ANN ARBOR — With the elections less than a week away, it’s worth considering that the party of the president influences the policy behavior of the Federal Reserve Bank, according to a new University of Michigan study.
The Federal Reserve Bank increases interest rates before the presidential elections when Democrats are in office, but lowers the rates when Republicans control the White House. The independent bank finds it easier to accomplish its policy goals when Republicans control the White House than when Democrats do, the researchers say. (more…)
Jack Turner, UW assistant professor of political science, is the author of “Awakening to Race: Individualism and Social Consciousness in America,” published this month by University of Chicago Press. He answered a few questions about his book for UW Today.
What’s the central concept behind “Awakening to Race”?
The book addresses the challenge of racial justice by asking, “What does it mean to be a self-aware human being? What does it mean to be awake to reality?”
In part, it means confronting the worst aspects of ourselves and our lives. Being awake to reality in the United States means confronting the ways America’s history of slavery, Jim Crow and white supremacy still shapes the present — the opportunities we have or we lack, the confidence we have in ourselves or fail to have in others, the ways our chances for success are still color coded. (more…)
The wide swings in debate performances by this year’s presidential candidates reflect the fact that in modern campaigns, a candidate’s image is the message, according to linguistic anthropologists who have studied presidential campaigns.
Candidates send important messages to voters through even their smallest gestures, the researchers say. For example, in this year’s first debate, President Barack Obama often looked down at the podium and was criticized for appearing disengaged. In subsequent debates Obama directly addressed his Republican opponent, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, and increased the use of a hammering hand gesture sometimes called the “power grip.” (more…)
Police officers and students exhibit an apparent “hierarchy of bias” in making a split-second decision whether to shoot suspects who appear to be wielding a gun or, alternatively, a benign object like a cell phone, research conducted by the University of Colorado Boulder and San Diego State University has found.
Both the police and student subjects were most likely to shoot at blacks, then Hispanics, then whites and finally, in a case of what might be called a positive bias, Asians, researchers found. (more…)
Kate Kenski, an associate professor in the UA communication department, is studying the 2012 election using talking points, Twitter feeds and also jokes.
Election season is to politics-watchers as tax season is to accountants. There are polls to follow, debates to dissect and political ads to analyze.
For Kate Kenski, an associate professor in the University of Arizona communication department and School of Government and Public Policy, election season provides a wealth of data that she analyzes to write and teach about public opinion and political communication.
For the 2012 election, Kenski is keeping a keen eye on whether the frequent explanations for wins and losses in previous campaigns hold true for this campaign. Will the economy be the determining factor? Or will candidate personality or message strategy tip the campaign in one candidate’s direction over the other’s? (more…)
EAST LANSING, Mich. — Faded and sometimes tattered, letters and journal entries written 150 years ago by hopeful and homesick Civil War soldiers will forever be preserved online, thanks to digitization by Michigan State University archivists.(more…)
October marks the 50th anniversary of of the 13-day Cuban Missile Crisis, when President John F. Kennedy discovered that the Soviet Union was building secret missile bases in Cuba. Forgoing the option of a Cuban invasion or air strikes, Kennedy asked Russian Premier Nikita S. Khrushchev to remove all weapons from the island, and on Oct. 28, 1962, Khrushchev conceded, halting the standoff. Here, Khrushchev’s son, Sergei Khrushchev, visiting professor of Slavic languages at Brown, reflects on the diplomatic lessons.
The perspective of the crisis has changed over time and today the history of the crisis is more focused not on the confrontation, but on cooperation.
The Cuban Missile Crisis showed that two leaders decided not to shoot first, but to think and negotiate with each other. And today that is very unusual, because we think we can only negotiate with friends. Today, we impose unconditional surrender and nobody surrenders unconditionally until fully defeated. (more…)
EAST LANSING, Mich. — A strong showing in the final two presidential debates could help Barack Obama regain some of the ground lost to Mitt Romney after the first verbal showdown in Denver, argues Michigan State University’s head debate coach.(more…)
