There are two narratives out there. One claims that mass shootings are rampant and on the rise while the other says that mass shootings are rare and trendless. One is based on unofficial data of questionable reliability while the other originates from a careful assemblage of official crime reports. One can construct an argument that a mass shooting […]

Politicians, concerned citizens, and the media have been hotly debating whether or not we have a moral responsibility to resettle refugees fleeing the Syrian war and if so, how many we ought to resettle. Charity groups, religious leaders and morally conscious celebrities are among the many people who are encouraging the US and other states […]

IS “likes to say it’s not a terrorist group, but it’s really a state or a movement,” said Max Abrahms, a terrorism expert at Northeastern University. The FBI is investigating the shootings at the social services facility in San Bernardino as an act of terrorism. Comey said agents have found signs of radicalization, though no […]

Max Abrahms, terrorism expert and Northeastern University professor, joined Boston Herald Radio’s “NewsFeed” show to talk about the recent shootings in San Bernardino, Calif., and the War on Terror.

A Northeastern professor is using an interesting vehicle for spreading information about AIDS prevention: a soap opera. Rachel Jones, an associate nursing professor at Northeastern, has focused her research on curtailing HIV and AIDS transmission among urban women, particularly African American women. To move her mission forward, the National Institute of Nursing Research, part of […]

The National Football League is about to face one of its greatest challenges. On Christmas Day 2015, Columbia Pictures will release Concussion, a film starring Will Smith. Smith plays Nigerian doctor Bennet Omalu, the pathologist who first identified chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) in the brains of deceased football players. He estimated that a third of […]

The Boston Globe recently published a letter from Michael O’Keefe, the district attorney for the Cape and Islands, criticizing Yvonne Abraham’s column about the current status of the 2012 drug lab scandal wrought by the actions of rogue chemist Annie Dookhan. O’Keefe properly identified “the lack of oversight of the state Department of Public Health […]

At least 14 killed and 21 injured in a mass shooting at an office building in San Bernardino, Calif., allegedly by a couple armed and dressed for battle. The extent of carnage is absolutely shocking, while the relationship of the suspected gunman and gunwoman is surprising, but only somewhat so. It is quite true that […]

Slava Epstein works in aggressively low-tech quarters at Northeastern University. You might expect otherwise, given the extraordinary work that he and his colleagues are doing, discovering new kinds of antibiotics that are fundamentally different than the ones doctors prescribe today. And yet, when I paid Epstein a visit recently, we sat down amid a veritable […]

WGBH Legal analyst and Northeastern University Law Professor Daniel Medwed discusses with WGBH Morning Edition host Bob Seay three high profile cases appearing in Massachusetts state and federal courthouses this week; the Chism and Carter cases, and an effort by attorneys for Boston Marathon Bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev in seeking a new trial.

But James Alan Fox, a criminologist at Northeastern University, said his research showed the number of such shootings has roughly held steady in recent decades. He said that if analysts added a single year, 2014, and looked at four-year intervals instead of five-year intervals, the average number of annual mass shootings actually declined slightly from […]

In interviews and in the new report, legal experts questioned the legality and even the constitutionality of quarantines in these situations. “The state has to have clear and convincing evidence that the detention is necessary to prevent the spread of disease,” said Wendy Parmet, director of the program on health policy and law at Northeastern […]