Category: The Conversation – USA

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Kevin B. Smith, Professor of Political Science, University of Nebraska-Lincoln

If you gathered every American with a prison record into one contiguous territory and admitted it to the union, you would create the 12th-largest state. It would be home to at least 7 million to 8 million people and hold a dozen votes in the Electoral College.

In a close presidential race, this hypothetical state of the formerly incarcerated could decide who wins the White House.

It may sound far-fetched to conceive of former felons determining the outcome of a presidential election, not by voting but by failing to vote. But there’s a real chance they already have – not just once, but twice. That’s in addition to affecting the outcomes of some U.S. Senate and gubernatorial elections.

I am a political scientist with a long-standing interest in the question of why mass incarceration rates vary so widely across states. My 2024 book, “The Jailer’s Reckoning,” explores that question and measures its political, social and economic impacts.

One of my findings is that the sheer number of people who’ve cycled through prisons over the past 40 years is influencing election outcomes.

Scholars vigorously debate the reasons why the United States locks up more of its citizens than any other liberal democracy, or even most authoritarian regimes. Less examined are the consequences of this decades-long social experiment in mass incarceration.

The consequences, however, likely include affecting the results of close elections. Incarceration certainly plays a key role in depressing voter turnout, which lags, in no small part, because felony convictions have made so many people ineligible.

Mass incarceration has led to a fast-growing bloc of citizens who either are legally barred from voting or have just stopped bothering. Under the right circumstances, this slice of the electorate is large enough to tip an election.

Imprisonment and the franchise

Felony conviction reduces political engagement, sometimes entirely. Inmates are legally barred from voting in all but two states, Maine and Vermont. Ten states bar ex-felons from voting either permanently or for some period of time, depending on the crime, absent unusual circumstances such as a governor’s pardon.

In Idaho, Oklahoma and Texas, a criminal record means that as many as 1 in 10 citizens are ineligible to vote. Among Black Americans, that number can jump to 1 in 5.

However, even when legally eligible, ex-convicts rarely exercise the right to vote. Turnout rates among this population may be as low as 10%. Contact with the criminal justice system lowers political trust, which in turn reduces the likelihood of political engagement among ex-convicts.

Although scholars debate the exact partisan tilt of this potential constituency, there’s a consensus that it is disproportionately Democratic. The upper end of estimates suggest that if this group showed up to the polls, 70% would cast ballots for Democrats.

Even estimates that are much lower sketch a picture of an alternative political world. In 2000, roughly 7% of Florida’s 11.7 million voting-age residents were disenfranchised due to past convictions. They represented about 800,000 potential voters.

If 10% of them had voted and, say, 55% voted Democratic for president, that would have translated to a 6,000-vote swing for Vice President Al Gore. In reality, Texas Gov. George W. Bush won the state – and with it the presidency – by 537 votes.

Florida Republicans Ron DeSantis and Rick Scott may have owed their initial, tight gubernatorial victories to felony disenfranchisement, since the outcomes could have been much different if former felons had the franchise.

In 2018, Florida voters did approve a constitutional amendment to restore voting rights automatically to most former felons. But a subsequent law requiring felons to pay off fines and fees has kept nearly 1 million Floridians from being able to vote, according to the Sentencing Project, a group that opposes mass incarceration.

An electorate in the shadows

Serving time behind bars or having a felony record is not a social anomaly. It is an increasingly normalized feature of American life.

The most careful scholarly estimate suggests that at least 20 million Americans have served time in prison or lived under felony supervision, or both. That’s now a conservative estimate, as it is based on 2010 data.

Given their lack of voting habits, the millions of people in this group constitute a vast shadow electorate, far larger than the roughly 2% of American citizens legally ineligible to vote due to being currently incarcerated.

These disenfranchised or absent voters are a quiet force with the potential to reshape American democracy. The statistical models in my book show that in statewide races this constituency represents roughly a 1- or 2-percentage-point swing.

That might not sound like much, and in single-party strongholds it is not. In genuinely competitive statewide elections, however, a percentage point or two can be decisive.

Consider the 2016 presidential election. That year, the Electoral College outcome was decided by Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Donald Trump won all three states by less than a percentage point. Again, the outcome could easily have been different if voting rights for former felons were a given.

Kevin B. Smith 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. The nation is missing millions of voters due to lack of rights for former felons – https://theconversation.com/the-nation-is-missing-millions-of-voters-due-to-lack-of-rights-for-former-felons-273328

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Nina Srinivasan Rathbun, Professor of International Relations, Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy, University of Toronto; USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences

Three rounds of nuclear talks between the U.S. and Iran failed to persuade President Donald Trump that a solution to the two country’s nuclear impasse lay in diplomacy, rather than military action. A perceived lack of progress in the last of those indirect negotiations on Feb 26, 2026, was enough to prompt Trump to green-light a massive onslaught of missiles that has degraded Iran’s offensive capabilities and killed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and several members of Iran’s senior military leadership.

In response, Tehran has launched strikes across the Middle East, targeting Israel as well as Gulf states that host U.S. airbases. At least three Americans have been killed.

While the scale of the U.S., Israeli and Iranian strikes has taken some observers by surprise, the failure of the talks that led to them was all too predictable.

For diplomacy to be successful, both sides need to agree on the issues subject to negotiation and also believe that peaceful resolution is more valuable than military engagement. This clearly was not the case in the U.S.-Iran nuclear talks of 2025 and 2026.

As someone who has researched nonproliferation and U.S. national security for two decades and was involved in State Department nuclear diplomacy, I know that even under more favorable conditions, negotiations often fail. And the chances for success in the Iran-U.S. talks were always slim. In fact, publicly stated red lines by both sides were incompatible with each other – meaning negotiations were always likely to fail.

Iran wanted the talks confined only to guarantees about the civilian purpose of its nuclear program, not its missile program, support of regional proxy groups or human rights abuses. Essentially it wanted a return to 2015’s Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, which halted Iran’s development of nuclear technology and stockpiling of nuclear material in exchange for lifting multiple international economic sanctions placed on Iran.

Meanwhile, Trump insisted on limits to Iran’s ballistic missiles and the cutting of Tehran’s support for regional militias. These were not included in the 2015 agreement, with parties ultimately deciding that a nuclear deal was better than the alternative of no deal at all.

False hope

Nevertheless, there had been a slim chance for a breakthrough of late.

While the positions of both the U.S. and Iranian governments had ossified since May 8, 2018 – the date when the first Trump administration withdrew the United States from the Obama-era Iran nuclear deal – there had been some recent movement by Iran, according to former U.S. diplomats involved in negotiations during the Obama and Biden administrations.

With U.S. military building up in the region, Iran appeared more willing to negotiate within the nuclear arena than before. There were plausible solutions to the issue of Iran’s enrichment of uranium capabilities, including maintaining a minimum domestic capacity to develop medical isotopes and a removal of Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium necessary to build a nuclear bomb.

There was less openness on other points of contention. Notably, there was no movement on ballistic missiles, which had always been a red line. On the eve of the round of discussions held in Geneva on Feb. 17, Trump stated: “I think they want to make a deal.” Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, noted progress over the “guiding principles” of the talks.

But a lot of this optimism appeared to have dissipated by the time the two sides held another round of talks on Feb. 26. While mediator Oman’s negotiators continued to talk of progress, the U.S. side was noticeably silent. Reporting since has suggested that Trump was displeased with the way the talks had gone, setting the stage for the Feb. 28 attack.

Military brinkmanship

The threat of military action was, of course, a continued backdrop to the talks.

The USS Abraham Lincoln carrier group was deployed near Iranian waters in January as a signal of support to the Iranian protesters. The USS Gerald R Ford carrier group joined the buildup before the last round of talks.

Trump warned Iran that “if they don’t make a deal, the consequences are very steep.”

The thinking may have been that Iran, weakened by both the June 2025 U.S.-Israeli strikes and diminished capabilities of Tehran proxies Hamas and Hezbollah, was playing a weak hand in the talks.

Yet Iran also signaled a willingness to engage in military action. In the run-up to the last round of talks, Iran held military exercises and closed the Strait of Hormuz for a live-fire drill. Leaders in Tehran also declared that they would not restrain its response to another attack. The world is seeing that now, with a response that has seen Iran launch missiles across the Middle East and at rival Gulf nations.

Optimism has fallen before

Trump isn’t the first president to fail to secure a nuclear deal, although he is the first to respond to that failure with military action.

The Biden administration publicly pledged to strengthen and renew the Obama-era nuclear deal in 2021. However, Iran had significantly increased its nuclear technical capability during the years that had passed since the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action collapsed. That increased the difficulty – just to return to the previous deal would have required Iran to give up the new technical capability it had achieved for no new benefits.

That window closed in 2022 after Iran removed all of the International Atomic Energy Agency’s surveillance and monitoring under the deal and started enriching uranium to near-weapons levels and stockpiling sufficient amounts for several nuclear weapons. The IAEA, the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog, maintains only normal safeguards that Iran had agreed to before the plan of action.

Optimism also existed for a short time in spring 2025 during five rounds of indirect talks that preceded the United States bombing Iran’s nuclear infrastructure in June as part of a broader Israeli attack.

A more unstable Middle East

When I worked in multilateral nuclear diplomacy for the U.S. State Department, we saw talks fail in 2009 regarding North Korea’s nuclear weapons program, after six years of on-and-off progress. The consequence of that failure is a more unstable East Asia and renewed interest by South Korea in developing nuclear weapons.

Unfortunately, the same dynamic appears to be playing out in the Middle East.

Military strikes have already killed more than 200 in Iran and across the region. A wider war in the Middle East is a possibility, and should the Iranian regime survive, it may commit to developing nuclear weapons given that the lack of them proved no deterrent to U.S. and Israeli military action.

Talks do not necessarily need an end point – in the shape of a deal – for them to have purpose. Under situations of increased military brinkmanship, talks could have helped the U.S. and Iran step back from the edge, build trust and perhaps develop better political relations – even if an actual deal remained out of reach.

Instead, Trump opted to go a different route.

This article includes sections originally published by The Conversation U.S. on Feb. 17, 2026.

Nina Srinivasan Rathbun 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. Failure of US-Iran talks was all-too predictable – but Trump could still have stuck with diplomacy over strikes – https://theconversation.com/failure-of-us-iran-talks-was-all-too-predictable-but-trump-could-still-have-stuck-with-diplomacy-over-strikes-277209

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Jae A. Puckett, Associate Professor of Psychology, Michigan State University

The number of bills directly targeting and undermining the existing legal rights of transgender and nonbinary people in the U.S. has been escalating, with sharp increases since 2021 and with each consecutive year. Kansas dealt the most radical blow yet on Feb. 26, 2026, as a law that immediately invalidates state-issued driver’s licenses, identification cards and birth certificates for holders whose gender marker does not match their sex assigned at birth took effect overnight.

This new law, called the House Substitute for Senate Bill 244, passed after legislators overrode the governor’s veto to rush it through legislation.

There is no grace period for this law, meaning trans and nonbinary people will have immediately invalid documents putting them at risk of a US$1,000 fine and up to six months in jail for driving with an invalid license. The law also restricts bathroom use to assigned sex at birth, and it allows citizens to sue transgender people for up to $1,000 for not complying.

While 21 states have passed similar bathroom restrictions, Kansas is the first to invalidate state-issued identification documents that were legally obtained.

We are researchers who study how marginalization and resilience affect the lives of trans and nonbinary people. Our work has documented how lack of access to accurate and affirming identification documents affects the health and well-being of this community.

By mandating the use of birth-assigned sex on identity documents, Kansas denies transgender people legal recognition and curtails their freedom of movement. These laws open the door to an even wider range of discriminatory policies.

ID is essential to participate in society

Invalidating someone’s identification documents has immediate and powerful consequences that cascade into all aspects of their life.

For example, without a valid driver’s license, many trans and nonbinary people will be unable to get to work, attend classes, pick up their children, visit the doctor, see friends or go to the grocery store. Trans and nonbinary people who need to drive with an invalid license risk fines and jail time, where they would be housed according to their sex assigned at birth.

Taking a train or bus is not a solution that would work for many people. Almost half of the U.S. population does not have access to public transportation, and for those who do, it is often poorly maintained, sparse or unreliable. The two transgender men who sued the state of Kansas to block the law noted how loss of their ability to drive makes them unable to work.

The effects of invalidating someone’s legal documents goes far beyond just transportation. Legal IDs are required to access health care, obtain housing, have a job, vote, attend college, access financial assistance or even purchase cold medicine at a pharmacy.

Health effects of incorrect ID

Not having identification documents with the correct gender marker also poses a safety and health risk.

Trans and nonbinary people who have not updated their identification documents are more likely to experience psychological distress and suicidality, in part due to increased day-to-day stress. For trans and nonbinary people whose physical appearance no longer aligns with their ID, not having updated documents puts them at increased risk for harassment and violence.

Roughly a quarter of trans and nonbinary people who have not updated their identification documents experience subsequent mistreatment when showing their IDs, including verbal harassment, assault and denial of services or access to settings. In our research, we similarly found that not having one’s gender legally affirmed is associated with greater discrimination and social rejection – one pathway to negative effects on mental and physical health.

To comply with the current law sets up an impossible situation for many trans and nonbinary people who have been using the restroom aligning with their gender identity and presentation for years. These individuals are set up to face violence, legal action or criminal penalties even when they are complying with the law, as using the restroom aligned with their sex assigned at birth will appear to others as contradicting their gender presentation.

Researchers and public health officials consider accurate and affirming identification documents an essential determinant of health. The World Health Organization, United Nations and the World Professional Association for Transgender Health have called for trans and nonbinary people to have the right to legal recognition of their gender.

Another blow in a broader battle

The Kansas law is a flash point in the ongoing battle across the country for legal recognition of trans and nonbinary people’s existence.

The process for gender marker changes varies widely across states. Some require documentation of medical procedures to affirm one’s gender, while some do not allow gender marker changes at all. Some allow for gender-neutral gender markers, like the letter X.

According to the 2022 U.S. Trans Survey, which had over 92,000 participants, 59% of trans and nonbinary people have not updated their gender on any of their documents, and 23% have some of their documents updated but not others. This law and others like it will disadvantage even more trans and nonbinary people.

To us, this is about more than access to driving a car – it is a direct attack on the ability of trans and nonbinary people to live and survive. As of February 2026, 711 bills are under consideration across 41 states, with 110 at the national level. The restrictions these bills propose are far-reaching – prohibiting access to gender-affirming medical care, prohibiting students from using their chosen names and pronouns, banning trans and nonbinary youth from participating in sports, restricting access to bathroom facilities and censoring public education on issues related to gender.

In the face of these legislative efforts to control and erase trans and nonbinary people from public life, trans and nonbinary people, along with their allies, continue to stand up for each other and fight for their rights.

Jae A. Puckett co-leads the Gender Affirmation Project.

Noelle Martin is affiliated with the Gender Affirmation Project.

L. Zachary DuBois 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. Kansas revoked transgender people’s IDs overnight – researchers anticipate cascading health and social consequences – https://theconversation.com/kansas-revoked-transgender-peoples-ids-overnight-researchers-anticipate-cascading-health-and-social-consequences-277052

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Donald Heflin, Executive Director of the Edward R. Murrow Center and Senior Fellow of Diplomatic Practice, The Fletcher School, Tufts University

After the largest buildup of U.S. warships and aircraft in the Middle East in decades, American and Israeli military forces launched a massive assault on Iran on Feb. 28, 2026.

President Donald Trump has called the attacks “major combat operations” and has urged regime change in Tehran. Iranian media reported Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed in the strikes.

To better understand what this means for the U.S. and Iran, Alfonso Serrano, a U.S. politics editor at The Conversation, interviewed Donald Heflin, a veteran diplomat who now teaches at Tufts University’s Fletcher School.

Widespread attacks have been reported across Iran, following weeks of U.S. military buildup in the region. What does the scale of the attacks tell you?

I think that Trump and his administration are going for regime change with these massive strikes and with all the ships and some troops in the area. I think there will probably be a couple more days’ worth of strikes. They’ll start off with the time-honored strategy of attacking what’s known as command and control, the nerve centers for controlling Iran’s military. From media reporting, we already know that the residence of Khamenei was attacked.

What is the U.S. strategic end game here?

Regime change is going to be difficult. We heard Trump today call for the Iranian people to bring the government down. In the first place, that’s difficult. It’s hard for people with no arms in their hands to bring down a very tightly controlled regime that has a lot of arms.

The second point is that U.S. history in that area of the world is not good with this. You may recall that during the Gulf War of 1990-1991, the U.S. basically encouraged the Iraqi people to rise up, and then made its own decision not to attack Baghdad, to stop short. And that has not been forgotten in Iraq or surrounding countries. I would be surprised if we saw a popular uprising in Iran that really had a chance of bringing the regime down.

Do you see the possibility of U.S. troops on the ground to bring about regime change?

I will stick my neck out here and say that’s not going to happen. I mean, there may be some small special forces sent in. That’ll be kept quiet for a while. But as far as large numbers of U.S. troops, no, I don’t think it’s going to happen.

Two reasons. First off, any president would feel that was extremely risky. Iran’s a big country with a big military. The risks you would be taking are large amounts of casualties, and you may not succeed in what you’re trying to do.

But Trump, in particular, despite the military strike against Iran and the one against Venezuela, is not a big fan of big military interventions and war. He’s a guy who will send in fighter planes and small special forces units, but not 10,000 or 20,000 troops.

And the reason for that is, throughout his career, he does well with a little bit of chaos. He doesn’t mind creating a little bit of chaos and figuring out a way to make a profit on the other side of that. War is too much chaos. It’s really hard to predict what the outcome is going to be, what all the ramifications are going to be. Throughout his first term and the first year of his second term, he has shown no inclination to send ground troops anywhere.

Speaking of President Trump, what are the risks he faces?

One risk is going on right now, which is that the Iranians may get lucky or smart and manage to attack a really good target and kill a lot of people, like something in Jerusalem or Tel Aviv or a U.S. military base.

The second risk is that the attacks don’t work, that the supreme leader and whoever else is considered the political leadership of Iran survives, and the U.S. winds up with egg on its face.

The third risk is that it works to a certain extent. You take out the top people, but then who steps into their shoes? I mean, go back and look at Venezuela. Most people would have thought that who was going to wind up winning at the end of that was the head of the opposition. But it wound up being the vice president of the old regime, Delcy Rodríguez.

I can see a similar scenario in Iran. The regime has enough depth to survive the death of several of its leaders. The thing to watch will be who winds up in the top jobs, hardliners or realists. But the only institution in Iran strong enough to succeed them is the army, the Revolutionary Guards in particular. Would that be an improvement for the U.S.? It depends on what their attitude was. The same attitude that the vice president of Venezuela has been taking, which is, “Look, this is a fact of life. We better negotiate with the Americans and figure out some way forward we can both live with.”

But these guys are pretty hardcore revolutionaries. I mean, Iran has been under revolutionary leadership for 47 years. All these guys are true believers. I don’t know if we’ll be able to work with them.

Any last thoughts?

I think the timing is interesting. If you go back to last year, Trump, after being in office a little and watching the situation between Israel and Gaza, was given an opening, when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attacked Qatar.

A lot of conservative Mideast regimes, who didn’t have a huge problem with Israel, essentially said “That’s going too far.” And Trump was able to use that as an excuse. He was able to essentially say, “Okay, you’ve gone too far. You’re really taking risk with world peace. Everybody’s gonna sit at the table.”

I think the same thing’s happening here. I believe many countries would love to see regime change in Iran. But you can’t go into the country and say, “We don’t like the political leadership being elected. We’re going to get rid of them for you.” What often happens in that situation is people begin to rally around the flag. They begin to rally around the government when the bombs start falling.

But in the last few months, we’ve seen a huge human rights crackdown in Iran. We may never know the number of people the Iranian regime killed in the last few months, but 10,000 to 15,000 protesters seems a minimum.

That’s the excuse Trump can use. You can sell it to the Iranian people and say, “Look, they’re killing you in the streets. Forget about your problems with Israel and the U.S. and everything. They’re real, but you’re getting killed in the streets, and that’s why we’re intervening.” It’s a bit of a fig leaf.

Now, as I said earlier, the problem with this is if your next line is, “You know, we’re going to really soften this regime up with bombs; now it’s your time to go out in the streets and bring the regime down.” I may eat these words, but I don’t think that’s going to happen. The regime is just too strong for it to be brought down by bare hands.

This article was updated on Feb 28, 2026, to include confirmation of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s death.

Donald Heflin 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. Despite massive US attack and death of Ayatollah, regime change in Iran is unlikely – https://theconversation.com/despite-massive-us-attack-and-death-of-ayatollah-regime-change-in-iran-is-unlikely-277180

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Donald Heflin, Executive Director of the Edward R. Murrow Center and Senior Fellow of Diplomatic Practice, The Fletcher School, Tufts University

After the largest buildup of U.S. warships and aircraft in the Middle East in decades, American and Israeli military forces launched a massive assault on Iran on Feb. 28, 2026.

President Donald Trump has called the attacks “major combat operations” and has urged regime change in Tehran.

To better understand what this means for the U.S. and Iran, Alfonso Serrano, a U.S. politics editor at The Conversation, interviewed Donald Heflin, a veteran diplomat who now teaches at Tufts University’s Fletcher School.

Widespread attacks have been reported across Iran, following weeks of U.S. military buildup in the region. What does the scale of the attacks tell you?

I think that Trump and his administration are going for regime change with these massive strikes and with all the ships and some troops in the area. I think there will probably be a couple more days’ worth of strikes. They’ll start off with the time-honored strategy of attacking what’s known as command and control, the nerve centers for controlling Iran’s military. From media reporting, we already know that the residence of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was attacked.

What is the U.S. strategic end game here?

Regime change is going to be difficult. We heard Trump today call for the Iranian people to bring the government down. In the first place, that’s difficult. It’s hard for people with no arms in their hands to bring down a very tightly controlled regime that has a lot of arms.

The second point is that U.S. history in that area of the world is not good with this. You may recall that during the Gulf War of 1990-1991, the U.S. basically encouraged the Iraqi people to rise up, and then made its own decision not to attack Baghdad, to stop short. And that has not been forgotten in Iraq or surrounding countries. I would be surprised if we saw a popular uprising in Iran that really had a chance of bringing the regime down.

Do you see the possibility of U.S. troops on the ground to bring about regime change?

I will stick my neck out here and say that’s not going to happen. I mean, there may be some small special forces sent in. That’ll be kept quiet for a while. But as far as large numbers of U.S. troops, no, I don’t think it’s going to happen.

Two reasons. First off, any president would feel that was extremely risky. Iran’s a big country with a big military. The risks you would be taking are large amounts of casualties, and you may not succeed in what you’re trying to do.

But Trump, in particular, despite the military strike against Iran and the one against Venezuela, is not a big fan of big military interventions and war. He’s a guy who will send in fighter planes and small special forces units, but not 10,000 or 20,000 troops.

And the reason for that is, throughout his career, he does well with a little bit of chaos. He doesn’t mind creating a little bit of chaos and figuring out a way to make a profit on the other side of that. War is too much chaos. It’s really hard to predict what the outcome is going to be, what all the ramifications are going to be. Throughout his first term and the first year of his second term, he has shown no inclination to send ground troops anywhere.

Speaking of President Trump, what are the risks he faces?

One risk is going on right now, which is that the Iranians may get lucky or smart and manage to attack a really good target and kill a lot of people, like something in Jerusalem or Tel Aviv or a U.S. military base.

The second risk is that the attacks don’t work, that the supreme leader and whoever else is considered the political leadership of Iran survives, and the U.S. winds up with egg on its face.

The third risk is that it works to a certain extent. You take out the top people, but then who steps into their shoes? I mean, go back and look at Venezuela. Most people would have thought that who was going to wind up winning at the end of that was the head of the opposition. But it wound up being the vice president of the old regime, Delcy Rodríguez.

I can see a similar scenario in Iran, if Khamenei and a couple of other leaders were taken out. But the only institution in Iran strong enough to succeed them is the army, the Revolutionary Guards in particular. Would that be an improvement for the U.S.? It depends on what their attitude was. The same attitude that the vice president of Venezuela has been taking, which is, “Look, this is a fact of life. We better negotiate with the Americans and figure out some way forward we can both live with.”

But these guys are pretty hardcore revolutionaries. I mean, Iran has been under revolutionary leadership for 47 years. All these guys are true believers. I don’t know if we’ll be able to work with them.

Any last thoughts?

I think the timing is interesting. If you go back to last year, Trump, after being in office a little and watching the situation between Israel and Gaza, was given an opening, when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu attacked Qatar.

A lot of conservative Mideast regimes, who didn’t have a huge problem with Israel, essentially said “That’s going too far.” And Trump was able to use that as an excuse. He was able to essentially say, “Okay, you’ve gone too far. You’re really taking risk with world peace. Everybody’s gonna sit at the table.”

I think the same thing’s happening here. I believe many countries would love to see regime change in Iran. But you can’t go into the country and say, “We don’t like the political leadership being elected. We’re going to get rid of them for you.” What often happens in that situation is people begin to rally around the flag. They begin to rally around the government when the bombs start falling.

But in the last few months, we’ve seen a huge human rights crackdown in Iran. We may never know the number of people the Iranian regime killed in the last few months, but 10,000 to 15,000 protesters seems a minimum.

That’s the excuse Trump can use. You can sell it to the Iranian people and say, “Look, they’re killing you in the streets. Forget about your problems with Israel and the U.S. and everything. They’re real, but you’re getting killed in the streets, and that’s why we’re intervening.” It’s a bit of a fig leaf.

Now, as I said earlier, the problem with this is if your next line is, “You know, we’re going to really soften this regime up with bombs; now it’s your time to go out in the streets and bring the regime down.” I may eat these words, but I don’t think that’s going to happen. The regime is just too strong for it to be brought down by bare hands.

Donald Heflin 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. Massive US attacks on Iran unlikely to produce regime change in Tehran – https://theconversation.com/massive-us-attacks-on-iran-unlikely-to-produce-regime-change-in-tehran-277180

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Brendan Frizzell, PhD Student in Sociology, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences

Bad Bunny likes to remind the world where he and his music come from.

In “EoO,” a song from his 2025 album “DeBÍ TiRAR MáS FOToS,” he raps, “‘Tás escuchando música de Puerto Rico” (“You’re listening to music from Puerto Rico”). Similarly, in the album’s second track, “VOY A LLeVARTE PA PR,” he announces that both he and reggaeton were born in Puerto Rico: “Aquí nací yo y el reggaetón, pa’ que sepa’.”

Puerto Rican artists like Bad Bunny certainly helped popularize the genre. But they didn’t create it.

In my own research of Latin America, I’ve explored how reggaeton comes from the small Central American nation of Panama, where the sound emerged from a swirl of sonic influences that included Spanish conquistadors, Caribbean immigrants and American colonizers.

English and Spanish collide

Understanding reggaeton requires understanding the intermingling of cultures and languages that Panama experienced over a relatively short period of time.

After Panama gained its independence from Spain in 1821, it became part of Gran Colombia, which, at its peak, included modern-day Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador and Panama.

Throughout the 19th century, Panama experienced population growth and mass industrialization, and waves of Afro Caribbean immigrants arrived in northern Panama in search of economic opportunities. Since they came from former British colonies, many of them spoke English. Meanwhile, the many Afro Panamanians already living in the country, whose descendants had been trafficked as slaves, spoke Spanish.

These linguistic distinctions resulted in two primary groups of Black people in Panama: Spanish-speaking Afro Panamanians and English-speaking West Indians. They worked alongside one another on construction projects, such as the trans-Isthmus railroad, in the mid-19th century. But with their different languages, colonial histories and cultures, they didn’t always get along.

In 1903, Panama separated from Gran Colombia, becoming the independent nation we know today. The U.S. had supported Panama’s independence for strategic reasons: It wanted to build and control the Panama Canal to secure influence over maritime trade and military movement in the Western Hemisphere. While Gran Colombia had rebuffed earlier U.S. overtures, leaders of the newly independent Panama were more receptive to American interests.

Jim Crow is imported to the Canal Zone

Police brutality, exploitation and intra-racial and interracial tensions also served as scaffolding for reggaeton.

During the canal’s construction, the U.S. operated and controlled the Panama Canal Zone, a 553 square-mile (1,432 square-kilometer) parcel of land encompassing the canal. Up to 60,000 people lived there while the canal was being built, with residents segregated by race into “gold roll” and “silver roll” workers. Gold roll workers were usually white. Silver roll workers were Black, and they were tasked with the most dangerous jobs.

The Canal Zone’s white residents were far more likely to have access to health services and have proper sanitation; Afro Panamanian and immigrant workers from Barbados, the Antilles, Jamaica and other Caribbean countries were much more likely to be exposed to – and die from – malaria.

West Indians and Afro Panamanians also experienced police brutality. Black women, in particular, were harassed by white police officers, who often accused them of sex work.

While both West Indians and Afro Panamanians were subjected to segregation and police brutality, the Americans running the Canal Zone tended to treat the English-speaking West Indians better. Meanwhile, children born and raised in the Canal Zone were only taught English in schools, which Afro Panamanians resented.

These tensions led to the rise of “panameñismo,” a movement that sought to preserve and promote Spanish language and culture in Panama. This movement culminated in the passing of restrictive immigration laws targeted at West Indians and stripping second-generation West Indians of their citizenship.

Despite these anti-West Indian policies, many Jamaican, Barbadian and Antillean immigrants who had already built a life in Panama remained in the country even after the canal was completed in 1914.

Reggae with a Spanish twist

In the 1960s and 1970s, Jamaicans introduced three subgenres of reggae – mento, ska and dancehall – to Panama.

The lyrics were in English and Jamaican Patois, an English-based creole language. But it didn’t take long for an offshoot of reggae, “reggae en español,” to emerge. By the end of the 1970s, reggae en español had become popular in Panama and had spread throughout Latin America. Similarly, the nascent genre of hip-hop was gaining steam in the U.S. and eventually made its way to Panama, where an American presence had remained since the completion of the canal. It wasn’t until 1979 that the Canal Zone was abolished, and Panama did not have ownership over the canal until 2000.

It was out of this diverse mix of musical and linguistic influences that reggaeton was born, a genre that features the looping drum pattern – called “dembow riddim” – of Jamaican dancehall, the tropical vibe of reggae and a mixture of rapping and singing. Like reggae and hip-hop, reggaeton lyrics often emphasize Black solidarity and speak out against racial oppression and police violence.

The Panamanian artist Renato is credited with releasing the first reggaeton song, titled, “El D.E.N.I.,” in 1985.

The D.E.N.I. – an acronym for the Departamento Nacional de Investigaciones, or National Department of Investigations – was a tool of repression for Panama’s military dictatorship under Omar Torrijos in the 1970s and later under Manuel Noriega in the 1980s. The secret police force became entangled in drug trafficking and political corruption.

In the song, Renato assumes the role of a racist police officer, the kind he encountered after relocating from the Canal Zone to Rio Abajo, an impoverished neighborhood in Panama City:

Con mi cara albina, te puedo golpear …

(With my albino face, I can hit you …)

Te voy a enseñar

(I am going to teach you)

Que a la justicia no se puede burlar

(That you cannot make fun of the justice system)

After its release, the track became a protest anthem against Panama’s military government.

While Renato’s popularity was growing in Panama, early Panamanian reggaeton artists and producers like El General were collaborating with Jamaican and American artists in New York City, where the underground dancehall and “hip-hop en español” scene thrived.

Even though El General primarily produced music, one of his tracks, “No Mas Guerra,” channeled the fighting spirit of original reggaeton, calling for Latin American communities to come together to end violence and wars.

A sanitized version of reggaeton goes mainstream

Despite not being responsible for its creation, Puerto Rico is where the genre went mainstream – largely thanks to the popular Puerto Rican artist Daddy Yankee.

Daddy Yankee’s music spread, in part, thanks to American brands like Kellogg’s and Reebok, whose ads featuring his songs were broadcast to American audiences. Few of his tracks contained the social justice themes that characterized early reggaeton.

Meanwhile, Tego Calderon, a Black Puerto Rican reggaeton artist, struggled to find a buyer for his 2003 debut album, “El Abayarde,” after being told he was too ugly for a musical career – a remark rooted in the anti-Blackness that’s pervasive in Puerto Rico.

Calderon’s experience in the industry and as a Black Puerto Rican dictated how he viewed the genre and created his music. Like Calderon, Renato and other Black reggaeton artists have spoken out against racism in reggaeton.

Bringing reggaeton back to its roots

Though he may have the genre’s history slightly wrong, Bad Bunny’s own tracks return to reggaeton’s social justice roots.

Performed during the Super Bowl halftime show by Ricky Martin, Bad Bunny’s “LO QUE LE PASÓ A HAWAii” describes the history of U.S. colonialism in Hawaii and Puerto Rico, pointing out how local communities have been forced out by gentrifiers:

Quieren quitarme el río y también la playa

(They want to take the river and the beach away from me)

Quieren al barrio mío y que tus hijos se vayan

(They want my neighborhood and for your kids to leave)

And while the early-2000s reggaeton popularized by Daddy Yankee, Tego Calderon and Don Omar contained elements of misogyny and homophobia, Bad Bunny’s tracks “Yo Perreo Sola” and “YO VISTO ASÍ” build on feminist reggaeton anthems like Ivy Queen’s “Yo Quiero Bailar.”

Reggaeton was born out of a call for freedom, equality and justice. So I find it fitting that Bad Bunny is creating music that speaks to all types of people from all over the world.

Brendan Frizzell 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. Bad Bunny says reggaeton is Puerto Rican, but it was born in Panama – https://theconversation.com/bad-bunny-says-reggaeton-is-puerto-rican-but-it-was-born-in-panama-276347

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Leonie Baier, Postdoctoral Fellow in Behavioral Biology, Naturalis Biodiversity Center

Deep into the Panamanian night, the forest hums with sound. Chirping insects form a steady backdrop, rain softly trickles from leaves. Somewhere above a stream, frogs call into the darkness.

But I am not there to see this scene.

It’s already passed. What I hold now is a small, mud-smeared biologger, no larger than a Lego brick. This tag recorded the sounds of the previous night.

The evening before, my team and I had set nets outside the roosts – hollow trees or human-made structures such as tunnels or bunkers – where fringe-lipped bats (Trachops cirrhosus) sleep during the day. Under the faint glow of red headlamps, we weighed each bat we caught on its way out of the roost, checked its age and sex, and carefully glued a tiny tag to the fur between its shoulder blades.

When we released a tagged bat into the darkness, it vanished into the trees, carrying our recorder into the night.

Within a few days, the tags either fell off naturally or I gently removed them from recaptured bats with a quick trim of fur. Each biologger captured five to six hours of continuous sound and movement data – every flight, every attack, every crunch of prey bones between sharp teeth.

For the first time, I could follow a predator through the forest from its own point of view. And what those recordings revealed surprised me: Our fringe-lipped bats don’t simply grab the first thing they detect. Instead, they stalk the forest’s creatures with a patience and precision I hadn’t expected.

Tiny tags for tiny hunters

I’m a behavioral ecologist, and fringe-lipped bats have been part of my scientific life for years, through my work with animal behavior researcher Rachel Page at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama. In our recent study published in the journal Current Biology, we paired decades of field knowledge with miniature biologging technology, allowing us to accompany the bats through the night.

When I plug a tag into my laptop, I follow that journey in sound and movement. Through my headphones, I hear a familiar note. A túngara frog (Engystomops pustulosus) calls; that distinctive “whiiiiine-chuck-chuck” I know so well.

On my screen, the line charting the bat’s motions stirs: a tremor of movement, then a sharp burst of wingbeats. At the same time, the audio trace fills with a rapid series of ultrasonic echolocation calls, the staccato sound of a hunter steering through darkness. In my ears, a rush of air surges past the tiny microphone, then there’s a splash, more wingbeats, and finally the faint, wet crunching of teeth. A few minutes later, it’s over.

The bat has eaten the frog. I smile; we’ve studied this bat for so many years, the data matches what we have observed in the laboratory. But now, for the first time, I can hear how the hunt unfolds in the wild.

I scroll further in my recording.

A new sequence begins, but this time there are no frog calls. No sound to guide a strike. Just a sudden rush of air, a violent rustling, and then the unmistakable sounds of a fight thrash through my headphones: wings flapping, claws scraping, and the harsh cries of a prey animal fighting to survive.

Eventually – silence.

For a long moment, I hear only the sounds of the forest. Then again, the beat of wings. The bat is flying once more. It lands. And then comes that telltale sound again – slow, steady and deliberate. The bat is eating its catch.

Five minutes pass. Ten. Twenty. The chewing stops. The motion trace falls flat. As the night drifts on, nothing moves. The bat has fallen asleep.

Much later, the silence breaks. A quick shudder, a few brief pulses of echolocation: The bat is awake again. But it doesn’t fly off. It starts chewing again. And again. In the end, I count a total of 84 minutes of chewing, spread out across several bouts. Whatever this tiny bat caught, it was nothing like the quick frog meal I’d heard before.

Size of predator usually matches size of prey

In the animal kingdom, size usually dictates strategy.

Large lions, wolves and polar bears chase prey nearly their own size, at enormous costs: hours of stalking, bursts of sprinting and long fasts between meals. Their energy reserves let them weather failure after failure until finally a single successful kill restores the balance.

Small predators live by different rules. The tiny bodies of weasels, shrews and bats burn energy so fast that skipping even one meal can mean starvation. For bats, the demands of powered flight push those costs even higher. So they hunt small, abundant prey: quick, low-cost meals that keep the metabolic fire burning.

On average, the bats we tracked made around seven attacks per night and succeeded roughly half the time. Hearing that more-than-one-hour-long chewing episode recorded on the biologger left me astonished. Was this individual bat just an exceptionally slow eater? Or had it taken down something very large?

To find out, I turned to a feeding experiment I had run in captivity, where I measured how long bats chewed prey of known weights. That calibration allowed me to translate chewing time in the wild into meal size. I discovered that most prey weighed around 2 grams, about 7% of a bat’s body mass. But some meals were far larger, reaching up to 30 grams – nearly the bat’s own weight.

How can a creature so small, with so little energy to spare, afford to hunt like a lion?

Listening to dinner

Our bats’ style of hunting is close to that of lions or polar bears, but the efficiency of their hunts sets the bats apart from any large predator. After leaving the roost at dusk, they spent just over five minutes flying in total before making their first attack. So rather than spending the whole night in search on the wing, they flew only about 11% of the time – less than half an hour over five hours of recording.

How could they find their meals so quickly? The answer lies in their extraordinary ears.

Fringe-lipped bats are masters of acoustic espionage. Instead of using echolocation alone to detect their prey, they eavesdrop on the sounds that frogs and other animals make. A túngara frog’s distinctive “tuuuuungara,” for example, carries through the forest and serves as a perfect beacon for a hungry bat.

Our recordings show that attacks were eight to 12 times more likely when frog calls were present. Strikes launched from flight clustered near loud choruses, while nearly all attacks from perches occurred in silence.

The bats have a dual ambush strategy. They launch strikes from the air when prey are advertising themselves. When the forest falls quiet, they hang almost motionless from branches to listen for subtler cues, sweeping the scene with their large ears before swooping down onto their prey.

By alternating between active flight and patient perch hunting, they minimize effort and maximize success.

Learning to thrive in a changing world

Fringe-lipped bats have solved the small-predator dilemma by hunting large prey – such as frogs, lizards, birds or rodents – with remarkably little effort.

But not every bat we tracked was equally efficient. Adults tackled a wider range of prey, while juveniles focused only on smaller, more manageable meals – likely smaller frogs, grasshoppers and dragonflies. This variation suggests that experience plays a major role.

Fringe-lipped bats are long-lived – some over 14 years – and have exceptional memories. They can learn new prey sounds by trial and error, or even by observing other bats. Over a lifetime, a bat refines its strategy, becoming more selective in its choice of prey. In this way, it seems that its hunting success is not just a product of anatomy or instinct – it’s also a story of cognitive evolution.

The bats’ success, however, depends on a thriving forest. As amphibians face global declines from disease, habitat loss and climate change, the bats’ longevity gives them some time to respond and learn, offering hope that these extraordinary predators can persist even as ecosystems change – if we work to keep their forests alive.

Leonie Baier has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation
program (Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions) and the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute.

– ref. Tiny recording backpacks reveal bats’ surprising hunting strategy – https://theconversation.com/tiny-recording-backpacks-reveal-bats-surprising-hunting-strategy-271996

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Andres B. Sanchez Alvarado, Ph.D. Candidate in Chemistry, Rice University

Across the U.S., hundreds of sites on land or in lakes and rivers are heavily contaminated with hazardous waste produced by human activity. Many of these places, designated as Superfund sites by the Environmental Protection Agency, can be found in Houston, Texas, the city where my colleagues and I live and work.

Hazardous contaminants present at these sites that can increase the risk of cancer – such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, or PAHs – are pervasive in soil and water. Detecting these contaminants is only the first step to cleaning them up and keeping the environment safe.

The EPA’s standard methods for analyzing water samples from a well, for example, involve expensive techniques that must be carried out in a separate location, taking weeks.

Our chemistry research group develops new methods that are more accessible and portable to detect toxic pollutants in soil, water and even blood.

My colleagues and I use machine learning methods to detect individual compounds in mixtures without separating them and to automatically identify those compounds by comparing them to a digital database. With machine learning we can streamline analysis of a contaminated site, detecting hazardous pollutants faster and on-site, for more efficient environmental monitoring.

Nanomaterials are extra sensitive

Imagine trying to look at the end of a strand of your hair head on. You would barely see the width of the tiny filament. Now try to imagine a material that is 1,000 times smaller than the width of that hair strand. You wouldn’t see anything at all. My research uses microscopic objects known as nanoparticles that are about that size.

These nanoparticles interact with light in unique ways – kind of like how a magnifying glass focuses sunlight. Any substances near the nanoparticles are exposed to this focused light. We take advantage of this property by shining a beam of infrared light on the nanoparticles, so the substances around them absorb the intense light and generate a signal. We can detect the signal with a spectrophotometer: an instrument that measures the amount of light of a specific frequency.

Any toxic pollutant near the nanoparticles will absorb more of that infrared light than it normally would, enhancing the signal that we can measure. This process occurs only when the pollutant is close to the nanoparticles’ surface. But even the smallest concentrations of these pollutants can be detected using the nanoparticles’ enhancement, if they’re nearby.

In our laboratory, I make the nanoparticles using solutions of metal salts. I then dissolve them in a liquid to make an ink, which I then paint onto glass microscope plates. After the ink dries, I am left with nanoparticles packed together on the surface of the glass, like beads on a diamond painting kit.

Once the nanoparticle painting is ready, I add a drop of contaminated water on top of the tinted glass and let it dry again. During this process, the contaminant molecules stick to the nanoparticles. Once dry, I slide the glass inside a spectrophotometer and measure the light absorbed and emitted by the pollutants on the nanoparticles.

The specific frequencies of light that a compound absorbs and emits are like a signature. Each contaminant will have a different signature that we can use to identify them in the water.

Machine learning simplifies the analysis

Sometimes, the contaminated water contains a mix of many different compounds, which complicates the analysis. Each compound will absorb light, and they might absorb similar wavelengths. To prevent this interference, scientists usually need to use sophisticated techniques to physically separate out each compound. These techniques can be time-consuming, so our team wanted to figure out how to circumvent this step.

We partnered with computer scientists who have been designing tailored algorithms that use machine learning. These programs take the data from our measurements and find patterns so subtle that even the most skilled analyst would miss them.

These methods can simplify the data and extract the most significant characteristics from each compound. These distinctive characteristics help the computer distinguish the individual compounds present in a mixture, bypassing any physical separation stage in the analysis. Computer scientists can make these algorithms so sophisticated that we don’t even need to train the machine before analyzing a sample.

We can use our nanoparticles to measure water or soil polluted with a toxic contaminant, feed the data into the algorithms, and the machine will find the most important features and match them to a reference database. This analysis takes only a few hours, making it at least twice as fast as standard methods.

However, our method is far from perfect. One of the biggest challenges we face is optimizing the nanoparticles’ composition for different classes of contaminants. It can take different nanoparticles to enhance the detection of different pollutants. We also have to tweak the algorithm to look more closely for different signatures in the data.

This method could screen a site for broad classes of contaminants that are similar in chemical structure. Subsequently, in the future a specific type of nanoparticle and a more refined model could be used to identify each specific pollutant molecule.

Streamlined analysis can get the job done

Analyzing contaminants in the environment helps detect the presence of hazardous pollutants, and doing so efficiently can prevent exposure to people. The techniques our group uses to detect contaminants and analyze the data have been used in the field with portable instrumentation by other researchers. These portable instruments are still cheaper than those required for standard techniques.

Currently, our team is exploring the use of these machine learning-enhanced methods in different environmental contexts. We’ve analyzed other types of samples, such as water and air from contaminated sites. We are working on expanding the scope of analysis to a wider range of hazardous pollutants. We also collaborate with toxicologists and environmental engineers in the Texas Medical Center, with the goal of transferring this technology as an alternative method for environmental and public health agencies.

To that end, we’ve filed a patent for our method that combines spectroscopy and machine learning to analyze complex samples. While our team is not currently pursuing commercialization of this technology, it is a possibility down the road.

Still, detection is not the end for environmental safety. After a hazardous pollutant has been identified, a site must be investigated to decide how to clean it up. Our motivation is to streamline the process of detecting and identifying contaminants. The faster we can detect a hazardous substance, the faster we can prevent future emissions and begin cleanups.

Andres B. Sanchez Alvarado participated in research into combining spectroscopy and ML to analyze complex samples, which has a patent pending.

– ref. Nanoparticles and artificial intelligence can help researchers detect pollutants in water, soil and blood – https://theconversation.com/nanoparticles-and-artificial-intelligence-can-help-researchers-detect-pollutants-in-water-soil-and-blood-271149

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Yana van der Meulen Rodgers, Professor of Labor Studies, Rutgers University

Economist Larry Summers will resign from his tenured job as a professor at Harvard University, the school announced on Feb. 25, 2026, following heightened scrutiny of his ties with the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Summers will leave at the end of the 2025-26 academic year, with a new title: president emeritus.

It’s a soft landing for his fall from grace.

In November 2025, Harvard launched an investigation of Summers, a former U.S. treasury secretary who previously served as Harvard’s president.

The probe looked into whether Summers and other members of Harvard’s faculty and administration had interactions with Epstein that violated its guidelines on accepting gifts and should be subject to disciplinary action. Summers’ resignation is connected with this ongoing investigation, a Harvard spokesperson told The Hill.

Despite repeated calls by students for Harvard to revoke Summers’ tenure, he held onto his teaching and academic appointments at Harvard until he chose to retire. Students and staff also called for his resignation in 2005 following his disparaging comments about women in science.

“Free of formal responsibility, as President Emeritus and a retired professor, I look forward in time to engaging in research, analysis, and commentary on a range of global economic issues,” Summers said in a statement released on Feb. 25.

Not surprised

As a female economist and a board member of the Committee on the Status of Women in the Economics Profession – a standing committee of the American Economic Association – I wasn’t surprised by the revelations of Summers’ apparent chumminess with Epstein, shocking as they may appear.

After all, it was Summers’ disparaging remarks about what he said was women’s relative inability to do math that led him to agree to relinquish the Harvard presidency in 2006.

And for years, researchers have documented the gender bias that pervades the field of economics.

The title of president emeritus is honorary. It brings with it symbolic recognition and the opportunity to maintain a formal connection to the university. Emeritus status is selective and requires approval at most universities. It’s usually bestowed on retiring professors.

In my view, by conferring this title on Summers, Harvard is signaling that powerful men can outlast gross misconduct with their honorifics intact.

Summers’ ties to Epstein

Summers, until his entanglement in the Epstein scandal came to light, was among the nation’s most influential economists.

But his history of public controversy stretches back to at least 1991, when a memo he wrote while serving as the World Bank’s chief economist appeared to justify sending toxic waste to poorer countries.

Criticism of Summers surged after the House of Representatives released damning messages between Summers and Epstein as part of a dump of more than 20,000 public documents from Epstein’s estate in November 2025.

A series of emails and texts documented how Summers repeatedly sought Epstein’s advice while pursuing an intimate relationship with a woman he was mentoring – while the economist was married to someone else.

Summers was close enough to Epstein that in 2014, the sex offender named the economist as a backup executor for his estate.

The Department of Justice released a much larger tranche of documents in January 2026 in compliance with a law passed by Congress. So far, no major media outlet has reported on any new Summers materials discovered as a result.

Harvard’s slow response

The Summers-Epstein exchanges released in November ignited a new round of scrutiny and led to the unraveling of Summers’ prestigious career.

Summers went on leave from teaching at Harvard on Nov. 19 and stepped down from several high-profile boards.

But beyond launching the investigation, Harvard took no decisive action to discipline or sanction Summers. This calculated hesitation, which reflects the institution’s efforts to court funding, power and influence among top donors, appears to have put donor politics above basic accountability.

By contrast, the American Economic Association, the primary professional association for economists, did take swift and harsh action. In an unprecedented move, on Dec. 2, 2025, the AEA announced that it had placed a lifetime ban on Summers from all its conferences and other activities.

Having lots of company

To be sure, Harvard is not the only prestigious university dealing with the aftermath of the Epstein revelations.

The Epstein documents include evidence that administrators and professors at other prestigious colleges and universities like Duke, Yale, Bard, Princeton and Columbia also exchanged messages with Epstein.

As public funding for higher education has eroded, universities have increasingly turned to wealthy donors to underwrite major projects and supplement budgets by endowing professorships and research centers. Epstein appears to have taken advantage of this dependence on rich supporters by presenting himself as someone who could deliver both his own money and access to other affluent donors.

The Epstein files uncovered many email exchanges, meetings and discussions with the sex offender about research and funding opportunities, and they demonstrated how thoroughly the man had embedded himself in academic circles.

Disturbingly, Summers was hardly the only scholar to solicit Epstein’s help in pursuing women.

Among others, Duke University economist Dan Ariely asked him for the contact information of a “redhead” he had met, and Yale computer scientist David Gelernter told Epstein about a woman he called a “v small goodlooking blonde.”

An economics problem

While Summers’ behavior and the reported dynamics between him and a woman he mentored may appear shocking, they are all too common in economics. For years, researchers have been documenting the gender bias that pervades the profession.

The data shows that abuse of power is common among male economists.

A 2019 survey by the AEA documented widespread sexual discrimination and harassment. Almost half of the women surveyed said that they had experienced sexual discrimination, and 43% reported having experienced offensive sexual behavior from another economist – almost always men.

Also, a 2021 study published by the National Bureau of Economic Research documented hostile environments in economics seminars, with female presenters experiencing more interruptions and encountering more patronizing behavior.

In 2024, according to the National Science Foundation, about 1 in 3 newly minted economics Ph.D.s in the U.S. were women, a considerably lower share than in other social sciences, business, the humanities and scientific disciplines. This ratio has changed very little since 1995.

After earning doctoral degrees in economics, women face a leaky pipeline in the tenure track, which represents the highest-paid, most secure and prestigious academic jobs. The higher the rank, the lower the representation of women.

The gender gap is wider in influential positions, such as economics department chairs and the editorial board members of economics journals. Women are also substantially underrepresented as authors in the top economics journals.

This bias not only hurts women who are economists; it can also hamper policymaking by limiting the range of perspectives that inform economic decisions.

Allowing a soft landing

Allowing Summers to commence a dignified retirement while continuing to hold honorifics risks signaling that there are ultimately few consequences at the very top in higher education.

I believe that if colleges and universities want to prove that they are serious about confronting abuses of power within their ranks, they must show that prestige does not entitle anyone, however accomplished, to a soft landing.

Portions of this article appeared in a related article published on Dec. 2, 2025.

Yana van der Meulen Rodgers is a board member of the Committee on the Status of Women in the Economics Association.

– ref. Former Harvard president Summers’ soft landing after Epstein revelations is case study of economics’ trouble with misbehaving men – https://theconversation.com/former-harvard-president-summers-soft-landing-after-epstein-revelations-is-case-study-of-economics-trouble-with-misbehaving-men-277025

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Reid Kress Weisbord, Distinguished Professor of Law and Judge Norma Shapiro Scholar, Rutgers University – Newark

When Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen died on Oct. 15, 2018, he left behind an estimated US$26 billion that he wanted to largely leave to charity.

Allen died at 65 of septic shock after a yearslong cancer battle. He’s back in the news because his estate is finally selling an asset that represents nearly a quarter of his fortune: the Seattle Seahawks football team, which he bought in 1997 for roughly $200 million.

The sale of the 2014 and 2026 Super Bowl champions could fetch more than $6.5 billion – a potentially record-breaking sum.

Allen never married and he had no children. His sister, businesswoman Jody Allen, is his estate’s trustee and executor. She’s now overseeing the Seahawks’ sale.

As law professors who study the transfer of property after death, we can explain why it often takes a long time for complex estates to settle following the death of ultrawealthy people.

Settling the estates of billionaires

When most people die, the distribution of any wealth they leave to their heirs or charitable causes can be relatively straightforward.

If all goes well, the process will take a few years at most. Homes, vehicles, bank accounts and retirement assets can usually be relatively quickly sold or transferred to members of the family or friends of the deceased.

When people hear that an estate is still being sorted out years after someone’s death, they often assume that big disputes have interfered with the settlement process.

Indeed, high-profile celebrity estates, including those that celebrity musicians such Prince and Aretha Franklin left behind, have been delayed by legal battles.

But delays are common even without conflicts, particularly when an estate is very large or complex.

Similar to sprawling empires

As you might imagine, billionaires’ estates are different. They tend to be more like sprawling business empires than what your beloved aunt left behind when she died. Multibillion-dollar estates usually take many years to unwind because they involve complex assets that are hard to assess and sell.

Some of Allen’s holdings, for example, were patents, which often complicate estate administration because intellectual property rights can be difficult to value for tax purposes.

Although the contents of Allen’s will were made public in 2018, the specifics of his estate plan remain confidential.

That’s because he used a private family office to manage his wealth – and he left all of his property owned at death to a private trust.

The specific terms of that trust aren’t publicly known, but his family foundation continues to support charitable causes tied to the arts, the environment and the engagement of young people in civic life.

Unwinding unusual assets

Sports teams, while clearly valuable, are infrequently sold. That makes them some of the hardest assets to get rid of after an owner’s death.

Jody Allen, as her brother’s executor and trustee, has a legal obligation to sell the team for as much money as possible, which requires careful timing and good business judgment when appraising the asset’s fair market value.

She managed the sale of another sports franchise Allen owned, the NBA’s Portland Trail Blazers, in 2025. The reportedly $4.25 billion deal brought the estate revenue that’s also slated for charity. The timing of the Seahawks’ pending sale – shortly after their latest Super Bowl win – is most likely intended to maximize the amount of money the estate will collect from the eventual buyer.

But some of the National Football League’s rules can complicate a team’s sale.

Other team owners and league officials, for example, must approve any change of ownership. Approval requires the support of more than three-quarters of the league’s other owners.

The NFL also requires all teams to submit a succession plan that explains what will happen if their owner dies to reduce the chance of any disruption that could arise from uncertainty of ownership.

Bulking up his endowment

Once the sale does go through, the money could end up in the foundation Paul Allen co-founded.

Allen donated more than $2 billion during his lifetime to support a wide range of causes primarily tied to medical research, education, the arts and the environment.

Like many ultrawealthy donors, he gave through his own foundation, now called Allen Family Philanthropies.

Six years after his death, it had a roughly $1.4 billion endowment and made more than $62 million in grants annually. Jody Allen, who co-founded Allen Family Philanthropies with her late brother, serves as its board chair and president.

The sale of the Trail Blazers, like the upcoming sale of the Seattle Seahawks, may make his foundation far bigger – leading to even more charitable gifts for years to come.

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. How the Seattle Seahawks’ sale will score a touchdown for charity 8 years after Paul Allen’s death – https://theconversation.com/how-the-seattle-seahawks-sale-will-score-a-touchdown-for-charity-8-years-after-paul-allens-death-276577