Source: The Conversation – USA – By Gregory P. Magarian, Thomas and Karole Green Professor of Law, Washington University in St. Louis
Ohio National Guardsmen on the Kent State University campus prepare to disperse student protesters on May 4, 1970. Troops later opened fire on students, killing four.Howard Ruffner/Getty Images
The president announces an aggressive, controversial policy. Large groups of protesters take to the streets. Government agents open fire and kill protesters.
In Minneapolis, free speech has weathered the crisis better, as seen in the protests themselves, the public’s responses – and even the protest songs the two events inspired.
Protesters march through the streets of downtown Minneapolis on Jan. 25, 2026, one day after federal agents shot dead U.S. citizen Alex Pretti. Roberto Schmidt/AFP via Getty Images
The public response to Minneapolis has made a difference. The Trump administration has announced an end to its immigration crackdown in the Twin Cities. Trump has backed off attacks on Good and Pretti. Congressional opposition to ICE funding has grown. Overall public support for Trump and his policies has fallen.
Free speech in protests, recordings and songs
What has caused people to view the killings in Minneapolis so differently from Kent State? One big factor, I believe, is how free speech has shaped the public response.
The Minneapolis protests themselves have sent the public a more focused message than what emerged from the student protests against the Vietnam War.
Anti-war protests in 1970 targeted military action on the other side of the world. Organizers had to plan and coordinate through in-person meetings and word of mouth. Student protesters needed the institutional news media to convey their views to the public.
In contrast, the anti-ICE protests in Minneapolis target government action at the protesters’ doorsteps. Organizers can use local networks and social media to plan, coordinate and communicate directly with the public. The protests have succeeded in deepening public opposition to ICE.
In addition, the American people have witnessed the Minneapolis shootings.
Finally, consider two popular protest songs that emerged from Kent State and Minneapolis: Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young’s “Ohio” and Bruce Springsteen’s “Streets of Minneapolis.”
Bruce Springsteen sings ‘Streets of Minneapolis.’
Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young recorded, pressed and released “Ohio” with remarkable speed for 1970. The vinyl single reached record stores and radio stations on June 4, a month after the Kent State shootings. The song peaked at No. 14 on the Billboard chart two months later.
Neil Young’s lyrics described the Kent State events in mythic terms, warning of “tin soldiers” and telling young Americans: “We’re finally on our own.” Young did not describe the shootings in detail. The song does not name Kent State, the National Guard or the fallen students. Instead, it presents the events as symbolic of a broader generational conflict over the Vietnam War.
The internet and social media let Springsteen document Minneapolis, almost in real time, for a mass audience. Springsteen’s lyrics balance symbolism with specificity, naming not just “King Trump” but also victims Pretti and Good, key Trump officials Stephen Miller and Kristi Noem, main Minneapolis artery Nicollet Avenue, and the protesters’ “whistles and phones,” before fading on a chant of “ICE out!”
At the same time, Minneapolis has shown how networked communication can promote free speech. Through focused protests, recordings of government action, and viral popular culture, today’s public can get fuller, clearer information to help critically assess government actions.
Gregory P. Magarian 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.
Public debate about artificial intelligence in higher education has largely orbited a familiar worry: cheating. Will students use chatbots to write essays? Can instructors tell? Should universities ban the tech? Embrace it?
These concerns are understandable. But focusing so much on cheating misses the larger transformation already underway, one that extends far beyond student misconduct and even the classroom.
Universities are adopting AI across many areas of institutional life. Some uses are largely invisible, like systems that help allocate resources, flag “at-risk” students, optimize course scheduling or automate routine administrative decisions. Other uses are more noticeable. Students use AI tools to summarize and study, instructors use them to build assignments and syllabuses and researchers use them to write code, scan literature and compress hours of tedious work into minutes.
People may use AI to cheat or skip out on work assignments. But the many uses of AI in higher education, and the changes they portend, beg a much deeper question: As machines become more capable of doing the labor of research and learning, what happens to higher education? What purpose does the university serve?
As these technologies become better at producing knowledge work – designing classes, writing papers, suggesting experiments and summarizing difficult texts – they don’t just make universities more productive. They risk hollowing out the ecosystem of learning and mentorship upon which these institutions are built, and on which they depend.
Nonautonomous AI
Consider three kinds of AI systems and their respective impacts on university life:
AI-powered software is already being used throughout higher education in admissions review, purchasing, academic advising and institutional risk assessment. These are considered “nonautonomous” systems because they automate tasks, but a person is “in the loop” and using these systems as tools.
These technologies can pose a risk to students’ privacy and data security. They also can be biased. And they often lack sufficient transparency to determine the sources of these problems. Who has access to student data? How are “risk scores” generated? How do we prevent systems from reproducing inequities or treating certain students as problems to be managed?
These questions are serious, but they are not conceptually new, at least within the field of computer science. Universities typically have compliance offices, institutional review boards and governance mechanisms that are designed to help address or mitigate these risks, even if they sometimes fall short of these objectives.
Hybrid AI
Hybrid systems encompass a range of tools, including AI-assisted tutoring chatbots, personalized feedback tools and automated writing support. They often rely on generative AI technologies, especially large language models. While human users set the overall goals, the intermediate steps the system takes to meet them are often not specified.
Hybrid systems are increasingly shaping day-to-day academic work. Students use them as writing companions, tutors, brainstorming partners and on-demand explainers. Faculty use them to generate rubrics, draft lectures and design syllabuses. Researchers use them to summarize papers, comment on drafts, design experiments and generate code.
This is where the “cheating” conversation belongs. With students and faculty alike increasingly leaning on technology for help, it is reasonable to wonder what kinds of learning might get lost along the way. But hybrid systems also raise more complex ethical questions.
If students rely on generative AI to produce work for their classes, and feedback is also generated by AI, how does that affect the relationship between student and professor? Eric Lee for The Washington Post via Getty Images
One has to do with transparency. AI chatbots offer natural-language interfaces that make it hard to tell when you’re interacting with a human and when you’re interacting with an automated agent. That can be alienating and distracting for those who interact with them. A student reviewing material for a test should be able to tell if they are talking with their teaching assistant or with a robot. A student reading feedback on a term paper needs to know whether it was written by their instructor. Anything less than complete transparency in such cases will be alienating to everyone involved and will shift the focus of academic interactions from learning to the means or the technology of learning. University of Pittsburgh researchers have shown that these dynamics bring forth feelings of uncertainty, anxiety and distrust for students. These are problematic outcomes.
A second ethical question relates to accountability and intellectual credit. If an instructor uses AI to draft an assignment and a student uses AI to draft a response, who is doing the evaluating, and what exactly is being evaluated? If feedback is partly machine-generated, who is responsible when it misleads, discourages or embeds hidden assumptions? And when AI contributes substantially to research synthesis or writing, universities will need clearer norms around authorship and responsibility – not only for students, but also for faculty.
Finally, there is the critical question of cognitive offloading. AI can reduce drudgery, and that’s not inherently bad. But it can also shift users away from the parts of learning that build competence, such as generating ideas, struggling through confusion, revising a clumsy draft and learning to spot one’s own mistakes.
Autonomous agents
The most consequential changes may come with systems that look less like assistants and more like agents. While truly autonomous technologies remain aspirational, the dream of a researcher “in a box” – an agentic AI system that can perform studies on its own – is becoming increasingly realistic.
Growing sophistication and autonomy of technology systems means that scientific research can increasingly be automated, potentially leaving people with fewer opportunities to gain skills practicing research methods. NurPhoto/Getty Images
Agentic tools are anticipated to “free up time” for work that focuses on more human capacities like empathy and problem-solving. In teaching, this may mean that faculty may still teach in the headline sense, but more of the day-to-day labor of instruction can be handed off to systems optimized for efficiency and scale. Similarly, in research, the trajectory points toward systems that can increasingly automate the research cycle. In some domains, that already looks like robotic laboratories that run continuously, automate large portions of experimentation and even select new tests based on prior results.
At first glance, this may sound like a welcome boost to productivity. But universities are not information factories; they are systems of practice. They rely on a pipeline of graduate students and early-career academics who learn to teach and research by participating in that same work. If autonomous agents absorb more of the “routine” responsibilities that historically served as on-ramps into academic life, the university may keep producing courses and publications while quietly thinning the opportunity structures that sustain expertise over time.
The same dynamic applies to undergraduates, albeit in a different register. When AI systems can supply explanations, drafts, solutions and study plans on demand, the temptation is to offload the most challenging parts of learning. To the industry that is pushing AI into universities, it may seem as if this type of work is “inefficient” and that students will be better off letting a machine handle it. But it is the very nature of that struggle that builds durable understanding. Cognitive psychology has shown that students grow intellectually through doing the work of drafting, revising, failing, trying again, grappling with confusion and revising weak arguments. This is the work of learning how to learn.
Taken together, these developments suggest that the greatest risk posed by automation in higher education is not simply the replacement of particular tasks by machines, but the erosion of the broader ecosystem of practice that has long sustained teaching, research and learning.
An uncomfortable inflection point
So what purpose do universities serve in a world in which knowledge work is increasingly automated?
One possible answer treats the university primarily as an engine for producing credentials and knowledge. There, the core question is output: Are students graduating with degrees? Are papers and discoveries being generated? If autonomous systems can deliver those outputs more efficiently, then the institution has every reason to adopt them.
But another answer treats the university as something more than an output machine, acknowledging that the value of higher education lies partly in the ecosystem itself. This model assigns intrinsic value to the pipeline of opportunities through which novices become experts, the mentorship structures through which judgment and responsibility are cultivated, and the educational design that encourages productive struggle rather than optimizing it away. Here, what matters is not only whether knowledge and degrees are produced, but how they are produced and what kinds of people, capacities and communities are formed in the process. In this version, the university is meant to serve as no less than an ecosystem that reliably forms human expertise and judgment.
In a world where knowledge work itself is increasingly automated, we think universities must ask what higher education owes its students, its early-career scholars and the society it serves. The answers will determine not only how AI is adopted, but also what the modern university becomes.
The Applied Ethics Center at UMass Boston receives funding from the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies. Nir Eisikovits serves as the data ethics advisor to MindGuard, a startup focused on AI integration into companies’ workflow.
Jacob Burley receives funding from The Applied Ethics Center at UMass Boston.
There is a long and storied history of nonhuman actors, from Luke, the dog of silent star Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle, to the collies cast in the role of Lassie in film and on television. Bart the Bear racked up over 20 film and TV credits in the 1980s and 1990s, while countless horses have supported period dramas that now saturate streaming services.
But business has not been as good as it used to be for the animal trainers who specialize in renting creatures of all kinds to film and TV productions.
Hollywood’s adoption of visual effects – also referred to as computer generated imagery, or CGI – has had an outsized role in putting many animal actors out of work. Ever since “Jurassic Park” (1993) dared to comingle CGI dinosaurs with human actors, more and more digital animals have appeared alongside humans on screen.
But even before these recent events, there were calls for Hollywood to radically reduce its dependence on animal actors.
In 2012, The Hollywood Reporter – the same trade magazine that recently lamented a downturn in animal rentals – published an exposé cataloging incidents in which animals died, were injured or were put at grievous risk on sets. These productions nonetheless went on to carry the famous “No Animals Were Harmed” credit awarded by the American Humane Association, despite the fact that, well, animals were harmed. American Humane maintained that the incidents were tragic but not the result of negligence.
In 2016, PETA released the results of undercover investigations documenting substandard living conditions and untreated medical conditions at Birds & Animals Unlimited, which operates animal training facilities for film and television. In 2024, the organization detailed neglect of animals in the care of Atlanta Film Animals. Both companies denied the allegations.
There are, of course, any number of ways to minimize or avoid using actual animals in film and TV altogether.
“The Rise of the Planet of the Apes” and its sequels have used motion-capture, with humans performing the movements of characters later rendered as chimpanzees, gorillas, bonobos and orangutans.
For Ang Lee’s 2012 production “Life of Pi,” visual effects artists created thousands of virtual animals, while director Darren Aronofsky opted for completely digital animals, supplemented by some practical props, in 2014’s “Noah.”
Bucking high-tech trends, the 2025 horror film “Primate” went old school without reverting to real animals, deploying a movement artist in a costume and prosthetics to play a murderously rabid chimp.
The 2025 horror flick ‘Primate’ doesn’t deploy CGI or an animal actor, but instead uses a costumed human to portray the maniacal ape.
Can CGI numb viewers to animal violence?
What do digital animals, these bestial avatars, make possible?
Undoubtedly, there are trainers who care deeply for their charges and uphold best practices in animal husbandry. But it stands to reason that the fewer captive animals, the better, and recent advances in AI have made visual effects and CGI even more realistic and easier to model.
In the past, the fact that the animals on set were real sometimes curbed filmmakers’ most savage impulses; violence was implied or took place off-screen in family fare like “The Yearling” (1946) and “Old Yeller” (1957). At the same time, camera tricks and props have been used to create scenes of animal cruelty in many films, from “American Psycho” (2000) to “John Wick” (2014).
While the effects of violent media on viewers are notoriously hard to study, some evidence suggests that some audiences can become desensitized to the real-world consequences of unhealthy and violent content. It’s easy to see how this desensitization could extend to watching cruelty toward animals on screen.
Viewers can still sniff out the virtual
A hybrid approach to portraying animals on screen seems to have taken hold, using what one scholar has called – in a reference to on-screen dogs – “composite canine performances.”
The team behind the 2025 version of “Superman,” for example, sought to create a realistic dog, right down to each scruffy patch of fur. But they needed it to defy gravity and other laws of physics. So they incorporated just enough live animal in preproduction to animate a mostly CGI creature, with director James Gunn’s own dog serving as the “model,” or “reference,” for the superdog, Krypto.
Director James Gunn’s dog was used to model the mostly CGI Krypto in 2025’s ‘Superman.’
This technique recalls the methods of Disney animators who were stumped by the challenge of creating the characters for “Bambi” (1942). So they studied animal anatomy, photographed deer in the wild and sketched animals brought into the studio in order to better capture their movements on paper.
But when it comes to live-action films grounded in everyday life, there’s still work on set for real animals. For one, it’s still usually cheaper to deploy the real thing. Moreover, most of the virtual animals on screen simply don’t look realistic enough to allow for the full suspension of disbelief that makes cinema magic.
Future opportunities for trainers and their charges appear to rest on just how good visual effects can get. For some animal activists – not to mention the animals that have no say in their work – that day can’t come soon enough.
Moviegoers and animal advocates, meanwhile, might hope for a middle ground: a future in which only ethically treated animals continue to get to appear on the screen.
Cynthia Chris 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.
“Humble” is not a word my colleagues would use to describe me, especially early in my career.
In fact, when word got around that I was researching humility, I suspect more than a few choked on their coffee.
And even though I have spent over a decade exploring the concept as an attribute and as a practice, it wasn’t until I recently reflected on my own professional challenges that I truly understood how to embrace humility.
I want to share my journey, but first it is important to understand what humility is – and isn’t. It’s been extolled as a virtue for centuries, but it’s often mischaracterized.
In today’s culture, it can be mistaken as a humblebrag, which disguises a boast as modesty – for example, “I really hate talking about myself, but people keep asking how I managed to run a marathon while working full time.” Or it can resemble impostor phenomenon, the persistent experience of feeling intellectually or professionally fraudulent despite clear evidence of competence or success.
But research shows that humble people hold accurate views of their own abilities and achievements. They openly acknowledge their mistakes and limitations and are receptive to new ideas. Overall, they recognize their places within a larger whole and genuinely appreciate the value of others.
Humility doesn’t always earn praise. Sometimes the humble may be seen as meek, subservient or self-abasing.
Generally, though, when humility is understood as grounded self-awareness rather than self-erasure, it’s viewed as something worth cultivating and practicing. We see openness, curiosity, acknowledgment of others and a lack of ego in fictional characters like Ted Lasso, hero of the same-titled Apple TV series; Samwise Gamgee in the “Lord of the Rings” books; and Jean-Luc Picard, commander of the USS Enterprise in “Star Trek: The Next Generation.”
Humility is also evident in public figures, such as former President Jimmy Carter, children’s television host Fred Rogers, and Nelson Mandela, the Black nationalist who served as the first Black president of South Africa.
Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter speaks to the congregation at Maranatha Baptist Church before teaching Sunday school in his hometown of Plains, Ga., on April 28, 2019, at age 94. After leaving the White House in 1981, Carter taught Sunday school at the church on a regular basis. Paul Hennessy/NurPhoto via Getty Images
From my research and my own experience, I’ve learned that true humility isn’t self-erasure. It’s a sense of security and confidence that your value doesn’t depend on recognition and that you are just one member of a larger system with a multitude of contributors. By removing the need to dominate, humility fosters openness to collaboration, innovation and an awareness of how the systems around us work.
Still, in a world of Instagram likes and LinkedIn accolades, humility can be the virtue everyone seems to admire but few practice It’s the one we say we want – until it requires us to confront the parts of ourselves that crave affirmation.
Climbing the professional ladder
I tend to stand out in a crowd. I’m 6-foot-4, with close-cropped hair, a heavy beard and tattoos. I also push myself to stand out professionally.
Starting in graduate school, I was determined to make my voice heard and sought after. I pursued nearly every opportunity, committee and position that came my way. No role was too small for me to accept.
I strived to present my work in top-tier journals and at conferences, and I cold-called prominent scholars to propose working together. And I constantly shared my findings and thoughts on social media.
Like many workplaces, the academic world has a set of defined success metrics, such as publications, citations of your work, grant funding and teaching evaluations from students. School culture and leadership influence what each college or university considers more or less valuable among those measures. To advance and get promoted, particularly to get tenure, it’s important to learn at an early stage what one’s department, college or university truly prioritizes.
I wanted to get tenure but also to be seen as an active citizen of academia – energetic, outspoken and unafraid to push boundaries. When my department chair described me as having my hair on fire, I took it as a compliment. I called it “making positive noise.”
Initially, the system rewarded that noise. I earned tenure at the University of Delaware and received departmental, college and national awards. I also was appointed to serve as associate dean and to direct a new research center. I felt validated, visible and valuable.
The sociology department at the University of Delaware had a typical academic culture that’s often summarized as “publish or perish.” The most important measures of scholars’ work were writing, publishing their work in respected journals and having other researchers cite those studies. Securing external funding from government, private companies or foundations was valued but was not as high a priority as publishing.
For many academic researchers, their number of publications and the frequency with which other scholars cite their articles are important measures of professional success. Barret Michalec
A new beginning that felt like an end
In 2020 I received a new opportunity at Arizona State University, a much larger school that branded itself as a hub of innovation and entrepreneurship. I was offered the chance to direct the Center for Advancing Interprofessional Practice, Education and Research and to step into the shoes of a leader I deeply admired. I arrived expecting to be a big fish in a bigger pond.
I couldn’t have been more wrong.
I showed up imagining there’d be a bit of buzz around my arrival given my time at the University of Delaware. But reality didn’t match the script: no greeting, office or nameplate marked my place when I arrived.
Early conversations with administrators weren’t about my research or teaching visions – the things that I thought set me apart. Instead, I felt they tended to focus on how much external funding I could raise from foundations and government agencies. My new colleagues often spoke in a shorthand of grant-based acronyms when referring to what projects they were working on, a “language” I was woefully unfamiliar with.
To make matters worse, I arrived during COVID-19, with classes either canceled or taught online and faculty members working mainly from home. The hallway chatter, open doors and spontaneous collaboration that I was accustomed to were absent. I began to feel alienated and disoriented as a scholar.
Even after ASU resumed in-person classes in the fall of 2021, I felt like the silence and distance lingered. No students waited for office hours. I struggled to make connections with my colleagues. I eagerly proposed collaborations when really everyone was just trying to find their footing in this new era of education.
My proposals for new classes and curricular programs hit up against institutional barriers I was unaware of. At one point, a college administrator asked, “How do we get you on other people’s grants?” – a question that I took to imply that they felt my research wasn’t strong enough.
It appeared that my colleagues in Edson College were accustomed to these values and spoke the language. I was a stranger in a strange land. Although I was producing some of my best work, measured in terms of publications and citations, I felt no one seemed interested. I had come from an environment where I felt known and valued to one where I seemed to be a nobody.
I felt as though I needed to staple my resume to my forehead and parade around the hallways asserting, like Ron Burgundy in the movie “Anchorman,” “I’m not quite sure how to put this, but … I’m kind of a big deal. People know me.”
Newsman Ron Burgundy gets a cool reception in a new media market in ‘Anchorman.’
The impact of feeling unseen
For people who have built careers by being highly engaged and visible, suddenly feeling unseen can be devastating. In any profession, a fear that you don’t belong at your workplace can be debilitating and make you question your own value.
I sought advice from peers and college leaders, and even hired a professional coach. Things only worsened. Curricular proposals were stalled or turned down. My center was shuttered in a restructuring, although it was meeting its goals and earning international recognition.
At first, I blamed ASU and Edson College for my feelings of disconnection. I thought the leadership structure and style was dysfunctional; that many colleagues were cold, unfriendly and conformist; and that the college’s stated values were inauthentic.
This series of what I came to call “unacknowledgments” sent me into a personal and professional tailspin. Negativity and self-doubt consumed me, and I truly worried that my career was over. Had I been blackballed? Why did it feel as though no one cared?
When the noise turns inward
I had spent years studying empathy – the ability to understand and feel what someone else is feeling – and how to cultivate it among health care professionals and students in order to support more patient-centered care. To that end, at the University of Delaware I had developed a program designed to foster empathy across health professions. It aimed to help students see one another as collaborators, build shared respect and recognize their collective role on the same health care delivery team.
But when I further analyzed the program’s outcomes from my office at ASU, I realized that empathy wasn’t enough. It could help students feel with others, but it didn’t necessarily help them see themselves, or others, differently.
I realized that what I really wanted the students to develop was humility. This step would require them to recognize their limits, accept that they were fallible, see themselves as part of a larger team and value others’ contributions.
That realization changed my research trajectory – and eventually, my professional life.
Health care often involves teams whose members play varying roles. Here, Dr. Akrum Al-Zubaidi performs a bronchoscopy on patient Orlando Carrasco, with the help of his team, from left, Ana Stefan, R.N., Mike Galloway, respiratory therapist, and anesthesiologist Michael Kessler, M.D., on Aug. 7, 2017, at National Jewish Health in Denver, Colo. Helen H. Richardson/The Denver Post via Getty Images
As my own professional world began to unravel, and as I dived deeper into the concept of humility through my research, something unexpected happened. I realized that humility wasn’t just an idea to study – it was becoming a mirror that made me rethink my own perspective.
Slowly, I began to see how pride and insecurity were entwined in my reactions to my new setting at ASU. I realized that my need to be noticed, and my insistence that others validate my worth, represented my own kind of arrogance.
Perhaps my ambition had been less about contributing and more about gaining external validation. I had lost the selfless wonder and awe that drive scholarly inquiry and curiosity. And now I had to confront what remained when the spotlight dimmed.
Humility, I began to understand, wasn’t just an abstract concept to explore “out there” among others. I needed to hone it internally by thinking beyond myself. By decentering my ego, I realized that I could nurture and sustain curiosity in its own right.
In short, I needed to practice what I was preaching. It wasn’t an easy lesson. I assume that cultivating humility never is.
To that end, I felt that it was essential to develop a program to help build humility “muscles.” In 2024 I developed HIIT for Humility, an online training package for individuals or groups, modeled after the fitness concept of high-intensity interval training. This program provides evidence-based strategies to help users start building “habits of humility,” such as acknowledgment of others and self-awareness.
Just as physical exercise requires consistency to produce results, so does the cultivation of humility. Leaning into HIIT for Humility workouts gradually eased my sense of alienation and defensiveness. I became more appreciative of others, less quick to judge and better able to listen to others’ perspectives. In doing so, I started to feel more confident and secure.
While I still took pride in my work, I began to see that my contributions were not the only ones that mattered. I also found that I could stretch into unfamiliar but necessary tasks, such as working harder to win federal and foundation grants and seeing the value of my colleagues’ contributions to science.
Why am I here?
Only a few years into this process, I can see that ASU and Edson College have unintentionally taught me humility by signaling, often quietly, which contributions are deemed essential and which forms of success carry the most weight. Navigating stalled proposals, shifting priorities and structural reorganizations have required me to recalibrate my ego, expectations and identity.
Not being seen as a “big fish” and being expected to persist without consistent recognition have required me to understand my work as part of a larger system with differing values and, at times, challenging constraints. Shifting to ASU forced me to rethink my identity as a professor and to reevaluate my sense of purpose from the inside out.
A colleague of mine often asks students who he feels are coasting along, “Why are you here?” Lately, I’ve taken that question personally. What is the point of being a professor – writing papers, submitting grant proposals, teaching courses? Why did I choose this path in the first place?
When I feel unseen, unheard or unappreciated, pondering why I’m here helps ground me. For anyone who is struggling to feel visible or valued at work, I strongly recommend considering this simple question.
Over time, I’ve stopped needing to be the big fish in the pond and measuring my worth in titles and awards. I now see that my responsibility as a scholar, teacher and human being is to stay curious, listen more deeply and make space for others’ voices.
Embracing humility, and consistently using my humility muscles, have helped me realize that I’m here to be part of the creative energy of academia, do the work and cultivate curiosity in my students, my peers and myself.
Barret Michalec 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.
Michelangelo’s fresco of “The Last Judgment,” covering the wall behind the altar of the Sistine Chapel in Vatican City, is being restored. The work, which started on Feb. 1, 2026, is expected to continue for three months.
The Sistine Chapel is one of the great masterpieces of Renaissance art. As the setting where the College of Cardinals of the Catholic Church meets to elect a new pope, it was decorated by the most prestigious painters of the day. In 1480, Pope Sixtus IV commissioned Domenico Ghirlandaio, Sandro Botticelli, Pietro Perugino and Cosimo Rosselli to paint the walls. On the south are six scenes of the “Life of Moses,” and across on the north are six scenes of the “Life of Christ.”
In 1508, Pope Julius II commissioned Michelangelo to paint the ceiling. The theme is the Book of Genesis, the first book of the Bible. The images show God creating the world through the story of Noah, who was directed by God to shelter humans and animals on an ark during the great flood. The ceiling’s most famous scene may be “God Creating Adam,” where Adam reaches out his arm to the outstretched arm of God the Father, but their fingers fail to meet.
At the sides, the artist juxtaposed the male Hebrew prophets and the female Greek and Roman sybils who were inspired by the gods to foretell the future. It was completed in 1512; then in 1536, Michelangelo was asked to create a painting for the wall behind the altar. For this immense work of 590 square feet (about square meters), filled with 391 figures, he labored until 1541. He was then nearly 67 years old.
As an art historian, I have been aware how, from the beginning, Michelangelo’s “The Last Judgment” sparked controversy for its bold and heroic portrayal of the male nude.
Many layers of meaning
Michelangelo liked to consider himself primarily a sculptor, expressing himself in variations of the nude male body. Most famous may be the Old Testament figure of David about to slay Goliath, originally made for the Cathedral of Florence.
The artist’s ceiling for the Sistine Chapel had included 20 nude males as supporting figures above the prophets and sibyls. Originally, Michelangelo’s Christ of “The Last Judgment” was entirely nude. A later painter was hired to provide drapery over the loins of Christ and other figures.
“The Last Judgment” scene also contains multiple references to pagan gods and mythology. The image of Christ is inspired by early Christian images showing Christ beardless and youthful, similar to the pagan god of light, Apollo.
At the bottom of the composition is the figure of Charon, a personage from Greek mythology who rowed souls over the river Styx to enter the pagan underworld. Minos, the judge of the underworld, is on the extreme right.
Giorgio Vasari, a fellow artist and historian who knew Michelangelo personally, later recounted the criticism by a senior Vatican official, Biagio da Cesena. The official stated that it was disgraceful that nude figures were exposed so shamefully and that the painting seemed more fit for public baths and taverns.
Michelangelo’s response was to place the face of Biagio on Minos, the judge of the underworld, and give him donkey’s ears, symbolizing stupidity.
Michelangelo included a reference to his own life in a detail connected to the Apostle Bartholomew, who is located to the lower right of Christ. The apostle was believed to have met his martyrdom by being flayed alive. In his right hand, he holds a knife and, in his left, his flayed skin whose face is a distorted portrait of the artist.
Michelangelo thus placed himself among the blessed in heaven, but also made it into a joke.
Thought-provoking imagery
The Last Judgment is a common theme in Christian art. Michelangelo, however, pushes beyond simple illustration to include pagan myths as well as to challenge traditional depiction of a calm, bearded judge. He uses dramatic imagery to provoke deeper thought: After all, how does anyone on Earth know what the saints do in heaven?
In these decisions, Michelangelo displayed his sense of self-confidence to introduce new ideas and his goal to engage the viewer in new ways.
A digital reproduction of the painting will be displayed on a screen for visitors to the Sistine Chapel during this period of restoration. Behind the screen, technicians from the Vatican Museums’ Restoration Laboratory will work to restore the masterpiece.
Virginia Raguin 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.
While floods are becoming more frequent in recent years, you should still be able to buy reasonably priced home insurance. That reassurance exists largely because of Flood Re. Launched in 2016, Flood Re is a national public–private reinsurance scheme that prevents many properties from being priced out of cover.
But the Flood Re scheme is a temporary fix that’s due to end in 2039, on the assumption that flood risk will fall and the market can move back towards more risk-reflective pricing. As financial experts, we’re worried that the UK may not be able to adapt its infrastructure and systems to climate change fast enough.
The success of the Flood Re scheme hinges on a shared contract between government, homeowners and insurers. Government has to cut risk through investment and delivery. Homeowners reduce damage by building back better and avoiding preventable exposure. And insurers must increase prices of premiums to better represent the climate risk but not so fast that cover becomes unaffordable.
If premiums rise too quickly, fewer households will stay insured and the ability to socialise risks across a large pool will not be possible.
The scale of the challenge is already clear. Flood Re was designed when a global temperature rise of 1.5°C still felt achievable and a 2°C increase should be a hard limit.
The House of Commons public accounts committee warns that deterioration in existing defences has left around 203,000 properties without reliable protection, while the government aims to protect 200,000 more by 2027. Labour’s target to deliver 1.5 million new homes in England by 2029 risks adding pressure by pushing development onto cheaper land that’s at greater risk of flooding.
Many countries intervene to support insurance for disasters such as floods and storms, but few put a firm end date on that support. For example, The US National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) was created to provide affordable flood insurance and to reduce future damage by discouraging development in high-risk floodplains.
In practice, repeated extreme weather has left the NFIP in debt and subsidised premiums have weakened incentives to avoid building in flood-prone areas. Although the NFIP is regularly renewed by the US Congress, its long-term sustainability remains uncertain.
France’s catastrophes naturelles scheme (CAT-NAT) covers natural disaster losses that private insurers struggle to price, funded by a national surcharge. Rising losses from more frequent and severe disasters are straining the model, so the surcharge increased from 12% to 20% in January 2025. That raises a hard question: how can the system stay fair as the cost of disasters keeps climbing?
Preparing for post-2039
Our ongoing research suggests flood-related volatility can amplify financial stress and uncertainty. The choice is not simply between keeping Flood Re forever or ending the scheme. The real question is whether the UK can use the time Flood Re is buying to reduce risk fast enough to make a fair transition possible by 2039.
That is why progress needs to be visible and measurable in five areas.
First, as demonstrated by recent updates in England and Wales, flood maps and modelling must reflect current conditions and future climate risk, with updates that keep pace with changes to the drivers of flood risk whether that be from heavy rainfall or rivers and the sea.
Second, governance must be joined up, with clear responsibilities and minimum coordination standards across agencies for rivers, surface water, drainage and sewers. Better collaboration would help to resolve misalignments in major capital programmes across risk management authorities.
Third, drainage and surface water management must be strengthened, with clear rules and long-term maintenance so new development does not add to flood and sewer risk.
Also, every tool in the box should be used to increase investment in flood risk reduction and to enhance maintenance. The benefits of flood protection should be made transparent to insurers and fed into catastrophe models.
Finally, a clear Flood Re future must be shaped together by planners, insurers and flood authorities. This will help set a shared standard for flood risk management.
Don’t have time to read about climate change as much as you’d like?
Neil Gunn works and consults for Willis Towers Watson and also owns some shares in that company
While the Willis research network supports scientific research through for example direct grants and in kind support, it benefits from schemes like CDTs which are supported by government funding
Dalu Zhang and Meilan Yan do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
The financial industry is entering a new era, with AI and new regulations on accessing data transforming how finance works. These changes are giving people more options to manage their money in new ways – taking us closer to totally cashless transactions.
Over the last century, banks implemented new technologies like ATMs, internet banking and smartphone apps to fundamentally change our relationship with money. Now, new regulations and initiatives around the world are forcing banks to allow fintech firms (companies that use technology to provide financial services) to access customers’ banking data.
This includes regulations like the EU’s revised payment services directive (PSD2), which aims to encourage innovation in financial products while protecting consumers’ data. In the UK, the CMA9 order serves a similar purpose. These regulatory changes are a game changer in the world of finance.
Accessing customer data allows for greater openness in the financial industry. It enables a shift from a closed banking model, where banks kept a tight hold of their customers’ data, to an open banking ecosystem where people are free to share their financial data with third-party apps or websites.
For the first time, this shift is enabling customers themselves to benefit from the sharing of banking data as fintechs use it to enhance their experiences and offer them a wider range of services.
My research shows that the traditional role of banks is changing in profound ways. Banks are increasingly operating behind the scenes as infrastructure providers, facilitating secure data exchange with fintechs. These fintechs are more agile and tech-savvy than banks, focusing on specialised customer solutions and often offering superior customer experiences.
A 2025 report found that open banking is becoming central to the global financial system. Fintechs, including digital-only banks, payment services like Stripe and Trustly, buy-now-pay-later providers and crypto platforms, are emerging as major providers of alternative financial services.
With data central to innovation, AI is reshaping how we interact with money. As an example, the same report indicates that 80% of fintechs are implementing AI. Customers are beginning to experience these advances thanks to data-driven agents like chatbots and robo advisors. This technology can analyse customer behaviour to offer personalised services in ways that were previously not possible.
Here are five ways that AI could be reshaping your relationship with money.
1. Intelligent credit-scoring
AI-driven credit scoring uses open banking data instead of a customer’s traditional bank credit history. It considers customers’ context and behaviour – things like mobile phone and rent payments – to make fairer assessments. This can encourage responsible access to credit for people on low incomes, and promote financial inclusion.
2. Debt rehabilitation services
These services can be used to manage financial behaviour. People who are struggling financially can use these debt services to track their spending patterns in real time. Trusted individuals, maybe a friend or relative, can be alerted when their spending is irregular.
3. Automated savings trackers
Saving trackers use AI to advise customers on when and how much to save. They can also transfer funds into savings accounts automatically. This can help people to manage money shocks and build financial resilience.
Customers can connect accounts from different banks to get an aggregate view of their financial health. This can help them to make better decisions around their money, enhancing their sense of being in control and making them more resilient against financial shocks.
5. Predictive finance
Personalised services can assess financial behaviour by learning customers’ habits and anticipating their future needs. Predictive finance can translate these assessments into practical, money-saving recommendations. People can use AI agents to plan and time a family trip. The AI agent can then autonomously make a booking that best fits and alert the customer.
Financial technology firms (fintechs) are using customer data to develop services like these that make accessing and managing money simpler – potentially making it easier for everyone to participate in the financial system. Taken together, these innovations show the promise of AI for making finance more inclusive.
But risks are inevitable. In this new landscape, the traditional trust between bank and customer might be challenged, as the open nature of transactions can increase security risks. Automated profiling, data vulnerabilities and fraud can also erode trust, invade customers’ privacy and violate their dignity. That’s why transparent regulations are needed to protect customers and preserve their digital rights.
When traditional banks and fintechs work together, they must keep the customer’s best interests in focus. After all, there is no doubt that the double-edged consequences of AI and data will continue to shape the evolving financial landscape.
Osama Mansour received funding from Stiftelsen Riksbankens Jubileumsfond (RJ).
Many fish appear to hang effortlessly in the water while they wait for prey, defend a nest or pause between bursts of activity. But our research shows that this quiet stillness is anything but effortless. Hovering, the behaviour that allows a fish to remain suspended in one place, is far more energetically demanding than scientists once believed.
In a comparative study of 13 near neutrally buoyant species, we found that metabolic rates during hovering were almost twice as high as during rest (when the fish supports its weight with the bottom of the tank). In some cases, they were even greater. These findings challenge the long standing assumption that fish can remain motionless in the water column at little physiological cost.
Most bony fishes possess a swim bladder, which allows them to regulate buoyancy and avoid sinking or floating. This ability has encouraged the idea that once a fish reaches neutral buoyancy it can stay at its chosen depth with minimal effort. Our results show that the story is more complex. A fish that hovers must do more than balance weight and buoyant force; it must also control its posture.
In many species, the centre of mass and the centre of buoyancy do not align perfectly. The slight offset between them creates a continual torque that would cause the fish to roll or pitch if no corrective action were taken. Even in still water, a hovering fish must repeatedly counter these small rotational forces. What looks like serene suspension is in fact the product of continuous and precise adjustment.
To understand the true energetic cost of these corrections, we combined metabolic measurements with detailed observations of movement. Each fish was placed in a respirometer chamber so we could measure oxygen consumption during hovering. We recorded its movements using synchronised high speed cameras. We also quantified important aspects of body form, including the positions of the centres of mass and buoyancy, using anatomical measurements and micro CT scans.
Although the fish were incredibly good at maintaining postural equilibrium, the recordings revealed an uninterrupted sequence of minor fin movements. Pectoral, pelvic, anal and tail fins all contributed to the task of maintaining position. The fin trajectories varied across species and often traced intricate three dimensional paths.
The energetic consequences of this activity were striking. Across the thirteen species, hovering metabolic rates ranged from about 158 to 351 milligrams of oxygen per kilogram per hour, always above resting levels. Most species nearly doubled their metabolic expenditure during hovering.
A few fish, such as gouramis, managed to hover with only a small rise in metabolism. Others, including giant danios, cichlids and glass catfish, expended far more energy. In these species, the tail played a particularly active role. Their tail fins moved through larger distances than those of the low cost species. This indicated that tail driven corrections, rather than pectoral fin use alone, were central to the task of staying still.
Body shape had a clear influence on energetic demand. Deep-bodied fish, with their larger surface area, generate more resistance as water moves around them, making them naturally better at resisting unwanted rotations. These species relied less on fin movements and maintained position at comparatively low energetic cost.
Elongated or narrow-bodied fish were less inherently stable and needed more frequent corrections. Fin position mattered too. Species with pectoral fins set farther back on the body hovered more efficiently, because even small movements produced effective stabilising forces.
A hidden cost of everyday behaviour
So, hovering is far from a trivial activity. Many fish do it routinely throughout the day, whether guarding eggs, feeding on particles in the water, avoiding obstacles or keeping their place within a school. Understanding how much energy these routine actions require helps biologists build more accurate pictures of the daily lives of fishes and the ecological pressures they face.
The findings also shed light on the evolution of fish form and movement. Many teleost fish (bony fish, such as cod, salmon and goldfish) are inherently unstable. It’s a quality that allows them to manoeuvre rapidly when they need to turn sharply or evade predators.
But this same instability means they must make constant corrections whenever they stop moving. The balance between instability, control and energy use has shaped the extraordinary diversity of body shapes and fin arrangements found in modern fish.
Our study has practical relevance beyond biology. Engineers designing underwater robots face many of the same challenges that fish have solved. A robot that needs to hold its position in moving water can waste significant power stabilising itself. By studying how fish coordinate multiple fins to correct minute disturbances, designers may be able to create more efficient vehicles capable of hovering for long periods while using far less energy.
The next time you see a fish suspended apparently without effort in an aquarium, it’s worth remembering what lies beneath that calm surface. Hovering may look simple, but it is a remarkably demanding feat of balance and control.
Our study shows that fish invest far more energy than expected simply to stay in place – a hidden cost in the daily lives of animals that spend much of their time looking as though they are doing nothing at all.
The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Wuthering Heights initially baffled readers who dismissed it as “a strange book”.
Earlier readers found it was “wild” and “confused”, portraying a “semi-savage love”. Yet, in 1850, the poet and critic Sydney Dobell recognised its originality and power, praising the novel’s distinctly poetic quality. To Dobell, “the thinking out” of many of the passages was “the masterpiece of a poet, rather than the hybrid creation of a novelist”.
Fittingly, before Heathcliff and Cathy haunted the moors, Emily Brontë was crafting her magic in verse preoccupied with death, steeped in grief and brimming with elemental passion and the spectral. Such motifs form the beating heart and singular atmosphere of Wuthering Heights, but without her gothic poetry, her beloved novel may not have existed. And, while this novel defines her reputation today, in her lifetime she was first and foremost a poet.
Among all her poems, Remembrance (1845) stands out as a direct ancestor of Wuthering Heights. The speaker mourns a lover lost for “15 wild Decembers”. It is full of imagery of frozen graves and icy bodies “cold in the earth” foreshadowing Cathy’s burial. The snow also anticipates the wintry desolation that frames Wuthering Heights.
In Written in Aspin Castle (1842-43), Lord Alfred’s spectral roaming in his family home (Aspin Castle) is not unlike the return of ghostly little Cathy to her childhood home in Wuthering Heights. In fact, Aspin’s “spectral windows” anticipate the window on which Mr Lockwood’s sleep is disturbed by what he assumes is a branch knocking on it.
“I must stop it, nevertheless!” I muttered, knocking my knuckles through the glass, and stretching an arm out to seize the importunate branch: instead of which, my fingers closed on the fingers of a little, ice-cold hand!
Windows as gothic portals clearly fascinated Emily, a fascination vividly captured in a drawing she produced in 1828 at just ten years old.
And in The Prisoner (A Fragment) (1845-46), the captive heroine – also like Mr Lockwood in Wuthering Heights – is tormented by nightly visitations in her “dungeon crypt” where a spiritual messenger figured as the wind summons “visions” that “kill me with desire”, which is much like Heathcliff’s anguish.
Cold in the earth
It is, however, Remembrance’s central question if “time’s all-severing wave” has broken their bond that directly foreshadows Cathy’s haunting challenge to Heathcliff: “Will you forget me – will you be happy when I am in the earth?” Cathy torments Heathcliff at length on this point, asking if “20 years hence” he will say, “that’s the grave of Catherine Earnshaw. I loved her long ago, and was wretched to lose her; but it is past.”
Yet, while the poem’s speaker finds a way to live alongside the painful memory of love lost, Heathcliff cannot adapt. Death for him is a psychological catastrophe, and he remains trapped in grief, unable to exist “without [his] life” – Cathy.
Remembrance was born in the imaginative world of Gondal, a poetic fantasy realm that Emily created with her sister Anne in childhood and continued to write about through adulthood. Set on an island in the North Pacific, Gondal was a landscape of political intrigue and destructive passions ruled by formidable women, such as the enigmatic A.G.A. – a figure deeply bound to the forces of nature, much like Heathcliff.
Gondal’s terrain gave Emily the freedom to explore the themes that later erupt in Wuthering Heights. And long before being revised for publication as Remembrance in 1846, the first iteration can be seen in a poem set in Gondal written in 1845. The speaker in this earlier work is the female character R. Alcona who is addressing her dead lover, Julius Brenzaida. Only fragments of Emily’s Gondal saga survive, but R. Alcona is thought to be Rosina of Alcona, a powerful figure, and Julius the Prince (later emperor) of Gondal.
In another poem addressing Rosina as his “despot queen”, Julius casts Rosina as the tyrant of his soul. Blaming her for his spiritual imprisonment, he laments being ensnared by her “haughty beauty”, finding her eyes “shine/But not with such fond fire as mine”. The anguish and accusation he directs at Rosina echo the tortured reproach of Heathcliff to Cathy in Wuthering Heights, especially when he tells Cathy that she has shattered her own heart “and in breaking it, you have broken mine”.
Secret notebooks
Emily’s poetic journey began in secret. Her sister, Charlotte Brontë wrote in the Biography of Ellis and Acton Bell of how in 1845, she “accidentally alighted” on a private notebook of verse in her sister’s hand. What she discovered astonished her: these were “not common effusions”, she reflected, but poems that possessed “a peculiar music” – “wild, melancholy, and elevating”.
Though Emily was furious at the intrusion on her privacy, Charlotte insisted the poems deserved a readership. From that fraught moment came a plan for joint publication, and in 1846, Emily published 21 poems in a joint collection with her sisters. Writing under the nom de plume “Ellis Bell”, the volume Poems by Currer, Ellis and Acton Bellsold only two copies, according to Charlotte, on its first printing.
A few perceptive critics, however, singled out the “spirit” of Emily’s verse, sensing an extraordinary poetic “power” that might one day “reach heights not here attempted”. While Poems brought neither riches nor security, it achieved something else: it paved the way for the sisters to produce and publish their now canonical novels a year later – Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre.
Wuthering Heights stands apart from other Victorian novels precisely because it was crafted by a poet who never ceased thinking in verse. Its windswept moors, restless spirits, and love that defies death were first imagined in poetry, where snow falls endlessly over the “cold earth” and love endures beyond the grave. This poetic apprenticeship laid the foundation for Emily Brontë’s timeless gothic novel that continues to captivate hearts and minds worldwide.
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Claire O’Callaghan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Over 95% of the world’s adult population is infected with Epstein–Barr virus (EBV), but most people never realise it. The infection often causes few symptoms and then stays in the body for life.
But for a small minority, EBV is linked to serious disease. For more than 50 years, EBV has been recognised as the first virus shown to contribute to certain cancers, and is therefore classified as a group one carcinogen.
More recently, strong evidence suggests it plays a key role in the development of multiple sclerosis (MS), a disease in which the immune system attacks the brain and spinal cord. MS affects millions of people worldwide and is often diagnosed in early adulthood, with symptoms that can vary unpredictably over time.
I was part of a research team who explored how EBV infection may help initiate MS. Our findings suggest the disease could potentially be targeted by blocking the brain inflammation associated with EBV infection.
Using lab mice with a human-like immune system, we found that after infection, B cells (immune cells that produce antibodies and help coordinate immune responses) became unusually active and travelled into the brain. Here, they released signals that attracted T cells, which recognise and destroy infected or abnormal cells.
Together, these immune cells caused inflammation and early brain damage similar to what is believed to happen in the early stages of MS. When we used a commonly prescribed drug to remove the B cells, there were far fewer T cells in the brain and much less immune activation.
This suggests EBV may help set MS in motion by altering how B cells behave. These changed cells can enter the brain and drive inflammation, drawing in T cells that intensify the immune response. Targeting these B cells early could help prevent or slow the development of MS.
MS affects the central nervous system, the brain and spinal cord. In people with MS, the immune system damages myelin, the protective coating around nerve fibres that helps electrical signals travel quickly. When it is stripped away, messages between the brain and body slow down or fail.
Over time, repeated damage can also affect the nerves themselves, leading to symptoms such as problems with movement, vision, balance and fatigue.
MS is an autoimmune disease. This means the immune system mistakenly attacks the body’s own tissues. One leading explanation for how EBV fits into this process is a form of mistaken identity, where immune responses first directed at the virus begin to resemble those aimed at myelin by people who have MS.
Why doesn’t everyone develop MS?
If EBV infection is so common, why doesn’t everyone develop MS? Other factors shape risk, including genetics, sex, smoking, obesity and low vitamin D levels. EBV appears to be an important part of the puzzle, but it is unlikely to act alone.
EBV infects B cells, the immune cells that produce antibodies, and can remain dormant inside them for life. But in some situations, the virus can reactivate. EBV-infected cells have been linked to certain cancers when immune control fails.
New research is beginning to reveal what this looks like inside the nervous system. A recent study found unusually high numbers of EBV-targeting immune cells in the cerebrospinal fluid, which surrounds the brain and spinal cord, of people with MS. Many were T cells primed to recognise the virus, suggesting the immune system may be responding to EBV activity within the central nervous system.
When immune cells gather there, they can spark inflammation. This allows more immune cells to enter the brain and spinal cord and cause local damage, forming patches known as lesions that underpin many symptoms of MS.
Treatments and the role of B cells
Current treatments mostly work by calming the immune system rather than targeting a single cause. Many of these medicines are immunosuppressants, which can increase infection risk but also reduce relapses and slow disease progression.
One of the most effective MS treatments targets B cells using monoclonal antibody drugs, laboratory-made proteins designed to recognise specific immune cells. Examples include ocrelizumab, rituximab and ofatumumab. These therapies reduce B cell numbers and may also lower the pool of EBV-infected cells.
These treatments have improved outcomes for many patients. But by dampening part of the immune system, they can also increase infection risk and reduce vaccine responses.
This raises an obvious question: could preventing EBV infection stop MS developing in the first place? And if so, why not prevent EBV infection with a vaccine?
Developing EBV vaccines has proved difficult, partly because the virus hides inside cells and establishes lifelong infection. Researchers are exploring this area, and none are currently approved. It remains unclear whether preventing EBV infection would reduce MS risk.
The link between EBV and MS is now one of the most active areas in MS research, and is reshaping how prevention and treatment are being explored.
Rather than viewing MS solely as an immune system disorder, researchers are increasingly investigating whether stopping EBV infection, or targeting cells that harbour the virus, could reduce a person’s risk of developing the disease or slow its progression.
This shift is driving new strategies, including therapies aimed at EBV-infected B cells, and efforts to design vaccines or immune-based treatments that interrupt the biological processes connecting the virus to MS. If successful, these approaches could move MS care beyond symptom control, towards prevention or earlier disease-modifying interventions.
Eanna Fennell receives funding from the Irish Research Council and Horizon Europe.
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