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. (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…)
A new Brown University poll of Rhode Island voters finds strong support for state-operated casino gaming at Twin River and Newport Grand. In the hotly contested Congressional District One race, Rep. David Cicilline retains a small lead. The survey, conducted Sept. 26 to Oct. 5 2012, is based on a sample of 496 registered voters in Rhode Island.
PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — A new public opinion survey by Brown University researchers finds that Rhode Island voters appear poised to approve questions one and two on the state ballot, which would allow casino gaming in Lincoln and Newport. Despite an approval rating of just 29.7 percent, Rep. David Cicilline appears to have an edge over Republican challenger Brendan Doherty among voters in 1st Congressional District.
Researchers at the A. Alfred Taubman Center for Public Policy and American Institutions and the John Hazen White Public Opinion Laboratory at Brown University surveyed a random sample of 496 Rhode Island voters from Sept. 26 to Oct. 5, 2012. The poll has an overall margin of error of plus or minus 4.4 percent. (more…)
ANN ARBOR — One of the casualties of the 1994 Rwandan genocide was the culture’s storytelling tradition. Resurrecting it has been the mission of a project called Stories for Hope for the past four years. (more…)
A long campaign season with genuine gaffes and alleged misstatements began its culmination with the first presidential debate. Like many citizens, linguist Geoff Pullum, a visiting professor at Brown, was watching
Grammarian Geoff Pullum is the Gerard Visiting Professor of Cognitive, Linguistic and Psychological Sciences at Brown University and professor of general linguistics at the University of Edinburgh. He is also a frequent blogger on language and politics on Language Log and Lingua Franca. (more…)
An online study of eligible voters around the country revealed that preferences for whites over blacks among the least politically-partisan voters are strong enough to have substantial impact on their presidential candidate preference.
Among these voters, race biases against Barack Obama could produce as much as a 20 percent gap in the popular vote in a contest that would otherwise be equal. (more…)
