Symptomatic of today’s politically polarized environment in the U.S., Democrats and Republicans express substantially different levels of confidence in colleges and universities. The 56% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents who have a great deal or quite a lot of confidence in colleges is more than 20 percentage points higher than […] Read more »
Partisan Right-Wing Websites Shaped Mainstream Press Coverage Before 2016 Election, Berkman Klein Study Finds
The Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University today released a comprehensive analysis of online media and social media coverage of the 2016 presidential campaign. The report, “Partisanship, Propaganda, and Disinformation: Online Media and the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election,” documents how highly partisan right-wing sources helped shape […] Read more »
Charlottesville And The Rise Of White Identity Politics
There is nothing new about white supremacist groups in the U.S., or anti-Semitism, or people who defend the symbols of the Confederacy. (The “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, was to protest the planned removal of a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee.) From Richard Nixon’s “law and […] Read more »
These are the three reasons fascism spread in 1930s America — and might spread again today
The violent white nationalist rally in Virginia has reawakened simmering fears of American fascism. But the roots of these feelings — and the militant organizations that promoted them — did not begin with the election of President Trump. The last time fascism was brazenly embraced was in the 1930s. The […] Read more »
Republicans are increasingly antagonistic toward experts. Here’s why that matters.
Since 2015, according to a new Pew Research Center poll, Republicans’ attitudes toward colleges and universities have become much more negative. The poll found that the number of Republicans who believe colleges have a “positive impact on the way things are going in the country” dropped from 54 percent in […] Read more »
Democrats Growing More Economically Liberal
Americans’ economic ideology has tilted conservative over the past two decades, with only modest variation in conservatives’ lead over liberals. However, changes have been happening beneath the surface, with slightly more Republicans identifying as economically conservative than did so during the George W. Bush years and Democrats tugging the national […] Read more »