Year: 2018

United States (Conversation) – One day after hearing emotional testimony from accuser Christine Blasey Ford, the Senate Judiciary Committee advanced Brett Kavanaugh’s nomination to become a U.S. Supreme Court justice pending an FBI investigation. For millions of American women – both those who’ve survived assault and those who have experienced workplace harassment – seeing a man on the path to promotion despite allegations of harassment is jarring yet painfully familiar. Recent examples include former CBS Chair Les Moonves and Fox’s Bill O’Reilly, not to mention media mogul Harvey Weinstein. Sadly, this…

United States (Conversation) – Christine Blasey Ford’s account of allegedly being sexually assaulted by Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh when they were teenagers is provoking both informed and uninformed comment from politicians. Still more private conversations about the subject are happening in homes and offices around the country. There is a large body of social science research about what are called “peer sexual assaults” that is relevant to these discussions. We are experts on violence, including sex offenses against children and youth, and our research focuses on surveys to document…

World Wide (Conversation) – One of the most controversial books in recent literary history, Salman Rushdie’s “The Satanic Verses,” was published three decades ago this month and almost immediately set off angry demonstrations all over the world, some of them violent. A year later, in 1989, Iran’s supreme leader, the Ayatollah Khomeini, issued a fatwa, or religious ruling, ordering Muslims to kill the author. Born in India to a Muslim family, but by then a British citizen living in the U.K., Rushdie was forced to go into protective hiding for…

World Wide (Conversation) – I’m a typical sociologist, meaning I am skeptical about religion and human spirituality. Although I attended Catholic Church as a small child, I could see the hypocrisy, even as a child. I rejected that religion at an early age. My undergraduate sociological training reinforced my atheism. My sociological lectures and sociological canons all decried and denounced the irrationality of human religion. I dutifully read Marx’s Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right and dismissed religion as an opiate delusion. I understood from Max Weber that religion was…

United States (ProPublica) –  Who’s ready to become a smarter, more engaged, more empowered voter?! Hopefully your answer is … Over the next several weeks, I’ll be your guide through the midterm election landscape. We’re going to talk about political campaigns, who your representatives in Congress are (and what it is they do), the candidates who want to represent you in Congress and the sometimes convoluted business of voting. National politics can seem distant or complicated — but I promise, it’s pretty easy to follow once you know the basics. I’m Cynthia, by the way, director of…

India (Conversation) – When world gold prices go up, fewer girl babies in India survive the first month of life, according to our new research. My colleagues and I suggest that this is linked to gold often being part of bridal dowries in India – so when gold prices go up, the cost of raising girls rises and families tend to neglect or abort them. Dowry, a transfer at marriage from parents to daughters, is an ancient tradition thought to date back to at least 200BC, and was widely prevalent…

World Wide (Conversation) – Survey the shelves of most supermarkets and you’ll no doubt be confronted with row upon row of food designed to appeal to children.Be it chicken nuggets or turkey twizzlers – many foods now bear little resemblance to their original ingredients – “junk foods” now line the supermarket shelves to appeal to young consumers. The influence of supermarkets on UK children is not to be underestimated. These super-retailers generated just under £164 billion in 2011 with UK grocery sales predicted to rise to just below £197 billion…

World Wide (Conversation) – If a man offers to help a woman with her heavy suitcase or to parallel park her car, what should she make of the offer? Is it an innocuous act of courtesy? Or is it a sexist insult to her strength and competence? Social psychologists who describe this behavior as “benevolent sexism” firmly favor the latter view. But researchers have also revealed a paradox: Women prefer men who behave in ways that could be described as benevolently sexist over those who don’t. How could this be?…