Perspectives

The public-health evidence makes clear that houses of worship should limit their gatherings, whether mandated or simply encouraged by government officials, writes John Inazu.

The estimates of total cases and fatality rates are rapidly changing, writes Darrell Hudson. There is no way to accurately account for how many people have the virus. Our best-case scenario during this pandemic is the prevention paradox.

Reformers have rightly focused attention on many aspects of American criminal justice that are broken, writes Dan Epps. Some reforms are easier than others. Creating a defender general is an unusually simple one, with the potential to provide large benefits for millions of people.

The loopholes in our campaign financing laws will continue to advantage billionaires like Michael Bloomberg, writes Clarissa Rile Hayward. But the outcomes of our elections should be not be shaped by the power of his checkbook.

Adia Harvey Wingfield, the Mary Tileston Hemenway Professor in Arts & Sciences, writes an essay published in Vox about the Louisiana abortion case before the U.S. Supreme Court. She argues that laws requiring hospital admitting privileges are particularly dangerous for black doctors.

Michael Allen, senior lecturer at the Sam Fox School, writes in an article published in The St. Louis American reflecting on the death of longtime St. Louis Alderman Sam Moore. “Moore’s legacy urges us to remember that St. Louis won’t be a whole city until north St. Louis is a record of equity and justice,”. […]

Far right theories on a Jewish-Chinese COVID-19 cabal are breaking out of the infamously anti-Semitic dark web – with real-world consequences, writes Flora Cassen.

Luis FZ Batista, assistant professor at the School of Medicine, writes a first-person article published in Science about how being diagnosed with epilepsy has changed — but not derailed — his career.

Abortion bans ask black doctors, who already often face hostile environments, to surmount these barriers in an environment where they could face criminal prosecution simply for doing the work they were trained to do, writes Adia Harvey Wingfield.

William J. Maxwell, professor of English in Arts & Sciences, co-edited the book “Romance in Marseille,” a pioneering African American novel by Claude McKay, published nearly 90 years after its creation.  Maxwell also wrote an introduction of the work, which was reviewed in The New York Times.