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The military standoff between two of the Middle East’s regional powers, Israel and Iran, risks escalating into a wider conflict that could plunge the entire region into a complete state of chaos. Following Iran’s barrage of drone and missile attacks on April 13, Israel has retaliated and conducted a strike attack near the city of Isfahan in southern Iran.

Both sides have now matched each other in striking targets within each other’s national border. But the contrast in the two countries conventional capabilities is now becoming apparent.

While Iran’s attack, involving more than 300 projectiles were mostly mitigated by Israeli missile defence systems, this relatively limited Israeli strike seems to have actually penetrated Iran’s air defences. However, details of the extent of any damage done by Israel’s strike are disputed and are being played down by Iran.

It is reasonable to assume that both states are now evaluating each other’s resilience. But the question of whether this could spiral into a full-blown war is still unclear. Iran has said it has no immediate plans for retaliation.

Israeli strategy is undoubtedly still being discussed by the prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and his war cabinet. But analysts commenting in the press have suggested that Israel could strike Iran’s nuclear facilities by using its fleet of F-35 fighter jets or deploying Jericho ballistic missiles.

Even though Iran has fortified its Natanz facility in the Isfahan province, making it difficult for Israel to destroy, that course of action now seems plausible. Isfahan is reportedly “home to the biggest nuclear research establishment in the country”.

The politics of status

Image and standing represent factors which are likely to drive this escalatory trajectory on both sides. Domestic issues can play an important role here, in how the political and military elites of both states decide to react.

Netanyahu cannot afford to stand idle, especially as he seeks to avoid probing questions into the intelligence failures that led to the horrific attack by Hamas on October 7. Despite the majority of the Israeli public being in favour of the campaign to eradicate Hamas in Gaza, he remains unpopular.

Calibrated response: Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu with members of his war cabinet in the Knesset.
Debbie Hill/UPI/Alamy Live News

His political standing will rest – to a large extent – on his ability to be seen as the leader which will deliver security and retribution for Israel. Hence there are good reasons for him to respond military to the challenge posed by Iran.

Iran meanwhile has a reason to provoke an Israeli military response. As with all military confrontations, the prospect of being attacked can be used politically to confer domestic support – which the Iranian regime has lacked recently.

The brutal and bloody repression of protesters in Iran, in response to the killing of Mahsa Amini in 2022, has posed a serious challenge to the legitimacy of the regime headed by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Regime forged in war

Historically, the trauma of war has been used by the Islamic Republic to foster nationalism among the population. Following the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s, the loss of Iranian life, which totalled in the hundreds of thousands, played a huge role in cementing “the formation and empowerment of the Islamic Republic”. Militarily contesting Israel can be perceived as a means of solidifying the regime’s position internally and enhancing the country’s image within the region.

At present, neither side has the ability to send an expeditionary force into each other’s territory. But Iran may well look to exploit its network of proxy groups in the region as a means of deterring and attacking Israel – should Israel decide to escalate even further.

This represents perhaps the greatest risk to regional stability. Israel’s lack of strategic depth, which is largely determined by its geographical size, can be exploited by the Iranians. They are able to draw on Hezbollah’s large arsenal of missiles – thought to be around 150,000 – to supplement a future attack.

Given the demands of its military campaign in Gaza, Israel is likely to struggle if forced to confront adversaries on two separate fronts. This poses a dilemma for the country’s western allies.

According to a White House official, President Joe Biden has warned Netanyahu that the US will not participate in an offensive against Iran. But if Iran’s proxy forces in Lebanon and perhaps Syria and Yemen join a concerted effort to attack the Jewish state, this will change the calculations.

The US president, Joe Biden, has repeatedly urged restraint from his Israeli allies.
AP Photo/Alex Brandon

Just as alliances can strengthen the west’s deterrence policy in the Middle East, they can equally become a reason for conflagration. The UK is currently “very firmly engaged in counselling de-escalation and moderation”, according to government minister Mel Stride, speaking to Sky News. But realistically there is a limited amount the UK can do to influence Israeli policy.

But as the world waits to see if there will be any further military attacks by either side, one thing is clear: the domestic politics of Iran and Israel will shape how this story unfolds in the near future.

The fact that Israel’s national security minister, Itamar Ben Gvir, dismissed Israel’s response in a derisive tweet as “Lame!” underscores the impact of domestic politics on this issue. Ben Gvir may have been savaged by much of the more moderate side of Israeli politics, but he represents a constituency that Netanyahu depends on to stay in power.

Neither side wants to lose face and that may unfortunately drive the region into further instability. Läs mer…

Liz Truss’s 49 days as UK prime minister will probably be best remembered for her 2022 “mini budget”. Her plan for £45 billion of unfunded tax cuts led to economic panic, caused chaos on the financial markets, and she was forced to quit her job.

But she still appears to be fairly resolute about her economic philosophy. Busy promoting her new memoir, she has dismissed anyone who blames her for crashing the UK economy as “stupid or malevolent”.

She has also been fiercely critical of two independent institutions she blames for standing in her way – the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) and the Bank of England.

But Truss knew the institutional context she was working in, and everything that happened after the mini-budget was entirely predictable. She made a big mistake that affected millions of ordinary people, and has only herself to blame.

She does have a point though, about independent institutions constraining the action of the government. For while these constraints are generally beneficial to the economy, they also make it almost impossible to develop a radical agenda.

And, in a country suffering from massive underinvestment in the public sector, there may be a case for greater flexibility.

Flexibility was what Truss was hoping for on September 23 2022, when her chancellor, Kwasi Kwarteng, presented the government’s “growth plan”. The idea was fairly simple: the UK economy needed a shock to stimulate investment, and that shock would be a series of tax cuts.

If the Truss government had asked the OBR for an assessment of its plans – as all UK governments have done since 2010 – it would probably have concluded that £45 billion of unfunded cuts would not meet the government’s own targets on borrowing and public debt.

What Truss had in mind though was a different model, one in which the tax cuts would pay for themselves by convincing investors to put more of their money into the British economy.

So she decided to go ahead without an OBR assessment. But instead of flocking to the UK economy, investors smelled blood.

If the UK was not on track to meet its rules, it might be facing a period of instability – and investors tend to avoid instability. The pound fell sharply, British companies became less valuable and UK pensions funds were at risk of collapse.

Investors even started betting against the ability of the government to repay its debt.

This is when the Bank of England (independent from the government since 1998) stepped in, putting aside £65 billion to buy up UK government debt, showing investors there was nothing to gain from betting against it.

Fairly quickly, the government then U-turned on most of the mini-budget, the chancellor was sacked and Truss resigned. The British economy could then start licking its wounds, and learn the lessons from a harsh experiment in economics.

One of those lessons is that independent bodies exist for a reason. If the UK is seen as a credible payer of debts, the country can borrow money more cheaply. And when 9.7% of annual government spending goes on debt interest, cheap money makes a huge difference.

Because the Bank of England is independent, everyone trusts it to bring inflation down. And because the Bank is credible, it only had to spend a fraction of the £65 billion it had committed to buy government debt.

But Liz only got 49 days.
EPA-EFE/ANDY RAIN

Without the independent Bank of England and the OBR, Truss could have tried her plan without institutional constraint. But she would have had to convince investors all over the world of the UK’s economic stability – and they would have had to take her word for it. It is hard to see how she could have succeeded.

Instead, independent institutions, as well as the markets and public finance (fiscal) targets, put the brakes on “Trussonomics”.

Fiscal frustration

But fiscal targets have their problems too. In the UK, there is clearly room for major investment where rivers are filled with sewage, public transport is unreliable, roads are full of potholes and the transition to net zero is falling behind.

And thanks to fiscal targets, subsequent governments have repeatedly cut investment in infrastructure. The Labour Party has already said it will not make ambitious spending plans which might risk the credibility of its fiscal policy should it win the next election. In effect, Keir Starmer would face the same kind of constraints that so frustrated Liz Truss.

Yet fiscal credibility and major investment are not mutually exclusive everywhere.

The EU recently borrowed and invested €2.1 trillion (£1.8 trillion) in long-term projects in infrastructure, energy transition and education. Investors didn’t baulk at that level of borrowing because they trust in the EU as an institution which can ensure national governments will spend the money wisely.

The US invested a similar amount on infrastructure and social spending and another US$369 billion (£296 billion) to support green industries. The market did not panic here either, because the US is the US. It is too big to fail.

But the UK is not too big to fail. Nor can it rely on the valuable backing of the EU. For any UK prime minister, borrowing money is currently very expensive, and large investment programmes, however much they are needed, would appear to be off the table for now – just as large tax cuts were for Liz Truss. Läs mer…

Bitcoin, the largest and most talked about digital asset, has been on a rollercoaster of a ride since its launch in January 2009. With a market capitalisation that reached a high of more than US$1.4 trillion (£1.125 trillion) this February and volatile swings since, bitcoin has attracted lots of attention recently.

Now a hotly anticipated recurring event that happens roughly every four years is taking place: the bitcoin halving. This could have further significant impact on the value of the cryptocurrency.

To understand what the halving is and what it could mean, we have to understand how bitcoin works. Bitcoin is a digital currency that makes use of what’s called blockchain technology to securely store, record and publicly publish all transactions.

It is distinct from fiat currencies, such as dollars or pounds, because it has no central authority and members of the network have equal power. Each transaction is made and recorded with the user’s public address, a code that enables them to remain anonymous.

Bitcoins are created by so-called miners who contribute computing power to secure the network and solve complex mathematical puzzles in order to process transaction data. These miners are then rewarded for their work with newly minted bitcoins.

The idea for bitcoin was first proposed in a white paper published online in 2008 by a mysterious individual or group using the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto. To combat inflation, Nakamoto wrote into the code that the total number of bitcoins will only ever be 21 million. Currently, more than 19.6 million bitcoins have been mined.

At the beginning, back in 2009, miners received 50 bitcoins for every block (unit of transaction data) they mined. But after every 210,000 blocks (roughly every four years), the reward halves.

So in 2012 the reward fell to 25 bitcoins, then to 12.5 bitcoins in 2016 and to 6.25 bitcoins in 2020. The latest halving means the reward will be just 3.125 bitcoins.

Why does bitcoin halve?

Nakamoto has never explained explicitly the reasons behind the halving. Some speculate that the halving system was designed to distribute coins more quickly at the beginning to incentivise people to join the network and mine new blocks. Block rewards are programmed to halve at regular intervals because the value of each coin rewarded is deemed likely to increase as the network expands.

But this may lead to users holding bitcoin as a speculative asset rather than using it as a medium of exchange. Additionally, the 21 million cap on the number of coins that can enter circulation makes them scarce (at least in comparison to dollars or euros), which for some people is enough to make them valuable.

So what impact does the halving have on the price? After the halving, the number of new bitcoin entering circulation shrinks. Demand should, in theory, be unaffected by this event and therefore the price should go up.

With previous halvings, the price of bitcoin has risen.
Kurzycz/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA

“The theory is that there will be less bitcoin available to buy if miners have less to sell,” said Michael Dubrovsky, a co-founder of PoWx, a crypto research non-profit. While the first halving happened in 2012, when bitcoin was less well known and quite hard to buy and sell, we can learn from the subsequent two halvings.

The second halving on July 16 2016 was highly anticipated. The price dropped by 10%, but then shot back up to where it had been before. Although the immediate impact on the price was small, bitcoin did eventually respond and some argue that the 2017 bull run when the market boomed was a delayed result of the halving.

Beginning the year around US$900, by the end of 2017 bitcoin was trading above US$19,000. The third halving in 2020 happened during a bullish period for bitcoin and it continued to rise to more than US$56,000 in 2021.

Making an asset of scarcity

These few data points are not enough however to offer any concrete causal relationship or trend. But we do know that instantly miners’ rewards are halved, meaning their revenue immediately halves and their profit margins are severely affected. Consequently, unless there is a price appreciation, many miners may become unprofitable and could cease the practice.

Bitcoin’s scarcity is arguably one of its most significant characteristics, especially in a time of high inflation, quantitative easing and high interest rates. With the real value of fiat currencies falling, bitcoin’s limited supply is an attractive feature and can be reassuring for investors.

Bitcoin hit an all-time high in February following the approval of bitcoin exchange-traded funds, which effectively make it easier for retail investors and big banks to invest in bitcoin.

This, coupled with a more favourable regulatory environment on the horizon and the fact that it is becoming more integrated in the financial system, means bitcoin may continue on the rise it has experienced in 2024 so far. Läs mer…

Twelve jurors have now been selected and sworn in for Donald Trump’s high profile trial in New York, the first criminal trial of a former president.

Initially 500 jurors were evaluated, with 96 being invited to the courtroom. From this, more than half were dismissed after they claimed they could not be impartial. On day three, one of the selected jurors asked to stand down after she became concerned about her name becoming public. The judge has ordered that jury names and identifying material are not to be published by the media, but jurors are clearly worried about the consequences of their participation.

Well before being called to attend the court, these potential jurors would have been asked to fill in a qualification questionnaire (to check they fulfil requirements such as being a US citizen) as part of the selection. After this, prospective jurors who were summoned to attend court had to answer other questions. The questions in court can range from which radio stations or podcasts they listen to, to their marital status and what they do for a living.

Potential jurors in this trial were also asked about their views on Trump. Lawyers for both the prosecution and defence will also ask additional questions of the prospective jurors. This is all done to deselect biased jurors. In some cases, Trump’s lawyers had even looked through old social media posts as grounds to exclude a juror.

In this extremely high-profile trial of an internationally known figure, jury selection went particularly slowly before the 12 jurors were in place, because of the difficulty of finding an impartial jury. Trump, who is currently running for president, is accused of falsifying business records to disguise a “hush-money” payment made to Stormy Daniels, a former adult film star, not long before the 2016 election.

How are jurors selected?

The US takes a different approach to juror selection, or deselection, compared to the UK, for instance. In the US, they use the process of voir dire. Voir dire comes from the French “to speak the truth”. Jurors are deselected through voir dire, though questioning. With each being replaced with a prospective juror.

There are normally about 35 to 40 prospective jurors. This process repeats until a group of about 14 (12 jurors and two alternative jurors) are selected. This can deviate, six alternates are going to be chosen for the Trump trial.

Jury selection is different in the US to Scotland, England and Wales. Here a jury are sworn in for a case in Portland, Oregon.
David R. Frazier Photolibrary, Inc. /Alamy

Prospective jurors are initially sourced from state voter lists to trials in their own state. Other lists such as those of licensed drivers can also be used to ensure a representative sample . Individuals selected from these lists will be sent (either through mail or online) a qualification questionnaire.

Prospective jurors who have been summoned to the court are either questioned by the judge or by the prosecution and defence lawyers. The whole point of juror deselection is to remove jurors who may be biased against or towards the prosecution and defence . The process of removing biased jurors may be justified. Jury researchers professors Kurt Carlson and Edward Russo found in a mock juror study that jurors start with a preference for either the prosecution or the defence, and that this shapes how they evaluate the rest of the evidence. With jurors who favour guilty verdicts seeing prosecution evidence favourably and either distorting or ignoring the defence evidence – jurors who favour not guilty verdicts show the opposite pattern of results.

During the jury selection process, lawyers may ask general questions such as “do you know the defendant?” or more specific ones such as “have you ever been involved in a protest?”. This is done to assess if the prospective jurors can put aside their biases.

A discussion of voir dire.

Based on the answers to these and similar questions, lawyers may challenge prospective jurors and dismiss (or remove) them for cause . Lawyers will dismiss jurors for cause if they have evidence that the juror is likely to be biased. Even more interestingly, however, is that lawyers also have a limited number of peremptory challenges. This allows them to deselect a juror without giving a reason. Thus they do not have to provide evidence of bias.

However, there are a number of issues with voir dire. Firstly, it has been proposed by some academics that lawyers are motivated to win rather than impartiality – making many sceptical of the fairness of the process.

Second, many of the peremptory challenges are based on hunches rather than modern scientific instruments developed by psychologists. Meaning that rather than making the process of jury selection systematic, the decisions made during Voir Dire may be based on the biases of the legal professionals involved.

Likewise, psychologists have known for a while that members of the public often answer questions in socially desirable ways, despite not having beliefs or behaviours consistent with said answers. Therefore, some jurors will not be dismissed for cause despite being biased because they know how to answer in an acceptable way.

Scotland and England and Wales

In comparison, jurors in England and Wales and Scotland are selected to be summoned randomly from the electoral register. The court clerk (England and Wales) or clerk of court (Scotland) will then empanel (or select) the jury by randomly selecting names from a ballot.

There are some circumstances by which the prosecution and defence can challenge the empanelment of a juror. However, this is rare and would only be done where it was seen as essential.

In terms of jury selection, the fevered atmosphere and numerous challenges seen around the Trump trial have highlighted some of the weaknesses of a system under the media spotlight, its potential to be manipulated, and how it could be offputting to those who are called to jury service. Läs mer…

The U.S. government moved closer to banning the video social media app TikTok after the House of Representatives attached the measure to an emergency spending bill on Apr. 17, 2024. The move could improve the bill’s chances in the Senate, and President Joe Biden has indicated that he will sign the bill if it reaches his desk.

The bill would force ByteDance, the Chinese company that owns TikTok, to either sell its American holdings to a U.S. company or face a ban in the country. The company has said it will fight any effort to force a sale.

The proposed legislation was motivated by a set of national security concerns. For one, ByteDance can be required to assist the Chinese Communist Party in gathering intelligence, according to the Chinese National Intelligence Law. In other words, the data TikTok collects can, in theory, be used by the Chinese government.

Furthermore, TikTok’s popularity in the United States, and the fact that many young people get their news from the platform – one-third of Americans under the age of 30 – turns it into a potent instrument for Chinese political influence.

Indeed, the U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence recently claimed that TikTok accounts run by a Chinese propaganda arm of the government targeted candidates from both political parties during the U.S. midterm election cycle in 2022, and the Chinese Communist Party might attempt to influence the U.S. elections in 2024 in order to sideline critics of China and magnify U.S. social divisions.

To these worries, proponents of the legislation have appended two more arguments: It’s only right to curtail TikTok because China bans most U.S.-based social media networks from operating there, and there would be nothing new in such a ban, since the U.S. already restricts the foreign ownership of important media networks.

Some of these arguments are stronger than others.

China doesn’t need TikTok to collect data about Americans. The Chinese government can buy all the data it wants from data brokers because the U.S. has no federal data privacy laws to speak of. The fact that China, a country that Americans criticize for its authoritarian practices, bans social media platforms is hardly a reason for the U.S. to do the same.

The debate about banning TikTok tends to miss the larger picture of social media literacy.

I believe the cumulative force of these claims is substantial and the legislation, on balance, is plausible. But banning the app is also a red herring.

In the past few years, my colleagues and I at UMass Boston’s Applied Ethics Center have been studying the impact of AI systems on how people understand themselves. Here’s why I think the recent move against TikTok misses the larger point: Americans’ sources of information have declined in quality and the problem goes beyond any one social media platform.

The deeper problem

Perhaps the most compelling argument for banning TikTok is that the app’s ubiquity and the fact that so many young Americans get their news from it turns it into an effective tool for political influence. But the proposed solution of switching to American ownership of the app ignores an even more fundamental threat.

The deeper problem is not that the Chinese government can easily manipulate content on the app. It is, rather, that people think it is OK to get their news from social media in the first place. In other words, the real national security vulnerability is that people have acquiesced to informing themselves through social media.

Social media is not made to inform people. It is designed to capture consumer attention for the sake of advertisers. With slight variations, that’s the business model of all platforms. That’s why a lot of the content people encounter on social media is violent, divisive and disturbing. Controversial posts that generate strong feelings literally capture users’ notice, hold their gaze for longer, and provide advertisers with improved opportunities to monetize engagement.

There’s an important difference between actively consuming serious, well-vetted information and being manipulated to spend as much time as possible on a platform. The former is the lifeblood of democratic citizenship because being a citizen who participates in political decision-making requires having reliable information on the issues of the day. The latter amounts to letting your attention get hijacked for someone else’s financial gain.

If TikTok is banned, many of its users are likely to migrate to Instagram and YouTube. This would benefit Meta and Google, their parent companies, but it wouldn’t benefit national security. People would still be exposed to as much junk news as before, and experience shows that these social media platforms could be vulnerable to manipulation as well. After all, the Russians primarily used Facebook and Twitter to meddle in the 2016 election.

Media literacy is especially critical in the age of social media.

Media and technology literacy

That Americans have settled on getting their information from outlets that are uninterested in informing them undermines the very requirement of serious political participation, namely educated decision-making. This problem is not going to be solved by restricting access to foreign apps.

Research suggests that it will only be alleviated by inculcating media and technology literacy habits from an early age. This involves teaching young people how social media companies make money, how algorithms shape what they see on their phones, and how different types of content affect them psychologically.

My colleagues and I have just launched a pilot program to boost digital media literacy with the Boston Mayor’s Youth Council. We are talking to Boston’s youth leaders about how the technologies they use everyday undermine their privacy, about the role of algorithms in shaping everything from their taste in music to their political sympathies, and about how generative AI is going to influence their ability to think and write clearly and even who they count as friends.

We are planning to present them with evidence about the adverse effects of excessive social media use on their mental health. We are going to talk to them about taking time away from their phones and developing a healthy skepticism towards what they see on social media.

Protecting people’s capacity for critical thinking is a challenge that calls for bipartisan attention. Some of these measures to boost media and technology literacy might not be popular among tech users and tech companies. But I believe they are necessary for raising thoughtful citizens rather than passive social media consumers who have surrendered their attention to commercial and political actors who do not have their interests at heart. Läs mer…

The Jewish festival of Passover recalls the biblical story of the Israelites enslaved by Egypt and their miraculous escape. During a ritual feast known as a Seder, families celebrate this ancient story of deliverance, with each new generation reminded to never take freedom for granted.

Every year, a written guide known as a “Haggadah” is read at the Seder table. The core text comprises a description of ritual foods, the story of the Exodus, blessings, commentaries, hymns and songs. The word Haggadah – “telling,” in Hebrew – was derived from Exodus 13:8, a verse which instructed the Israelites to commemorate their liberation and tell the story to their children.

Even though the ancient festival that became Passover has been celebrated since the biblical period, the complete text of the Haggadah emerged only in the eight to ninth centuries. And it was not until the 14th century that fully developed, sumptuously illuminated versions emerged, used by the Jewish communities of Germany, Italy and Spain. Medieval editors integrated decorative borders, such as fantastical, beastlike creatures borrowed from the wider culture.

This artistic license, together with slight modifications to the text over time, meant that the Haggadah became both a mirror and a commentary on the societies in which they were produced. Here at the University of Florida’s Price Library of Judaica, where I am curator and a medieval Hebrew scholar, we have hundreds of Haggadahs – each one a window into how Jews in a particular time and place adapted the telling of the Passover story.

An illustrated classic

One of the greatest examples our library has of this blending of cultures was printed in Amsterdam in 1695.

The Amsterdam Haggadah’s illustrations set a precedent for centuries.
Isser and Rae Price Library of Judaica, CC BY-ND

The Amsterdam Haggadah was illustrated by Abraham Bar Yaakov, a German pastor who converted to Judaism. Abandoning the standard use of woodcut images, Bar Yaakov created a series of copper engravings based on Bible illustrations by the Swiss engraver Matthäus Merian the Elder. In addition, he incorporated a pull-out map of the route of the Exodus and an imaginative rendering of the Temple in Jerusalem.

Bar Yaakov also added an image of the “four sons” standing together – one of the many elements of Haggadahs designed to engage and instruct children sitting through the long Seder meal. Each son represents a different type of child, described by their attitude toward Passover: wise, wicked, silent and one who does not even know how to ask questions about the holiday.

In medieval Haggadahs, the wicked son was usually portrayed as a combatant – the personification of evil for European Jews who had suffered recurrent mob raids and violent expulsions. In Bar Yaakov’s rendering, the wicked son is a Roman soldier precariously balanced on one foot and looking back toward the wise son, who is depicted as Hannibal, the Carthaginian general who battled Rome in the third century B.C.E.

The second edition of this Haggadah was printed with additional engravings in 1712 by Solomon Proops, founder of an acclaimed Dutch Jewish printing house. The text, traditionally written in Hebrew and Aramaic, included instructions in Yiddish and Ladino, the everyday languages for Jews in Europe. The Ladino translations were specifically geared toward Sephardi Jews who arrived in the Netherlands after being expelled from Spain and Portugal, as well as Portuguese “Conversos” returning to Judaism after their ancestors had been forced to convert to Catholicism.

The Amsterdam Haggadah proved to be incredibly influential on later versions, with its illustrations copied into the modern era.

A Haggadah for everyone

By the 20th century, Haggadahs had been adapted and translated to meet the needs of diverse Jewish communities around the world, including various religious denominations – Reform, Conservative, Orthodox – or political, social and labor groups, such as Zionists or socialists. The Haggadah’s key theme of freedom from oppression was tailored to address contemporary situations and viewpoints.

Modern Haggadah illustrations also reflected developments in the art world. In 1920s Berlin, a Jewish art teacher, Otto Geismar, reinterpreted the story of the Exodus using plain, black-and-white, modernist “stick figures” – another Haggadah in our collection.

The stick-figure designs especially appealed to children, whose interest might wane over the course of the meal.
Isser and Rae Price Library of Judaica, CC BY-ND

Despite their minimal lines, the figures are all expressive. Geismar even injected elements of humor: A child is shown asleep at the table, and in another scene a family of stick figures is engaged in animated conversation and debate. In his depictions of ancient Israelite slaves, stick figures appear especially burdened with heavy loads on their backs. He also divided the Hebrew text into more easily readable sections using eye-catching, black-and-white decorative borders.

The striking simplicity of the design, aimed primarily at children, gained great popularity, and his work was reprinted in multiple German and Dutch editions.

Wine – and coffee

There was growing demand for different printed versions, as Jews around the world adapted the traditional Haggadah. Meanwhile, some suppliers sensed an opportunity to adapt it for their own needs. Thus rose a phenomenon known as the commercial Haggadah: the product of astute companies realizing the power of advertising their wares in a book dedicated to the art of “telling.”

The most famous of these is the Maxwell House Haggadah from 1932, which was distributed freely with every can of coffee purchased.

In 1938, the Schapiro House of Kosher Wines caught on. The company, whose flagship store was on New York’s Lower East Side, produced a Haggadah with an English translation and illustrations borrowed from the Amsterdam Haggadah. Owner Sam Schapiro savvily linked his products to the Seder, during which participants drink four small cups of sacramental wine. Wine, seen at this point as a luxury item, also symbolized freedom.

Where better to advertise wine than in a text that calls for drinking several glasses of it?
Isser and Rae Price Library of Judaica, CC BY-ND

Just in case there were any doubts about advertising alcohol a mere five years after Prohibition, when sacramental wine was difficult to access, Schapiro’s Haggadah made the case for wine’s “health values.” Across two pages at the back of the book, the editor describes in English and Yiddish the supposed efficacy of wine against a host of maladies, including typhoid fever, depression and even obesity.

Schapiro’s Haggadah fulfilled the commandment to relate the story of the Exodus for a new generation – but the opening pages also provide a tribute in Yiddish to Sam Schapiro’s 40-year-old company. Here Schapiro’s is praised for being the place where religious men and intellectuals alike could get together over a good glass of wine.

Commercial Haggadahs were not expected to become venerable family heirlooms. Rather, they provided a handy, affordable way for Jewish families of lesser means to participate in the annual ritual of coming forth out of bondage – another expression of freedom. Läs mer…

A chatbot turns hostile. A test version of a Roomba vacuum collects images of users in private situations. A Black woman is falsely identified as a suspect on the basis of facial recognition software, which tends to be less accurate at identifying women and people of color.

These incidents are not just glitches, but examples of more fundamental problems. As artificial intelligence and machine learning tools become more integrated into daily life, ethical considerations are growing, from privacy issues and race and gender biases in coding to the spread of misinformation.

The general public depends on software engineers and computer scientists to ensure these technologies are created in a safe and ethical manner. As a sociologist and doctoral candidate interested in science, technology, engineering and math education, we are currently researching how engineers in many different fields learn and understand their responsibilities to the public.

Yet our recent research, as well as that of other scholars, points to a troubling reality: The next generation of engineers often seem unprepared to grapple with the social implications of their work. What’s more, some appear apathetic about the moral dilemmas their careers may bring – just as advances in AI intensify such dilemmas.

Aware, but unprepared

As part of our ongoing research, we interviewed more than 60 electrical engineering and computer science masters students at a top engineering program in the United States. We asked students about their experiences with ethical challenges in engineering, their knowledge of ethical dilemmas in the field and how they would respond to scenarios in the future.

First, the good news: Most students recognized potential dangers of AI and expressed concern about personal privacy and the potential to cause harm – like how race and gender biases can be written into algorithms, intentionally or unintentionally.

One student, for example, expressed dismay at the environmental impact of AI, saying AI companies are using “more and more greenhouse power, [for] minimal benefits.” Others discussed concerns about where and how AIs are being applied, including for military technology and to generate falsified information and images.

When asked, however, “Do you feel equipped to respond in concerning or unethical situations?” students often said no.

“Flat out no. … It is kind of scary,” one student replied. “Do YOU know who I’m supposed to go to?”

Another was troubled by the lack of training: “I [would be] dealing with that with no experience. … Who knows how I’ll react.”

Many students are worried about ethics in their field – but that doesn’t mean they feel prepared to deal with the challenges.
The Good Brigade/DigitalVision via Getty Images

Other researchers have similarly found that many engineering students do not feel satisfied with the ethics training they do receive. Common training usually emphasizes professional codes of conduct, rather than the complex socio-technical factors underlying ethical decision-making. Research suggests that even when presented with particular scenarios or case studies, engineering students often struggle to recognize ethical dilemmas.

‘A box to check off’

Accredited engineering programs are required to “include topics related to professional and ethical responsibilities” in some capacity.

Yet ethics training is rarely emphasized in the formal curricula. A study assessing undergraduate STEM curricula in the U.S. found that coverage of ethical issues varied greatly in terms of content, amount and how seriously it is presented. Additionally, an analysis of academic literature about engineering education found that ethics is often considered nonessential training.

Many engineering faculty express dissatisfaction with students’ understanding, but report feeling pressure from engineering colleagues and students themselves to prioritize technical skills in their limited class time.

Researchers in one 2018 study interviewed over 50 engineering faculty and documented hesitancy – and sometimes even outright resistance – toward incorporating public welfare issues into their engineering classes. More than a quarter of professors they interviewed saw ethics and societal impacts as outside “real” engineering work.

About a third of students we interviewed in our ongoing research project share this seeming apathy toward ethics training, referring to ethics classes as “just a box to check off.”

“If I’m paying money to attend ethics class as an engineer, I’m going to be furious,” one said.

These attitudes sometimes extend to how students view engineers’ role in society. One interviewee in our current study, for example, said that an engineer’s “responsibility is just to create that thing, design that thing and … tell people how to use it. [Misusage] issues are not their concern.”

One of us, Erin Cech, followed a cohort of 326 engineering students from four U.S. colleges. This research, published in 2014, suggested that engineers actually became less concerned over the course of their degree about their ethical responsibilities and understanding the public consequences of technology. Following them after they left college, we found that their concerns regarding ethics did not rebound once these new graduates entered the workforce.

Joining the work world

When engineers do receive ethics training as part of their degree, it seems to work.

Along with engineering professor Cynthia Finelli, we conducted a survey of over 500 employed engineers. Engineers who received formal ethics and public welfare training in school are more likely to understand their responsibility to the public in their professional roles, and recognize the need for collective problem solving. Compared to engineers who did not receive training, they were 30% more likely to have noticed an ethical issue in their workplace and 52% more likely to have taken action.

The next generation needs to be prepared for ethical questions, not just technical ones.
Qi Yang/Moment via Getty Images

Over a quarter of these practicing engineers reported encountering a concerning ethical situation at work. Yet approximately one-third said they have never received training in public welfare – not during their education, and not during their career.

This gap in ethics education raises serious questions about how well-prepared the next generation of engineers will be to navigate the complex ethical landscape of their field, especially when it comes to AI.

To be sure, the burden of watching out for public welfare is not shouldered by engineers, designers and programmers alone. Companies and legislators share the responsibility.

But the people who are designing, testing and fine-tuning this technology are the public’s first line of defense. We believe educational programs owe it to them – and the rest of us – to take this training seriously. Läs mer…

The second week is wrapping up in former President Donald Trump’s first criminal trial on charges from the state of New York related to paying hush money to an adult film star. So far, the jury has been selected, but no other proceedings have begun.

The Conversation U.S. interviewed Tim Bakken, a former New York prosecutor and now a legal scholar teaching at West Point, and Karrin Vasby Anderson, a political communication expert at Colorado State University, to find out what overarching themes they have observed, both in the courtroom and outside it.

Is this trial proceeding normally?

Bakken: It seems like an ordinary trial, but it is an extraordinary trial underneath if we really look at some of the details. The first thing that struck me was on Day 1, when Judge Juan Merchan questioned 96 jurors. Fifty of them said they could not be fair to Trump. On Day 3, 48 of that day’s 96 said the same thing.

That does not bode well for a defendant in a jurisdiction where Democrats outnumber Republicans 9 to 1.

In addition, the judge did not make an accommodation to alleviate the possible difficulty that such antagonism represents. If 50 out of 96 people raised their hands and said they couldn’t be fair because of the color of the defendant’s skin, that would signal a problem. In a trial, that problem is addressed through allowing the defense to ask more questions of the jurors and to get more peremptory challenges, which allows them to dismiss a juror without having to explain why.

There are 10 already allotted because this is a low-level felony trial. In other cases in New York, you would have 20, such as a murder case. And the judge has the discretion to increase that number. He could have done that in this case, but he didn’t.

A courtroom sketch depicts Judge Juan Merchan, Donald Trump, prospective jurors and other court and legal personnel.
Christine Cornell via AP Pool

How fast is the judge moving?

Bakken: Merchan has told Trump he may not be able to attend his child’s high school graduation, scheduled for May 17. That indicates that the judge is moving apace.

But in many cases in New York – on Fridays, for example, when a defendant or defense lawyer or prosecutor is Muslim or Jewish – some or all of the entire day will be taken off by the judge. There won’t be any trial.

I think the judge will let Trump attend the high school graduation, because otherwise he might seem to treat Trump a little bit differently than other defendants.

What is most important for the public to understand so far?

Anderson: I think it’s important for the casual observer, who might wonder whether being on trial for a felony was hurting Trump’s presidential campaign, to understand that he’s strategically using the trial to his advantage.

Voters following the trial in the mainstream media are hearing from experts that the legal proceedings are progressing relatively normally and the system is standing up under the unprecedented circumstances of this case.

But in the conservative media sphere, Trump is using the trial as a campaign strategy pretty effectively, stoking his base’s fears and quoting pundits and hosts from Fox News, Newsmax and OAN who echo his framing of the trial.

Trump has said the requirement to be in the courtroom every day is harming his ability to campaign. The Guardian reported, however, that while he is in court, his “Truth Social page is putting up new posts minute by minute.”

If you look at those posts, you see a series of complaints about the case interspersed with pro-Trump campaign messaging and posts telling voters to be afraid of what he says is rampant crime under Joe Biden’s tenure as president.

Individually, the campaign posts are consistent with Trump’s usual messaging. But when Trump layers messages about crime with others about an allegedly corrupt justice system, the goal is to not only intensify voters’ fears but also tell voters they should be afraid because powerful people are coming for him and are going to come after regular people next.

Trump is also charging that the process of his trial is undermining democracy. He posted a video in which his close adviser Stephen Miller urged, “So when you hear them say that democracy is on trial, they’re right. Democracy is on trial. Freedom is on trial. The rule of law is on trial. … If Donald Trump is convicted then all of these principles are convicted and destroyed with him.”

This sets up a catch-22. If Trump is not convicted, he gets to say he was exonerated. If he is convicted, then he just pivots to this charge that a normally operating courtroom is what’s undermining justice and democracy – not his actions or the actions of his campaign.

If Trump was just posting on his social media account, it wouldn’t be nearly as powerful. But Fox News, OAN and Newsmax are really functioning as his campaign surrogates. Since much of the country is paying attention to that media space, that’s a really consequential campaign strategy. It’s savvy of him to use the court proceedings in this way.

Donald Trump walks outside during a break in trial proceedings.
Mark Peterson/Pool Photo via AP

Is any of what Trump is saying a fair criticism or statement?

Bakken: The New York district attorney decided to prosecute Trump in this case. He didn’t have to. It seems unquestionable that Trump filed or made false business documents. That’s a misdemeanor. And in this instance, the misdemeanor statute of limitations had run out by the time the district attorney issued the charges. But the prosecutor chose to say the actions were related to another crime, which makes them felonies.

Anderson: The charges also have context. Maybe no other businessperson would be prosecuted for this filing of paperwork. But that’s only half of the problem. Donald Trump would not be in trouble for filing this paperwork if he hadn’t done it to allegedly illegally influence an election.

I think that’s actually why Trump is so aggressively pushing his narrative of “election interference.” He knows that the charges against him are really about breaking campaign finance laws and his conduct in an election more than a particular business filing.

Bakken: In the last week or so, it came out that Merchan had contributed to Democratic candidates, including President Biden, in the past. It was reportedly a total of US$35, which seems very minimal. But one of New York’s legal ethics leaders, Stephen Gillers, a professor at New York University, said it is a judicial ethics violation, though he said it would likely only merit a warning and not removal from the case.

What does the trial mean so far in terms of politics or the 2024 presidential election?

Anderson: I think the media has to report on the facts on all sides of this trial. But I worry that it may not actually be as consequential as maybe people who are following it think that it will be, because many undecided voters have opted out of political news altogether.

Bakken: The trial emphasizes an extraordinary level of political antagonism between the parties, and also an extraordinary reluctance of people who are not inclined toward party politics to tune out and protect themselves.

The people who are tuning out might not be strong advocates, politically, for one side or the other but the people who would be neutral if they collected all the information. They could be the moderators, the good-faith, middle-minded people who can help bridge the gap between the political combatants. Läs mer…

South Korea’s parliamentary election of April 10, 2024, was widely seen as a referendum on President Yoon Suk Yeol’s first two years in office.

That being the case, the nation collectively expressed its strong disapproval.

With a relatively high turnout of 67%, voters handed Yoon’s conservative People’s Power Party defeat, with its share of the 300-seat National Assembly dropping from 114 to 108.

The opposition Democratic Party retained its large majority in the National Assembly, winning 175 seats and maintaining control in the populous metropolitan areas of Seoul, Incheon and Gyeonggi provinces. Voters also delivered a disappointing outcome for most third-party candidates, the exceptions being the Rebuilding Korea Party, which campaigned as more combative opposition to the DP, and the New Reform Party, which broke away from the ruling PPP earlier this year.

As a political scientist with a focus on East Asia and international affairs, I believe the election results will have ramifications on Yoon’s foreign and domestic agenda during the remainder of his term.

Growing domestic pressure

Yoon had hoped the election would end the political gridlock that has stymied his first two years as president.

Throughout that time, the opposition has held a legislative majority. Subsequently, Yoon’s government has seen key parts of its agenda for education, labor and pension reforms blocked. Yoon has also vetoed multiple bills passed by the opposition-controlled legislature.

But the election saw the DP and other opposition parties amass 192 seats, just short of a veto-proof, two-thirds majority. As such, President Yoon again faces a divided government for the remainder of his term. In fact, he will be the only South Korean president whose party has failed to control the National Assembly at any time during the five-year presidential term.

A better parliamentary outcome for Yoon’s party would have bolstered the chances for the government’s legislative agenda on pressing domestic issues, such as addressing the country’s declining birthrate, high inflation and expanding medical student enrollment, as well as relaxing business regulations.

Instead, the Yoon government is more likely to be on the defensive after the election. Opposition parties have vowed to investigate alleged stock manipulation involving first lady Kim Keon Hee and probe former Defense Minister Lee Jong-sup over claims that he influenced an earlier report into the drowning death of a Korean marine.

Though Yoon retains veto power, there is now growing uncertainty over whether ruling PPP assembly members will continue defending the president’s actions if and when the two probes move forward.

Meanwhile, President Yoon’s prime minister, Han Duck-soo, announced his resignation after the assembly election. The National Assembly can vote against the president’s nominee to replace him, which may compel Yoon to pick a candidate acceptable to the opposition parties.

A trickier foreign policy climate

Under South Korea’s political system, the presidency has greater leeway in national security and foreign affairs than in domestic policy.

As such, the Yoon government will likely continue its foreign policy of expanding trilateral partnerships with the U.S. and Japan, building ties with NATO and striving to be a “global pivotal” state in the Asia-Pacific region.

During his first two years in power, Yoon has generally aligned South Korea closer to the West, though he has also been careful to avoid direct confrontation with China and Russia – both of which are geographic neighbors and trade partners.

While the opposition-controlled National Assembly has, to date, been generally supportive of the Yoon government’s attempts to strengthen ties with the U.S. – a policy that remains popular among the South Korean public – the same cannot be said about its attempts to bolster relations with Japan.

In particular, the Democratic Party and the Rebuilding Korea Party have criticized the prospect of a closer partnership with Japan – whether through military exercises or intelligence sharing – mainly due to Korea’s experiences under Japanese colonial rule.

And despite being generally welcoming of ties with the West, the two opposition parties are more cautious than the Yoon government when it comes to engaging in geopolitical rivalry. Specifically, Democratic Party leader Lee Jae-myung warned during the recent election campaign that South Korea should not become involved in the Russia-Ukraine war or China-Taiwan tensions.

The opposition might not directly stop Yoon from pursuing his foreign policy, but they are likely to pressure the president to pay attention to domestic political issues.

Moreover, opposition parties will be pushing the Yoon government to demonstrate what diplomatic “wins” the country has secured through its partnership with Japan and the United States. Notably, if the point of strategic partnership with the United States and Japan is to ensure security in East Asia, some voters may legitimately ask why it has failed to deter North Korea’s continued military provocations.

If the Yoon government cannot demonstrate diplomatic successes, opposition parties are likely to frame his foreign policy as one-sided “subservient diplomacy.”

Yoon has three years to show that his foreign policy has paid dividends; South Korea’s next presidential election is in the spring of 2027.

How successfully the president can navigate the domestic and international constraints exacerbated by the results of the parliamentary election could determine whether he exceeds the political expectations of a president facing a divided government or encounter, as some predict, an early “lame-duck presidency.” Läs mer…

C. Everett Koop, the avuncular doctor with a fluffy white beard who served as the U.S. surgeon general during the Reagan administration, was famous for his work as an innovative pediatric surgeon and the attention he paid to the HIV-AIDS crisis.

As dentistry scholars, we believe Koop also deserves credit for something else. To help make the medical profession pay more attention to the importance of healthy teeth and gums, he’d often say: “You are not healthy without good oral health.”

Yet, more than three decades after Koop’s surgeon general stint ended in 1989, millions of Americans don’t get even the most basic dental services, such as checkups, tooth cleanings and fillings.

Americans who rely on the traditional Medicare program for their health insurance get no help from that program with paying their dental bills aside from some narrow exceptions. This group includes some 24 million people over 65 – about half of all the people who rely on Medicare for their health insurance.

Surgeon General C. Everett Koop, seen in 1987 while serving in the Reagan administration.
Wally McNamee/Corbis via Getty Images

‘Medically necessary’ exceptions

When the Medicare program was established in 1965, almost all dental services were excluded due to the expense and vigorous opposition from associations that represent dentists out of fear that reimbursement rates would be markedly low compared to traditional insurance plans or out-of-pocket payment.

However, interest in including dental benefits in Medicare is on the rise at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the federal agency responsible for the Medicare program, as well as many organizations that seek to provide dental benefits to all members of society.

The Biden administration initially considered the addition of comprehensive Medicare dental coverage as part of its proposed Build Back Better legislation, a broad US$1.8 trillion legislative package designed to fix problems ranging from child care costs to climate change, but failed to get enough support in Congress.

Dental coverage was eliminated from the version of the bill the House passed in 2021, in part due to cost concerns and resistance from organized dentistry due to the low reimbursement rates for medical care for patients with Medicare benefits.

In 2022, after the broader package was blocked in the Senate, the federal government added coverage for dental treatment that was designated as “medically necessary” for people with Medicare.

The list of circumstances that would lead patients to be eligible is short. Some examples include patients scheduled for organ transplants or who have cancer treatment requiring radiation of their jaws.

But we believe that dental care is necessary for everyone, especially for older people.

Chew, speak, breathe

While many working Americans get limited dental coverage through their employers, those benefits are usually limited to as little as $1,000 per year. And once they retire, Americans almost always lose even that basic coverage.

Given the importance of oral health for your overall health and quality of life, and increasing scientific understanding of the role of poor oral health in a wide array of chronic diseases, we believe that Medicare should include basic dental services.

A healthy mouth is essential for chewing, speaking and breathing. Being able to flash a good smile boosts self-esteem and helps maintain a sense of well-being.

Left untreated, dental diseases often result in infections that can cause severe pain. Poor oral health can lead to hospitalization and even death. Yet, routine oral care is frequently unavailable to many Americans.

Rich Americans with Medicare coverage are almost three times more likely to receive dental care compared to those with low incomes. And almost 3 in 4 low-income people over 65 don’t see a dentist in a typical year.

Connected to many serious conditions

Numerous epidemiological studies have associated atherosclerosis, a serious condition colloquially known as clogged arteries, cardiovascular disease and stroke, with periodontal disease – chronic inflammation of the bone and gum tissues that support the teeth.

Having diabetes makes you three times as likely to develop gum disease because diabetes compromises the body’s response to inflammation and infection. At the same time, treating diabetes patients for gum disease can help control their blood sugar levels. Researchers have found that when people with diabetes get preventive dental and periodontal care, their diabetes is better controlled and health care costs decline.

Poor oral health can also increase the risk of contracting pneumonia, especially for patients in hospitals and nursing homes. When patients see a dentist before entering the hospital, they’re less likely to get pneumonia during their stay.

There is also evidence that untreated dental problems may contribute to rheumatoid arthritis as well as Alzheimer’s disease and other cognitive impairments.

Chemo can damage your teeth

Many cancer treatments can damage teeth, especially for older adults.

As a result, Medicare has started to reimburse for dental bills tied to tooth decay or other oral conditions after they get chemotherapy or radiation treatment.

The American Dental Association warns of the oral health problems that arise following chemotherapy and radiation treatment and offers tips on protecting your teeth during treatment.

More than nice to have

The history of U.S. health care helps explain why Medicare generally won’t cover the cost of dental and gum treatment.

Doctors and dentists are educated separately, and doctors learn very little about dental conditions and treatments when they’re in medical school.

Most dental electronic health records aren’t linked to medical systems, hindering comprehensive care and delivery of dental care to those in need.

At the same time, medical insurance and dental insurance have evolved to serve very different functions. Medical insurance was designed specifically to cover large, unpredictable expenses, while dental insurance was intended to mainly fund predictable and lower-cost preventive care.

While protection from catastrophic medical costs has always been perceived as a necessity, coverage of dental services was conceived as a benefit that’s mostly nice to have.

But that’s an outdated idea disconnected from a large body of scientific evidence.

Medicare Advantage plans

Until Medicare expands coverage to include preventive dental services for everyone, alternative plans such as Medicare Advantage, through which the federal government contracts with private insurers to provide Medicare benefits, serve as a stopgap.

In 2016, only 21% of beneficiaries in traditional Medicare had purchased a stand-alone dental plan, whereas roughly two-thirds of Medicare Advantage enrollees had at least some dental benefits through their coverage. However, these plans vary greatly in the procedures that they cover.

The costs of this hole in Medicare coverage is high: 1 in 5 Americans with Medicare – including many with little disposable income – are spending at least $1,000 a year on dental care.

It seems that Dr. Koop was onto something – you can’t be healthy without good oral health. Adding basic dental benefits to Medicare would likely help many older Americans to live happier and healthier lives, and at the same time potentially reduce overall health care costs. Läs mer…