One particular challenge is pinpointing hate crimes against immigrants, said Jack McDevitt, director of the Institute on Race and Justice at Northeastern University. In cities such as Boston that are declared sanctuaries for immigrants, local law enforcement agencies decline to enforce immigration rules, leaving that job to the federal government. “Police don’t want to ask […]

Timothy Gagnon, an associate professor of accounting at Northeastern University, questions the effectiveness of states asking for driver’s license information. “They don’t think someone who got your Social Security [number] and name and address won’t have that?” he said sarcastically. “And I don’t like them collecting more information that they don’t need to have in […]

In response to this informational deficit, a seven-person research team from Northeastern University was deployed along the western Balkan migration route into Europe (see map below) to speak with Syrian migrants, learn how and why they have left their country, and study the consequences of their migration to themselves and to Europe. Members of the […]

House Speaker Paul Ryan’s slide in the public eye from policy wonk to partisan hack was a long time coming. But it finally reached its bottom during the past few weeks in two revealingly smug displays of insolence.

Jack Levin, a professor at Northeastern University who studies hate crimes, agrees. “Unquestionably, there has been a larger number of hate attacks generally, including hate-motivated actions against Jews, since Trump’s election,” says Levin, a professor emeritus of criminology and sociology. “You really do have to talk about the expressed attitudes of our leaders. Rightly or […]

Lisa Feldman Barrett, a Northeastern University professor of psychology, is at the forefront of the “constructed emotion” theory. In this view, emotions aren’t standard across all human brains. For example: Fear does not have a specific operating location in the brain, nor does it create a universal response, like widening your eyes.

Legal experts compared the alleged crime to sending a letter bomb in the mail, or to purposely giving a person a dangerous allergic reaction. “What is new, because of the technology, is the ease with which certain individuals can be targeted across state lines by remotely distant perpetrators,” said Andrea Matwyshyn, a law professor at […]

She’s a first step toward a goal of human colonization of Mars and beyond, a wonderful dream for a robot currently tethered to the ceiling of a warehouse in snowy Lowell, Massachusetts, an hour’s drive outside of Boston. The Lowell model is one of four units produced by NASA. The space agency held onto one […]

Legal experts compared the alleged crime to sending a letter bomb in the mail, or to purposely giving a person a dangerous allergic reaction. “What is new, because of the technology, is the ease with which certain individuals can be targeted across state lines by remotely distant perpetrators,” said Andrea Matwyshyn, a law professor at […]

“The negative consequence of those experiences are in and of itself what makes you vulnerable to post-traumatic stress, depression, anxiety, substance abuse,” said Carlos Cuevas, associate professor of criminology and criminal justice at Northeastern University in Boston. “So it’s both a consequence of being victimized in the first place that puts you at risk and […]

It also is possible that since there is a greater police presence in high crime areas, there are more opportunities for police to observe unlawful biking and give out tickets, said James Alan Fox, a criminologist at Northeastern University in Boston.

Advocates hoped the health law would change this. The idea was to push nonprofit hospitals to invest more in public health initiatives that do not directly earn them money — giving such programs more value on the balance sheet. But it’s hard to gauge whether that’s happened. “You can find hospitals that have done this. […]