Purpose This study aims to examine the risks faced by electoral officials in electoral violence hotspot areas in Nigeria and to empirically explore the political factors that increases the likelihood of their being targeted in balloting spaces. Design/methodology/approach The study chronicles the experiences of electoral officials who were targets of political hoodlums seeking to disrupt elections. The author utilized in-depth interviews and mini focus group discussions to elicit information on the dangers faced by the study participants in violent hotspots. Officials of the Independent National Electoral Commission were purposively sampled. Data analysis considered thematic approaches. The paper also draws from a diverse set of secondary sources selected to address different aspects of the discussion. Scholarly sources are used to address how the relationship between electoral violence and electoral officials have been discursively framed in academic scholarship. Similarly, policy and journalistic sources are utilized to triangulate the primary data and clarify election-related events within specific periods. Findings The findings highlighted the pervasiveness of political thugs or hoodlums in voting and ballot collation spaces, as well as the inadequacy of state security agents to protect election officials. Close electoral races among two major political parties in a political context where violence is both leverageable and commodified increases the likelihood of violent skirmishes in balloting spaces, which impacts the safety of electoral officials. The findings equally align with previous studies that link off-cycle elections in Nigeria to high incidents of violence compared to general elections. Research limitations/implications This study acknowledges two primary limitations. Firstly, the restricted participant pool may not capture the full spectrum of experiences, thus potentially limiting the generalizability of findings beyond Rivers State’s 2016 re-run elections. Secondly, lack of inclusion of Nigeria Police Force perspectives due to the adverse political climate in the country in the period of fieldwork impacts the richness of the primary data. While this omission affects data comprehensiveness, insights were partially supplemented by existing secondary research on related themes. Consequently, the findings are context-specific. Originality/value The findings in this study expand the theoretical and empirical literature on the relationship between violence and off-cycle elections in Nigeria, as well as their related impact on electoral officials.

This exploratory project uses muted group theory and qualitative methods to examine the personal and professional experiences of Palestinian journalists in the United States during the ongoing genocide in Gaza. The survey responses and interviews uncovered changes to Palestinians’ professional relationships, the impact of the current political climate in the U.S. on newsrooms, and how these factors have affected reporting experiences. The findings underscore the dangers of attacks on Palestinian voices in journalism and media, and the heightened importance of amplifying Palestinian stories and sources in media coverage.

This conceptual analysis examines the fluidity of peace as both an idea and a practice, and the shifting positionalities of those who teach and study it. While peace education is often promoted as a global model for social cohesion, its meanings and the legitimacy of those who invoke them shift with changing political climates. Drawing on critical and decolonial peace education scholarship and interpretive reflection on the Turkish case, the article conceptualizes peace as a fluid discursive terrain shaped by power, censorship, and appropriation. As regimes redefine what may be spoken in the name of peace, educators and researchers are continually re-positioned, sometimes as dissenters, sometimes as representatives of the state. The article introduces the concept of “fluid context,” as a theoretical lens for analyzing peace education under shifting regimes of speech and legitimacy.

There is an emerging body of evidence linking political conservatism and conservative political climate in the United States to COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy and uptake. The goal of the present research was to examine how political climate moderates the relationship between self-reported political conservatism and COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy and uptake. We collected online survey data from 683 participants between March 8 and April 19, 2023. Controlling for age, education, income, and race, there was an interaction between political conservatism and conservative political climate for both vaccine and booster hesitancy (β = .07, p = .03; β = .12, p < .001, respectively), such that liberals were less likely to be hesitant regardless of political climate. However, conservatives living in liberal political climates were less vaccine hesitant than their conservative counterparts living in conservative regions. A similar interaction was for the likelihood of receiving a COVID-19 booster (OR =.84, p = .049). Liberals were more likely to receive a booster regardless of political climate, while conservatives’ likelihood was associated with their political climate. Observed patterns linking liberal political climates with vaccine uptake among conservative individuals have important implications for vaccination efforts among conservative individuals in the United States.

The naturalness bias.

Unique Career Challenges: Social and Political Climates Shape LGBTQIA+ Careers as Neuroscientists

The National Association of Chronic Disease Directors (NACDD) is a nonprofit organization that supports state and territorial chronic disease prevention and health promotion efforts through capacity building and technical assistance. Each year, NACDD surveys health department leaders who oversee chronic disease prevention and health promotion work (hereafter, Chronic Disease Directors). In this paper, we report on the 2024 survey outcomes and place those findings into the broader public health policy context. Fifty-one Chronic Disease Directors completed the organizational capacity and development needs survey. Responses were summarized in aggregate and by jurisdiction size. State and territorial chronic disease units have varied responsibilities, but most address diabetes, cardiovascular diseases, and cancer screening and prevention. Chronic Disease Directors reported strong or improving capacity in most practice areas but ranked workforce development lower than other areas. Staffing decreased slightly during 2024 compared with 2023 (median of 1.1 and 1.3 employees per 100000 jurisdiction population, respectively). Many Chronic Disease Directors expressed ongoing concerns about staff turnover and workforce development, funding limitations and stability, and the effects of the political climate on public health work. Despite these challenges, many respondents also conveyed success stories about program achievements, obtaining new funding, and building partnerships and collaborations. Looking forward to 2025, many Chronic Disease Directors expressed intentions to focus on leadership, policy, and technical training; on making structural and staffing changes within their units; and on continuing to build cross-sector relationships and collaborations. Continued concerns about staff turnover and workforce development underscore the need to better understand and remove barriers to capacity building in this area to support job satisfaction and employee retention. Changes to federal infrastructure are likely to have substantial impacts and may increase reliance on cross-sector partnerships to continue advancing chronic disease prevention and health promotion.

ABSTRACT Why does climate action so often take socially regressive and ecologically destructive forms? Building on Stuart Hall, we argue that regressive climate change solutions are enabled by an articulation between planetary-scale carbon fetishism and capitalist class interests. We term this global but uneven formation planetary climate politics. Planetary climate politics reduces the climate crisis to atmospheric CO2 management and a corresponding assignment of responsibility across states. This abstract planetary conception of the problem occludes political-economic context at multiple scales and separates climate politics from the politics of any actual social milieu. This leaves even ‘progressive’ climate advocates undiscriminating about possible solutions, enabling alliances with dominant classes around ‘false solutions.’ Drawing on ethnographic research conducted in coastal Bangladesh and the U.S. state of Louisiana, we illuminate the baneful consequences of planetary climate politics at sites of both adaptation and mitigation. More broadly we make the case for critical ethnographies of the climate crisis to challenge planetary carbon fetishism, differentiate emancipatory and regressive pathways of climate action and help the climate movement articulate with struggles for social and environmental justice.

This study examined how overseas educational volunteer work by university students, which began 10 years ago, has evolved and developed. The six elements of cultural-historical activity theory were used to analyze the volunteer work journals, reports, papers, and books. The impact of volunteer work on participants was also analyzed. The subject of overseas educational volunteer work has expanded, and the object has also expanded to the teacher training and the new lessons. The tools have been improved through localization, and rules have changed flexibly or strengthened. In the community, changes in Nicaraguan politics and society have significantly impacted volunteer work, and in the division of labor, the locals increasingly has taken a larger role. The evolution of the volunteer work system can be categorized into changes within and between sub-elements, expansion or addition of sub-elements, and changes within the six elements. Volunteer work has continued to evolve, overcoming conflicts such as the political and social climate and the COVID-19 pandemic, and has even led to the creation of new volunteer work systems. While outlining what needs to change and what needs to continue in volunteer work, we discussed the importance of strengthening teacher training, strengthening the role of co-teachers, safety management, lessons that emphasize teacher-student interaction, and classes that emphasize student experience. Furthermore, because volunteer work is a life experience that provides participants with a wealth of learning, it is crucial to continuously expand the subjects. We graphically summarized the changes in the volunteer work system to provide reference for related research and volunteer activity management. We hope that research on volunteer work will be continued in Korea, a rapidly transforming multicultural society, and we suggest future research.

ABSTRACT The article analyses the political, economic and social climate in the Jewish Autonomous Region (Birobidzhan) during the final years of the Soviet Union and the early years of the post-1991 Russian Federation, when the local administration strove to advance the region’s status to a republic, especially after the other four autonomous regions had succeeded in doing it. The extremely low proportion of the Jewish population, emigration to Israel and precipitous decline of the regional economy played key roles in the failure of the campaign, driven mainly by ‘regionalism’ (local patriotism) and career ambitions of administrators than by Jewish national motivations.

Films are an important source of data for understanding the socio-cultural and ideological dynamics of different periods. In particular, science fiction and horror films are strongly shaped by the political and social climate of their time. These films reflect social anxieties, expectations and dominant ideologies. This study aims to identify changes in the depiction of artificial intelligence (AI) in cinema and to interpret these changes within the context of broader social trends. Using qualitative content analysis with a descriptive approach, a document search was conducted via the IMDb database, identifying 186 feature-length films released between 2014 and 2024 and tagged with “artificial intelligence.” Based on IMDb’s popularity metric, 11 films were selected as a sample, and AI-related themes were coded and analysed. Between 2014 and 2019, AI was predominantly portrayed through more optimistic and supportive narratives. After 2020, however, increasingly anxious representations emerged, shaped by concerns such as unemployment, technological determinism and ethical dilemmas related to AI. In recent years, narratives emphasizing the manipulative power of AI through algorithmic systems have become more prominent.

ABSTRACT In this qualitative study, the authors interviewed 25 social studies teachers across 5 different states (i.e. California, Florida, Massachusetts, South Carolina, and Tennessee) to examine their experiences teaching during a political climate involving attacks on their profession through discriminatory censorship laws (DCLs). The teachers explained the various ways that DCLs were impacting students, colleagues, and themselves. Many educators engaged in resistance to these laws and the researchers captured the forms that their resistance took in practice. These acts of resistance outline different ways that educators can potentially respond to DCLs.

Over the last 15 years, anti-gender discourses, the politicization of gender, and political attacks on gender studies have intensified in Hungary. Yet, limited research has examined how these factors have shaped the field of gender scholarship. To date, no review of the Hungarian academic literature on gender and gender-based needs has been conducted during the right-wing populist political era. This paper aims to fill this gap by addressing the following research question: How have academic narratives conceptualized gender and gender-based needs in Hungary under the governance of the right-wing populist party coalition since 2010? Based on a purposive sampling procedure combined with expert selection, we analyzed 67 articles published between 2010 and 2023 to represent the main theoretical approaches and empirical investigations on the multifaceted nature of gender-related research in Hungary. The findings indicate that the Hungarian academic literature on gender and gender-based needs has evolved significantly despite the adverse political climate. While most articles implicitly understand gender in its classical binary form as the roles of men and women and gender is predominantly understood through a constructivist lens in Hungary, the academic narratives continue to encompass a wide range of topics and approaches related to critical gender-based needs. The paper identifies both more traditional sex- and gender-based needs (such as those related to motherhood, fatherhood, the distribution of household chores, work-life balance issues, and combating labor market discrimination), in addition to more contemporary and politics-driven gender-based needs such as empowering women through civil society organizations, policies and practices for LGBTQ+ individuals, and the effects of anti-gender rhetoric. The paper concludes that policymakers should pay more attention to social science research, as scholars are actively mapping gender-based needs in the Hungarian context.

Addressing climate change depends on large-scale system changes, which require public advocacy. Here, we identified and tested 17 expert-crowdsourced theory-informed behavioral interventions designed to promote public, political, and financial advocacy in a large quota-matched sample of US residents (n = 31,324). The most consistently effective intervention emphasized both the collective efficacy and emotional benefits of climate action, increasing advocacy by up to 10 percentage points. This was also the top intervention among participants identifying as Democrats. Appealing to binding moral foundations, such as purity and sanctity, was also among the most effective interventions, showing positive effects even among participants identifying as Republicans. These findings provide critical insights to policymakers and practitioners aiming to galvanize the public behind collective action and advocacy on climate change with affordable and scalable interventions.

There is an emerging body of evidence linking political conservatism and conservative political climate in the United States to COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy and uptake. The goal of the present research was to examine how political climate moderates the relationship between self-reported political conservatism and COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy and uptake. We collected online survey data from 683 participants between March 8 and April 19, 2023. Controlling for age, education, income, and race, there was an interaction between political conservatism and conservative political climate for both vaccine and booster hesitancy (β = .07, p = .03; β = .12, p < .001, respectively), such that liberals were less likely to be hesitant regardless of political climate. However, conservatives living in liberal political climates were less vaccine hesitant than their conservative counterparts living in conservative regions. A similar interaction was for the likelihood of receiving a COVID-19 booster (OR =.84, p = .049). Liberals were more likely to receive a booster regardless of political climate, while conservatives' likelihood was associated with their political climate. Observed patterns linking liberal political climates with vaccine uptake among conservative individuals have important implications for vaccination efforts among conservative individuals in the United States.

Building on the historical foundation of bioethics, we argue that bioethicists, with inherently interdisciplinary approaches and backgrounds, are well positioned to promote Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI) in the healthcare setting through the practice of clinical ethics. In the current cultural and political climate, bioethicists cannot remain silent while staying true to the tenets of the field. Provisions in the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities (ASBH) Code of Ethics and the lived experience of Canadian bioethicists offer relevant guidance. We argue that competence in clinical ethics obliges bioethicists to identify and seek to remove systemic barriers facing those whom clinical ethicists are privileged to serve. By adopting an intersectional approach to clinical bioethics, bioethicists can become advocates for the promotion of just healthcare.

&lt;p&gt;The Western Tibetan Plateau (WTP), a nexus of Central, South, and East Asia, played a vital role in shaping early Asian cultural and religious exchanges. Understanding human activities in this region is essential for reconstructing these historical interactions, yet the study of settlement and migration here faces significant obstacles due to limited archaeological research and fragmented historical records. This study employs pagoda construction as a targeted approach to investigate human migration and cultural diffusion. We compiled an extensive dataset of pagoda construction ages across the WTP using radiocarbon (&lt;sup&gt;14&lt;/sup&gt;C) measurements, analyzing organic remains from 29 sites. Our results align &lt;sup&gt;14&lt;/sup&gt;C ages with documented construction dates, affirming the approach’s consistency. Initial pagoda building in the Zanda Basin aligns with Buddhism’s introduction to the Tibetan Plateau in the early 7&lt;sup&gt;th&lt;/sup&gt; century, suggesting that Buddhism entered via multiple routes, beyond the routes in the eastern plateau. Most pagodas, however, emerged during and after the Later Propagation of Tibetan Buddhism (post-9&lt;sup&gt;th&lt;/sup&gt; century), reflecting a resurgence of religious activity. In Zanda, construction spans 7&lt;sup&gt;th&lt;/sup&gt;-20&lt;sup&gt;th&lt;/sup&gt; centuries, while in Purang, most pagodas postdate 15&lt;sup&gt;th&lt;/sup&gt; century, suggesting a significant migration from Zanda to Purang during the late Guge Kingdom and its decline, likely driven by political turmoil, religious conflicts, and climate change. These spatiotemporal patterns, corroborated by regional relic distributions, demonstrate that pagoda ages can uncover hidden histories of human mobility, providing fresh insights into the intricate interplay of early cultures, religions, and population movements across Asia.&lt;/p&gt;

Bioethicists, globally, have historically enjoyed collaborative exchange and relationships. However, given the current political strain, moral deliberation is threatened and diminished. The redevelopment of morally safe spaces and the pursuit of truth require the embodiment of moral courage and intentionality. To meet the moment, bioethics must move beyond neutrality by drawing on the African American experience’s emphasis on moral clarity and community accountability — embracing positionality and centring marginalized voices to confront socio-political tensions within and beyond academia. The concepts of the 3Ms ( moaning , mourning , and morning ) provide a framework for creating a more inclusive moral space. Based in social work theoretical praxis, Moaning refers to African American pain and suffering, Mourning, the collective effort to overcome grief, and Morning, the representation of breakthrough and transformation from hardships. Despite the three concepts being a powerful exploration of the African American tradition, it can be helpful to others outside this community. This essay focuses, however, only on the concept of “Morning” — a metaphor that serves as a blueprint for the bioethics profession to address the current political climate. It is imperative that bioethics elevate the voices and listen to the past experiences of the marginalized and oppressed. These experiences can provide a blueprint for transcending barriers of social and political inequities, both domestically and abroad. We suggest reevaluating the use of neutrality, opting instead for clear commitments to positions on ethical dilemmas.

ABSTRACT We exploit a one-month period when SEC activity largely stopped during a U.S. government shutdown to examine whether variation in SEC scrutiny affects its ability to enforce insider trading. Difference-in-differences analyses suggest insiders earn abnormal profits during the shutdown, and the findings are robust to using different control periods and groups. We estimate that it takes roughly one week before the abnormally profitable trading begins, consistent with insiders updating their beliefs regarding the duration and disruption of the shutdown. Supporting the claim that SEC regulatory activity drops with the shutdown and does not fully recover afterward, we find a decline in the frequency of insider trading enforcement releases, investigations, and comment letter issuances after the SEC resumes operations. Our study speaks to the SEC insider trading enforcement literature and economic consequences of a regulatory discontinuity in a divisive political climate. Data Availability: All data are available from public sources. JEL Classifications: G14; G30; M41; M48.

In Marguerite Duras’s oeuvre, the late 1970s represent a critical moment, marked by Le Camion (1977) and Le Navire Night (1979), two films that resonate strongly with her contemporaneous political reflections on the impossibility of societal revolution. In particular, Duras regarded the aesthetics of these films, which she considered to be the culmination point of her intellectual trajectory, as the most viable artistic response to the coeval political climate. While this remarkable moment in her career takes place against the background of 1970s French political history, the notion of a culmination concurrently suggests that it draws on a pre-existing intellectual history. This article examines Duras’s thoroughgoing alignment of politics and aesthetics against the background of French political history, while tracing the roots of its premises back to the redefinition of human existence as ‘insufficiency’ in 1930s French philosophy, which was instigated by the work of Alexandre Kojève. Mediated by Georges Bataille, Maurice Blanchot, and Dionys Mascolo, this legacy found new footing in Duras’s political film aesthetics in the late 1970s.