© Sophie Park for The New York Times
Desire for a politics that cares about global and local injustice is sharpening the political gender divide
Sometimes a political backlash doesn’t take the shape you expect. Though there are times when it goes off like a firework, as young men’s TikTok-fuelled surge of enthusiasm for Nigel Farage did last summer, sometimes it’s more of a long, slow burn. The most underexplored form of revolt against mainstream politics right now is the second kind, involving not angry young men lurching rightwards but anxious young women turning, if anything, more sharply left.
Almost a quarter of women aged 18 to 24 voted Green last July, roughly double the number of young men who voted Reform, though predictably it’s the latter who have since got all the attention. While the big parties chased avidly after so-called Waitrose women, well-heeled home counties matrons considering defecting from the Tories, they had little to say to their daughters. So it was the Greens who ended up cornering the market in a certain kind of frustrated gen Z voter: typically a middle-class student or graduate in her early 20s, whose conscience is pricked every time she opens Instagram by heartrending images of orphans in Gaza or refugees drowning in the Channel, and who can’t understand why nobody seems to care. She’s angry about the rampant misogyny of some boys she knew at school, Donald Trump, greedy landlords and a burning planet, and the Greens’ more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger social media posts attacking Keir Starmer for choosing welfare cuts over wealth taxes strike a chord.
Gaby Hinsliff is a Guardian columnist
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© Illustration: Nate Kitch
© Illustration: Nate Kitch
When they’re not shouting at their own children, many of Britain’s soccer dads like nothing more than swearing at the officials, or even trading blows on the touchline. Isn’t this supposed to be fun?
A chilly Saturday morning on the Astroturf pitches at Coram’s Fields in central London and several youth football matches are under way. I’m watching an under-11s game. The sound is the thud of boot on ball, the shrill interruption of the referee’s whistle, and a whole lot of shouting. From the players (“Mine!”, “Here!”, “Pass!”, “Ref!”, etc). From the two coaches (“Press!”, “Stay wide!”, “Push up!”, “Ref!”, etc). And from the touchline dads. There is one mum here today, but she’s less vocal.
To varying degrees, the dads are part fan, part coach, part personal trainer to their progeny. There is one dad (there’s always one) who’s taking it a bit further, who’s a bit shoutier than the others. “Get rid of it!” he screams at the defence, meaning hoof it upfield, which is the opposite of the coach’s instructions to play it out from the back. “Ref! Seriously?” he shouts at the referee (who’s only about 17 himself).
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© Illustration: Gus Scott/The Guardian
© Illustration: Gus Scott/The Guardian
Over the years, first as a PhD student and now as a postdoc, I have been approached by many students and early-career academics who have confided their problems with me. Their issues, which they struggled to deal with alone, ranged from anxiety and burnout to personal and professional relationships as well as mental-health concerns. Sadly, such discussions were not one-off incidents but seemed worryingly common in academia where people are often under pressure to perform, face uncertainty over their careers and need to juggle lots of different tasks simultaneously.
But it can be challenging to even begin to approach someone else with a problem. That first step can take days or weeks of mental preparation, so to those who are approached for help, it is our responsibility to listen and act appropriately when someone does finally open up. This is especially so given that a supervisor, mentor, teaching assistant, or anybody in a position of seniority, may be the first point of contact when a difficulty becomes debilitating.
I am fortunate to have had excellent relationships with my PhD and postdoc supervisors – providing great examples to follow. Even then, however, it was difficult to subdue the feeling of nausea when I knocked on their office doors to have a difficult conversation. I was worried about their response and reaction and how they would judge me. While that first conversation is challenging for both parties, fortunately it does gets easier from there.
Yet it can also be hard for the person who is trying to offer help, especially if they haven’t done so before. In fact, when colleagues began to confide in me, I’d had no formal preparation or training to support them. But through experience and some research, I found a few things that worked well in such complex situations. The first is to set and maintain boundaries or where your personal limits lie. This includes which topics are off limits and to what extent you will engage with somebody. Someone who has recently experienced bereavement, for example, may not want to engage deeply with a student who is enduring the same and so should make it clear they can’t offer help. Yet at the same time, that person may feel confident providing support for someone struggling with imposter syndrome – a feeling that you don’t deserve to be there and aren’t good at your work.
Time restrictions can also be used as boundaries. If you are working on a critical experiment, have an article deadline or are about to go on holiday, explain that you can only help them until a certain point, after which you will explore alternative solutions together. Setting boundaries can also be handy for mentors to prepare to help someone struggling. This could involve taking a mental-health first-aid course to support a person who experiences panic attacks or is relapsing into depression. It could also mean finding contact details for professionals, either on campus or beyond, would could help. While providing such information might sound trivial and unimportant, remember that for a person who is feeling overwhelmed, it can be hugely appreciated.
Sharing problems takes courage. It also requires trust because if information leaks out, rumours and accusations can spread quickly and worsen situations. It is, however, possible to ask more senior colleagues for advice without identifying anyone or their exact circumstances, perhaps in cases when dealing with less than amicable relationships with collaborators. It is also possible to let colleagues know that a particular person needs more support without explicitly saying why.
There are times, however, when that confidentiality must be broken. In my experience, this should always be first addressed with the person at hand and broken to somebody who is sure to have a concrete solution. For a student who is struggling with a particular subject, it could, for example, be the lecturer responsible for that course. For somebody not coping with divorce, say, it could be someone from HR or a supervisor for a colleague. It could even be a university’s support team or the police for a student who has experienced sexual assault.
Even if the situation has been handed over to someone else, it’s important to follow up with the person struggling, which helps them know they’re being heard and respected
I have broken confidentiality at times and it can be nerve-wracking, but it is essential to provide the best possible support and take a situation that you cannot handle off your hands. Even if the issue has been handed over to someone else, it’s important to follow up with the person struggling, which helps them know they’re being heard and respected. Following up is not always a comfortable conversation, potentially invoking trauma or broaching sensitive topics. But it also allows them to admit that they are still looking for more support or that their situation has worsened.
A follow-up conversation could also be held in a discrete environment with reassurance that nobody is obliged to go into detail. It may be as simple as asking “How are you feeling today?”. Letting someone express themselves without judgement can help them come to terms with their situation, let them speak or have confidence to approach you again.
Regularly reflecting on your boundaries and limits as well as having a good knowledge of possible resources can help you prepare for unexpected circumstances. It gives students and colleagues immediate care and relief at what might be their lowest point. But perhaps the most important aspect when approached by someone is to ask yourself this: “What kind of person would I want to speak to if I were struggling?”. That is the person you want to be.
The post How to support colleagues who are dealing with personal issues appeared first on Physics World.
Experts call for redesign of financial services and improved Centrelink processes to protect older Australians from fraud
The fraud began when Ray Baird, then 65, asked his son Peter for help dealing with the bank. In the years that followed, Peter gained access to his dad’s bank accounts, diverted Ray’s aged pension to his own bank account and ran up debts in his father’s name that led to two caveats being put on Ray’s home.
By the time the fraud was uncovered and Ray, then 74, began to untangle the lies his son had spun, Peter had taken more than $230,000 from him, including seven years of pension totalling $152,423.33.
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© Photograph: Christopher Hopkins/The Guardian
© Photograph: Christopher Hopkins/The Guardian
© Bonnie Jo Mount/The Washington Post, via Getty Images
Researchers surprised at impact that even small differences in sleep make to adolescents’ cognitive abilities
Teenagers who go to bed earlier and sleep for longer than their peers tend to have sharper mental skills and score better on cognitive tests, researchers have said.
A study of more than 3,000 adolescents showed that those who turned in earliest, slept the longest, and had the lowest sleeping heart rates outperformed others on reading, vocabulary, problem solving and other mental tests.
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© Photograph: Blend Images/Alamy
© Photograph: Blend Images/Alamy
© Heather Khalifa for The New York Times
With so much turmoil in the world at the moment, it’s always great to meet enthusiastic physicists celebrating all that their subject has to offer. That was certainly the case when I travelled with my colleague Tami Freeman to the 2025 Celebration of Physics at Nottingham Trent University (NTU) on 10 April.
Organized by the Institute of Physics (IOP), which publishes Physics World, the event was aimed at “physicists, creative thinkers and anyone interested in science”. It also featured some of the many people who won IOP awards last year, including Nick Stone from the University of Exeter, who was awarded the 2024 Rosalind Franklin medal and prize.
Stone was honoured for his “pioneering use of light for diagnosis and therapy in healthcare”, including “developing novel Raman spectroscopic tools and techniques for rapid in vivo cancer diagnosis and monitoring”. Speaking in a Physics World Live chat, Stone explained why Raman spectroscopy is such a useful technique for medical imaging.
Nottingham is, of course, a city famous for medical imaging, thanks in particular to the University of Nottingham Nobel laureate Peter Mansfield (1933–2017), who pioneered magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). In an entertaining talk, Rob Morris from NTU explained how MRI is also crucial for imaging foodstuffs, helping the food industry to boost productivity, reduce waste – and make tastier pork pies.
Still on the medical theme, Niall Holmes from Cerca Magnetics, which was spun out from the University of Nottingham, explained how his company has developed wearable magnetoencephalography (MEG) sensors that can measures magnetic fields generated by neuronal firings in the brain. In 2023 Cerca won one of the IOP’s business and innovation awards.
Richard Friend from the University of Cambridge, who won the IOP’s top Isaac Newton medal and prize, discussed some of the many recent developments that have followed from his seminal 1990 discovery that semiconducting polymers can be used in light-emitting diodes (LEDs).
The event ended with a talk from particle physicist Tara Shears from the University of Liverpool, who outlined some of the findings of the new IOP report Physics and AI, to which she was an adviser. Based on a survey with 700 responses and a workshop with experts from academia and industry, the report concludes that physics doesn’t only benefit from AI – but underpins it too.
I’m sure AI will be good for physics overall, but I hope it never removes the need for real-life meetings like the Celebration of Physics.
The post Physicists gather in Nottingham for the IOP’s Celebration of Physics 2025 appeared first on Physics World.
This episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast features William Phillips, who shared the 1997 Nobel Prize for Physics for his work on cooling and trapping atoms using laser light.
In a wide-ranging conversation with Physics World’s Margaret Harris, Phillips talks about his long-time fascination with quantum physics – which began with an undergraduate project on electron spin resonance. Phillips chats about quirky quantum phenomena such as entanglement and superposition and explains how they are exploited in atomic clocks and quantum computing. He also looks to the future of quantum technologies and stresses the importance of curiosity-led research.
Phillips has spent much of his career at US’s National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) in Maryland and he also a professor of physics at the University of Maryland.
This podcast is supported by Atlas Technologies, specialists in custom aluminium and titanium vacuum chambers as well as bonded bimetal flanges and fittings used everywhere from physics labs to semiconductor fabs.
This article forms part of Physics World‘s contribution to the 2025 International Year of Quantum Science and Technology (IYQ), which aims to raise global awareness of quantum physics and its applications.
Stayed tuned to Physics World and our international partners throughout the next 12 months for more coverage of the IYQ.
Find out more on our quantum channel.
The post William Phillips: Nobel laureate talks about his passion for quantum physics appeared first on Physics World.
From the Global Physics Summit in Anaheim, California
I spent most of Saturday travelling between the UK and Anaheim in Southern California, so I was up very early on Sunday with jetlag. So just as the sun was rising over the Santa Ana Mountains on a crisp morning, I went for a run in the suburban neighbourhood just south of the Anaheim Convention Center. As I made my way back to my hotel, the sidewalks were already thronging with physicists on their way to register for the Global Physics Summit (GPS) – which is being held in Anaheim by the American Physical Society (APS).
The GPS combines the APS’s traditional March and April meetings, which focus on condensed-matter and particle and nuclear physics, respectively – and much more. This year, about 14,000 physicists are expected to attend. I popped out at lunchtime and spotted a “physics family” walking along Harbor Boulevard, with parents and kids all wearing vintage APS T-shirts with clever slogans. They certainly stood out from most families, many of which were wearing Mickey Mouse ears (Disneyland is just across the road from the convention centre).
The GPS starts in earnest bright and early Monday morning, and I am looking forward to spending a week surrounded by thousands of fellow physicists. While many physicists in the US are facing some pretty dire political and funding issues, I am hoping that the global community can unite in the face of the anti-science forces that have emerged in some countries.
This year is the International Year of Quantum Science and Technology, so it’s not surprising that quantum mechanics will be front and centre here in Anaheim. I am looking forward to the “Quantum Playground”, which will be on much of this week. It promises, “themed areas; hands-on interactive experiences; demonstrations and games; art and science installations; mini-performances; and ask the experts”. I’ll report back once I have paid a visit.
The post Global Physics Summit: this week, Anaheim is the hub of world physics appeared first on Physics World.
This episode of the Physics World Weekly podcast features an interview with the theoretical physicist Jim Gates who is at the University of Maryland and Brown University – both in the US.
He updates his theorist’s bucket list, which he first shared with Physics World back in 2014. This is a list of breakthroughs in physics that Gates would like to see happen before he dies.
One list item – the observation or gravitational waves – happened in 2015 and Gates explains the importance of the discovery. He also explains why the observation of gravitons, which are central to a theory of quantum gravity, is on his bucket list.
Gates is known for his work on supersymmetry and superstring theory, so it is not surprising that experimental evidence for those phenomena are on the bucket list. Gates also talks about a new item on his list that concerns the connections between quantum physics and information theory.
In this interview with Physics World’s Margaret Harris, Gates also reflects on how the current political upheaval in the US is affecting science and society – and what scientists can do ensure that the public has faith in science.
The post Jim Gates updates his theorist’s bucket list and surveys the damage being done to US science and society appeared first on Physics World.
A new exhibition dedicated to Ukrainian scientists has opened at Harvard Science Centre in the Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the US.
The exhibition – Freedom in the Equation – shares the stories of 10 scientists to highlight Ukraine’s lost scientific potential due to Russia’s aggression towards the country while also shedding light on the contributions of Ukrainian scientists.
Among them are physicists Vasyl Kladko and Lev Shubnikov. Kladko worked on semiconductor physics and was deputy director of the Institute of Semiconductor Physics in Kyiv. He was killed in 2022 at the age of 65 as he tried to help his family flee Russia’s invasion.
Shubnikov, meanwhile, established a cryogenic lab at the Ukrainian Institute of Physics and Technology in Kharkiv (now known as the Kharkiv Institute of Physics and Technology) in the early 1930s. In 1937, Shubnikov was arrested during Stalin’s regime and accused of espionage and was executed shortly after.
The scientists were selected by Oleksii Boldyrev, a molecular biologist and founder of the online platform myscience.ua, together with Krystyna Semeryn, a literary scholar and publicist.
The portraits were created by Niklas Elemehed, who is the official artist of the Nobel prize, with the text compiled by Olesia Pavlyshyn, editor-in-chief at the Ukrainian popular-science outlet Kunsht.
The exhibition, which is part of the Science at Risk project, runs until 10 March. “Today, I witness scientists being killed, and preserving their names has become a continuation of my work in historical research and a continuation of resistance against violence toward Ukrainian science,” says Boldyrev.
The post Freedom in the Equation exhibition opens at Harvard Science Centre appeared first on Physics World.
Scientists across the US have been left reeling after a spate of executive orders from US President Donald Trump has led to research funding being slashed, staff being told to quit and key programmes being withdrawn. In response to the orders, government departments and external organizations have axed diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programmes, scrubbed mentions of climate change from websites, and paused research grants pending tests for compliance with the new administration’s goals.
Since taking up office on 20 January, Trump has signed dozens of executive orders. One ordered the closure of the US Agency for International Development, which has supported medical and other missions worldwide for more than six decades. The administration said it was withdrawing almost all of the agency’s funds and wanted to sack its entire workforce. A federal judge has temporarily blocked the plans, saying they may violate the US’s constitution, which reserves decisions on funding to Congress.
Individual science agencies are under threat too. Politico reported that the Trump administration has asked the National Science Foundation (NSF), which funds much US basic and applied research, to lay off between a quarter and a half of its staff in the next two months. Another report suggests there are plans to cut the agency’s annual budget from roughly $9bn to $3bn. Meanwhile, former officials of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) told CBS News that half its staff could be sacked and its budget slashed by 30%.
Even before they had learnt of plans to cut its staff and budget, officials at the NSF were starting to examine details of thousands of grants it had awarded for references to DEI, climate change and other topics that Trump does not like. The swiftness of the announcements has caused chaos, with recipients of grants suddenly finding themselves unable to access the NSF’s award cash management service, which holds grantees’ funds, including their salaries.
NSF bosses have taken some steps to reassure grantees. “Our top priority is resuming our funding actions and services to the research community and our stakeholders,” NSF spokesperson Mike England told Physics World in late January. In what is a highly fluid situation, there was some respite on 2 February when the NSF announced that access had been restored with the system able to accept payment requests.
Trump’s anti-DEI orders have caused shockwaves throughout US science. According to 404 Media, NASA staff were told on 22 January to “drop everything” to remove mentions of DEI, Indigenous people, environmental justice and women in leadership, from public websites. Another victim has been NASA’s Here to Observe programme, which links undergraduates from under-represented groups with scientists who oversee NASA’s missions. Science reported that contracts for half the scientists involved in the programme had been cancelled by the end of January.
It is still unclear, however, what impact the Trump administration’s DEI rules will have on the make-up of NASA’s astronaut corps. Since choosing its first female astronaut in 1978, NASA has sought to make the corps more representative of US demographics. How exactly the agency should move forward will fall to Jared Isaacman, the space entrepreneur and commercial astronaut who has been nominated as NASA’s next administrator.
Anti-DEI initiatives have hit individual research labs too. Physics World understands that Fermilab – the US’s premier particle-physics lab – suspended its DEI office and its women in engineering group in January. Meanwhile, the Fermilab LBGTQ+ group, called Spectrum, was ordered to cease all activities and its mailing list deleted. Even the rainbow “Pride” flag was removed from the lab’s iconic Wilson Hall.
Some US learned societies, despite being formally unaffiliated with the government, have also responded to pressure from the new administration. The American Geophysical Union (AGU) removed the word “diversity” from its diversity and inclusion page, although it backtracked after criticism of the move.
There was also some confusion that the American Chemical Society had removed its webpage on diversity and inclusion, but they had in fact published a new page and failed to put a redirect in place. “Inclusion and Belonging is a core value of the American Chemical Society, and we remain committed to creating environments where people from diverse backgrounds, cultures, perspectives and experiences thrive,” a spokesperson told Physics World. “We know the broken link caused confusion and some alarm, and we apologize.”
For the time being, the American Physical Society’s page on inclusion remains live, as does that of the American Institute of Physics.
Dismantling all federal DEI programmes and related activities will damage lives and careers of millions of American women and men
Neal Lane, Rice University
Such a response – which some opponents denounce as going beyond what is legally required for fear of repercussions if no action is taken – has left it up to individual leaders to underline the importance of diversity in science. Neal Lane, a former science adviser to President Clinton, told Physics World that “dismantling all federal DEI programmes and related activities will damage lives and careers of millions of American women and men, including scientists, engineers, technical workers – essentially everyone who contributes to advancing America’s global leadership in science and technology”.
Lane, who is now a science and technology policy fellow at Rice University in Texas, think that the new administration’s anti-DEI actions “will weaken the US” and believes they should be considered “un-American”. “The purpose of DEI policies programmes and activities is to ensure all Americans have the opportunity to participate and the country is able to benefit from their participation,” he says.
One senior physicist at a US university, who wishes to remain anonymous, told Physics World that those behind the executive orders are relying on institutions and individuals to “comply in advance” with what they perceive to be the spirit of the orders. “They are relying on people to ignore the fine print, which says that executive orders can’t and don’t overwrite existing law. But it is up to scientists to do the reading — and to follow our consciences. More than universities are on the line: the lives of our students and colleagues are on the line.”
Another target of the Trump administration is the US Department of Education, which was set up in 1978 to oversee everything from pre-school to postgraduate education. It has already put dozens of its civil servants on leave, ostensibly because their work involves DEI issues. Meanwhile, the withholding of funds has led to the cancellation of scientific meetings, mostly focusing on medicine and life sciences, that were scheduled in the US for late January and early February.
Colleges and universities in the US have also reacted to Trump’s anti-DEI executive order. Academic divisions at Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, for example, have already indicated that they will no longer require applicants for jobs to indicate how they plan to advance the goals of DEI. Northeastern University in Boston has removed the words “diversity” and “inclusion” from a section of its website.
Not all academic organizations have fallen into line, however. Danielle Holly, president of the women-only Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Massachusetts, says it will forgo contracts with the federal government if they required abolishing DEI. “We obviously can’t enter into contracts with people who don’t allow DEI work,” she told the Boston Globe. “So for us, that wouldn’t be an option.”
For an administration that doubts the reality of climate change and opposes anti-pollution laws, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is under fire too. Trump administration representatives were taking action even before the Senate approved Lee Zeldin, a former Republican Congressman from New York who has criticized much environmental legislation, as EPA Administrator. They removed all outside advisers on the EPA’s scientific advisory board and its clean air scientific advisory committee – purportedly to “depoliticize” the boards.
Once the Senate approved Zeldin on 29 January, the EPA sent an e-mail warning more than 1000 probationary employees who had spent less than a year in the agency that their roles could be “terminated” immediately. Then, according to the New York Times, the agency developed plans to demote longer-term employees who have overseen research, enforcement of anti-pollution laws, and clean-ups of hazardous waste. According to Inside Climate News, staff also found their individual pronouns scrubbed from their e-mails and websites without their permission – the result of an order to remove “gender ideology extremism”.
Critics have also questioned the nomination of Neil Jacobs to lead the NOAA. He was its acting head during Trump’s first term in office, serving during the 2019 “Sharpiegate” affair when Trump used a Sharpie pen to alter a NOAA weather map to indicate that Hurricane Dorian would affect Alabama. While conceding Jacobs’s experience and credentials, Rachel Cleetus of the Union of Concerned Scientists asserts that Jacobs is “unfit to lead” given that he “fail[ed] to uphold scientific integrity at the agency”.
Another concern for scientists is the quasi-official team led by “special government employee” and SpaceX founder Elon Musk. The administration has charged Musk and his so-called “department of government efficiency”, or DOGE, to identify significant cuts to government spending. Though some of DOGE’s activities have been blocked by US courts, agencies have nevertheless been left scrambling for ways to reduce day-to-day costs.
The National Institutes of Health (NIH), for example, has said it will significantly reduce its funding for “indirect” costs of research projects it supported – the overheads that, for example, cover the cost of maintaining laboratories, administering grants, and paying staff salaries. Under the plans, indirect cost reimbursement for federally funded research would be capped at 15%, a drastic cut from its usual range.
NIH personnel have tried to put a positive gloss on its actions. “The United States should have the best medical research in the world,” a statement from NIH declared. “It is accordingly vital to ensure that as many funds as possible go towards direct scientific research costs rather than administrative overhead.”
Just because Elon Musk doesn’t understand indirect costs doesn’t mean Americans should have to pay the price with their lives
US senator Patty Murray
Opponents of the Trump administration, however, are unconvinced. They argue that the measure will imperil critical clinical research because many academic recipients of NIH funds did not have the endowments to compensate for the losses. “Just because Elon Musk doesn’t understand indirect costs doesn’t mean Americans should have to pay the price with their lives,” says US senator Patty Murray, a Democrat from Washington state.
Slashing universities’ share of grants to below 15%, could, however, force institutions to make up the lost income by raising tuition fees, which could “go through the roof”, according to the anonymous senior physicist contacted by Physics World. “Far from being a populist policy, these cuts to overheads are an attack on the subsidies that make university education possible for students from a range of socioeconomic backgrounds. The alternative is to essentially shut down the university research apparatus, which would in many ways be the death of American scientific leadership and innovation.”
Musk and colleagues have also gained unprecedented access to government websites related to civil servants and the country’s entire payments system. That access has drawn criticism from several commentators who note that, since Musk is a recipient of significant government support through his SpaceX company, he could use the information for his own advantage.
“Musk has access to all the data on federal research grantees and contractors: social security numbers, tax returns, tax payments, tax rebates, grant disbursements and more,” wrote physicist Michael Lubell from City College of New York. “Anyone who depends on the federal government and doesn’t toe the line might become a target. This is right out of (Hungarian prime minister) Viktor Orbán’s playbook.”
As for the long-term impact of these changes, James Gates – a theoretical physicist at the University of Maryland and a past president of the US National Society of Black Physicists – is blunt. “My country is in for a 50-year period of a new dark ages,” he told an audience at the Royal College of Art in London, UK, on 7 February.
My country is in for a 50-year period of a new dark ages
James Gates, University of Maryland
Speaking at an event sponsored by the college’s association for Black students – RCA BLK – and supported by the UK’s organization for Black physicists, the Blackett Lab Family, he pointed out that the US has been through such periods before. As examples, Gates cited the 1950s “Red Scare” and the period after 1876 when the federal government abandoned efforts to enforce the civil rights of Black Americans in southern states and elsewhere.
However, he is not entirely pessimistic. “Nothing is permanent in human behaviour. The question is the timescale,” Gates said. “There will be another dawn, because that’s part of the human spirit.”
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