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Notre Dame’s Fightin’ Irish Battalion receives Department of Defense award as nation’s top Army ROTC program

2025-05-07T09:00:00-04:00

The United States Department of Defense honored the University of Notre Dame’s Army Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) as the nation’s top Army collegiate program for the 2023-24 academic year.

This will be the first time Notre Dame’s Army ROTC Fightin’ Irish Battalion has received the department’s Educational Institution Partnership Excellence Award, which recognizes the program’s achievements in recruiting, educating, training and commissioning leaders of character to be the next generation of military officers.

The prestigious award, established in 2020, is given out annually to outstanding ROTC units and host educational institutions from each military branch and highlights overall program performance, student-cadet achievements and university support. With this honor, the Fightin’ Irish Battalion now ranks first out of 274 Army ROTC programs nationwide.

“Our Army ROTC cadets and leaders make us proud in so many ways, through their efforts in the classroom, their engagement across campus and their dedication to serving our nation,” said University President Rev. Robert A. Dowd, C.S.C. “The Fightin’ Irish Battalion truly embodies the best of Notre Dame, and I am delighted that their extraordinary efforts have been recognized with this prestigious award from the Department of Defense.”

Award builds on previous accomplishments

This national award follows the battalion’s receipt of the 7th Brigade General Douglas MacArthur Award for the 2023-24 academic year, which recognized the program’s high standing among 38 universities within the 7th Brigade (including ROTC programs in Michigan, Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee and Ohio), and allowed the unit to become eligible for the Department of Defense’s Excellence Award.

University President Rev. Robert A. Dowd, C.S.C., presents the 7th Brigade General Douglas MacArthur Award to the Notre Dame Army ROTC Fightin’ Irish Battalion prior to the start of the annual Presidential Pass in Review ceremony. Brigadier General Maurice O. Barnett, far left, commanding general of the U.S. Army Cadet Command, Lt. Col. William Kobbe, center, and members of the Army ROTC unit stand by as the award streamer is attached to their battalion guidon. (Photo by Matt Cashore/University of Notre Dame)

The MacArthur Award showcases the ideals of “duty, honor and country” and is based on the achievements of the school’s commissioning mission, its cadets’ performance and standing on the command’s National Order of Merit List, and a number of various quality performance metrics. This is the second year in a row that Notre Dame’s Army ROTC unit has won this award, presented by Cadet Command and the Gen. Douglas MacArthur Foundation.

Among its accomplishments, the Notre Dame Army ROTC unit produced 25 commissioned officers at the end of 2024, 11 of whom graduated with military distinction. Three were selected as Fulbright English Teaching Award finalists, with one winning the Fulbright Award to teach in the Czech Republic and another chosen to teach in France. The program maintained a 92 percent progression rate and a 38.6 percent STEM rate, with an overall battalion GPA of 3.59. Cadets representing 28 states across the U.S. comprise the 100-member unit, with 46 of those being female. This year’s unit included three pairs of siblings serving simultaneously, with 14 cadets having at least one parent who graduated from Notre Dame’s ROTC program.

“The Fightin’ Irish Battalion’s success can be attributed to our deep sense of devotion to our people,” said Lt. Col. William Kobbe, professor of military science and Army battalion commander at Notre Dame. “We emphasize a team-first attitude, fostering a culture of excellence and accountability to get better. We seek to embrace the University’s motto of ‘God, Country, Notre Dame’ each and every day.”

Kobbe has been named the 2024 Professor of Military Science of the Year by the U.S. Army Cadet Command for his dedication and commitment as leader of the Fightin’ Irish Battalion. In this role, Kobbe is responsible for training and mentoring the cadets, preparing them to serve their nation and others as future Army officers.

This annual award is given to military science professors who exemplify outstanding performance, leadership and mission success, based on candidates’ physical fitness, commissioning mission success, training accomplishments and contributions to their respective programs.

Battalion excels in Ranger Challenge and Sandhurst Military Skills Competition

Not only are student-cadets of the Fightin’ Irish Battalion taught to be goal-oriented, dedicated and academically focused, but they are also rigorously trained for physical performance and endurance. In October, the battalion’s team won the 7th Brigade Ranger Challenge competition at Fort Knox, Kentucky, securing the top spot for the third straight year. This competition brings Army ROTC teams from more than 30 universities within the five-state brigade to face one another in feats of military skills, physical fitness, leadership and combat readiness.

Members of the Notre Dame Army ROTC Irish Rangers team pose with the Fightin' Irish Ranger Challenge flag as they prepare for the Sandhurst Military Skills Competition at West Point.

Winning the 2024 Ranger Challenge title qualified the team to compete in the annual Sandhurst Military Skills Competition at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York. Named after the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst in the United Kingdom, this competition is regarded as one of the toughest military skills events in the world and brings together teams from across the U.S. Army and various ROTC programs, as well as international military units.

The team competed at the 2025 Sandhurst competition on May 2 and 3 and took home an impressive standing by placing 6th among all ROTC programs and 25th overall, securing its spot as one of the top programs in the country. Facing challenges in events such as fitness tests, land navigation (both day and night), ruck marches, one-rope bridge construction and weapons disassembly/assembly, among others, the Notre Dame rangers proved their ability to consistently perform and exhibit teamwork under intense circumstances.

“It is inspiring to witness the commitment to leadership excellence from all of our cadets, faculty and staff, which has led to the Fightin’ Irish Battalion’s exceptional accomplishments,” said Ken Heckel, director of Notre Dame’s Office of Military and Veterans Affairs (OMVA).

The OMVA is charged with supporting the University’s ROTC programs representing all three major branches of military service (Army, Air Force and Navy), as well as all military-affiliated individuals at the University.

“Notre Dame has a proud lineage of Army officers who have selflessly served our nation upon graduation and commissioning. The accomplishments of this group of future leaders ensure that this legacy will continue,” Heckel said.

About Notre Dame Army ROTC

Notre Dame’s long history of military service and training can be traced back to the University’s founding by Rev. Edward Sorin, C.S.C., in 1842. Just 16 years later, in 1858, a student military company called the Notre Dame Continental Cadets was formed. During the Civil War, many Congregation of Holy Cross priests and sisters served in varying capacities, with Rev. William Corby, C.S.C., Notre Dame’s third president, being the most notable for his granting absolution to the Union Army’s Irish Brigade at the Battle of Gettysburg.

In 1941, Notre Dame became one of the first universities to host all three military branches with an affiliated ROTC program, with former University President Rev. Theodore M. Hesburgh, C.S.C., signing official documentation in 1951 for the formal establishment of the Army ROTC program. Since then, thousands of men and women have been commissioned through the Army ROTC program and have served in every conflict where American forces have deployed.

In addition to serving abroad, members of the Army National Guard and Army Reserve support local and federal initiatives such as flood and natural disaster relief, Defense Support to Civil Authorities, and the operational ready reserve for the Active Duty component.

Esteemed graduates from Notre Dame’s ROTC programs include Gen. Bryan P. Fenton, a 1987 Army ROTC graduate, U.S. Special Operations Commander and recipient of the Rev. William Corby, C.S.C., Award, and Adm. Christopher W. Grady, a 1984 Navy ROTC graduate, the vice chairman and acting chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Notre Dame’s 2025 Commencement speaker.

The annual Tri-Military ROTC Presidential Pass in Review, held on Notre Dame’s campus, represents the University’s long-standing military legacy and continued desire to prepare future leaders for the armed forces. Standing in formation, the 300 cadets and midshipmen embody the University’s three values: God, country and Notre Dame. (Photo by Matt Cashore/University of Notre Dame)

Contact: Tracy DeStazio, associate director of media relations, 574-631-9958 or tdestazi@nd.edu

ND Expert Arun Agrawal: The Holy Father’s vision in Laudato Si’ is both a beacon and a caution

2025-04-21T06:45:00-04:00

Arun Agrawal, the Pulte Family Professor of Development Policy at the Keough 91��Ƶ of Global Affairs and inaugural director of the Just Transformations to Sustainability Initiative, focuses his research on environmental politics, sustainable development, community-based conservation and transformative change. Agrawal considers the Holy Father’s vision as described in his encyclical Laudato Si’ as being both a source of direction and inspiration for how we can work together to make lasting, meaningful change in our world, and a warning for what could happen if we don’t.

“The Holy Father gave all humanity — indeed, all of the planet — a way to create a better world, helping us advance a vision of connectedness and community as being essential ingredients for discovering meaning and purpose,” Agrawal said.

But, added Agrawal, Pope Francis’ “vision about the inherent dignity of each and all humans is simultaneously a beacon for those who care for a just and sustainable future and a caution for those who see the world transactionally.”

Agrawal believes that the best available science and our innermost convictions tell us that transformative change for sustainability requires adjustments in thought, structure and action, but that these all must remain consistent with the guidance from Pope Francis.

“The Sustainability Initiative at Notre Dame, as imagined and elaborated by the University’s leadership, is deeply aligned with and inspired by Laudato Si’ and its vision of integral ecology,” Agrawal said.

Going forward, the initiative will seek to transform how students and faculty at Notre Dame engage with sustainability research and practice, as well as alter the field of sustainability itself through high-impact research and knowledge creation, curricular innovations and global engagement.

ND Expert Scott Appleby: Pope’s letter speaks loud and clear to protect valuable resources, end poverty

2025-04-21T06:43:00-04:00

As the Keough-Hesburgh Professor of Global Affairs at Notre Dame’s Keough 91��Ƶ of Global Affairs, Scott Appleby focuses on global religion — in particular, its relationship to peace and conflict and integral human development. He said Pope Francis’ monumental 2015 encyclical Laudato Si’: On Care for Our Common Home is one of the “most profound and enduring” of all the wonderful gifts he gave to the Church and to the world.

“The letter’s exhortation to transform our relationship to nature and to one another by ‘heeding the cry of the earth and the cry of the poor’ is a clarion call to end wasteful habits and selfish practices that exploit our planet’s resources and leave the poor to pick up the tab,” Appleby said.

Appleby said the pope’s words inspire Notre Dame’s work in poverty, peace, sustainability and environmental justice — all of which are key elements of the Keough 91��Ƶ’s strategic focus.

Those important pillars, as well as the University’s new initiative on a just transformation to a sustainable environment, are “directly inspired by Laudato si’ and by the teaching and example of Pope Francis,” he said.

‘Who the messenger is matters’: Cultural leaders can positively influence population growth

2025-03-31T10:50:00-04:00

Fertility rates across the world have been steadily dropping since 1950. Pinpointing the reasons — despite the lack of typical causal conditions such as famine or war — is at the heart of one researcher’s work at the University of Notre Dame.

Lakshmi Iyer, a professor in the Department of Economics, found that there was more to fertility rates than a simple economic or circumstantial explanation. According to her research, people are having fewer children due to cultural factors, with social norms playing a larger role than previously thought.

Popular opinions regarding marriage, contraception and abortion directly impact fertility rates and therefore the demography of a region. This can be particularly true in regions that are predominantly Catholic and where the Church’s teachings have a stronger influence on an individual’s fertility decisions.

“Social norms truly matter when it comes to understanding demography,” said Iyer, who is also a professor of economics and global affairs at Notre Dame’s Keough 91��Ƶ of Global Affairs and a faculty fellow at the school’s Kellogg Institute for International 91��Ƶ and Liu Institute for Asia and Asian 91��Ƶ. “And we are researching how changing the salience of specific norms is shaping fertility behavior.”

Iyer and her research team examined the impact of visits by Pope John Paul II throughout Latin America between 1979 and 1996. They found that in countries where he gave public speeches that reinforced Catholic social teaching, fertility rates were higher in the long term. Using Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) data on 13 Latin American countries across 16 papal visits, the researchers found that although the pope’s speeches were not intentionally aimed at influencing fertility, his messaging heightened existing Catholic social norms that promote getting married and having families, causing a statistically significant increase in birth rates within those countries.

The findings, which were reported in the working paper “Religion and Demography: Papal Influences on Fertility,” indicated that in the two to five years following the papal visits, an additional 220,000 to 251,000 births occurred in the 13 countries analyzed in the study. Where the pope mentioned marriage or abortion and contraception in his public speech, birth rates jumped the greatest. Where he condemned premarital sex in his homilies, birth rates decreased. Where he spoke about the value of marriage, both marriage and fertility rates increased.

The researchers said the effects of the pope’s messages were felt most strongly by individuals who were not necessarily following the Church’s teachings on these topics; in this case, those in non-Catholic, wealthy and highly educated households.

“These results indicate that people are really listening to what the pope has to say,” Iyer said. “And the topics he addresses really matter.”

Lakshmi Iyer, a professor in the Department of Economics at the University of Notre Dame. (Photo by Peter Ringenberg/University of Notre Dame)

Iyer added that not only were the messages important in changing how the audiences viewed their relationship with marriage and family, but so was the fact that it was the pope himself delivering those messages.

“Who the messenger is matters,” Iyer said. “It needs to be someone who can reinforce what is important to the culture. You can change social norms by having a predominant leader remind people of what is considered good and acceptable behavior within that particular society.”

For Latin America at the time of Pope John Paul’s visits, these messages were crucial to help slow down the dramatic decline in birth rates, which went from an average of 5.9 births per woman in 1960 to 2.2 in 2010. For other countries experiencing similar below-replacement fertility rates, Iyer said this type of messaging can help induce people to want to have more children.

And those messages don’t have to be tied to a specific religion or to religious beliefs, Iyer added, but they do need to be relevant to the culture they are addressing and to the existing social norms — and having them delivered by a respected leader only adds to their saliency.

“Cultural ambassadors matter, but only in certain contexts,” Iyer explained. “They are the ones who can speak for those norms, reinforce them or make them more important to people.”

This study exemplifies the kind of population-level research that Notre Dame Population Analytics (ND Pop), a new research initiative at the University, seeks to foster. Many of the issues facing society are demographic — poverty, the aging population and declining fertility, disparities in educational outcomes, family instability and the decline in life expectancy brought about by the drug crises. ND Pop is leveraging the tools of data science to foster impactful research that can inform policy and practice. Iyer’s paper and other recent population study findings are available through ND Pop’s working paper series.

“Who the messenger is matters. It needs to be someone who can reinforce what is important to the culture.”

“Demography is really important to think about in terms of long-term economic or social change,” Iyer said. Aside from policies that promise monetary incentives or better access to child care for families, Iyer and her co-authors believe that a cultural component could also be considered. They acknowledge, however, that further research should be conducted to analyze the effects of other changes in social norms such as increased secularization or changing religious denominations in a country, as well as contrasting these with the effects of government policies and economic incentives.

Iyer conducted her research alongside co-authors Paloma Lopez de mesa Moyano of Emory University and Vivek Moorthy, who received his doctorate from Notre Dame in 2022 and is now at the College of the Holy Cross.

The DHS surveys are nationally representative household surveys conducted in more than 90 countries since the mid-1980s. They collect detailed information from women of child-bearing age about their fertility histories, including a retrospective questionnaire on the month and year of all births. These fertility histories enabled the researchers to construct fertility time series for each woman using a consistent survey methodology and questionnaire across countries.

Contact: Tracy DeStazio, associate director of media relations, 574-631-9958 or tdestazi@nd.edu

ND Expert on tariffs and trade policy: ‘How should the US be engaged with the rest of the world?’

2025-03-27T07:47:56-04:00

Since January, the Trump administration has imposed a host of new tariffs and restrictive trade measures, including tariffs on steel and aluminum and increased levies on imports from China. The administration also issued, and then temporarily paused, sweeping tariffs on Mexico and Canada. In response, the European Union, Canada and China have imposed retaliatory tariffs on U.S. exports.

And there are more tariff announcements still to come: The tariff pause with Mexico and Canada is set to expire on April 2, and the U.S. Department of Commerce is slated to announce its plan for “reciprocal tariffs” in early April.

To make sense of these policy changes, Robert Johnson, the Brian and Jeannelle Brady Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Notre Dame, explained how tariffs affect global economies and what this means for U.S. engagement in global trade.

“There is currently a general reevaluation of the degree to which the U.S. engages in trade with the rest of the world,” Johnson said. “Much of that involves raising tariffs to essentially disengage the U.S. from the global economy, which is a huge and fundamental shift in our trade policy.”

At the same time, Johnson emphasized that the economic costs and benefits of tariffs are different now than in the past, due to the rise of global value chains. In a global value chain, various stages of production — from design and sourcing to manufacturing, marketing and distribution — are executed by different countries. This type of linked and integrated production occurs across borders in many industries, but the North American automobile industry stands out. Cars that are assembled in the U.S. contain large amounts of imported parts, components and materials; likewise, cars assembled in Mexico and imported by the U.S. contain parts and components produced by suppliers in the U.S. Many integral products even pass back and forth across borders multiple times and, if tariffs are in place, get taxed each time.

As a result, Johnson suggested that placing tariffs and sparking trade wars with our neighbors to the north and south can hurt all of us, markets and consumers included, because tariffs can disrupt supply chains, raise prices and threaten job security. The importance of global value chains and trade policy is explained in a forthcoming article in the journal The Review of Economic 91��Ƶ authored by Johnson, Emily Blanchard of the Tuck 91��Ƶ of Business at Dartmouth College, and Chad Bown of the Peterson Institute for International Economics.

Robert Johnson, the Brian and Jeannelle Brady Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Notre Dame. (Photo by Barbara Johnston/University of Notre Dame)

“The costs of raising tariffs are higher, and the benefits are lower, than they would have been if U.S. producers were not integrated in global value chains,” Johnson said.

Johnson highlighted three mechanisms by which tariffs hurt U.S. economic interests through these interconnected global trade networks.

Tariffs on imported parts that go into U.S. production

The main objective of tariffs is to get consumers to buy locally, supporting U.S. manufacturing, Johnson said. But from a U.S. producer’s perspective, many companies will still need to import items from either Mexico or Canada to be used in the production of U.S.-made goods. When a tariff is placed on those imported items, it raises the production costs, making them less competitive.

“That reduces the demands for their goods” both at home and abroad, Johnson said, because the companies have higher costs of production. “Tariffs placed on inputs are, writ large, bad for U.S. manufacturing.”

Tariffs on imported finished goods that contain foreign parts

When tariffs are placed on imported finished goods (cars, T-shirts, TVs, etc.), Johnson said, the goal is to shift consumer expenditure from imports to domestically produced goods. Even here, the existence of value chains has important hidden impacts.

While the goal of a tariff might be for consumers to buy more U.S.-assembled cars instead of cars assembled in Mexico, cars assembled in the U.S. use Mexican and Canadian parts, whereas cars assembled in Mexico contain U.S.-made parts. Because U.S. cars contain imported parts, some of the benefits of the tariff leak back to those foreign auto parts suppliers, explained Johnson. “This makes the shift in demand that occurs as a result of raising the tariff less attractive to the government,” he said, “because it’s losing some of the benefits of that tariff to foreign auto parts suppliers.”

Another way to look at it, Johnson said, is that when we raise tariffs on foreign imports in the hopes of increasing the number of cars being assembled in Michigan, some of the value of those assembled cars is actually Canadian. “In effect, we’re helping the Canadian auto parts suppliers. The more of the Canadian value that’s embedded in the Ford, for example, the more of the benefit of the tariff flows back to Canada.”

Using the same example of the auto industry, Johnson said that if a car is assembled in Mexico and there is a tax on imports from that country, then what happens if the Mexico-produced car is made from U.S.-manufactured parts and materials?

“There will be auto parts and engine firms in Ohio or Michigan that are going to be sending those parts and materials to Mexico where they will be used to assemble a car there, and then those cars are going to be re-exported into the U.S.,” Johnson said. “When we tax the car coming across the border from Mexico to the U.S., we’re implicitly taxing the supply of U.S. parts to that Mexican auto assembler firm. So, we’re essentially taxing ourselves.”

Tariffs on multinational firms that include U.S.-owned companies located abroad

The third example of how imposing tariffs can cause global pain is when U.S. firms own foreign companies. For example, Johnson said, if Ford or GM owns an auto assembly plant in Mexico, then it has engaged in foreign direct investment by building that plant. When the U.S. places tariffs on imports from Mexico, then we’re actually hurting GM and Ford because they take in profits from that assembly activity and are directly impacted by the tariff, he said.

“The more globalized the ownership structure is, and the more globalized the value chains are, the less attractive it becomes to raise tariffs,” Johnson said.

“Given that we are in this period of reevaluation, I think it is important to think broadly about how the U.S. should be engaged in the world...we ought to pause and reflect on how we have prospered through engagement with partners and allies around the world, before we tear that all up.”

Changing technologies affect trade decision-making

There have been tremendous increases in the amount of value chain activity across borders over the last several decades, according to Johnson. Countries weren’t as connected in the 1980s as they are today. Technological changes in communication and information sharing have increased connectivity, as it has become much easier to coordinate production and move goods across borders.

“That has helped to integrate value chains across countries even more deeply,” Johnson said. “And so we’re living in this world now where tariffs have these built-in costs as a result of global value chain integration that they might not have had in the past. The right thing to do in the 1980s would have been very different from what the right thing to do today might be.”

As the new administration grapples with how to leverage tariffs in the U.S.’s favor, Johnson said the current approach to working with Canada and Mexico — considered some of our closest partners — is “untested, to say the least,” and seems contrary to our long-standing interest in cooperation within North America.

“Given that we are in this period of reevaluation, I think it is important to think broadly about how the U.S. should be engaged in the world,” Johnson said. “The U.S. derives enormous benefits from the global trading system, a system that we designed and built in service of U.S. economic and foreign policy interests. I think we ought to pause and reflect on how we have prospered through engagement with partners and allies around the world, before we tear that all up.”

Contact: Tracy DeStazio, associate director of media relations, 574-631-9958 or tdestazi@nd.edu

Notre Dame faculty, students and administrators reflect on experiences in the Middle East

2024-12-12T13:00:00-05:00

Faculty, students and administrators from the University of Notre Dame gathered to discuss their personal and professional connections to the ongoing conflict in Israel and Palestine as part of the 2024-25 Notre Dame Forum on “What Do We Owe Each Other?” (Photo by Matt Cashore/University of Notre Dame)

Several distinguished experts from the University of Notre Dame gathered Dec. 4 at the Eck Visitors Center Auditorium to discuss their personal and professional connections to the ongoing conflict in Israel and Palestine. This was the third event in the Israel-Palestine Series of the 2024-25 Notre Dame Forum on “What Do We Owe Each Other?”

This series, as well as a corresponding academic course for Notre Dame students, is co-led by Mahan Mirza, an Islamic studies scholar and the executive director of the Ansari Institute for Global Engagement with Religion in the Keough 91��Ƶ of Global Affairs, and Tzvi Novick, the Abrams Jewish Thought and Culture Professor of Theology. Mirza formally opened the event, emphasizing the diverse backgrounds and voices of the panelists and centering them as Notre Dame students, staff and faculty.

“They are humanitarians, scholars, citizens and soldiers, and they are connected to the reality on the ground in their own ways,” Mirza said, “but are situated differently with respect to the conflict by experience and by expertise.” He added that the conflict “is not just ‘over there,’ it is also here in our communities and in our politics and in our institutions.”

The presentation, titled “On the Ground in Israel-Palestine,” included panelists Daniel Bannoura, a Palestinian theologian and doctoral candidate in Notre Dame’s Department of Theology; Ramzi Bualuan, teaching professor and director of undergraduate studies in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering; Gabriel Mitchell, director of undergraduate studies at Notre Dame Jerusalem; Ray Offenheiser, senior adviser to the dean of the Keough 91��Ƶ of Global Affairs and director of the Keough 91��Ƶ’s McKenna Center for Human Development and Global Business; and Atalia Omer, professor of religion, conflict and peace studies in the Keough 91��Ƶ.

Michael Desch, the Packey J. Dee Professor of International Relations and the Brian and Jeannelle Brady Family Director of the Notre Dame International Security Center, served as the panel’s moderator, introducing the panelists and inviting them to share their “on-the-ground” perspectives.

Omer, an Israeli Jew who grew up in Jerusalem, discussed the historical context of the current situation starting with the “nakba,” or “the catastrophe,” a forced mass displacement of Palestinians that occurred from 1947 to 1949 and continues to have a deep impact today. Omer cited her recent research, which focuses on American Jews unlearning the conflation of Judaism with Israel and the recent mobilization in the U.S. and Canada against Israeli policies. She emphasized the importance of framing the conversation and using the proper language to discuss the conflict, reminding the audience to be “very attuned to how the language is being deployed and what the language itself is normalizing.”

Offenheiser shared his personal journey of graduating from Notre Dame to working and living as a laborer on a kibbutz in Israel to launching a career in international development. He recounted his 20 years of experience working with Oxfam, a humanitarian aid organization, and described the challenges faced by humanitarians working in conflict zones like Gaza, Lebanon and other regions. He emphasized the role of humanitarians in saving lives, meeting basic human needs and helping to reduce conflict — despite the dangers and risks they face.

Offenheiser noted that of the 13,000 U.N. aid workers in Gaza, most of them are Palestinian and almost 100 percent of them are now displaced. “These are people who, every day, are getting up to do humanitarian work and having to make a decision of whether to stay with their own families, who may be displaced, or continuing to do their jobs,” he said.

Bualuan, of Lebanese descent, spent the first 13 years of his life in Switzerland before moving to Lebanon for high school and college. The Lebanese civil war began shortly after he arrived in the country, and much of his reflection focused on his ongoing efforts to process and understand his experiences during that conflict and the one occurring now between Israel and Lebanon.

He noted that of utmost importance is hearing different viewpoints, and that his version of peace activism is demonstrated by his behavior — how he interacts with people and the respect he shows them. “I’m not a peace activist in my job, but I believe I am a peace activist in how I live my life,” he said.

As a Notre Dame faculty member living in Jerusalem, Mitchell was in Israel on Oct. 7 when Hamas-led militants attacked the southern portion of the country. He, along with his family, endured hours spent in a bomb shelter, and he wrestled with the agonizing decisions around how to keep his own family safe as well as ensuring the safety of the Notre Dame Jerusalem students and staff under his care. To further complicate the situation, as an Israeli citizen, Mitchell was then called up as a reservist to serve in the Israel Defense Forces, fulfilling his duty by patrolling in a tank unit along the border of Lebanon and Syria for five months.

Mitchell spoke of the transformation he underwent during his military service and the ongoing challenges of reconciling his dual identities as an American and an Israeli. He reflected on the enormous, collective trauma he witnessed and knows is ongoing for millions. While acknowledging the need for hope and action, Mitchell admitted, “I may not see a meaningful resolution for this conflict in my lifetime,” but noted that he can begin to focus on what he “can do in the long term — not just for myself, but for my family and for both peoples — in order to make tomorrow better than today.”

As a Palestinian Christian growing up in Bethlehem, Bannoura was able to speak firsthand regarding the direct impact of the war on his community, reflecting on the deaths of numerous friends and neighbors throughout the past 14 months. He referenced the ongoing dehumanization and marginalization of Palestinians and the importance of centering their suffering in the conversation surrounding the current conflict and addressing the injustices they face on a daily basis.

From the perspective of his Christian faith, Bannoura said he finds hope in Christ in order to move forward. “Christ is in the people, is with the people of Gaza,” he said. “Christ is with us, for us, and that’s what gives us hope.”

Following individual presentations, the panelists took turns answering questions posed by Desch, which included responses drawing parallels between the war in Gaza and other historical global events such as the attacks of Sept. 11 and the war on terror in Iraq and Afghanistan. Omer interjected that in such historical atrocities, a person cannot base their own safety and freedom on the removal of another person’s safety and freedom.

Mitchell summed up the diverse perspectives in the room when he said, “The idea that there is a singular view of the world is really put to the test in a place like Israel-Palestine. There is no one truth but the pursuit of truth itself.”

Questions from the audience centered on how the war has been fought in Gaza and the complications around adherence to international law. The conversation also touched on the complexities of memory and the generational trauma of war, the need for forgiveness and the value of continued dialogue and action for peace and justice.

To conclude, Novick thanked all panelists and attendees and invited them to stay engaged with future events that are part of the Israel-Palestine Series throughout the rest of the academic year. He encouraged the packed auditorium to continue the conversation. “Seek out each other, seek nuance," he said. “Try to understand precisely the perspective of the person you disagree with, not necessarily to end up agreeing with that person, but as a praxis of self-criticism.”

Watch a recording of the event here. To see other and future events related to the Notre Dame Forum 2024-25, visit forum2024.nd.edu.

When countries hide their true public debt, they hurt themselves, their citizens and their lenders

2024-11-07T14:26:00-05:00

Economists from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) recently announced that global public debt would soon collectively catch up to the worldwide gross domestic product (GDP), likely matching it by 2030. New research from the University of Notre Dame suggests that this could happen even sooner, thanks to countries’ hidden debts.

These hidden debts — debt that was already in a government’s books but had not been disclosed — are the result of malicious intent or corruption, fear of scrutiny by lenders or simple accounting errors. Too much debt prevents governments from investing in the things its citizens need most, including infrastructure, health care and education.

Monitoring a country’s debt level is also top of mind for investors and analysts who want to ensure the lendability and dependability of a borrower.

But revelations of hidden debt have dire consequences for those misreporting borrowers and those who lend to them.

According to a new study from an economist at the University of Notre Dame, misreported debt can lead to higher interest rates for borrowers and lower recovery rates for lenders. These findings suggest indirect adverse effects on global financial stability and consumer welfare.

Cesar Sosa-Padilla, associate professor of economics and a faculty fellow at the Kellogg Institute for International 91��Ƶ, part of Notre Dame’s Keough 91��Ƶ of Global Affairs, along with co-authors from the World Bank, the University of Hamburg and the University of Duisburg-Essen, authored a working paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research titled “Hidden Debt Revelations.” The researchers used the World Bank’s International Debt Statistics database to measure the accuracy of reported debt levels spanning more than 50 years for 146 developing and emerging market countries.

The researchers tracked revisions to the World Bank’s external-debt statistics database, which compiles reports from all countries that borrow from foreign lenders, from 1970 through 2022. Each revision showed discrepancies when compared to the previous year’s data, indicating an underreported or overreported debt amount. Their research method, which also included digitizing records that preceded online capabilities, revealed several facts regarding the size, timing and characteristics of hidden debt, according to Sosa-Padilla.

They found that public debt is consistently and pervasively underreported — by an average of 1 percent of each country’s GDP, totaling $1 trillion of hidden debt across all countries and years and equating to more than 12 percent of total foreign borrowing by all countries in the study sample.

“Hidden debt is large and common,” the researchers wrote, with 70 percent of all debt stocks reported to the World Bank requiring amendments at least once after their initial publication. And most of those revisions, Sosa-Padilla explained, involve an adjustment upward versus downward when reporting true public debt — indicating that underreporting occurs more often than not.

These hidden debts can only be counted when they are revealed through a revision, so it is likely that some countries’ debts are actually larger than they are willing to admit, he said.

“We find that public external debt is consistently underreported, and that this phenomenon is more prevalent in countries with weak institutions,” Sosa-Padilla said.

The reporting discrepancies were most often found during bad economic years, according to Sosa-Padilla. “The accumulation of debt that was not reported usually happened during boom years,” he said, “while the revelations of that hidden debt occurred during bad economic years.”

These hidden debt revelations typically occurred when the government’s books came under close scrutiny due to loan defaults or during audits from the IMF, a multilateral organization set up to assist countries on the brink of financial crisis. The United States is the largest shareholder in the IMF.

The researchers also found that hidden debt can have adverse implications for both creditors and borrowers. For creditors, it means larger creditor losses and a lower recovery rate on loans provided to a country that is further in debt than expected. In turn, having less chance to recoup funds during the renegotiation process leads creditors to pass along less-advantageous borrowing terms to those countries seeking loans.

“Theoretically, when a country has a history of hiding its debt, it not only faces higher interest rates from foreign lenders, but it also has less ability to smooth out consumption or stabilize fluctuations in its economy,” Sosa-Padilla explained. “Essentially, it leads to a more volatile path of consumption levels, which can trickle down to affect consumer households.”

For American consumers in particular, Sosa-Padilla said that hidden debt revelations make investing in foreign bonds much riskier than originally thought. Also, as one of the IMF’s largest contributors, U.S. funders may take extra care when considering providing funds to countries that consistently misreport their economic health.

Bonds, which are publicly traded, and World Bank-provided loans have fewer incidents of misreporting as those debts are consistently disclosed. The largest revisions to yearly debt levels occur within less transparent markets, such as with borrowed funds coming from private lenders in the form of bank credit or from governments as bilateral loans.

On this point, and using a quantitative model of sovereign borrowing and default, the researchers took into account the amount of oversight and transparency that is required when it comes to monitoring each country’s forthrightness in debt reporting, saying that “only countries with strong fundamentals and low hidden debt levels benefit from increased transparency” while countries with high levels of hidden debt are “likely to find exposure to greater scrutiny to be costly.”

For that reason, the study’s findings suggest that transparency policies are best implemented during positive economic times versus times of financial crisis.

“Analysts in both asset pricing and country surveillance should take into account that debt statistics tend to increase after their initial publication, which makes default more likely,” Sosa-Padilla concluded.

Contact: Tracy DeStazio, associate director of media relations, 574-631-9958 or tdestazi@nd.edu

Democrats and Republicans agree on one thing: Censoring hate speech

2024-10-16T12:27:00-04:00

There is strong disagreement in the United States as to whether, when and how much hate speech should be censored when posted on social media platforms. Democrats and Republicans, in particular, often argue about this question, especially in light of the Israel-Hamas war sparking further consternation over antisemitic and anti-Palestinian hate speech.

In an era of intense polarization, partisans have historically, and mistakenly, believed that members of the other party prioritize protecting certain types or victims of hate speech over others based on stereotypes or their affiliation with those potentially vulnerable groups.

New research from the University of Notre Dame, however, revealed that Democrats and Republicans generally agree on what to censor when it comes to the target, source and severity of hate speech.

Matthew E.K. Hall, the director of Notre Dame’s Rooney Center for the Study of American Democracy and the David A. Potenziani Memorial College Professor of Constitutional 91��Ƶ. (Photo by Jon Hendricks/University of Notre Dame)

“Basically, partisans misunderstand the other party’s priorities,” said Matthew E.K. Hall, one of several co-authors of the study, “Illusory interparty disagreement: Partisans agree on what hate speech to censor but do not know it,” published recently by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“And these misunderstandings over hate speech censorship might lead to even greater polarization because people misrepresent the values and preferences of the other party members, which, in an election year, can reduce cross-party voting,” said Hall, the director of Notre Dame’s Rooney Center for the Study of American Democracy and the David A. Potenziani Memorial College Professor of Constitutional 91��Ƶ.

The research was conducted by Hall and first author Brittany C. Solomon, the Thomas A. and James J. Bruder Assistant Professor of Administrative Leadership in Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business, along with co-authors Abigail Hemmen, a doctoral student in the Department of Political Science at Notre Dame, and James N. Druckman, a professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Rochester.

Hall pointed out that one major disconnect is that Democrats overestimate and Republicans underestimate the other party’s willingness to censor speech that specifically targets white people. On the flip side, he said, both Republicans and Democrats are especially concerned about antisemitic hate speech and are more supportive of censoring anti-Black speech than any other form of hate speech.

In a survey conducted between Dec. 8 and 22, 2023, the researchers showed more than 3,357 participants a variety of social media profiles containing potentially objectionable speech and asked whether they would remove the post or deactivate the account. The researchers found that members of both parties chose to remove social media posts containing hate speech in the majority of profiles, regardless of the group being targeted. More than 60 percent of respondents recommended removing posts that targeted Black people and more than 58 percent wanted to remove posts targeting Jews. Majorities also chose to remove posts targeting Palestinians (54.8 percent) and white people (54.6 percent).

Some participants felt so strongly about the hate speech that they advocated for deactivating the social media accounts altogether, most commonly for posts targeting Black people (nearly 51 percent) and Jews (nearly 48 percent).

One unexpected finding for the researchers was that neither the source’s partisanship nor position within society affected the participants’ censorship decisions. The bottom line, the researchers wrote, is that “partisans agreed on hate speech censorship based on the source — largely in that the source does not matter.”

This finding was true with one exception: Democrats were more likely to deactivate accounts owned by elected officials versus private citizens.

Brittany C. Solomon, the Thomas A. and James J. Bruder Assistant Professor of Administrative Leadership in Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business. (Photo by University of Notre Dame)

“Debates on hate speech moderation should focus on understanding misperceptions of censorship preferences rather than on what or who should be censored,” Solomon reiterated.

Another factor considered in the study was the severity of the hate speech content — incitement to violence being the most severe. Partisans also tended to agree on censoring hate speech based on the harshness of the language, with increased support for censorship as severity increased.

While the U.S. Constitution protects the freedom of speech, including hate speech on principle, this constitutional guarantee does not allow unfettered hate speech. The government can regulate speech if it is viewed as inciting lawlessness, posing a true threat or breaching the peace, the researchers explained. Furthermore, private actors such as social media platforms can moderate content on their platforms as they deem necessary.

“I think the study’s findings show that social media companies can find consensus policies that can get broad support, even in this highly polarized era,” Hall said.

“Moreover, this research suggests that media framings around partisan debates — like those over free speech — are largely driven by misunderstandings,” Hall explained. “And we need to better educate the public about these misunderstandings.”

At a time when democracy is in crisis, Hall noted that it is important to focus on the country’s core and essential democratic principles, including free speech as well as voting rights and civic engagement.

“Free speech is an essential value in a democratic society, and disagreements over censorship are increasingly prominent in that realm. It’s important to think about how we build and maintain consensus around appropriate levels of censorship in order to preserve core free speech rights,” Hall said.

Hall added that this particular study only focused on antisemitism and anti-Palestinian hate speech given the ongoing war in Israel, as well as anti-Black and anti-white speech given their significance in American culture.

“Further research on hate speech censorship should include additional comparisons across hate speech targeting other social groups,” the researchers noted.

Contact: Tracy DeStazio, associate director of media relations, 574-631-9958 or tdestazi@nd.edu

Political scientist explores extending constitutional duties to private actors

2024-10-01T13:00:00-04:00

Christina Bambrick, the Filip Family Assistant Professor of Political Science (Photo by Barbara Johnston/University of Notre Dame)

Do we have a constitutional duty to protect one another’s rights?

What if each of us, as private citizens, were responsible for upholding the constitutional rights of our fellow citizens? For example, what if a landlord had a constitutional duty to provide safe and ample housing for his or her tenant, or a privately owned social media platform was expected to protect the freedom of speech of its users?

For Christina Bambrick, the Filip Family Assistant Professor of Political Science in the Department of Political Science at the University of Notre Dame, this is something she has pondered and studied for years. “I have always been interested in big questions about the legitimacy of government authority as well as limits on authority,” said Bambrick, who specializes in constitutional theory.

In new research, Bambrick explores the difference between our conventional understanding of rights protections in the U.S. Constitution — which directs responsibility vertically, obligating the government to protect citizens’ rights — versus a more horizontal approach, which extends that duty to private actors to protect each other’s rights. She examines constitutional politics across the globe to explore these different approaches to balancing rights and responsibilities in a democratic society.

Legal scholars and practitioners in the United States have generally understood the Constitution as obligating only the state or federal government with protecting constitutional rights, favoring a strict separation between the public and private sphere.

But now, Bambrick said, courts and constitution-makers are opening up the possibility that private actors — such as individuals, businesses, hospitals and private schools — have certain constitutional duties to one another. Her research delves into the theoretical potential of applying constitutional duties horizontally and explores the way in which we view the relationship between the public and private realms of society.

Bambrick’s book, “Constitutionalizing the Private Sphere” (Cambridge University Press, November 2024), examines the differing approaches of constitutional orders across the globe and how they often depart from traditional understandings of the government’s lone role in upholding constitutional rights.

In addition to the United States, Bambrick studied a range of democracies, including India, Germany and South Africa, that have adopted this horizontal approach in different areas of governance.

“A judge or lawyer in the United States, for example, is unlikely to argue that a constitutional right creates a duty for a private actor,” Bambrick said.

From a global perspective, however, that understanding has shifted, according to Bambrick. She said courts in other countries increasingly view their constitutions as establishing potential obligations for private actors as well. In her research, Bambrick looked to constitutional debates, court cases, interviews and political histories to examine these horizontal duties.

“One way in which I do see these kinds of arguments permeating U.S. political discourse is when we talk about social media companies, who are private actors,” Bambrick said. “We often want to apply values like freedom of speech to these private companies, where we expect them to respect and protect an individual’s right to say what they want.”

But this points to a different way of thinking about rights, Bambrick explained.

“It’s as if we are now saying: ‘You have your rights as a private actor, as a citizen or even a big corporation, but you may have certain duties as well,’” Bambrick said. “Maybe you actually have some part to play in realizing others’ rights. The emphasis isn’t just on one’s own freedoms, but maybe you have to do something to allow others to exercise their freedoms, too.”

Bambrick said this conversation is not new. Historically, the debate about the separation of public and private spheres goes back to the time of the Civil War Amendments and, later, the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Questions that arose in those eras are relevant to these current discussions, Bambrick noted, and can inform and illuminate our contemporary debates.

“You do see in the American context episodes where there was some real wrestling with these questions, but they were typically shelved because Congress and the courts were hesitant to entertain the idea of constitutional duties for private actors,” Bambrick said.

She added that many experts see these types of horizontal interpretations as too heavily empowering the courts, which are often thought to be less democratic as institutions. “But others view this idea as a way for the Constitution to speak to the whole country more directly,” Bambrick said.

Bambrick agreed that the legal and political culture in the U.S. places a great emphasis on individualism and individual rights, as well as the sanctity of a robust private sphere where citizens enjoy wide personal freedom.

“The idea of horizontal rights does not mean there is no separation between the public and private spheres anymore. However, it does reinterpret what it means for the Constitution to be the supreme law of the land. To realize the will of the people more completely, this understanding suggests the Constitution should have influence across spheres,” she said.

But for such an idea to succeed and overcome common objections, she said, it would help to involve sectors and branches of government beyond the courts. “If we were ever going to regulate private spaces in this way in the U.S., it could help to have more connection to institutions like legislatures that are thought to have more democratic accountability,” Bambrick said.

The intent behind these nontraditional ideas speaks to a deeper, broader question about what we owe each other as fellow citizens. Bambrick said it begins with asking ourselves more generally, “What are our duties to each other, and how do we know what those duties are? Second, how do we take those duties seriously — within our relationships and our communities — and even within our own country?”

Contact: Tracy DeStazio, associate director of media relations, 574-631-9958 or tdestazi@nd.edu

Virtual learning detrimental to school attendance, especially in districts with higher poverty rates, study finds

2024-09-04T14:39:00-04:00

Since the COVID-19 pandemic, rates of chronic absenteeism have nearly doubled across the nation for students in kindergarten through grade 12.

This increase was tied to the mode of instruction during the early years of the pandemic. In particular, schools that employed virtual learning as the primary teaching mode during the 2020-21 school year experienced a greater increase in chronic absenteeism in the following year. That increase was significantly greater in school districts with higher levels of poverty, according to new research from the University of Notre Dame.

William Evans, the Keough-Hesburgh Professor of Economics and co-founder of Notre Dame’s Wilson Sheehan Lab for Economic Opportunities, co-authored the study with current undergraduate student Kathryn Muchnick and 2024 graduate Olivia Rosenlund. Their work was recently published in the scientific journal JAMA Network Open.

The study analyzed data for two years from more than 11,000 school districts across the United States and found that chronic absenteeism rates increased from 16 percent in 2018-19 to nearly 30 percent in the 2021-22 school year. Students whose schools had full virtual instruction during the pandemic had chronic absenteeism rates that were nearly 7 percentage points higher than those schools that were fully in person, according to the research.

A student is considered chronically absent if he or she misses at least 10 percent of the instructional days in any given school year. That equates to more than three weeks of absences during a 180-day academic year.

As reported in the study, chronic absenteeism has been shown to lead to lower test scores, reduced social and educational interactions, lower rates of high school graduation and increased substance use. The increase in chronic absenteeism began to occur as public schools in the U.S. were attempting to return to pre-pandemic modes of in-person teaching.

Previous studies have indicated that moving away from in-person instruction during the 2020-21 school year to online teaching methods reduced student achievement and educational development, adversely affected children’s mental well-being and decreased school enrollment.

William Evans (Photo by Barbara Johnston/University of Notre Dame)

“We’ve learned a lot from the pandemic,” Evans said, “and a lot of work has gone into researching what effects virtual learning has had on students. It’s really difficult when you disrupt their educational experience by going remote.”

Both of Evans’ co-authors were high school students during the pandemic, giving them a uniquely personal perspective on the study’s results. Rosenlund said that when she entered the end of her senior year with fully virtual classes, she and her classmates “definitely had lower motivation to learn during that time compared to when class was fully in person.”

Muchnick added, “The shift in student motivation after online learning [back to in-person] was palpable.”

The research also indicated that chronic absenteeism rates hit at-risk students and school districts with the highest levels of poverty the hardest. Those school districts saw chronic absenteeism soar more than 10 percentage points higher among students who had participated in fully remote instruction, versus in-person learning.

“There is growing evidence that those in the most precarious situations were the ones that were really hurt the most by virtual instruction,” Evans said. “The districts with higher levels of poverty had higher rates of chronic absenteeism already, and they were much more aggressive at using virtual learning during COVID. So you took a vulnerable population, used this method of delivery for educational instruction, and the outcomes for these children are substantially worse.”

Households with lower incomes or fewer resources were less likely to have reliable or high-speed internet service and had far less access to quality computers or technology, making for a less-than-ideal virtual learning environment. “It was pretty detrimental for those kids who were most at risk in the first place,” Evans added, “and now they’ve been pushed further behind as a result of these policies.”

Although the study did not specifically explore the reasons behind the drop in school attendance, it did offer several possible explanations. First, roughly 10 to 20 percent of students were experiencing post-COVID-19 symptoms and may have elected not to go to school for medical and health reasons. Second, there was a corresponding increase in teacher absences and substitute teacher shortages that made students less compelled to go to school. Third, a greater occurrence of mental health issues, which is often coupled with an increased preoccupation with social media, may have kept students at home. Finally, following the pandemic, parents appear to be more willing to allow their children to miss school for a variety of reasons.

With the worst of the pandemic behind us, many parents, school teachers and administrators believe that virtual instruction is here to stay and will continue as a major component of K-12 education, potentially being used as a substitute for in-person teaching under certain circumstances, such as snow days.

“It’s going to be really difficult to put the genie back in the bottle in this context,” Evans said.

Finding a balance of how to use virtual learning in a way that does not negatively impact the students’ overall educational experience will be crucial, according to the researchers.

Rosenlund added, “It’s disheartening that students are still suffering from the negative effects of online learning. I hope that we can consider its implications more carefully going forward.”

The researchers suggest that educators and policymakers examine the evidence when establishing policies and practices related to online learning, particularly for those communities supporting at-risk students, in order to achieve equitable outcomes for all students.

“I think we need to take a more holistic approach in thinking about how to deal with these pandemics in the future,” Evans said.

Contact: Tracy DeStazio, associate director of media relations, 574-631-9958 or tdestazi@nd.edu

Tax policies impact donors’ generosity, affecting bottom line for nonprofits

2024-07-29T13:00:00-04:00

Do tax policies really matter for charitable giving?

The short answer is yes.

As most taxpayers know, the U.S. tax code creates incentives for some donors to give money to charities. But the huge tax reform policies of 2017, known as the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), changed that for millions of households. As a result, charitable giving fell by nearly $20 billion annually, according to new research by a University of Notre Dame economist.

This particular reform — the largest change enacted in U.S. giving incentives in a generation — not only affected charitable donation amounts, but also changed the game for charities and proved that tax policy really matters for giving.

The study, released as a working paper by the National Bureau of Economic Research, also found that churches saw much less of a drop in giving than other charities, and sophisticated donors were able to “re-time” some of their gifts to take advantage of the incentives prior to the tax changes. The research was conducted by Daniel Hungerman, a professor in Notre Dame’s Department of Economics and a research associate at the bureau, and co-authors Xiao Han and Mark Ottoni-Wilhelm, both of Indiana University Indianapolis.

Daniel Hungerman, professor of economics at the University of Notre Dame. (Photo by Barbara Johnston/University of Notre Dame)

The new tax code increased the standard deduction amount between 2017 and 2018, essentially doubling it. In addition, the government placed a $10,000 cap on the deduction of state and local taxes (better known as SALT). These changes made it more advantageous for most taxpayers to take the standard deduction, rather than going through the trouble of listing out their itemized expenses — including their charitable donation amounts. For these taxpayers, this meant there was no longer any tax-based incentive to give since they weren’t getting a federal tax benefit for doing so.

“This was the biggest tax reform since 1986, and Congress had hoped it would lower federal taxes and help simplify the tax code,” Hungerman said. But one result, he explained, was that about one in five households stopped itemizing their taxes, making a big impact on the nonprofit sector.

For those taxpayers who switched to the standardized deduction, the TCJA caused charitable giving in 2018 to decrease by roughly $880 per taxpayer, amounting to a drop of $20 billion between what was projected for that tax year and what was actually donated.

In the United States, where charitable giving to the nonprofit sector represents about 2 percent of the gross domestic product, “the charitable deduction involves hundreds of billions of dollars in donations and tens of billions of dollars in tax revenue each year,” the co-authors wrote.

One piece of good news from the study, however, is that the tax reform caused little change in giving to religious congregations. The researchers used the term “congregations” to include churches, synagogues, mosques and TV/radio ministries. The drop was found to only affect “other charitable organizations,” such as those involved with helping people with basic needs, contributing to arts and culture and preserving the environment.

Hungerman noted that he and his co-authors devised a novel method to adjust estimates for re-timed giving, or giving by donors who anticipated the tax changes and who chose to donate early, right before they went into effect. “Following the introduction and passage of TCJA in the fourth quarter of 2017, forward-looking taxpayers may have anticipated losing itemization in 2018, and consequently re-timed gifts into 2017,” according to the co-authors.

“It’s important to note that public policy affects charitable activity and behavior — and tax policies really do matter when it comes to taxpayers’ generosity.”

“This new technique allowed us to see a bump in giving in 2017 and to accommodate for that in our final figures,” Hungerman explained.

“Such anticipation matters for interpreting the estimated effects of changes in tax policy,” the co-authors wrote in their study.

But this is not the last time this particular tax reform policy will be up for discussion.

Come Jan. 1, 2026, when several of the TCJA provisions are set to expire, Congress may get the chance to revamp and find other ways to offer tax relief for taxpayers.

“While trying to lighten the tax burden on the American public, Congress has enacted a tax reform that hurt nonprofits, but there are other ways of going about it,” Hungerman said. “They will have to revisit this at some point, and our hope is that they think about changing this part of the tax code.

“But what happens in November could really impact how we revisit this law. It’s important to note that public policy affects charitable activity and behavior — and tax policies really do matter when it comes to taxpayers’ generosity.”

Contact: Tracy DeStazio, associate director of media relations, 574-631-9958 or tdestazi@nd.edu

Democrats grapple with virtual versus in-person formats at national convention

2024-06-05T09:00:00-04:00

As the Democratic Party prepares for its 2024 Democratic National Convention, scheduled to take place Aug. 19-22 in Chicago, it faces an important question: Should the convention be a largely virtual event, similar to the one held in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic, or a largely in-person event like those held prior to 2020?

Some party leaders favor a virtual format to minimize the disruptive effects of protests likely to occur during the convention. The party has already decided to nominate President Joe Biden with a virtual roll call. But other leaders are skeptical of a virtual approach, favoring a traditional event where face-to-face interactions can foster unity among party activists.

A recent survey conducted by a political scientist at the University of Notre Dame provides important insight into this debate. The survey asked the delegates to the 2020 Democratic convention how they felt about the virtual format, which replaced the traditional coverage of in-person speeches to thousands of delegates with celebrity hosts, remote presentations and professionally produced video content.

The survey found that while most of the 2020 delegates considered the virtual convention a success, a large majority of them would prefer not to repeat it this year. Because many of these respondents are likely to be delegates again in 2024, their opinions suggest how well received and perhaps how successful another virtual convention would be.

Geoff Layman, professor and chair of the Department of Political Science, University of Notre Dame.

Geoff Layman, professor and chair of Notre Dame’s Department of Political Science, along with his collaborators, John Green of the University of Akron and John Jackson of Southern Illinois University, interviewed 554 respondents (21 percent of the 2,500 Democratic delegates whom they contacted) between July 2023 and March 2024.

In a report on their findings, they indicate that 56 percent of the 2020 delegates viewed the virtual experience in a positive light overall, with 27 percent providing a more negative assessment. For 2024, however, nearly 65 percent prefer a largely in-person event; 31 percent prefer to have a hybrid event with an even balance of virtual and in-person elements; and just 4 percent would be happy with a largely virtual event.

Democratic delegates’ views were mixed on specific facets of the 2020 virtual convention. For example, a clear majority of delegates had positive views on the technical innovations employed in conducting the convention, such as holding the roll call of state delegations from scenic locations in each state (69 percent thought the format was successful while 20 percent did not), and incorporating a greater use of celebrities presiding at convention events (53 percent approved of the tactic and 31 percent were not as impressed).

As far as meeting the traditional goals of national conventions, the majority of respondents said the virtual format was successful in persuading independent and swing voters and for conducting regular party business such as approving the platform and rules. The delegates believed the virtual format was less successful when it came to building a strong and cohesive organization to carry out the general election campaign and in generating enthusiasm and excitement among grassroots activists and key constituencies.

Layman believes that the limitations of a virtual convention for building party cohesion and grassroots excitement are the main reasons the 2020 delegates want an in-person 2024 convention. “These delegates are political activists and they like politics,” he said. “And while the 2020 convention was effective in terms of helping them achieve the ultimate goal — winning the election — it didn’t have the side benefits for them of the personal interactions and networking with other political activists.

“Discussing how best to mobilize voters, especially the ones sitting on the fence, and teaming up across counties, states or congressional districts to coordinate activities, training sessions and resources to help local party officials and activists campaign effectively — these are the types of in-person things that go on at the convention and that were missing in 2020.”

According to the report, displeasure with the 2020 virtual convention is concentrated among delegates who are younger than 40 years old and supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders’ 2020 nomination campaign. Dissenters of 2020’s virtual format also report weaker levels of support for the Democratic Party organization and stronger support for issue and ideological groups.

Overall, the delegates reported giving top priority to six issues: protecting democracy from domestic extremists, reducing economic inequality, fighting climate change, and protecting abortion, minority and LGBTQ+ rights.

“I think our survey results should make Democratic Party officials who are thinking about moving to a virtual convention take pause, because while their activists were pleased with how it worked in 2020, they don’t want to go back to that. And you’ve got to keep them happy, enthusiastic, supportive and mobilized because the elections are going to be very close this year.”

A key reason for some Democratic leaders preferring to host the convention virtually is the potential for Israel-Palestine protests, which are reminiscent of the anti-Vietnam protests that took place during the 1968 Democratic National Convention — also held in Chicago.

But, according to Layman, this year represents a different time, a different war and vastly different local leadership. “The specter of the 1968 convention hangs over this a little bit since the last time we had these sorts of major campus protests against a sitting Democratic president and his foreign policy was in 1968,” Layman explained.

“But the context was completely different in 1968. We were many years into a very unpopular war with people in their 20s getting drafted into the military, and we had an old-style political machine running Chicago with a more aggressive police department confronting protesters. I think the probability of the Democrats having a repeat of 1968 is very low.”

If the convention moves to a hybrid production, the plan would incorporate in-person speeches from Biden and key Democrats as well as pre-recorded testimonials and videos taped from various parts of the country — with the intention of obtaining maximum television and internet coverage while minimizing contentious moments ripe for demonstrators to distract viewers and attendees.

Layman said the Democratic Party may choose to use more rehearsed and professionally produced content, which would give the party more opportunity to manage the narrative. “The more airtime you can control, the better it is for the party,” Layman said.

As the Democrats finalize plans for their 2024 convention format, Layman said these findings matter in the big picture. “I think our survey results should make Democratic Party officials who are thinking about moving to a virtual convention take pause, because while their activists were pleased with how it worked in 2020, they don’t want to go back to that,” he said.

“And you’ve got to keep them happy, enthusiastic, supportive and mobilized because the elections are going to be very close this year.”

Contact: Tracy DeStazio, associate director of media relations, 574-631-9958 or tdestazi@nd.edu

Swifties unite after ‘The Great War’ to make a move into politics

2024-05-23T12:48:00-04:00

(Photo by Paolo Villanueva via Flickr, licensed under Creative Commons)

Scholars say democracy is in danger if people aren’t paying attention to what matters. And if the public doesn’t care enough about politics, then they may not vote or won’t be as informed when they vote, nor will they be able to fulfill their role in a democratic society.

But if anyone can motivate people to pay attention, it’s Taylor Swift.

During the botched ticket presales for Taylor Swift’s “Eras Tour” in late 2022, the combination of unprecedented demand, arbitrary and unfair purchasing privilege, and Ticketmaster’s website crashes made it nearly impossible for most Swift fans to get tickets. New research from political scientists at the University of Notre Dame found that this pivotal experience forced “Swifties” to pay attention to politics by connecting it to something meaningful and personal in their lives.

By drawing fans’ attention to the issue that mattered most to them — scoring concert tickets — the system failures and ensuing disappointment brought to light the importance of event ticketing politics, namely the lack of market competition, consumer rights and wealth inequality. Those unlucky Swifties who were unable to obtain “Eras” tickets were galvanized to speak out on those issues and hold their elected officials accountable.

‘The story of us’

Erin Rossiter is the Nancy Reeves Dreux Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Notre Dame. (Photo by Steve Toepp/University of Notre Dame)

Notre Dame researchers Erin Rossiter, the Nancy Reeves Dreux Assistant Professor of Political Science, and Jeff Harden, the Andrew J. McKenna Family Professor in the Department of Political Science, tested a political science theory called “issue publics.” This theory suggests that there are small groups within the public sphere that are very passionate about a certain political issue — one that drives their opinion and behavior, keeps them invested for a substantial amount of time and encourages them to engage in the democratic process or participate in political activism.

Through a natural experiment, as documented in their study, “The Development of an Issue Public: Evidence from The Eras Tour,” Rossiter and Harden found that the Swiftie community was one such group. “Swifties are a long-standing, cohesive, passionate and largely apolitical fan base,” they wrote. The fans are very interconnected, especially online, and can coordinate information very well, Rossiter added.

But they are also a socially, economically and politically relevant group that has been credited for an increase in voter registration and a boost in the local economies where “The Eras Tour” concerts were hosted, as well as representing a sought-after constituency in the 2024 presidential campaign, according to the researchers.

“They could become a powerful force in politics,” Rossiter said. “And so, we wanted to test how issue publics form and where they come from, and who joins them and why.”

‘Long story short, it was a bad time’

Tickets for the tour’s first U.S. leg were set to go on sale Nov. 15, 2022. Fans would have access through random selection to purchase tickets; those not selected were waitlisted. When it came time to buy tickets, fans faced an anxiety-inducing and error-ridden process whereby the Ticketmaster website would either crash entirely from the extreme volume, or crash sporadically during mid-purchase.

Ultimately, only about 65 percent of those who attempted to purchase tickets that day found success, according to data collected by Rossiter and Harden.

These presale issues forced Ticketmaster to cancel its public sale planned for Nov. 18, which permanently spiked ticket prices on the secondary market (e.g., StubHub or SeatGeek) — with an average price soaring to $2,183 per ticket by May 2023. This devastated Swifties who could not afford such price tags, leading them to refer to the frustrating process and resulting controversy as “The Great War,” a reference to a track on the 3am Edition of Swift’s 2022 album, “Midnights.”

‘Look what you made me do’

Nine months later, and after the first leg of the “Eras Tour,” Rossiter and Harden fielded a survey of more than 4,000 lucky and unlucky Swift fans from August to September of 2023.

Jeff Harden is the Andrew J. McKenna Family Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Notre Dame. (Photo by Matt Cashore/University of Notre Dame)

They found that fans who were randomly excluded from being able to purchase primary-market tickets had noticeably different attitudes and behaviors in regard to event ticketing politics than those who successfully bought tickets. “These unlucky fans reported agreement that Ticketmaster’s lack of competition and uneven ticket distribution processes were problematic,” the researchers wrote.

Rossiter and Harden used the survey — which was broadly shared across Swiftie social media channels — to measure fans’ behaviors following their experience. According to the study, the unlucky Swiftie respondents were more likely to contact a government agency to file a complaint. The survey provided a link to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) should any of the participants wish to lodge a formal consumer complaint.

Harden said that roughly 10 percent of the survey respondents filed with the FTC, meaning approximately 400 of them took the time to go through the questions and complete the online form.

The two researchers concluded that behavior shifts occurred within the fan community that prompted them “to engage more with the politics of the issue,” one way or another.

‘This is me trying’

The researchers also wondered if anyone outside of their study took note of the shifts. “Was anybody listening to these young people — this newly developed group of informed and motivated citizens — who were now becoming more politically engaged about this event ticketing issue?” Harden asked.

The answer was yes. “There were a lot of examples of elected officials being responsive to this issue,” Harden said. Several antitrust bills were introduced in Congress and state legislatures, attorneys general in multiple states launched their own inquiries, and the U.S. Department of Justice announced that it will sue Ticketmaster parent Live Nation, one of the largest ticketing and live events companies in America, for antitrust violations.

“There is a suggested pattern that completes this whole cycle of accountability,” Harden said. “People got motivated about a political issue, went to their government about it, and at least in some form the government actually responded with legislation.”

“We know that people aren’t informed, knowledgeable or invested in every single thing that’s happening, but maybe they can care a lot about one thing, one particular issue that they are passionate about.”

Rossiter said that despite the political polarization and infighting in the U.S. that leaves many people averse to politics, this research gives hope that democracy can still function as it should.

“We know that people aren’t informed, knowledgeable or invested in every single thing that’s happening,” Rossiter said. “But maybe they can care a lot about one thing, one particular issue that they are passionate about.”

Contact: Tracy DeStazio, associate director of media relations, 574-631-9958 or tdestazi@nd.edu

Opioid epidemic reaches beyond health impacts to influence politics

2024-05-02T13:00:00-04:00

The health shock of the opioid epidemic in America is a “huge crisis in people’s lives right now,” a University of Notre Dame researcher said.

And it undeniably is. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), drug overdose deaths in the United States topped 100,000 in 2022 — with nearly 83,000 of those deaths involving opioids. And over the past two decades, mortality from opioid overdoses in the U.S. has increased at an alarming rate, claiming the lives of more than 645,000 individuals. In that same 20-year period, nearly 280,000 people died from overdoses involving prescription opioids.

Vicky Barone, assistant professor of economics at the University of Notre Dame. (Photo by Matt Cashore/University of Notre Dame)

Vicky Barone, assistant professor of economics at Notre Dame, along with her co-author Carolina Arteaga, assistant professor of economics at the University of Toronto, researched the origins and development of the opioid epidemic and found that the unregulated marketing of potent painkillers led to increased access to prescription opioids and subsequent overdose mortalities. The two researchers then traced the long-term consequences of opioid overdose deaths on the political landscape in America, finding an increased support for conservative beliefs and Republican candidates.

Their research culminated in two working papers completed this academic year: “A Manufactured Tragedy: The Origins and Deep Ripples of the Opioid Epidemic” and “The Political Consequences of the Opioid Epidemic.”

In their first study, “A Manufactured Tragedy,” the researchers examined areas of the country that witnessed high rates of opioid prescriptions when opioids first entered the market in the mid-1990s. They found that Purdue Pharma, the manufacturer of OxyContin — a prescription opioid that is a highly potent and addictive painkiller — intentionally and aggressively targeted the marketing of its drug to areas with high cancer mortality rates to treat cancer pain.

According to the researchers, unsealed court records drawn from litigation against Purdue Pharma indicated a strategy by the pharmaceutical company to expand their marketing efforts from the cancer pain market to the much larger non-cancer pain market in those same geographic areas. This meant that physicians and patients not involved in cancer exposure or treatment would then be targeted by OxyContin promotion, the researchers said, and would eventually gain access to potent prescription opioids to treat moderate and chronic pain.

In the years following that initial marketing campaign, those targeted communities suffered from deadly opioid drug overdoses more than any other towns across the country, Barone and Arteaga calculated. Focusing on those areas already experiencing cancer mortality, the researchers found that there was a 55 percent increase in prescription opioid deaths and a 33 percent increase in deaths from all opioids. As noted in the study, the CDC determined that opioid prescriptions reached their peak in 2012; however, mortality from prescription opioids rose for another five years to reach its maximum in 2017, and deaths involving any opioids were at an all-time high in 2021.

The researchers explained that the opioid crisis quickly spiraled out of control due to several factors. First of all, it was not initially or fully understood how addictive the opioids were and how risky it was to prescribe and use them without stricter dosing parameters. Second, there was a spread of misinformation regarding any such risks or dangers of addiction surrounding their use. Third, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration lacked oversight in terms of how the drugs were marketed. And finally, once the drugs hit the black market, there was no controlling how and how many of them were distributed within the community.

Building on the research from that first study, Barone and Arteaga turned the focus of their second study toward the opioid epidemic’s connection to political perceptions and whether or not the “health shocks” of drug overdose deaths occurring in those affected communities influenced how their members chose to vote.

Focusing on the period between 1982 and 2020, including the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections — as well as any congressional elections within that period — the researchers documented a causal relationship between those areas experiencing epidemic-related health shocks and an increased support of the Republican party and its values.

Specifically, the researchers discovered that the opioid epidemic increased Republican vote shares and started to flip elections in the early 2000s. In areas hit harder by the opioid epidemic, Barone explained, there was more support for Republican candidates and a higher Republican vote share, which translated into Republicans winning additional seats in the House from 2012 until 2020, in addition to an increase in House members who tend to hold more conservative views.

“The opioid epidemic has shaped the views of the American population in terms of who voters are supporting,” Barone said. “And from electoral survey data, we see a real shift toward more conservative beliefs in the areas affected most by the shock of high opioid mortality rates.”

“The opioid epidemic has shaped the views of the American population in terms of who voters are supporting. And from electoral survey data, we see a real shift toward more conservative beliefs in the areas affected most by the shock of high opioid mortality rates.”

These effects are explained by changes in voter views rather than voter composition, the study said. For example, when voters were asked what their views were on abortion, gun control and immigration policy, those who were more exposed to the effects of the opioid epidemic had stronger feelings in alignment with those of conservatives.

The researchers offered one potential explanation for this shift: the perceived greater effectiveness of the Republicans’ approach to curbing the opioid epidemic over the Democrats’ approach. The Republican party favors increased law enforcement to curb drug trafficking and crime, while Democrats prefer harm reduction policies and funding increases for opioid abuse treatment and recovery.

It is important to note that the original opioid epidemic has transformed over the past several years to become a fentanyl epidemic — fentanyl being a synthetic opioid that can be deadly even in small doses and is found on the street rather than being prescribed. Barone explained that the idea of keeping these particular drugs out of the country altogether resonated with the public, boosting support for the Republican party’s directive.

“The Republican response was generally more appealing to the public,” Barone said. “And in places where people were more exposed to the epidemic, it made more sense in their minds.”

The co-authors concluded that the potential effects of the increased supply of prescription opioids stretches beyond the uptick in overdose deaths and touches communities in health, economic and social dimensions, “and indicates how it will continue to shape these communities through its effects on their elected officials and intergroup perceptions.”

Contact: Tracy DeStazio, associate director of media relations, 574-631-9958 or tdestazi@nd.edu

There’s no ‘one size fits all’ when it comes to addressing men’s health issues globally

2024-04-23T09:03:20-04:00

Even with important strides in addressing health issues across the globe, men have not benefited equally compared to women. Men’s life expectancies have not grown as steadily as women’s over the past few decades, and they are expected to live about five years less than women, according to 2021 global health data from the Human Mortality Database and the United Nations’ World Population Prospects. The discrepancy in life expectancy between men and women persists in places all over the world, and is even growing in other places.

At a time when health resources are at a premium and need to be wisely allocated, health professionals must find points within men’s lives when it makes the most sense to intervene and advocate for preventive care for promoting better health outcomes. Life transitions such as marriage and fatherhood are often pivotal and crucial intervention points — and men often experience long-term health benefits from those family roles, with lower mortality risks than single men without children. But just like every man is different, health concerns across global communities differ as well.

Research from the University of Notre Dame finds that not all life transitions produce the same health results, and not all men’s global health policies should look the same from one country to another.

Lee Gettler, associate professor of anthropology and chair of Notre Dame’s Department of Anthropology. (Photo by Matt Cashore/University of Notre Dame)

In most contexts in the United States and Europe, men tend to experience physical health changes when they get married and start having a family. These changes include an increase in waist circumference and body mass index — a phenomenon known as the “dad bod,” explained Lee Gettler, associate professor of anthropology and chair of Notre Dame’s Department of Anthropology.

But Gettler’s research found that this phenomenon actually differs across societies. His study, recently published in the journal Social Science and Medicine, used a large longitudinal dataset from the Philippines to explore how men’s physical health changed across transitions to either marriage or cohabitation and fatherhood. His and his co-authors’ findings present a different picture of Filipino men’s health as it relates to these major transitions, compared to what is commonly seen in the U.S. and Europe.

Gettler worked with scientists from the University of Michigan, Northwestern University and the University of San Carlos in Cebu City, Philippines, to conduct and compile the research.

“Our research shows that the links between physical health with marriage and fatherhood are different for Filipino men in Cebu than they are in places like the United States or Europe,” said Gettler, who is also director of Notre Dame’s Hormones, Health and Human Behavior Lab and faculty affiliate with the Eck Institute for Global Health.

Gettler and his fellow researchers collected socio-demographic, health, behavioral and testosterone data from a long-running birth cohort study of Filipino men at ages 21, 26 and 31 (approximately) between 2005 and 2014. The researchers discovered that their group of 607 men fared much better than men in other cultures at the same stages of life.

“We don’t find that the married or cohabitating Filipino men have the same kind of negative health trajectories in terms of their physical well-being compared to the Filipino men who stayed single in our study,” Gettler said. “They are not experiencing deteriorating health, or demonstrating the dad bod, as a consequence of becoming a partner or father.”

The study acknowledged the myriad reasons behind this difference in outcome and said that diet and physical activity, as well as the social dynamics surrounding partnering, could explain such results. In addition, the study revealed that the Cebu men who were stronger and more muscular in their early 20s were more likely to later become partnered in the first place — a pattern the co-authors described as the “marital selection” model.

“Our findings indicate that an emphasis on men’s body composition as they transition to partnering and parenting may be less critical in Cebu and similar contexts,” the researchers wrote, compared to prioritizing other potential men’s health issues at this same stage in life, such as mental health.

“The transition to fatherhood represents a promising developmental period to encourage men to attend to their own health,” continued the co-authors, with the added benefit being overall family health in the long run. But, they cautioned, it is crucial to direct those promotional efforts and resources to the most pressing needs within a specific socio-ecological setting and community.

“In global public health, men’s well-being is often a secondary concern, despite men faring poorly compared to women on multiple dimensions of health across the life course,” Gettler said. “But to help address this gap, we not only need improved strategies and policies, but we also require a more robust understanding of factors that shape mens’ health across diverse contexts.

“This means we cannot simply transport a ‘one size fits all’ policy on men’s health and family life from one context to other settings around the world.”

Contact: Tracy DeStazio, associate director of media relations, 574-631-9958 or tdestazi@nd.edu

Essays on democracy draw attention to critical threats, explore safeguards ahead of Jan. 6

2024-03-25T13:00:00-04:00

The U.S. Capitol building in Washington, D.C. (Photo Credit: Matt Cashore/University of Notre Dame)

Following the events of Jan. 6, 2021 — when a violent mob stormed the U.S. Capitol building in an effort to interrupt the certification process of the 2020 presidential election — experts began to question how to protect the next presidential election from a similar threat. To that end, University of Notre Dame political scientists have partnered with preeminent scholars of democracy from across the country to produce a set of recommendations to strengthen and safeguard democracy in America.

The University’s Rooney Center for the Study of American Democracy established the January 6th, 2025, Project in an effort to understand the social, political, psychological and demographic factors that led to that troublesome day in our nation’s capital. By pursuing research, teaching and public engagement, the project offers insight into how American democracy got to this point and how to strengthen and protect it, while emphasizing how to prepare for a similar attack many deem imminent on Jan. 6, 2025, when Congress seeks to certify the 2024 presidential election results. The project includes 34 members who represent various disciplines and leading universities — 10 of whom hail from Notre Dame’s faculty.

Matthew E.K. Hall, director of the Rooney Center for the Study of American Democracy and the David A. Potenziani Memorial College Professor of Constitutional 91��Ƶ at the University of Notre Dame. (Photo Credit: University of Notre Dame)

Matthew E.K. Hall, director of the Rooney Center, said one of the project’s first goals was to create a collection of essays written by its members to be included in a special issue of the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, which was published this month. These essays aim to draw attention to the vulnerabilities in our democratic system and the threats building against it, and to create consensus on ways to remedy both problems.

The authors set out to tackle the following tough questions, but from different perspectives: How serious are the threats to our democracy, how did we get to this point, and what can we do to fix the situation? The 14 essays are broken down into categories, falling under the headings of “‘Us’ Versus ‘Them,’” “Dangerous Ideas” and “Undermining Democratic Institutions.” With most pieces being co-authored by faculty from multiple institutions, the collection offers a collaborative approach to evaluating what led America to this crisis and how to avert it.

David Campbell, director of the Notre Dame Democracy Initiative and the Packey J. Dee Professor of American Democracy in the Department of Political Science at the University of Notre Dame. (Photo Credit: Barbara Johnston/University of Notre Dame)

David Campbell, director of the Notre Dame Democracy Initiative and the Packey J. Dee Professor of American Democracy in the Department of Political Science, described the project as “an example of how Notre Dame can be a national leader on the issue of preserving American democracy. Not only do we have top scholars working on the issue, but we can provide a forum for a community of scholars across many leading universities. Maintaining democracy will require all hands on deck.”

In the collection’s introduction, Hall explained the backdrop of what led America to this point and why these essays help acknowledge the challenges we are facing as a nation. “We are basically living through a revival of fascist politics in the U.S.,” Hall wrote, “where politicians are using divisive rhetoric to separate us into an ‘us’ versus ‘them’ paradigm — left versus right, white versus Black, rich versus poor, urban versus rural, religious versus secular — the divisions go on and on.”

“Maintaining democracy will require all hands on deck.” ~ David Campbell

Hall estimated that between 25 and 30 percent of Americans have consistently endorsed some fascist ideas such as racial oppression, conspiracy theories and authoritarianism. “Ordinarily, this consistent minority is held in check by the democratic process,” Hall explained. “These candidates don’t even get nominated for major political positions because their co-partisan allies don’t want to lose the general election.

“But when our politics become this intensely polarized, most partisans will support their party no matter who is nominated,” he continued. “As a result, politicians pushing these fascist ideas can gain power by taking over one political party and then exploiting the polarization to win elections. Once taking power, they will likely manipulate the electoral process to remain in power.”

Consequently, Hall said, fascist leaders are able to exploit these social divisions to break down basic social norms and shared understandings about American politics. This pushes huge swaths of society toward accepting dangerous ideas that would normally be rejected, such as expanded executive power, intense animosity toward political opponents, a wavering support for free speech, and political candidates who deny election losses. This weakened support for democratic norms enables attacks on our democratic institutions, such as ignoring court rulings, enacting voter suppression laws and — most shockingly (as in the case of Jan. 6) — openly subverting elections.

With the political situation as dire as many feel it to be, the January 6th, 2025, Project’s essays outline a few practical steps that can be taken to strengthen and safeguard democracy in America.

For example, Hall said, as the nation moves forward into this next election year, American voters have to stay focused on the “deliberate denial of reality” on the part of some politicians so that they can discern the difference between lies, truths and just plain distractions.

“The more we lose touch with basic facts and accept misinformation, conspiracies and contradictory claims as the norm in our society,” he said, “the more vulnerable we are to losing our democracy.

“Even more importantly, we have to be willing to sacrifice short-term political gains in order to preserve the long-term stability of our democracy. That might mean holding your nose to vote for candidates that you would not otherwise support.”

Hall added that Americans must redouble their devotion to democratic principles such as open elections and free speech, and states should adopt institutional reforms that remove partisans from the electoral process (for example, employing nonpartisan election commissions). He also noted the importance of paying close attention to efforts that divide groups of Americans, especially those that portray outgroup members as evil or less than human.

“The public needs to take these critical threats seriously and we’re hoping that these essays draw attention to them, and help to build consensus about the underlying problems in our politics and potential remedies.” ~ Matthew E.K. Hall

The members of the project hope that by honestly acknowledging the challenges our nation is facing, understanding the mistakes that were made and recognizing the vulnerabilities in our system that led us to this situation — and by resolving to fix these issues — we can pull our country’s political system back from the edge of the cliff before it’s too late.

“The public needs to take these critical threats seriously and we’re hoping that these essays draw attention to them, and help to build consensus about the underlying problems in our politics and potential remedies,” Hall concluded.

Notre Dame faculty who are members of the January 6th, 2025, Project include David Campbell, the Packey J. Dee Professor of American Democracy; Darren Davis, the Snyder Family Mission Professor of Political Science; Luis Fraga, the Rev. Donald P. McNeill, C.S.C., Professor in Transformative Latino Leadership; Matthew E.K. Hall, the David A. Potenziani Memorial College Professor of Constitutional 91��Ƶ; Jeffrey Harden, the Andrew J. McKenna Family Associate Professor of Political Science; Geoffrey Layman, professor and chair of the Department of Political Science; Rachel Porter, assistant professor of political science; Ricardo Ramirez, associate professor of political science; Erin Rossiter, the Nancy Reeves Dreux Assistant Professor of Political Science; and Christina Wolbrecht, the C. Robert and Margaret Hanley Family Director of the Notre Dame Washington Program and professor of political science.

Democracy is one of several University-wide initiatives emerging from Notre Dame’s recently released Strategic Framework. The Democracy Initiative will further establish Notre Dame as a global leader in the study of democracy, a convenor for conversations about and actions to preserve democracy, and a model for the formation of civically engaged citizens and public servants. The Democracy Initiative will connect research, education and policy work across multiple campus units and will extend Notre Dame’s voice to policymakers and federal agencies in Washington, D.C.

Contact: Tracy DeStazio, associate director of media relations, 574-631-9958 or tdestazi@nd.edu

Does Russia stand to benefit from climate change?

2024-02-21T13:00:00-05:00

Icebergs in Mikoyan Bay, Bolshevik Island, Severnaya Semlya, Russia. (Photo Credit: Ansgar Walk)

New research examines the effect of climate change on Russia and the country’s role in addressing global environmental challenges

“There’s a narrative out there about climate change that says there are winners and losers. Even if most of the planet might lose from the changing climate, certain industries and countries stand to benefit. And Russia is usually at the tip of people’s tongues, with Russian officials even making the claim that Russia is a potential winner.”

This portrayal, described by Debra Javeline, associate professor of political science at the University of Notre Dame and lead author on the recently published study “Russia in a changing climate,” was debated by her 16 co-authors — all Russia specialists and members of the Program on New Approaches to Research and Security in Eurasia (PONARS), a multinational cohort of academics from North America, Europe and post-soviet Eurasia.

Debra Javeline (Photo Credit: Barbara Johnston/University of Notre Dame)

The PONARS scholars, including Susanne Wengle, also an associate professor of political science at Notre Dame, studied the effects of climate change on Russia and Russia’s role in global efforts to combat climate change or obstruct climate action.

“We asked ourselves,” Javeline said of her research team, “does Russia stand to benefit from climate change? Are the claims made by the Russian government officials accurate in that it does benefit them?”

The PONARS network includes social scientists of different disciplinary backgrounds, allowing each co-author to contribute analysis of Russia in their respective fields, including agriculture, international affairs, the changing Arctic, public health, civil society and governance.

Drawing on their collective expertise and a comprehensive literature review, the researchers found that Russia is already suffering from a variety of climate change impacts — despite the government’s positive spin — and is ill-prepared to mitigate or adapt to those climate impacts. And, as the rest of the world transitions to renewable energy sources, Russia’s fossil-fuel-dependent government is not willing or ready to make alternative plans for the country, changes that could potentially benefit the whole of their society.

“The future of Russia is politically and economically interdependent with the future of the climate,” she said. “If we have any hope of seeing a peaceful Russia that can rejoin the international community with a more responsive government, then we can’t talk about one without the other.”

But while Russia continues to wage a carbon-intensive war in Ukraine after a full two years, it remains “increasingly isolated from the international community and its efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions,” the researchers wrote.

The cause for concern lies in the fact that not only is Russia considered the world’s largest country, occupying more than half the Arctic Ocean coastline, but it is also warming four times faster than Earth as a whole and is a primary emitter of greenhouse gases, according to the PONARS study.

Susanne Wengle (Photo Credit: Matt Cashore/University of Notre Dame)

Environmental impacts already occurring in Russia include flooding, heat waves, drought and wildfires that affect not only communities, but agriculture, forestry and water resources as well. “Russia is one of the world’s most important producers and exporters of grains,” said Wengle, an expert on Russian agriculture. “What this means is that the effects of climate change on Russian farms are a concern not only for Russians, but for everyone concerned with global markets for commodity crops and global food security.”

Global warming has had a huge influence on Russia’s permafrost, which is now thawing at alarming rates. What was once considered permanently frozen, stable ground is now defrosting, shifting and causing tremendous damage. The study pointed to increased flooding, landslides, caving or sinking of ground that supports existing infrastructures — resulting in cracked foundations and compromised shelters.

“Some Russian cities in high-latitude regions report infrastructure damage from thawing permafrost and soil instability for up to 80 percent of buildings and for pipelines,” the researchers discovered.

Russian leadership, however, interprets these climate impacts self-servingly and encourages its citizens to accept them as benefits, according to the PONARS scholars. For example, while Russian scientists warn about extreme temperatures and decreased Arctic sea ice, the Russian government touts a year-round Arctic sea route and a more livable climate overall. And although Russian climatologists study the effect of climate change, there are limited policies in place to reduce the vulnerability of some regions to climate impacts, and generally little adaptation planning and even less implementation of actual adaptations.

The researchers found that there is also a real climate leadership deficit in Russia and an absence of commitment to mitigate and adapt. “No top political leader champions a climate agenda,” they proclaimed. “Those in the highest positions of power demonstrate silence or denial.”

Furthermore, Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has exacerbated the climate emergency. “The humanitarian disaster is of the utmost importance — the number of deaths and structures that were destroyed — but the collateral damage is intense destruction to the atmosphere,” Javeline noted.

The war has brought irreparable damage to the global climate from increased military emissions, which the researchers explain as taking the form of “potentially several million extra tons of carbon dioxide equivalent.” Military operations have all had a harmful effect on the environment by adding toxic chemicals and hazardous waste into the air and water supplies.

The PONARS study serves as a framework to identify gaps in research. In particular, the scientists believe that more research is needed on the political dimensions of Russia in our changing climate — namely, taking a closer look at the country’s centralized political system and how it handles policy challenges related to climate change.

Javeline and Wengle added that the researchers hope to improve understanding of climate issues affecting Russia so that when Russian leadership does decide to acknowledge the country’s precarious position in a changing climate, there will be a reliable base of knowledge to assist them with efforts to mitigate and adapt.

Contact: Tracy DeStazio, associate director of media relations, 574-631-9958 or tdestazi@nd.edu

‘I’m watching you’ behavior produces racial disparities in school discipline

2024-02-12T11:00:00-05:00

During the 2020-21 school year, the number of Black male students involved in disciplinary outcomes at school was disproportionately high compared to their enrollment numbers in kindergarten through grade 12, according to a report the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights published in November that surveyed student discipline in U.S. public schools. Specifically, the data indicated that Black boys were nearly two times more likely than white boys to receive an out-of-school suspension or an expulsion.

Calvin Zimmermann

While this report includes the full extent of the elementary through high school population, research from Calvin Zimmermann, the O’Shaughnessy Assistant Professor of Education in the Department of Sociology at the University of Notre Dame, indicates that even early childhood teachers often apply discipline disproportionately in their classrooms based on a student’s race.

In his study, recently published in the journal Sociology of Education, Zimmermann found that elementary school teachers not only anticipated trouble from Black students more so than they did from white students, but they also watched and scrutinized their behavior more carefully and subsequently handed out heavier punishments to them.

“Official data show that Black boys are disciplined at the highest rate of any racial and gender subgroup,” Zimmermann wrote in his study. This overrepresentation troubled Zimmermann and led him to conduct his own investigation into what causes such disparity.

By conducting a two-year observational study in a public charter school, following a group of male kindergarten students through first grade, Zimmermann was able to see firsthand the daily interactions between students and teachers within the classroom as well as on the playground.

The first thing he noticed was that teachers — regardless of their own race — took more of an “authoritarian approach” to discipline with Black boys and a more “permissive approach” to white boys in routine school behavior scenarios. The more authoritarian approach led to teachers surveilling the Black boys more carefully than the white boys, including making such comments to them directly as “I’m watching you,” even as the two played side by side in the same space. “Black boys were singled out and monitored for ‘rough play’ behaviors even when white boys were also participating in the same activity,” Zimmermann said. “It was as if teachers were ‘looking for trouble’ intentionally.”

The manner in which the teachers engaged with misbehaving boys also differed, Zimmermann explained. The teachers would frequently engage with and reprimand the Black boys for their behaviors but did not acknowledge the same behaviors on the part of the white boys. “White boys more easily evaded teacher reprimands as compared to Black boys,” Zimmermann wrote, with their misbehavior remaining largely ignored.

The third example of differential treatment was in how the teachers responded to noncompliance on the part of students who weren’t doing what they were told or who challenged the teacher’s authority. “Teachers exhibited patience and leniency with white boys who were noncompliant but unwavering harshness with Black boys,” Zimmermann said. Sometimes the correction would even involve gentle physical force, such as moving the students from one place to another, removing them from the classroom entirely or guiding them with a hand on their shoulder to sit down or comply.

“Teachers may have unconscious biases that lead them to believe that Black boys are somehow more responsible for their behaviors or less innocent,” Zimmermann surmised. “They are not being given the benefit of the doubt of ‘boys will be boys’ — and teachers are assuming that there’s something more negative involved in their intentions, that they’re actually ‘trying to cause trouble.’”

“It is important to understand how race and racism shape children’s earliest school experiences.”

These early, everyday interactions between teachers and students can have important, long-lasting consequences for a student’s future life choices, life chances, social relations and educational opportunities, as well as potential career and income trajectories, according to Zimmermann. Specifically for Black boys, these divergent disciplinary experiences in early childhood may impact their future attitudes toward school, affect their relationships and level of trust with their teachers, and contribute to the school-to-prison pipeline that plagues our country’s educational system, he said.

“Authoritarian disciplinary practices may socialize Black boys into a broader sense of racial inferiority and contribute to a negative self-image,” Zimmermann explained, “while permissive discipline may socialize white boys into a sense of racial superiority, entitlement and privilege.”

In addition, when Black boys are repeatedly singled out and altogether removed from the classroom for bad behavior, they miss out on learning opportunities that come from time spent in class. “This impacts your test scores and performance further down the road,” Zimmermann noted, “further reducing your chances for educational success.”

Zimmermann said it’s difficult to change whatever beliefs or biases teachers may carry in their hearts or minds, but schools and school leadership can focus specifically on changing their behaviors and actions in the classroom.

“91��Ƶs can do a lot to support teachers in engaging in this work,” Zimmermann said. By providing training on racial bias and placing behavioral support staff in the classroom to help manage discipline and behavior issues, schools can take the burden off of teachers so they can focus more on teaching and engaging positively with their students.

“It is important to understand how race and racism shape children’s earliest school experiences,” Zimmermann wrote. “Even for students as young as 6 years old, schools perpetuate existing social and educational inequalities.”

Contact: Tracy DeStazio, associate director of media relations, 574-631-9958 or tdestazi@nd.edu

Anthropologist offers blueprint for new ways of being and relating to others in wake of disaster

2023-12-19T13:00:30-05:00

Aidan Seale-Feldman

Aidan Seale-Feldman knows a thing or two about what it’s like to witness a disaster. She was working in Nepal in 2015 when a 7.8-magnitude earthquake struck the central region of the country, followed by a 7.3-magnitude aftershock, both of which claimed the lives of more than 9,000 people in total once the ground had ceased heaving and the dust had finally settled. The event changed her life — and her work — forever.

Disasters, both natural and humanitarian, are all around us. How we as humans process tragedy and survive all that suffering — and find ways to continue moving forward — is worth studying.

For Seale-Feldman, an assistant professor and a medical and psychological anthropologist in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Notre Dame, providing the right kind of care for victims of disaster is crucial. She finds insight by studying the diverse ways humans respond to catastrophe and loss, and how those responses are shaped by cultural, social and political factors. Understanding those differences reveals not only why we react the way we do when something awful happens, but also informs how to genuinely and compassionately help those in the middle of a crisis, whatever it may be and wherever they may be.

Our ability to cope with disaster depends on our well-being, resources

When a disaster strikes, Seale-Feldman says, an immediate disorientation can develop in multiple directions — the severity and manifestation of which depends on a person’s well-being and level of social support prior to the disaster, as well as one’s personal and cultural resources in the management of that loss.

“It is certain that those who are in precarious situations, or who were already struggling with feelings of hopelessness, sadness, excessive worry or substance use prior to a disaster, will be more vulnerable to increased distress,” Seale-Feldman explained.

Knowing someone’s history and ability to cope with tragedy sets the stage for what mental health resources they may need.

‘The world is like this’: How different cultures, belief systems deal with disaster

It is important to remember that people from different cultures and belief backgrounds respond to loss differently after a disaster, Seale-Feldman said. She offered the example of the earthquake in Nepal, where she had been working on research on the translation of affliction between Indigenous and psychiatric worlds when the quake hit. The 2015 event helped her to discover that not all cultures see disaster in the same way. In Nepal, a place shaped by Hindu and Buddhist values, many people spoke of suffering as simply the reality of the world we live in.

“They would tell me, ‘The world is like this,’” Seale-Feldman said. “Basically, that life is a constant oscillation between suffering and contentment, misery and joy — everything is impermanent.”

These different human responses to moments of tragedy may also require different approaches to healing. “Not all psychosocial counseling or humanitarian efforts fit every culture or person in the wake of a disaster,” Seale-Feldman said.

For example, there is an idea in Western medicine that talking about loss and expressing negative emotions is necessary for healing. In Nepal, however, “there is a sense that to talk about those who died a bad death (in an accident or before one’s time) can strengthen the attachments between the living and the dead, making it harder for the dead to achieve either rebirth into the next life or liberation from the world,” Seale-Feldman said.

Something she learned from her experience in Nepal was that trained counselors have to find new ways to help those working with loss — in particular, learning healing techniques that may be different from what they have been taught as common practice in their field.

Two ways to offer care emerge

Seale-Feldman refers to the words of Dean Spade, a professor at the Seattle University 91��Ƶ of Law, in his book “Mutual Aid: Building Solidarity During This Crisis (and the Next),” where he argues that there are two main forms of care that emerge in the wake of a disaster: charity and mutual aid.

“Humanitarianism, a form of charity, relies on a hierarchical model in which those with resources decide who is deserving of aid and in what form, while mutual aid involves a nonhierarchical effort of collective coordination to meet each other’s needs,” Seale-Feldman explained.

One of the major issues in humanitarianism is that care is allocated based on “victim status,” Seale-Feldman said, “such that anyone who is not eligible as a victim based on predetermined criteria will be excluded from receiving aid, even if they may be suffering due to other issues.”

Mutual aid, however, offers a different form of care that sees all those involved as eligible sufferers in need of equal and adequate attention.

According to Seale-Feldman, beyond these two models, there are also smaller forms of care that emerge in the aftermath that are important to acknowledge and focus on, such as “the risks undertaken by some to help others, acts of kindness and generosity, and interactions marked by gentleness between people.”

These modes of assistance are what Seale-Feldman strives to illuminate in her own work.

How can we help better, for longer?

Seale-Feldman said that sustainability is one of the biggest problems with humanitarian efforts in terms of bringing access to mental health and psychosocial counseling to countries where mental health had not been incorporated into the public health care system.

“One thing I think humanitarians must ask is, ‘What are the ethics of giving care post-disaster, only to take it away once the disaster has been deemed over and all immediate effects have subsided?’ These finite programs make us think to ourselves, ‘What happens after that?’”

One response to this issue of sustainability has been an increasing effort to actually construct more permanent and inclusive mental health systems in times of emergency.

Is it possible to mentally and socially prepare for a disaster?

Regardless of where a disaster takes place in the world, there are some questions to be asked and lessons to be learned. “Disasters call on us to question the current state of affairs, to ask how it is that such a thing has happened and to critically rethink how we should be living — both in relation to each other and on a rapidly changing planet,” Seale-Feldman pointed out. “Disasters often provide a momentary opening for certain things to change.

“At a very immediate level, social support always plays a crucial role in the aftermath of a disaster. If we have strong social support networks in place, this will be very beneficial and protective — and not only in times of crisis.”

In part, this may mean building up mental health support services into current public health care systems — and being mindful of what those will look like, culturally and socially, depending on the community they are serving.

“The question is, how can we sustain this concern for others and these forms of community in life beyond the disaster?” Seale-Feldman asked.

“I think one thing we can do is to actively remember the relationships that are made possible because of the disaster — as well as the acts of care, kindness and solidarity that arise in its wake — with the hope that they might become blueprints for new ways of being and relating to others in the future.”

Contact: Tracy DeStazio, associate director of media relations, 574-631-9958 or tdestazi@nd.edu

‘Woman the hunter’: 91��Ƶ aim to correct history

2023-11-20T09:00:00-05:00

Cara Ocobock

When Cara Ocobock was a young child, she often wondered at the images in movies, books, comics and cartoons portraying prehistoric men and women as such: “man the hunter” with spear in hand, accompanied by “woman the gatherer” with a baby strapped to her back and a basket of crop seeds in hand.

“This was what everyone was used to seeing,” Ocobock said. “This was the assumption that we’ve all just had in our minds and that was carried through in our museums of natural history.”

Many years later, Ocobock, an assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology and director of the Human Energetics Laboratory at the University of Notre Dame, found herself as a human biologist studying physiology and prehistoric evidence and discovering that many of these conceptions about early women and men weren’t quite accurate. The accepted reconstruction of human evolution assumed males were biologically superior, but that interpretation wasn’t telling the whole story.

Relying on both physiological and archaeological evidence, Ocobock and her research partner, Sarah Lacy, an anthropologist with expertise in biological archaeology at the University of Delaware, recently published two studies simultaneously in the journal American Anthropologist. Their joint research, coming from these two angles, found that not only did prehistoric women engage in the practice of hunting, but their female anatomy and biology would have made them intrinsically better suited for it.

Cover art courtesy of Samantha Mash

Of her and her co-author’s dual-pronged research, which was the cover story for the November issue of Scientific American, Ocobock said, “Rather than viewing it as a way of erasing or rewriting history, our studies are trying to correct the history that erased women from it.”

Female physiology and estrogen, the ‘unsung hero of life’

In their physiological study, the two researchers explained that prehistoric females were quite capable of performing the arduous physical task of hunting prey and were likely able to hunt successfully over prolonged periods of time. From a metabolic standpoint, Ocobock explained, the female body is better suited for endurance activity, “which would have been critical in early hunting because they would have had to run the animals down into exhaustion before actually going in for the kill.”

Two huge contributors to that enhanced metabolism are hormones — in this case, estrogen and adiponectin, which are typically present in higher quantities in female bodies than in male. These two hormones play a critical role in enabling the female body to modulate glucose and fat, a function that is key in athletic performance.

Estrogen, in particular, helps regulate fat metabolism by encouraging the body to use its stored fat for energy before using up its carbohydrate stores. “Since fat contains more calories than carbs do, it’s a longer, slower burn,” Ocobock explained, “which means that the same sustained energy can keep you going longer and can delay fatigue.”

Estrogen also protects the body’s cells from damage during heat exposure due to extreme physical activity. “Estrogen is really the unsung hero of life, in my mind,” Ocobock said. “It is so important for cardiovascular and metabolic health, brain development and injury recovery.”

Adiponectin also amplifies fat metabolism while sparing carbohydrate and/or protein metabolism, allowing the body to stay the course during extended periods, especially over great distances. In this way, adiponectin is able to protect the muscles from breaking down and keeps them in better condition for sustained exercise, Ocobock explained.

The female body structure itself is another element Ocobock and Lacy found to be of advantage in terms of endurance and effectiveness for prehistoric hunters. “With the typically wider hip structure of the female, they are able to rotate their hips, lengthening their steps,” Ocobock detailed. “The longer steps you can take, the ‘cheaper’ they are metabolically, and the farther you can get, faster.

“When you look at human physiology this way, you can think of women as the marathon runners versus men as the powerlifters.”

Archaeology tells more of the story of ‘woman the hunter’

Several archaeological findings indicate prehistoric women not only shared in the resulting injuries of the dangerous business of close-contact hunting, but that it was an activity held in high esteem and valued by them. “We have constructed Neandertal hunting as an up-close-and-personal style of hunting,” Ocobock said, “meaning that hunters would often have to get up underneath their prey in order to kill them. As such, we find that both males and females have the same resulting injuries when we look at their fossil records.”

Ocobock described those traumatic injuries as being similar to those received by modern-day rodeo clowns — injuries to the head and chest where they were kicked by the animal, or to the limbs where they were bitten or received a fracture. “We find these patterns and rates of wear and tear equally in both women and men,” she said. “So they were both participating in ambush-style hunting of large game animals.”

Second, Ocobock said, there is evidence of early female hunters in the Holocene period in Peru where females were buried with hunting weapons. “You don’t often get buried with something unless it was important to you or was something that you used frequently in your life.

“Furthermore, we have no reason to believe that prehistoric women abandoned their hunting while pregnant, breastfeeding or carrying children,” Ocobock added, “nor do we see in the deep past any indication that a strict sexual division of labor existed.”

The bottom line, Ocobock noted, was that “hunting belonged to everyone, not just to males,” especially in prehistoric societies where survival was an all-hands-on-deck activity. “There weren’t enough people living in groups to be specialized in different tasks. Everyone had to be a generalist to survive.”

Fighting bias

“This revelation is especially important in the current political moment of our society where sex and gender are in a spotlight,” Ocobock said. “And I want people to be able to change these ideas of female physical inferiority that have been around for so long.”

When talking about reconstructing the past in order to better understand it — and to conduct “good science” — Ocobock said scientists have to be extremely careful about how modern-day bias can seep into one’s interpretations of the past. She cautioned that researchers have to be aware of their own biases and make sure they are asking the proper questions so the questions don’t lead them down the road of looking for what it is they want to see.

“We have to change the biases we bring to the table, or at least to give pause before we assign those biases. And in a broader sense, you cannot outrightly assume somebody’s abilities based on whatever sex or gender you have assigned by looking at them,” Ocobock concluded.

Contact: Tracy DeStazio, associate director of media relations, 574-631-9958 or tdestazi@nd.edu