• Germany Trains New Generation of Muslim Leaders

    In a groundbreaking move, Germany has begun training its own Muslim religious leaders, fostering a deeper connection with local communities. Muslim groups across the country are seeing change brought by a new generation.

  • In Eagle Pass, a Tense Border Standoff Between Texas and the Federal Government Is Reaching a Crescendo

    A park on the Rio Grande is the new focus of a long battle over border enforcement that’s reached the U.S. Supreme Court. Under federal law, the federal government has sole authority to enforce immigration laws — a power that’s been affirmed by Supreme Court decisions, but Gov. Greg Abbott, in the past three years, has convinced state lawmakers to spend more than $10 billion in an attempt to deter hundreds of thousands of migrants who have crossed the Rio Grande into Texas, many of whom are seeking asylum.

  • Fake News: Who's Better at Detecting it?

    More than 2 billion voters in 50 countries are set to go to the polls in 2024 — a record-breaking year for elections. But 2024 is also the year when artificial intelligence (AI) could flood our screens with fake news like never before. With the U.S. in election mode, a study finds Republicans are less likely to spot fake news than Democrats. Gender and education are important factors, too.

  • The Maths of Rightwing Populism: Easy Answers + Confidence = Reassuring Certainty

    Rightwing populists appear to be enjoying a surge across the Western world. For those who don’t support these parties, their appeal can be baffling and unsettling. They appear to play on people’s fears and offer somewhat trivial answers to difficult issues. The mathematics of human inference and cognition can help us understand what makes this a winning formula.

  • Tough New Immigration Rules Risk Empowering the Cartels

    It’s undeniable that in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, irregular migration—primarily from crisis-stricken countries in Latin America and the Caribbean—has reached unprecedented, unmanageable proportions. But it should be recognized that tight restrictions on asylum and parole will drive migration further underground, where criminal groups profit.

  • The Hidden Cost of Being Branded a Terrorist by the U.S. Government

    The FBI credits its Terror Watchlist with keeping the country safe, but critics point to the experience of thousands of innocent American Muslims who were swept up by a screening system, and then found themselves trapped in a Kafkaesque nightmare as they tried to clear their names. The watchlist currently contains nearly two million names, of which about 15,000 are U.S. citizens and permanent residents.

  • Could an Extremist Soon Head a German State Government?

    Björn Höcke, leader of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) in the eastern state of Thuringia, is aiming to take the reins in 2024. Analysts fear far-reaching consequences. Höcke has in the past marched alongside neo-Nazis. He criticized Germany’s efforts to atone for the Holocaust, saying that “These stupid politics of coming to grips with the past cripple us.” In the past five years, the AfD has become radicalized and is more aligned with Höcke’s extremist positions then the more moderate positions of other party leaders.

  • “Killer Robots” Are Coming, and UN Is Worried

    Long the stuff of science fiction, autonomous weapons systems, known as “killer robots,” are poised to become a reality, thanks to the rapid development of artificial intelligence. In response, international organizations have been intensifying calls for limits or even outright bans on their use. Human rights specialist lays out legal, ethical problems of military weapons systems that attack without human guidance.

  • Do Gun Regulations Equal Fewer Shootings? Lessons From New England

    Gun rights advocates often point to low rates of shootings in Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont to argue that you don’t need strong gun laws to keep violence in check. Here’s what the data actually reveals.

  • New Report Card to Assess, Rank Campus Responses to Antisemitism

    In the face of growing antisemitism across U.S. college campuses, ADL announced that it is developing a new tool to evaluate the climate of antisemitism on individual campuses. The ADL will create comparative evaluation of how leading colleges and universities are responding to the surge of antisemitism and protecting their Jewish students.

  • Course on Antisemitism and the Law Debuts in Spring Semester

    A new course at Cornell University aims to give students the tools to understand antisemitism and its history through the lens of the law. “One of my principal goals is to give my students the tools to be able to both recognize manifestations of antisemitism as well as other forms of bigotry and confront and counter them effectively,” said Menachem Rosensaft, adjunct professor of law at Cornell Law School.

  • Truth Decay and National Security

    The line between fact and opinion in public discourse has been eroding, and with it the public’s ability to have arguments and find common ground based in fact. Two core drivers of Truth Decay are political polarization and the spread of misinformation—and these are particularly intertwined in the national security arena. Exposure to misinformation leads to increased polarization, and increased polarization decreases the impact of factual information. Individuals, institutions, and the nation as a whole are vulnerable to this vicious cycle.

     

  • Republicans Are Pushing for Drastic Asylum Changes – an Immigration Law Scholar Breaks Down the Proposal

    There is bipartisan agreement for the need for immigration reform and stark disagreement on what that reform should be. Conservative Republicans in Congress are now proposing legal changes that would make it harder for most applicants to get asylum. The Republicans’ plan is similar to both a similar rule that the Department of Homeland Security adopted in 2019 and a policy that President Joe Biden is trying to push through. The proposed changes would make it almost impossible for a migrant entering through the U.S.-Mexico border to get asylum, even if that migrant has a legitimate fear of returning to his or her home country.

  • The True Dangers of Long Trains

    Trains are getting longer. Rail companies had recently adopted a moneymaking strategy to move cargo faster than ever, with fewer workers, on trains that are consistently longer than at any time in history. Railroads are getting richer, but these “monster trains” are jumping off of tracks across America and regulators are doing little to curb the risk.

  • Why Have Authoritarianism and Libertarianism Merged? A Political Psychologist on “the Vulnerability of the Modern Self”

    Logically, authoritarianism and libertarianism are contradictory. Yet there is a history of these two outlooks being intertwined. A psychological approach can help us to understand the dynamics of this puzzling fusion. As Erich Fromm and others have shown, our ideological affinities are linked to unconscious structures of feeling. At this level, authoritarianism and libertarianism are the interchangeable products of the same underlying psychological difficulty: the vulnerability of the modern self.