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Duane Boning named vice provost for international activities
With extensive international outreach experience as a faculty member and program leader, Boning brings a spirit of curiosity and collaboration to his new role.
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A new world of warcraft
In the past decade, high tech tools have proliferated in the world’s fighting forces. At least 80 nations can now deploy remote-controlled drones. Will the widespread use of digitally enhanced arsenals prove a destabilizing, if not destructive, element in the complex struggles among states? Not necessarily, argues assistant professor of political science Erik Lin-Greenberg ’09, […]
Democracy in distress?
When the Cold War ended in the early 1990s, it seemed democracy had triumphed among political systems. But more recently, many democracies have run into a common set of troubles, with authoritarian leaders grasping enough power to create illiberal regimes. Understanding how this happens was the focus of MIT’s Oct. 23 Starr Forum, an online […]
Saudi Arabia faces increased heat, humidity, precipitation extremes by mid-century
The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) is at a crossroads. Recent long-term studies of the area indicate that rising temperatures and evaporation rates will likely further deplete scarce water resources critical to meeting the nation’s agricultural, industrial, and domestic needs; more extreme flooding events could endanger lives, economic vitality, and infrastructure; and a combination of […]
Podcast series from J-PAL North America shares stories behind the impact of summer jobs in the US
The inaugural season of J-PAL Voices: The Impact and Promise of Summer Jobs in the United States highlights the stories behind the impact of a program that has enabled communities across the country to lower violent crime, reduce incarceration, and save lives. Hosted by J-PAL North America’s Senior Research and Policy Manager Rohit Naimpally, the […]
Examining the French stage during the Enlightenment and French Revolution
The MIT Press recently published “Databases, Revenues and Repertory: The French Stage Online, 1680-1793,” an innovative collection of original essays that explore an important initiative in the digital humanities, the Comédie-Française Registers Project (CFRP). This international online collaboration consists of high-resolution reproductions of the detailed daily box office receipts for the Comédie-Française theater troupe in […]
Why soldiers fight
Matthew Cancian concluded his service in the U.S. Marine Corps in 2013, but in some ways he never left his Afghanistan battlefield experience behind. A rising fifth-year doctoral candidate in political science, Cancian researches what motivates people to enlist and to engage in combat. “It could be said that my dissertation is a poorly disguised […]
A global collaboration to move artificial intelligence principles to practice
Today, artificial intelligence — and the computing systems that underlie it — are more than just matters of technology; they are matters of state and society, of governance and the public interest. The choices that technologists, policymakers, and communities make in the next few years will shape the relationship between machines and humans for decades to […]
Learning by doing, remotely
Experiential learning is alive and well at MIT — even when it’s remote. Just ask Julian Zulueta, a sophomore in biological engineering. Last May, he spotted an intriguing social impact internship opportunity in the PKG Public Service Center newsletter: The CDC Foundation, a Congressionally-chartered nonprofit created to support the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention […]
MIT community unites for Beirut explosion relief efforts
On Aug. 4, the third-largest non-nuclear blast the world has ever seen shook the city of Beirut, Lebanon. The city’s core was wiped out. Beirut was in shambles, leaving 300,000 people homeless in a city that was already struggling economically, politically, and socially — all during a global pandemic. Thousands of injured people flooded Beirut’s […]