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Many Americans had probably never heard of Aurora, Colorado, or Springfield, Ohio, before Donald Trump broadcast his false claims about these cities nationwide late in the 2024 presidential campaign.

First, in September 2024, the Republican presidential nominee claimed in a debate with Kamala Harris that Haitian immigrants in Ohio were stealing and eating other residents’ pets. A month later, at a rally in Aurora, Trump declared that city to be a “war zone” overrun by Venezuelan gangs.

Trump’s false claims went viral, creating chaos for these communities. Reporters rushed in. In Springfield, so did bomb threats.

These stories feel familiar to me as an anthropologist whose work has explored the social dynamics of immigrant destinations in the United States. Springfield and Aurora are only the latest small cities to become sudden flash points in America’s ongoing – and increasingly heated – immigration debate.

Siler City, North Carolina

The small town of Siler City, North Carolina, was used as a backdrop for anti-immigrant political rhetoric a quarter century ago.

In the late 20th century, jobs in Siler City’s local poultry industry became a magnet for Latin American immigrants and their families, leading to rapid demographic change. In 1990, the town was 98% white and African American. By the 2000 census, almost 40% of the town’s 6,000 residents identified as Hispanic or Latino.

This shift caused some racial tension, and in 2000 the notoriously racist politician David Duke headlined an anti-immigrant rally outside City Hall in Siler City.

Duke, who was also a former Louisiana state representative and former Ku Klux Klan grand wizard, railed against Latin American immigrants.

David Duke, speaking at a 1977 press conference, was a racist agitator who built his political career on white supremacy.
Bill Peters/The Denver Post via Getty Images

“Do you understand that immigration will destroy the foundations of this country?” Duke asked. “When you have more diversity, you end up with more division and more conflict,” he said, warning of “extinction” for white people in the U.S.

Duke also railed against school integration. Thirty-five years after desegregation, this remained a favorite complaint of white supremacists.

Only a handful of people, many of them from out of town, showed up to support Duke’s message, carrying signs like “The Melting Pot is Boiling Over.”

In the short term, Duke’s rally exacerbated polarization in Siler City. It also stoked fear and anxiety among foreign-born residents, some of whom believed the local government had endorsed Duke’s message because the rally took place in front of the town hall.

Looking back, however, many Siler City residents see the David Duke incident as a turning point – toward an improvement in ethnic relations in their town.

After Duke’s rally, local politicians spoke out against the divisiveness and hatred. Within a few months, residents offended by the anti-immigrant rally had organized a unity event and cultural festival.

By the time I visited Siler City in 2008 as a graduate research assistant studying new immigration destinations, many locals noted with pride that white supremacists could gain no foothold in town. They said Duke’s racist rally caused neighbors to stop and think, and decide what side they were on.

Today, Siler City has an immigrant community advisory board, and the government actively works to promote integration and social cohesion among residents.

Lewiston, Maine

A similar story unfolded in the working-class Maine city of Lewiston in 2002 after its mayor wrote a public letter about the city’s rising refugee population.

Just over 1,000 Somali refugees had settled in the city in the preceding year, having been displaced by civil war and drought back home.

“This large number of new arrivals cannot continue without negative results for all,” Mayor Laurier Raymond wrote. “Our city is maxed out financially, physically and emotionally.”

He called on Somali people to “pass the word (that) we have been overwhelmed.”

Raymond’s letter got the attention of organized white supremacist groups, who descended on Lewiston, a former sawmill hub of about 35,000 people. In response, local people formed an ad hoc community organization called “Many and One,” and when the hate group World Church of the Creator rallied in Lewiston on Jan. 11, 2003, only 36 people attended. About 4,000 counter-protesters came out to support the Somali community.

A film crew that had showed up to document the conflict ended up telling the story of Lewistonians sending a message of acceptance and unity.

At a 2003 rally on the steps of Lewiston City Hall, activists denounced ‘the climate of intolerance’ created by Mayor Larry Raymond.
Jack Milton/Portland Press Herald via Getty Images

The temporary stresses on Lewiston were real, but in general locals came down on the side of inclusion and welcome. By 2021, Lewiston had one of the country’s highest per capita populations of Muslim residents, and of Somali-Americans.

Twenty years later, the arrival of Somali families has become part of the story Lewiston tells about its history and identity.

Conservative and anti-immigrant messages continue to resonate in the town. Yet many locals, like author Cynthia Anderson, say they are “moved and inspired” by the resilience of their Somali-American neighbors.

Like most Haitians living in Springfield, Somali people did not choose to leave their country. They were displaced, and many were traumatized – yet they built new lives and contributed to the community.

What can this history tell us now?

While there are key differences between Springfield, Aurora, Siler City and Lewiston, these four places also share many attributes.

These are all economically beleaguered cities with higher crime rates than the U.S. average but lower housing costs and more entry-level jobs in manufacturing. Such places are sometimes called “emerging gateway cities,” because they are appealing to immigrant families seeking opportunity.

Yet the same conditions also make these cities attractive to political figures seeking a stage to blame immigrants for the community’s preexisting economic, social and public safety challenges.

As in Siler City and Lewiston, Springfield and Aurora have mainly rejected false political claims and negative messages about their immigrant residents.

In Springfield, residents have organized rallies and a prayer vigil in solidarity with Haitians, and Ohio’s Republican governor defended the city against Trump’s allegations.

The Republican mayor of Aurora said before Trump’s Oct. 11 visit that he hoped “to show him and the nation that Aurora is a considerably safe city – not a city overrun by Venezuelan gangs.”

The 2024 election has brought tense and polarizing times to these towns. But history suggests that Springfield and Aurora will eventually be home to vibrant and integrated immigrant communities.

Once the vitriol fades, Trump’s incendiary misinformation will likely become just a footnote to the larger story of the country’s 21st-century transformation. Läs mer…

The Taliban, an ultraconservative Islamic political group, retook control of Kabul a little more than three years ago, dashing many Afghans’ hopes for a tolerant, democratic government.

As U.S. troops withdrew from Afghanistan days after the Taliban’s resurgence in 2021, hundreds of thousands of Afghans flocked to the Kabul airport, desperate to be evacuated. Among them were Afghans who worked for U.S. military and NATO forces as interpreters and in other roles – in addition to other people who were afraid of the Taliban.

Chaotic and sometimes violent scenes of the poorly planned evacuation captured media attention for weeks, as the U.S. military airlifted nearly 124,000 people out of Afghanistan.

Many of the Afghans who fled their country in 2021 went to Iran, Pakistan and other nearby countries. To offer a lifeline to the Afghans who came to the U.S., the Biden administration announced on Aug. 29, 2021, that evacuated Afghans could legally – but temporarily – stay in the U.S.

As a scholar of civil conflict and refugee migration, I have been following the Afghan evacuation and policy responses in Washington since 2021. While President Joe Biden renewed humanitarian parole for approximately 70,000 Afghans in 2023, these people remain in legal limbo, unable to fully move forward in their lives.

The upcoming election will likely be decisive in resolving Afghans’ legal status or not.

An Afghan couple, including a man who worked as an interpreter for the U.S. military, walk in Charlestown, Mass. in February 2022.
Joseph Prezioso/AFP via Getty Images

Understanding humanitarian parole

The U.S. admitted Afghans into the country through what’s called humanitarian parole, a federal program that the president can authorize to give protection to people in other countries facing extreme emergency circumstances.

Humanitarian parole must be renewed by a presidential administration every two years, unlike the U.S. refugee admission policy, which gives foreigners who face legitimate fears of returning home the right to get permanent residency in the U.S.

The Afghan parole program enabled people like Mina Bakhshi – a female rock climber who had no future under the Taliban because of her gender – to enter the U.S. and attend college.

It also helped people like Qasim Rahimi, a journalist in Afghanistan, to flee to safety with his family and settle in Kansas City, Missouri.

About one-third of the Afghan evacuees who came to the U.S. settled in California, Virginia and Texas, while the rest settled in other states.

Yet humanitarian parole is not a permanent solution.

While these Afghan people can legally work and attend school in the U.S., they often face obstacles with getting stable work or even finding a home to rent because they are not permanent residents and do not have Social Security numbers.

A long history of parole in the US

Typically, the U.S. government has used humanitarian parole to rescue people from conflicts in which U.S. armed forces are involved, like Vietnam and Ukraine.

People who face serious danger because of conflict or other reasons can also enter the U.S. by applying for and receiving refugee status, but it can take more than a year for it to be granted. Humanitarian parole lets the U.S. government act quickly when it wants to help foreigners come to the country during an emergency.

At the end of the Vietnam War in 1975, for example, the U.S. admitted thousands of Vietnamese, Cambodian and Laotian migrants fleeing their countries.

As then-President Gerald Ford stated in an address to Congress in 1975, providing humanitarian parole to Vietnamese people who supported the U.S. in its war effort in Vietnam was a “profound moral obligation.” In 1977, Congress passed a law that allowed these refugees to permanently settle in the U.S.

The U.S. also issued humanitarian parole to Hungarian and Cuban refugees who fled communist dictatorships in the 1950s.

More recently, the U.S. granted parole to a group of Haitian orphans following a major earthquake in 2010, and to children from Central America who illegally crossed the border without their parents during the Obama administration.

In 2022, the U.S. government again used humanitarian parole to welcome more than 125,000 Ukrainians fleeing the war in their country.

What the Afghan Adjustment Act would do

While Biden issued temporary humanitarian parole to Afghans in 2021 and renewed it in 2023, only Congress has the power to pass an act that would ensure they can legally stay in the country permanently. Yet, a deadlocked Congress has failed to pass legislation to adjust the status of Afghans.

A proposed bipartisan bill in Congress called the Afghan Adjustment Act would allow Afghan parolees to apply for permanent legal status.

A coalition of refugee advocates and veterans organizations has championed the Afghan Adjustment Act.

Yet, a handful of Republican lawmakers, led by Sen. Chuck Grassley, have opposed the act on national security grounds. They say that vetting procedures for newcomers are not sufficient, which could lead to security risks. Some want a more targeted program that focuses only on Afghans who worked with U.S. troops.

Republican Sen. Tom Cotton has proposed another bill that would significantly reduce a president’s authority to use humanitarian parole for Afghans or anyone else in the future.

An Afghan evacuee living in Charlestown, Mass., in February 2022 shows a photo of himself working in Afghanistan as a translator.
Joseph Prezioso/AFP via Getty Images

The election factor

The fate of Afghan parolees will likely be determined by the results of the upcoming election. Should Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris win office, I believe she is likely to renew parole for Afghans for at least two more years, as Biden did in 2023. Congress may be more likely to pass the Afghan Adjustment Act after the election, since it is rare to pass major legislation during an election period.

What Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump might do about Afghans living temporarily in the U.S. is an open question. During Trump’s previous presidential term, his administration focused in part on curbing immigration. This included slashing refugee admissions and making it harder to issue U.S. visas to Afghans and Iraqis who worked with the U.S. military.

On the campaign trail, Trump has promised to renew his travel ban on Muslims and to continue to limit immigration to the U.S.

In the meantime, Afghans who fled the Taliban continue to face uncertainty about their future in the U.S. Läs mer…

On July 25, 2024, Vice President Kamala Harris spoke to the American Federation of Teachers – the first labor union she addressed after announcing her candidacy for president.

Even though she was speaking to a roomful of teachers, Harris didn’t focus on teacher-specific issues. Rather, she spoke about general policies that working people want, such as sick leave and paid family leave. She also spoke about the labor movement more broadly. “When unions are strong, America is strong,” she said.

At the Democratic National Convention in August, Harris’ running mate Tim Walz proudly claimed his identity as a teacher. On Instagram, he described himself as being a “dues-paying, card-carrying member of my teachers union for years.”

Public school teachers are not often talked about as a major force in national politics. They are not wealthy donors. They rarely hold public office. Many congresspeople claim to have been “educators,” but that includes law school professors, school fundraisers and school district superintendents.

Teachers and their unions, however, can be influential in politics – in the U.S. and globally. Walz’s candidacy prompts a reexamining of their role. Whose interests do they represent? Can teachers really speak on behalf of broader communities?

Our view, based on political science research we and others have carried out, is that teachers are one of the most – if not the most – well-organized groups advocating in favor of the economic interests of working people in politics today.

The rise of teachers as political candidates around the world

Tim Walz taught social studies for 20 years at Mankato West High School in Minnesota. When he served in Congress, he was one of only a handful of teachers from public K-12 schools. The overwhelming majority of congresspeople are lawyers and business professionals who are mostly from higher-income backgrounds, and a disproportionate number studied at elite institutions.

Walz’s candidacy as a high school teacher turned high-profile politician has few obvious precedents in the United States. But Walz is far from unique globally.

In many developing democracies, from Colombia to Indonesia and India, teachers are a large group of public sector workers who are organized through powerful labor unions. Around the world, teacher candidates have risen through the ranks politically. In Colombia, for example, the teachers union has 270,000 members, making it the largest union in that country. A number of leaders from that union have moved from the union presidency to the Senate of the republic.

The 2024 book “Mobilizing Teachers” documents the emergence of teachers as a political force in Latin America beginning three decades ago.

Former president of Peru Pedro Castillo may be best remembered for being ousted from office in 2022 after attempting to dissolve Congress. But his origins are notable. He was a humble elementary school teacher and union leader who improbably rose to the presidency in 2021. Similarly in Mexico, national teachers union leader Alfonso Cepeda Salas became a senator for the ruling party in 2024.

Teachers unions aren’t always a force for good governance. In Mexico, they are widely criticized for using corrupt practices to influence politics, such as showing favoritism in promoting teachers aligned with certain parties. In the 1980s, however, teachers mobilized in the streets of Brazil, Chile and Mexico against military dictatorships and authoritarian rule, and Brazilian teachers unions advocated for broader causes such as the right to education and increased spending on public schools.

In the U.S., public K-12 teachers do not usually become high-profile political candidates. However, they emerged as major political actors in other ways in the late 20th century. This was spurred by economic changes such as automation and globalization, which disrupted the work of many unions – such as manufacturing unions – but not teachers. Today, 1 in 5 union members are teachers. And teachers as a whole make up 8% of the college-educated workforce in the United States.

Through their labor unions, teachers in the U.S. are sometimes recruited as political candidates, especially in state and local elections. However, their numbers are few. In 2018, for example, teachers were on the ballot in record numbers but still represented just 3% of candidates.

Teachers and the public interest

Teachers in the U.S. have faced criticism for opposing reforms such as school choice and connecting teacher evaluations to student test scores. Some scholars believe these reforms could improve education quality.

In the U.S., there’s also concern about teachers’ strong influence on school board elections and Democratic Party primaries. Some researchers argue that teachers unions have disproportionate power because “they are actively and purposely engaged in an electoral effort to control their own superiors” – school board members. In other words, unlike private sector workers, teachers unions use their political clout to select their own bosses.

Yet, other scholars have shown that the policies teachers pursue often align with the interests of students. Teachers unions have long argued that better teacher working conditions mean better learning conditions for students, and that’s what they often advocate for.

In some states and cities, there are severe teacher shortages, which some analysts cite to argue that low pay for teachers has made it an unattractive career. These shortages not only affect the quality of education but also reflect the economic concerns of middle-class Americans. Teacher salaries have stagnated, even though a large body of economics research has shown a cause-and-effect relationship between increasing educational spending and better student achievement, especially when funding increases go to teacher salaries.

Over the past 16 years in the U.S., teacher strikes have raised teacher salaries and the salaries of other education workers, such as janitors, bus drivers and administrative staff. Teachers have also highlighted the kinds of school-quality concerns that many parents care about, such as free school meals and hiring more counselors, nurses and psychologists at schools.

The role of teachers in preserving democracy

Public school teachers are uniquely positioned to uphold democratic institutions – a primary concern for many scholars heading into this election. Teachers are deeply embedded in local communities and habitually organize to coordinate political efforts with other local nonprofits and grassroots groups. We believe they’re one of the few middle-class groups still able to push back against the growing power of large corporations, megadonors and media conglomerates. Läs mer…

Parenting, single people and the U.S. birth rate have assumed a greater place in the 2024 presidential campaign than any race in recent memory.

Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance was widely rebuked for criticisms he lodged in 2021 against “childless cat ladies,” saying they have no “physical commitment” to the country’s future.

In August 2024, Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, also a Republican, piled on, saying Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris has no children to “keep her humble,” even though she’s stepmother to two children who call her “Mamala.”

As a historian of women, families and children in the U.S., I see these biological definitions of motherhood as too narrowly conceived. The past can serve as a reminder that other forms of mothering are important, too.

My research offers a broader perspective on women’s experiences of mothering and a deeper understanding of how women without biological children contribute to the nation and its future.

‘Mothers of all children’

One such woman was Katharine Bement Davis, the subject of my current research.

Born in Buffalo, New York, in 1860, Davis was a member of a generation of “new women” who pursued higher education, built professional careers and fought for political rights.

Other women of this generation included Nobel Peace Prize winner Jane Addams, public health nurse Lillian Wald, prison reformer Miriam Van Waters, child welfare advocate Julia Lathrop, social work pioneer Sophonisba Breckinridge and first lady Eleanor Roosevelt – to name just a few.

Of this group, only Roosevelt had children of her own. But all of them saw themselves as “mothers of all children,” as one historian has described juvenile justice advocates. Accepting responsibility for the nation’s welfare, they used their identity as public mothers to shape American politics.

In a 1927 letter to her college classmates, Davis whimsically reflected on her life choices:

“First, I am still an old maid; therefore, I cannot write interesting things about my husband and children, (and) how I have treated him and how I have raised them. First and last, however, I have had a good deal to do in the way of looking after other people’s husbands and children.”

Indeed, Davis’ life illustrated the many meanings of motherhood.

Like many ostensibly childless women, Davis was a doting aunt. With her unmarried sisters, Helen and Charlotte, she helped care for her only niece, Frances, whose mother died when she was just a toddler. In the mid-1920s, Frances lived with all three aunts while attending school in New York City.

Black feminist scholars call this sort of arrangement, long practiced in African American communities, “othermothering.”

Davis and other white women of her generation also engaged in the practice of caring for children, whether through formal adoption or informal caregiving. For instance, Breckinridge helped raise her nieces and nephews, while Van Waters legally adopted a daughter.

‘Maternalism the coming great force in government’

Throughout her life, Davis used what she called “the methods of motherhood” to promote public welfare.

After teaching school in western New York , establishing a playground in a working-class neighborhood in Philadelphia and supervising young offenders in upstate New York, Davis became New York City’s first female commissioner of correction in 1914.

Only months into her term, male inmates at Blackwell’s Island Penitentiary staged a major riot. Davis quelled the rebellion and established her own authority by addressing the refractory prisoners like wayward children. “You fellows must behave,” she pronounced. “I’ll have it no other way.”

Social reformer Katharine Bement Davis, right, wrote that she ‘had a good deal to do in the way of looking after other people’s husbands and children.’
Heritage Art/Heritage Images via Getty Images

After successfully using “motherly methods” to regain control of “the bad boys of Blackwell’s Island,” Davis proclaimed that “maternalism” was “the coming great force in government.”

Echoing her colleagues in the suffrage movement, Davis used the language of maternalism to promote women’s voting rights. Like other feminist pacifists, she believed that women were “the mother half of humanity.” Finally, like many women activists in the U.S. and Europe, she believed that all women – whether they had children of their own or not – were responsible for all children’s welfare.

Insisting that “wise motherhood” was essential to better government, Davis argued that women needed the vote – and that the nation needed women voters. Maternalist activists also promoted juvenile justice, parks and playgrounds, health care programs and financial assistance for needy families and children, laying the groundwork for the modern welfare state.

Giving women the right to choose

While she promoted public welfare and demanded political rights, Davis also advocated for what she and her contemporaries called “voluntary motherhood” – the idea that women should be able to control their reproductive lives.

Davis supported efforts to overturn the Comstock Act of 1873, which defined contraception and abortion as obscene and made distributing birth control information or devices through the U.S. postal service a federal crime.

States followed federal precedent by adopting “mini-Comstock Laws” criminalizing birth control. By the 1920s, however, some states permitted physicians to prescribe contraceptives – such as diaphragms and spermicides – to protect the health of their female patients.

When she surveyed 1,000 married women for a study of female sexuality in the 1920s, Davis found that most of her study subjects used contraceptives. In addition, nearly 1 in 10 reported having had at least one abortion, even though the procedure was illegal in every state.

And when Davis asked the women about their views on contraception – or as the survey put it, “the use of means to render parenthood voluntary instead of accidental” – she found that about three-quarters of them approved of it.

When the childless take charge

So-called childless women like Davis have shown that they have a stake in children’s welfare, women’s welfare and the nation’s welfare.

Over the past century, maternalists and feminists often have worked together to achieve their aims. Indeed, sometimes they were the same people.

Davis cuddles a kitten in a photograph taken while she was a college student.
Life and Labor, Volume 4

But today, it seems that Republican politicians are attempting to drive a wedge between mothers and others. As a recent New York Times article put it, “the politics of motherhood” have become a “campaign-trail cudgel.”

However, as Davis understood, many issues that affect mothers are important to all women. Moreover, Davis believed that everyone – not just biological mothers – shares the responsibility for the health and welfare of future generations. Finally, she insisted that women should control their own destinies.

So, was Davis a childless cat lady?

Well, a grainy photo of her cuddling a kitten suggests that she did love cats.

As for her childless status, when you consider the full range of her work on behalf of the nation’s children, the answer becomes a bit more complicated. Läs mer…

Blood samples of patients infected with a parasitic worm that causes schistosomiasis contain hidden information that marks different stages of the disease. In our recently published research, our team used machine learning to uncover that hidden information and improve early detection and diagnosis of infection.

The parasite that causes schistosomiasis completes its life cycle in two hosts – first in snails and then in mammals such as people, dogs and mice. Freshwater worm eggs enter human hosts through the skin and circulate throughout the body, damaging multiple organs, including the liver, intestine, bladder and urethra. When these larvae reach blood vessels connecting the intestines to the liver, they mature into adult worms. They then release eggs that are excreted when the infected person defecates, continuing the transmission cycle.

Since diagnosis currently relies on detecting eggs in feces, doctors usually miss the early stages of infection. By the time eggs are detected, patients have already reached an advanced stage of the disease. Because diagnosis rates are poor, public health officials typically mass-administer the drug praziquantel to populations in affected regions. However, praziquantel cannot clear juvenile worms in early stages of infection, nor can it prevent reinfection.

Schistosomiasis isn’t usually diagnosed until the late stages of the disease.
DPDx/CDC

Our study provides a clear path forward to improving early detection and diagnosis by identifying the hidden information in blood that signals active, early stage infection.

Your body responds to a schistosomiasis infection by mounting an immune response involving several types of immune cells, as well as antibodies specifically targeting molecules secreted by or present on the worm and eggs. Our study introduces two ways to screen for certain characteristics of antibodies that signal early infection.

The first is an assay that captures a quantitative and qualitative profile of immune response, including various classes of antibodies and characteristics that dictate how they communicate with other immune cells. This allowed us to identify specific facets of the immune response that distinguish uninfected patients from patients with early and late-stage disease.

Second, we developed a new machine learning approach that analyzes antibodies to identify latent characteristics of the immune response linked to disease stage and severity. We trained the model on immune profile data from infected and uninfected patients and tested the model on data that wasn’t used for training and data from a different geographical location. We identified not only biomarkers for the disease but also the potential mechanism that underlies infection.

Why it matters

Schistosomiasis is a neglected tropical disease that affects over 200 million people worldwide, causing 280,000 deaths annually. Early diagnosis can improve treatment effectiveness and prevent severe disease.

In addition, unlike many machine learning methods that are black boxes, our approach is also interpretable. This means it can provide insights into why and how the disease develops beyond simply identifying markers of disease, guiding future strategies for early diagnosis and treatment.

Clusters of Schistosoma haematobium eggs surrounded by immune cells in bladder tissue.
CDC/Dr. Edwin P. Ewing Jr.

What still isn’t known

The schistosomiasis infection signatures we identified remain stable across two geographical regions across two continents. Future research could explore how well these biomarkers apply to additional populations.

Further, our work identifies a potential mechanism behind disease progression. We found that a particular immune response against a specific protein on the surface of the worm signals an intermediate stage of infection. Understanding how the immune system responds to this understudied antigen could improve diagnosis and treatment.

What’s next

Besides improving our understanding of how the immune system responds to different stages of infection, our findings identify key antigens that could pave the way for designing cost-effective and efficient approaches to diagnosis and treatments. Our next steps will include actually deploying these strategies in the field for early detection and management of disease.

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

A growing number of students in public schools – right now, about 15% of them – are eligible for special education services. These services include specially designed instruction for students with autism, learning or physical disabilities, or traumatic brain injuries. But going into the current school year, more than half of U.S. public schools anticipate being short-staffed in special education. Dr. Kimber Wilkerson, a professor of special education and department chair at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, explains why there’s a shortage and what needs to be done to close the gap.

Dr. Kimber Wilkerson discusses the special education teacher shortage.

The Conversation has collaborated with SciLine to bring you highlights from the discussion, which have been edited for brevity and clarity.

Which students receive special education services?

Kimber Wilkerson: Students with a disability label receive special education services. They need these additional services and sometimes instruction in school so they can access the curriculum and thrive like their peers.

What is happening with staffing for special education?

Wilkerson: Since special education became a thing in the ’70s, there have always been challenges in filling all the special education positions.

In the past 10 years preceding the COVID-19 pandemic, those challenges started to increase. There were more open positions in special education at the beginning of each school year than in previous decades. In the 2023-24 school year, 42 states plus the District of Columbia reported teacher shortages in special education.

What is causing these shortages?

Wilkerson: One, there are fewer young people choosing teaching as a major in college and as a profession. And special education is affected by these lower rates more than other forms of education.

Also, there’s more attrition – people leaving their teaching job sooner than you might expect – not because they’re retiring, but because they are tired of the job.

They want to do something different. They want to go back to school. Sometimes it’s life circumstances, but the number of people leaving the job before retirement age has increased. And in our state, Wisconsin, about 35% of all educators leave the field before they hit their fifth year.

That number is even higher for special educators. About half of special educators are out of the profession within five years.

Why do special education teachers leave the profession?

Wilkerson: There’s not a national study that speaks to that reason. There are some localized studies, and people report things like too much paperwork or too many administrative tasks associated with the job. Sometimes they report the students’ behavioral challenges. Sometimes it’s a feeling of isolation, or a lack of support from the school.

How are students with disabilities affected when their school does not have enough special educators?

Wilkerson: In a school that’s one special educator short, the other special educators have to take over that caseload. Instead of having 12 students on their caseload, maybe now they have 20. So, the amount of individual attention given to each student with a disability decreases.

Also, when teachers with experience leave the profession, they leave behind a less experienced group of teachers. This means the students are losing out on the benefit of those years of wisdom and experience.

What are some strategies to recruit and retain more special education teachers?

Wilkerson: There’s a range of strategies that different universities, states and school districts have taken, like residency programs.

In these programs, the person who is learning to be a teacher, and who is referred to as a teaching resident, works alongside a mentor teacher for an entire year in a school, and they get paid to do so. They’re not the teacher of record, but they’re learning and getting paid, and they’re in that school community.

Can you tell us about your recent study on supporting new special education teachers?

Wilkerson: One thing that made a big difference is when the teachers in our study, which is now under review, had access to a mentor and a group of their peers. We called this facilitated peer-to-peer group of teachers a “community of practice.” Every other week, on Zoom, we’d get these new special education teachers from different school districts together, along with experienced teachers. And they would do some sort of work on problems, bringing in the things that were challenging, and work on possible solutions as a group.

We also used Zoom to do one-on-one mentoring. And what people liked about it was that they could talk to someone who wasn’t right in their building and right in their district who they could be open and vulnerable with.

Sometimes, special educators can be isolated because they’re not necessarily a part of a grade-level team. They work with kids across a lot of classrooms. This gave them an opportunity to have their own kind of community, and that made a difference.

We also surveyed their level of burnout and how good they felt about the job they did. And then we surveyed special education teachers who weren’t participating in our community of practice.

At the end of the year, those people who had that mentoring and the community of practice felt less burnt out, and they also felt more effective in the area of classroom management. And that’s critical, because burnout is one of the primary reasons people leave the profession.

So if we can make people feel like they’re better equipped to handle this challenging position, then that’s one strategy to increase the number of people wanting to stay in their job year after year.

Watch the full interview to hear more.

SciLine is a free service based at the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a nonprofit that helps journalists include scientific evidence and experts in their news stories. Läs mer…

Psychologists know that childhood trauma, or the experience of harmful or adverse events, can have lasting repercussions on the health and well-being of people well into adulthood. But while the consequences of early adversity have been well researched in humans, people aren’t the only ones who can experience adversity.

If you have a rescue dog, you probably have witnessed how the abuse or neglect it may have experienced earlier in life now influence its behavior – these pets tend to be more skittish or reactive. Wild animals also experience adversity. Although their negative experiences are easy to dismiss as part of life in the wild, they still have lifelong repercussions – just like traumatic events in people and pets.

As behavioral ecologists, we are interested in how adverse experiences early in life can affect animals’ behavior, including the kinds of decisions they make and the way they interact with the world around them. In other words, we want to see how these experience affect the way they behave and survive in the wild.

Many studies in humans and other animals have shown the importance of early life experiences in shaping how individuals develop. But researchers know less about how multiple, different instances of adversity or stressors can accumulate within the body and what their overall impact is on an animal’s well-being.

Wild populations face many kinds of stressors. They compete for food, risk getting eaten by a predator, suffer illness and must contend with extreme weather conditions. And as if life in the wild wasn’t hard enough, humans are now adding additional stressors such as chemical, light and sound pollution, as well as habitat destruction.

Given the widespread loss of biodiversity, understanding how animals react to and are harmed by these stressors can help conservation groups better protect them. But accounting for such a diversity of stressors is no easy feat. To address this need and demonstrate the cumulative impact of multiple stressors, our research team decided to develop an index for wild animals based on psychological research on human childhood trauma.

A cumulative adversity index

Developmental psychologists began to develop what psychologists now call the adverse childhood experiences score, which describes the amount of adversity a person experienced as a child. Briefly, this index adds up all the adverse events – including forms of neglect, abuse or other household dysfunction – an individual experienced during childhood into a single cumulative score.

This score can then be used to predict later-life health risks such as chronic health conditions, mental illness or even economic status. This approach has revolutionized many human health intervention programs by identifying at-risk children and adults, which allows for more targeted interventions and preventive efforts.

So, what about wild animals? Can we use a similar type of score or index to predict negative survival outcomes and identify at-risk individuals and populations?

These are the questions we were interested in answering in our latest research paper. We developed a framework on how to create a cumulative adversity index – similar to the adverse childhood experiences score, but for populations of wild animals. We then used this index to gain insights about the survival and longevity of yellow-bellied marmots. In other words, we wanted to see whether we could use this index to estimate how long a marmot would live.

A marmot case study

Yellow-bellied marmots are a large ground squirrel closely related to groundhogs. Our research group has been studying these marmots in Colorado at the Rocky Mountain Biological Laboratory since 1962.

A marmot wearing an ear tag.
Xochitl Ortiz Ross

Yellow-bellied marmots are an excellent study system because they are diurnal, or active during the day, and they have an address. They live in burrows scattered across a small, defined geographical area called a colony. The size of the colony and the number of individuals that reside within varies greatly from year to year, but they are normally composed of matrilines, which means related females tend to remain within the natal colony, while male relatives move away to find a new colony.

Yellow-bellied marmots hibernate for most of the year, but they become active between April and September. During this active period, we observe each colony daily and regularly trap each individual in the population – that’s over 200 unique individuals just in 2023. We then mark their backs with a distinct symbol and give them uniquely numbered ear tags so they can be later identified.

Although they can live up to 15 years, we have detailed information about the life experiences of individual marmots spanning almost 30 generations. They were the perfect test population for our cumulative adversity index.

Among the sources of adversity, we included ecological measures such as a late spring, a summer drought and high predator presence. We also included parental measures such as having an underweight or stressed mother, being born or weaned late, and losing their mother. The model also included demographic measures such as being born in a large litter or having many male siblings.

Importantly, we looked only at females, since they are the ones who tend to stay home. Therefore, some of the adversities listed are only applicable to females. For example, females born in litters with many males become masculinized, likely from the high testosterone levels in the mother’s uterus. The females behave more like males, but this also reduces their life span and reproductive output. Therefore, having many male siblings is harmful to females, but maybe not to males.

A yellow-bellied marmot shown on a trail camera in Montana.

So, does our index, or the number of adverse events a marmot experienced early on, explain differences in marmot survival? We found that, yes, it does.

Experiencing even just one adversity event before age 2 nearly halved an adult marmot’s odds of survival, regardless of the type of adversity they experienced. This is the first record of lasting negative consequences from losing a mother in this species.

So what?

Our study isn’t the only one of its kind. A few other studies have used an index similar to the human adverse childhood experiences score with wild primates and hyenas, with largely similar results. We are interested in broadening this framework so that other researchers can adopt it for the species they study.

A better understanding of how animals can or cannot cope with multiple sources of adversity can inform wildlife conservation and management practices. For example, an index like ours could help identify at-risk populations that require a more immediate conservation action.

Instead of tackling the one stressor that seems to have the greatest effect on a species, this approach could help managers consider how best to reduce the total number of stressors a species experiences.

For example, changing weather patterns driven by global heating trends may create new stressors that a wildlife manager can’t address. But it might be possible to reduce how many times these animals have to interact with people during key times of the year by closing trails, or providing extra food to replace the food they lose from harsh weather.

While this index is still in early development, it could one day help researchers ask new questions about how animals adapt to stress in the wild. Läs mer…

Curious Kids is a series for children of all ages. If you have a question you’d like an expert to answer, send it to curiouskidsus@theconversation.com.

Is a zombie apocalypse caused by fungi, like the Cordyceps from “The Last of Us,” something that could realistically happen? – Jupiter, age 15, Ithaca, New York

Zombies strike fear into our hearts – and if they’re persistent, eventually they get inside our heads. Animals taken over by zombies no longer control their own bodies or behaviors. Instead, they serve the interests of a master, whether it’s a virus, fungus or some other harmful agent.

The term “zombi” comes from Vodou, a religion that evolved in the Caribbean nation of Haiti. But the idea of armies of undead, brain-eating human zombies comes from movies, such as “Night of the Living Dead,” television shows like “The Walking Dead” and video games like Resident Evil.

Those all are fictional. Nature is where we can find real examples of zombification – one organism controlling another organism’s behavior.

I study fungi, a huge biological kingdom that includes molds, mildews, yeasts, mushrooms and zombifying fungi. Don’t worry – these “brain-eating organisms” tend to target insects.

The fungus Ophiocordyceps unilateralis infects and kills ants. Over time, they can diminish the local ant population.

Insect body snatchers

One of the most famous examples is the zombie ant fungus, Ophiocordyceps unilateralis, which is part of a larger group known as Cordyceps fungi. This fungus inspired the video game and HBO series “The Last of Us,” in which a widespread fungal infection turns people into zombie-like creatures and causes society to collapse.

In the real world, ants usually comes into contact with this fungus when spores – pollen-size reproductive particles that the fungus makes – fall onto the ant from a tree or plant overhead. The spores penetrate the ant’s body without killing it.

Once inside, the fungus spreads in the form of a yeast. The ant stops communicating with nestmates and staggers around aimlessly. Eventually it becomes hyperactive.

Finally, the fungus causes the ant to climb up a plant and lock onto a leaf or a stem with its jaws – a behavior called summiting. The fungus changes into a new phase and consumes the ant’s organs, including its brain. A stalk erupts from the dead insect’s head and produces spores, which fall onto healthy ants below, starting the cycle again.

A citrus cicada nymph infected with Ophiocordyceps sobolifera. The nymph lives underground, but the fungus ensures that it ‘summits’ to just below the soil line, so that its stalks (pink) and spores find their way above ground.
Matt Kasson, CC BY-ND

Scientists have described countless species of Ophiocordyceps. Each one is tiny, with a very specialized lifestyle. Some live only in specific areas: for example, Ophiocordyceps salganeicola, a parasite of social cockroaches, is found only in Japan’s Ryukyu Islands. I expect that there are many more species around the world awaiting discovery.

The zombie cicada fungus, Massospora cicadina, has also received a lot of attention in recent years. It infects and controls periodical cicadas, which are cicadas that live underground and emerge briefly to mate on 13- or 17-year cycles.

The fungus keeps the cicadas energized and flying around, even as it consumes and replaces their rear ends and abdomens. This prolonged “active host” behavior is rare in fungi that invade insects. Massospora has family members that target flies, moths, millipedes and soldier beetles, but they cause their hosts to summit and die, like ants affected by Ophiocordyceps.

The real fungal threats

These diverse morbid partnerships – relationships that lead to death – were formed and refined over millions of years of evolutionary time. A fungus that specializes in infecting and controlling ants or cicadas would have to evolve vastly new tools over millions more years to be able to infect even another insect, even one that’s closely related, let alone a human.

In my research, I’ve collected and handled hundreds of living and dead zombie cicadas, as well as countless fungus-infected insects, spiders and millipedes. I’ve dissected hundreds of specimens and uncovered fascinating aspects of their biology. Despite this prolonged exposure, I still control my own behavior.

Dozens of Massospora cicadina-infected 13-year cicadas being prepared for drying and analyzing in Matt Kasson’s mycology lab at West Virginia University.
Matt Kasson, CC BY-ND

Some fungi do threaten human health. Examples include Aspergillus fumigatus and Cryptococcus neoformans, both of which can invade people’s lungs and cause serious pneumonia-like symptoms. Cryptococcus neoformans can spread outside the lungs into the central nervous system and cause symptoms such as neck stiffness, vomiting and sensitivity to light.

Invasive fungal diseases are on the rise worldwide. So are common fungal infections, such as athlete’s foot – a rash between your toes – and ringworm, a rash that despite its name is caused by a fungus.

Fungi thrive in perpetually warm and wet environments. You can protect yourself against many of them by showering after you get sweaty or dirty and not sharing sports gear or towels with other people.

Not all fungi are scary, and even the alarming ones won’t turn you into the walking dead. The closest you’re likely to come to a zombifying fungus is through watching scary movies or playing video games.

If you’re lucky, you might find a zombie ant or fly in your own neighborhood. And if you think they’re cool, you could become a scientist like me and spend your life seeking them out.

Hello, curious kids! Do you have a question you’d like an expert to answer? Ask an adult to send your question to CuriousKidsUS@theconversation.com. Please tell us your name, age and the city where you live.

And since curiosity has no age limit – adults, let us know what you’re wondering, too. We won’t be able to answer every question, but we will do our best. Läs mer…

Social class continues to influence British people’s opportunities and the way they think about them, even if the boundaries between those classes have shifted.

In the third part of Know Your Place: what happened to class in British politics, a podcast series from The Conversation Documentaries, we explore how class is defined and measured, and how the UK’s changing class identity interacts with identity politics.

Over the course of the last half century, there’s been a big shift in the make up of the labour market, and a decline in what are traditionally considered working class jobs, such as in manufacturing. And yet, data from the annual British Social Attitudes (BSA) survey run by the National Centre for Social Research, found that 52% of people identify as working class compared with 43% who identify as middle class.

According to Oliver Heath, professor of politics at Royal Holloway University of London, who co-authored the chapter on class for the BSA report in 2023, people still think about themselves in class terms to exactly the same degree as they did 40 years ago.

There’s been no decline in terms of whether people think of themselves as identifying with a class, and no decline in whether they identify with being working class or not. So that seems remarkably stable and if anything showed some signs of actually increasing.

The growth of self-employment, and in particular the gig economy, has disrupted the UK’s traditional class structure, according to Daniel Evans, a lecturer of criminology, sociology and social policy at Swansea University.

The size of the formally self-employed has absolutely exploded. It’s close to about 5 million,  which is coming very close to the size of the entire public sector. This is absolutely unprecedented. In the early 1970s, it was about 1 million self-employed people.

Evans argues this has also muddled what it means to be part of the petit bourgeoisie, someone who own the means of your own production in a Marxist sense.

So many people are doing almost like bogus forms of self-employment. Whereas in the past, lots and lots of people are doing this voluntarily, a lot of working class people aspired to join the ranks of the self-employed because they wanted to be their own boss … more and more people have been forced, basically, into self-employment.

Education, education, education

Amid these shifts, education has become a dominant force in recent years, overriding class defined by occupation or income as the most influential factor in voter behaviour. According to Paula Surridge, professor of political sociology at the University of Bristol, this was true for the Brexit vote too, she says.

Education is a stronger predictor of Brexit vote than class, with those with degree or higher level education more likely to vote remain than those with lower level qualifications. And the reason for that is the Brexit vote was primarily driven by a set of social values that don’t relate to economics.

Town and gown: Britain’s modern political divide.
Shutterstock

This can be a tricky dynamic to talk about. The education divide is not a term intended to deliver a value judgement but describes two distinct experiences of life. The university population in the UK has exploded since the 1990s and going to university has a profound effect on a person’s outlook, according to John Curtice, professor of politics at the University of Strathclyde and senior research fellow at Natcen:

The experience of university, where people get mixed with people from diverse backgrounds, they’re encouraged, particularly in the humanities, to be critically reflective about culture, etc. that that seems to create a rather more socially liberal ambience.

For more analysis, listen to the full episode of Know Your Place: what happened to class in British politics on The Conversation Documentaries.

A transcript is available on Apple Podcasts.

Know Your Place: what happened to class in British politics is produced and mixed by Anouk Millet for The Conversation. It’s supported by the National Centre for Social Research.

Newsclips in the episode from BBC Newsnight, Financial Times, The Frost Report, CBC News, Sky News, France24 English, AP Archive, BBC News, Official Jeremy Corbyn Channel and Channel 4 News.

Listen to The Conversation Documentaries via any of the apps listed above, download it directly via our RSS feed or find out how else to listen here. Läs mer…

The first anniversary of the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel and the beginning of conflict in Gaza left UK schools with a dilemma: how to mark the event. It has affected many around the world, including school children and their families in the UK.

Earlier in 2024, government adviser on social cohesion, Sara Khan, suggested that schools were not supporting reasonable debate about the Israel-Gaza conflict because teachers are nervous about handling such a sensitive topic in the classroom.

But if schools shut down the topic they risk encouraging mistrust, anger, hate and polarisation. Not least because students will instead seek out information online – and are quite likely to stumble upon fake news and conspiracy theories.

The leader of the UK’s biggest education union, Daniel Kebede, recently noted that there simply isn’t enough space in the curriculum for students to discuss such difficult issues. He claims the solution is to embed philosophy as a subject across England’s school curriculum.

The subject of philosophy is specifically set up to promote critical thinking skills and teach people how to have difficult conversations about controversial issues.

Teaching controversial topics

Controversial and sensitive topics are unavoidable. We encounter them discussed in the media, on the news, in the street and in our homes. Yet we are not always sure what to think, especially when the issue is complex, or how to talk to people we disagree with. And the skills of reasonable dialogue can be even harder when emotions are running high.

Young people need to learn how to discuss controversial issues like the Israel-Gaza war. The best way to do this is by including philosophy on the curriculum. Philosophy has an excellent toolkit designed to explore various points of view in a critically engaged way and, when taught dialogically – through discussion between students and teachers – students become seekers of shared knowledge and wisdom.

A key aspect of a democracy involves welcoming different ideas. Such diversity is a strength because it allows for many claims to be scrutinised, with only the best arguments gaining traction. Yet this process of sharing ideas requires our citizens to be able to hold reasoned discussions and to think critically.

The ability to hold reasoned, critical discussion is a valuable skill.
fizkes/Shutterstock

To avoid aggression or chaos, people need to engage charitably with one another, being respectful of various experiences and perspectives while also being critical of the ideas presented.

The dialogical skills of philosophy

Philosophy, more than any other subject, encourages students to think about the reasons why they think something, and entertain the possibility that there are other points of view.

Philosophy is inherently dialogical. The most common teaching approach is to think about the steps in an argument, and then to consider the weaknesses in each of these.

Philosophy does this by teaching students to check: What assumptions am I making? Are the premises of my position sound? Does the conclusion logically follow from my starting point? What is a counterargument or counterexample to which I need to reply? Could I be wrong about this? What additional information do I need to draw a conclusion?

These kinds of questions encourage intellectual humility: the idea that I, like anyone else, could be wrong. Intellectual humility goes hand in hand with open-mindedness, ensuring we remain open to relevant new information.

Such skills of critical thinking and respectful disagreement are vital in a time of disinformation and fake news. Not only do we need young people to learn how to fact check and be critical of what they see and hear, but we also need them to learn that it is OK to disagree.

Being open-minded

The influential American philosopher Daniel Dennett, who died earlier this year, wrote about the importance of criticising with kindness and seeking the most charitable version of your opponent’s position. This is so important when discussing controversial topics, because reasonable people will disagree.

Criticising with kindness means staying humble and open to different points of view when having difficult conversations. And it means creating space for the airing of diverse arguments and examples. In this way, teachers who are trained in philosophy are able to remain politically neutral while helping students converse with one another about important issues that affect them and those they care about.

Philosophy is about learning to be respectful of others whose views differ from one’s own and to accept reasonable disagreement. It also teaches us to be comfortable with unsettled questions and complex answers. Teaching philosophy in the classroom leads to students engaging with ideas charitably and critically, encouraging open-mindedness and intellectual humility.

It is the skills of dialogue that we need as our society faces increasing polarisation and violent disagreement. These skills are some of the defining characteristics of a democracy. Happily, teachers are uniquely positioned to embrace the subject of philosophy and the skills it has to offer. Läs mer…