Put yourself in the shoes of Sen. Barack Obama or Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton. You are widely seen by Democratic voters as a transformational presidential candidate. Democrats are nearly evenly divided between you and your competitor, and you think you are the best candidate for your party -- and...

On the eve of crucial presidential primaries in Indiana and North Carolina, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) has found himself dogged by questions about his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. As the Democratic front-runner's popularity has suffered after public statements by Wright about ra...

Hillary Rodham Clinton has half a dozen good reasons she thinks she is the best Democratic candidate for president. They are called Pennsylvania and Ohio, Arkansas and Nevada, New Jersey and New Mexico -- states she has won in the Democratic primary contest.

People hate Mondays. And they love Fridays. The Carpenters crooned about being blue in "Rainy Days and Mondays." The restaurant chain T.G.I. Friday's might restrict its clientele to workaholics if it were to rename itself T.G.I. Monday's.

One hundred forty-three years ago, women's suffrage advocate Elizabeth Cady Stanton faced a conundrum: With the Civil War over, Stanton had to decide whether to support the 14th and 15th amendments to the Constitution, which enabled black men to vote -- at a time when white women such as herself...

The housing market is in free fall: Quick -- let's protect homeowners against foreclosure.

Three horrors await Americans who get behind the wheel of a car for a family road trip this summer: the spiraling price of gas, the usual choruses of "are-we-there-yet?" -- and the road rage of fellow drivers.

The United States is awash in gloom. Overwhelming majorities of Americans say they are dissatisfied with the country's economic direction, and the intensity of unhappiness is greater than it has been in 15 years, according to a recent Washington Post-ABC News poll. The answer, pundits, politicians...

Subprime mortgages have been linked to a meltdown in housing and questionable Wall Street practices, and they may have been the original domino that set off America's current economic crisis.

Seventeen years ago, a couple of criminologists at the University of Maryland published an interesting paper about the 1976 District ban on handguns -- a ban that was recently overturned by the Supreme Court on the grounds it was inimical to the constitutional right of Americans to bear arms to p...

Among psychologists who study sports, there is a code word for parents who lose their temper standing on the sidelines of their children's soccer, baseball and football games: THOSE parents -- Tempestuous, Harried, Overwrought, Self-absorbed and Emotional.

In May, the baby-faced chief executive of IndyMac Bancorp, Michael Perry, lashed out at critics who said the bank was on weak footing: "Given the decline in our stock price, some people have questioned IndyMac's survivability in the current environment. I am here to tell you that I believe we hav...

It happens all the time: Two guys in a garage come up with a cool new technology -- and dream of making it big. A thousand people take time off work to campaign for a visionary politician because they feel they are doing something to change the world. A million kids hit baseballs -- and wonder what...

Days before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Osama bin Laden left his compound in Kandahar in Afghanistan and headed into the mountains. His driver, Salim Ahmed Hamdan, traveled with him. As U.S. and Northern Alliance forces stood poised to capture Kandahar a few months later, bin Laden told Hamdan t...

If American sprinters Tyson Gay and Walter Dix reprise their race in the U.S. Olympic trials at the Olympic finals in Beijing, you will see the athletes crouch low over the starting blocks. Gay's right foot will be in the rear position on the blocks; Dix prefers to have his left foot in the rear ...

Nearly a century ago, American middle-distance runner Abel Kiviat entered the Stockholm Olympics as the odds-on favorite to win the 1,500-meter race, an event in which he held the world record. Kiviat had the lead 1,492 meters into the race but was passed in the final eight meters by Britain's...

Consider these scenarios. Scandal A: A prominent politician gets caught sleeping with a campaign aide and plunges himself into an ugly paternity dispute -- all while his cancer-stricken wife is fighting for her life.

Political conventions, like all forms of public relations, carry the risk of whiplash. Last week in Denver, for example, Bill Clinton said Barack Obama "has a remarkable ability to inspire people, to raise our hopes and rally us to high purpose" -- all of which sounded a little different from the...

In the days after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, with the twin towers vanished from Manhattan's skyline, a poem by W.H. Auden could have been the song of a wounded nation. "September 1, 1939," written on the eve of World War II, seemed eerily prescient:

Have you seen the photo of Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin brandishing a rifle while wearing a U.S. flag bikini? Have you read the e-mail saying Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama was sworn into the U.S. Senate with his hand placed on the Koran? Both are fabricated -- and...

With America divided right down the middle for the third presidential election in a row, most people would not be surprised to hear that Democratic and Republican partisans perceive a widening gap between their presidential choices. In 2004, for example, die-hards in both parties felt that the...

A few years ago, psychologists Mahzarin Banaji and Thierry Devos showed the names of a number of celebrities to a group of volunteers and asked them to classify the well-known personalities as American or non-American. The list included television personality Connie Chung and tennis star Michael ...

The Center for Responsive Politics recently estimated that it cost $5.8 billion to finance the 2008 general elections. To most people that is a staggeringly large sum and evidence of the profoundly corrupting role that money plays in politics, but to some very smart political watchers, the better...

Every time the White House changes hands between the Democrats and the Republicans, the outgoing party quickly sees the virtues of staffing government departments with competent managers. The incoming party invariably seeks to reward loyal campaign operatives with political appointments.

When nearly 200 people in India were killed in terrorist attacks late last month, the carnage received saturation media coverage around the globe. When nearly 600 people in Zimbabwe died in a cholera outbreak a week ago, the international response was far more muted.

Let's say the FBI hears a senior elected official on a tapped telephone line demanding kickbacks in exchange for favors and shaking down donors for campaign contributions in exchange for plum contracts.

When President-elect Barack Obama, an early opponent of the Iraq war, asked Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton -- who helped to authorize the war -- to be his secretary of state, many liberals scratched their heads.

Americans like to live in diverse communities. At least, that's what they say.

Here's a trick question, so think carefully before you answer: If someone mentions the word "beast" to you, which word would you match it with?

Last year, as the financial meltdown was getting underway, a scientist named Yaneer Bar-Yam developed a computer model of the economy. Instead of the individuals, companies and brokers that populate the real economy, the model used virtual actors. The computer world allowed Bar-Yam to do what...

"I know how unpopular it is to be seen as helping banks right now, especially when everyone is suffering in part from their bad decisions. I promise you, I get it. But I also know that in a time of crisis, we cannot afford to govern out of anger."

President Obama appears serenely confident as he goes about fixing the worst global financial crisis in more than half a century while simultaneously revamping the national health-care system, changing the way Americans use and produce energy, giving tax breaks to 95 percent of all households, an...

Below I share some details about SACNAS and some of the mathematical events that happened at this year’s SACNAS National Conference.  I hope that this may also serve as an invitation/motivation for anyone interested in diversity and mathematics to participate … Continue reading →

There is so much that is peculiar, irregular, silly, or downright twisted in mathematical verbiage that, certainly, we could all benefit from some soul-searching on the language of our culture. Some of mathematics usage is confusing (e. g. overuse of … Continue reading →

Recently, Abigail Thompson, a Vice President of the AMS and Professor at UC Davis, wrote a short opinion piece coming out against the use of diversity statements in hiring. As I read her piece, I found myself troubled by some … Continue reading →

In which I write about the wonderful mathematics that I learned inspired by a graphics design student I met at a Halloween party.

In case you want to catch up: here are Parts 1 & 2 of my first-year journey. We like to think that our life stories have happy endings, perhaps that we can carefully partition our lives into fourths of each … Continue reading →

I didn’t go to the joint meetings (JMM) this year. This is despite the following good reasons I had to go:  I’m in my fifth year, applying for jobs, and this is the time when you’re supposed to get out … Continue reading →

Acknowledgments: Special THANKS to Matthias Beck, Ben Braun, Pamela Harris, Max Hlavacek, Mariel Supina, Julie Vega, and the Discrete Geometry Group/The Villa at FU Berlin. I recently came back from a research visit to the Freie Universität in Berlin where … Continue reading →

I have never watched Hidden Figures. Was that a bad way to start off an article concerning the late Katherine Johnson, the NASA legend whose persistence, precision, and proclivity for mathematics sent America to space in the 1960s? Maybe it was. … Continue reading →

Hi all, 2020 has been a complicated year so far, and things are only going to get more complicated as the COVID-19 pandemic. I’ve been thinking a lot about teaching recently, (as I’m the instructor for a class of undergrad … Continue reading →

So around two months ago, as the novel coronavirus was just breaking in the Western media, I wrote a post bemoaning the culture of carbon-intensive academic travel. Funny — here we are, barely a quarter of the way into the … Continue reading →

With displacement at a record high, governments around the world are looking for ways to jumpstart, expand, or maximize the impact of their refugee resettlement programs. Yet the evidence base regarding the effectiveness of such programs is particularly thin. This report maps the monitoring and evaluation gaps that exist and identifies areas where further research could help inform policymakers' actions.

Marking the release of an MPI Europe report commissioned as part of the EU-FRANK project, this webinar examines critical gaps in the research and evaluation of refugee resettlement programs and recommendations for improving evidence gathering and knowledge sharing between resettlement countries. 

Following the 2015­–16 crisis that saw record numbers of refugees arrive in Europe, policymakers have shown interest in creating managed, legal alternatives to the dangerous, unauthorized journeys many asylum seekers make. While these discussions should be informed by an understanding of current pathways and protection channels, it is "nearly impossible" to know how protection seekers enter and what legal channels are available to them, as this MPI Europe report explains.

As European policymakers and publics continue to grapple with the migration crisis, this conversation offers an opportunity to reflect on the role and responsibility of experts in these politically sensitive debates.

Across Europe, grassroots efforts have emerged in the wake of crisis that draw members of the public into the process of receiving refugees and supporting their integration. This policy brief examines the many forms community-based or private sponsorship can take, what benefits such approaches may hold for European communities, and the tradeoffs policymakers face in their implementation.

Following the release of the mid-term review of the European Agenda on Migration, this webinar offers insights from EU Member States on how existing, new, and untapped legal pathways interact with other humanitarian policies, and fit into a larger protection strategy.

Since the 2015–16 refugee crisis, European policymakers have eagerly sought cooperation with origin and transit countries in the hopes of stemming unauthorized migration to Europe. This approach is neither new, nor without its limitations. By examining the evolution of two longstanding Mediterranean partnerships—between Spain and Morocco, and Italy and Tunisia—this report offers insights on what has and has not worked.

In 2016, the European Union announced with fanfare a new Migration Partnership Framework to inform cooperation with countries of origin and transit. While the bloc has long recognized collaboration as key to achieving its migration-management aims, EU partnerships face persistent challenges, including looking beyond short-term enforcement goals and taking into account partner needs, capacity, and objectives.