Humanities & Society

The U.S. House and Senate are at a stalemate over enacting sweeping police reforms in the wake of the death of George Floyd and other Black Americans. The gulf between the Democratic and Republican proposed solutions is wide and neither side seems willing to bend, says an expert on criminal legal reform at Washington University in St. Louis.

Ahead of the anticipated SCOTUS ruling on landmark abortion case, Marie Griffith, director of the John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics at Washington University in St. Louis, discussed the Supreme Court case, the history of the abortion debate across religious/political lines and a way forward.

In the wake of national protests following the death of George Floyd, some activists are calling on cities to defund their police departments. But what does that mean exactly? Robert Motley, a PhD candidate in the Brown School and manager of the Race & Opportunity Lab at Washington University in St. Louis, explained it’s more of a reallocation of funds for public safety and health.

It has been nearly 75 years since the end of World War II, yet its legacy of xenophobia, political intolerance and radical political parties continues to plague Germany and the rest of Europe. A new study from Washington University in St. Louis finds that living near former Nazi-era concentration camps is, in part, to blame.

Fifty-five years ago, on March 7, 1965, the events of “Bloody Sunday” in Selma, Ala., forever changed the civil rights movement and the life of Rep. John Lewis. He recalled his experience in 1985 for the landmark documentary series “Eyes on the Prize.” Lewis’ interviews, along with those of Sheriff James Clark, Gov. George Wallace and others, are available online through Washington University Libraries’ Film and Media Archive.

The divide between urban and rural voters in the United States is nothing new, but its cause has been less clear. A new study by Washington University in St. Louis political scientists finds that it isn’t personal profiles, but rather proximity to bigger cities that drives the political divide.

Political scientist David Carter co-authored a study of more than 50 barriers erected around the world, most of which have emerged since 2001. He and his co-author at the University of Chicago found that legal trade plummets up to 31% as a result of constructing a wall between two neighboring countries.

In a November wave of The American Social Survey conducted by the Weidenbaum Center on the Economy, Government, and Public Policy, political scientists polled likely primary voters to find that — despite consensus among Democratic candidates and the Trump administration’s actions to repeal environmental regulations — the two parties’ electorates don’t match their candidates’ stances on climate change.

Is music universal? To answer that question, Christopher Lucas, assistant professor of political science, worked with colleagues from Princeton and Harvard to analyze music from 315 societies from across the planet. Their findings are published in the Nov. 21 issue of Science.