Dallas Morning News: As voters, we elect the people who represent us. If only that were completely true. Political gerrymandering, which courts have upheld as legal, allows politicians to pick their voters, in essence seeding districts with voters of like mind and creating safe districts that minimize competition, encourage elected officials to pay less attention […]
Tag: faculty research
WFAA: Math for Unbiased Maps created 1.5 million random redistricting maps and none were as biased as the one lawmakers approved Researchers at Southern Methodist University say new congressional maps passed by Texas lawmakers are significantly biased and engineered to create a Republican advantage. Andrea Barreiro is an associate professor of mathematics at SMU and part of […]
Dallas Morning News: A group of SMU mathematicians and one philosopher are using math to measure how biased voting district maps are in Texas. The group, called Math for Unbiased Maps in Texas, uses software that generates millions of maps to compare with proposed district maps, creating an opportunity for greater accountability in redistricting. Every […]
After English department faculty member Jonathan Malesic received more than 1,000 responses to his essay, “My College Students Are Not OK,” the New York Times published a follow-up essay with his response to some of the questions he received. “Don’t lose hope,” he urged a college student. “We’re going to need to all the brainpower […]
A new dinosaur species identified by paleontologist Tony Fiorillo and SMU Ph.D. graduate Yoshitsugu Kobayashi was covered by the Mirror, Earth.com and LiveScience.
In a Washington Times podcast, “History as it Happens,” presidential historian Jeffrey Engel discussed the long-ranging effects of President Biden’s commitment to Ukraine against a longstanding enemy.
Foreign Policy News Jo Guldi, data scientist, historian, and SMU Associate Professor, for a piece advocating for world-wide equity in land ownership as one means to combat global warming. Published in Foreign Policy News under the heading We need a global government of land, air and water: https://bit.ly/3MyYlxv Polls show that two-thirds of Americans believe that the government should do more […]
EOS The field of seismology is entering a new era where our understanding of earthquakes and the solid earth is increasingly driven by new Big Data experiments and algorithms. By: Stephen J. Arrowsmith, Daniel T. Trugman, Karianne Bergen and Beatrice Magnani Scientists have been measuring earthquakes for hundreds of years. As instruments have advanced, so […]
The Hill Joseph Kobylka, Altshuler Distinguished Teaching Professor and chair of the SMU Department of Political Science, for a commentary summing up the work of the 2021 Supreme Court term and how influencer Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., shaped the membership and caused an abrupt turn in rulings toward the right. Published in The Hill under […]
SMU News Therizinosaurs were a large group of primarily herbivorous theropod dinosaurs (dinosaurs with hollow bones and three-toed limbs). Therizinosaurs were first discovered in Asia; the fossil records in Asian countries such as China and Mongolia are rich in therizinosaurus fossils, and fossil fragments have also been reported from Japan. Scientists from Japan and the […]