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Lawmakers grilled Columbia University President Minouche Shafik and three colleagues on April 17, 2024, over antisemitism on college campuses, just four months after three of her presidential peers were summoned to Capitol Hill over how their institutions were handling antisemitism on campus following Hamas’ attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. Two of them resigned shortly thereafter. Here, Lynn Greenky, a scholar of communication and rhetoric, gives her take on how Shafik handled being in the same hot seat as her colleagues.

How did today’s hearing differ from the one on Dec. 5?

Unlike Claudine Gay, Liz Magill and Sally Kornbluth – the presidents of Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania and MIT, respectively – Shafik and the other witnesses representing Columbia University spoke with greater moral clarity on the issue of what constitutes antisemitism on campus. Of course, they had the benefit of being able to first see what happens when you don’t.

Columbia’s president, Minouche Shafik, as well as David Schizer and David Greenwald, co-chairs of the Columbia University Task Force on Antisemitism, and Co-Chair of the Board of Trustees Claire Shipman, came ready to acknowledge their responsibility, even culpability, in their failure to recognize and control hate speech directed at Jews on campus. Shipman in particular made it clear that Columbia is suffering a “moral crisis” on its campus.

All of the witnesses showed a lot of deference to the committee. They even thanked the committee for the investigation and asked for the committee’s help to address antisemitism on campus. In fact, Shipman concluded her opening statement saying she looked forward to the committee’s input as Columbia seeks to refocus its vision back to its core values of wisdom, empathy and respect.

What did committee members say about faculty?

Professors Joseph Massad, Katherine Franke and Mohamed Abdu were mentioned by name.

Several members of the Congressional committee singled out Massad, who on Oct. 8, 2023, described the Hamas attack on Israel as “awesome” and “innovative” in an online article, for particular scorn. Shafik promised the committee that Massad would be removed from his position as chair of Columbia’s academic review committee, whose principle function is to “assess program quality and effectiveness,” “foster planning and improvement” and “provide guidance for administrative decisions.” Shafik also indicated Massad might be fired even though his position is tenured.

While some might argue that removing Massad as chair, or firing him, infringes on the professor’s First Amendment right to academic freedom, it is unclear whether that assertion will save him. The Supreme Court has not provided specific guidance on the parameters of academic freedom. In fact, the concept of academic freedom generally refers to a scholar’s freedom to pursue inquiry, discussion and teaching within the sphere of that scholar’s research and consistent with the institution’s curriculum. Academic freedom is not the same as a professor’s individual right to speak one’s mind.

The committee’s chairperson, Virginia Foxx, a Republican from West Virginia, warned that radical faculty remain a huge problem at Columbia. She said she expects Columbia to make “tangible progress” to sanction or remove radical faculty. If not, she says, Columbia will be brought before the committee again.

Was there any conflict over what is hate speech?

Recalling a House resolution that condemned the chant “from the river to the sea” as antisemitic, Rep. Elise Stefanik, a Republican from New York, pushed Shafik to amend her previous testimony that alluded to how the chant can, in some circumstances, represent protected political speech.

Shafik seemed reluctant to label students or faculty as engaging in hate and harassment. She tried very hard, sometimes unsuccessfully, to assert the need to balance constitutionally protected speech with the educational mission of the university.

Still, Shafik frequently testified that the policies and structures in place at Columbia prior to the Oct. 7 attack were inadequate. In her written statement to the committee, Shafik admitted that before Oct. 7, Columbia’s process for reporting allegations of hate speech, harassment and other forms of disruptive behavior needed to be simplified. She also said staff training needed to be improved. Throughout her testimony she acknowledged her personal horror at the hatred and vitriol expressed on campus both before and after Oct. 7.

What action did Shafik and her colleagues say they would take?

Shafik, Schizer and Shipman each repeated the refrain that they recognize the mistakes and failures made in response to events on campus that – according to their testimony – left Jewish students angry and frightened. They said they are working on revising policies and practices that will promote vigorous debate while protecting student safety.

As a result of some of the preliminary recommendations of Columbia’s Task Force on Antisemitism, the university has updated the reporting and response process regarding harassment and discrimination.

How will all this affect free speech on campus?

Rep. Foxx made it clear that continued eruptions on campus, which the House has identified as antisemitic, risk the withdrawal of federal funds.

Certainly, a college or university has a compelling interest in protecting its students, faculty and staff’s freedom, safety and integrity. However, as always, the devil is in the details. It is difficult to mediate the appropriate balance between promoting robust debate and protecting against offense. Often, when colleges and universities undertake the task, I believe it is the freedom to speak one’s mind that suffers. Läs mer…

The Conversation, CC BY-ND

A recent federal study on graduation rates for American colleges and universities shows that 40% of all students did not earn a degree or credential within eight years of leaving high school. The graduation rate is even lower for low-income students.

Among students from families with income levels of US$115,000 or more, 66% who enrolled in higher education earned a bachelor’s degree or higher from 2009 through 2021. However, among students from families who made less than $35,000, 26% earned a bachelor’s degree or higher during the same period. For people whose families had earnings between $35,000 and $55,000, 36% earned these degrees.

Many start but don’t finish

The problem goes beyond the fact that students from lower-income households are entering higher education at a lower rate than high-income students. Rather, the issue is also that fewer low-income students are graduating.

The data also reveals disparities in the graduation rates of different racial and ethnic groups. While 50% of white students earned a bachelor’s degree or higher during this period, only about 29% of Black students did, and 30.4% of Hispanic students earned these degrees.

Also, 73% of students who went to a private high school earned a bachelor’s degree or higher, while 42% of public school students attained these degrees.

Educational segregation

As I indicate in my book, “Educating Inequality,” there are many causes for these disparities. One key factor is that low-income students of color tend to go to low-funded higher education institutions with low graduation rates. Meanwhile, most white and Asian students attend highly funded schools with high graduation rates.

Moreover, underrepresented minority students tend to major in high-paying STEM disciplines at a much lower rate. According to federal data, 20% of white college students earned a STEM degree, while 15% of Hispanic students and 10% of Black students earned degrees in these majors.

Since race is highly correlated with income in the United States, one possible solution is to push universities and colleges with high graduation rates to accept and graduate more low-income students. In our current system of de facto educational segregation, however, economic disparities are growing bigger instead of shrinking.

Making matters worse is the fact that students of color often leave college with high levels of debt. In 2019, close to a third of Black adults had student debt, while only 20% of white adults bore this burden. Meanwhile, the average level of outstanding student loans for Black borrowers was $30,000, while it was $23,000 for white borrowers.

The combination of low graduation rates and high debt can severely reduce the ability to pay off loans. These loans generally cannot be discharged through bankruptcy.

Even though President Joe Biden has forgiven some student debt, causing the total owed to decline slightly, there is still $1.727 trillion of outstanding student loans.

A significant part of student debt is generated by for-profit colleges that have low graduation rates. In comparison with students who go to public four-year colleges and universities, students who attend for-profit colleges take on $3,000 more debt and default on their loans at twice the rate.

At a time when many public and nonprofit colleges and universities are striving to increase diversity on campus, their own enrollment and retention practices could be adding to economic and racial inequality. Läs mer…

Unsafe sleep practices underlie most sudden unexpected infant deaths in the U.S., with three-quarters of infants affected by multiple unsafe practices at the time of death, and almost 60% sharing a sleep surface with another person. These are the key findings from our recent study published in Pediatrics.

Sudden unexpected infant death, or SUID, occurs in infants less than 1 year old who die suddenly and unexpectedly without an obvious cause before investigation, accounting for about 3,400 deaths annually in the U.S.. These infants die from sudden infant death syndrome, or SIDS, accidental suffocation and strangulation in bed, or other ill-defined and unknown causes.

Infants sharing a sleep surface with parents, other adults or other infants or children is highly discouraged by the American Academy of Pediatrics and numerous other agencies because it can increase the risk of these deaths.

So the high occurrence of surface sharing – also called bedsharing – in our study is alarming. The study included 7,595 infants who died from SUID during the period 2011 to 2020 and who were in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s SUID Case Registry, which collects data from child death review teams in 23 states, cities or counties.

We examined characteristics of infants who were bedsharing at the time of death.

Compared with nonsharing infants in our study, bedsharing infants were more likely to have the following characteristics:

0 to 3 months old, non-Hispanic Black and insured by Medicaid or other public plan
Were found lying on their back in an adult bed, chair or couch
Were affected by a higher number of unsafe sleep factors
Had been exposed to maternal cigarette smoking while in the womb
Were being supervised by someone impaired by drugs or alcohol at the time of death
Did not have a crib in the home

Among nonsharing infants in the study, only one-third were sleeping in the recommended back position, and three-quarters were in sleep areas that had soft bedding such as pillows, comforters or bumper pads at the time of death.

Three-quarters of all the sudden unexpected infant deaths in our study were affected by multiple unsafe sleep factors.

What you need to know about safe infant sleep and ways to reduce the risk of SUID.

Why it matters

Rates of sudden unexpected infant deaths overall in the U.S. have changed only minimally in the past 20 years, but racial-ethnic disparities [in these deaths are widening] due to increasing rates among non-Hispanic Black infants.

Our study suggests that the majority of these deaths are preventable by following the guidelines for safe infant sleep as outlined by the American Academy of Pediatrics and the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.

These guidelines include:

Placing the baby to sleep on a firm, flat sleep surface
Placing the baby to sleep in his or her parents’ room for the first six months on a separate sleep surface designed for infant sleep, close to the parents’ bed
Keeping the baby’s sleep space free of soft objects, such as pillows and loose bedding
Avoiding alcohol, marijuana, opioids and illicit drug use during pregnancy and after birth
Avoiding smoke and nicotine exposure during pregnancy and after birth

So why are the sudden unexpected infant death rates not changing? Even with knowledge of the recommended practices, many parents find it difficult to follow the recommendations. Others may choose not to follow them or may not follow them all of the time.

For example, an exhausted mother might bring her baby into bed to feed him, and then fall asleep with the baby in the bed. Or a parent might place their baby on a pillow because they think the baby will be more comfortable and sleep better. Bedsharing may also be a common cultural or preferred practice, so not doing so might go against one’s beliefs or preferences.

It is essential for health care providers to take these factors into account when advising families. To ensure a safe sleep space, many cities have programs that provide a free crib to parents unable to afford one.

What’s next

Much more research is needed to find the most effective ways to teach families about safe infant sleep. There are currently a number of studies underway using innovative methods to engage and educate parents, starting in pregnancy and continuing after the baby is born.

Focusing on families with the highest risk, like those in our study, is crucial to help eliminate sudden unexpected infant deaths and the racial-ethnic disparities that have, to date, been stubbornly resistant to change.

The Research Brief is a short take on interesting academic work. Läs mer…

In the wake of North America’s recent solar eclipse, another historic natural event is on the horizon. From late April through June 2024, the largest brood of 13-year cicadas, known as Brood XIX, will co-emerge with a midwestern brood of 17-year cicadas, Brood XIII.

This event will affect 17 states, from Maryland west to Iowa and south into Arkansas, Alabama and northern Georgia, the Carolinas, Virginia and Maryland. A co-emergence like this of two specific broods with different life cycles happens only once every 221 years. The last time these two groups emerged together was in 1803, when Thomas Jefferson was president.

For about four weeks, scattered wooded and suburban areas will ring with cicadas’ distinctive whistling, buzzing and chirping mating calls. After mating, each female will lay hundreds of eggs in pencil-size tree branches. Then the adult cicadas will die. Once the eggs hatch, new cicada nymphs will fall from the trees and burrow back underground, starting the cycle again.

There are perhaps 3,000 to 5,000 species of cicadas around the world, but the 13- and 17-year periodical cicadas of the eastern U.S. appear to be unique in combining long juvenile development times underground with synchronized, mass adult emergences. There are two other known periodical cicadas in the world, one in northeast India and one in Fiji, but these have only four-year and eight-year life cycles, respectively.

Periodical cicadas raise many questions for entomologists and the public alike. What do cicadas do underground for 13 or 17 years? Why are their life cycles so long? Why are they synchronized? Will the two broods emerging this spring interact? How can citizen scientists help to document this emergence? And is climate change affecting this wonder of the insect world?

We study periodical cicadas to understand questions about biodiversity, biogeography, behavior and ecology – the evolution, natural history and geographic distribution of life. It’s no accident that the scientific name for periodical 13- and 17-year cicadas is Magicicada, shortened from “magic cicada.”

Illinois is expected to be ground zero for the dual emergence of two periodical cicada broods in 2024.

Ancient visitors

As species, periodical cicadas are older than the forests that they inhabit. Molecular analysis has shown that about 4 million years ago, the ancestor of the current Magicicada species split into two lineages. Some 1.5 million years later, one of those lineages split again. The resulting three lineages are the basis of the modern periodical cicada species groups, Decim, Cassini and Decula.

Early American colonists first encountered periodical cicadas in Massachusetts. The sudden appearance of so many insects reminded them of biblical plagues of locusts, which are a type of grasshopper. That’s how the name “locust” became incorrectly associated with cicadas in North America.

During the 19th century, notable entomologists such as Benjamin Walsh, C.V. Riley and Charles Marlatt worked out the astonishing biology of periodical cicadas. They established that unlike locusts or other grasshoppers, cicadas don’t chew leaves, decimate crops or fly in swarms.

Instead, these insects spend most of their lives out of sight, growing underground and feeding on plant roots as they pass through five juvenile stages. Their synchronized emergences are predictable, occurring on a clockwork schedule of 17 years in the North and 13 years in the South and Mississippi Valley. There are multiple, regional year classes, known as broods.

Each color on this map represents a brood of 13-year or 17-year cicadas, denoted by University of Connecticut researchers observing active cicada choruses. Broods XIII (brown) and XIX (orange) will emerge in 2024. Click on any point to see which brood it belongs to. Source: University of Connecticut, used with permission.

Acting in unison

The key feature of Magicicada biology is that these insects emerge synchronously in huge numbers – as high as 1.5 million per acre. This increases their chances of accomplishing their key mission aboveground: finding mates.

Dense emergences also provide what scientists call a predator-satiation or safety-in-numbers defense. Any predator that feeds on cicadas, whether it’s a fox, squirrel, bat or bird, will eat its fill long before it consumes all of the insects in the area, leaving many survivors behind.

While periodical cicadas largely come out on schedule every 17 or 13 years, often a small group emerges four years early or late. Early-emerging cicadas may be faster-growing individuals that had access to abundant food, and the laggards may be individuals that subsisted with less.

If growing conditions change over time, as is happening now with climate warming, having the ability to make this kind of life cycle switch and come out either four years early in favorable times or four years late in more difficult times becomes important. If a sudden warm or cold phase causes a large number of cicadas to come out off schedule by four years, the insects can emerge in sufficient numbers to satiate predators and shift to a new schedule.

Will climate change shift Magicicada clocks?

As glaciers retreated from what is now the U.S. some 10,000 to 20,000 years ago, periodical cicadas filled eastern forests. Temporary life cycle switching in diverse locations has formed a complex mosaic of broods.

Today there are 12 broods of 17-year periodical cicadas in northeastern deciduous forests, where trees drop leaves in winter. These groups are numbered sequentially and fit together like a giant jigsaw puzzle. In the Southeast and the Mississippi Valley there are three broods of 13-year cicadas.

Because periodical cicadas are sensitive to climate, the patterns of their broods and species reflect climatic shifts. For example, genetic and other data from our work indicate that the 13-year species Magicicada neotredecim, which is found in the upper Mississippi Valley, formed during a previous interglacial period about 200,000 years ago.

As the environment warmed, 17-year cicadas in the area emerged successively, generation after generation, after 13 years underground. Eventually, they permanently shifted to a 13-year cycle.

But it’s not clear whether cicadas can continue to evolve as quickly as humans are altering their environment. Although periodical cicadas prefer forest edges and thrive in suburban areas, they cannot survive deforestation or reproduce successfully in areas without trees.

A pile of dead and dying periodical cicadas and their cast-off nymph shells collect at the base of a tree in Columbia, Md., during the 2021 Brood X emergence.
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

Indeed, some broods have already become extinct. In the late 19th century, one Brood (XXI) disappeared from north Florida and Georgia. Another (XI) has been extinct in northeast Connecticut since around 1954, and a third (VII) in upstate New York has shrunk from eight counties to one since mapping first began in the mid-1800s.

Climate change could also have farther-reaching effects. As the U.S. climate warms, longer growing seasons may provide a larger food supply. This may eventually change more 17-year cicadas into 13-year cicadas, just as past warming altered Magicicada neotredecim.

Early emergences occurred in 2017 in Cincinnati and the Baltimore-Washington metro area, and in 1969, 2003 and 2020 in the Chicago metro area, with more individuals participating in successive generations. We hypothesize that this was due to climate warming.

In 2024, 17-year Brood XIII will emerge geographically adjacent to 13-year Brood XIX. However, contrary to some recent media reports, they will not overlap. We know this because we have mapped them in previous generations when they emerged separately. In the area of adjacency, we are not able to tell the two broods apart. They are identical in appearance, song and genetics.

Researchers need detailed high-quality information to track cicada distributions over time. Citizen scientists are key to this effort because periodical cicada populations are so large and their adult emergences last only a few weeks.

Volunteers who want to help document the 2024 emergence can download the Cicada Safari mobile phone app, provide snapshots and follow our research in real time online at www.cicadas.uconn.edu. Cicadas will be hard to ignore if they’re in your area, so why not learn to appreciate them and have fun?

This is an updated version of an article originally published on March 12, 2021. Läs mer…

The NHL playoffs are almost like a second season – two months of bruising, relentless play, as the top teams compete for the chance to hoist Lord Stanley’s Cup.

The 16 hockey teams that have made it into the postseason owe a great deal of their success to the abilities of their players and the tactics of their coaching staffs.

They should also thank their lucky stars.

In my new book “The Random Factor,” I explain why of the five major U.S. team sports – basketball, football, baseball, hockey and soccer – the one with the greatest amount of luck involved in wins and losses is hockey.

Skill vs. chance

Using a mathematical approach known as “true score theory,” analysts have been able to assess the contribution of luck to a team’s overall success.

This statistical technique utilizes the variance in skill, chance and outcome to estimate the relative importance of skills versus chance in determining results.

In the NHL, it is estimated that the contribution of luck to a team’s season record is approximately 53%. At the other end of the spectrum, only 12% of an NBA team’s record is due to luck.

The other three sports are clustered in the middle, with their position in the standings influenced roughly one-third by luck.

More scoring opportunities matter

How might these differences be understood?

One key factor is the number of opportunities that a team has to score. The more chances a team has, the less luck plays a role in the outcome.

In a typical NBA game, each team may tally 35 or more baskets during a game, whereas in an NHL game there may be only one or two times that a team scores. Luck plays much more of a role when the opportunities to score are lower. In these situations, a lucky bounce is more likely to determine the outcome of a game.

You can see this with coin flips. If you flip a coin 10 times, you may very well wind up with seven or eight heads or tails, even though the overall probability on any individual coin toss is 50%. With so few tosses, there can be significant deviations from what should theoretically happen: five heads and five tails.

However, if you flip a coin 100 times, you’ll probably find that nearly half of those coin tosses will be heads. As the number of events – in this case, coin flips – increases, the more likely the final tally will reflect the underlying probability.

Similarly, in sports, the abilities of players are more likely to come to the fore when there are more opportunities to score. In the NBA, a player can attempt more than 20 shots over the course of a game – perhaps making half of them – so they have more chances to put their skills on display and influence the outcome of a game.

Deflect, deflect, deflect

The outsize role of luck in hockey can also be explained by an additional factor.

While scoring in typical NHL games is quite low, each team may very well attempt 45 or 50 shots. This would seemingly refute the explanation that the number of events or opportunities influences the role of luck in a game’s outcome.

Yet anyone who has ever watched a professional hockey game can grasp the randomness that’s taking place on the ice. Skates or sticks often randomly deflect shots when players cross in the path of a puck’s trajectory. Pucks can take strange bounces as they travel across the rink. Goalies might just happen to be in the right place at the right time.

Nashville Predators center Colin Wilson (33) watches his deflection of a shot fly past Chicago Blackhawks goalie Scott Darling during a playoff game in 2015.
AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast

In short, there is considerable randomness that occurs between the time the hockey stick hits the puck and where it eventually ends up.

It’s also simply difficult to score a goal in hockey. The net is small and the goalies are large and wear bulky pads. Pucks have very little space to squirt through.

Across all sports, chance and luck add excitement and intrigue to these contests. You can never be quite sure of the way the ball or puck may bounce. While your team may be heavily favored, the random factor is always in play.

Nowhere is this more apparent than in hockey.

So for all of the predictions from pundits and oddsmakers, fans of NHL playoff teams would be wise to do something else: cross their fingers. Läs mer…

From childhood, we are told that patience is a virtue and that good things will come to those who wait. And, so, many of us work on cultivating patience.

This often starts by learning to wait for a turn with a coveted toy. As adults, it becomes trying to remain patient with long lines at the Department of Motor Vehicles, misbehaving kids or the slow pace of political change. This hard work can have mental health benefits. It is even correlated with per capita income and productivity.

But it is also about trying to become a good person.

It’s clear to me, as a scholar of religious ethics, that patience is a term many of us use, but we all could benefit from understanding its meaning a little better.

In religious traditions, patience is more than waiting, or even more than enduring a hardship. But what is that “more,” and how does being patient make us better people?

The writings of medieval Islamic thinker Abu Hamid al-Ghazali can give us insights or help us understand why we need to practice patience – and also when not to be patient.

Who was al-Ghazali?

Born in Iran in 1058, al-Ghazali was widely respected as a jurist, philosopher and theologian. He traveled to places as far as Baghdad and Jerusalem to defend Islam and argued there was no contradiction between reason and revelation. More specifically, he was well known for reconciling Aristotle’s philosophy, which he likely read in Arabic translation, with Islamic theology.

Al-Ghazali was a prolific writer, and one of his most important works – “Revival of the Religious Sciences,” or the “Iḥyāʾ ʿulūm al-dīn” – provides a practical guide for living an ethical Muslim life.

This work is composed of 40 volumes in total, divided into four parts of 10 books each. Part 1 deals with Islamic rituals; Part 2, local customs; Part 3, vices to be avoided; and Part 4, virtues one should strive for. Al-Ghazali’s discussion of patience comes in Volume 32 of Part 4, “On Patience and Thankfulness,” or the “Kitāb al-sabr waʾl-shukr.”

He describes patience as a fundamental human characteristic that is crucial to achieving value-driven goals, and he provides a caveat for when impatience is called for.

1. What is patience?

Humans, according to al-Ghazali, have competing impulses: the impulse of religion, or “bāʿith al-dīn,” and the impulse of desire, or “bāʿith al-hawā.”

Life is a struggle between these two impulses, which he describes with the metaphor of a battle: “Support for the religious impulse comes from the angels reinforcing the troops of God, while support for the impulse of desire comes from the devils reinforcing the enemies of God.”

Muslim scholar Abū Ḥāmid Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad al-Ghazālī.
From the cover illustration of ’The Confessions of Al-Ghazali,’ via Wikimedia Commons

The amount of patience we have is what decides who wins the battle. As al-Ghazali puts it, “If a man remains steadfast until the religious impulse conquers … then the troops of God are victorious and he joins the troops of the patient. But if he slackens and weakens until appetite overcomes him … he joins the followers of the devils.” In other words, for al-Ghazali, patience is the deciding factor of whether we are living up to our full human potential to live ethically.

2. Patience, values and goals

Patience is also necessary for being a good Muslim, in al-Ghazali’s view. But his understanding of how patience works rests on a theory of ethics and can be applied outside of his explicitly Islamic worldview.

It all starts with commitments to core values. For a Muslim like al-Ghazali, those values are informed by the Islamic tradition and community, or “umma,” and include things like justice and mercy. These specific values might be universally applicable. Or you might also have another set of values that are important to you. Perhaps a commitment to social justice, or being a good friend, or not lying.

Living in a way that is consistent with these core values is what the moral life is all about. And patience, according to al-Ghazali, is how we consistently make sure our actions serve this purpose.

That means patience is not just enduring the pain of a toddler’s temper tantrum. It is enduring that pain with a goal in mind. The successful application of patience is measured not by how much pain we endure but by our progress toward a specific goal, such as raising a healthy and happy child who can eventually regulate their emotions.

In al-Ghazali’s understanding of patience, we all need it in order to remain committed to our core principles and ideas when things aren’t going our way.

3. When impatience is called for

One critique of the idea of patience is that it can lead to inaction or be used to silence justified complaints. For instance, scholar of Africana studies Julius Fleming argues in his book “Black Patience” for the importance of a “radical refusal to wait” under conditions of systemic racism. Certainly, there are forms of injustice and suffering in the world that we should not calmly endure.

Despite his commitment to the importance of patience to a moral life, al-Ghazali makes room for impatience as well. He writes, “One is forbidden to be patient with harm (that is) forbidden; for example, to have one’s hand cut off or to witness the cutting off of the hand of a son and to remain silent.”

These are examples of harms to oneself or to loved ones. But could the necessity for impatience be extended to social harms, such as systemic racism or poverty? And as Quranic studies scholars Ahmad Ismail and Ahmad Solahuddin have argued, true patience sometimes necessitates action.

As al-Ghazali writes, “Just because patience is half of faith, do not imagine that it is all commendable; what is intended are specific kinds of patience.”

To sum up, not all patience is good; only patience that is in service of righteous goals is key to the ethical life. The question of which goals are righteous is one we must all answer for ourselves. Läs mer…

Google recently made headlines globally because its chatbot Gemini generated images of people of color instead of white people in historical settings that featured white people. Adobe Firefly’s image creation tool saw similar issues. This led some commentators to complain that AI had gone “woke.” Others suggested these issues resulted from faulty efforts to fight AI bias and better serve a global audience.

The discussions over AI’s political leanings and efforts to fight bias are important. Still, the conversation on AI ignores another crucial issue: What is the AI industry’s approach to free speech, and does it embrace international free speech standards?

We are policy researchers who study free speech, as well as executive director and a research fellow at The Future of Free Speech, an independent, nonpartisan think tank based at Vanderbilt University. In a recent report, we found that generative AI has important shortcomings regarding freedom of expression and access to information.

Generative AI is a type of AI that creates content, like text or images, based on the data it has been trained with. In particular, we found that the use policies of major chatbots do not meet United Nations standards. In practice, this means that AI chatbots often censor output when dealing with issues the companies deem controversial. Without a solid culture of free speech, the companies producing generative AI tools are likely to continue to face backlash in these increasingly polarized times.

Vague and broad use policies

Our report analyzed the use policies of six major AI chatbots, including Google’s Gemini and OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Companies issue policies to set the rules for how people can use their models. With international human rights law as a benchmark, we found that companies’ misinformation and hate speech policies are too vague and expansive. It is worth noting that international human rights law is less protective of free speech than the U.S. First Amendment.

Our analysis found that companies’ hate speech policies contain extremely broad prohibitions. For example, Google bans the generation of “content that promotes or encourages hatred.” Though hate speech is detestable and can cause harm, policies that are as broadly and vaguely defined as Google’s can backfire.

To show how vague and broad use policies can affect users, we tested a range of prompts on controversial topics. We asked chatbots questions like whether transgender women should or should not be allowed to participate in women’s sports tournaments or about the role of European colonialism in the current climate and inequality crises. We did not ask the chatbots to produce hate speech denigrating any side or group. Similar to what some users have reported, the chatbots refused to generate content for 40% of the 140 prompts we used. For example, all chatbots refused to generate posts opposing the participation of transgender women in women’s tournaments. However, most of them did produce posts supporting their participation.

Freedom of speech is a foundational right in the U.S., but what it means and how far it goes are still widely debated.

Vaguely phrased policies rely heavily on moderators’ subjective opinions about what hate speech is. Users can also perceive that the rules are unjustly applied and interpret them as too strict or too lenient.

For example, the chatbot Pi bans “content that may spread misinformation.” However, international human rights standards on freedom of expression generally protect misinformation unless a strong justification exists for limits, such as foreign interference in elections. Otherwise, human rights standards guarantee the “freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers … through any … media of … choice,” according to a key United Nations convention.

Defining what constitutes accurate information also has political implications. Governments of several countries used rules adopted in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic to repress criticism of the government. More recently, India confronted Google after Gemini noted that some experts consider the policies of the Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi, to be fascist.

Free speech culture

There are reasons AI providers may want to adopt restrictive use policies. They may wish to protect their reputations and not be associated with controversial content. If they serve a global audience, they may want to avoid content that is offensive in any region.

In general, AI providers have the right to adopt restrictive policies. They are not bound by international human rights. Still, their market power makes them different from other companies. Users who want to generate AI content will most likely end up using one of the chatbots we analyzed, especially ChatGPT or Gemini.

These companies’ policies have an outsize effect on the right to access information. This effect is likely to increase with generative AI’s integration into search, word processors, email and other applications.

This means society has an interest in ensuring such policies adequately protect free speech. In fact, the Digital Services Act, Europe’s online safety rulebook, requires that so-called “very large online platforms” assess and mitigate “systemic risks.” These risks include negative effects on freedom of expression and information.

Jacob Mchangama discusses online free speech in the context of the European Union’s 2022 Digital Services Act.

This obligation, imperfectly applied so far by the European Commission, illustrates that with great power comes great responsibility. It is unclear how this law will apply to generative AI, but the European Commission has already taken its first actions.

Even where a similar legal obligation does not apply to AI providers, we believe that the companies’ influence should require them to adopt a free speech culture. International human rights provide a useful guiding star on how to responsibly balance the different interests at stake. At least two of the companies we focused on – Google and Anthropic – have recognized as much.

Outright refusals

It’s also important to remember that users have a significant degree of autonomy over the content they see in generative AI. Like search engines, the output users receive greatly depends on their prompts. Therefore, users’ exposure to hate speech and misinformation from generative AI will typically be limited unless they specifically seek it.

This is unlike social media, where people have much less control over their own feeds. Stricter controls, including on AI-generated content, may be justified at the level of social media since they distribute content publicly. For AI providers, we believe that use policies should be less restrictive about what information users can generate than those of social media platforms.

AI companies have other ways to address hate speech and misinformation. For instance, they can provide context or countervailing facts in the content they generate. They can also allow for greater user customization. We believe that chatbots should avoid merely refusing to generate any content altogether. This is unless there are solid public interest grounds, such as preventing child sexual abuse material, something laws prohibit.

Refusals to generate content not only affect fundamental rights to free speech and access to information. They can also push users toward chatbots that specialize in generating hateful content and echo chambers. That would be a worrying outcome. Läs mer…

In the long list of Donald Trump’s legal woes, the Mueller report – which was released in redacted form on April 18, 2019 – appears all but forgotten.

But the nearly two-year investigation into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election dominated headlines – and revealed what has become Trump’s trademark denial of any wrongdoing. For Trump, the Russia investigation was the first “ridiculous hoax” and “witch hunt.”

Mueller didn’t help matters. “While this report does not conclude that the president committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him,” the special counsel stated.

With such equivocal language, it’s easy to see how Democrats and Republicans – and the American public – responded to the report in completely different ways. While progressive Democrats wanted Trump to be impeached, some GOP leaders called for an investigation into the origins of the investigation itself.

Over the past five years, the Conversation U.S. has published the work of several scholars who followed the Mueller investigation and what it revealed about Trump. Here, we spotlight four examples of these scholars’ work.

1. Obstruction of justice

As a law professor and one-time elected official, David Orentlicher pointed out that Trump did many things that influenced federal investigations into him and his aides. They include firing FBI Director James Comey, publicly attacking the special counsel’s work and pressuring then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions not to recuse himself from overseeing Mueller’s investigation.

Some accused Trump of obstructing justice with these actions. But Orentlicher wrote that obstruction of justice is “a complicated matter.”

According to federal law, obstruction occurs when a person tries to impede or influence a trial, investigation or other official proceeding with threats or corrupt intent. The law requires a “corrupt” intention to obstruct justice as well.

But in a March 24, 2019, letter to Congress summarizing Mueller’s findings, then-Attorney General William Barr said he saw insufficient evidence to prove that Trump had obstructed justice.

William Barr’s letter to Congress summarizing the findings of Mueller’s report.
AP Photo/Jon Elswick

So it was up to Congress to further a case against Trump on obstruction charges, but then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi declined, arguing that it would be too divisive for the nation and Trump “just wasn’t worth it.”

Read more:
Trump and obstruction of justice: An explainer

2. Why didn’t the full report become public?

Charles Tiefer is a professor of law at the University of Baltimore and expected that Trump and Barr would do “everything in their power to keep secret the full report and, equally important, the materials underlying the report.”

Tiefer was right. To keep Mueller’s report private, Barr invoked grand jury secrecy – the rule that attorneys, jurors and others “must not disclose a matter occurring before the grand jury.”

Attorney General William Barr was handpicked by Donald Trump to be in office when the Mueller report came in.
AP Photo/Alex Brandon/Jose Luis Magana

Trump and Barr also claimed executive privilege to further prevent the release of the report. Though it cannot be used to shield evidence of a crime, Tiefer explained, “that’s where Barr’s exoneration of Trump really helped the White House.”

Read more:
How Trump and Barr could stretch claims of executive privilege and grand jury secrecy

3. Alternative facts

Political scientists David C. Barker and Morgan Marietta asked an important question: After nearly two years of waiting, why didn’t the report help the nation achieve a consensus over what happened in the 2016 presidential election?

In their book, “One nation, Two Realities,” they found that voters see the world in ways that reinforce their values and identities, irrespective of whether they have ever watched Fox News or MSNBC.

President Donald Trump gestures after the release of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report on Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, April 18, 2019.
REUTERS/Lucas Jackson

“The conflicting factual assertions that have emerged since the report’s release highlight just how easy it is for citizens to believe what they want, regardless of what Robert Mueller, William Barr or anyone else has to say about it,” they wrote.

Perhaps the most disappointing finding, they argued, is that there are no known fixes to this problem. They found that fact-checking has little impact on changing individual beliefs, and more education only sharpens the divisions.

And with that, they wrote, “the U.S. continues to inch ever closer to a public square in which consensus perceptions are unavailable and facts are irrelevant.”

Read more:
From ’Total exoneration!’ to ’Impeach now!’ – the Mueller report and dueling fact perceptions

4. Trump’s demand for loyalty

Political science professor Yu Ouyang studies loyalty and politics at Purdue University Northwest. He explained that it’s normal for presidents to prefer loyalists.

What sets Trump apart, Ouyang wrote, is his “exceptional emphasis on loyalty.”

Trump expects personal loyalty from his staff – especially from his attorney general.

When his first attorney general, Sessions, recused himself from overseeing the FBI’s probe into Russian meddling, Trump considered it an act of betrayal and fired him in November 2017. Session’s removal enabled Trump to hire Barr.

“Trump values loyalty over other critical qualities like competence and honesty. … And he appoints his staff accordingly,” Ouyang wrote.

Read more:
Why does a president demand loyalty from people who work for him? Läs mer…

In the long list of Donald Trump’s legal woes, the Mueller report – which was released in redacted form on April 18, 2019 – appears all but forgotten.

But the nearly two-year investigation into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election dominated headlines – and revealed what has become Trump’s trademark denial of any wrongdoing. For Trump, the Russia investigation was the first “ridiculous hoax” and “witch hunt.”

Mueller didn’t help matters. “While this report does not conclude that the president committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him,” the special counsel stated.

With such equivocal language, it’s easy to see how Democrats and Republicans – and the American public – responded to the report in completely different ways. While progressive Democrats wanted Trump to be impeached, some GOP leaders called for an investigation into the origins of the investigation itself.

Over the past five years, the Conversation U.S. has published the work of several scholars who followed the Mueller investigation and what it revealed about Trump. Here, we spotlight four examples of these scholars’ work.

1. Obstruction of justice

As a law professor and one-time elected official, David Orentlicher pointed out that Trump did many things that influenced federal investigations into him and his aides. They include firing FBI Director James Comey, publicly attacking the special counsel’s work and pressuring then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions not to recuse himself from overseeing Mueller’s investigation.

Some accused Trump of obstructing justice with these actions. But Orentlicher wrote that obstruction of justice is “a complicated matter.”

According to federal law, obstruction occurs when a person tries to impede or influence a trial, investigation or other official proceeding with threats or corrupt intent. The law requires a “corrupt” intention to obstruct justice as well.

But in a March 24, 2019, letter to Congress summarizing Mueller’s findings, then-Attorney General William Barr said he saw insufficient evidence to prove that Trump had obstructed justice.

William Barr’s letter to Congress summarizing the findings of Mueller’s report.
AP Photo/Jon Elswick

So it was up to Congress to further a case against Trump on obstruction charges, but then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi declined, arguing that it would be too divisive for the nation and Trump “just wasn’t worth it.”

Read more:
Trump and obstruction of justice: An explainer

2. Why didn’t the full report become public?

Charles Tiefer is a professor of law at the University of Baltimore and expected that Trump and Barr would do “everything in their power to keep secret the full report and, equally important, the materials underlying the report.”

Tiefer was right. To keep Mueller’s report private, Barr invoked grand jury secrecy – the rule that attorneys, jurors and others “must not disclose a matter occurring before the grand jury.”

Attorney General William Barr was handpicked by Donald Trump to be in office when the Mueller report came in.
AP Photo/Alex Brandon/Jose Luis Magana

Trump and Barr also claimed executive privilege to further prevent the release of the report. Though it cannot be used to shield evidence of a crime, Tiefer explained, “that’s where Barr’s exoneration of Trump really helped the White House.”

Read more:
How Trump and Barr could stretch claims of executive privilege and grand jury secrecy

3. Alternative facts

Political scientists David C. Barker and Morgan Marietta asked an important question: After nearly two years of waiting, why didn’t the report help the nation achieve a consensus over what happened in the 2016 presidential election?

In their book, “One nation, Two Realities,” they found that voters see the world in ways that reinforce their values and identities, irrespective of whether they have ever watched Fox News or MSNBC.

President Donald Trump gestures after the release of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report on Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, April 18, 2019.
REUTERS/Lucas Jackson

“The conflicting factual assertions that have emerged since the report’s release highlight just how easy it is for citizens to believe what they want, regardless of what Robert Mueller, William Barr or anyone else has to say about it,” they wrote.

Perhaps the most disappointing finding, they argued, is that there are no known fixes to this problem. They found that fact-checking has little impact on changing individual beliefs, and more education only sharpens the divisions.

And with that, they wrote, “the U.S. continues to inch ever closer to a public square in which consensus perceptions are unavailable and facts are irrelevant.”

Read more:
From ’Total exoneration!’ to ’Impeach now!’ – the Mueller report and dueling fact perceptions

4. Trump’s demand for loyalty

Political science professor Yu Ouyang studies loyalty and politics at Purdue University Northwest. He explained that it’s normal for presidents to prefer loyalists.

What sets Trump apart, Ouyang wrote, is his “exceptional emphasis on loyalty.”

Trump expects personal loyalty from his staff – especially from his attorney general.

When his first attorney general, Sessions, recused himself from overseeing the FBI’s probe into Russian meddling, Trump considered it an act of betrayal and fired him in November 2017. Session’s removal enabled Trump to hire Barr.

“Trump values loyalty over other critical qualities like competence and honesty. … And he appoints his staff accordingly,” Ouyang wrote.

Read more:
Why does a president demand loyalty from people who work for him? Läs mer…

Black Lives Matter protests in cities with Black women police chiefs experienced significantly lower levels of violence – from both police and protesters – than cities with police chiefs of other racial backgrounds and gender, according to our newly published paper.

After George Floyd’s death at the hands of Minneapolis police on May 25, 2020, the Black Lives Matter movement surged. Advocating for social justice, the movement galvanized over 11,000 protest events across thousands of cities in all 50 states. Most demonstrations were peaceful, but others were not, and city police chiefs had the job of dealing with street violence. In some communities, they engaged in dialogue with protesters; in others, they responded with force.

Our research included analyzing 11,540 protests that occurred between May 25 and Aug. 29, 2020, in 3,338 cities, spanning 1,481 counties and all 50 states. To ensure robustness and eliminate bias, we measured violence based on an independent categorization of violence, protest event descriptions, numbers of arrests and severity of the charges. We also researched the gender and racial background of the local police chief.

Our analysis, published in the Journal of Management, found that protests in cities with police departments led by Black women tended to be relatively peaceful.

Consider, for instance, Black female Chief Catrina Thompson in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, who chose dialogue over force. She conveyed solidarity with the Black Lives Matter cause and affirmed that peaceful protests could spur change without destroying the city.

By contrast, a protest in Lincoln, Nebraska, in late May 2020 saw a group of protesters break store windows and threaten police officers, which resulted in police officers – in a department led by white male Chief Jeff Bliemeister – firing pepper spray, tear gas and rubber bullets.

This and other research has found that through their personal and professional experience as they rise through the ranks of a traditionally male, white profession, Black women tend to develop a strong understanding of racial dynamics and use their knowledge to devise flexible strategies.

Of course, not all Black women lead in exactly the same ways, but they tend to share similar experiences that can help foster peaceful outcomes in times of social unrest.

Why it matters

Amid a backdrop of widespread protests and calls for social justice, public safety depends on peaceful interactions between police and demonstrators.

The study highlights the significance of having diverse leadership voices and the importance of recognizing and elevating individual identities. Despite a rise in the appointment of Black police chiefs over the past decade, Black women continue to be underrepresented in law enforcement leadership positions. This research highlights the value to society of including diverse perspectives and leadership approaches informed by the intersections of people’s identities.

What still isn’t known

Despite these insights, several questions remain unanswered. We do not yet know the specific way in which the leadership of Black women police chiefs translates into lower violence levels. We suggest the mechanism is a complex result of their communication strategies, community engagement practices and decision-making processes – but we do not know which has the most influence.

Our study also raises questions about how these findings about Black women at a time of Black protest might be applied to other civic leaders’ handling of demonstrations from different types of social movements.

What’s next

The study paves the way for more in-depth research into how intersecting identities – such as gender and race – affect leadership approaches and outcomes across various professions, not just law enforcement.

Ongoing research efforts – our own and others’ – are directed at better understanding how people’s identities inform their leadership styles and how they handle conflict. Future studies are also needed to explore how organizations and communities can better support Black women and promote them into leadership roles, ensuring their perspectives and skills benefit society as a whole.

The Research Brief is a short take on interesting academic work. Läs mer…