• 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.

  • Growing Number of Migrants Highlights Border Crisis

    U.S. officials processed an estimated 300,000 people at the U.S. border with Mexico in December, which would be the highest number ever recorded, according to multiple news organizations. While DHS will release the December numbers later this month, Reuters and other news organizations estimate that 300,000 people attempted to cross the border in the final month of 2023, with about 50,000 of them coming through designated points of entry.

  • How Tennessee’s Justice System Allows Dangerous People to Keep Guns — With Deadly Outcomes

    Michaela Carter was one of at least 75 people killed in domestic violence shootings in Nashville since 2007. Nearly 40% were shot by people who were legally barred from having a gun.

  • Reports Analyzing the Police Response to a Mass Shooting Can Leave Unanswered Questions — if They’re Released at All

    Communities often rely on after-action reviews of mass shootings for a comprehensive and independent assessment of what happened. But even if an after-action investigation is released, a lack of national standards leads to wide variability in the detail of information in reports, an investigation found.

  • Chinese Migration Up at Border as U.S. Marks Anniversary of Repeal of Exclusion Act

    As the U.S marks the 80th anniversary of the repeal of the Chinese Exclusion Act, thousands of Chinese immigrants are crossing the U.S.-Mexico border, mostly for the same reasons as their countrymen did more than a century ago.

  • Immigrant Rights Groups Sue Texas to Halt New Law Allowing Arrests of Migrants

    The lawsuit asks a judge to prevent the state from enforcing Senate Bill 4, which will authorize Texas police to arrest immigrants suspected of crossing the border illegally.