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The board of South Africa’s National Student Financial Aid Scheme (NSFAS) has been dissolved by the country’s higher education and training minister, Blade Nzimande, and the organisation placed under administration. Nzimande made the decision because of “(the problem of) non-payment of (students’) allowances”.

Thandi Lewin is a higher education scholar who worked in the Department of Higher Education with responsibility for oversight of NSFAS between 2018 and 2023. She also briefly served as a departmental representative on the NSFAS board in 2018. The Conversation Africa asked her to explain the organisation’s history, its mandate and the current crisis.

What is NSFAS and how many students does it fund each year?

NSFAS is a South African state entity established in 1999 under the auspices of the Department of Higher Education and Training. Its core function is to distribute government financial aid to students in public post-school education and training institutions – that is, universities and technical and vocational education and training (TVET) colleges.

Since its establishment, according to the minister, the scheme has supported more than 5 million beneficiaries. In 2021 it funded 826,084 students, 67% at universities and 33% at TVET colleges. (This number includes a small proportion of students who are funded through other state bursary schemes.)

About 61% of undergraduate students in public universities are funded through NSFAS.

How are students evaluated for funding?

Firstly, students must meet the financial eligibility criteria, with a family income of no more than R350,000 (about US$19,000) a year. Beneficiaries of the South African Social Security Agency automatically qualify for NSFAS support.

Secondly, students must be registered for a funded programme at a public TVET college or university. Continued funding relies on them meeting both NSFAS’s financial criteria and academic standards set by individual institutions.

NSFAS assesses funding eligibility using data supplied by applicants. The Department of Home Affairs and the South African Revenue Service verify the information. Academic admissions are determined by institutions.

It is important to understand the dual qualification criteria because it shows that the financial aid scheme operates within a higher education ecosystem. Collaboration between institutions is key for it to work effectively.

Is NSFAS in a stable condition?

The provision of state financial aid to students has been one of the most important and successful higher education policies in post-apartheid South Africa. Significant numbers of students who would otherwise not access higher education have been able to do so.

This can be seen in the sustained transformation of the demographic profiles of public universities.

Studies conducted by the Department of Higher Education show that university students funded by NSFAS are less likely to drop out than those who are not. For instance, data on the 2013 entering cohort shows that NSFAS students drop out at a rate 10 percentage points less than the overall undergraduate cohort. They also have an 8 percentage point higher throughput rate overall; this is a measure of student qualification completion.

Of course, multiple factors affect student success. But financial aid is critical to ensure equitable access to higher education and training.

What are its three biggest challenges?

Severe administrative challenges continue to weaken the effectiveness of this social justice policy. In short, the biggest challenges are:

systems and capacity that are not fit for purpose
administrative changes that do not recognise the complexity of the operational ecosystem and the need for co-operation and trust between NSFAS and universities and TVET colleges
an unstable policy environment, including financing that will ensure student funding policies are sustainable over time.

Most recently, in 2023, NSFAS made several ill-conceived and badly planned administrative changes. One was the introduction of a direct payments solution supported by four fintech companies. Beneficiaries are paid directly by NSFAS and not through institutions and third parties. The change was introduced in the middle of the 2023 academic year, without being piloted and at short notice. It sparked chaos for students and institutions alike. The new “NSFAS bank accounts” introduced in 2023 also forced financial processing costs onto students, reducing the value of their allowances.

The effects of this included delayed confirmation of funding and processing appeals, the late or non-payment of allowances and the over- and under-payment of allowances. The entity blamed institutions for its administrative failures, claiming that they did not submit accurate registration data on time.

Then evidence emerged that the direct payments service providers had been irregularly appointed. The CEO of NSFAS was fired for tender irregularities and the former chair of the board is under investigation. He’s accused of taking kickbacks from the direct payments service providers. The board accepted the recommendations of the report it commissioned from the law firm Werksmans to terminate the payment service provider contracts.

Now NSFAS is again under administration. (It was under administration for the first time between 2018 and 2020.) An administrator has taken over the governance and management of the entity because of concerns about maladministration.

What immediate steps ought to be taken?

NSFAS must focus on building the capacity and systems to support its core mandate. It needs to develop appropriate IT systems and architecture to assess and monitor eligibility. It also needs to provide accurate funding decisions and ensure that qualifying students receive the correct funding at the appropriate time.

This could involve direct payments from NSFAS to students but would require IT systems to be integrated with public institutions. This will not work in the short term. NSFAS has recognised this by requesting that institutions continue making allowance payments to students, as was being done before the direct payments process started.

The entity must also, with the support of the department, address the recommendations of two reports. One is the 2021 ministerial commission of inquiry into NSFAS’s systems and capacity. The other is a ministerial task team report on student funding, finalised in 2022. Neither of these reports have been released publicly but they have been discussed in parliament.

The department has a crucial role to play here. It must ensure policy and funding stability in the student funding arena. In recent years funding has been taken from university subsidies to fund NSFAS commitments. This takes critical support away from institutions as only part of NSFAS funding is spent on tuition fees.

If the challenges are not urgently resolved, generations of young people will be negatively affected and scarce public funding will not serve its intended purpose. Läs mer…

Every vehicle built after 1981 has a unique vehicle identification number, or VIN. The location of this string of letters and numbers varies, but it’s located somewhere on every car, SUV, motorcycle and truck – typically on a small metal plate or a sticker.

VINs serve many purposes. They help consumers learn about a used car’s history, including whether it was stolen, or determine whether rebates for a particular electric vehicle are available. This code appears in the paperwork necessary to do everything from insuring your car to selling it.

I research data standards and became interested in VINs while doing research for my book about the cultural history of barcodes.

Like barcode numbers, a VIN’s characters are standardized. They can tell a story if you know what to look for.

A lot of information is packed into these 17 characters.
The Conversation U.S., CC BY-SA

What VINs can tell you

VINs can convey at least seven pieces of information.

Origin
If a VIN begins with a 1, 4 or 5, that means it’s a vehicle assembled in the U.S. Many other countries have their own unique identifier. A 2, for example, means the vehicle was made in Canada; a J stands for Japan.
Manufacturer
The second and third characters indicate the manufacturer. In some cases, the code corresponds with a line of vehicles that now belongs to a larger corporation. Dodge and Jeep, now part of Stellantis, each has its own. So does Lincoln, which became a division of Ford Motor Co. in 1922.
Description
The fourth through eighth characters provide several details, such as body type and engine type.
Security
The ninth character is a “check digit” determined by a complex mathematical equation based on the rest of the VIN’s numbers and letters. This digit, either a number or the letter X, is used to authenticate that the VIN is not a forgery.
Year
The 10th character indicates the model year. There’s only one slot for this, and not all letters and numbers are used, resulting in repetition. An R could signal either 2024 or 1994, for example.
Factory
The 11th character indicates the specific plant where the vehicle was assembled.
Serial number
The VIN’s final six characters compose a serial number that differentiates the vehicle from all others made in the same factory that are the identical type and model year.

Vehicle identification number locations vary but are generally found in one of four places.
The Conversation U.S., CC BY-SA

Finding more information

Only experts can tell where a vehicle was assembled or what type of engine it has by looking at its VIN. But help is available.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration provides a handy VIN decoder. When I plugged my vehicle’s VIN into the decoder, the site correctly determined that my SUV is a 2011 Subaru Forester with an automatic transmission.

Of course, I already knew all that.

What I didn’t realize was that it weighs between 4,000 and 5,000 pounds, has a 2.5-liter engine and features side curtain airbags to protect the driver and passengers in the front and back seats. I also learned that this Subaru Forester was assembled in Gunma, Japan.

Those details had been invisible to me as a consumer, but they had been within easy reach ever since I bought my Forester in 2018. I had somehow driven that car well over 100,000 miles without realizing the number on the side of my driver’s seat contained some history.

Before buying the Forester, even though I didn’t know that my VIN could say so much, I did run it through a free online system to make sure it hadn’t been stolen.

To be sure, VINs won’t tell you everything you might want to know about a vehicle, such as what color it was when it rolled off the line. But if you can do a little decoding and make use of widely available online tools, they do harbor important information.

Where’s your VIN and what’s it for? Läs mer…

Animal behavior research relies on careful observation of animals. Researchers might spend months in a jungle habitat watching tropical birds mate and raise their young. They might track the rates of physical contact in cattle herds of different densities. Or they could record the sounds whales make as they migrate through the ocean.

Animal behavior research can provide fundamental insights into the natural processes that affect ecosystems around the globe, as well as into our own human minds and behavior.

I study animal behavior – and also the research reported by scientists in my field. One of the challenges of this kind of science is making sure our own assumptions don’t influence what we think we see in animal subjects. Like all people, how scientists see the world is shaped by biases and expectations, which can affect how data is recorded and reported. For instance, scientists who live in a society with strict gender roles for women and men might interpret things they see animals doing as reflecting those same divisions.

The scientific process corrects for such mistakes over time, but scientists have quicker methods at their disposal to minimize potential observer bias. Animal behavior scientists haven’t always used these methods – but that’s changing. A new study confirms that, over the past decade, studies increasingly adhere to the rigorous best practices that can minimize potential biases in animal behavior research.

Adding up?
Karl Krall/Wikimedia Commons

Biases and self-fulfilling prophecies

A German horse named Clever Hans is widely known in the history of animal behavior as a classic example of unconscious bias leading to a false result.

Around the turn of the 20th century, Clever Hans was purported to be able to do math. For example, in response to his owner’s prompt “3 + 5,” Clever Hans would tap his hoof eight times. His owner would then reward him with his favorite vegetables. Initial observers reported that the horse’s abilities were legitimate and that his owner was not being deceptive.

However, careful analysis by a young scientist named Oskar Pfungst revealed that if the horse could not see his owner, he couldn’t answer correctly. So while Clever Hans was not good at math, he was incredibly good at observing his owner’s subtle and unconscious cues that gave the math answers away.

In the 1960s, researchers asked human study participants to code the learning ability of rats. Participants were told their rats had been artificially selected over many generations to be either “bright” or “dull” learners. Over several weeks, the participants ran their rats through eight different learning experiments.

In seven out of the eight experiments, the human participants ranked the “bright” rats as being better learners than the “dull” rats when, in reality, the researchers had randomly picked rats from their breeding colony. Bias led the human participants to see what they thought they should see.

Eliminating bias

Given the clear potential for human biases to skew scientific results, textbooks on animal behavior research methods from the 1980s onward have implored researchers to verify their work using at least one of two commonsense methods.

One is making sure the researcher observing the behavior does not know if the subject comes from one study group or the other. For example, a researcher would measure a cricket’s behavior without knowing if it came from the experimental or control group.

The other best practice is utilizing a second researcher, who has fresh eyes and no knowledge of the data, to observe the behavior and code the data. For example, while analyzing a video file, I count chickadees taking seeds from a feeder 15 times. Later, a second independent observer counts the same number.

Yet these methods to minimize possible biases are often not employed by researchers in animal behavior, perhaps because these best practices take more time and effort.

In 2012, my colleagues and I reviewed nearly 1,000 articles published in five leading animal behavior journals between 1970 and 2010 to see how many reported these methods to minimize potential bias. Less than 10% did so. By contrast, the journal Infancy, which focuses on human infant behavior, was far more rigorous: Over 80% of its articles reported using methods to avoid bias.

It’s a problem not just confined to my field. A 2015 review of published articles in the life sciences found that blind protocols are uncommon. It also found that studies using blind methods detected smaller differences between the key groups being observed compared to studies that didn’t use blind methods, suggesting potential biases led to more notable results.

In the years after we published our article, it was cited regularly and we wondered if there had been any improvement in the field. So, we recently reviewed 40 articles from each of the same five journals for the year 2020.

We found the rate of papers that reported controlling for bias improved in all five journals, from under 10% in our 2012 article to just over 50% in our new review. These rates of reporting still lag behind the journal Infancy, however, which was 95% in 2020.

All in all, things are looking up, but the animal behavior field can still do better. Practically, with increasingly more portable and affordable audio and video recording technology, it’s getting easier to carry out methods that minimize potential biases. The more the field of animal behavior sticks with these best practices, the stronger the foundation of knowledge and public trust in this science will become. Läs mer…

The news about the Israel-Hamas war is filled with reports of Israeli families huddling in fear from relentless rocket attacks, Israeli tanks and artillery flattening buildings in the Gaza Strip, hundreds of kidnapped hostages imprisoned in subterranean tunnels, and millions of people driven from their homes by fighting.

But beyond the visceral violence lies a hidden layer of the war – an online conflict. We are scholars of cyberwarfare who have cataloged and analyzed the various cyber operations conducted during the war by Hamas, Israel and other nations and hacking groups supporting one side or the other. The data paints a picture of an unseen facet of the conflict, and it offers insights about the nature of cyber conflict more broadly.

The main conclusion we’ve drawn is that the consequences of cyber conflict are primarily felt by civilians, not the soldiers or militants actively engaged in the fighting. We find that the damage cyberattacks inflict on digital systems is far less significant than the resulting harm to humans, and the resulting upward spiral of violence.

Hamas’ cyberwarfare activities

The cyberattacks hitting Israeli government and civilian systems have had mixed effects. Some technically simple attacks succeeded in obtaining crucial intelligence that assisted Hamas fighters’ incursion into Israel. Other attacks employed a scattershot approach, targeting anything within digital reach – hospitals, universities, banks and newspapers. These attacks didn’t serve any military purpose, but simply aimed to disrupt Israeli life and terrorize the public.

The quantity and sophistication of the attacks have made clear that hackers working for the government of Iran, a key Hamas funder and supplier, are supporting Hamas’ online warfare. Other “hacktivists” and private hacking groups based in countries as varied as Sudan, Pakistan and Russia have also joined the fray.

Before the deadly Oct. 7, 2023 terror attack on Israel that sparked the current war, Hamas cyber operatives were working to support the attack planning. A Hamas hacking unit called Gaza Cybergang spied on Israel in search of sensitive information about Israeli military installations. The information they gleaned was instrumental during the attack.

Hamas hackers also conducted phishing attacks, relatively simple attacks in which fake email or text messages resemble legitimate ones and encourage a user to either reply with sensitive information or click on a link that downloads malicious software to their computer or mobile phone.

As the Oct. 7 attack unfolded, the pro-Palestinian hacktivist group AnonGhost released a mobile app with the same name as a prominent reputable app that gives Israeli citizens warnings about impending attacks from Hamas into Israel. AnonGhost issued false alerts – including, reportedly, one about a nuclear attack – and collected users’ data, including their contacts, call logs and text messages.

However, since full-fledged hostilities erupted, Hamas has been largely unable to carry out effective cyberattacks that aid its war efforts. As a result, the group turned to information warfare, seeking to evoke panic and shift public opinion.

The most common type of attack that Hamas’ cyberwarriors and their allies use now is a distributed denial-of-service, when a barrage of nonsense internet traffic is aimed at one or more websites, email servers or other internet-connected systems. They get overwhelmed by the nonsense traffic and either shut down or cease to function properly.

Denial-of-service attacks have hit websites for news media outlets, banks, financial institutions and government agencies. One attack took the Jerusalem Post website offline for two days. The group that claimed responsibility for that attack was a religious hacktivist group called Anonymous Sudan, with known connections to Russian hacking groups.

Hamas and its online allies are also using wiper malware, which infects a computer and destroys its data. This kind of attack does not serve a purpose such as extortion or surveillance – it just aims to destroy everything in its wake.

We also recorded several attacks that infiltrated databases and released their contents, such as one where the private data of students at Ono Academic College was published online.

Another series of attacks took control of digital billboards to display the Palestinian flag in sites around Israel, along with false news about military defeats. These attacks are part of a broader misinformation effort designed to shape domestic debate and terrorize Israeli civilians.

Electronic billboards have been hacked to display pro-Palestinian messages around the world, including this one in Spain.
Horacio Villalobos/Corbis via Getty Images

Israel’s activities

By contrast with Hamas, Israel is a global cyber power whose military possesses some of the strongest cyber warfare capabilities in the world.

Yet the effectiveness of Israel’s cyber arsenal is limited because Hamas doesn’t depend on the internet very much. Without any targets to strike on a digital battlefield, Israel’s primary strategy has been to turn on or off internet connectivity in Gaza. It can do this because Israel controls the electricity and internet cables that serve Gaza.

On Oct. 27, 2023, Israel imposed a near-total telecommunications blackout that lasted for approximately 34 hours. The telecommunications blackout was condemned by international organizations, including the World Health Organization, whose director general posted that the blackout made it “impossible for ambulances to reach the injured.” Without internet or telephone connections, injured Palestinians in Gaza can’t call an ambulance, nor can medical staff stay connected with their dispatch centers.

Similar internet shutdowns have occurred frequently since then. Due to damage, displacement and power and internet disruptions, internet connectivity in Gaza has been reduced to 15% of the typical rate.

During periods when there was internet service in Gaza, pro-Israeli hacktivists got involved. For example, the group WeRedEvils crashed the Gaza Now news site. As hostilities intensified, up to 60% of all traffic to Palestinian websites was made up of denial-of-service attack traffic, according to Cloudflare, a U.S.-based data-transfer and tracking company. The bulk of the attacks were aimed at banks and technology companies.

The U.S. is involved, too. The federal Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency is working with the Israelis to help thwart some cyberattacks.

A few observations about online conflict

In contrast to Hollywood depictions of cyber warfare, where unstoppable hackers can cripple entire armies and countries with the push of a button, the reality of cyber power is more constrained. Digital battles cannot win wars. Most of the online operations in the Israel-Hamas war have little effect on the actual battlefield. They involve spying or propaganda, not wholesale destruction.

Our data shows that cyber warfare doesn’t necessarily give terror groups the ability to face major powers on more equal terms. Hamas’ online operations have not been able to offset Israel’s military superiority. But Israel’s online capabilities are not a significant advantage against a largely offline opponent.

Perhaps most importantly, though, is our recurring finding that civilians are the foremost victims of cyberattacks during war. In our experiments, conducted among more than 10,000 people over 10 years, we have seen that cyberattacks arouse severe psychological distress – akin even to the harm generated by physical terrorism. When confronted with cyberattacks, people feel trapped and anxious, and their sense of safety plummets. As a result, victims lash out and demand strong retaliation in a way that fuels cycles of violence.

As Israel and Hamas volley cyberattacks back and forth, innocent people are caught in the crossfire. This human dimension of cyber warfare is the threat that worries us. Läs mer…

Society Hill, where Sixers star Joel Embiid recently put his penthouse condo on the market for US$5.5 million, has long been one of Philadelphia’s most exclusive neighborhoods.

It’s a distant cry from what the neighborhood looked like 125 years ago when sociologist and civil rights activist W.E.B. Du Bois published “The Philadelphia Negro: A Social Study.”

The book examines in meticulous detail the social conditions of thousands of Black Philadelphians living in what was then called the Seventh Ward, a neighborhood that overlaps present-day Society Hill.

We are sociologists and scholars of Du Bois whose research covers gentrification and anti-Black racism. We are also guest-editing a special issue of the City & Community journal that will be dedicated to Du Bois’ historic study.

On its 125th anniversary, “The Philadelphia Negro” offers valuable lessons about why many historically Black Philadelphia neighborhoods look the way they do today – and where they might be headed.

Family portrait of W.E.B. Du Bois, his wife, Nina, and their son, Burghardt, in 1898.
W.E.B. Du Bois Papers, 1803-1999, Special Collections and University Archives, University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries

Du Bois surveys the 7th Ward

Du Bois and his wife, Nina, arrived in Philadelphia in 1896 at the invitation of the University of Pennsylvania and with the support of the local settlement house movement. With “The Philadelphia Negro,” published in 1899, these benefactors tasked Du Bois with analyzing “the Negro problems”.

As Du Bois wrote, “Here is a large group of people – perhaps 45,000, a city within a city – who do not form an integral part of the larger social group.” He observed that a quarter of all Black Philadelphians lived in the Seventh Ward, a neighborhood at the time bounded from east to west between 7th and 25th streets, and north to south from Spruce Street to South Street.

Philadelphia of the late 1800s was a manufacturing juggernaut and the second largest city in the U.S.. Yet, as Du Bois detailed in his study, Black Philadelphians were concentrated in “certain slum districts,” areas with “poor homes and worse police protection.” They were shut out from well-paying jobs and faced higher rates of incarceration and lower rates of pardons for crimes than white Philadelphians. These challenges, Du Bois explained, were rooted in systemic racism with historical ties to slavery.

“Such discrimination,” Du Bois stated plainly, “is morally wrong, politically dangerous, industrially wasteful, and socially silly.”

A mural dedicated to Du Bois and the old Seventh Ward is painted on the corner of 6th and South streets in Philadelphia.
Paul Marotta/Getty Images

When Du Bois arrived in Philadelphia, the process of devaluing and disinvesting in Black neighborhoods like the Seventh Ward had already been decades in the making. Throughout the 1800s, Philadelphia’s population swelled considerably as industry expanded and wealth increased. Real estate values rose across the city. Yet, Black residents were less likely than white residents to own property. Racial discrimination, he determined, kept Black Philadelphians in lower-wage work and segregated in areas of the city with older homes that were poorly maintained.

Urban renewal and resistance

Nearly 50 years after Du Bois’ study, the urban planner Edmund Bacon helped organize a “Better Philadelphia” exhibition in 1947 with a vision for private reinvestment in the city’s slumping downtown economy.

Bacon, deemed the “father of modern Philadelphia,” largely got his way. He trained his eyes on Society Hill, and his vision for that neighborhood became a blueprint for urban design. Expensive high-rise apartments pushed out poor residents, including Black people and Eastern European immigrants who had been there for decades.

Other parts of the Seventh Ward later experienced the effects of urban renewal too. Black Seventh Warders led a long, successful struggle in the 1960s and ‘70s to fight off a proposed expressway that would have cut through their neighborhood. However, as the sociologist Marcus Hunter documents in his book “Black Citymakers,” the neighborhood underwent significant changes from 1975 to 2000. South Street east of Broad Street emerged as a “distinctly artsy and commercial area,” while west of Broad Street “became a combination of high-end condominiums and businesses.”

Modern Philly gentrification

With its visible markers of luxury apartments and trendy cafes and restaurants, gentrification has transformed neighborhoods all across Philadelphia, from Germantown to Fishtown. While not part of the old Seventh Ward, the ZIP codes that encompass Point Breeze, in South Philadelphia, and Northern Liberties, just north of Center City, rank among the most gentrified in the nation since 2000.

Construction is underway on a $10 million residential complex at 27th and Girard in Brewerytown, Philadelphia.
Jeff Fusco /The Conversation U.S., CC BY-NC-ND

For some historically Black Philadelphia neighborhoods, however, the disinvestment and decline over the decades has been so extreme that they are not vulnerable to gentrification anytime soon. Middle-class homebuyers, businesses and real estate developers and investors deem them too risky and stigmatized.

Meanwhile, Black Philadelphians have expressed frustration at how new research centers at Drexel University and the University of Pennsylvania – ironically, the same institution that hired Du Bois to conduct his study – have displaced residents in the historic Black Bottom, a neighborhood since rebranded as University City.

Gentrification benefits many middle-class white people who purchase affordable homes that quickly increase in value as the neighborhood demographics change. But long-term residents and businesses often face higher rents and property taxes that can make the homes and neighborhood where they grew up unaffordable. Cultural institutions such as Black churches close their doors for good as the people they serve leave the neighborhood. The First African Baptist Church in South Philly, one of the oldest churches of its kind in the country, was sold to developers in 2016 and became a boutique hotel.

When Philadelphia residents are squeezed out of gentrifying neighborhoods, they often relocate to lower-income areas, a process Hunter calls “secondary migration.” For those who can afford to stay, there is “cultural displacement” as gentrified neighborhoods no longer feel like home.

Yet, Black Philadelphians have always been “place-makers” – people who use creative and political agency to build spaces where they can thrive and respond to neighborhood change. And organizations fighting for housing justice, such as Philly Thrive, have helped lead anti-gentrification efforts in the city. The Jumpstart Germantown program is training area developers to invest in local communities and build community wealth.

Meanwhile, Black middle-class residents have chosen to invest in Philadelphia by opening businesses where everyone is welcome. One example is Uncle Bobbie’s, a beloved coffee shop, bookstore and community meeting space in Germantown.

While the Seventh Ward is no longer an official designation, an arts-based tribute is teaching new generations about the rich Black history in that area. It’s a story about neighborhood change and the possibility for more equitable futures for Black Americans – something Du Bois hoped for in writing “The Philadelphia Negro” and throughout his career. Läs mer…

Americans, it seems, can both value the idea of democracy and not support it in practice.

Since 2016, academics and journalists have expressed concerns that formerly secure democracies are becoming less democratic. Different measures of democracy, such as scores produced by the Economist Intelligence Unit, Freedom House and the Varieties of Democracy Institute, have suggested as much based on data over the past decade.

The surveys have sounded alarms about the future of democratic governance in places such as the U.S., which the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance listed as “backsliding” since 2019.

A number of countries that were once considered stable democracies – such as Hungary, India and Nicaragua – have seen their leaders and representatives undermine government institutions in common ways: by encouraging division and polarization, spreading misleading or biased messages, pursuing strategies to unfairly dominate in elections, promoting loyalists and marginalizing opponents, and attacking efforts to hold leaders accountable.

This pattern across democracies raises questions about whether what’s called democratic backsliding is happening globally and which democracies are at risk of failing.

A report released recently by the Pew Research Center that describes the results of public opinion surveys on democracy and political representation in 24 countries, including the U.S., has added to those concerns.

A substantial portion of respondents feel unrepresented by their governments, and 59% are dissatisfied with how their democracy is functioning. Three-quarters of respondents indicate that elected officials do not care what people like them think, and 42% say that no political party in their country represents their views.

In the U.S., Pew reports that 66% are dissatisfied with how democracy is working, 83% feel overlooked by officials, and 49% feel overlooked by political parties. Such pessimistic trends are not new; a Gallup Poll in 2021 and a Pew survey from 2022 both reported that Americans’ trust in government is low.

One of the most unsettling statistics from the recent survey is that 32% of Americans think that “rule by a strong leader or the military would be a good way of governing their country.” This particular finding has been taken as evidence for the idea that a growing number of Americans support replacing democracy with an authoritarian government.

Are Americans losing faith in democracy?

Not quite. Instead, respondents may be losing faith in current institutions’ ability to deliver what they expect out of democracy.

What kind of leader will Americans vote to put in the White House this election year?
Getty Images

Democracy’s different definitions

Most Americans support democracy as a concept.

Pew found that about 75% of respondents in the U.S. think that representative democracy is a good way of governing. A 2023 study also showed that Americans tend to see themselves as being more committed to democracy, while viewing members of the other party as being more likely to subvert democracy.

But people hold different ideas about what “democracy” is and what it should look like.

When asked to define democracy, those who emphasize electoral and liberal aspects – such as free elections and civil liberties – are more likely to indicate support for democracy. Research shows that commitment to these values is strongly related to democracy support.

In contrast, those who define democracy in terms of its ability to deliver economic security, such as taxing the rich and helping the unemployed, show weaker support for it. This suggests that when people in more democratic countries think that democracy is supposed to alleviate income disparities, they tend to be less satisfied with how democracy is working.

Respondents’ evaluations of whether their country is democratic – or whether democracy is functioning as intended – can therefore be influenced by whether they are economically well off and whether they feel their values are represented in society. Those who are benefiting more from the current political situation are more likely to support it.

Citizens’ desires for a strong leader may largely reflect economic dissatisfaction that overlaps with social and political shifts, such as changes in demographic diversity, family structures and religiousness. Competition with other groups over power and resources presents threats that make people more concerned about their future well-being than about how democracy is functioning.

Many may think that democracy is broken because it neither provides what they expect nor reflects the values they hold. Being laid off and experiencing rising food prices, or disapproving of prevailing positions on socially divisive issues such as abortion, can lead a person to think that supporting mainstream politicians and the usual practice of electing officials is not enough to guarantee that their interests are represented.

An aerial view of Washington, D.C. Do government institutions deliver what people want out of their democracy?
Joe Sohm/Visions of America/Universal Images Group via Getty Images

Using dissatisfaction to undermine democracy

The Pew survey does not directly indicate that American citizens do not support democracy. But it does reveal an important vulnerability.

The results suggest that a substantial portion of citizens might support a leader working outside of democracy’s institutions – by breaking laws and avoiding accountability for it – because they have lost faith in those institutions’ ability to deliver their version of good governance.

Dissatisfaction with government performance and concerns about socioeconomic well-being can lead citizens to support someone who is willing to flout constitutional rules to restore what they consider to be a broken democracy.

When facing changes that they deem a threat to their economic and social security, voters may gravitate toward someone who can “fix” the problem.

This has the potential to erode the very freedoms that respondents profess to care about. Populist leaders can use dissatisfaction and people’s feelings of being left behind or excluded to build support and justify antidemocratic stances.

Recognizing this is important for understanding how citizens can intrinsically value democracy – and undermine it at the same time. Although people may think they share similar definitions of it, democracy is a complex concept.

Concluding that citizens do not support democracy based on the survey does not address what those citizens think democracy is. Läs mer…

Immigration has become a defining issue in the 2024 elections and a major challenge in many U.S. cities. Over the past several years, wars and armed conflict, violent persecution and desperate poverty have displaced millions of people worldwide and propelled the arrival in the U.S. of thousands seeking protection, mainly at the U.S.-Mexico border.

Large cities such as New York, Miami, Denver and Boston are struggling to house new arrivals and meet their basic needs. Cities are looking for ways to support these new arrivals – some for a short time, others for months, years or permanently.

I study forced migration, government responses to it, and how refugees and asylum-seekers integrate into new settings. My focus is on humanitarian arrivals – people who enter the U.S. legally as asylum-seekers, resettled refugees or under various temporary protection programs, also known as parole.

In total, the Biden administration has admitted or authorized admitting roughly 1.5 million people under these programs since 2021. Cities need help to cope with these waves of new arrivals. The good news is that with support, refugees and people receiving asylum successfully integrate into life in the U.S. and contribute more to the national economy than they cost.

Meals for refugees at La Colaborativa day shelter in Chelsea, Mass., in February 2024. The new shelter is helping about 200 migrants – mainly refugees from Haiti – build resumes, get work and receive health care.
Joseph Prezioso/AFP via Getty Images

Entering on humanitarian grounds

People immigrate to the United States for many reasons and receive different types of visas and treatment when they arrive. Here are the main types of humanitarian admissions:

– Humanitarian parole: The federal government can give certain groups permission to enter or remain in the U.S. if it finds “urgent humanitarian or significant public benefit reasons” for doing so. People who enter through parole programs must have an approved financial supporter in the U.S. They typically can stay for one to two years and may apply for authorization to work.

Currently, the federal government is admitting a maximum of 30,000 people per month under a parole program for immigrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela. The Biden administration has also admitted people from Afghanistan and Ukraine through other parole programs. In total, the Biden administration has admitted more than 1 million people through these programs.

– Refugees and asylees: People who can show that they have experienced persecution, or have a well-founded fear of being persecuted based on their race, religion, nationality, social affiliations or political opinion, can apply for refugee status or asylum. Asylum is granted to people who are already in the U.S. Refugee status is provided to people who are vetted abroad and approved for resettlement.

Resettled refugees and people granted asylum can apply for authorization to work in the U.S. After one year in the U.S., they are eligible to apply for legal permanent residence, also known as a green card.

For fiscal year 2024, Biden has approved a maximum of 125,000 refugee admissions. There is no limit on the number of people who may be granted asylum each year.

Applicants for asylum, however, must go before an immigration judge in the U.S., who will decide whether their fears qualify them to be allowed to remain. U.S. immigration courts are heavily backed up, with more than 2 million asylum applications pending. Asylum applicants can remain in the U.S. while their case is pending, but they cannot receive work permits for six months after they apply for asylum.

Where new immigrants settle

As has been the case since at least 2010, Texas and Florida are top U.S. destinations for migrants, along with cities in New York, Illinois and Colorado. Counties where new migrants make up more than 2% of the population include Queens, New York; Miami-Dade, Florida; and Denver, Colorado.

In cities, many humanitarian immigrants find work in the hospitality and health care industries. Others move to small towns in rural areas, where they work in long-standing migrant sectors such as meatpacking, health services and agriculture.

People who come with an intent to stay are motivated to put down roots and become part of their new communities. But becoming established can take time, and newcomers’ needs can stress city neighborhoods that are already struggling with housing and employment problems. The months immediately following their arrival is the time when refugee newcomers need support of all kinds.

Venezuelan migrants wait at a processing center to get paperwork for admission to shelters in May 2023 in Denver, Colo.
Helen H. Richardson/MediaNews Group/The Denver Post via Getty Images

Working with diaspora communities

New arrivals often move to particular towns or city neighborhoods because they know that people from their country are well established there. These residents are familiar with the new arrivals’ home language and cultures and understand their needs.

For example, there are over 40,000 Ukrainians in Rochester, New York, and about 134,000 in New York City. The U.S. also has large communities of parolees, including Haitians, Venezuelans and Cubans, and long-standing diasporas of resettled refugees and asylum recipients from many parts of the world.

I see established diasporas as a critical resource for supporting new immigrants and maximizing benefits for host communities. By working with diaspora individuals and families to support new arrivals, federal and state governments could redirect funds that are now going to hotels and shelters.

For example, Boston has struggled in recent months to house large numbers of Haitian immigrants, placing several thousand families at hotel and motel sites – an unusual and expensive practice born of necessity. An alternative might be to offer cash payments or tax breaks to some of the state’s 81,050 Haitian residents in return for housing new Haitian arrivals for a few months.

Diaspora households can offer information about navigating city bureaucracies, finding jobs and accessing banking services, in addition to the comfort of familiar food and company. These communities can be an enormous help to new immigrants as they become established and begin to contribute to the city.

Such incentives could also be aimed at non-diaspora communities and people who are willing to help newcomers. A direct community support system, with safeguards built in to protect both the refugees and their hosts, would cost a city or state much less than paying for hotel rooms.

Faster work permits

Speeding up work authorizations for new arrivals can shorten the time they need support from the government. Under federal law, most nonresident foreign nationals must obtain an employment authorization document in order to apply for jobs in the U.S.

Currently, although the Biden administration is trying to move more quickly, these applications are taking more than six months to process. Once immigrants have work permits in hand, diasporas and host neighborhoods could receive tax breaks or other economic benefits in return for helping them find work.

There are other things cities and the federal government can do to support new humanitarian arrivals. Banks could be encouraged to support refugee business, as some are already doing. For example, Re:start Financial is a neobank – a tech company that provides online banking services – based in Austin, Texas, and founded in 2021 by a group of immigrants. It allows immigrants who do not yet have permanent addresses or Social Security numbers to open free online banking accounts with nontraditional documentation from their home countries.

With adequate support, new arrivals usually find their feet and become self-reliant within a few months. Using federal and state resources to enlist host neighborhoods and diaspora communities in this process would help ensure that everyone benefits. Läs mer…

William Shakespeare’s famous tragedy “Othello” is often the first play that comes to mind when people think of Shakespeare and race. And if not “Othello,” then folks usually name “The Merchant of Venice,” “Antony and Cleopatra,” “The Tempest,” or his first – and bloodiest – tragedy, “Titus Andronicus,” my favorite Shakespeare play.

Among Shakespeare scholars, those five works are known as his traditionally understood “race plays” and include characters who are Black like Othello, Jewish like Shylock, Indigenous like Caliban, or Black African like Cleopatra.

But what did Shakespeare have to say about race in plays such as “Hamlet” and “Macbeth,” where Black characters do not have a dominant role, for example?

As Shakespeare scholars who study race know, all of his plays address race in some way. How could they not?

After all, every human being has a racial identity, much like every living human being breathes. Said another way, every character Shakespeare breathed life into has a racial identity, from Hamlet to Hippolyta.

The playwright wrote about many key subjects during the late 15th and early 16th centuries that are relevant today, including gender, addiction, sexuality, mental health, social psychology, sexual violence, antisemitism, sexism and, of course, race.

In my book “Shakespeare’s White Others,” I explore the intraracial divisions that Shakespeare illustrates in all his plays.

Here are four things to know about Shakespeare and race.

1. No one should fear Shakespeare

For a long time, I was afraid of Shakespeare. I am not the only one.

In his 1964 essay “Why I Stopped Hating Shakespeare,” James Baldwin detailed his initial resistance. Like many people today, Baldwin wrote that he, too, was “a victim of that loveless education which causes so many schoolboys to detest Shakespeare.”

A major part of Baldwin’s loathing of Shakespeare had nothing to do with the English writer specifically, but rather the white elitism that surrounded his work and literature.

But as Baldwin eventually realized, Shakespeare was not the “author of his oppression.”

Just as Shakespeare didn’t create misogyny and sexism, he didn’t create race and racism. Rather, he observed the complex realities of the world around him, and through his plays he articulated an underlying hope for a more just world.

2. Shakespeare’s work reveals social injustice

“Titus Andronicus” featured the playwright’s first Black character, Aaron. In that play, written near the end of the 16th century, the white Roman empress, Tamora, cheats on her white emperor husband, Saturninus, with Aaron. When Tamora eventually gives birth to a baby, it’s clear Tamora’s baby daddy isn’t Saturninus.

Consequently, the white characters who know about the infant’s real father urge Aaron to kill his newborn Black son. But Aaron refuses. He opts instead to fiercely protect his beloved child.

Vintage engraving of a scene from Shakespeare’s ‘Titus Andronicus.’
Getty Images

Amid all the drama that occurs around the child’s existence, Shakespeare momentarily offers a beautiful defense of Blackness in the play’s fourth act.

“Is black so base a hue?” Aaron initially asks before challenging the cultural norm. “Coal-black is better than another hue, in that it scorns to bear another hue.”

In other words, at least to Aaron, being Black was beautiful, Blackness exuded strength.

Such words about the Black identity are not uttered elsewhere in Shakespeare’s plays – not even by the more popular Othello.

3. The power of whiteness

In plays such as “Hamlet,” “Macbeth” and “Romeo and Juliet,” race still figures in the drama even when there are no dominant Black characters.

Shakespeare does this by illustrating the formation and maintenance of the white identity. In a sense, Shakespeare details the nuances of race through his characters’ racial similarities, thus making racial whiteness very visible.

An image of what is considered the most important book in English literature, William Shakespeare’s ‘The First Folio 1623.’
Scott Barbour/Getty Images

In Shakespeare’s time, much like our present moment, the presumed superiority of whiteness meant social status was negotiated by everyone based on the dominant culture’s standards.

In several of his plays, for instance, the playwright uses “white hands” as noble symbols of purity and white superiority. He also called attention to his character’s race by describing them as “white” or “fair.”

Shakespeare also used black as a metaphor for being tainted.

One such moment occurs in the comedy “Much Ado About Nothing.”

A young white woman, Hero, is falsely accused of cheating on her fiancé. On their wedding day, Hero’s groom, Claudio, charges her with being unfaithful. Claudio and Hero’s father, Leonato, then shame Hero for being allegedly unchaste, a no-no for 16th-century English women who were legally their father’s and then their husband’s property.

With Hero’s sexual purity allegedly tainted, her father describes her as having “fallen into a pit of ink.”

Sex before marriage violated the male-dominated culture’s expectations for unwed white women.

Thus, in that play, Hero momentarily represents an “inked” white woman – or a symbolic reflection of the stereotyped, hypersexual Black woman.

4. The future of scholarship on Shakespeare and race

Today, scholars are publishing new insights on the social, cultural and political issues of Shakespeare’s time and our own. In fact, there are dozens of scholars and theater practitioners devoting their professional lives to exploring race in Shakespeare’s literature and time period.

In his 2000 book “Shakespeare Jungle Fever: National-Imperial Re-Visions of Race, Rape, and Sacrifice,” UCLA English professor Arthur L. Little Jr. explored British imperialism, racialized whiteness and the sexual myths about Black men.

In 2020, playwright Anchuli Felicia King wrote “Keene,” a satirical riff on “Othello” that offers a modern-day critique on whiteness. In “Keene,” Kai, a Japanese musicologist, and Tyler, a Black Ph.D. student, meet at a Shakespeare conference where they are the only two people of color at the elite white gathering. While Tyler is focused on writing his thesis, Kai is focused on Tyler. A romance ensues, only to see Tyler – much like Othello before him – betrayed by his closet white confidant, Ian.

In 2019, British actress Adjoa Andoh directed Shakespeare’s “Richard II” with a cast of all women of color – a production that she called “a thought experiment into the universality of humanity.” Läs mer…

Why is persuasion so hard, even when you have facts on your side?

As a philosopher, I’m especially interested in persuasion – not just how to convince someone, but how to do it ethically, without manipulation. I’ve found that one of the deepest insights comes from the German philosopher Immanuel Kant, a focus of my research, who was born 300 years ago: April 22, 1724.

In his final book on ethics, “The Doctrine of Virtue,” Kant writes that each of us has a certain duty when we try to correct others’ beliefs. If we think they’re mistaken, we shouldn’t dismiss them as “absurdities” or “poor judgment,” he says, but must suppose that their views “contain some truth.”

What Kant is describing might sound like humility – just recognizing that other people often know things we don’t. But it goes beyond that.

This moral duty to find truth in others’ mistakes is based on helping the other person “preserve his respect for his own understanding,” Kant claims. In other words, even when we encounter obviously false points of view, morality calls on us to help the person we’re talking to maintain their self-respect – to find something reasonable in their views.

This advice can come across as patronizing, as though we were supposed to treat other adults like children with fragile egos. But I think Kant is onto something important here, and contemporary psychology can help us see it.

The need for respect

Imagine that you had to postpone lunch because of a meeting. With only 15 minutes to spare and a growling stomach, you leave to get a burrito.

On your way, however, you run into a colleague. “I’m glad to see you,” they say. “I’m hoping to change your mind about something from the meeting.”

In that scenario, your colleague has little chance of persuading you. Why? Well, you need food, and they’re getting in the way of you satisfying that need.

As psychologists of persuasion have long recognized, a key factor in persuasion is attention, and people don’t attend to persuasive arguments when they have more pressing needs – especially hunger, sleep and safety. But less obvious needs can also make people unpersuadable.

No, I really don’t to hear your ‘quick idea’ – not until I have some food in me, anyway.
Jose Luis Pelaez/Stone via Getty Images

One that has received a lot of attention in recent decades is the need for social belonging.

The psychologist Dan Kahan gives the example of somebody who, like everyone in their community, incorrectly denies the existence of climate change. If that person publicly corrected their beliefs, they might be ostracized from friends and family. In that case, Kahan suggests, it can be “perfectly rational” for them to simply ignore the scientific evidence about an issue that they can’t directly affect, in order to satisfy their social need for connection.

This means that a respectful persuader needs to take into account others’ need for social dignity, such as by avoiding public settings when discussing topics that might be sensitive or taboo.

… and self-respect

Yet external needs, like hunger or social acceptance, aren’t the only ones that get in the way of persuasion. In a classic 1988 article on self-affirmation, the psychologist Claude Steele argued that our desire to maintain some “self-regard” as a good, competent person profoundly shapes psychology.

In more philosophical terms: People have a need for self-respect. This can explain why, for instance, students sometimes blame low grades on bad luck and difficult material, but explain high grades in terms of their own ability and effort.

Steele’s approach has yielded some surprising results. For example, one study invited female students to write down values that were important to them – an exercise in self-affirmation. Afterward, many students who had done this exercise earned higher grades in a physics course, particularly girls who had previously performed worse than male students.

That study and many others illustrate how bolstering someone’s self-esteem can equip them to tackle intellectual challenges, including challenges to their personal beliefs.

With that in mind, let’s turn back to Kant.

Politics are personal

Recall Kant’s claim: When we encounter somebody with false beliefs, even absurdly false ones, we must help them preserve their respect for their own understanding by acknowledging some element of truth in their judgments. That truth could be a fact we’d overlooked, or an important experience they’d had.

Kant isn’t just talking about being humble or polite. He directs attention to a real need that people have – a need that persuaders have to recognize if they want to get a fair hearing.

For example, say that you want to change your cousin’s mind about whom to support in the 2024 election. You come equipped with well-crafted evidence and carefully choose a good moment for a one-on-one talk.

Despite all that, your chances will be slim if you ignore your cousin’s need for self-respect. In a country as polarized as the U.S. is today, an argument about whom to vote for can feel like a direct attack on someone’s competence and moral decency.

In today’s climate, political conversations can feel like attacks on your character, not the politician’s.
Goran 13/iStock via Getty Images

So providing somebody with evidence that they should change their views can run headfirst into their need for self-respect – our human need to see ourselves as intelligent and good.

Moral maturity

Persuasion, in other words, takes a lot of juggling: In addition to making strong persuasive arguments, a persuader also has to avoid threatening the other person’s need for self-respect.

Actual juggling would be a lot easier if we could slow down the objects. That’s why juggling on the Moon would be about twice as easy as on Earth, thanks to the Moon’s lower gravity.

When it comes to persuasion, though, we can slow things down by pacing the conversation, opening up time to learn something from the other person in return. This signals that you take them seriously – and that can bolster their self-esteem.

To be ethical, this openness to learning must be sincere. But that’s not hard: On most topics, each of us have limited experience. For example, perhaps Donald Trump or Joe Biden validated some of your cousin’s frustrations about their local government, in ways you couldn’t have guessed.

This approach has an important benefit to you as well: helping you preserve your own self-respect. After all, approaching others with humility shows moral maturity. Recognizing others’ need for self-respect can not only help you persuade someone, but persuade in ways you can feel proud of. Läs mer…

Escherichia coli (which most of us know better as E coli) has a bit of a bad reputation. Many know it as the harmful bug that can cause a stomach illness, urinary tract infections, kidney failure and even death. But this reputation is slightly unfair. There are many types of E coli – and many play an important role in a healthy gut microbiome.

E coli was discovered nearly 140 years ago when it was isolated from the poop of a German baby. Since then, it’s become the most studied species of bacteria – and arguably the most studied species of all life – on Earth.

This bacteria has many different strains, most of which are friendly. So why does E coli have a bad reputation?

Most strains of E coli play an important role in the healthy human gut microbiome. They’re one of the first bacteria to live in the intestine of babies, paving the way for other good bacteria to join them.

In a healthy adult gut, friendly E coli work tirelessly to produce vitamin K (which helps clot blood and supports wound healing) and prevent disease-causing bacteria from taking hold. The strain E coli Nissle is actually a probiotic – meaning its presence in the gut prevents infections. This strain was first identified in 1917 after it was isolated from the poop of a German man who had not been affected by a diarrhoea outbreak that had infected many of his fellow soldiers.

But sometimes, these friendly strains find themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time. For example, even though between 80-95% of urinary tract infections are caused by E coli, this is often merely because of the proximity of the anus and the entrance of the urinary tract, which allows the bacteria to physically move from one area to the other.

This means strains that are well behaved in the gut cause an infection in the urethra.

The harmful strain E coli 0157 can cause stomach pain – among other symptoms.
Prostock-studio/ Shutterstock

But other strains of E coli, which do not normally live in our gut and are unwelcome guests, are perhaps more deserving of the bacteria’s bad reputation. The strain E coli 0157 is one such strain, and can be found in the gut of cows, sheep and goats.

When it infects humans, it causes abdominal pain, bloody diarrhoea, kidney disease – and, in some tragic cases, death. It arrives in the human gut through contaminated foods, direct contact with animals or their environments. This serves as a reminder for all of us to keep a clean kitchen, cook meat well and wash our hands after touching or being around livestock.

A healthy gut

Each person’s microbiome is different, so the amount of E coli you have living there – and what strains – will vary. Sometimes, these differences are due to dysregulation – where the gut’s microbial community becomes imbalanced. This can have a number of implications for health.

In inflammatory bowel diseases – including irritable bowel syndrome, Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis – the number of E coli is often higher than in a healthy gut. But we don’t currently know if increased numbers of E coli in the gut microbiome drive inflammatory bowel disease, or if the disease makes the gut less inhabitable for other species of bacteria – leading to an increase in the amount of specific strains of E coli.

Colorectal cancer and gut microbiome dysregulation are also correlated – again with a higher amount of E coli in the diseased gut. This may be due to a group of nasty E coli strains that make molecules called cyclomodulins and then excrete them near human cells.

Cyclomodulins are carcinogenic, altering how the human cells grow and develop, implying that some E coli strains may increase the likelihood of their human host developing cancer.

But while E coli may have a bad reputation, not all strains are actually bad for us – and remain an important part of a health gut microbiome.

This article is part of Meet Your Gut Microbes, a series about the rich constellation of bacteria, viruses, archaea and fungi that live in people’s digestive tracts. Scientists are increasingly realising their importance in shaping our health – both physical and mental. Each week we will look at a different microbe and bring you the most up-to-date research on them. Läs mer…