China has been in the news recently for its censorship: the government cracked down on popular messaging service WhatsApp and Winnie-the-Pooh in the same week. But it’s also a growing economic and political power. Bryan Van Norden, a professor of philosophy at both Vassar College and Yale-NUS College in Singapore, argues that understanding Chinese philosophy is essential to understanding this increasingly influential nation. Yet, major Chinese philosophies such as Confucianism and Daoism are rarely taught at U.S. universities.
The scientific community meanwhile is concerned about a “reproducibility crisis” – when some studies are run a second time they don’t come up with the same results. University of Washington archaeologist Ben Marwick describes how he and his collaborators produced groundbreaking results while taking steps to make sure their work would be reproducible by others.
Last week “Lula” da Silva – Brazil’s most popular politician – joined the ranks of dozens of the country’s other lawmakers, businessmen and leaders sentenced to jail for corruption. Although Lula maintains his innocence, his conviction reveals the utter bankruptcy of Brazilian politics, argues the University of Florida’s Terry McCoy, who’s been following Brazil for four decades and met the former president three times.
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Plato, Confucius and Aristotle. Ancient Greek philosophy is widely taught in American universities, but classes in Chinese philosophy are few and far between.
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Bryan W. Van Norden, Yale-NUS College
It's more important than ever that the U.S. understand China. So why don't our universities teach Chinese thought?
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Science + Technology
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Ben Marwick, University of Washington; Zenobia Jacobs, University of Wollongong
A team of archaeologists strived to improve the reproducibility of their results, influencing their choices in the field, in the lab and during data analysis.
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Chris Clarkson, The University of Queensland
A new study pushes back the first known evidence of human activity in Australia by almost 20,000 years. In this groundbreaking work, the archaeologists used the reproducible methods described in the article above.
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Ethics + Religion
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Brian Levin, California State University San Bernardino
FBI data show that in 2015 anti-Muslim hate crimes spiked to the highest level since 2001. A scholar finds political rhetoric correlates to both sharp increases and decreases in hate crime.
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Mathew Schmalz, College of the Holy Cross
The hierarchy of the Catholic Church requires nearly absolute obedience. This makes it difficult to speak up against superiors. And by the same token, superiors too can protect offending priests.
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Michael Gavin, Colorado State University
There's little research into origins of the geographic patterns of language diversity. A new model exploring processes that shaped Australia's language diversity provides a template for investigators.
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Ronald W. Pies, Tufts University
What sort of beliefs made a mass movement succeed?
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Henry Adams, Case Western Reserve University
His rise was just as swift as his fall. To mark the painter's 100th birthday, an art historian explores the forces – cultural, political and personal – that created a polarizing legacy.
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