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Political Science

Trump issued an executive order to prepare for an EMP attack. What is it, and should you worry?

Trump issued an executive order to prepare for an EMP attack. What is it, and should you worry?

School of Arts and Sciences Ph.D. students Christopher Blair, Casey Mahoney, Shira Pindyck, and Joshua Schwartz co-wrote about the president’s plans to issue an executive order meant to protect the country from electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attacks. The authors say that such an attack is highly unlikely, due to the prospect of nuclear retaliation from the U.S. and assertions that the destructive capacity of EMPs has been overstated.

America has already had a gay president

America has already had a gay president

PIK Professor Ezekiel Emanuel penned an op-ed about James Buchanan, the country’s only “bachelor president.” Emanuel writes that in the mid-19th century, sexual orientation was generally considered “a private matter, and irrelevant to holding or performing public office.”

What’s next for the UK and Europe?
Big Ben with the U.K. and E.U. flags

What’s next for the UK and Europe?

Years of debate and negotiation are coming to a head as the deadline for the United Kingdom to leave the European Union looms. Political science professor Brendan O’Leary explains what’s happened and what could come next.

Gwyneth K. Shaw

Negotiating a truce in the war on drugs
Participants at the Addicted to the War on Drugs Symposium

Ethan Nadelman, founder and former executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, Penn political science professor Marie Gottschalk, Evan Anderson, a senior lecturer in the School of Nursing, and Roseanne Scotti, the New Jersey director of the Drug Policy Alliance, discussed their policy ideas. (Photo: Gwyneth K. Shaw)

Negotiating a truce in the war on drugs

A Penn Law symposium brought together experts from the legal, law enforcement, social work, and policy camps to discuss how to refocus the decades-long fight to be less punitive and more protective.

Gwyneth K. Shaw

Not-so-self-evident truths
Sophia Rosenfeld

Sophia Rosenfeld, Walter H. Annenberg Professor of History

Not-so-self-evident truths

In her new book, Sophia Rosenfeld, the Walter H. Annenberg Professor of History, digs up the roots of the relationship between democracy and truth.

Penn Today Staff

The geography of partisan prejudice

The geography of partisan prejudice

Research by Diana Mutz of the Annenberg School for Communication and the School of Arts and Sciences found that white, highly educated people tend to be isolated from political diversity, rarely interacting with ideological opponents.