By Marc Bekoff

I am always incredulous that the AWA does not consider rats of the genus Rattus and mice of the genus Mus to be animals. Other animals also are conveniently tossed out of the animal kingdom. When I tell people this they are shocked. We know from detailed scientific research that they have highly evolved cognitive and emotional capacities, they experience empathy, and rats laugh and like to be tickled. And, we know that tickling laboratory rats is good for science. What more do we need to show that these are sentient beings with rich and deep emotional lives? Read more →

By Dennis A. Henigan

For the first time since 2000, the Presidential election promises to be pivotal for the politics of gun control. Both for supporters of stronger gun laws, and for “gun rights” partisans, the stakes could not be higher. It was not long ago that the political death of gun control was accepted as an incontestible truth by pundits of every ideological stripe. For the Democratic Party, although much was made of the alleged impact of the gun issue on the Gingrich takeover of the House of Representatives in 1994, the real turning point was the 2000 Presidential election. Read more →

By Kay Whitlock | The August 2016 announcement by the Obama administration that it will phase out or “substantially reduce” contracts with private prisons to house federal prisoners provides a master lesson in the political benefit of the magician’s art of misdirection. Hailed by many as a definitive step forward in criminal justice reform and a severe blow to the continuation of mass incarceration, the focus on private prisons hides more than it reveals. It raises false hopes, offers false promises, and points many who want transformative change in the wrong direction. Read more →

A Q&A with Eileen Pollack | Many science professors think that they treat their male and female students equally. But studies have shown that they actually encourage white male students in subtle (and not so subtle) ways, while subtly discouraging women. And society itself discourages women and minorities through the images and signals that our culture constantly is sending out. Read more →

By Ashlyn Edwards

Growing up, I was very awkward, very smart, and very un-feminist. If you had asked me at thirteen what I thought of feminism, I would have recited some hackneyed cultural stereotype about bra-burners and told you that gender equality was achieved when women won the right to vote—mostly because I had hardly learned anything about feminism in school. It wasn’t until I was seventeen and started following feminist bloggers that I began to understand that many of my deepest insecurities and feelings of inferiority were actually the byproducts of structural inequality and internalized sexism. Read more →

By Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

The first international relationship between the Sioux Nation and the US government was established in 1805 with a treaty of peace and friendship two years after the United States acquired the Louisiana Territory, which included the Sioux Nation among many other Indigenous nations. Other such treaties followed in 1815 and 1825. These peace treaties had no immediate effect on Sioux political autonomy or territory. By 1834, competition in the fur trade, with the market dominated by the Rocky Mountain Fur Company, led the Oglala Sioux to move away from the Upper Missouri to the Upper Platte near Fort Laramie. By 1846, seven thousand Sioux had moved south. Thomas Fitzpatrick, the Indian agent in 1846, recommended that the United States purchase land to establish a fort, which became Fort Laramie. “My opinion,” Fitzpatrick wrote, “is that a post at, or in the vicinity of Laramie is much wanted, it would be nearly in the center of the buffalo range, where all the formidable Indian tribes are fast approaching, and near where there will eventually be a struggle for the ascendancy [in the fur trade].” Read more →

By Nicholas DiSabatino | Dear Sister Sonia: We’ve never met in person, yet we’ve spoken on the phone dozens of occasions since I joined Beacon Press back in 2012. I’ve been so blessed to work with you as your publicist these past few years. It’s a strange feeling to “know” someone only via the phone. I feel in some ways like we’re long distance pen pals, even though you’re only in Philadelphia and I’m in Boston. I’ve come to expect that particular warmth in your voice whenever we speak and I hear that familiar “Brother Nicholas, any calls?” from you. It’s part of who you are as a person and an artist Read more →

By Deborah Jiang-Stein

In our fame machine culture of “Look at me, look at me!” where fame is marketed as a drug of choice, we’re consumed by the notion that the only light worth seeking is the limelight. I recently had the privilege to witness another way to hold the light. With Gloria Steinem at my side last spring, we entered the state prison for women in Minnesota to share a tour and speaking engagement. She was in Minnesota on a generous acceptance when I invited her to a fundraiser for the nonprofit I founded, the unPrison Project, so that we could raise funds to reach the thirty-one states that have requested my speaking and our programming into their women’s prisons. Read more →

By Bill Fletcher, Jr.

Graduate students have been attempting to organize labor unions for decades. Until recently, those at private universities and colleges have been blocked from unionizing largely due to a Supreme Court decision from 1980, NLRB v Yeshiva University, that placed graduate students into the camp of managerial personnel and, therefore, ineligible for unionization and collective bargaining. The National Labor Relations Board has shifted the entire discussion with a decision affecting Columbia University graduate students. Just recently, Yale University students filed a petition for union recognition. Read more →