Peter A. Morrison, Ph.D., President, Morrison & Associates, Inc.

Washington’s 2018 Voting Rights Act mirrors federal law in providing federal protection and remedies for fair minority group representation. Under the WVRA, municipalities can change their election systems from an “at-large” election to a district-based election in order to remedy voting rights violations. The law sets forth many factors to consider when adopting remedies and these factors and remedies pose empirical and analytical challenges for politicians and independent analysts and scholars.  

In an October 14, 2019 article in the New York Times’s Upshot, CSDE Affiliate and Professor of Public Policy Jacob Vigdor is quoted regarding the linkage between immigration and urban economic vitality and revitalization.  While the current administration’s policy approach gives both topics distinctly separate and high priority, the New York Times essay argues that the issues are inevitably interrelated and so are the political solutions. The article quotes Vigdor, writing “there’s a symbiotic relationship that immigrants need cities in order to acclimate to a new society,

It is a well known fact that pregnancy and childbirth affects women’s physiology and hormones, before and immediately following pregnancy.  Less well understood is how pregnancy and childbirth affects the aging process.  CSDE Affiliate and Associate Professor of Anthropology Dan Eisenberg pioneering research in this area was featured in The Washington Post in a recent article “Do pregnancy and childbirth accelerate aging in women? Maybe.” The Post’s article discusses Eisenberg and co-authors’

The metaphor of “lynching” is repeatedly used by politicians in recent American history. This Mother Jones essay explores how the metaphor came about in American politics considering the violent racial history of the term “lynching”. The author quotes CSDE Affiliate and Professor of Sociology Amy Bailey about her research examining race and inequality. Bailey discusses the historical roots of lynching and racial violence drawing on her co-authored book with CSDE Affiliate Stew Tolnay,

The deadline for the 2020 call for nominations for the NIH Office of Disease Prevention Early-Stage Investigator Lecture is on November 1st! The award is made annually to an early-career scientist who has made significant research contributions in disease prevention but who has not yet successfully competed for an R01 or R01 equivalent NIH research grant. The award winner will be invited, with all travel expenses covered, to give a lecture at the NIH in April 2020.