With the rise of the #MeToo Movement in late 2017 and subsequent sexual abuse allegations against men in positions of power, the pervasiveness of sexual misconduct has figured prominently in public conversation. Time magazine’s 2017 Person of the Year, for example, featured “the silence breakers”: people whose public storytelling of abuse made vivid the costs […]
Racist violence against has marred American society since the colonial period, beginning with the treatment of Native Americans and then African-Americans. The violence directed against minority groups by both law enforcement and private citizens has included beatings, lynchings, and, today, shootings of unarmed black people by police officers and in some cases private citizens. In […]
Immigration has played a critical role in the national consciousness since our nation’s founding. For just as long, immigration has been a contentious issue which political developments such as the forced separation of migrant families and calls for a Southern border wall have only amplified. Recently, the deportations of long settled undocumented migrants and “Dreamers” […]
With the rise of fatal shootings in public places like schools and shopping malls, the question of gun control has taken center stage. These questions are of pressing concern for young people in particular, in the wake of the shooting at Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida and other school shootings. Gun safety advocates […]
Freedom of expression has been a central value in American society since our nation’s founding. For just as long, Americans have debated about what free speech means and under what circumstances it might legitimately be constrained. Most people agree both that it is important to permit broad freedom of expression and also that in some […]
The United States spends more on health care than any other country in the world, and yet all that spending does not produce better health outcomes for Americans compared to citizens of other developed nations. In fact, in recent comparisons of population health in 11 high-income countries, the United States ranked last. Although the Affordable Care Act, […]
American society is riven by deep economic and social divisions, including poverty rates and inequities in the distribution of wealth and income that are among the highest of any developed nation. As of late 2017, the richest one percent of Americans owned 40 percent of the nation’s wealth, the highest figure in over a half […]
Humans affect the world around us every day, but the moral, social, and ecological implications of our impact increase in our heavily globalized world. This is made especially clear in relation to climate change, the greatest environmental threat that our contemporary society faces and perhaps that any society has faced. Scientists agree that we are […]