Across its nearly 250-year history, the United States has never had an official language. On March 1, U.S. President Donald Trump changed that when he signed an executive order designating English as the country’s sole official language. The order marks a fundamental rupture from the American goverment’s long-standing approach to languages. “From the founding of our […] … learn more→

The use of information technology (IT) has significant environmental and social impacts, including human mortality from climate change. One striking example is the carbon emissions and impacts associated with digital communication. To quantify the human cost of carbon-emitting technology, researchers use the 1,000-ton rule that estimates that for every 1,000 tons of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere, […] … learn more→

When two junior employees bump into each other in the corridor and start chatting about their manager’s overbearing manner, it’s typically considered gossip. But what about when two managers have an off-record catch-up to discuss an under-performing employee? Both scenarios meet traditional definitions of gossip – the information being shared is about other people, the […] … learn more→

The Trump administration on Tuesday slashed staff at the Department of Education – firing roughly 1,300 employees – as part of its long-planned effort to eliminate the agency entirely. The move leaves the department with 2,183 employees, down from more than 4,000 at the beginning of the year. The cuts also follow recent leaks that President Donald Trump was planning […] … learn more→

A widely used principle in economics to understand how people make decisions is that of rationality : people behave in ways that achieve the greatest possible benefit. This benefit, mathematically represented by a utility function , is typically the economic gain we receive from our actions (in the context of those of others). However, the emergence of experimental economics , which […] … learn more→

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said that the government will deport lawful permanent residents who support Hamas and came to the U.S. as students with an intent “to rile up all kinds of anti-Jewish student, antisemitic activities,” referencing the Palestinian rights protests at universities in 2024. “And if you end up having a green card – not […] … learn more→

Schools have always sought to supervise students and their teachers, with a teaching method long based on authority and discipline. However, pedagogical knowledge, psychological knowledge, public policies as well as social transformations (mass schooling, rise of individual rights, new educational expectations) have largely contributed to transforming educational standards and the way in which we interpret, […] … learn more→

You’ve probably noticed lately that a lot of people are trying out alternatives to the big social media networks X, Instagram and Facebook. For example, after Elon Musk bought Twitter in 2022 and started allowing far more disinformation and hateful content on the site, renamed X, advertisers and users started backing away. More recently, Meta’s decision to roll back hate […] … learn more→

The U.S. educational landscape has been drastically transformed since the COVID-19 pandemic shuttered school campuses five years ago. Access to high-quality teachers and curriculum developed by teachers is shrinking, for example. Likewise, there has been a loss of emotional support for students and a decline in the school use of technology and social media. As education scholars focused on literacy practices […] … learn more→

Should young teenagers be banned from using social media? That’s the question being discussed by British MPs debating a bill that proposes the government should decide within a year whether to raise the age children can have social media accounts from 13 to 16. It follows a recent petition on the same topic that garnered nearly 130,000 signatures, […] … learn more→