Bruce Levenson’s decision to sell the Atlanta Hawks, the second basketball franchise this year to change ownership in the wake of an owner’s racist comments, may lead to wider discussion of America’s racial inequality, according to the head of a sports sociology organization. Levenson announced yesterday that he will sell his controlling interest in the […]

A forthcoming paper from Northeastern University’s Max Abrahms and the University of Michigan’s Philip Potter reports that leadership decapitation may increase civilian casualties. Militant groups in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region, Abrahms and Potter discovered, became “significantly less discriminate in their targeting choices”—in other words, more likely to target civilians—after high-level militants were killed in drone strikes. […]

The state unemployment rate, 5.6 percent, is near the six-year low as the state has added nearly 70,000 jobs over the past year, a pace not seen since the dot-com boom at the beginning of the century. Earlier this year, the state surpassed the all-time employment record reached just before the boom went bust in […]

For many sports fans, this week brings the long-awaited change in the seasons. The National Football League — the most popular of our sports pastimes — returns with a full schedule of games that actually count in the standings. While those with favorite clubs still in contention for baseball’s post-season linger on in their affection […]

For many, the only way to learn about ISIS is through the news, or through social media. It is not often we hear honest accounts of why people join terrorist organizations, Max Abrahms, an expert on terrorism from Northeastern University, said. “If you ask terrorists why they joined an organization after they have been in […]

September 1974 marked the start of a new school year unlike any that Boston had ever seen. It was the beginning of court-ordered school desegregation and Boston was catapulted into a state of turmoil. Forty years later, we are still feeling the reverberations. In the summer of 1974, District Court Judge Arthur W. Garrity ruled […]

It’s only a matter of time, some researchers are warning, before isolated cases of Ebola start turning up in developed nations, as well as hitherto-unaffected African countries. The current Ebola outbreak in West Africa has killed more people than all previous outbreaks combined, the World Health Organization said Wednesday. The official count includes about 3,600 […]

Patrick Sawyer, Nigeria’s first Ebola patient, collapsed at the international airport in Lagos on July 20. This Wednesday, more than six weeks later, the World Health Organization (WHO) said that it was monitoring at least 200 Nigerians for infection related to Sawyer’s case. Sawyer, a Liberian-American who had traveled from Monrovia, had carried the often-fatal […]

The five-minute Michael Dukakis speech for capturing the hearts and minds of voters has been told to the former governor’s students at Northeastern University, to a sitting senator and the current governor, and to at least one candidate in next week’s primary election. But really, those five minutes can be boiled down to two words: […]

While states in much of the country were content to take quick action to address gun violence, Massachusetts took time to craft a comprehensive and strong bill which has garnered wide support. Our law in Massachusetts is unique. We are, for example, the only state that both closes the intractable secondary gun sales loophole and […]

The bleak outlook for Florida’s multibillion dollar citrus industry’s growing season will mean fewer jobs for seasonal workers and a big hit to the state’s economy, experts predict. Analysts expect the state to produce its smallest citrus crop in five decades during the season beginning next month, as up to 75 percent of the state’s […]

Northeastern University Professor Alessandro Vespignani creates models with data about, for example, air travel. Ebola may be headed next to Gambia, Ghana and Senegal, his research shows. “There is a tangible risk of spreading in the region to other countries,” Vespignani told National Public Radio, “probably in the ballpark of 20 to 30 percent in […]