Political Science | Penn Today

A grandparent and a child sit on a park bench in daylight, both wearing masks and sitting six feet apart.

COVID-19 checkup

Ezekiel J. Emanuel, vice provost for global initiatives and a physician, gave an update on the pandemic during a Perry World House virtual earlier this week. He says summer is a good time to open up in stages but cautions about fall.

Taiwan’s Tsai to treat cautiously on cross-strait relations at inauguration: Experts

Jacques deLisle of the Law School and School of Arts & Sciences says Tsai Ing-wen, the recently re-elected president of Taiwan, will probably reference political unrest in Hong Kong in her inaugural speech. “I think she has to walk a fine line in how much to reference the Hong Kong situation which obviously is key to her re-election but neuralgic to Beijing,” he said.

Book banning is a bipartisan game

Jonathan Zimmerman of the Graduate School of Education wrote about efforts by those at both ends of the political spectrum to censor certain books in schools. “It’s too easy to mock the conservatives out in Alaska. It’s a lot harder to look in the mirror, and to ask whether we liberals might be imitating them,” he wrote.

Person in black hooded jacket and pants facing away from camera walks near Red Square in Moscow.

Diagnosing Russia’s COVID-19 response

Despite the Russian government’s assertions that it has the COVID-19 crisis under control, the outbreak is in the beginning stages in the country and three experts says Vladimir Putin’s political fate may rest on how he responds to the crisis.

Here’s a fair approach to calculating COVID-19 specific aid to the states

Robert Inman of the Wharton School and David Skeel of the Law School wrote an op-ed proposing a fair method to calculate federal aid for states. “Because some states will be hit harder than others, Congress should allocate the $358 billion based on each state’s rate of COVID-19 cases and related unemployment claims,” they wrote.

Screen shot of computer with image of United States and the words "How Concerned are You?" and four participants on a Zoom call.

COVID-19 hackathon

Students tackle real-world, real-time data sets about the coronavirus at hackathon

Empty podium with seal of the White House flanked by American flags with plaque reading The White House hung from curtains in background

Q&A

Pandemics and presidential elections

The coronavirus outbreak has already caused disruptions in the 2020 election cycle. What if the nation is in the midst of another shutdown come Election Day in November?

The creative thinker who should be Biden's vice president

Benjamin Jealous of the Annenberg School for Communication wrote an op-ed about Stacey Abrams, whom he believes should be Joe Biden’s vice presidential candidate. Abrams brings to politics “creative approaches to complex challenges, and given the current pandemic crisis we are facing, we need her creative thinking, now more than ever,” writes Jealous.

Will the coronavirus make conservatives love government spending?

Yphtach Lelkes of the Annenberg School for Communication contributed to an analysis of how Republican voters and leaders are reacting to coronavirus relief proposals that involve significant government spending and intervention.

Millions of Americans are receiving relief payments this week, but who is being left out?

Amy Castro Baker of the School of Social Policy & Practice said lawmakers should consider how stimulus legislation will shape society going forward. “Any types of inequality that we’re writing into policy now are going to have a reverberation moving forward—both in terms of policy precedent and in terms of uneven distribution of resources,” she said.

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