Attorney General William Barr recently announced, late on a Friday, that Geoffrey Berman was “stepping down after two-and-a-half years of service as United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York.” This announcement was news to Berman, who later contradicted Barr by declaring that he had not resigned and indeed had no intention of...
Ernest Hemingway was affectionately called “Papa,” but what kind of dad was he? In my role as Associate Editor of the Hemingway Letters Project, I spend my time investigating the approximately 6,000 letters sent by Hemingway, 85% of which are now being published for the first time in a multivolume series. The latest volume –...
From Homer Simpson to Phil Dunphy, sitcom dads have long been known for being bumbling and inept. But it wasn’t always this way. Back in the 1950s and 1960s, sitcom dads tended to be serious, calm and wise, if a bit detached. In a shift that media scholars have documented, only in later decades did...
When I read about Amy Cooper, the woman in Central Park who called the police on a black birder because he’d asked her to leash her out-of-control dog, I was horrified. But, as a sociolinguist who studies and writes about language and discrimination, I was also struck by the name given to Cooper in several...
In a recent interview, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison was asked why it’s so difficult to prosecute cases against police officers. “Just think about all the cop shows you may have watched in your life,” he replied. “We’re just inundated with this cultural message that these people will do the right thing.” While two of...
As a professor of medieval Europe, I’ve taught the bubonic plague, and how it contributed to the English Peasant Revolt of 1381. Now that America is experiencing widespread unrest in the midst of its own pandemic, I see some interesting similarities to the 14th-century uprising. The death of George Floyd has sparked protests fueled by...
While millions of people across Europe and beyond have been forced into lockdown during the COVID-19 pandemic, some artists have used their time in isolation to create work using religious imagery as a way to tell the story of the crisis. On the streets of Madrid, graffiti artist Ernesto Muñiz reimagined the imagery related to...
La Loma is an area of the city of Medellin, Colombia, which is divided into small neighbourhoods controlled by gangs known as “combos”. Each combo is loyal to one or other of the country’s organised-crime groups. La Loma is also a main route for trafficking drugs, narcotics and weapons to different parts of the country....
The United States and Brazil have much in common when it comes to the coronavirus. Both are among the world’s hardest-hit countries, where hundreds die daily. Their like-minded presidents, Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro, have both been widely criticized for their poor handling of the pandemic. And in both countries the virus is disproportionately affecting...
ta Rica is known around the world over for its rainforests, coffee and beaches. But despite Costa Rica’s reputation for safety and its recent economic growth, criminals use its strategic location for smuggling activities. A team of U.S. forensic science experts, led by two West Virginia University professors from Costa Rica, aim to fix that. A new...
