Nicholas Xenos, professor of Political Science at UMass Amherst, has been awarded a grant of $225,000 from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to support a Sawyer Seminar entitled “The Universal Basic Income: History and Theory of a Utopian Desire.”

Paul Musgrave, political science, comments in a news story about how President Donald J. Trump and Rex Tillerson are saying different and contradictory things about dealing with North Korea. In another news report, Professor Musgrave comments about how President Trump and his administration are facing some pushback from federal agencies where officials don't accept Trump's views on key issues such as climate change.

- State Sen. Stanley C. Rosenberg was a guest speaker in Raymond J. La Raja’s political science class last week. 

- Professor La Raja is also the co-author of a new report that examines how activist groups are re-engineering politics on both the left and the right.

A new study co-authored by Brian F. Schaffner, political science, and Phillipa Gill, computer science, looks at Reddit and finds a strong correlation between the rise of Donald Trump’s popularity and increase in offensiveness in social media comments and messages.