WashU Experts

A voting rights filibuster “carve-out” — or making an exception to the 60-vote threshold to overcome a legislative filibuster — would help to preserve the core democratic principle of majority rule, says an expert on constitutional law at Washington University in St. Louis.

January 6, 2022, marks the one-year anniversary of the attack on the U.S. Capitol building by supporters of president Donald Trump. Here, university experts in political science and law offer their thoughts on what the attack means.

Women of color are leading the reproductive justice movement, which expands the conversation to include the broader range of reproductive experiences, according to sociologist Zakiya Luna.

During oral arguments Dec. 1, Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh suggested the court should take a neutral position on the divisive question of abortion. In fact, Roe v. Wade does exactly that, says a School of Law expert on reproductive rights.

It is hard to imagine a scenario where the current standoff between baseball owners and players would lead to lost games in 2022, according to Patrick Rishe, a leading sports business expert at Olin Business School.

Sociologist Adia Harvey Wingfield says America is at a crossroads. Racial and economic parity is possible, but will depend on whether workers are able to leverage sustained pressure to change institutionalized policies that perpetuate inequality.

Panos Kouvelis, director of The Boeing Center for Supply Chain Innovation, said, optimistically, supply chains could recover by next summer. But if the energy crisis in China doesn’t resolve quickly, “2022 will be driven by that crisis and the constraints that it creates.”

Each fall, the leaves of almost half of North America’s species of trees and shrubs turn red. Biologist Susanne S. Renner at Washington University in St. Louis helps explain why the North American fall is so red, compared with Europe, and also what changes to fall foliage we can expect under climate change.

Saying goodbye to daylight saving time, and the summertime memories we associate with it, can be difficult. But experts in biological rhythms, including Erik Herzog in Arts & Sciences, agree that it’s time to let it go.

Lisa Gilbert, a lecturer in education in Arts & Sciences, shares her perspective on how social studies education has changed over the last 20-30 years, why this has become such a polarizing issue and where schools should go from here.