Society

Diversity among students and researchers is a common goal across academia. This has been driven by a desire to increase opportunities for the historically marginalized in higher education—moving away from the straight, white and male personification of academia.... Read more

A new study into one of the world's most popular tobacco leaf production processes has revealed its particularly damaging harms to the environment and how it impacts farmers' lives in Zimbabwe.... Read more

Kleptocratic "ecosystems" should be seen as transnational enterprises and national security threats, with the recovery of assets legally linked not only to the individual criminal acts but to the systemic harm caused to national security and democracy, experts have warned.... Read more

A new study in the Journal of Economic Geography has revealed that European "due diligence" laws designed to make multinational companies accountable for labor and environmental abuses are beginning to give a voice to some of the world's most vulnerable workers.... Read more

If there are two things the internet loves talking about, they're conspiracy theories, and who may or may not be a narcissist.... Read more

Christian Reconstructionism is a theological and political movement within conservative Protestantism arguing that society should be governed by biblical principles, including the application of biblical law to both personal and public life.... Read more

Eighty years ago, Canada enacted executive orders to banish more than 10,000 Canadians of Japanese descent, stripping thousands of citizenship in the process. Named a Top 100 Book of 2025 by The Hill Times and described as "essential reading for history buffs" by The Globe and Mail, a new book... Read more

A new study finds that worrying about police brutality and harassment is associated with physical markers of cardiovascular health risk in Black women in the United States. The study found the association was most pronounced for Black women concerned about potential interactions between their children and police.... Read more

The Group of Twenty (G20) emerged from the financial turmoil that followed the collapse of the Thai currency in 1997, which rapidly spread financial instability from Thailand to the rest of Asia.... Read more

Rising trade frictions over the past decade have sparked urgent questions about their long-term impact on global economies. The U.S. now applies tariffs of 66.4% on Chinese exports, which is higher compared to the average rate of 19.3%, while China retaliates with a 58.3% import tariff on U.S. exports, higher... Read more

For more than three decades, DHS provided vital demographic and health data on population, health, HIV, and nutrition in over 90 countries. Its termination leaves major gaps in tracking the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), particularly in low- and middle-income countries.... Read more

A new study led by Yale anthropologist Catherine Panter-Brick examines how stakeholders in socially diverse, conflict-affected societies conceptualize everyday peace, drawing on a comparative analysis across different groups of people. The findings offer insights that can inform peacebuilding policies and strategies across the globe.... Read more

Public support for broad-based taxation risks eroding when voters learn that the super-rich pay lower tax rates than ordinary citizens, according to new research co-authored by King's academics.... Read more

Money talks, and new research from Northwestern University suggests that it often speaks louder than an American voter's commitment to democratic norms.... Read more

An international project investigating the form, content and consequences of online conspiracy theories has found that in German-speaking countries, such theories often originate locally and have come to form a complex ecosystem of alternative news websites, print media and parts of the political spectrum.... Read more

A new study on how U.S. defense attorneys think about autism and use strategies informed by neurodiversity in their work finds that attorneys saw autism through a medical lens and acknowledged the need for better ways to secure accommodations for their clients in court.... Read more

A new study has concluded that in New Jersey's largest city, crime was concentrated significantly around corner stores compared with other commercial venues. The study's findings have implications for crime prevention, urban planning, and community safety policies.... Read more

In communities around the Amazon Rainforest, there's a pervasive belief that large landowners use their money to influence local politics to benefit their operations.... Read more

More than two years of war in Gaza have left many Palestinian children too weak to learn or play and convinced they will be "killed for being Gazans," a new report warns. The University of Cambridge-led study also includes the first analysis of education in the West Bank and East... Read more

Two things are clear from a University of Michigan analysis of nearly 200,000 Twitter posts between 2012 and 2022. One, people are really good at identifying peak pollen season: The largest volume of tweets about pollen often lined up with pollen counters hitting their biggest numbers. And two, liberal users... Read more

Older adults tend to do well at identifying falsehoods in experiments, but they're also likelier than younger adults to like and share misinformation online.... Read more

Researchers at the University of Basel have developed a tool that measures when people engage in dialog across political divides. The results show that personal factors play a greater role in people's willingness to engage in dialog than the controversial nature of a topic.... Read more

Donald Trump joked in 2016 that he could "stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody" and not lose support. In 2024, after two impeachments and 34 felony convictions, he has more or less proved the point. He not only returned to the White House, he turned his... Read more

In 2025, youth-led protests erupted everywhere from Morocco to Nepal, Madagascar and Europe. A generation refused to remain silent in the face of economic precariousness, corruption and eroding democratic norms and institutions.... Read more

By any measure, 2025 was not a good year for world peace.... Read more

Among his other ongoing projects, US President Donald Trump has spent much of his second term on a renovation. The Oval Office has been converted into a miniature palace festooned with gold bling, the rose garden has been paved over, a triumphal arch is planned and the new ballroom will... Read more

A new study shows that moral arguments appealing to care and fairness can persuade both liberals and conservatives in the United States. By contrast, arguments grounded in the "binding" moral foundations—loyalty, authority and sanctity—primarily influence conservatives.... Read more

We find ourselves in the midst of a crisis of truth. Trust in public institutions of knowledge (schools, legacy media, universities and experts) is at an all-time low, and blatant liars are drawing political support around the world. It seems we collectively have ceased to care about the truth.... Read more

When, on 10 February 2025, United States President Donald Trump signed the executive order suspending the enforcement of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA), companies previously involved in overseas corruption cases collectively gained around USD 39 billion. On average, on that day, each individual company that had been subject to... Read more

While millions of people make the effort to sort their recycling, buy fewer clothes and generally make greener choices, the world's wealthiest can emit the same amount of carbon as the average person does in a year by going on holiday just once.... Read more

A study conducted during the 2024 French elections finds that information about immigrants' efforts to overcome poverty and learn French reduces negative beliefs about immigration and modestly decreases opposition to immigration among voters. The study is published in the journal PNAS Nexus.... Read more

Over half of Americans believe tech companies should take action to restrict extremely violent content on their platforms, according to Pew data, yet even trained content moderators consistently disagree in their decisions about how to classify hate speech and offensive images.... Read more

A study from a team of researchers that includes faculty from the University of California San Diego and Princeton University shows how a mix of subsidies for clean energy and taxes on pollution can significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change.... Read more

The gap between rich and poor has reached historic highs. According to the World Inequality Report 2026, released in recent weeks, the richest 10% of the global population now receive 53% of all income and own a staggering 75% of all wealth.... Read more

At the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st, write the authors of a new article from Polity, neoliberalism was "consolidated as the only legitimate form of doing politics." But in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, and with the entrenchment of far-right governments across... Read more

New research from the University of St Andrews has found that increases in women's parliamentary representation within a country are related to enhanced public trust in the national parliament.... Read more

A group of college students braved the frigid New England weather on Dec. 13, 2025, to attend a late afternoon review session at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. Eleven of those students were struck by gunfire when a shooter entered the lecture hall. Two didn't survive.... Read more

Americans living in political "swing states" have a significantly louder voice in national trade policy—effectively making their votes worth more than others—according to a new study published in the Journal of International Economics.... Read more

If you wander through Glasgow Green, you'll encounter the Doulton fountain, a gaudy terracotta tribute to empire that features "native" and colonial figures in national dress holding out the produce of their lands to the imperial center. Like thousands of imperial monuments across Britain, the Doulton Fountain is neither widely... Read more

The Syrian civil war, which began in 2011, has been widely framed as a "climate conflict" and a mass migration and uprising triggered by a severe drought. This very well-known and media-popular narrative is now debunked in a new report by the United Nations University Institute for Water, Environment and... Read more

The Oct. 27, 2025, interview between former Fox News host Tucker Carlson and political streamer Nick Fuentes created a rare public divide inside the MAGA movement.... Read more

When federal science agencies became the focus of sweeping budget cuts earlier this year, the national debate quickly took on a familiar shape: Conservatives approved of the budget cuts while liberals opposed them.... Read more

Democratic congressmembers are significantly more likely to post on social media following a mass shooting event in the US compared to Republican congressmembers, according to a study published in PLOS Global Public Health by Dmytro Bukhanevych from New York University, United States, and colleagues.... Read more

Researchers Rachel Ruttan and Katherine DeCelles of the University of Toronto's Rotman School of Management are anything but neutral on neutrality. The next time you're tempted to play it safe on a hot-button topic, their evidence-based advice is to consider saying what you really think.... Read more

Two years after Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, families of the victims filed suit against Binance, a major cryptocurrency platform that has been plagued by scandals.... Read more

Germany has unveiled plans to introduce voluntary military service. From January 2026, all 18-year-old men will be required to complete a questionnaire asking if they are interested and willing to join the armed forces. Women will not be required to fill out this form.... Read more

The year 2025 has not been a great one for U.S.-Chinese relations. Tit-for-tat tariffs and the scramble over rare earth elements has dampened economic relations between the world's two leading economies. Meanwhile, territorial disputes between China and American allies in the Indo-Pacific region have further deepened the intensifying military rivalry.... Read more

Across the EU, immigration is one of the most divisive topics in politics today. Germany, a country once known for its "Willkommenskultur" (welcome culture), is a case in point.... Read more

Ariel Procaccia is the Alfred and Rebecca Lin Professor of Computer Science at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS). His work combines mathematics, computer science, and AI to develop fairer, more representative methods of collective decision-making.... Read more

People often see science as a world apart: cool, rational and untouched by persuasion or performance. In this view, scientists simply discover truth, and truth speaks for itself.... Read more