Eve Brank, Aaron Douglas Professor of psychology, was a guest on WBUR’s “On Point” program on April 1, where the topic was whether holding parents criminally responsible for their children’s actions could curb gun violence in the United States. She outlined the history of parental liability and involvement laws in the country and suggested that some people favor help over punishment to prevent terrible things from happening. “I think that that could be one argument or one proposal would be to really just focus on prevention and services and help rather than on the punishment side.” The program was picked up by several other radio stations.
Brank was also interviewed for an April 9 Al Jazeera article on the topic. Brank said there is a “very large gap” between the punishments for parents in past cases and the Crumbley case. She also cautioned that there has not been research conducted to determine if punishing parents will serve as a deterrent for others. “I think [this case] still begs the question whether this will give us the result we want,” she said. “So I still would advocate for more empirical research on the topic.”
After two months of challenging field research in a northern Mississippi forest, Noori Choi has created a proof-of-concept for documenting the vibroscape: the ground-bound realm of vibrations that spiders, insects and an estimated quintillion other arthropods employ to court mates, hunt prey and escape predators. Choi was a doctoral student in biological sciences at Nebraska at the time of the research. Popular Science published an April 2 article on the research.
John Hibbing, professor emeritus of political science, was interviewed for an April 15 Independent article on former President Donald Trump verbally attacking judges, prosecutors and others involved in the legal cases against him. Hibbing stressed that people are predisposed to feel one of two ways. “Some people want to embrace outsiders and they welcome immigrants and new ideas and new faces and new things, and other people react very strongly against that — they want to preserve this ethos, whether it be Brexit in the U.K. or Donald Trump in the United States.” Yahoo! News picked up the article.
Hibbing was also interviewed for an April 22 U.S. News and World Report article on the electoral battleground of Douglas County. “Biden is quite likely to win Douglas County,” he said. “The real question is whether he will win it by enough to win the district. My hunch is that he will. The district as a whole probably leans conservative, but not ‘Trump conservative.’”
Sergio Wals, political science, appeared on Noticias Univision’s YouTube channel on April 25 to discuss the results of a BSP Research poll indicating how eligible U.S.-based Mexican voters view their homeland’s 2024 presidential election. The polling project was commissioned by Wals and Xavier Medina Vidal, associate professor and director of the Center for Mexican American Studies at the University of Texas at Arlington.
Lisa Kort-Butler, sociology, was interviewed for an April 29 Big Think article titled “Is the U.S. becoming more paranoid?” She said that many Americans think crime rates are going up, which is not true in the last couple of decades. She stressed that this leads many people to misjudge the risk of becoming a crime victim and act accordingly. She encouraged people to think critically about where they get their information.
