Category: The Conversation

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Gregory A. Daddis, Professor and Melbern G. Glasscock Endowed Chair in American History, Texas A&M University

In an unprecedented step, the Department of Defense announced online on Nov. 24, 2025, that it was reviewing statements by U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly, a Democrat, who is a retired Navy captain, decorated combat veteran and former NASA astronaut.

Kelly and five other members of Congress with military or intelligence backgrounds told members of the armed forces “You can refuse illegal orders” in a video released on Nov. 18, reiterating oaths that members of the military and the intelligence community swear to uphold and defend the Constitution. The legislators said they acted in response to concerns expressed by troops currently serving on active duty.

President Donald Trump called the video “seditious behavior, punishable by death.”

Retired senior officers like Kelly can be recalled to duty at any time, which would make it possible for the Pentagon to put Kelly on trial under the Uniform Code of Military Justice, although the Defense Department announcement did not specify possible charges. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth wrote online that “Kelly’s conduct brings discredit upon the armed forces and will be addressed appropriately.”

This threat to punish Kelly is just the latest move by the Trump administration against perceived enemies at home. By branding critics and opponents as disloyal, traitorous or worse, Trump and his supporters are resurrecting a playbook that hearkens back to Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s crusade against people he portrayed as domestic threats to the U.S. in the 1950s.

As a historian who studies national security and the Cold War era, I know that McCarthyism wrought devastating social and cultural harm across our nation. In my view, repeating what I believe constitutes social and political fratricide could be just as harmful today, perhaps even more so.

Targeting homegrown enemies

In the late 1940s and early 1950s, many Americans believed the United States was a nation under siege. Despite their victory in World War II, Americans saw a dangerous world confronting them.

The communist-run Soviet Union held Eastern Europe in an iron grip. In 1949, Mao Zedong’s communist troops triumphed in the bloody Chinese civil war. One year later, the Korean peninsula descended into full-scale conflict, raising the prospect of World War III – a frightening possibility in the atomic era.

Anti-communist zealots in the U.S., most notably Wisconsin Republican Sen. McCarthy, argued that treasonous Americans were weakening the nation at home. During a February 1950 speech in Wheeling, West Virginia, McCarthy asserted that “the traitorous actions of those who have been treated so well by this nation” were undermining the United States during its “final, all-out battle” against communism.

When communist forces toppled China’s government, critics such as political activist Freda Utley lambasted President Harry Truman’s administration for what they cast as its timidity, blundering and, worse, “treason in high places.” Conflating foreign and domestic threats, McCarthy claimed without evidence that homegrown enemies “within our borders have been more responsible for the success of communism abroad than Soviet Russia.”

As ostensible proof, the senator pointed to American lives being lost in Korea and argued that it was possible to “fully fight a war abroad and at the same time … dispose of the traitorous filth and the Red vermin which have accumulated at home.”

Political opponents might disparage McCarthy for his “dishonest and cowardly use of fractional fact and innuendo,” but the Wisconsinite knew how to play to the press. Time and again, McCarthy would bombastically lash out against his critics as he did with columnist Drew Pearson, calling him “an unprincipled liar,” “a fake” and the owner of a “twisted perverted mentality.”

While McCarthy focused on allegedly disloyal government officials and media journalists, other self-pronounced protectors of the nation sought to warn naive members of the public. Defense Department pamphlets like “Know Your Communist Enemy” alerted Americans against being duped by Communist Party members skilled in deception and manipulation.

Virulent anti-communists denounced what they viewed as inherent weaknesses of postwar American society, with a clearly political bent. Republicans asserted that cowardly, effeminate liberals were weakening the nation’s defense by minimizing threats both home and abroad.

Censure and worse

In such an anxiety-ridden environment, “red-baiting” – discrediting political opponents by linking them to communism – spread across the country, leaving a trail of wrecked lives. From teachers to public officials, anyone deemed un-American by McCarthyites faced public censure, loss of employment or even imprisonment.

Under the 1940 Smith Act, which criminalized promoting the overthrow of the U.S. government, hundreds of Americans were prosecuted during the Cold War simply for having been members of the Communist Party of the United States. The act also authorized the “deportation of aliens,” reflecting fears that communist ideas had seeped into nearly all facets of American society.

The 1950 Internal Security Act, widely known as the McCarran Act, further emphasized existential threats from within. “Disloyal aliens,” a term the law left purposefully vague, could have their citizenship revoked. Communist Party members were required to register with the government, a step that made them susceptible to prosecution under the Smith Act.

Immigrants could be detained or deported if the president declared an “internal security emergency.” Advocates called this policy “preventive detention,” while critics derided the act as a “Concentration Camp Law,” in the words of historian Masumi Izumi.

Scapegoating outsiders

The scaremongering wasn’t just about people’s political views: Vulnerable groups, such as gay people, were also targeted. McCarthy warned of links between “communists and queers,” asserting that “sexual perverts” had infested the U.S. government, especially the State Department, and posed “dangerous security risks.” Closeted gay or lesbian employees, the argument went, were vulnerable to blackmail by foreign governments.

Fearmongering also took on a decidedly racist tone. South Carolina Governor George Bell Timmerman, Jr., for instance, argued in 1957 that enforcing “Negro voting rights” would promote the “cause of communism.”

Three years later, a comic book titled “The Red Iceberg” insinuated that communists were exploiting the “tragic plight” of Black families and that the NAACP, a leading U.S. civil rights advocacy group, had been infiltrated by the Kremlin. Conservatives like Arizona Sen. Barry Goldwater criticized the growing practice of using federal power to enforce civil rights, calling it communist-style social engineering.

A new McCarthyism

While it’s never simple to draw neat historical parallels from past eras to the present, it appears McCarthy-like actions are recurring widely today. During the Red Scare, the focus was on alleged communists. Today, the focus is on straightforward dissent. Critics, both past and present, of President Donald Trump’s actions and policies are being targeted.

At the national level, Trump has called for using military force against “the enemy from within.” On Sept. 30, 2025, Trump told hundreds of generals and admirals who had been called to Quantico, Virginia, from posts around the world that the National Guard should view America’s “dangerous cities as training grounds.”

The Trump administration is making expansive use of the McCarran Act to crack down on immigrants in U.S. cities. White House adviser Stephen Miller has proposed suspending the constitutionally protected writ of habeas corpus, which entitles prisoners to challenge their detentions in court, in order to deport “illegal aliens,” alleging that the U.S. is “under invasion.”

In my home state of Texas, political fearmongering has taken on an equally McCarthyesque tone, with the Legislature directing the State Board of Education to adopt mandatory instruction on “atrocities attributable to communist regimes.”

Perhaps it is unsurprising, then, that right-wing activist Laura Loomer has unapologetically called for “making McCarthy great again.”

Disagreement is democratic

The history of McCarthyism shows where this kind of action can lead. Charging political opponents with treason and calling the media an “enemy of the people,” all without evidence, undercuts democratic principles.

These actions cast certain groups as different and dehumanize them. Portraying political rivals as existential threats, simply for disagreeing with their fellow citizens or political leaders, promotes forced consensus. This diminishes debate and can lead to bad policies.

Americans live in an insecure world today, but as I see it, demonizing enemies won’t make the United States a safer place. Instead, it only will lead to the kind of harm that was brought to pass by the very worst tendencies of McCarthyism.

Gregory A. Daddis 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. Pentagon investigation of Sen. Mark Kelly revives Cold War persecution of Americans with supposedly disloyal views – https://theconversation.com/pentagon-investigation-of-sen-mark-kelly-revives-cold-war-persecution-of-americans-with-supposedly-disloyal-views-265964

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Andrew Cowell, Professor of Linguistics, University of Colorado Boulder

I was hired at the University of Colorado Boulder in 1995 as a language professor. I relocated from Hawaii, where I had learned the Hawaiian language.

When I arrived in Colorado, I decided I needed to learn about the Indigenous language of the Boulder and Denver area, Arapaho. The Arapaho people had occupied the area for many years until they were forced to leave in the 1860s.

I first visited the Northern Arapaho people on the Wind River Reservation in Wyoming in 1999. At that time, there were hundreds of speakers of the Arapaho language.

Today, there are less than 100, and all are over the age of 70.

The Arapaho people in Wyoming and Colorado believe their language can still survive, and so do I. That’s why I am working to combine decades of language documentation with new technological approaches in order to help revive the language.

Loss of Native languages

Many Native American languages currently have few Native speakers, and the speakers are typically the oldest members of the community. The languages of the Wichita and Kansa people, for example, are among many that are no longer spoken at all.

Native American languages have been in decline in the face of Euro-American pressure for centuries.

On the Great Plains, this decline accelerated after World War II when Native soldiers came home after seeing prosperity off the reservation.

Arapaho elders tell me that bilingual parents decided to speak only English to their children to improve their chances of success in life. They were certain the tribal languages would come “later.”

But “later” didn’t happen. Boarding schools had already been suppressing the language, and now economic improvements brought cars, radios and televisions to Wind River, further promoting the use of English. Without language exposure in the home, children were not able to acquire good speaking abilities.

Today, however, tribal communities around the country increasingly want to maintain or reacquire their languages. Efforts to do this have been going on for several decades, with some successes, such as the Mohawk language of New York and Canada, Cherokee in Oklahoma and North Carolina and the Blackfoot language of northern Montana.

In most places however, numbers of Native speakers continue to decline, while learning among younger speakers progresses slowly.

Uses of data for curriculum

My early work focused on documenting the Arapaho language. Past linguists working with Native languages typically focused on traditional storytelling, as well as audio-recorded data. But my interest in anthropology led me to focus on conversation and everyday interaction. I also recorded on video to capture social settings, gestures and sign language. And to better understand the role of the language in daily use, I worked to become a good speaker myself.

I have compiled my documentation into a database that contains over 100,000 sentences of natural Arapaho speech. All of this has been transcribed, translated into English and accompanied by detailed linguistic analysis.

The database is further supported by an online learning site and an online dictionary of around 25,000 entries. They are among the largest such resources for an Indigenous language, though resources do exist for other languages, such as Yurok.

From documentation to curriculum

In response to the Arapaho people’s goal of language revitalization, my own work has shifted from documentation to assisting teachers, students and curriculum developers. The database turns out to have great value in this area.

Adult learners can watch the videos along with the Arapaho transcriptions or English translations, or both, and review the detailed grammatical analysis.

However, it is quite difficult for young learners to immediately benefit from listening to natural discourse. That’s why carefully graded curricula are crucial. Unlike for commonly taught languages such as French or Spanish, materials for most Native American languages are just being developed.

Arapaho can be challenging to learn because its structure is quite different from English. Many small chunks of meaning are combined to produce long, complex words. For example, an English speaker can start with “happy” and produce “un-happi-ness.” Arapaho speakers typically add three, four or even five prefixes, and multiple suffixes as well. A speaker can say the word “niibeetwonwoteekoohunoo” – which has six separate meaningful chunks. This translates to English, “I want to go and drive to town.”

There is little value in memorizing such complex words, just as English learners don’t memorize entire sentences. Instead, Arapaho learners need to understand the separate parts, and how they combine.

Previous efforts have succeeded in teaching children to speak basic Arapaho. The challenge now is to keep improving their Arapaho language abilities, using a graded curriculum that continues through all school levels.

The database can identify and label the individual chunks of words, and assign meanings to each chunk. A beginner’s dictionary of 1,300 entries has been created by calculating the overall frequency of base words in the 100,000 sentences, and then selecting only the most common ones.

The list has been broken down further to produce target vocabulary for each grade level. Smaller chunks of prefixes and suffixes are also measured, and sequential grammar-learning goals can be produced based on frequency and complexity.

A draft Arapaho learning sequence has been created, with 44 stages. It is now possible for the first time to produce a full, progressive language curriculum for Arapaho. The next step is to develop more curricular materials and train teachers to use them.

The sequence of 44 stages is now being introduced at Wyoming Indian Elementary School, the first school on the Wind River Reservation to pioneer dual-language classrooms.

Limitations of technology

Technology is not a magic bullet, however. Only Native people can save their languages, by choosing to learn and speak them.

Because artificial intelligence works using large language models, it needs billions of words of discourse to be trained effectively in a language. No Indigenous language has nearly that amount of data, so the capacity of AI to address Native language endangerment is limited. Moreover, many Indigenous communities are wary of AI due to concerns over data sovereignty and cultural property rights.

My own old-fashioned experience as a learner and teacher has proved crucial. I can see where difficulties lie for learners, and how to fine-tune computational measurements and predictions. I’ve learned that success in helping revitalize Native languages depends on researchers building long-term relationships with Native peoples and, ideally, speaking Native languages. Only then can new technologies be applied most productively.

Andrew Cowell currently receives funding from National Science Foundation. Past funding related to the work described here has come from the American Council of Learned Societies and Hans Rausing Endangered Language Documentation Programme.

He has received compensation from elements of the Northern Arapaho Tribe and the Southern Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribe for some of his assistance and consultation.

– ref. A database could help revive the Arapaho language before its last speakers are gone – https://theconversation.com/a-database-could-help-revive-the-arapaho-language-before-its-last-speakers-are-gone-269592

Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By Joslyn Brenton, Assistant Professor of Sociology, Ithaca College

The 2025 government shutdown drew widespread attention to how many Americans struggle to get enough food. For 43 days, the more than 42 million Americans who receive Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits had to find other ways to stock their cupboards.

When asked how she felt about her benefits being suspended, one woman in West Virginia told a New York Times reporter, “We’re angry. Because we do count!”

Her sentiment reflects an often underappreciated fact about food. Food is not just a matter of survival. What and how you eat is also a symbol of your social status. Being unable to reliably feed your family healthy and nutritious foods in a way that aligns with your values can feel undignified. It can make people feel unseen and less important than others.

As researchers who study food inequality, nutrition and food justice, we have spent decades surveying and interviewing Americans about how they eat. We have witnessed firsthand how food assistance does help people meet their basic needs, but how it can also be stigmatizing and diminish their sense of dignity.

We have also studied alternatives to typical charitable food programs that, despite good intentions, tend to induce shame. We have learned that it is possible to help people put food on the table while preserving their dignity.

Dignity and food assistance

Addressing the root causes of food insecurity – what happens when people lack steady access to the food they need for a nutritious diet that’s in keeping with their preferences – is a persistent problem in the United States.

Thus, the demand for SNAP benefits, which help Americans buy groceries, other government nutrition programs, and food banks and food pantries rarely declines much – even when the economy is strong. Yet relying on food assistance programs does not tend to support a healthy diet and can take a toll on mental health.

As interviewers and clinicians, we have heard mothers describe the shame they feel when SNAP benefits do not cover the entire grocery bill. We have witnessed the frustration that comes with walking down a food pantry aisle lined with signs instructing hungry people to “take only 1 item!”

“The stuff looks like almost trash, but they give it to you,” one woman we interviewed said of her experience with food pantries and the like.

These kinds of stories are not uncommon. Charitable food programs receive leftover items from grocery stores, donations from community food drives and local businesses, and sometimes surplus from local farms. Food is often damaged in transport or from being handled too many times. A review of the research found that many people who use food pantries described the food as unhealthy, moldy or inedible. Being given unhealthy and unappealing food in a time of need is a double burden.

While free food may fill the stomach, it does not satisfy the desire to feel fully human and worthy of nourishment.

People who visit food banks have told researchers that they have come to expect low-quality food and few choices. When food aid is provided that way, it can leave the people it is supposed to help feeling powerless and ashamed.

These indignities are compounded by the fact that people who visit food banks and food pantries routinely face suspicion and surveillance around what they buy and how they eat, intensifying the stress associated with food insecurity.

In our research, we saw cashiers hovering over mothers using SNAP EBT cards in the self-checkout line. Politicians routinely suggest that SNAP is corrupt, contributing to nationwide perceptions that people who rely on this program are unfairly gaming the system. One study found that more than two-thirds of the Americans people who get food assistance have been the target of hostile comments and interactions from strangers at the grocery store.

Minimizing stigma

Several studies have shown that food programs do not need to sacrifice dignity to offer help. Programs that offer opportunities for people with lower incomes to receive and give back are important.

In Canada, bulk-buying food cooperatives did just that. Food assistance programs confer dignity when they make people feel good. People seeking help feel more satisfied after visiting food pantries that keep convenient hours or offer fresh produce.

SNAP has also tried to promote client dignity by ensuring that benefits are accepted in major grocery stores and distributing the funds to debit cards, allowing people to look and feel like everyday shoppers.

Yet despite these efforts social stigma persists. People who are enrolled in the SNAP program are still routinely devalued and judged for being poor in a society that assigns social value and worth based on one’s position on the economic ladder.

Cultivating dignity in food assistance

Minimizing stigma improves food assistance. Intentionally cultivating food dignity may be the next step.

Our assessment of a nationwide meal kit program demonstrated how dignity can be cultivated when food assistance programs consider the nutritional, emotional, aesthetic and cultural dimensions of food and eating.

In 2021, we conducted 116 interviews with participants of a meal kit program called Pass the Love. The program was free and anyone could enroll, no questions asked. The meal kits contained the necessary food and recipes to make three vegetarian meals a week, such as sesame coconut noodle salad or carrot coconut dal with rice. The program ran for four consecutive weeks.

When we interviewed participants about their experiences during and after the program, we learned that while they were thankful for the free food, what mattered more was the high quality, how it was packaged and how it conveyed care and respect.

Most participants had incomes at or well below the poverty line. They described what we came to call a “high dignity food experience,” meaning that it generated positive feelings and a sense of worth.

Opening the nicely packaged meal kit boxes each week felt like “Christmas,” to some people and a “gift” to others. Many found the “thought and care” that went into the program remarkable. Offering high-quality food to make nutritious, complete meals symbolized that low-income or food-insecure people deserve to eat well and feel good.

Our research, like similar studies that others have conducted, shows that treating food as a basic human right requires more than just giving people something to eat. It means ensuring unconditional access to the culturally appropriate fresh and nutritious food people need to thrive not just physically, but psychologically and socially.

Joslyn Brenton received funding from Partnership for a Healthier America as an external research expert.

Dr. Virudachalam received funding from the Edna G. Kynett Memorial Foundation, Rite Aid Foundation, and Partnership for a Healthier America in the last 36 months. She is a member of The Food Trust Board of Directors, the National Produce Prescription Collaborative Steering Committee, and Philadelphia City Council’s Food and Nutrition Security Task Force.

Alyssa Tindall 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. How food assistance programs can feed families and nourish their dignity – https://theconversation.com/how-food-assistance-programs-can-feed-families-and-nourish-their-dignity-269171

Source: The Conversation – USA (3) – By Christina Hymer, Assistant Professor of Management and Entrepreneurship, University of Tennessee

When you picture Santa Claus, a white, bearded, overweight and jolly man who dashes around delivering gifts to children during the Christmas season probably comes to mind. Yet, not everyone who dons the red suit fits this stereotype.

That’s what Bethany Cockburn, Borbala Csillag and I learned when we teamed up to study professional Santas. For our study, we looked into how these professional Santas were able to “be” Santa, even if they didn’t fully fit the image.

As we explained in a forthcoming article in the Academy of Management Journal, many who do this work don’t see it as just a job – it’s a calling. For some professional Santas, it’s especially important that they look and feel like Santa to experience that sense of purpose in their work.

We surveyed 849 professional Santas who live across the U.S. and interviewed 53 of them, collecting data between 2018 and 2021. We identified three types of professional Santas: prototypical (64%), semi-prototypical (23%) and nonprototypical (13%).

Prototypical Santas look the part. They are white and overweight, have real beards and express confidence that they are the right fit.

Semi-prototypical Santas looked the part, too, but felt like they weren’t quite suitable for a range of reasons. They might be introverted or use a fake beard.

Nonprototypical Santas had characteristics at odds with the stereotype. They might be nonwhite, female or gay, or have a physical disability.

Whereas prototypical Santas could easily slide into the Santa role, the process was more complex for the others.

Semi-prototypical Santas did things like come up with stories they’d tell themselves or share with children to explain away their fake beards. Nonprototypical Santas had values aligned with the Santa image, such as being peaceful, loving and kind. But they still made a big effort to look like what people expect when they visit a Santa.

“Should it be a difference if you’re a Jewish Santa Claus or a Catholic Santa Claus?” asked an atheist professional Santa we called “Santa Aquila.” “No. You’re Santa Claus. What do you do? You’re not even supposed to preach anything.”

Another Santa whom we called “Santa Lynx” hid that she was female in part by flattening her chest.

Why it matters

While anyone can take a turn being their neighborhood potluck’s Santa, the one you meet at the mall probably attended some combination of Santa schools, webinars and training.

For instance, the Charles W. Howard Santa Claus School was founded in 1937 and conducts an annual Santa training each year. National networks also exist, such as the Fraternal Order of Real Bearded Santas, which says it has 1,000 members, – and the IBRBS, formerly known as the International Brotherhood of Real Bearded Santas, offering meetups and professional support.

There are also local organizations, such as the Lone Star Santas network in Texas.

Although most professional Santas are paid for their work, many do this voluntarily.

It’s not uncommon for there to be some sort of expectation around who should have a particular occupation. Pilots tend to be male, most schoolteachers are female, and salespeople are often seen as extroverted.

But that doesn’t mean that women can’t be pilots, men can’t be teachers or that introverts can’t work in sales.

What’s next

I’m now looking at how broader institutional environments, current events and social movements can shape how people experience their callings and find meaning at work.

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

Christina Hymer 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. What makes a true Santa is inside – and comes with the red suit – https://theconversation.com/what-makes-a-true-santa-is-inside-and-comes-with-the-red-suit-269569