Category: The Conversation

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Robert D. Bland, Assistant Professor of History and Africana Studies, University of Tennessee

Divided along ideological lines, the U.S. Supreme Court on April 29, 2006, issued a ruling that severely weakens a provision of the landmark Voting Rights Act of 1965. That provision, known as Section 2, prohibited any discriminatory voting practice or election rule that results in less opportunity for minority groups to exercise their political clout.

In her dissent on the ruling, Justice Elena Kagan wrote that it is the “latest chapter in the majority’s now-completed demolition of the Voting Rights Act.”

The decision in the case known as Louisiana v. Callais struck down a Louisiana voting district drawn to consolidate Black voters into a district where they would be the majority. The court’s conservative majority deemed the drawing of the district an unconstitutional gerrymander.

That, wrote Kagan, will “systematically dilute minority citizens’ voting power.”

I’m a historian of racial formation and electoral and cultural politics in the U.S. I see this decision by the nation’s highest court as the latest in a long line of successful attempts, by both state and federal authorities, to limit the political power of Black Americans and, most recently, to reverse the gains they won in two periods of civil rights advancement.

Etching away at voting rights

Back in 2013, the Supreme Court tossed out a key provision of the Voting Rights Act regarding federal oversight of elections.

In the Louisiana v. Callais case, the court seemed ready to abolish Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act.

While the conservative majority in Louisiana v. Callais did not explicitly strike down Section 2, the ruling appears likely to nonetheless open the floodgates for widespread vote dilution by allowing primarily Southern state legislatures to redraw political districts, weakening the voting power of racial minorities.

The case was brought by a group of Louisiana citizens who declared that the federal mandate under Section 2 to draw a second majority-Black district violated the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment and thus served as an unconstitutional act of racial gerrymandering.

Initially designed to enshrine federal civil rights protections for freed people facing a battery of discriminatory “Black Codes” in the postbellum South, the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause has been the foundation of the nation’s modern rights-based legal order, ensuring that all U.S. citizens are treated fairly and preventing the government from engaging in explicit discrimination.

The cornerstone of the nation’s “second founding,” the Reconstruction-era amendments to the Constitution, including the 14th Amendment, created the first cohort of Black elected officials.

As I highlight in my new book “Requiem for Reconstruction,” the struggle over the nation’s second founding not only highlights how generational political progress can be reversed but also provides a lens into the specific historical origins of racial gerrymandering in the United States.

Without understanding this history – and the forces that unraveled Reconstruction’s initial promise of greater racial justice – we cannot fully comprehend the roots of those forces that are reshaping our contemporary political landscape in a way that I believe subverts the true intentions of the Constitution.

The long history of gerrymandering

Political gerrymandering, or shaping political boundaries to benefit a particular party, has been considered constitutional since the nation’s 18th-century founding, but racial gerrymandering is a practice with roots in the post-Civil War era.

Expanding beyond the practice of redrawing district lines after each decennial census, late 19th-century Democratic state legislatures built on the earlier cartographic practice to create a litany of so-called Black districts across the postbellum South.

The nation’s first wave of racial gerrymandering emerged as a response to the political gains Southern Black voters made during the administration of President Ulysses S. Grant in the 1870s. Georgia, Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, North Carolina and Louisiana all elected Black congressmen during that decade. During the 42nd Congress, which met from 1871 to 1873, South Carolina sent Black men to the House from three of its four districts.

Initially, the white Democrats who ruled the South responded to the rise of Black political power by crafting racist narratives that insinuated that the emergence of Black voters and Black officeholders was a corruption of the proper political order. These attacks often provided a larger cultural pretext for the campaigns of extralegal political violence that terrorized Black voters in the South, assassinated political leaders, and marred the integrity of several of the region’s major elections.

Election changes

Following these pogroms during the 1870s, southern legislatures began seeking legal remedies to make permanent the counterrevolution of “Redemption,” which sought to undo Reconstruction’s advancement of political equality. A generation before the Jim Crow legal order of segregation and discrimination was established, southern political leaders began to disfranchise Black voters through racial gerrymandering.

These newly created Black districts gained notoriety for their cartographic absurdity. In Mississippi, a shoestring-shaped district was created to snake and swerve alongside the state’s famous river. North Carolina created the “Black Second” to concentrate its African American voters to a single district. Alabama’s “Black Fourth” did similar work, leaving African American voters only one possible district in which they could affect the outcome in the state’s central Black Belt.

South Carolina’s “Black Seventh” was perhaps the most notorious of these acts of Reconstruction-era gerrymandering. The district “sliced through county lines and ducked around Charleston back alleys” – anticipating the current trend of sophisticated, computer-targeted political redistricting.

Possessing 30,000 more voters than the next largest congressional district in the state, South Carolina’s Seventh District radically transformed the state’s political landscape by making it impossible for its Black-majority to exercise any influence on national politics, except for the single racially gerrymandered district.

Although federal courts during the late 19th century remained painfully silent on the constitutionality of these antidemocratic measures, contemporary observers saw these redistricting efforts as more than a simple act of seeking partisan advantage.

“It was the high-water mark of political ingenuity coupled with rascality, and the merits of its appellation,” observed one Black congressman who represented South Carolina’s 7th District.

Racial gerrymandering in recent times

The political gains of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s, sometimes called the “Second Reconstruction,” were made tangible by the 1965 Voting Rights Act. The law revived the postbellum 15th Amendment, which prevented states from creating voting restrictions based on race. That amendment had been made a dead letter by Jim Crow state legislatures and an acquiescent Supreme Court.

In contrast to the post-Civil War struggle, the Second Reconstruction had the firm support of the federal courts. The Supreme Court affirmed the principal of “one person, one vote” in its 1962 Baker v. Carr and 1964 Reynolds v. Sims decisions – upending the Solid South’s landscape of political districts that had long been marked by sparsely populated Democratic districts controlled by rural elites.

The Voting Rights Act gave the federal government oversight over any changes in voting policy that might affect historically marginalized groups. Since passage of the 1965 law and its subsequent revisions, racial gerrymandering has largely served the purpose of creating districts that preserve and amplify the political representation of historically marginalized groups.

This generational work is being undone by the current Supreme Court with its ruling in Louisiana v. Callais.

This is an updated version of an article originally published on Feb 3, 2026.

Robert D. Bland 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. Supreme Court ruling: The latest in history of diminishing minority voting rights – https://theconversation.com/supreme-court-ruling-the-latest-in-history-of-diminishing-minority-voting-rights-281815

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Kerri J. Malloy, Assistant Professor of Native American and Indigenous Studies, San José State University

Many universities and museums in the U.S. have long held Native American burial artifacts, other sacred objects and even human remains.

Most of these collections were acquired in the late 19th and 20th centuries. They came from grave excavations, anthropological research and other practices carried out without the consent of Native American communities.

In 1990, Congress passed the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, or NAGPRA. This law requires federally funded institutions, including museums and universities, to identify Native American artifacts, consult with tribes and return them to descendants, tribes and Native Hawaiian organizations.

Some institutions, like the University of California, have publicly committed to returning Native American artifacts and remains to the proper communities, in a process known as repatriation. But progress has been slow, and many sacred objects and remains are still held in collections.

As a scholar of Native American genocide, memory and justice, I think repatriation is about more than merely returning items taken without permission.

It’s about how universities and other institutions are confronting the histories that produced these collections in the first place.

The case of the University of California

The University of California is not the only institution confronting this issue of repatriation. But it is one of the country’s most visible university systems, with 10 campuses across the state.

The University of California has publicly stated in a detailed policy document and other places online that it is “committed to the repatriation of Native American human remains and cultural items.” It publicly tracks its work on returning Native American items and remains via a searchable database.

As of February 2026, the university repatriated 9,303 human remains, 476,592 items used for burials, and 140,443 other cultural items, among other objects, according to its database.

Between 2020 and 2024 alone, the University of California campuses completed 100 repatriations involving thousands items, according to the California state audit released in April 2025.

However, the university is facing criticism from tribal leaders and state auditors for moving too slowly.

The 2025 audit found that the University of California still holds the remains of thousands of Native American individuals, along with hundreds of thousands of cultural items. The university’s own database confirms this analysis.

The audit also found gaps in the repatriation work. Some campuses are still discovering new collections that they did not initially document. The University of California’s office of the president does not systematically track this recovery effort, the audit found.

At the university’s current pace, some of its campuses could take more than a decade to finish repatriation.

Earlier state audits in 2019 and 2021 reached similar conclusions. They pointed to weak oversight, delayed planning and limited funding to make good on repatriation promises.

Although the president of the University of California required all campuses to create repatriation plans, many still lack full timelines or other clear steps to solve complex situations.

At the University of California, Santa Barbara, for example, some items were loaned to other institutions and have not been returned.

At the University of California, Davis, 30 items believed to be part of Native American collections were stolen from a display case in 2022. In this case, the university was not sure whether the stolen items initially came from Native communities or not.

A deeper meaning for Native Americans

For Native American communities, ancestral remains are not specimens – they are relatives.

Some of these artifacts were placed with the dead as part of burial practices. These sacred and cultural objects carry ceremonial, historical and communal meaning that does not disappear when they enter a university or museum collection.

Some tribes believe their ancestors’ spirits cannot rest until they are properly reburied, as California’s audits note.

When institutions hold on to Native people’s bodies and belongings for decades, fail to track them fully and then delay their return, the issue is not only administrative. It is also a matter of authority and respect.

This question is especially urgent in California, where many Native American tribes are not federally recognized.

In 2001, California created its own repatriation law, CalNAGPRA, to include these tribes in repatriation work.

However, changes to federal rules in 2024 have made it harder to return certain ancestral remains and cultural items to nonfederally recognized California tribes.

That conflict between federal and state law has made an already difficult process harder.

A widespread issue

This problem is not limited to California.

Across the country, a small number of universities, museums and government agencies hold a large share of the Native American remains and cultural items that have not yet been returned.

Harvard University and Indiana University, for example, are among the schools working to repatriate Native American ancestral remains and cultural items.

Some institutions have interpreted the 1990 law narrowly. In some cases, they have discounted tribal knowledge and labeled ancestral remains as “culturally unidentifiable,” meaning no clear tribal affiliation could be determined.

Moving beyond symbolism

Repatriation at the University of California is part of a broader reckoning. Universities and museums across North America and Europe face the same question: How will they move beyond symbolic statements and address the legacy of colonialism in their collections?

The University of California says campuses are updating plans, budgets and reporting in response to the 2025 audit. It has pledged to return all items by 2028.

I think that these are important steps. But a larger question remains: Will this action lead to more accountability and a quick return of all Native American items and ancestral human remains?

Repatriation is not only about correcting the past. It is a test of how universities serve the public, including Native American communities.

The University of California has adopted policies that include language of repair. The challenge now is to match that language with meeting self-imposed deadlines, and holding true to promises and the federal law in a timely matter.

Kerri J. Malloy 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. Universities returning Native American remains and artifacts isn’t just about physical objects – it’s about dignity and justice – https://theconversation.com/universities-returning-native-american-remains-and-artifacts-isnt-just-about-physical-objects-its-about-dignity-and-justice-281278

Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By Lakshmi Chauhan, Associate Professor of Infectious Disease Medicine, University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus

Spring’s warmer weather lures people outdoors – and into possible contact with ticks that spread Lyme disease.

Already, the 2026 tick season is booming. On April 23, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warned that emergency room visits due to tick bites are at their highest level since 2017. That may portend an especially severe season for Lyme disease and other tick-borne illnesses.

State health departments reported more than 89,000 cases of Lyme disease in 2023, the last year for which data is available. But public health experts believe that close to 500,000 people in the U.S. get Lyme disease every year.

As an infectious disease doctor with experience treating some of this infection’s long-term outcomes, I know that Lyme disease can be tricky because people often don’t notice tick bites and may overlook early symptoms of an infection. But left untreated, the infection can cause serious lingering – and even permanent – health issues.

Here’s what you need to know about Lyme disease to stay safe this season:

What causes Lyme disease?

Lyme disease, named after the Connecticut town where the disease was first identified in 1975, is caused by a group of bacteria called Borrelia – most often, the species Borrelia burgdorferi.

Deer ticks – also called black-legged ticks, and members of a group called Ixodes – transmit the disease after feeding on an infected animal, usually a bird, mouse or deer. When they then bite a person, they can transmit the bacteria into the person’s bloodstream.
Usually, the tick must attach for 24-48 hours to transmit the bacteria causing Lyme disease.

Where and when does Lyme disease occur?

Lyme disease can occur in most regions where deer ticks live.

These ticks are most active in late spring, summer and fall – usually April to November in most regions. They emerge when the temperature is above freezing. In years when winter is shorter, ticks can emerge earlier. And they may be active year-round in regions where freezing temperatures are rare.

Approximately 90% of U.S. cases are reported from states in the Northeast, mid-Atlantic from Virginia to eastern Canada, and Upper Midwest regions including Wisconsin, Michigan and Minnesota. A few cases occasionally pop up in California, Oregon and Washington.

Since 1995, the incidence of Lyme disease in the U.S. has almost doubled.

Warmer weather and changes in rainfall patterns now allow ticks to survive in new regions of the country – and for longer periods. But even in regions where ticks lived before, Lyme disease has become more common due to increases in deer populations. As woodland areas are increasingly being developed, it may be bringing the habitat of deer and mice closer to people, increasing the risk of transmission.

Lyme disease symptoms to watch for

Early symptoms of Lyme disease – fever, muscle aches and fatigue – generally emerge within three to 30 days after a tick bite. Another classic symptom in the first month is a target or bull’s eye rash at the site of tick bite, which occurs in about 70% to 80% of cases.

Other rashes following a tick bite can also occur. Some may be due to irritation from the bite, and not necessarily an infection.

If you know you’ve had a tick bite and experience flu-like symptoms – or if you see a bull’s-eye rash, whether you know you were bitten or not – it’s important to check with your healthcare provider about whether you should be treated with antibiotics.

A blood test for antibodies can help confirm the infection, but it can sometimes yield a false negative result, particularly in the first couple of weeks of the disease.

In most people, the rash goes away on its own. However, treatment may shorten its duration and is important for preventing other symptoms. A two- to four-week course of antibiotics can generally treat Lyme disease. Severe cases might require intravenous antibiotics.

A promising new vaccine for Lyme disease is currently being tested. In March 2026, Pfizer, the pharmaceutical company developing it, announced that in a late-stage study, the vaccine prevented the disease in 70% of people who received it.

Later Lyme symptoms

If left untreated, the bacteria that causes Lyme can spread, potentially causing longer-term symptoms. About 60% of people who get Lyme disease and don’t treat it can develop arthritis.

In rare cases, Lyme disease can also affect the heart and the nervous system. Inflammation in the brain or the tissues surrounding it, called meninges, can cause headaches and neck pain, as well as balance issues and memory and behavior changes. It can also cause nerve damage that results in numbness, tingling and muscle weakness.

These symptoms can appear right away or much later – sometimes months to years after infection. And in cases where the disease wasn’t promptly treated, late-stage symptoms can linger even after antibiotics kill the bacteria.

Scientists don’t fully understand why, but one intriguing study found that some particles from the bacteria’s cell wall leak into the joints and can persist after treatment, spurring ongoing inflammation and arthritis symptoms.

Another reason for Lyme’s long-term effects is that it can trigger autoimmune disease, which is when the immune system attacks its own cells. What’s more, because the nervous system may be particularly sensitive to damage caused by the bacteria and related inflammation, it may take an especially long time to heal. In some situations, the damage could be permanent.

Preventing Lyme disease

Until a vaccine becomes available, there are steps you and your family can take to help protect against Lyme disease:

• Use tick and insect repellents such as DEET and picaridin, which can be applied to skin, and permethrin, which is sprayed onto clothing, to keep ticks at bay. Treating clothing with permethrin may be especially beneficial, since the substance withstands several washes.

• Wear long-sleeve shirts and pants while you are gardening, hiking or walking through grass or woods to prevent tick bites. Wearing light-colored clothes makes ticks more visible, and tucking your pants into your socks can also prevent the little buggers from traveling from your pants, shoes and socks onto your legs.

• Remove your outdoor clothes immediately. Washing and drying clothes at high temperature can help kill any ticks that managed to hitch a ride. And a quick shower immediately after spending time outdoors can wash ticks off the skin before they have a chance to attach.

• If you spend time outdoors, perform daily tick checks, paying special attention to warm areas like your armpits, neck, ears and underwear line. If you find a tick attached, pull it off with tweezers, holding them perpendicular to the skin.

• If you find a tick that may have been on the skin for more than 36 hours, ask your healthcare provider whether a dose of preventive antibiotics – generally given within 72 hours of the bite – would be appropriate.

Lakshmi Chauhan receives funding from NIH.

– ref. Warmer temps bring soaring tick populations – here’s how to stay safe from Lyme disease – https://theconversation.com/warmer-temps-bring-soaring-tick-populations-heres-how-to-stay-safe-from-lyme-disease-263303

Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By Wayne Unger, Associate Professor of Law, Quinnipiac University

The U.S. Supreme Court has cleared the way for a chain of crisis pregnancy centers based in New Jersey to challenge a subpoena from New Jersey’s attorney general.

First Choice Women’s Resource Centers operates at several locations throughout New Jersey. There are more than 2,500 of these Christian-led nonprofits in the United States. Most try to discourage pregnant women from obtaining abortions. Some offer free medical services, such as over-the-counter pregnancy tests and sonograms. Many give their clients clothing, diapers and other items that the parents of babies require.

First Choice caught the attention of Matthew Platkin in 2023 while he served as the state’s attorney general. He suspected that it violated New Jersey’s Consumer Fraud Act by misleading its donors about its mission and operations. According to court filings, Platkin wanted to determine if First Choice had misled its donors and patients into believing that the centers provide “comprehensive reproductive health care services, including abortion care and contraception, when they in fact have an objective of deterring individuals from seeking such services.”

As part of New Jersey’s investigation, Platkin issued a subpoena demanding that First Choice produce donation records, including the personal information of the donors, over a 10-year period so that his office could “contact a representative sample” of them to determine if they had “been misled” by First Choice about what the group does – that is, whether or not it provided abortions.

First Choice asserted that the subpoena violated its First Amendment rights, and that it had a right to sue New Jersey’s attorney general in federal court to quash the subpoena.

The Supreme Court sided with First Choice in its unanimous ruling on First Choice Women’s Resource Centers, Inc. v. Davenport. The case now bears the name of New Jersey’s current attorney general, Jennifer Davenport.

In my view as a privacy and constitutional law scholar, the court ruled correctly by concluding that issuing a subpoena for personal information regarding a crisis pregnancy center’s donors may deter those donors from supporting the organization.

Quashing New Jersey’s subpoena

After First Choice sued to block the subpoena, Platkin argued that federal courts lacked jurisdiction to decide the case. That’s because First Choice’s alleged injury – deterring donors from supporting the organization – had not yet materialized because New Jersey had not yet tried to enforce the subpoena in court.

In other words, Platkin argued that the case was premature.

But First Choice argued that merely issuing a subpoena can deter donors from making a gift. To further its argument, First Choice presented what it said was an “anonymous declaration from several donors describing the present chill on their First Amendment-protected association.” In its view, the injury was real and concrete enough for the federal courts to decide the case.

The justices have now cleared the way for First Choice to continue with its lawsuit against New Jersey authorities in federal court.

Court ruled on a related case in 2018

The First Choice case might sound similar to a case the court decided in 2018.

In National Institute of Family and Life Advocates v. Becerra, the Supreme Court considered a different First Amendment claim asserted by a California-based organization that counsels crisis pregnancy centers.

In 2015, California enacted the Reproductive Freedom, Accountability, Comprehensive Care, and Transparency Act, better known as the Reproductive FACT Act. That law required clinics to inform their patients of California’s free or low-cost access to family-planning services, prenatal care and abortion. Several anti-abortion groups objected to California’s mandate, claiming the Reproductive FACT Act unconstitutionally compelled crisis pregnancy centers to disclose a message they do not support.

The Supreme Court agreed. Justice Clarence Thomas, writing for the court, concluded that the Reproductive FACT Act required clinics to “provide a government-drafted script about the availability of state-sponsored activities” that the clinics opposed.

In the court’s view, this violated the clinics’ First Amendment rights because it compelled them to speak a message containing an implicit viewpoint – support for abortion – that the clinics fundamentally opposed.

Both cases sit at the intersection of abortion politics and the First Amendment, but they raise distinct questions. The prior one, which addressed California’s attempt to regulate crisis pregnancy centers, asked whether the government can force those centers to make mandated statements. This new one, First Choice, asks whether the government can force the centers to disclose their donors’ identities.

Precedent set in an old NAACP case

The court has found previously that donations are a form of protected speech, including in its Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission ruling. In that 2010 decision, the majority recognized that “All speakers, including individuals … use money amassed from the economic marketplace to fund their speech.”

As Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote in the Free Choice ruling, each right protected by the First Amendment “necessarily carries with it a corresponding right to associate with others.” Without such a right, he added, “no two men could safely share the same soapbox.”

This crisis pregnancy center ruling also reaffirms what the court decided about seven decades earlier in NAACP v. Alabama. The NAACP, founded in 1909, is one of the nation’s biggest civil rights groups.

In this 1958 ruling, the court concluded that any government actions that “may have the effect of curtailing the freedom to associate” warrant the highest form of protection under the First Amendment.

That ruling protected the privacy of NAACP members in Alabama. While there were no donors involved in that case, I believe that the rights of donors in the First Choice case are analogous to the rights of the NAACP’s members in the 1958 case – in that both have the right to the protection of their privacy.

In the 1950s, Alabama Attorney General John Patterson wanted to shut down the local NAACP chapter, based on his belief that the civil rights organization was “causing irreparable injury to the property and civil rights of the residents and citizens of the State of Alabama” by operating within the state as an unincorporated association.

As a part of his effort to oust the NAACP from Alabama, Patterson sought the membership lists of the local chapter, which, if disclosed, would have unquestionably caused “intimidation, vilification, economic reprisals, and physical harm.”

Similarly, in the 2026 First Choice case, Gorsuch, who wrote the 9-0 decision, “demands for private donor information inevitably carry with them a deterrent effect on the exercise of First Amendment rights.”

That is similar to Alabama’s demand for the NAACP’s membership list in 1958.

“It is hardly a novel perception that compelled disclosure of affiliation with groups engaged in advocacy may constitute as effective a restraint on freedom of association,” Supreme Court Justice John Marshall Harlan II declared in the ruling, which essentially shut down Alabama’s effort to ban the NAACP.

“This Court has recognized the vital relationship between freedom to associate and privacy in one’s associations,” Harlan added.

How to read this ruling

Many conservatives today will surely see the court’s decision as a win for the anti-abortion movement and its associated organizations. And many progressives will perceive it as another ruling from a supermajority conservative court that favors the rights of Americans who oppose access to abortion over those who support abortion rights.

The court, for example, overturned the nationwide right to abortion in 2022 in its Dobbs v. Jackson’s Women’s Health Organization ruling.

I think both interpretations are wrong because this case is more about free speech than abortion.

The fundamental principle the court asserted in NAACP v. Alabama remains intact – there is a vital relationship between the right to privacy and the freedom to associate.

Since its ratification in 1791, the First Amendment has protected much more than the rights that are expressly mentioned in its text. It protects the right to speak freely, just as it protects the right not to speak and the right to speak anonymously.

The First Amendment protects the right to associate with groups and organizations, just as it protects the right to associate with those groups and organizations anonymously.

It protects the right to think freely, to hold certain beliefs and to reject others. And as the Supreme Court reaffirmed in the First Choice case, the First Amendment protects individuals’ rights to associate with organizations that align with their beliefs by donating to them.

Wayne Unger 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. Supreme Court bolsters donors’ free speech rights in unanimous crisis pregnancy center ruling – https://theconversation.com/supreme-court-bolsters-donors-free-speech-rights-in-unanimous-crisis-pregnancy-center-ruling-281211

Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By Michal Raucher, Associate Professor of Jewish Studies, Rutgers University

When people picture a rabbi, they may imagine a man standing in front of a congregation in a synagogue. But “rabbi” means much more than that. For example, a rabbi could be a teacher, a nonprofit executive for a Jewish organization, or a scholar of Jewish law – and, increasingly, some of those roles are held by Orthodox women.

For decades, liberal denominations have permitted women to be ordained. Orthodox Judaism, however, has largely prohibited it. Yet attitudes toward women’s study of rabbinic texts is changing, leading some Orthodox leaders to conclude that women are qualified for rabbinic jobs.

Israel’s chief rabbis – known as the Rabbinate, and historically seen as the top authority for the country’s Orthodox institutions – do not recognize women as rabbis or permit their ordination. But on April 27, 2026, after an hourslong delay and an emergency injunction from the country’s High Court of Justice, three women sat for one of the Rabbinate’s exams about Jewish law. The exam followed a legal battle over the course of the past few years, culminating in a High Court of Justice decision in July 2025 that women must be allowed to take the tests. The chief rabbis appealed the decision, but the court rejected their request for a retrial.

These tests are required to apply for public sector jobs as any kind of Jewish religious authority in Israel: ensuring that restaurants adhere to Jewish dietary laws, for example. Passing does not make someone an ordained rabbi; ordination is conferred through private rabbis and schools, and most Orthodox communities do not recognize female rabbis. But it does allow women to apply for jobs previously available only to men and receive higher salaries for the educational jobs they have already. Most importantly, the High Court of Justice’s decision recognized that women have achieved high levels of education in rabbinic law.

I am a scholar of Jewish women and gender who researches religious authority among Orthodox women. While there have always been highly educated women, the court’s ruling reflects a growing trend among Orthodox women, while also opening up professional opportunities.

From Torah to Talmud

Formed in the 19th century, Orthodox Judaism is oriented around a strict observance of Jewish law and commitment to traditional gender roles. The denomination contains many divisions, each one adjusting their observance of Jewish law differently in response to modernity. While boys and men have been traditionally educated in Torah and rabbinic texts, historically girls and women did not have access to any formal Jewish education.

In the early 20th century, Jewish Polish teacher Sarah Schenirer revolutionized Orthodox girls’ education by founding the Bais Yaakov school system, now found in many countries. The Bais Yaakov education focused on teaching women Torah, while maintaining women’s place within the Jewish home.

But soon another debate arose: whether women could study Talmud. This text, composed between the second and seventh centuries C.E., contains the building blocks of rabbinic law. Studying the Talmud means learning the language, references and argument style of the Jewish legal system, called “halakha.”

Supporters and opponents of Talmud study for women both argued that it would forever alter orthodoxy. Opponents feared that if women understood Talmudic discussions, they would be interested in participating more in public religious life, upsetting the gender norms at the heart of orthodoxy.

Yet, in the 1970s, some well-known rabbis in Israel and America invited women into Talmud study. Since then, the number of Orthodox institutions that offer advanced Talmud study for women has grown significantly. Fifty years ago, there were only two options: Stern College of Yeshiva University in New York, or Michlelet Bruriah in Israel, now called Midreshet Lindenbaum. Today, dozens of institutions offer programs for Orthodox women who want to study rabbinic law.

The institutions where women can learn Talmud and rabbinic law span the Orthodox landscape. Many are affiliated with open or modern orthodoxy, which have embraced changes related to gender roles. Some cater to the Haredi or “ultra-Orthodox” population, and others to communities in between.

Most students who complete these programs are not seeking traditional ordination as rabbis. But the women graduate prepared for several other types of religious leadership, such as Jewish education, or as halakha guides for other women. Some programs prepare students to answer Jewish legal questions in particular areas, such as practices during menstruation or childbirth.

Feminist network

This growth in opportunities for Orthodox women is the result of a network of Orthodox feminists working across borders since the 1970s.

Michlelet Bruriah, for example, was founded by two American Jews who immigrated to Israel in the 1960s. Several other educational institutions developed through this network – including Matan, Nishmat and Drisha, which are currently located in Israel.

Yeshivat Maharat, the first Orthodox seminary to ordain women as rabbis, is in New York. Several of its teachers and students came from these Israeli institutions, and some of their donors have also supported the schools in Israel.

The lawsuit challenging the Israeli chief rabbis’ restriction on women taking the Jewish law exam was filed by several people involved in this network.

Rabbi Seth Farber, for example, is an American immigrant to Israel and the founder of ITIM, a nonprofit that advocates for Jewish religious pluralism within Israeli society. He filed the lawsuit along with his wife, Michelle Cohen Farber, another American immigrant to Israel. She uses the title “rabbanit,” which traditionally refers to someone married to a rabbi. In her case, it also refers to her own expertise in Jewish legal texts: She co-founded Hadran, an organization that promotes Talmud study among women.

Other petitioners include Rabbanit Avital Engelberg, an Israeli-born graduate of Yeshivat Maharat who directs the seminary’s Israeli branch.

Impact

Women’s training allows them to enter a variety of fields. Opportunities for Orthodox women’s religious leadership is growing, and it’s not all about ordination. “Yoatzot halacha,” for example, counsel other women about issues related to marriage, sex and reproduction.

More broadly, these programs – and the fact that women have now actually taken one of the Rabbinate’s exams – validate women’s religious leadership. For decades, many Orthodox Jews have looked to Israel’s Orthodox Rabbinate as the arbiter of religious authenticity. The ruling from the Israeli High Court of Justice forces Orthodox Judaism worldwide to recognize that women can achieve high levels of Talmudic education.

Finally, the proliferation of educational programs reflects – and creates – a need within orthodoxy. It is not just a small cadre of women seeking these opportunities. Programs continue to open because there is a demand among Orthodox women for the chance to study rabbinic texts. As more institutions create programs for women, they are creating a new reality: one where Orthodox women are religious leaders.

This is an updated version of an article originally published on Nov. 19, 2025.

Michal Raucher received funding from the Israel Institute, the University of Cincinnati, and the Hadassah Brandeis Institute to conduct research related to this article.

– ref. Three women sit for Israeli Rabbinate’s exam, amid growing recognition for Orthodox Jewish women’s religious leadership – https://theconversation.com/three-women-sit-for-israeli-rabbinates-exam-amid-growing-recognition-for-orthodox-jewish-womens-religious-leadership-281847

Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By Kyle Fiore Law, Postdoctoral Research Scholar in Sustainability, Arizona State University

Caring about future generations means believing that people who will live decades or centuries from now deserve ethical consideration. In practice, that means taking their interests into account when making all kinds of decisions across a range of issues – from aggressively cutting carbon emissions to investing in pandemic preparedness initiatives and regulating powerful emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence.

While it may sound like a niche moral view to care about future generations in this way, our new research, published in the academic journal Futures, suggests otherwise. In fact, Americans appear to care substantially about future generations. Nevertheless, they also systematically underestimate how much other Americans care.

To study this, we conducted two online surveys of U.S. adults, totaling 1,000 respondents. The samples were built to roughly match the U.S. population in age, gender, race or ethnicity, and political affiliation. In one survey, people told us their own views about future generations. In the other, a different group told us what they thought the average American believes.

We examined this in three ways. First, we asked how many future generations people think society should keep in mind when making collective decisions. For example, when setting climate targets or designing pandemic response systems, how many future generations should count as stakeholders in that decision? Second, we asked how many future generations elected officials should keep in mind when making decisions about laws and public policy. Third, we asked how far into the future people still deserve “moral concern.”

For the third question, participants were shown a list of the present generation and the next 50 generations, with each generation defined as a 25-year period. They then indicated how many of those generations still belonged inside their “moral circle.” In plain terms: If someone will live 100, 200, or even 1,000 years from now, does their suffering matter – and do we have some responsibility to help make their lives go better?

We found that Americans, on average, extended at least some moral concern about 28 generations into the future, or roughly 700 years. But there was a mismatch about when other people’s concern faded – respondents guessed that it happened around 21 generations out, about 175 years sooner.

A similar pattern appeared on the policy questions. Americans said society and government should take into account people living roughly 16 to 17 generations ahead, respectively – around 400 to 425 years into the future. But they assumed other Americans would endorse a shorter horizon of only about 13 generations, or roughly 325 years. In other words, Americans are more future-oriented than they think their fellow citizens are.

Why it matters

Public support for long-term policies depends partly on what people think other people value. Research on climate policy, for example, shows that Americans often underestimate how much support already exists for major mitigation measures. When people wrongly think their view is unusual, they can become less likely to speak up, join with others or pressure leaders to act.

Our findings suggest a similar dynamic may shape support for future-oriented policies more broadly. For issues such as pandemic preparedness, nuclear risk and emerging technologies, decisions made now can affect people far into the future.

It’s possible that a person might support stronger emissions cuts, better disease-prevention systems or safeguards on high-risk technologies, but stay quiet if they assume most other Americans do not care about those kinds of long-term consequences.

What’s next

For climate change, misperceptions are partly driven by partisan polarization, visible disagreement among leaders and vocal opposition from skeptics. Together, they can make public support appear weaker than it is.

Concern for future generations, by contrast, is much less overtly politicized – meaning it does not divide along party lines the way climate policy does. Most Americans, regardless of political affiliation, say they care about people living centuries from now. Yet this concern is rarely voiced in everyday conversation, in media coverage or in political debate.

Future research needs to examine why concern for future generations isn’t more visible in public life, such as in the media or voiced in everyday conversations. As a result, people might assume that others do not care as much as they actually do.

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. Americans care more about future generations than many think – and that gap could matter for policy – https://theconversation.com/americans-care-more-about-future-generations-than-many-think-and-that-gap-could-matter-for-policy-280315