CENTER FOR THE STUDY OF DIVERSITY AND DEMOCRACY

"Fights over racial justice go back a very long time. As Alvin B. Tillery told TMC readers, many of America’s founding politicians were racist, while the celebrated 19th-century conservative commentator on American politics, Alexis de Tocqueville, said systemic racism was baked into American society. Alan Coffee explained how Frederick Douglass captured America’s political factionalism in a book written 150 years ago; it has always been easier to dominate the Black population than to address the root causes of deep disagreement."

“The last several years in American politics have unfortunately introduced concern about political violence,” said study author James N. Druckman, the Payson S. Wild Professor of Political Science at Northwestern University and author of “Experimental Thinking: A Primer on Social Science Experiments.” “At the same time, the pandemic exacerbated rates of depressive symptoms such that roughly 30% of the population reported such symptoms. We were interested in understanding whether there were conditions under which the two relate to one another – with a very strong conviction that any such relationship is conditional and nuanced.” “Put another way, we are very sensitive to not stigmatizing those who suffer from depression,” Druckman explained. “We thus developed a theory that suggests the relationship depends on conspiratorial thinking and/or a participatory disposition/efficacy.”

As it steers toward a post-pandemic future, Northwestern University faces a set of challenges that would be familiar to the president of any prestigious academic institution in the nation. But Northwestern's new chief, Michael Schill, has a few unique problems on his hands—and how well he deals with them will largely depend on his ability to navigate changes that could fundamentally alter the academic landscape. 

The COVID-19 pandemic highlights the importance of responsive institutions: governments and communities coordinating policy changes; media, social networks, and officials swiftly and accurately conveying information; and an engaged public. This special issue explores social and political factors that both shaped initial response to the pandemic, and were altered by it. Institutional inequalities and variations in government response created significant differences in health outcomes even as the contagious nature of the pandemic linked spaces and people. Thus COVID-19 created new crises, exacerbated inequalities, and led to broad social changes. Social scientists will spend decades unraveling the consequences of COVID-19. This issue challenges scholars to apply existing theories and frameworks, but also to see the pandemic as an event that stimulates us to reevaluate settled paradigms.

Every year, over 1,000 public schools are permanently closed across the United States. And yet, little is known about their impacts on American democracy. Closed for Democracy is the ?rst book to systematically study the political causes and democratic consequences of mass public school closures in the United States. The book investigates the declining presence of public schools in large cities and their impacts on the Americans most directly affected – poor Black citizens. It documents how these mass school closure policies target minority communities, making them feel excluded from the public goods afforded to equal citizens. In response, targeted communities become superlative participators to make their voices heard. Nevertheless, the high costs and low responsiveness associated with the policy process undermines their faith in the power of political participation. Ultimately, the bo

Candidates for this year’s list were evaluated by a panel of expert judges, including Euan Blair, founder of the apprenticeship platform Multiverse; Sally Nuamah, a professor of human development and social policy at Northwestern University, 30 Under 30 list alum and founder of the TWII Foundation; and Michael Crow, president of Arizona State University.

The action on Tuesday is in Illinois, where Amendment 1, the Illinois Right to Collective Bargaining Measure, is on the ballot. One of dozens of important ballot measures this midterm cycle—on issues ranging from abortion rights to marijuana legalization to Medicaid expansion—Amendment 1 is a bold proposal to lock in union rights that could serve as a model for other states going forward. “A big important state like Illinois enshrining this right to their constitution sends a signal across the country that the right to bargain collectively is a fundamental right,” explains Daniel Galvin, a political scientist and faculty fellow at Northwestern University’s Institute for Policy Research.

But the proliferation of these congressional-Republican proposals to write the red-state rules into federal law suggests that this reassertion of states’ rights was just a way station toward restoring common national standards of civil rights and liberties—only in a much more restrictive and conservative direction. “All of these things have been building for years,” Alvin Tillery, the director of the Center for the Study of Diversity and Democracy at Northwestern University, told me. “It’s just that Mr. Trump gave them the idea they can succeed being more [aggressive] in the advocacy of these policies.”

Interestingly, neither Biden nor Harris, who have low approval ratings, were invited by candidates. The visits instead have been driven by the White House. "The White House wants to pitch in areas where they do have a positive impact and I do think the sixth is one of those areas, because every seat's going to matter," said Alvin Tillery, political science professor at Northwestern University. In a statement, the Illinois Republican Party said, "With historic inflation levels fueling rising gas and grocery costs, Democrats in toss-up seats across the country don't want to campaign with President Biden. Forced to defend once reliably safe Democrat seats in the Chicago suburbs, he will see voters' frustrations with his spending agenda firsthand."

Coming out of the pandemic, union support is at a record high. More than 70% of Americans approve of labor unions, a Gallup poll recently found. The outcome of a ballot measure during the midterm election could accelerate that growth: Voters in Illinois will decide whether or not to provide workers with the fundamental right to organize and bargain collectively. If the provision becomes law, “it will demonstrate strong popular support for labor rights in a big, important state,” said Daniel Galvin, an associate professor at Northwestern University whose research areas include workers’ rights and labor politics. “It would also signal to the rest of the country that the right to bargain collectively ought to be seen as a fundamental right worthy of constitutional protection.”

Jaime Dominguez, political science professor at Northwestern University, says social media entities should take responsibility for moderating disinformation on their platforms. “As we’ve known there’s been very little or very lax oversight over those platforms. And so Latinos become very susceptible in that way,” Dominguez said. “When they receive wrong information, then in many ways that can lead them to disengage from policy and politics … so the way I see it, it’s kind of a form of voter suppression.” “Their footprint has become a lot larger and it’s now obviously a huge footprint in the political process. I think they have an obligation to their consumers to make sure that the information that they’re putting out is actually accurate,” Dominguez continued.

Casten's challenger is Orland Park Mayor Keith Pekau. But the incumbent congressman is a new name to 75% of voters in the newly drawn district, most of whom are in the southern suburbs. "Down south, it's always been Republican," said Northwestern University political science professor Jaime Dominguez. "They're going to vote basically, on what everybody's voting on now: inflation, the price of gas, milk, etc. And reproductive rights is now second." Dominguez said there's no public polling in the race to see where things stand. "It's a case study basically in these newly created districts where they are competitive," he said. "Where you have sizable Democratic and Republican registered voters."

Political science Prof. Alvin Tillery, director of the Center for the Study of Diversity and Democracy at Northwestern, said striking down affirmative action will not make admissions truly race-blind due to factors like legacy and athlete recruitment, which traditionally favor white students. “You’re just taking race out of admissions for Blacks, Latinos, Asians and Indigenous Americans,” Tillery said. “We’re not taking it out of the system because all of those other forms of privilege, which accrue to whiteness, are still going to be at play.” Following the oral arguments, Supreme Court experts said the justices seem prepared to strike down affirmative action. The decision for the cases is expected to be released next summer.

James Druckman, one of the study’s researchers, is a Professor of Political Science at Northwestern’s Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences. “Interventions that reduce the extent to which partisans do not like each other do not seem to alter or reduce the extent to which they hold anti-democratic attitudes,” said Druckman. “We need to think about ways to help people see the value of democracy unto itself regardless of party.”

Weinberg freshman Sally Rogal, a self-identified Democrat, said she attended to learn more about the political process. “I like learning more about politics from different perspectives,” she said. “I feel like with the election coming up, it just makes more sense to have political conversations.”

“A big important state like Illinois enshrining this right to their constitution sends a signal across the country that the right to bargain collectively is a fundamental right.” — Northwestern University political scientist Daniel Galvin on the Workers’ Rights Amendment.

In a recent paper with Northwestern University political scientist James Druckman, we found that both Republicans and Democrats think the rival party’s members are 3 to 5 times more supportive of violence — and more willing to behave violently — than the other party’s members actually are. People who hold the largest misperceptions — themselves a troubling symptom of our divided country — are more likely to support the use of violence against their rivals. Unless those false beliefs are corrected, they could become a self-fulfilling prophecy; misperceptions could encourage actual violence intended to preempt this perceived, false, threat from the other side.

Every year, over 1,000 public schools are permanently closed across the United States. And yet, little is known about their impacts on American democracy. Closed for Democracy is the ?rst book to systematically study the political causes and democratic consequences of mass public school closures in the United States. The book investigates the declining presence of public schools in large cities and their impacts on the Americans most directly affected – poor Black citizens. It documents how these mass school closure policies target minority communities, making them feel excluded from the public goods afforded to equal citizens. In response, targeted communities become superlative participators to make their voices heard. Nevertheless, the high costs and low responsiveness associated with the policy process undermines their faith in the power of political participation.

Prof. TIllery is the Director of the Center for the Study of Diversity and Democracy, and has a joint appointment in the Department of African American Studies. He specializes in American politics, focusing on racial and ethnic politics, American political development, and social movements. He is nominated for his work in POLI_SCI 395: Black Political Thought.??Prof. Rogers’ research and teaching focus on complex topics such as the intersection of race, ethnicity, immigration, place, political behavior, and urban politics. Rogers has written numerous publications and a book as well as held various distinguished fellowships. Nominated for his work in POLI_SCI 321: Urban Politics and POLI_SCI 327: African American Politics, one student wrote that Professor Rogers is “incredibly prepared, caring, and detail-oriented” and that they are “so grateful to have learned from him.”

There has long been an assumption that a connection exists between affective polarization (i.e., partisan dislike of those in the other party) and anti-democratic attitudes. For that reason, policymakers and practitioners have focused on depolarization strategies to strengthen democracy. A groundbreaking study published today (Oct. 31) in Nature Human Behavior, tests several depolarization interventions and finds that, while they depolarize, they do not affect anti-democratic attitudes. “Interventions that reduce the extent to which partisans do not like each other do not seem to alter or reduce the extent to which they hold anti-democratic attitudes,” said political scientist James Druckman, one of the study’s researchers. “We need to think about ways to help people see the value of democracy unto itself regardless of party.”

How exactly the Court rules will shape changes to the system going forward, according to Anthony Chen, an associate professor of sociology and affiliated faculty member at the Institute for Policy Research. “I’ll be watching with everyone else to see if the Court throws out affirmative action altogether, or if they strike down the specific programs operated by Harvard and/or UNC because they did not satisfactorily demonstrate that race-neutral alternatives were not workable,” Chen said. “I suppose that it is also conceivable that the Court could choose to define the meaning of a workable, race-neutral alternative in a way that makes it virtually impossible for any school to justify the use of affirmative action going forward.”

In data going back to the 1970s, researchers have found that rising gas prices weigh on presidential approval, above and beyond what we might expect given other economic conditions. That doesn’t mean that people personally blame the president for expensive gas (although some certainly do). Rather, when you encounter those ubiquitous, oversized prices, “it keeps as top of mind things that are not going well in the country, and not going well for you,” said Laurel Harbridge-Yong, a political scientist at Northwestern who has studied the phenomenon. It’s not hard to draw those connections when expensive gas pushes people to forgo vacations, or to curb their grocery spending, or to put off seeing aging parents and grandchildren.

From August 11 to September 13, 2022, the researchers conducted a national survey of 26,616 Americans, and most of those surveyed, or 81%, were aware that the raid had taken place. A large majority of Democrats (84%) supported or strongly supported the search, compared to 13% of Republicans. Among Republicans, 64% opposed or strongly opposed the search, versus 3% of Democrats. Independents were nearly twice as likely to support the search as they were to oppose it. Close to a third, or 32%, of independents strongly supported the search, while almost another third (28%) neither supported nor opposed it. “The partisan gap is of course expected but what is interesting is the view of independents and that more Republicans do not display strong opposition—that is, more than half are not strongly opposed,” said IPR political scientist James Druckman, who co-authored the report.

Key takeaways • A large majority of Americans quickly became aware of the Mar-A-Lago search. Overall, 81 percent reported that they were aware of the search. Additionally, 82 percent of those who took the survey within a week after the search were already aware of it. • Overall, Americans approved of the search by a 51-27 margin. Another 22 percent neither supported nor opposed the search. • Democrats overwhelmingly supported the FBI search of Mar-A-Lago by an 84-3 margin. Over two thirds (69 percent) of Democrats strongly supported the search. • A strong majority of Republicans opposed the search by a 64-13 margin. Additionally, 47 percent of Republicans strongly opposed the search. • Independents were nearly twice as likely to support the search as they were to oppose it, with a 47-24 margin. Close to a third (32 percent) of independents strongly supported the search.

Politics and science have become increasingly intertwined. Salient scientific issues, such as climate change, evolution, and stem-cell research, become politicized, pitting partisans against one another. This creates a challenge of how to effectively communicate on such issues. Recent work emphasizes the need for tailored messages to specific groups. Here, we focus on whether generalized messages also can matter. We do so in the context of a highly polarized issue: extreme COVID-19 vaccine resistance. The results show that science-based, moral frame, and social norm messages move behavioral intentions, and do so by the same amount across the population (that is, homogeneous effects). Counter to common portrayals, the politicization of science does not preclude using broad messages that resonate with the entire population.

We use three large surveys to explore the connection between depression and conspiracy beliefs. We find a consistent association, with the extent of the relationship depending on individual and situational factors. Interestingly, those from relatively advantaged demographic groups (i.e., White, male, high income, educated) exhibit a stronger relationship between depression and conspiracy beliefs than those not from such groups. Furthermore, situational variables that ostensibly increase stress—such as having COVID-19 or parenting during COVID-19—exacerbate the relationship while those that seem to decrease stress, such as social support, vitiate it.

As Republicans have made crime a national issue, Biden’s message that he backs the police could help with those white voters. But it could also turn off younger voters in Senate races in Georgia and Florida who believe the police are part of the problem on civil rights, said Alvin Tillery Jr., a professor at Northwestern University and director of its Center for the Study of Diversity and Democracy. Tillery said he doesn’t know how the president can bridge those differences, though Biden could be in a better position to focus on the policing overhaul that Democrats tried to negotiate with Republicans — only to be unable to reach a consensus that would be able to clear a GOP filibuster. “Maybe they’ve blunted some Republican attacks, but they’ve also softened support for people who turned out for them in the 2020 election,” Tillery said.

One expert said the significance can’t be understated of what it would mean for Illinois to join the short list of states — Missouri, Hawaii and New York — with similar constitutional amendments. “A big important state like Illinois enshrining this right to their constitution sends a signal across the country that the right to bargain collectively is a fundamental right,” said Daniel Galvin, who teaches political science at Northwestern University and is a faculty fellow at the school’s Institute for Policy Research. Predictably, the fight over the Illinois measure has fallen along party lines, with Democrats backing labor and Republicans backing industry.

Campaigning on bipartisanship might seem out of step in what’s often viewed as a hyperpolarized era. But it’s a smart strategy, said Laurel Harbridge-Yong, a political scientist at Northwestern University. The party that controls the White House typically loses seats in a president’s first midterm election, and Biden’s sputtering popularity rating, along with voter concerns about rising costs, has created conditions that benefit Republicans. “Those are all reasons why members in competitive districts want to differentiate themselves from the party and say, 'Hey, you might be frustrated with the Democrats as a whole, but here are reasons why you should still vote for me,’” Harbridge-Yong said. “Individual legislators have a greater incentive to focus on bipartisanship and compromise at a time when being tied to the party is threatening or risky.”

Latino workers are not only disproportionately likely to work in the domestic and agricultural jobs that are not covered by some of the country’s key labor protections, but also are overrepresented in occupations and industries in which outright violations to labor law are high. Research by Janice Fine, Jenn Round, and Hana Shepherd of Rutgers University and Daniel Galvin of Northwestern University shows, for example, that as wage theft rose in tandem with the unemployment rate during the Great Recession of 2007–2009, minimum wage violation rates were highest for workers in private households, membership associations, real estate, food services, and agriculture.

It’s in the best interest of voters to rank all candidates from most- to least-preferred rather than rank a portion of the candidates, explained Northwestern University Political Science Professor James Druckman. The RoundTable spoke with Druckman before Tuesday’s meeting. He was not a speaker at the event. “If there’s somebody you really don’t want to get elected, putting them last, you’d be helping any other candidate beat that candidate,” Druckman said. “So I think it would certainly be in your interest to list them [the voter’s least preferred candidate].” When a voter ranks their least-preferred candidate last, they are not endorsing that candidate, Druckman explained. Whereas, choosing to rank only a portion of the candidates would mean the voter is indifferent to the unranked candidates.

Interestingly, the researchers find a large “partisan approval gap” between Republican and Democratic incumbents, with Republican voters rating Republican governors lower than Democratic voters' ratings of Democratic governors. Independents also contribute to that gap as they tend to assess Democratic governors more highly than Republican ones. “The differences in gubernatorial approval, with Democrats expressing more enthusiasm for their party’s governors than Republicans do for their party’s, could be notably consequential if it influences turnout, said IPR political scientist James Druckman. “And turnout surely will play a crucial role in some of these close races.” Druckman co-authored the report with scholars from Harvard, Rutgers, and Northeastern universities as part of the COVID States Project.

However, we do find substantial overlap between the interventions that affect partisananimosity and those that affect a number of important outcomes, including biased evaluation ofpoliticized facts, general social distrust, and preferences for social distance from outpartisans. Wealso found that support for undemocratic candidates was moved by interventions that affecteither partisan animosity or support for undemocratic practices, suggesting two separate causalpaths. Taken together, our findings provide a toolkit of promising interventions for practitioners,and shed new theoretical light on challenges facing American democracy.

The CSDD’s Evanston Reparations Research Collaborative will examine the ordinance’s impact on public sentiments about race relations within the Evanston community and the functioning of municipal government. The collaborative’s advisory board will bring together city officials, social science researchers and civic leaders to help oversee the project. The research will be conducted by a team of undergraduate students who will work in the field. A graduate student will design and implement the studies, as well as train the field researchers. The collaborative is led by CSDD director Alvin B. Tillery, professor of political science in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences, and a resident of Evanston.

SESP Prof. Tabitha Bonilla said areas with high average incomes and education levels like Evanston tend to see higher voter turnout in general. People in lower-income areas, however, may face various barriers to voting. Hourly wage workers may lose income when taking time off to go vote. People of color are also more likely to encounter difficulties when voting, with Black and Latino voters often facing longer lines at polls, according to recent data from the Brennan Center. “If it is harder for you to vote, it’s less likely that you’re going to be able to,” Bonilla said.

When a majority of council members vote to approve a draft of the budget, it is adopted as policy for the next calendar year. Board member Kimberly Marion Suiseeya suggested implementing an accountability system through a city ordinance, such that the city’s budget is required to include CARP goals for it to be legal and valid. She said this could help reinforce CARP against mission drift and apathy from city officials into the future. “You can’t have it relying on the city manager and the political will of the city council to do these things,” Marion Suiseeya said. “If you have something as ambitious as CARP with no strong implementation mechanisms, then you’re constantly pushing against the forces that don’t necessarily need to be there.”

In 2013, a groundbreaking report from the Environmental Change & Security Program of the Woodrow Wilson Center warned that efforts to cut planet-heating pollution and climate impacts could spark conflict, undercutting development and global security. The “backdraft” dynamic described in that report has since been echoed in concepts like “maladaptation” and “mal-mitigation” - where climate policies produce adverse impacts on marginalized or politically excluded populations.

Alvin Tillery, professor of political science and director of the Center for the Study of Diversity and Democracy at Northwestern University, has long studied racial inequality in the United States. He says the toxic legacy of European and British colonialism is everywhere. “It’s impossible for me to do my work as a scholar of these kinds of modern racial inequalities in America and not see the fingerprints of British colonials everywhere,” said Tillery. “The threads are intimately connected. The American race story starts with the Royal African Company.” The Royal Africa Company was founded in 1660 by the Duke of York, the brother of then King Charles II, who went on to become King James II and transported enslaved people from West Africa to the Americas.

The sacralization of the Israeli state is especially noxious to the two prominent Palestinian editors of this volume, and understandably so. Noting that most discussions of religion in politics have focused on non-state actors, their collection ably turns the tables to examine and critique the sacralization of the state and its role in perpetuating settler colonial violence in Israel and beyond. To this end, the editors thoughtfully juxtapose case studies that are rarely considered side-by-side, including Buddhist nationalism in Sri Lanka, Zionism in Israel/Palestine, competing nationalisms in Northern Ireland, and Hindutva in India—even as Zionism gets the lion’s share of attention. I was eager to dive in.

The study is funded by the Lewis-Sebring Family Foundation. The center is partnering with the National Opinion Research Center and is in the drafting phase of the study. Tillery estimates he will have results of the research by early spring. Tillery said he is conducting this study to see what concerns residents have and hopefully dispel the assumption that reparations efforts cause racial resentment. “I think that it’s very likely that in a place like Evanston – highly educated, more affluent than the average community, that values diversity and tolerance – it’s very likely that we don’t see these spikes of resentment,” Tillery said.

To understand the demonstrations from a Western perspective, but with the rigor of someone who has studied the subject in depth, La Tercera spoke with the American political scientist Elizabeth Shakman Hurd, professor of Political Science and Religious Studies and an expert on the Middle East at Northwestern University. A week after the death of the young Mahsa Amini, the protests in Iran have not abated. What are the keys to understanding what is currently happening in the country? Iranians, and in particular women from all walks of life, are demonstrating to call for a democratic transformation in Iran. It is both a continuation of previous movements calling for reforms, and a new spontaneous movement founded on women's organization and protest against state regulation, repression and violence.

Jaime Dominguez, a professor in the political science department at Northwestern University, also weighed in. "The extent to which either party is looking to capture the attention and the vote of Latinos I think they have to speak to core issues that matter to everybody which is basically the top three that you see all the time in poll after poll which is basically inflation/the economy, housing, jobs, healthcare and surprisingly there's been a couple of polls over the last couple of weeks that show that actually abortion is actually now a big issue for Latinos. More so than immigration," Dominguez said.

American democracy is at risk, Stanford scholars and others have warned. A Stanford-led project has identified a number of strategies that are effective in reducing Americans’ support for undemocratic practices and candidates. (Image credit: Getty Images) Many studies have found anti-democratic attitudes and support for partisan violence are at concerning levels among the American public, partisan animosity is growing, and Americans are willing to compromise democratic principles for partisan gain. Stanford sociologist Robb Willer is among those worried about what these attitudes mean for the stability of democracy in the U.S. To counter some of the risks Willer and many Americans are troubled by, Willer launched a massive, three-year project to test a variety of simple and scalable ways to counter anti-democratic beliefs that threaten the country’s political future.

"Historically, when social scientists thought of advanced democracies, including the United States, they didn’t really think about things like democratic backsliding. But the last five years have seen a rise of concern about authoritarian tendencies in the United States. It seems evident that a lot of partisans on either side would potentially privilege their party over democratic processes. So what can we do to try to ameliorate those tendencies? Because we might start seeing real undermining of not only democratic norms, but actual constitutional procedures, and then violence."

Research by IPR political scientist Daniel Galvin, however, shows that union influence has remained significant. During the period of union membership decline from 1973 to 2014, states with higher rates of union membership passed more employment laws and created a wider range of rights and protections for workers than states with less of a union presence. According to Galvin, 90% of U.S. workers do not belong to a union and must look to employment laws to protect their rights instead. But where did these laws come from, and why do some states have more robust regulatory regimes than others? “I find that unions were largely responsible for their construction,” Galvin said. “Even as they were hemorrhaging members and struggling to survive, they were leading legislative campaigns to create stronger protections for all workers.”

A Northwestern University-led research team has received a $5 million grant over five years from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to develop new methods to help mitigate the effects of climate change on the Great Lakes and its surrounding natural ecosystems. By partnering with Indigenous and Native American scientists, conservation agencies and government agencies, the team will focus on manoomin (the Ojibwe word for wild rice), a critical — yet declining — part of the Great Lakes ecosystem and a sacred food that connects Native communities to the land. The project is one of five new Coastlines and People (CoPe) Hubs, announced last week by NSF. It marks the first CoPe Hub for the Great Lakes region.

Affective polarization in the United States - the gap between individuals' positive feelings toward their own political party and negative feelings toward the opposing party - has increased markedly in the past two decades. We review recent scholarship on affective polarization, focusing on causes, social and political consequences, and antidotes. This work shows a link between affective polarization and some concerning behaviors such as deleterious reactions to COVID-19. However, connections between affective polarization and dire political outcomes such as democratic backsliding and violence remain unclear. While possible antidotes to affective polarization focus on correcting stereotypes or priming common identities, more work is needed to determine which causes and antidotes apply most directly to political consequences.

A recent study by IPR political scientist Chloe Thurston and David Karol of the University of Maryland examines voting records of California state legislators from the 1960s–1990s to understand the growing ties between the Republican Party and the Christian Right and the Democratic Party and feminist organizations. The researchers show how legislators in California, one of the first states to pass legislation dealing with abortion, shifted from voting on abortion issues based on their religious beliefs to aligning with the emerging views of their political parties.

This Focused Hub will use a holistic, transdisciplinary approach to untangle the interconnected human, coastal, and climate change issues causing region-wide manoomin decline in the Western Great Lakes. The Hub will advance scientific capacity to measure, understand, and predict changes in coastal wetland ecosystems, focusing on manoomin as a vital sentinel species. Direct partnerships with Native Nations and Communities will affirm local sovereignty over coastal land, water, and ecosystems, and inform resilience decisions at community, tribal, national, state, and regional levels. The Hub will increase coastal community capacity through community engagement, knowledge co-production, and training a new generation of scientists and leaders from currently underrepresented communities in the region.

Healthy democratic polities feature competing visions of a good society but also require some level of cooperation and institutional trust. Democracy is at risk when citizens become so polarized that an ‘us versus them’ mentality dominates. Despite a vast multidisciplinary literature, no coherent conceptual framework of the microlevel dynamics that increase or decrease polarization has been presented. In this Review, we provide a conceptual framework to integrate scientific knowledge about cognitive–motivational mechanisms that influence political polarization and the social-communicative contexts in which they are enacted. Ego-justifying and group-justifying motives lead individuals to defend their own pre-existing beliefs and those of their in-group, respectively. However, a distinct class of system-justifying motives contributes to asymmetric forms of polarization.

"This article identifies the justification frame as a common narrative used by public officials to justify the use of lethal force by police. Officials deploy the justification frame to obfuscate the use of force or claim that victims posed a threat to officers in order to justify civilian deaths. I examine initial statements given in the aftermath of officer-involved deaths in 2016, focusing on incidents where an on-duty officer used force against victims who did not pose a threat when they were killed. I find that elements of the justification frame appear frequently in the explanations issued after these incidents. Statements about Black decedents are more likely to deploy the justification frame."

Assistant Professor of Political Science Kimberly Marion Suiseeya similarly has made significant progress on revising a chapter of her book manuscript on environmental politics and Indigenous communities. “What I needed was protected time and space—two things I could not access in these last two-plus years,” she said. “Thus far, this retreat has provided what I needed most to reset productivity in my work. I didn’t imagine I could actually finish my revisions on this chapter this week, yet now I see the end in sight.”

What makes a legislator effective? The Thompson Center presents a virtual event that explores the elements of measuring legislative success. Featuring a panel of five speakers, each will share their expertise on lawmaking, followed by audience Q&A. Craig Volden is Co-Director of the Center for Effective Lawmaking and a Professor of Public Policy and Politics at the University of Virginia. Laurel Harbridge-Yong is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science and a Faculty Fellow at the Institute for Policy Research at Northwestern University. Beatriz Rey is a SNF Agora Visiting Fellow at Johns Hopkins University and an APSA Congressional Fellow (2021-2022) working at the U.S. House of Representatives. Jeffery Mondak is the James M. Benson Chair in Public Issues and Civic Leadership in the Department of Political Science at the University of Illinois. Walter Stone...

The Supreme Court’s Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision has reignited fears among liberals and progressives of the fall of the wall between church and state. Yet the wall of separation is only a metaphor, and a tired and strained one at that. When people try to defend access to abortion by trying to keep religion out, they are assuming a lot about religion. If religion were cordoned off from public life, they say, democracy and equality would flourish. This is a deeply flawed story. First, a majority of Americans, across traditions, support access to safe abortion. A recent Pew Research Center survey found that 61% of Americans say abortion should be legal in all or most circumstances. More than half of U.S. Catholics favor legal abortion, a 2019 Pew Research Center survey found.

Sally Nuamah (Northwestern University) will examine how experiences with the criminal justice system impacts political participation among Black women. Grants were made in our four core programs and our special initiative on Immigration and Immigrant Integration.

"We argue that American political development's (APD's) relentless preoccupation with the substantive problems that shape and animate American politics and how they emerge and develop over time has been a key source of the subfield's durability. We elaborate on three main payoffs to conceptualizing APD as a problem-driven enterprise: (1) it highlights APD's main comparative advantage within the American politics subfield, noting the tremendous agility APD's substantive breadth lends the enterprise; (2) it resolves the methodological debate, granting simply that the question chooses the method rather than the other way around; and (3) it reorients the critique: simply because a subfield considers itself to be problem-oriented does not mean that it is identifying the right problems to study."

“The public’s opinions on abortion are certainly nuanced — their opposition to no access under any circumstance is very clear, but they also support restrictions based on viability,” said political scientist James Druckman, one of the consortium researchers. “This makes it a complicated issue with limited mobilizational capacity for the Democrats. The bulk of Democrats live in states that have laws consistent with their preferences and it is unlikely Republicans in states with highly restrictive laws would shift their voting patterns due to the issue.”

"Investigations into how promises matter to voters, whether during campaigns for a new office or when running for reelection, reveal that voters have a nuanced understanding of promises that is dependent on assessments of candidate attentions as well as the successful policy interventions. Bonilla builds on that work and the long literature on motivated reasoning to examine how voters use partisanship in their decisions of promise fulfillment. With two original survey experiments, she demonstrates that voters view promise fulfillment through a partisan lens when an issue is a partisan issue, and particularly when there is ambiguity around if the promise is kept. This finding suggests nuance to the traditional assumptions around how promise fulfillment is assessed in reelection campaigns."

“The idea that it is a ‘religious’ issue is relatively new. Some trace it to the rise of the religious right in the 1970s and ’80s. But concern and fear about women’s autonomy and its societal and even biological consequences can be traced back much further in American history, as Marie Griffiths shows in her book “Moral Combat: How Sex Divided American Christians and Fractured American Politics.” Griffiths tracks these concerns to the rise of the anti-suffrage movement in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The bottom line is that these are both secular and religious questions. The idea that it is either/or is a distraction.”

Political science Prof. Daniel Galvin, who specializes in worker’s rights and labor politics, said the unionization process is “littered with obstacles” and “favors the employer at every turn.” About 90% of workers do not have collective bargaining abilities, Galvin said, preventing employee negotiations. “Low-wage workers are probably the ones who are most in need of rights and protections,” Galvin said. “They’re the ones who have turned to these small community-based organizations to recreate the kind of substantive rights that you might have otherwise gotten through collective bargaining agreements.”

The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riots opened with a highly orchestrated, prime-time event on Thursday that was watched by 20 million viewers, but history has shown that some of the most memorable hearings don't always produce lasting results. While congressional hearings have led to watershed moments in U.S. history, these hearings will address new subject matter for the nation, including accusations that a defeated president orchestrated an attack on the Capitol to overturn election results.

After nearly a year of investigating the Jan. 6 attack, the House select committee will Prime-time hearings of the Jan. 6 committee begin Thursday night. Reset checks in with experts to discuss what to expect and where we go from here.

“The primetime hearing scheduled by the House committee investigating the January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol is likely to break new ground in terms of what we know about the high-level planning and execution of the Republican Party’s attempt to steal the 2020 presidential election. “Given what we know from press reports, it will likely cast light on the role that several high-ranking members of Congress played in the events and give us some insight into precisely what Donald Trump was doing in the White House as the insurrection unfolded. There is no doubt that the hearings will scandalize the nation. The problem is that the hearings on their own will not save our Democracy. Not only have the GOP embarked on a dangerous path of denying that the insurrection ever happened, but they are continuing to plot and organize to steal subsequent elections."

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit globally, Otros Cruces began a virtual training program studying two books on secularism and religious freedom written by the outstanding scholar Elizabeth Shakman Hurd, a Professor at Northwestern University. We interviewed her, and she shared with us her main contributions in the disciplines of political science, religious studies, and the social sciences based on her research on global religion and politics.This booklet consists of the transcription and translation into Spanish of the interview conducted in English. It is a valuable work because, on the one hand, it is a pioneering unpublished work of Elizabeth Shakman Hurd in Spanish. In addition, we expect that this book will be the first of a series of writings delving into her contributions. On the other hand, this book represents the beginning of a dialogue about the problematics of religion and pol

The panel is also recommending programs to get Black people registered to vote and keep them on the voter rolls; programs to repay Black land and business owners for value lost in racial terror; programs to get students free tuition; and programs to house vulnerable populations. Plus, the panel wants lawmakers to allow incarcerated people to vote, make mental health care and rehabilitation a first priority for inmates and pay them for their work while in prison.

Theories of social norms suggest that, except for prejudiced people, individuals should reject racially derogatory speech. The increase of derogation in politics, including byi ngroup members, suggests more complexity. We argue that source cues shape the application of norms. Specifically, group membership of the observer and that of the speaker are critical to understanding how norms manifest in politics. We test this theory in four experimental studies that compare the reactions of White and Black respondents to White, Black, and Muslim candidates. We find that both Black andWhite Americans punish White candidates who derogate Blacks or Muslims."

"Justice and equity are fundamental to the complex choices that societies need to make to achieve transformative change (Bennett et al., 2019; IPBES, 2019; Leach et al., 2018; Martin, 2017). Evidence that more socioeconomically unequal societies tend to experience higher rates of biodiversity loss (Holland et al., 2009; IPBES, 2019) suggests that injustice and threats to biodiversity are closely intertwined. Injustice can function as an underlying cause of biodiversity loss, such as where colonial expropriation of Indigenous peoples’ land paves the way for its exploitation (Martinez-Alier, 2002)."

“Tomorrow’s primary contest in Georgia will be yet another test of former President Donald Trump’s power to shape the fortunes of Republican candidates in the current cycle. Mr. Trump has had a mixed record in the current cycle. His endorsement of J.D. Vance in the Ohio Senate primary is his big win thus far. In other states, however, Mr. Trump’s endorsement has proven to be far less powerful than anyone would have predicted going into the cycle."

A study by researchers at Northwestern University, released in September 2020, found that individuals who received their news from social media were more likely to believe in misinformation about coronavirus conspiracies and risk factors.

Scientists in the United States have made transformative discoveries that have improved societal well-being. Yet the United States also has a long, unsettling history of unequal access to these advances. This unequal access exacerbates disparate impacts of science-related phenomena, such as climate change and COVID-19, on vulnerable populations. In part, these problems are intensified by the fact that retrospective research that documents inequities is far more prevalent than prospective research that studies differences among groups.

Despite decades of climate science research, existing climate actions have had limited impacts on mitigating climate change. Efforts to reduce emissions, for example, have yet to spur sufficient action to reduce the most severe effects of climate change. We draw from our experiences as Ojibwe knowledge holders and community members, scientists, and scholars to demonstrate how the lack of recognition of traditional knowledges (TK) within climate science constrains effective climate action and exacerbates climate injustice.

According to a leaked draft opinion obtained by Politico, the U.S. Supreme Court is poised to overturn Roe v. Wade. Northwestern University has four political and legal experts available to discuss the historical and legal context of the potential decision and what it would mean for the future of abortion rights and the Court’s interpretation of the protections guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment.

According to Alvin Tillery, Jr., the founding director of Northwestern University’s Center for the Study of Diversity and Democracy (CSDD), “diversity” has become increasingly complex, nuanced, broader, and more contested.

In most advanced economies, social polices include an array of programs related to education, healthcare, unemployment insurance, retirement, housing, family and sick leave, and child care. Yet to a far greater extent than other OECD countries, the United States relies on markets and private actors to carry out these programs — and this both continues and contributes to racial inequalities, Chloe Thurston, professor of political science at Northwestern University, argues in a chapter of the recently published The American Political Economy: Politics, Markets, and Power (Cambridge University Press). The book was coedited by Stone Center Affiliated Scholar Alexander Hertel-Fernandez, Jacob S. Hacker, Paul Pierson, and Kathleen Thelen.

“The confirmation of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court is a watershed moment in our nation’s history,” Tillery said. “It is also a major win for President Biden, who has now kept a campaign promise to a crucial Democratic constituency and expanded the diversity of the Supreme Court. While it is understandable why the majority of Americans who wanted Judge Jackson confirmed to the Supreme Court might see her elevation as a sign that the country is finally moving past the polarization that characterized the Trump years, this would be a mistake.

This article explores the likelihood that officer-involved killings affect protest. Analyzing respondents to the Collaborative Multiracial Political Survey (CMPS) reveals no increases in protest activity between treatment groups exposed to officer-involved killings in their local area prior to participating in the survey and control groups who were exposed to officer-involved killings after survey participation overall. In fact, local exposure to Black victims appears to repress protest, but only among young Black respondents. This effect depends on the characteristics of the victim and the incident, as killings of low threat Black victims do not seem to repress protest.

Best laid plans: Years of planning haven’t spared Aurora from angst over closing schools

After more than a century and 200 failed attempts, the U.S. Senate unanimously passed a bill Monday that makes lynching a federal hate crime. The Emmett Till Anti-lynching Act was introduced by Illinois Congressman Bobby Rush and is expected to be signed by President Biden. Reset learns more about the legislation and what it means for the ongoing fight for racial justice in the U.S. GUESTS: Professor Alvin Tillery, director of the Center for the Study of Diversity and Democracy; and associate professor of political science and African American studies Rev. Wheeler Parker, cousin of Emmett Till

The Center for the Study of Diversity and Democracy (CSDD) at Northwestern University announced today (Feb. 23) the launch of a business forum that will connect academic researchers with industry leaders to address diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) issues arising in today’s global marketplace.The new CSDD Business Forum aims to provide business leaders with cutting-edge social science research to generate insights they can translate to their own DEI initiatives.

The January 6th, 2025, Project seeks to understand the social, political, psychological, and demographic factors that led to the January 6th, 2021, insurrection and continue to threaten the stability of our democratic system of government. Through our research, teaching, and public engagement, we hope to offer an assessment of the state of our democracy and insight into how to protect and strengthen it, with a special emphasis on how to prepare for the attack on our electoral system that will likely occur on January 6th, 2025.

“Dr. Carter G. Woodson, the founder of Black History Month, envisioned that a focus on Black history would teach all Americans to ‘aspire to equality and justice’ for everyone in the U.S,” said Alvin Tillery Jr., an associate professor of political science and director of the Center for the Study of Diversity and Democracy.

Graduate programs present challenges for women that mirror those in society and are also compounded by entrenched norms within the academy and the discipline. This chapter seeks to guide women-identifying graduate students on navigating these challenges and combat the often isolating experience academia presents. The perception that women are less methodologically and theoretically rigorous in their research is only one of many stressors impacting women in the academy and political science. Through the various lenses of learning, teaching, and research, we provide tangible advice for women in the discipline to find success and balance while creating space for the things that brought you to study political science at a graduate level in the first place. This manuscript is part of Strategies for Navigating Graduate School and Beyond, a forthcoming volume for those interested in pursuing g

Campaign promises are a cornerstone of representative democracy. Candidates make promises to signal to voters their intentions in office and voters evaluate candidates based on those promises. This study unpacks the theorized pathway regarding campaign promises: not whether promises are kept, but what purpose promises serve, what they signal, and how they affect voter decision-making. The author explores the pathways and conditions influencing promises and finds that promises tend to have a polarizing effect on voters' opinions of politicians, attracting similarly-positioned voters and strongly repelling voters who disagree with a candidate's position. In addition, voters perceive promise breakers as less honest and less likely to follow through than candidates who more weakly took the same position.

In 2012, the Chicago Public Schools board initiated the largest wave of school closures in U.S. history, shutting down 49 out of nearly 500 public schools. These schools were in predominately Black neighborhoods on the city’s South and West sides. In the American Political Science Review, IPR political scientist and social policy expert Sally Nuamah and political scientist Thomas Ogorzalek document how the closures changed the political behavior of Black Chicagoans who lived in communities targeted for a school closure. Despite relatively low participation rates in the democratic process before the closures, these citizens—who are from some of the city’s poorest neighborhoods—increased their political engagement. Their research supports a model of place-based mobilization, or the process of citizens responding to policy change concentrated in their local community.

A new law in Illinois allows homeowners to change their housing deeds to remove racist clauses that were used to bar people of certain races and religious groups from buying homes or living in a particular neighborhood.

So far, Evanston's efforts have yielded a $400,000 fund to be used for grants of up to $25,000 for Black homeowners, who resided in Evanston between 1919 and 1969, that can be used for mortgages or home improvements. This has been lauded as a step toward recognizing and redressing the city's role in racial economic disparities. It's also been criticized for being overly narrow in its eligibility criteria.

Narratives about Africa as dark, depraved, and diseased justified the exploitation of African land and people. Today, these narratives may still have a hold on people’s fears about disease. We test this in three (pre-COVID-19) experiments (N = 1,803). Across studies, we find that participants report greater worry about a pandemic originating in Africa (vs. elsewhere). In turn, they report greater support for travel bans and for loosening abortion restrictions. We then document these narratives in an archival study of newspaper articles of the 2015–2016 Zika pandemic (N = 1,475). We find that articles were more negative—for example, they included more death-related words—if they mentioned Africa. Finally, we replicate the experimental results within the COVID-19 context, using a representative sample (N = 1,200).

The holiday celebrating the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is an important moment of reflection for me each year. As an African American born three years after the movement Dr. King and others led to make America a multiracial democracy, the course of my life has been fundamentally shaped by the impact of his efforts. Without Dr. King’s work, I would have grown up in a different neighborhood, been educated in schools of lesser quality, and have had far less freedom to move in this society which is typically hostile to Black bodies.

Chloe Thurston, an assistant professor of political science at Northwestern University, authored a book on housing discrimination in the 20th century titled "At the Boundaries of Homeownership: Credit, Discrimination, and the American State.""If you have a house that was built before 1950, there's a pretty good chance that there's a restrictive covenant in the deed, particularly if that was a neighborhood that was historically predominantly white," she explained.

“Perhaps the most disappointing thing that we have learned is that the American people are largely content to watch their democracy burn,” said political scientist Alvin Tillery, director of Northwestern’s Center for the Study of Diversity and Democracy. “Two years after the largest mass protest movement in American history in the name of #BlackLivesMatter and after watching incredibly brave young people strike out for Democracy in places like Hong Kong and Nigeria, the American people are greeting the continuing assault on our democracy with a resounding ‘meh.’ So, on this eve of the one-year anniversary of the Capitol uprising, my warning to Americans, particularly people of color, is that we are not safe.”