Analyzing the 2016 election: Insights from 12 MIT scholars
The 2016 presidential election has brought to the fore a number of political and cultural issues that scholars in the MIT School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences (SHASS) think deeply about as part of their daily research. Here, 12 faculty members offer their perspectives on topics ranging from economic security to climate change to gender bias to the state of the U.S. electoral system itself. Follow links in each section for further discussion. On campaign discourse: "The United States has a history of unseemly bursts of crude and deceitful campaign rhetoric, beginning with outrageous slander slung between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson in 1800. Nonetheless, the sense that this year’s election rhetoric is different than usual is well founded." —Edward Schiappa, the John E. Burchard Professor of the Humanities Read more >> On the integrity of U.S. elections: "The current election administration system continues to stand in need of improvement. However, intimations that...