When the international art extravaganza opens on May 9, visitors to the pavilion sponsored by the Vatican will find a fusion of past and present in the music of the 12th-century German Saint Hildegard of Bingen being interpreted by some of today’s most innovative artists.

Helping bring the exhibit to life is , a professor of musicology at the Ģ����ý, whose extensive research into Hildegard has shaped how the world understands and performs her music.

Meconi was among the consultants to the creative team behind the Holy See’s pavilion, titled which as one of “eight pavilions that have the Venice Biennale buzzing.” The life and work of Hildegard inspired the exhibition and, according to the Holy See, centers on themes of “slowing down, listening, contemplating, and caring” and features performances by 24 artists, including stars like FKA Twigs, Brian Eno, Dev Hynes, and Patti Smith.

“One of the things I’ve always loved about Hildegard is how inspiring her music is to artists of all kinds,” says Meconi, whose book (University of Illinois Press, 2018) remains the first and only English-language text devoted to Hildegard’s work as a composer.

“Her music consists of a single melodic line that modern musicians use as a tabula rasa, bringing their own ideas and interpretations to it while still engaging with something authentically medieval,” Meconi says.

The Venice Biennale was founded in 1895 and is held every two years. Often described as the “Olympics of the art world” for its pavilions hosted by countries, the festival brings together artists, architects, and musicians and is a major stage for new ideas and cultural exchanges.

Part of the Vatican’s pavilion is located in The Mystical Garden in Venice, where visitors can listen to commissioned re-compositions of Hildegard’s music through headphones as they wander the secluded garden’s plots of vegetables and flowers.

The pieces were curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist and Ben Vickers in collaboration with Soundwalk Collective, an experimental sound art organization based in Berlin and New York City.

Ģ����ý scholarship shapes a global stage

Meconi’s involvement began last fall when Soundwalk Collective contacted her seeking guidance on Hildegard’s music.

“They knew they wanted modern performers to interpret her work, so I provided editions and translations and answered questions about pronunciation, tuning, and so on,” Meconi says. “I was also able to suggest pieces that might be appropriate for specific artists.”

As part of her role, she was recorded singing Hildegard’s music at Electric Lady Studios, the legendary space founded by Jimi Hendrix in New York City.

“That was surreal,” Meconi says. “But it is also surreal for someone who specializes in music before 1600 to see Brian Eno’s name in an email subject heading and to do a translation specifically for him.”

Another highlight for Meconi, as she tells it, was learning that Pope Leo XIV had translated one of Hildegard’s song texts into Portuguese for the famous fado singer Carminho. The song was one for which Meconi had provided the edition.

“Technically speaking,” she says, “the pope and I are now collaborators.”

Who is Hildegard, and why is her work so hot right now?

“She was the Boss Lady of the 12th century.”

Hildegard of Bingen was a German Benedictine nun and polymath of epic proportions. In addition to founding a convent, writing theological treatises on her heavenly visions, inventing a new language and alphabet, corresponding with everyone who was anyone in the 12th century, and authoring books on the natural world and healing, she was a prolific musician. She penned 77 songs and a musical drama before her death at 81 in 1179.

“She was the Boss Lady of the 12th century,” Meconi says.

The Holy See says its pavilion responds to the broad theme of the Biennale, titled “In Minor Keys.” The festival’s curator, Koyo Kough, died last year, but wrote of the exhibition in her original curatorial statement: “In refusing the spectacle of horror, the time has come to listen to the minor keys, to tune in sotto voce to the whispers, to the lower frequencies; to find the oases, the islands, where the dignity of all living beings is safeguarded.”

The Biennale runs from May 9 to November 22.

Americans are sharply divided over immigration policy, particularly enforcement measures, but share common ground on some fundamental issues, including broad support for birthright citizenship.

Those are the takeaways from a new nationwide survey of more than 30,000 adults across all 50 states conducted by the , a nonprofit joint initiative of the Ģ����ý, Harvard University, Northeastern University, and Rutgers University.

While the findings highlight deep partisan divisions, they suggest Americans also leave room for nuance when policy matters become personal.

“Immigration is one of the most polarizing issues in American politics,” says Ģ����ý political scientist James Druckman, a coauthor of the study and a nationally recognized expert on political polarization. “But when you look closely at the data, you see that Americans will distinguish between different policies and principles.”

Deep partisan divides

The survey found that roughly two-thirds of Americans say immigration is important to them personally, but revealed stark differences along party lines in how they view policy and enforcement.

For instance, 37 percent of respondents approve of President Donald Trump’s handling of immigration, while 49 percent disapprove. Among Republicans, however, approval reaches 78 percent, compared with just 11 percent for Democrats.

Similar divisions appear in attitudes toward federal immigration enforcement efforts. Nationwide, a third of respondents approve of the tactics used by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, while nearly half of them disapprove. Yet Republicans are far more supportive of them than Democrats, with the gap reaching almost 60 points.

“These differences are among the largest partisan divides we see on any policy issue,” Druckman says.

Broad support for birthright citizenship

Even as Americans disagree sharply about enforcement, the survey finds majority support for maintaining birthright citizenship, the constitutional principle of the Fourteenth Amendment that grants citizenship to anyone born in the United States, regardless of their parents’ immigration status.

Nearly 59 percent of Americans support birthright citizenship, whereas 24 percent oppose it. Support crosses party lines, although at different levels. The survey found 79 percent of Democrats, 59 percent of independents, and 39 percent of Republicans favor the policy.

Support also extends across the country geographically. Support for birthright citizenship fell below 50 percent in just three states—Montana (46 percent), Wyoming (47 percent), and South Dakota (48 percent).

“The relative consistency of support—at least compared to enforcement attitudes—suggests that Americans distinguish between debates over immigration enforcement and long-standing constitutional norms,” Druckman says.

A shift when policy gets personal

Although Americans often express strong views about immigration broadly, the survey shows that opinions shift when policy gets personal.

Ģ����ý one in four respondents say they worry that a family member or close friend could be deported, while about one in five say they personally know someone who is undocumented. Those concerns nearly double among Hispanic Americans.

The nuance plays out when Americans are asked their thoughts on deporting undocumented immigrants who have lived in the United States for more than 10 years.

“Americans may support enforcement in principle but become more hesitant when policies affect people who have built lives in the United States.”

Just 31 percent favor the idea of deporting longtime undocumented residents, including only half of Republicans, who widely favor stricter enforcement.

“That suggests Americans may support enforcement in principle but become more hesitant when policies affect people who have built lives in the United States,” Druckman says.

More aggressive enforcement proposals also face limited national support. Only about a third of Americans support using the military to assist with mass deportations.

Taken together, the findings suggest immigration remains a complex issue for American voters—one marked by sharp partisan divides but also pockets of potential agreement.

“People may have very different ideas about how immigration should be handled,” Druckman says. “But the data show that their views are often more nuanced than the political conversation might suggest.”

For the media

James Druckman
Martin Brewer Anderson Professor of Political Science

An expert in political behavior and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Druckman studies public opinion formation, political polarization, political and scientific communication, political psychology, and experimental and survey methods. He has published approximately 200 articles and book chapters. His latest coauthored book, (University of Chicago), was published in 2024.

• Learn more about Druckman.

“What is past is prologue,” wrote William Shakespeare in The Tempest, one of his final plays. As an undergraduate student at the Ģ����ý, Harriet Washington ’76 found herself poring over the confessional physician narratives at Rush Rhees Library and the version of events they captured. That formative experience would lead to a career reopening the medical history record for closer examination. Who compiled it, and to what ends? Who has trained the lens, and to whose exclusion? And critically, why do events of the last several centuries loom so large today?

As a leading historian of medicine and bioethicist, Washington is known for work that insists on accuracy over nostalgia, complexity over comfort. With her seventh book to be published in 2027, she examines how medical practices are shaped by culture, power, and race, and how those legacies persist for patients and caregivers today. Along the way, she has rescued overlooked figures from obscurity—and helped unseat others, literally, from their pedestals. (Specifically, the James Marion Sims statue in New York City’s Central Park—more on this later.)

Where ‘competing passions’ converge

Originally from Fort Dix, New Jersey, Washington arrived at Ģ����ý in 1972 with what she mistook for competing passions. “I had a deep love for history and kinship with the past, but didn’t see what practical use I could put to it,” she recalls. “I also had a desire to become a physician.”

At URochester, Washington studied with three influential professors who clarified her career path and passion: “to somehow meld literature, history, and medicine.”

The first was Margaret Perry, who introduced Washington to the writers of the Harlem Renaissance. Perry, hired in 1970 to lead the University’s Education Library, served as an assistant professor of English as well as the acting director of University Libraries. Among other works, Perry authored The Harlem Renaissance: An Annotated Biography and Commentary (Garland Publishing, 1982) and The Short Fiction of Rudolph Fisher (Greenwood Press, 1987). Fisher, an early radiologist, musician, and writer, would become one of three subjects of Washington’s forthcoming biography, Renaissance Men.

“I was seeing that the history of medicine had been carefully curated to exclude the experience of African Americans, people of color, and poor people. That lit my fire.”

Washington also credits Russell Peck, the prominent medieval scholar who spent more than five decades at URochester. “He really encouraged my interest in not only medieval history, but also the value of history in fully understanding the present,” she says. And finally, R. Carey Macintosh, author of The Evolution of English Prose, 1700–1800: Style, Politeness, and Print Culture (Cambridge University Press, 1998), was “very supportive of me at a critical juncture,” drawing out both content and confidence.

The physician confessional literature at Rush Rhees Library “was full of doctors who bragged about their exploits in foreign lands, bringing the ‘blessings’ of Western medicine,” she recalls. While these stories were moving, she says, something in their tone bothered her: disdain for women, people of color, and other cultures written off as simple-minded. “When I would raise this issue, people would become angry with me…. ‘You have no degree in history. Be gone.’ That was frustrating for me, but I knew I was onto something.”

A detective at work in the archives

At the University’s Strong Memorial Hospital, Washington continued reading between the lines—this time, of files for patients awaiting kidney transplants. Were they thick or thin? Did they say, “loving family, stable job,” or just include a curt advisory to prepare this patient for “imminent demise”?

“I felt like a detective. I was finding information. I was exposing something. I was proposing solutions. I was seeing patterns that people had not seen before. I was seeing that the history of medicine had been carefully curated to exclude the experience of African Americans, people of color, and poor people. That lit my fire. I knew that someone had to find out why it happened, and how to reverse it.”

Washington tapped into that spirit of inquiry to become a noted journalist, author, and medical ethicist. Her book��Medical Apartheid: The Dark History of Medical Experimentation on Black Americans from Colonial Times to the Present (Doubleday)��won the 2007����for nonfiction. In 2019, she published A Terrible Thing to Waste: Environmental Racism and Its Assault on the American Mind. And in 2021, her Carte Blanche: The Erosion of Medical Consent (Columbia Global Reports) drew praise from author Ibram X. Kendi as “urgent, alarming, riveting, and essential.”

Washington has been a fellow in ethics at Harvard Medical School, a fellow at the Harvard School of Public Health, and a senior research scholar at the National Center for Bioethics at Tuskegee University. She now teaches bioethics at Columbia University.

Tripling down on history

Renaissance Men, Washington’s first biography—and a triple one at that—tells the story of three Black physicians who transformed American medicine while contending with daunting barriers: Fisher, James McCune Smith, and Louis T. Wright. Smith, denied entry to US medical schools, earned his medical degree from the University of Glasgow in 1837 and became a leading abolitionist intellectual. Fisher bridged science and art as both a radiologist and Harlem Renaissance cultural figure. Wright, director of surgery at Harlem Hospital, was a pioneering researcher and civil rights activist.

During a campus visit in fall 2025, Washington received the University’s Frederick Douglass Medal, bestowed on individuals whose scholarship and civic engagement honor the legacy of the famed 19th-century African American abolitionist. University President Sarah Mangelsdorf noted that Washington’s work “has profoundly influenced how we understand the intersection of race, medicine, and ethics. She is one of the most important voices in contemporary bioethics.”

Knocking down to build up

Washington continues to argue for reforms that rebuild trust in healthcare systems, from changing research laws to establishing clear, data-driven policies to ensure equitable patient care, particularly in pain treatment and access to medication.

“There’s a difference between nostalgia and history,” she insists. Smallpox vaccination, defibrillator technology, and even the surgery for the congenital heart disorder known as Tetralogy of Fallot (or “blue baby syndrome”) owe a debt to Black ingenuity. Washington, who curates a medical-humanities film series, often screens the 2004 movie Something the Lord Made, a biopic of the cardiac inventor Vivien Thomas.

“We’ve given many people 400 years’ worth of reasons not to trust our healthcare system.”

Her research contributed to the successful effort to remove the statue of Dr. J. Marion Sims—the revered obstetric surgeon and “father of gynecology”—from Central Park in 2018, after renewed scrutiny of his non-consensual experiments on enslaved women. She supported the campaign, largely driven by medical students, while remaining behind the scenes, determined to preserve her credibility as a historian. Still: “Every time I spoke, I would see a row of older men glowering at me, waiting for the Q&A to jump down my throat.”

Even now, she sees the past playing out, with illnesses like COVID-19 laying bare the disparities of both disease burdens and treatment outcomes. “How to restore or inculcate patient trust is the most frequently asked question I get,” she says. “I always say, that’s the wrong question. We’ve given many people 400 years’ worth of reasons not to trust our healthcare system. The question then becomes: ‘How do we build a more trustworthy healthcare system?’ Having a more complete, inclusive, accurate history of medicine could help significantly.”

In 1967, 25 Black men from Pittsburgh’s impoverished Hill District were trained as the country’s first paramedics—not by a university hospital or a government agency, but through a community initiative called Freedom House Ambulance Service. They revolutionized emergency medicine. Then history mostly forgot them. Ģ����ý alumna Sylvia Owusu-Ansah ’00 made sure HBO Max didn’t.

Owusu-Ansah—medical director of prehospital and emergency medical services at UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh—joined The Pitt as a medical advisor through Hollywood, Health & Society, a University of Southern California program that helps the entertainment industry tell accurate health stories. The show, which follows a single shift at a fictional Pittsburgh emergency department, swept the television drama category at the Emmy Awards, Golden Globe Awards, and Critics Choice Awards. Season 2 is currently streaming.

“If you’re going to talk about healthcare in Pittsburgh,” Owusu-Ansah told the writers, “you have to talk about Freedom House Ambulance.” The story found its way into the show through Willie, an 81-year-old patient revealed to be a former medic in the program. Within weeks of the episode’s release, social media lit up with people discovering this history for the first time—fueling bipartisan support for a bill to award Freedom House the Congressional Gold Medal, a cause Owusu-Ansah has long championed.

Freedom House was one of many ideas she brought to The Pitt. When the producers asked what storylines had been missing from medical dramas, she raised the underrepresentation of Black physicians—only 5 percent of active physicians identify as Black, and just 2.3 percent are Black women—and the growing number of children ingesting THC. She also shared insights into the demographics of Pittsburgh and how healthcare workers observe a moment of silence after a patient dies.

“If you’re going to talk about healthcare in Pittsburgh, you have to talk about Freedom House Ambulance.”

One storyline drew directly from her own life. A 17-year-old Black girl arrived at Owusu-Ansah’s emergency department spitting, biting, and complaining of pain. “I heard a lot of screaming,” she recalls. “She was in four-point restraints. The security guard even had his hand around her neck.”

Owusu-Ansah—the only other Black person there—immediately recognized the patient was not an addict but in the throes of a sickle cell pain crisis. “I yelled and screamed, told them to get off her, and kneeled down next to her, whispered in her ear, ‘Just try to relax. I’m here for you. I’m your advocate.’” That patient became Joyce St. Clair on The Pitt, with third-year resident Samira Mohan taking on the role of Owusu-Ansah.

For season 2, she helped build the story of one-month-old “Baby Jane Doe,” abandoned in the hospital bathroom. She shared information on Pennsylvania’s Safe Haven law and the threshold—older than 28 days—at which leaving an infant at a hospital becomes a crime.

Originally from Boston, Owusu-Ansah majored in biochemistry at Ģ����ý before earning an MD from the University of Chicago Pritzker School of Medicine and a master of public health from Johns Hopkins University. Long before The Pitt, she was channeling her own experiences into educating and standing up for others.

While at URochester, she founded Kids for College, a mentorship program that brought students from underserved Rochester communities to campus for STEM and liberal arts enrichment. She later spent more than a decade on Capitol Hill advocating for pediatric healthcare legislation.

Since October, Owusu-Ansah has stepped back from the emergency department: She is a cancer survivor who completed her final chemotherapy treatment on February 10. She has also stepped behind the camera. In Good Hands, a finalist for an HBO Short Film Award, draws on her experience as a Black physician in academia. Featured at last year’s American Black Film Festival, it is currently screening on American Airlines.

For Owusu-Ansah, navigating the television and film industry as a full-time physician provides a newfound sense of balance—and a way to reach people medicine alone cannot. “Over the span of a lifetime of my profession, I may touch hundreds, maybe thousands of lives individually,” she says. “But through media, you touch millions of people all at once.”

This story is adapted with permission from an by Subaah Sayed ’27 in the Campus Times, the student newspaper at the Ģ����ý.

When cultural anthropologist traveled to the port city of Veracruz to conduct research, she intended to study Black people in Mexico. Instead, her research became an exploration of a city with people who may not necessarily identify as Afro-Mexican, but who were nonetheless knowledgeable and, in some instances, deeply connected to Mexican Blackness.

Frierson’s book (University of California Press, 2025) is the culmination of two years of research. Prior to joining the Ģ����ý’s in 2024, she spent nearly a decade visiting and living in Veracruz, located on the coast of east-central Mexico.

The book examines how Veracruzanos—natives or residents of the city—reckon with the Afro-Caribbean roots of their history, traditions, and culture. The Afro-Mexican population, which has struggled for recognition, was in the Mexican census for the first time in 2020.

“Local color is an homage to the people who have been on the receiving end of a new-to-them narrative about Mexico’s Blackness and what they did with that narrative,” says Frierson.

Public spaces offer lessons on Afro-Mexican heritage

From 2014 to 2016, Frierson conducted research on African heritage and influence in Mexico—a legacy Mexican residents refer to as “the third root,” the first two being their Indigenous and Spanish origins.

While immersing herself in the region’s communities, she observed various local affinity groups that cohered around the places and practices associated with jarocho (pronounced ha-RO-cho) legacy and traditions. (During the colonial era, the Spanish word jarocho referred to people of mixed Indigenous and African ancestry; since the 20th century, it has been used throughout Mexico to mean people from Veracruz more broadly.) In the book, Frierson refers to the affinity groups she focused on as jarocho publics.

Frierson studied local musical traditions and attended talks, among other activities, to build rapport and gain understanding. Her participation in local life broke the ice and made locals comfortable opening up about their heritage.

“They knew I was there to study the third root,” she says. “I spent that time sitting with people, dancing with people, playing music, drinking coffee with people, and understanding their lives and how Blackness is incorporated into their lives.”

Frierson’s interest in learning more about the African legacy in Mexico was sparked while living in California after earning an undergraduate degree and working for an education nonprofit before graduate school. In 2009, after viewing the exhibition The African Presence in México: From Yanga to the Present at the Oakland Museum of California, she left with the impression that the Gulf State of Veracruz had a rich history. And yet she wondered about its Black present.

Expanding what it means to be Black in Mexico—and around the world

Before conducting fieldwork in Veracruz, Frierson found that many scholars who had traveled to the port city concluded that Black residents in Veracruz were in denial about their Afro-Mexican roots. Upon her own arrival in Veracruz, Frierson quickly understood why these previous researchers came to that conclusion.

Frierson recalls initial conversations with locals during which she inquired about the Black Mexican population in Veracruz and was told, “There are no Black people here anymore.” Or, Frierson says, it was not uncommon to encounter someone in Veracruz who says, “I am not Black,” even though in the United States, they would be characterized as such.

Yet once Frierson engaged in more sit-down talks and participated in community activities, the discussion shifted. In time, the Veracruzanos she interviewed would voluntarily acknowledge their connections to Afro-Mexican heritage, clarifying that “this thing I do is Caribbean.”

“I don’t think of that as denial,” Frierson says. “Just because they might not self-recognize as the political subject of being Black Mexican or Afro-Mexican doesn’t mean they are denying Blackness.” In fact, she argues, by misguidedly privileging self-recognition or self-identification as Black, “we are going to miss the broader impacts of the African diaspora not only in the Americans specifically, but also in the world more broadly.”

Frierson hopes academics and a general audience take many things away from Local Color. Perhaps most importantly, the book functions as a call for nuanced definitions about what constitutes Blackness in the world, beyond the narrowness of physical bodies and skin color.

“I want people to think more expansively about Blackness and its generative possibilities—world-making, place-making,” she says. “And if we think more expansively, we can get to a more productive understanding of why it matters.”

Scroll through social media long enough and a pattern emerges. Pause on a post questioning climate change or taking a hard line on a political issue, and the platform is quick to respond—serving up more of the same viewpoints, delivered with growing confidence and certainty.

That feedback loop is the architecture of an echo chamber: a space where familiar ideas are amplified, dissenting voices fade, and beliefs can harden rather than evolve.

But new research from the Ģ����ý has found that echo chambers might not be a fact of online life. Published in IEEE Transactions on Affective Computing, argues that they are partly a design choice—one that could be softened with a surprisingly modest change: introducing more randomness into what people see.

The interdisciplinary team of researchers, led by Professor from the , created experiments to identify belief rigidity and assess whether introducing more randomness into a social network could help reduce it. The researchers studied how 163 participants reacted to statements about topics like climate change after using simulated social media channels, some with feeds modeled on more traditional social media outlets and others with more randomness.

Importantly, “randomness” in this context doesn’t mean replacing relevant content with nonsense. Rather, it means loosening the usual “show me more of what I already agree with” logic that drives many algorithms today. In the researchers’ model, users were periodically exposed to opinions and connections they did not explicitly choose, alongside those they did.

A tweak to the algorithm, a crack in the echo chambers

“Across a series of experiments, we find that what people see online does influence their beliefs, often pulling them closer to the views they are repeatedly exposed to,” says , a computer science PhD student and first author of the paper. “But when algorithms incorporate more randomization, this feedback loop weakens. Users are exposed to a broader range of perspectives and become more open to differing views.”

The authors—who also include Professor from the , , the Martin Brewer Anderson Professor of , PhD student , and ’16, ’22 (PhD)—say that the recommendation systems social media platforms use can drive people into echo chambers that make divisive content more attractive. As an antidote, the researchers recommend simple design changes that do not eliminate personalization but that do introduce more variety while still allowing users control over their feeds.

The findings arrive at a moment when governments and platforms alike are grappling with misinformation, declining institutional trust, and polarized responses to elections and public health guidance. Proma recommends social media users keep the results in mind when reflecting on their own social media consumer habits.

“If your feed feels too comfortable, that might be by design,” says Proma. “Seek out voices that challenge you. The most dangerous feeds are not the ones that upset us, but the ones that convince us we are always right.”

The research was partially funded through the .

When Kristina Brecko arrived at Stanford University in the fall of 2012 to start her PhD, she was already scanning the weather forecast—not for rainfall, but for snow. An avid snowboarder, she and her graduate study advisor, , a skier, were eager to get into the mountains.

There would be no great skiing that winter. California was entering what would become one of the most severe droughts in its history.

“I liked to snowboard,” Brecko says. “And so it was very salient that there really wasn’t any good snow that year.”

The drought, , transformed daily life across the state. Cities pleaded with residents to conserve water and let lawns go brown, rip out grass, stop watering altogether. Billboards and public campaigns urged restraint. Many complied. But some of the state’s heaviest water users, often homeowners with sprawling green lawns, did not.

For Brecko, now an assistant professor of marketing at the Ģ����ý’s , the disconnect raised a question that would shape years of research. California was awash in public opinion messaging. Was any of it effective?

“There was a lot of messaging happening, telling people to reduce their water usage,” she recalls. “And I had these question—it’s all marketing, but is it working? What exactly is working and for whom?”

Rather than focusing on the people who had already embraced conservation—those willing to let their lawns die or remove them entirely—Brecko and Hartmann became interested in the holdouts—that is, the households with the highest water consumption. , published in the Journal of Marketing Research, argue that those households should not be shamed or ignored. Instead, they should be targeted.

Harm reduction over abstinence

The study borrows a concept from public health: the idea of harm reduction. Instead of demanding abstinence—no drugs, no cigarettes, no lawns—the approach aims to reduce damage among people unlikely to completely quit a harmful action.

In California’s drought-stricken suburbs, the harm was outdoor irrigation. The tool was a smart irrigation controller, a device that automatically adjusts watering schedules based on weather, soil conditions, and plant needs. The question was whether such a device could significantly reduce water use without undermining more aggressive conservation efforts, like turf removal.

“There’re always going to be people who are just not going to do it,” Brecko says, referring to lawn removal. “Because it goes totally against their preferences.”

Working with Redwood City Public Works, the researchers tested whether offering irrigation controllers (at either steep discounts or for free) could change behavior among residents who wanted to keep their lawns green. Crucially, the study took place toward the end of the drought, after years of aggressive messaging and rebates for turf removal had already circulated.

“By the time we ran our study, people had had the chance to adopt the most effective solution—at least those people who would do it,” Brecko explains.

That timing mattered. Those most committed to conservation had already removed their turf. That meant the researchers could now focus on everyone else.

Field tests in thirsty times

The team ran two large-scale field experiments in Redwood City. In 2016, roughly 7,000 households were offered discounts on smart irrigation controllers, ranging from 10 percent to 80 percent. Some homeowners were also offered free professional installation.

Adoption was slower than expected.

“I think people just weren’t sure,” Brecko says. “The device was relatively new, and even the utility company wasn’t sure what effect it would have on water usage.”

The second experiment, in 2017, scaled up dramatically. Ģ����ý 19,000 households were randomly assigned to receive a free smart irrigation device, available in limited quantities. The process was designed to be as easy as possible: Residents received emails and accessed a dedicated online portal where discounts were applied instantly—no rebates, no paperwork.

The response was swift. Clearly, price and convenience mattered. Messaging alone did not. “Incremental discounts aren’t really going to do the trick,” Brecko notes. “We learned that we needed to overcome some barriers to adoption.”

Who adopted—and who saved

The devices appealed most to people who used the most water, with heavy irrigators adopting the device at the highest rates.

“It allows you to keep the green lawn that you care about.” Brecko says, “But it might allow you to also contribute to that social goal that we care about.”

Once installed, the controllers delivered substantial and lasting savings. Water use dropped by about 26 percent (from a regular irrigation baseline) during shoulder seasons—early spring and fall—when manual systems often overwater because homeowners forget to adjust them. The reductions persisted for nearly four years, the researchers found.

Among the heaviest irrigators, the water savings were large enough to offset the typical $250 cost of the device in roughly six months. The conserved water alone could cover a household’s annual indoor needs. But just as important, the study found no evidence that smart controllers undermined more aggressive conservation.

“We don’t see any difference in turf removal rates,” Brecko says. “And we see no increases in consumption among non-irrigator households.”

In other words, harm reduction did not “cannibalize abstinence,” the duo writes.

A middle road for climate behavior

For policymakers, the findings challenge the all-or-nothing approach that often dominates environmental messaging. The most effective solution—to simply rip out the lawn—will never appeal to everyone.

“My initial inclination is to say everyone should do the thing that’s most powerful,” Brecko says. “But the thing is, we all have really different preferences.”

While some people care deeply about conservation, others may have competing priorities and care more about their yard’s aesthetics, their kids’ being able to play on grass, or the curb appeal of their home. Stigmatizing the latter group or ignoring their strong preferences, can leave them unnecessarily out of conservation efforts.

“Not that those high users don’t care about conservation, it’s just that they might care about something else more,” says Brecko. “If you don’t engage them, they might do nothing.”

The lesson, she argues, is not to abandon high-impact solutions, but to sequence and supplement them. If you want people who use the most water to conserve, you may have to let them keep what they love, while reducing the shared costs of doing so.

“They get the thing that they care about,” Brecko says. “And you, as the conservation-oriented person, get the conservation, too.”

The US seizure of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro stunned people around the world—including political scientists who study regime change.

“I was surprised,” says , professor of and director of the at the Ģ����ý. “Going in the middle of the night, taking the leader of the country and his wife out of the palace, and saying, ‘That’s it, we’re running the country now.’ That’s extraordinary.”

For many Venezuelans, particularly those who fled repression and economic collapse, the news sparked celebration and hope. But Goemans urges caution, arguing that removing a dictator rarely dismantles the power structures that kept him in place.

The Venezuelan military still holds power

“The military propped up Maduro,” Goemans says. “The whole system of bribery and corruption revolves around the support of the armed forces. There’s no reason to believe that they’re now suddenly going to give up power.”

He compares the situation to previous US-led interventions.

“We’ve seen this in Iraq, we’ve seen it in Afghanistan,” Goemans says. “Decapitation—taking out one leader—doesn’t change the apparatus of the state. Post–regime change almost never works the way people hope.”

Goemans points to research by political scientist showing that foreign-imposed regime change frequently leads to instability or renewed conflict, not democracy. “The new regime you install has its own interests,” Goemans says.

“They don’t necessarily align with the interests of the United States, or with democratic reform.”

Why motivation matters—and how neighboring Guyana is in play

There are somewhat conflicting statements coming out of Washington as to the motivation for the American intervention.

House Speaker Mike Johnson has as one that aimed “to bring justice to a criminal” in Maduro, who was “duly indicted under American law.” Energy Secretary Chris Wright has said the United States intends to control the flow of Venezuelan oil into the marketplace.

Meanwhile, Secretary of State Marco Rubio has laid out a three-step plan that includes the United States stabilizing the country by seizing and selling up to 50 million barrels of oil and ensuring “American, Western, and other companies have access to the Venezuelan market in a way that’s fair.” He has called the third step “one of transition,” including the integration of opposition political parties.”

Goemans says motivations matter enormously.

It is possible, he says, that different actors inside the US administration are pursuing different goals—from energy interests, to immigration enforcement, to regional dominance—without a coherent long-term plan for Venezuela itself.

“That’s problematic,” he says, “because it means there’s no clear, overarching goal. If you don’t know what comes next, you’re almost guaranteeing trouble.”

There is one other possible motivation that Goemans sees for the US intervention that he says he has been surprised no one in the Trump administration has invoked: freeing the oil-rich Essequibo region of neighboring Guyana from Venezuelan rule.

“That’s a motivation, which, in my opinion, could have kind of legitimized overthrowing Maduro,” Goemans says.

In 2023, Venezuela to Essequibo, which is nearly the size of Florida and makes up half of Guyana’s territory. Maduro unveiled new maps displaying it as part of Venezuela, named a military general as its governor, and issued Venezuelan identity cards to people living there.

“Guyana has serious worries about Venezuela,” Goemans says. “It’s a real threat to the sovereignty of Guyana and it’s surprising that nobody in the Trump administration has invoked that.”

“There was no claim that this was about restoring democracy,” he continues. “That was never raised as one of the motivations. That should concern people.”

A dangerous precedent for world order

Beyond Venezuela, Goemans warns that forcibly removing heads of state undermines long-standing international norms.

He explains this using a classic political science concept: cooperation only holds if countries believe rules will be enforced over time.

“If you treat this as a one-shot game that says, ‘We can do this once and nothing follows,’ that’s very dangerous,” he says. “Other countries will respond eventually. Maybe not immediately, but the system will unravel.”

He argued that even US allies may feel compelled to push back if territorial integrity and sovereignty no longer carry weight.

“If the United States defects from the rules, others will have incentives to defect too,” he says. “In the long run, that’s not in America’s interest.”

Can the US try Maduro?

Another uncertainty is whether US courts can legally prosecute Maduro if he is considered Venezuela’s legitimate president, which Maduro insists he is despite doubts by many world leaders.

“This is going to be fought out in court,” Goemans says. “Judges will have to decide whether he is head of state, and that’s not a simple legal question.”

Unlike Panama’s Manuel Noriega, who was never an elected president but was that country’s de facto ruler before the United States seized him with an invasion in 1989, Maduro originally came to power through constitutional succession before consolidating his authority through a series of widely condemned elections in 2018 and in 2024.

What are the alternatives?

If US military intervention is unlikely to produce a stable democracy in Venezuela, what could?

Goemans points to historical examples in Eastern Europe and elsewhere, where authoritarian regimes collapsed after mass domestic mobilization, sometimes with outside support and an independent media.

“The only way the masses can overcome a repressive elite is if they successfully organize,” he says. “That means supporting opposition groups, election monitoring, information access. Not sending troops through jungles to Caracas.”

But he acknowledges how grim that sounds to Venezuelan people suffering now, whether in the country or living abroad.

“I understand the desperation,” he says. “People have had their lives stolen from them. Of course they want immediate change.”

Still, he warns that celebrating too early could result in disappointment.

“People were very happy when Saddam’s statues came down,” he says, speaking of the former president of Iraq, Saddam Hussein. “Then came the question: What comes next?”

Meet your expert

Hein Goemans

, a political science professor and the director of the Ģ����ý’s , is an expert on international conflict—how wars begin and how they end. He��is the author of (Princeton University Press, 2000) and coauthor of ��(Cambridge University Press, 2011).