Author: Mika Armenta

  • Coal, Cash, Cars, and Trees: Cliff-Notes From the Glasgow Climate Summit

    Coal, Cash, Cars, and Trees: Cliff-Notes From the Glasgow Climate Summit

    In November, the United Nations convened its 26th global climate summit, the Glasgow Climate Change Conference, or COP26. Held in Glasgow, Scotland from Oct. 31-Nov. 12, 2021, COP26 saw attendance and discussion from delegates representing almost 200 countries, while 21,000 representatives from observer organizations, host city volunteers, and the general…

  • A Quick-Reference Guide to Climate Change Terminology

    A Quick-Reference Guide to Climate Change Terminology

    In November the United Nations held the 26th global climate summit, the Glasgow Climate Change Conference, or COP26. Delegates from almost 200 countries discussed items ranging from membership in the UNFCCC and compliance with the Paris Agreement to Green Finance. If you have difficulty keeping the terminology straight, check out…

  • University of Chicago’s Interdisciplinary Conference on Violence

    University of Chicago’s Interdisciplinary Conference on Violence

    Violence may be a complex, wicked problem. Solutions to it are not necessarily true or false, just good or bad. It is a symptom and cause of other wicked problems like poverty, unemployment, education and social inequality—the topics worthy of “policies.” To solve wicked problems, policymakers and practitioners are increasingly…

  • Bridging social science, policy and community: engaged research

    Bridging social science, policy and community: engaged research

    If you ask a social researcher—psychologist, sociologist, cultural anthropologist—why they chose their profession, you might hear something like, “to help people,” but western social research is sometimes criticized for failing to help those who may need it most: groups on the underside of the power differential. When applied social research…

  • Sexual Adaptation and Miscommunication in the Age of #MeToo

    Sexual Adaptation and Miscommunication in the Age of #MeToo

    At one of #MeToo founder Tarana Burke’s first workshops, 30 high-school girls were asked to write “Me Too” on a sheet of paper if they wanted to anonymously record their experience of sexual harassment. Burke was stunned by how many sheets she counted; two-thirds of the girls wrote “Me Too.” Driven…

  • How Our Perceptions of Victims’ Humanity Increases Some Violence, But Not All

    How Our Perceptions of Victims’ Humanity Increases Some Violence, But Not All

    Dehumanization is the process through which we come to believe that a person cannot think, feel, and behave intentionally, nor experience right and wrong. A substantial body of literature from the social sciences posits that dehumanization may be the psychological rationale motivating acts of mass violence, such as the Holocaust…