“You have all these elements of controversy, excitement and weirdness coming together in a perfect storm that’s going to make this seem much, much more important than we could have imagined any debate 15 months before the election could possibly be,” says Alan Schroeder, a journalism professor at Boston’s Northeastern University and author of Presidential […]

But Alan Schroeder, a professor at Northeastern University who has written extensively about campaign debates believes candidates tempted by a joust with Trump will be wary. “I don’t think theres a magic bullet here,” he said. “ I don’t think there’s a recipe for dealing with Donald Trump because he’s so unpredictable. Schroeder added: “Trump […]

iPhone users have it better, because Apple designed all the hardware and software, making it relatively simple to build and test software upgrades and security patches. But even Apple must have its software tested by the phone companies. So fixing an iOS security bug can take a long time too. “Multiple weeks are minimum,” said […]

The prime-time debate highlights a number of GOP rivalries. Huckabee and Cruz are vying for the affections of Christian conservatives. Cruz, Rubio and Paul are wrestling for tea party support. Bush and Walker hope to consolidate the party’s establishment. “A little bit of this is survival of the fittest — which of the social conservatives […]

On a recent Friday, 1.7 million people were tuned to Fox News at 5 p.m., the time of the lower-tier event. “You can look at being relegated to the 5 p.m. debate as a form of punishment, but it’s also kind of liberating because there’s fewer people on stage so you are not fighting for […]

How can the nine other Republican candidates at tomorrow’s debate take on Donald Trump? Debate coach and Northeastern University professor Alan Schroeder offered suggestions for debating the GOP front-runner at tomorrow’s Fox News-Facebook Debate, which will kick off at 8:50p ET.

Two hours. Ten candidates. Three moderators. Simple math says not every — and perhaps no — candidate in Thursday’s prime-time, top-tier presidential debate is going to get as much time as he would like to make his case to voters. Some of the 10 candidates’ speaking times may be so minuscule that it’ll be as if […]

Any televised political debate resonates backs to the first ever such match in 1960 when underdog John F. Kennedy outshone Richard M. Nixon at the podium and rode the momentum on to victory in the election. Politicians, media experts, and academicians have pored over the dynamics of that event, analyzing every detail from JFK’s patrician […]

Restraint is the strategic underpinning of how many states confront cyber actions. Despite calls for a response to cyber aggression, the U.S. government still has not decided on a viable reaction given limited options. As David Sanger recounts in the New York Times, “in a series of classified meetings, officials have struggled to choose among […]

The current Lyme treatment is a round of common antibiotics. For chronic Lyme disease, doctors prescribe long-term doses. Studies by Kim Lewis, at Northeastern University in Boston, show that some Borrelia form persister (dormant) cells that evade antibiotics, so the best way to attack them is pulsing (on and off) instead of continuous use of […]

This pivot happens so often in debates that there’s a name for it: the “clubhouse turn.” Northeastern University journalism professor Alan Schroeder, author of several books on presidential debates, traces the phrase’s origin to Michael Sheehan, a debate coach for Bill Clinton and other Democrats. “ ‘Clubhouse turn’ strikes me as a particularly appropriate metaphor […]

In 2012, Massachusetts passed a new set of school nutrition standards mandating which foods should be sold in public middle and high schools statewide. With no financial incentives and little technical assistance from the state, schools were asked to implement those guidelines within their own facilities—and most actually did. Those are the results of a […]