From the Editors Archives - Page 96 of 171

Feature

The Curious Case of the Growing Placebo Effect

Evidence suggests that placebo effects are becoming more powerful

March 19, 2018 • by Jeremy Safran

Over the last several years evidence has been accumulating that placebo effects are becoming more powerful. Clinical trials on a range of medications used for treating both psychological and medical problems, are finding that differences in the magnitude of their impact relative to placebos are decreasing in size. For example, in ...

The Curious Case of the Growing Placebo Effect

Education

Concerns about Proposed Elimination of the History Major at University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point

An open letter

March 18, 2018 • by Mary Beth Norton

Provost Greg Summers University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point Academic Affairs Room 202 Old Main, 2100 Main Street Stevens Point, WI 54481-3897 gsummers@uwsp.edu Dean Eric Yonke University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point College of Letters and Science 130 Collins Classroom Center 1801 Fourth Avenue Stevens Point, WI 54481 eyonke@uwsp.edu Dear Provost Summers and Dean Yonke: The American Historical Association is deeply concerned about the recently announced plans to ...

Concerns about Proposed Elimination of the History Major at University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point

Feature

Lamb’s Victory and the 1974 Precedent

What the past may predict for the 2018 mid-terms

March 18, 2018 • by John Lawrence

Conor Lamb’s improbable but likely victory in Tuesday’s congressional race in the 18th district of Pennsylvania raises comparisons to the 1974 victories of Democratic candidates running in traditionally Republican districts. The significance of those earlier upsets as precursors to a November wave victory, is recounted in my just-published book, The Class of ...

Feature

Trump’s Tariffs, Weight Watchers for Teenagers, Disneyland Workers

Past Present Episode 122

March 17, 2018 • by Natalia Mehlman Petrzela, Nicole Hemmer and Neil J. Young

In this episode, Natalia, Neil, and Niki debate President Trump’s proposed tariffs, Weight Watchers’ bid for teenage dieters, and Disneyland’s underpaid workers.

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Trump’s Tariffs, Weight Watchers for Teenagers, Disneyland Workers

Feature

Understanding Media in Dark Times

The extensions of men and women

March 16, 2018 • by Jeffrey C. Goldfarb

The authoritarian threat in the United States and its resistance are actively being constituted through media, and the whole world is not only watching: it is actively participating. The Presidency of Donald Trump is not imaginable without Twitter. But also Black Lives Matter, #MeToo, and, this week, the nation wide walk ...

Feature

The Thick Line

On the impossibility of coming to terms with a dark past

March 16, 2018 • by Santiago Mandirola

"We split away the history of our recent past with a thick line. We will be responsible only for what we have done to help extract Poland from her current predicament from now on." – Tadeusz Masowiecki As Poland’s first post-Communist prime minister Tadeusz Mazowiecki sought to draw a thick line between the ...

Feature

Why Alexey Navalny is Important in Russia and the World

A look at how Navalny challenges Putin’s regime

March 15, 2018 • by Regina Smyth

The Kremlin’s political machine is shaping popular expectations about March 18th’s presidential election in Russia. For more than a year prior to the vote, the outcome of this election has been clear. In late 2016, First Deputy Head of the Presidential Administration Sergei Kiriyenko announced that President Putin would be ...

Why Alexey Navalny is Important in Russia and the World

Education

Analytic or Continental?

The psychology of becoming a philosopher in the 21st century

March 15, 2018 • by Reinier Hoon

Divorce need not be a tragedy. Things do turn messy, however, when parents force their kids to take sides: for one and against the other. We philosophers who are coming of age in the 21st century find ourselves, unfortunately, subject to such an unhappy circumstance. To become a philosopher today implies ...

Feature

Bannon at Booth

A conflict between principle and strategy?

March 15, 2018 • by Michael Weinman

Bannon, surely, needs no introduction, nor need we long belabor the reasons why the decision to invite him to speak at the University of Chicago proved controversial. Still, let’s note that in a letter of protest signed by over 100 members of the University of Chicago faculty, the rationale for objecting to ...

Feature

Pennsylvania Had a Little Lamb

A special election in PA-18 shows the limits of Trumpism

March 14, 2018 • by Claire Potter

I didn't stay up last night to see Conor Lamb bring the eighteenth Pennsylvania congressional district back to the Democrats. I think this result will stand, although I think we have to presume that if the final margin is under 1,000 votes, the lawyers will go to work on it, creating ...

Feature

Billy Graham, High School Activism, and Teachers’ Strikes

Past Present Episode 121

March 14, 2018 • by Natalia Mehlman Petrzela, Nicole Hemmer and Neil J. Young

In this episode, Neil, Natalia, and Niki debate the life and ministry of Billy Graham, youth activism after the Parkland shootings, and the West Virginia teachers’ strike.

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