally exploit resentment of working-class white people.

The result is what sociologist Michael M. Bell calls a “spatial patriarchy” that characterizes rural America as dumb, incapable, racist, poor and degraded as “white trash.”

This spatial patriarchy is as old as industrialization and urbanization. One of the first policy iterations was rural school consolidation during the turn of the 20th century, designed to modernize schools and make them more efficient. Urban policymakers were influenced by eugenics and the assumption that rural schools “were populated by cognitively deficient children whose parents had not been smart enough or fortunate enough to leave the decaying countryside,” according to sociologist Alex DeYoung.

So, states around the country consolidated schools, the lifeblood of rural communities. Where a school closed, the town often died, as in small towns, schools are not just socioeconomic hubs but centers of cultural and social cohesion.

Environmental impact

The same concept – that urban policymakers know better than rural Americans – is manifest in the modern environmental movement. Like with the MeatOut, rural communities also distrust environmental policies that, in their view, intentionally target a rural way of life. Rural communities take the position that they’ve been made to bear the brunt of the transformations of the global economy for generations, including those that deal with energy and the environment.

For example, environmentalists frequently call for lowering meat consumption and enacting livestock taxes to lower global greenhouse gas emissions.

But, there’s a huge, untapped potential for environmental policies that use language consistent with rural attitudes and values, such as ideas about conservation and land stewardship. Political scientists Richard H. Foster and Mark K. McBeth explain, “Rural residents perceive, probably correctly, that environmental ‘outsiders’ are perfectly willing to sacrifice local economic well-being and traditional ways of life on the altar of global environmental concerns.” They instead suggest “emphasizing saving resources for future generations” so that rural communities may continue to thrive.

The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations attribute between 18% to 24% of greenhouse gas emissions to agriculture, while the International Panel on Climate Change places the estimate closer to 10%. However, agricultural producers point out that, while they may be responsible for that 10%, just 100 companies, such as BP and ExxonMobil, have produced 70% of all emissions. Agricultural producers say policies such as livestock taxes would disproportionately impact small-scale farmers and intensify rural inequality.

Rural communities have the distinct feeling that urban America doesn’t care whether they fail or flourish. Nearly 70% of rural voters supported Trump in the 2024 presidential election. He won 93% of rural counties. Rural Americans feel left behind, and for them, Trump might be their last hope.

Kayla Gabehart 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. Why rural Coloradans feel ignored − a resentment as old as America itself – https://theconversation.com/why-rural-coloradans-feel-ignored-a-resentment-as-old-as-america-itself-260894

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Brendan Cantwell, Professor of Higher, Adult, and Lifelong Education, Michigan State University

The Trump administration and Harvard University are reportedly close to reaching a settlement that would require Harvard to pay US$500 million in exchange for the government releasing frozen federal funding and ending an investigation into antisemitism on campus.

This follows similar deals the White House struck with Columbia University and Brown University in July 2025. Both of those universities agreed to undertake campus reforms and pay a large sum – more than $200 million in the case of Columbia and $50 million for Brown – in order to receive federal funding that the Trump administration was withholding. The White House originally froze funding after saying that these universities had created unsafe environments for Jewish students during Palestinian rights protests on campus in 2024.

As a scholar of higher education politics, I examined the various deals the Trump administration made with some universities. When Harvard announces its deal, it will be informative to see what is different – or the same.

I believe the Columbia and Brown deals can be used as a blueprint for Trump’s plans for higher education. They show how the government wants to drive cultural reform on campus by giving the government more oversight over universities and imposing punishments for what it sees as previous wrongdoing.

Here are four key things to understand about the deals:

1. Antisemitism isn’t a major feature of the agreements

The Trump White House accused Brown and Columbia of tolerating antisemitism during campus protests. But the administration neither followed federal standards for investigating antisemitism, nor did it dictate specific reforms to protect Jewish students.

Ahead of its deal, Columbia in March 2025 adopted a new, broader definition of antisemitism that was created by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance. The United Nations and most European Union countries also use this definition.

Yet the school’s 22-page deal mentions antisemitism only once, where it says Columbia is required to hire an additional staff member to support Jewish students’ welfare.

Brown’s deal, meanwhile, did not involve the university adopting a particular definition of antisemitism. But Brown did commit to offering “research and education about Israel, and a robust Program in Judaic Studies.” Brown already hosts a Judaic Studies program, and it is unclear from the agreement’s text what additional measures are required.

The deals also extend well beyond antisemitism concerns and into questions of gender and the composition of student bodies.

Columbia agreed to provide “single-sex” housing and sports facilities, for example. The university has an optional Open Housing program that allows mixed-gender roommates and several gender-neutral restrooms.

This places the school in line with Donald Trump’s January executive order that says a person’s gender is based on their sex as assigned at birth.

Brown’s deal also requires single-sex sports and housing facilities. In addition, Brown committed to using definitions of men and women that match Trump’s executive order.

Columbia, which enrolls about 40% of its students from other countries, also agreed to “decrease financial dependence on international student enrollment.”

The Brown deal says nothing about international education.

2. Both deals are expensive but vague about financial details.

Columbia must pay a fine of more than $200 million to the federal government, while Brown will make $50 million in donations to Rhode Island workforce development programs.

In both cases, it is not clear where the money will go or how it will be used.

Congress passed The Clery Act in 1990, creating a legal framework for fining campuses that failed to protect students’ safety.

Since then, the government has reached different settlements with universities.

Liberty University, in Lynchburg, Virginia, was required to pay the federal government $14 million in 2024, for example, for failing to investigate sexual assault allegations.

But Columbia’s payment is far larger than any previous university and government settlement. Columbia will make three payments of about $66 million into the Treasury Department over three years, according to The Chronicle of Higher Education. But it isn’t clear how the money will exactly be spent and what will happen after those three years, The Chronicle of Higher Education reported in August 2025.

Only Congress can legally decide how to spend Treasury Department funds. But Trump has ignored Congress’ appropriation directives on a number of occasions.

Brown, meanwhile, will not pay the government anything. Instead, its deal will go “to state workforce development organizations operating in compliance with anti-discrimination laws, over the ten years.”

The Brown deal doesn’t say what qualifies as qualified workforce development organizations.

3. Trump wants to influence university admissions.

While the Brown and Columbia deals have several differences, the agreements have nearly identical language giving the Trump administration oversight of the way they admit students.

The deals say that the universities must provide the government with detailed information about who applied to the schools and was admitted, broken down by grades and test scores, as well as race and ethnicity. The government could then conduct a “comprehensive audit” of the schools, based on this information.

This information could also be used to determine if universities are showing a preferences for students of color. Without providing evidence, conservative activists have alleged that selective colleges discriminate against white people and that this is a violation of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Experts have said that these reporting requirements appear to be intended to increase the number of white students admitted to Ivy League schools.

4. The deals could open more doors to federal intrusion.

Claire Shipman, Columbia’s acting president, said in July that the deal would allow the university’s “research partnership with the federal government to get back on track.”

Christina Paxson, Brown’s president, also defended the agreement in a statement, writing that it “enables us as a community to move forward after a period of considerable uncertainty in a way that ensures Brown will continue to be the Brown that our students, faculty, staff, alumni, parents and friends have known for generations.”

But the deals could invite more scrutiny from the federal government.

Both deals spell out the government’s right to open new investigations against Brown and Columbia, or to reopen old complaints if the administration is not satisfied with how the universities are implementing the agreement.

Trump is now pressuring Harvard, UCLA and other universities to strike deals, also based on similar antisemitism allegations.

The White House announced on Aug. 8 that it could seize the research patents, worth hundreds of millions of dollars, that Harvard holds. Since 1980, universities have been able to legally hold, and profit from, patents resulting from federally funded research.

The federal government has long influenced higher education through funding and regulation. But the government has never tried to dictate what happens on campus before now.

Higher education experts like me believe that political goals now drive the way the government approaches higher education. Some of Trump’s conservative allies are now urging the president to go even further, saying “we have every right to renegotiate the terms of the compact with the universities.”

Given these and other pressure tactics, academics who study the law and government warn that the university deals indicate encroaching authoritarianism.

Brendan Cantwell 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. Exactly what is in the Ivy League deals with the Trump administration – and how they compare – https://theconversation.com/exactly-what-is-in-the-ivy-league-deals-with-the-trump-administration-and-how-they-compare-262912

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Andrew A. Schwartz, DeMuth Chair of Business Law, University of Colorado Boulder

Imagine you invest US$500 to help a startup get off the ground through investment crowdfunding. The pitch is slick, the platform feels trustworthy and the company quickly raises its target amount from hundreds of people just like you. Then – silence. No updates, no financials, not even a thank-you.

You’ve been ghosted – not by a friend, but by a company you helped fund.

This isn’t just an unlucky anecdote. It’s happening across the United States. And while it may violate federal law, there’s little enforcement – and virtually no consequences.

Thanks to a 2012 law, startups can raise up to US$5 million per year from the general public through online platforms such as Wefunder or StartEngine. The law was intended to “democratize” investing and give regular people, not just the wealthy, a chance to back promising young companies.

But there’s a catch: Companies that raise money this way are required to file an annual report with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and post it publicly. This report, intended to show whether the business is making progress and how it is using investor funds, is a cornerstone of accountability in the system.

As a professor of business law, I wrote the book on investment crowdfunding. And in my recent research, I found that a majority of crowdfunded companies simply ignore this rule. They raise the money and go silent, leaving investors in the dark.

In most cases, I suspect their silence isn’t part of an elaborate con. More likely, the founders never realized they had to file, forgot about the requirement amid the chaos of running a young business, or shut down entirely. But whether it’s innocent oversight or deliberate avoidance, the effect on investors is the same: no information, no accountability.

This kind of vanishing act would be unthinkable for public companies listed on the stock market. But in the world of investment crowdfunding, limited oversight means that going silent, whatever the reason, is all too easy.

It’s not just 1 or 2 victims

When startups go dark, they don’t just leave their investors behind – they undermine the entire crowdfunding model.

Investment crowdfunding was meant to be an accessible, transparent way to support innovation. But when companies ghost their backers, the relationship starts to look less like an investment and more like a donation.

It’s not just unethical – it’s illegal. Federal law requires at least one annual update. But so far, enforcement has been almost nonexistent.

Concerned state attorneys general have encouraged the SEC to ramp up enforcement actions. This could work in theory, but it’s unrealistic in practice, given the SEC’s limited resources and broad mission.

If nothing changes, the crowdfunding experiment could collapse under the weight of mistrust.

Incentives work − let’s use them

Fortunately, there’s a low-cost solution.

I propose that crowdfunding platforms hold back 1% of the capital raised until the company files its first required report. If it complies, it gets the funds. If not, it doesn’t.

It’s a small but powerful incentive that could nudge companies into doing the right thing, without adding bureaucratic complexity.

It’s the same principle used in escrow arrangements, which are common in finance. In a home sale, for example, part of the money goes into a neutral holding account – escrow – until the seller meets certain agreed conditions. Only then is it released. Applying that approach here, a small slice of crowdfunding proceeds would stay in escrow until the company files its first annual report. No report, no release.

Unfortunately, crowdfunding platforms are unlikely to adopt this voluntarily. They compete with one another for deal flow, and any rule that makes fundraising slightly harder at one platform could send startups to a rival site.

However, the SEC has the legal authority to update its rules, and this change would be easy to implement – no new laws, no congressional fights, just a bit of regulatory will. I’ve even drafted a proposed rule, ready-made for the SEC to adopt, and published it in my recent article, Ghosting the Crowd.

The idea behind investment crowdfunding remains powerful: Open the door to entrepreneurship and investment for everyone. But if that door leads to silence and broken promises, trust will disappear – and with it, a promising financial innovation.

A tiny tweak to the rules could restore that trust. Without it, investors will keep getting ghosted. And the market might ghost them right back.

Andrew A. Schwartz 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. Crowdfunded companies are ‘ghosting’ their investors – and getting away with it – https://theconversation.com/crowdfunded-companies-are-ghosting-their-investors-and-getting-away-with-it-261346

Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By Ilana Horwitz, Assistant Professor of Jewish Studies and Sociology, Tulane University

Students at elite universities tend to talk a good game when it comes to religious pluralism. Many of them show up on day one already saying all the right things about respecting different faiths.

But here’s the paradox: They don’t grow from there, according to our research published in The Journal of Higher Education. Students at less selective colleges, meanwhile, do develop more pluralistic attitudes. And by their fourth year, they participate in interfaith activities, such as taking courses about different religions or joining in interfaith dialogues, just as much as anyone else.

Religious pluralism goes beyond tolerance or diversity, which are simply coexisting with people of different faiths. Pluralism involves actively seeking to understand other traditions, talking with people from other backgrounds and working with them toward common goals.

As scholars of religion and education, we worked with sociologist of education David Shuang Song to study how students’ attitudes and actions change over time. We examined data from more than 3,100 students at 112 colleges, using the Interfaith Diversity Experiences and Attitudes Longitudinal Survey. Our study tracked students for four years, measuring two things: their attitudes about appreciating different faiths, and their actual participation in interfaith activities.

Our study revealed three findings.

First, freshmen at highly selective schools – institutions that typically admit fewer than 1 in 5 applicants – often start with stronger support for religious pluralism. Compared with freshmen at less selective schools, they are more likely to agree with questions like “I respect people who have religious or nonreligious perspectives that differ from my own,” though the difference was modest.

Second, fourth-year students at less selective schools showed more pluralistic attitudes than at the start of college. In contrast, students at elite institutions maintained their high initial attitudes without any measurable change.

Third, students at all types of institutions participated in more interfaith activities by the end of college, on average, with less selective schools showing slightly larger gains. That might mean attending services of different faiths, taking courses about other religions or joining dialogue groups.

The bottom line: At less selective colleges, students tended to develop stronger attitudes about religious pluralism, and they also increased their interfaith activities. At elite colleges, students increased their activities, but their attitudes more often remained flat.

Why it matters

The United States is growing more religiously diverse – with growing numbers of non-Christian and nonreligious adults – and more divided across religious lines. Antisemitic and Islamophobic incidents have surged over the past few years, including on college campuses. All of this makes it especially urgent that colleges prepare students to bridge divides.

Our findings reveal an interesting paradox: Elite institutions admit students who already express strong support for religious pluralism on surveys. On average, however, students’ attitudes don’t deepen during college, although their interfaith activities do increase somewhat.

And students’ answers to questions about pluralism don’t necessarily demonstrate genuine commitment. For example, these attitudes may be part of how some elite students learn to seem culturally sophisticated – voicing ideals they associate with being open-minded, cosmopolitan and educated.

The findings may challenge assumptions about where meaningful education about diversity occurs. On average, less selective institutions, which educate most college students, begin with students less inclined toward pluralism. Yet in general, we found that these schools successfully foster growth in both attitudes and behavior – particularly when interfaith programs are integrated into everyday campus life and curriculum. All colleges can challenge students through experiences like interfaith events, research projects or internships.

What’s next

Today’s college students are tomorrow’s civic leaders, educators, policymakers and professionals. If institutions are struggling to cultivate the skills students need to have conversations and collaborate with people from diverse religious backgrounds, the cultural divides that already fracture our democracy are at risk of deepening.

We believe colleges must go beyond performative pluralism to foster the habits of curiosity, humility and collaboration. Pluralism isn’t just a campus value. It’s a civic necessity.

The Research Brief is a short take on interesting academic work.

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. The paradox of pluralism: How college shapes students’ views of other religions – https://theconversation.com/the-paradox-of-pluralism-how-college-shapes-students-views-of-other-religions-261901