Oxford University Press's
Academic Insights for the Thinking World

January 2015

Immigration in the American west

By Stephen Aron

The headline reads: “Border State Governor Issues Dire Warning about Flood of Undocumented Immigrants.” And here’s the gist of the story: In a letter to national officials, the governor of a border state sounded another alarm about unchecked immigration across a porous boundary with a neighboring country. In the message, one of several from border state officials, the governor acknowledged that his/her nation had once welcomed immigrants from its neighbor, but recent events taught how unwise that policy was.

Insecticide, the fall armyworm, and maize in Mexico

By Carlos A. Blanco

From the comfort of a desk, looking at a computer screen or the printed page of a newspaper, it is very easy to ignore the fact that thousands of tons of insecticide are sprayed annually. Consider the problem of the fall armyworm in Mexico. As scientists and crop advisors, we’ve worked for the past two decades trying to curb its impact on corn yield.

The quintessential human instrument

By Jessica Barbour

The neat thing about the voice is that, while we don’t usually change the material, the shape is very flexible, and we can manipulate it to change our timbre. Overtone singing like Hefele’s takes an element of vocal sound and turns it into a new sort of instrument, inverting the typical relationship between instrument and timbre.

Mental contamination in obsessive-compulsive disorder

By Anna Coughtrey and Emily Booker

When we think of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder or OCD for short, lots of examples spring to mind. For example, someone who won’t shake your hand, touch a door handle, or borrow your pen without being compelled to wash their hands, all because of a fear of germs.

Celebrating women in STEM

By Charley James

It is becoming widely accepted that women have, historically, been underrepresented and often completely written out of work in the fields of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics. Explanations for the gender gap in STEM fields range from genetically-determined interests, structural and territorial segregation, discrimination, and historic stereotypes. With free Oxford University Press content, we tell the stories and share the research of both famous and forgotten women.

Our habitat: house

By Anatoly Liberman

It is astounding how mysterious the origin of such simple words as man, wife, son, god, house, and others like them is. They are old, even ancient, and over time their form has changed very little, sometimes not at all, so that we do not have to break through a thicket of sound laws to restitute their initial form.

Just one of the millions of victims of his World Communist Revolution

By Philip A. Mackowiak

Vladimir Ilich Ulyanov (aka Lenin) died on this day 90 years ago with cerebral vessels so calcified that when tapped with tweezers, they sounded like stone. He was only 53. He hadn’t smoked and, in fact, had prohibited smoking in his presence.

Oppress Muslims in the West. Extremists are counting on it.

By Justin Gest

In the aftermath of the Paris terror attacks, the Islamophobia pervading Western democracies is the best recruitment tool for violent extremists. Reports abound about anti-Islam protests, assaults of Muslim civilians, and movements to impose greater surveillance on Western Muslim communities […]

Gender inequality in the labour market in the UK

By Giovanni Razzu

The analysis of gender inequality in labour market outcomes has received substantial attention from academics of various disciplines. The distinct literatures have explored, often from differing perspectives and approaches, the various forms of inequality women experience in the labour market.

The economics behind detecting terror plots

By Edward H. Kaplan

How many good guys are needed to catch the bad guys? This is the staffing question faced by counterterrorism agencies the world over. While government officials are quick to proclaim “zero tolerance” for terrorism, unlimited resources are not made available to prevent terror attacks, nor should that be the case. Indeed, as with most public policy decisions, the appropriate staffing level depends upon both the benefits and costs of fielding counterterrorism agents.

Does the class come out of the person after the person comes out of the class?

By Jessi Streib

Does the class come out of the person after the person comes out of the class? This question asks us to think about social class inequality in a new way. It asks us to think not only of how much inequality exists in the United States, but how long inequality affects individuals.

Salamone Rossi as a Jew among Gentiles

By Don Harrán

As a Jewish musician working for the Mantuan court, and competing for the favors that its Christian musicians and composers hoped to gain, it was only inevitable for Rossi to have been considered an intruder.

Top 10 commercial law cases of 2014

By Miranda Dobson

2014 was an eventful year in commercial law, but what were the top most significant cases? Read our run-down of the biggest cases from the past 12 months. For example, in December 2014, Apple won a long-running class action that was brought against them in 2005.

Martin Luther King, Jr. on courage, equality, and justice

By Elizabeth Knowles

Each January, Americans commemorate the birthday of Martin Luther King Jr., reflecting on the enduring legacy of the legendary civil rights activist. From his iconic speech at the Civil Rights March of 1963, to his final oration in Memphis, Tennessee, King is remembered not only as a masterful rhetorician, but a luminary for his generation and many generations to come. These quotes, compiled from the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, demonstrate the reverberating impact of this work, particularly in a time of great social, political, and economic upheaval.

Replication redux and Facebook data

By Nathaniel Beck

Introduction, from Michael Alvarez, co-editor of Political Analysis Recently I asked Nathaniel Beck to write about his experiences with research replication. His essay, published on 24 August 2014 on the OUPblog, concluded with a brief discussion of a recent experience of his when he tried to obtain replication data from the authors of a recent […]

Sovereign equality today

By Umut Özsu

To speak of sovereign equality today is to invite disdain, even outright dismissal. In an age that has become accustomed to compiling “indicators“ of “state failure”, revalorizing nineteenth-century rhetoric about “great powers”, and circumventing established models of statehood with a nebulous “responsibility to protect”, sovereign equality seems little more than a throwback to a simpler, less complicated era.