When the late film producer Julia Phillips published her 1991 expose of Hollywood's depravity in the 1970s and 1980s, she chose a title that correctly forecasted the movie establishment's retributive response. "You'll Never Eat Lunch in This Town Again" was summed up by one Hollywood power broker as "the longest suicide note in history."

It wasn't the best of weeks for President Donald Trump. On Friday, he proclaimed it a "great day" for George Floyd, who had been murdered by Minneapolis police the week before. "Hopefully George is looking down right now and saying 'This is a great thing that's happening to our country,'" said Trump as Americans took to the streets in all 50 states to protest the persistence and scope of American racism, and as tens of millions remained jobless.

One of the most terrifying aspects of pathogens like the novel coronavirus is that they do not respect borders. Yet borders determine our vulnerability to infectious diseases. Today, governmental efforts have meant that citizens within certain national boundaries—like New Zealand or Vietnam—are much less likely to suffer from COVID-19.

Juliet Hooker, Professor of Political Science, discusses Black Lives Matter protests, asymmetrical perceptions of violence, and the role that images play in our politics.

In the Amereican Political Science Association's Comparative Politics 2020 Spring Newsletter, Professor Prerna Singh gives her take on COVID-19 and intergroup relations. Singh compares the impact of the ongoing pandemic to those of the past, specifically focusing on the evident increase in xenophobia. Read the full Q&A.

In a country claiming to be the first in the world to be founded on equality, why have black lives been so cheap? Can black Americans ever be treated with equality and dignity, instead of being brutalised?

Congratulations to all of the 2020 Political Science graduates

Until recently, it had been Sen. Joseph McCarthy who was the poster child for the thuggish impulse that occasionally rears its head in America — ebbing here, flowing there, but always present. If he has accomplished nothing else, President Donald Trump has supplanted McCarthy as the embodiment of the American thug, rising and reigning with the help of those who either thrill to his bullying or lack the courage to challenge it.

On March 13, following the U.S. House of Representatives passage of emergency relief legislation to support those most affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., recessed the Senate so he could fly to Louisville to celebrate the installation of one of his proteges, 37 year old Justin Walker, as a federal judge in Kentucky.

Doctor of Philosopy

Poverty in Pakistan may more than double, from 23% to 57%, as a result of the Covid-19 shock, according to one estimate from the Pakistan Institute of Development Economics. This is a dire picture and has the potential to undo much of the progress in poverty reduction that has occurred in Pakistan, particularly over the past two decades, unless urgent action is taken by the federal government.

The analogy of the COVID-19 crisis as war is inescapable. At first, the comparison seems apt: the disease’s global reach, the death toll, the active “threat” of the virus, and the public sacrifice required to fight it seem more similar to a global war than to a geographically confined natural disaster, constitutional crisis, or another form of sudden, transnational change.

In 1967, an unknown 38-year-old civil rights activist from New York took it upon himself to change the world, and then he did. Allard Lowenstein, a Yale-educated lawyer who had steadfastly avoided practicing law and was proud of having done so, was already a master of the quixotic. He had smuggled searing evidence about apartheid out of South Africa, managing to present it at the United Nations and forcing the United States to distance itself from its South African ally. Calling upon his credibility on campuses across America, he had spearheaded Freedom Summer, which drew hundreds of volunteers to Mississippi to register black voters in 1964.

The coronavirus pandemic death toll rises above 82,000 Americans. The administration continues to fumble the response leaving the nation’s governors on their own to design fifty separate strategies.

It is with great pleasure that we announce the winners of the 2020 DIAP Community Awards. The Office of Institutional Equity and Diversity, with generous support from the President’s Office, instituted the DIAP Community Awards in 2018. These awards recognize students, staff, and faculty as well as an administrative and academic department within our Brown community who have used the DIAP as a vehicle to actively create positive change within their departments, programs, and beyond. These awards are highly competitive and selections were made from a pool of exceptional candidates who were nominated by other members of the Brown community.

For some leaders, personal responsibility in disregarding warnings of an impending pandemic that has now killed 80,000 Americans and cratered the economy might stimulate reflection about the national good. Not so for Donald Trump, whose disastrous presidency continues to capsize the democratic institutions on which we have prided ourselves.

Professor Rose McDermott examines how leaders have dealt with illness during their time in office and how this impacts their leadership.

Before the pandemic struck, Sara Blazey made the same three-hour commute to work, three days a week, for the better part of 12 years. The 63-year-old family lawyer from the Blue Mountains works for a domestic violence legal advice hotline in Parramatta and it used to be that she would wake at 7am, drive seven minutes to Hazelbrook station and from there catch the 7.17am train to Parramatta before making the same one-and-a-half hour trip home in the evening.

Is a country that’s had a successful revolution doomed to endlessly re-enact it? In this episode, Adam talks to Professor Margaret Weir (Brown University and Oxford) about why anti-lockdown protests take the form they do in America: armed men entering legislatures and the waving of flags with the slogan "Don't Tread on Me".

As concern over Covid-19 shifts from a global health crisis to a global economic crisis we speak to political scientist Mark Blyth, author of the forthcoming book 'Angrynomics' about what this pandemic really means for the economy. How long can we afford lockdown? Is it time to abandon globalisation? And can our economies ever return to 'normal'? Mark Blyth was interviewed by Anne McElvoy, senior editor at The Economist and head of Economist Radio. You can find more about his forthcoming book here: https://amzn.to/3aP7ePH Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/intelligencesquared.

We should not only expect that labour flows will now be more strictly regulated than before. But also more than ever before in recent decades, Western investors will also have to factor in political risks in their investment decision-making.

This April, instead of submitting tax returns to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) as usual, many Americans were waiting for the IRS to send them cash payments as part of a coronavirus relief package. On April 14, The Washington Post broke the news that the U.S. Treasury Department had made an “unprecedented” decision that stimulus checks sent via postal mail would carry the words “President Donald J. Trump” printed on the memo line — the first time in U.S. history a president’s name appeared on an IRS check.

Every 10 years, the US government has taken a census of the country, then adjusted the number of Congressional seats for each state. After, states redrew the lines of House districts. Now, in the midst of the pandemic, the Census Bureau is asking for more time to complete in-person counting, thus delaying the information given to the states for redistricting.

Rich Arenberg, Visiting Professor of the Practice of Political Science, Senior Fellow in International and Public Affairs

Isn’t it ironic that bleach, an agent of whitening, may bring about Trump’s downfall? After all he has done for whiteness?

And that television, the medium that gave life to his personal and political ambitions, may be the instrument of his demise?

Rose McDermott, a professor of international relations at Brown University, argued that a lot of threat inflation comes from overrated low probability risks and underrated high probability risks. Things like terrorism or great power wars are low probability risks, but are highly overrated in public perception and public policy. People feared a terrorist incident far more than a global pandemic, even if such a pandemic was much more likely — and ultimately more deadly.

"Democracy is beautiful in theory," wrote Italian dictator Benito Mussolini. "In practice it is a fallacy. You in America will see that one day." The fiery fascist did not have a perfect score in the prognostication department. For example, his decision to ally with Adolf Hitler worked out poorly for him, and he ended up summarily executed by a countryman and hung upside down in a town square.

My dentist frequently reminds me not to grind my teeth. As I watched heroic Wisconsin voters stand in line for hour after hour during a pandemic, I ground harder. As I read the Supreme Court's decision requiring Wisconsin voters to choose between the risk of disease and their right to vote, I clenched my fists. And as I watch as the president on his nightly reality show in the White House press room fumble the chance to lead the nation, it makes my blood boil.

Rob Grace, PhD candidate in Political Science, writes on planning your 'please take social distancing seriously' conversations in The Conversation.

Oil prices have fallen dramatically in 2020, with dire consequences for some countries. The twin shocks of the novel coronavirus and a Russian-Saudi price war drove Brent crude to a low of about $25 a barrel in late March. Since then, prices recovered somewhat on rumors of an OPEC-plus production deal, but the outlook for oil prices remains low. Even if producers cut back significantly, oil prices are unlikely to return to $70 a barrel, as they were in January.

Public health agencies are losing trust, which may be hard to win back.

India's first week of a nationwide 21-day lockdown in response to the coronavirus has shined a brutal spotlight on the plight of the country's most vulnerable citizens.

In April 2020, Susan Moffitt co-edited the volume, "The Politics of the Opioid Epidemic" with Eric Patashnik (Brown University) as well as co-authoring an article in the volume with Paul Testa (Brown University) and Marie Schenk (Brown University). The piece focuses on American policy and practice in response to the epidemic, as well as exploring the question: "Where do we go from here?"

The American Workingmen's Parties in the 1828–32 period occupy a distinctive place within the history of socialism: they were the first to embrace a strategy of organizing a working-class political party and seizing the democratic state for their collective self-liberation. With universal suffrage, a working-class majority could take political power electorally and expropriate the rich. Karl Marx read about these workers’ parties through works by Thomas Hamilton and Thomas Cooper in the period of his early political development.

When it comes to pithy lines about dishonesty, writer Mary McCarthy's takedown of playwright Lillian Hellman remains a timeless classic. "Everything she writes is a lie," said McCarthy, "including 'and' and 'the.'" McCarthy died before Donald Trump became president, and wherever she is, she is undoubtedly glad she did. But any literary exaggeration by Hellman is mere chicken feed compared with the steady flow of falsehoods to which the nation is subjected daily by the president, who's responsible for bringing the word "pathological," previously used only by medical professionals, into common usage. As Trump likes to say: "No one could have imagined it. We've never seen anything like it."

Richard Arenberg, Senior Fellow in International and Public Affairs of the Watson Institute at Brown University, joined Joe Paolino Jr. to discuss the latest political news, the race to determine a Democratic nominee for president, how bipartisanship has fallen out of favor and the continuing situation surrounding the Coronavirus, on the show that aired March 15, 2020 on ABC6.

As the new coronavirus has spread around the world, many people have begun to rely on online maps to understand it. Researchers at Johns Hopkins University used a software package called GIS to create an interactive dashboard with a map, numerical data and charts.

Two years ago, Bernie Sanders journeyed south to trace the history of a past revolution, and to imagine a new one. On April 4, 2018, the 50th anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., thousands of people gathered on Beale Street in Memphis, Tennessee, for a rally and a march. Sanders was one of the speakers.

Katherine Tate: 2020 and the Black Vote

Rich Arenberg: 2020, the filibuster and 34 years working at the US Capitol

Rachel Meade: 2020 and populist movements

On Monday night, the Iowa caucuses ended in chaos. More important, the partial results released on Tuesday suggest that the Democratic path to the White House remains rocky.

The Russell Sage Foundation is pleased to announce the selection of 17 Visiting Scholars for the 2020-2021 academic year. While in residence at RSF in New York City, they will pursue research and writing projects that reflect the foundation’s commitment to strengthening the social sciences and conducting research to “improve social and living conditions in the United States."

Either the NPR journalist is unusually terrible at geography, or the State Department has issued a misleading statement.

Wendy Schiller, Chair of Political Science, Brown University, on the Senate impeachment trial of President Trump. Hosted by Lisa Abramowicz and Paul Sweeney.

They are challenging the BJP's attempts to narrow the national identity.