Division of Social Sciences

Exhibit highlights environmental impacts of war in Ukraine

Rachel Sauer — Thu, 19 Feb 2026 21:40:01 +0000

Exhibit highlights environmental impacts of war in Ukraine Rachel Sauer Thu, 02/19/2026 - 14:40

“Ecocide in Wartime Ukraine,” a pop-up exhibit at the CU Art Museum Feb. 20, shows through images and interactive displays how the ongoing war has environmentally devastated the country

Feb. 24 will mark the four-year anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine—a devastating anniversary marking the escalation of a longtime conflict into a war that has not abated in devastation or loss.

A sometimes-overlooked aspect of the wartime devastation is the environmental destruction: ruined farmland, poisoned waterways, endless plains of rubble. These losses will be featured in “Ecocide in Wartime Ukraine,” a pop-up interactive exhibit and reception from 4-6 p.m. Friday, Feb. 20, at the CU Art Museum.

The exhibit—sponsored by Svidok.org, Ukrainians of Colorado and the University of Colorado Boulder International Affairs Program—includes largescale photos of the environmental destruction that has happened in Ukraine since the war began along with descriptions and QR codes that participants can scan to learn more.

During Friday’s exhibit, Roman Oleksenko, a community development program manager for Peace Corps Ukraine, will join virtually from Ukraine. Since the full-scale Russian invasion, Oleksenko, who lives in Kyiv with his family, has been volunteering with a non-profit called Ukrainian Action, which delivers humanitarian aid to Ukraine.

U.S. Rep Joe Neguse has said he will attend Friday’s event, as will Boulder businessman and philanthropist Michael Brady, who will talk about his recent trip to Ukraine.

Layers of tragedy

“Ecocide in Wartime Ukraine” was originally proposed by Mark Dillen, a former diplomat with the U.S. State Department who now is director of public affairs for Ukrainians of Colorado. Sarah Sokhey, a 91��ý associate professor of political science and Eurasia specialist, met Dillen at an event “and he knew about the availability of these posters through this organization,” she explains.

If you go

What: Ecocide in Wartime Ukraine pop-up exhibit

When: 4-6 p.m. Friday, Feb. 20

Where: CU Art Museum

Other upcoming Ukraine-focused events include:

Speaker Series: Civil Society and Ukraine Resilience at 12:30 p.m. Friday, Feb. 20, on Zoom
Solar Chargers for Ukraine: convert solar panels to solar chargers and decorate them, 10-12:30 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 28, at Fairview High School

In one photo, a red truck traverses a dirt road between two charred fields as smoke billows behind it. “Ukraine’s fertile land, which helps feed much of the world, is being burned and razed to the ground by Russian attacks,” the description notes.

Another photo shows a person hugging a gray cat, and the description is in their words: “On the day the Kakhovka dam was blown up, water began to arrive quickly at 10 pm. People tried to save their property. My grandfather, who had just lost his wife (whose body likely could not find peace due to the flooding and erosion of the cemetery) carried things from his house from 10pm until 4am. Just imagine being forced to swim in cold water all night, in your 70s, with kidney problems and prostatitis.

“My grandfather had chickens, rabbits, and dogs. Our lop- eared Scottish cat, just a huge feline with whom I grew up, simply drowned, and no one helped him. He just drowned in the water. My other cat, also Scottish, but with straight ears, disappeared, and I'm still looking for him. The same thing happened to my sheepdog.”

“There are so many layers of tragedy happening in Ukraine, and I think highlighting any of those is important,” Sokhey says. “Now that we’re four years since the full-scale invasion and still the war is going on, as bad as it’s ever been, it can be hard to know what to emphasize. An aspect of the war that we thought people were missing is the long-term environmental damage—what it means for people living there, what it means for trying to rebuild after war.

“We hope people will come away with a better appreciation of the scale of destruction and the ongoing level of destruction and what that means for people’s quality of life. I don’t know that it’s all reversible, so I think seeing the scale of tragedy and the human impact is really important.”

Sokhey, who asked Oleksenko to join the exhibit, says he readily agreed, but with the caveat that he wants people to know that "'our daily thoughts are not about the environment right now,’” she says. “He’s in Kyiv, which is being attacked regularly, so for him and a lot of people it’s a day-to-day survival issue. While we want people to understand the scale and scope of environmental damage, we also want people to be aware of the human element. A lot of people don’t have the bandwidth to worry about these issues right now when they’re trying to get food and stay warm and stay alive.

“We want to document and note the environmental destruction because a lot of people in Ukraine can’t even think about that right now. They don’t have the luxury of thinking that long-term. That’s how bad it is.”

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“Ecocide in Wartime Ukraine,” a pop-up exhibit at the CU Art Museum Feb. 20, shows through images and interactive displays how the ongoing war has environmentally devastated the country.

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Exploring what it means to take up space

Rachel Sauer — Thu, 19 Feb 2026 17:26:03 +0000

Exploring what it means to take up space Rachel Sauer Thu, 02/19/2026 - 10:26

Rachel Sauer

Multimedia Takin’ Up Space performance Feb. 21 at Fiske Planetarium will highlight historical, cultural, environmental and social justice narratives as an act of reclaiming Black spaces

There are a lot of ways to take up space. The most basic is simply a function of being born—existing on this planet, possessing mass, moving across its horizontal surfaces.

There’s also taking up space in the cosmological sense: pondering the farthest reaches of the universe, soaring through this spiral galaxy and beyond, transcending gravity as an act of belonging in time and in space.

And then there’s taking up space as an act of taking back. This is a reclamation of spaces previously occupied, of being in them, of filling them as an act of defiance and homecoming.

91��ý professors Shawn O'Neal (left) and Kalonji Nzinga (right) envisioned Takin' Up Space, in part, to "revisit our past in order to have a better evaluation of the present and build better futures," O'Neal explains.

Considering these possibilities and more is Takin’ Up Space III: Holding Space, the third iteration of an event envisioned by Shawn Trenell O’Neal, a University of Colorado Boulder assistant teaching professor of ethnic studies and associate faculty director of the Center for African and African American Studies (CAAAS), and Kalonji Nzinga, an assistant professor in the School of Education.

The free event, which will be from 6 to 9 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 21, at Fiske Planetarium, is a multi-act, multimedia performance produced, arranged and performed by O’Neal and Nzinga, with special performances by Denver singer-songwriter Kayla Marque and wellness guide-somatic artist Soraya Latiff.

The title Takin’ Up Space acts, on one level, to “reintroduce us to spaces we’ve been systematically removed from over decades,” O’Neal explains, adding that themes of space and time are intrinsic to African culture.

“Harriet Tubman, when she was leading folks from enslavement on the Underground Railroad, read the stars and nature. So, another aspect of this is realizing we are one with nature, though we’ve been systematically removed from it for decades. I’ve never thought it was a coincidence that 1964 was the year of the Civil Rights Act and the Wilderness Act. In a way, it was opening the door to Black people’s human rights and closing our access to nature and space.”

If you go

What: Takin' Up Space III: Holding Space, a multi-media performance produced, arranged and performed by Shawn Trenell O'Neal and Kalonji Nzinga, with special guests including Denver singer-songwriter Kayla Marque and wellness guide-somatic artist Soraya Latiff

Where: Fiske Planetarium, 2414 Regent Drive

When: 6-9 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 21

The event is free but tickets are required.

Learn more

Takin’ Up Space will include O’Neal’s all-vinyl live scoring of the 1926 silent film The Flying Ace, whose cast members are all Black, followed by an immersive somatic meditation led by Latiff, during which she will guide reflection on the meaning of “holding space.” Nzinga will perform selections from his hip-hop soul catalog, synced with film visualizations aligned with his storytelling, and then Marque will bring “emotive vocals, electronic textures and cinematic storytelling,” inviting the audience “into a shared cosmic dream,” according to event organizers.

Occupying spaces of Blackness

For O’Neal, performing a live score to an almost-forgotten film represents the confluence of art, history and culture that has long motivated his scholarship and creative life. He first scored a silent film in 1998, when he was living in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and realized he had a gift for DJing.

“My friend had this idea that, ‘Hey, we should score a silent film,’” he recalls. They took on the challenge of scoring the 1925 The Phantom of the Opera starring Lon Chaney and Mary Philbin, and each night of the performance was different.

“I realized, ‘Wow, this is a really creative way to mix records and use my record collection in a different way than just dancing,” he says. “It was my way to push against how we collapse all these art forms into very limited, narrow views of what they can be.”

His goal evolved from literal-minded soundtracking to close consideration of subtext, mood and feeling—scoring as an artistic act of composition that embraces what the film shows both on and beneath the surface. So, on a recent Saturday in his home studio in his Denver basement, The Flying Ace is cued on his laptop, and he is a blur between two turntables and a soundboard.

Shawn O'Neal experiments with sound as he composes a score for the silent film The Flying Ace. (Photo: Rachel Sauer)

The scene playing is a joyous moment of flight, when pilot Finley Tucker takes to the air with Ruth Sawtelle, the woman he hopes to marry.

“When the plane is in the air, I want a big, bright blast of sound, probably something Sun Ra-ish,” O’Neal explains, bent over a milk crate of LPs that represent a winnowing from the many hundreds in his collection. “Then from that moment I want a very feminine sound—Mahalia Jackson to Alice Coltrane.”

If the choices are unexpected—leagues from the calliope plinks traditionally associated with silent movies—it’s partly because “something that’s always interested me about public performativity is the opportunity to capture feelings and emotions that are flowing through the audience, maybe even things people didn’t think they were ready to deal with.”

O’Neal says he wants to give people what they’re not expecting, pursuing a goal of introduction and reintroduction: “We’ve allowed Black music and Black art to be sold so short, so as we’re reintroducing ourselves to spaces of Blackness, that includes a musical heritage that is so broad and so deep.”

In fact, the scaffolding of Takin’ Up Space is built from the Africana aesthetics regarding the five pillars of hip hop studies: DJing, MCing, dance, graffiti/visual art and knowledge. O’Neal, Nzinga and their co-organizers also draw deeply from the symbols and stories in African cultures, including Sankofa of the Akan people of Ghana, represented as a bird with its head turned backward and an egg in its mouth, symbolizing the idea of looking back at the past to learn from it and move forward.

“We’re not doing this to say, ‘This is better than anything else,’ but to revisit our past in order to have a better evaluation of the present and build better futures,” O’Neal says. “We intend to take up space.”

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Multimedia Takin’ Up Space performance Feb. 21 at Fiske Planetarium will highlight historical, cultural, environmental and social justice narratives as an act of reclaiming Black spaces.

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Incarceration of 120,000 Japanese Americans holds lessons now

Rachel Sauer — Thu, 19 Feb 2026 14:37:00 +0000

Incarceration of 120,000 Japanese Americans holds lessons now Rachel Sauer Thu, 02/19/2026 - 07:37

Daryl Maeda

The Day of Remembrance, Feb. 19, should focus our attention on how a constitutional republic can shun its first principles

Today is the Day of Remembrance, marking the date that the United States officially marshalled the full force and power of the federal government against Americans whose only offense was being of Japanese descent. This day, which now lives in infamy, holds lessons for us now.

On Feb. 19, 1942, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which led to one of the most notable mass violations of civil liberties in U.S. history: the imprisonment of 120,000 Americans of Japanese descent without due process. Each year, the Japanese American community commemorates this Day of Remembrance to reflect on the lessons of that episode and resolve to advocate for justice for all.

Dressed in his U.S. Navy uniform, World War I veteran Hikotaro Yamada enters the Santa Anita assembly center after being forced to leave his Torrance, California, home. (Photo: Clem Albers/U.S. Department of the Interior)

The attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941 exacerbated decades of anti-Japanese racism. Japanese immigrants were disparaged from the 1890s onward as an invading “yellow peril” that brought crime and sexual deviance, stole jobs and threatened to impose a foreign culture.

Before 1941, the federal government barred them from becoming naturalized citizens and eventually prevented their migration. Many states prohibited them from marrying white people and buying land, a serious impediment for an ethnic group whose economy relied heavily on agriculture. Despite these barriers, the Japanese American community grew to include Nisei, children born in the United States who possessed natural-born citizenship.

After Dec. 7, government and military officials portrayed Japanese Americans as a monolithic threat to national security, alleging that they could not be differentiated individually and were thus all potential spies or saboteurs.

As the historian Jacobus vanBroek reported, Mississippi Congressman John Rankin told the House of Representatives: “I'm for catching every Japanese in America, Alaska and Hawaii now and putting them in concentration camps and shipping them back to Asia as soon as possible ... This is a race war, as far as the Pacific side of the conflict is concerned ... The White man's civilization has come into conflict with Japanese barbarism ... One of them must be destroyed ... Damn them! Let's get rid of them now!”

New Deal liberals like Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson declared, “Their racial characteristics are such that we cannot understand or trust even the citizen Japanese.”

General John L. DeWitt, military commander of the West Coast, said, “In the war in which we are now engaged, racial affinities are not severed by migration. The Japanese race is an enemy race and while many second and third generation Japanese born on United States soil, possessed of United States citizenship, have become ‘Americanized,’ the racial strains are undiluted ... It therefore follows that along the vital Pacific Coast over 112,000 potential enemies of Japanese extraction are at large today.”

California Attorney General and future Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren called for the mass expulsion and incarceration of Japanese Americans just one decade before issuing the landmark decision barring school segregation in Brown v. Board of Education.

Members of the Mochida family, with government-issued identification tags on their clothes, await a bus that will take them from their California home to an internment camp. Mr. Mochida (back row, left) operated a nursery and five greenhouses on a two-acre site in Eden Township, California. (Photo: Dorothea Lange/U.S. Department of the Interior)

Newspapers added cruelty to the message. The San Francisco Examiner opined, “Herd 'em up, pack 'em off and give 'em the inside room in the badlands. Let 'em be pinched, hurt, hungry, and dead up against it... Let us have no patience with the enemy or with anyone whose vein carry his blood…”[1]

EO 9066 authorized the Secretary of War to remove civilians from areas deemed to be militarily sensitive. It named no class of civilians or ethnic groups and defined no geographic boundaries or criteria for designating sensitive areas.

The vaguely defined yet overwhelming power conveyed by the order resulted in Japanese Americans—accused of no crimes as individuals and receiving no due process—being removed from the West Coast and incarcerated in barbed-wire enclosed prison camps hastily constructed in interior states including Colorado. My uncle and aunt were imprisoned at the Amache camp near Granada, Colorado.

Barracks at the Amache internment camp near Granada, Colorado. (Photo: Tom Parker/U.S. Department of the Interior)

Three legal challenges by Gordon Hirabayashi, Min Yasui, and Fred Korematsu to the removal and incarceration made their way to Supreme Court, which ruled repeatedly that EO 9066 and its implementation were constitutional.

In what has come to be a widely admired dissent from the majority opinion in the Korematsu case, Justice Frank Murphy declared, “I dissent, therefore, from this legalization of racism. Racial discrimination in any form and in any degree has no justifiable part whatever in our democratic way of life. It is unattractive in any setting, but it is utterly revolting among a free people who have embraced the principles set forth in the Constitution of the United States.”

Here at the University of Colorado Boulder, the U.S. Navy established the Japanese Language School, which recruited some Nisei instructors out of the camps to train military translators and interpreters. President Robert L. Stearns supported the establishment of the school and urged the Boulder community to welcome the instructors and their families.

In response to the Denver Post’s propaganda campaign demonizing Japanese Americans, CU students voiced their outrage, writing in the school’s Silver and Gold newspaper, “Now that the Denver Post has embraced Hitler’s doctrines of race and Aryan superiority, now that the Post has converted this war from a battle of principles or even of nations into a battle of peoples, now that the Post has declared war on the Japanese Americans in our cities and internment camps, it’s about time we college students registered our protests against such fascist techniques in our midst.”

Posterity has condemned the mass incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II. In 1988, President Ronald Reagan signed the Civil Liberties Act, which offered an official government apology for the “fundamental injustice” done to citizens and permanent resident aliens of Japanese ancestry and providing monetary compensation to those still alive over four decades later.

In signing the bill, Reagan said, “[M]y fellow Americans, we gather here today to right a grave wrong. More than 40 years ago, shortly after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, 120,000 persons of Japanese ancestry living in the United States were forcibly removed from their homes and placed in makeshift internment camps. This action was taken without trial, without jury. It was based solely on race, for these 120,000 were Americans of Japanese descent.”

What lessons can be drawn from this sordid episode that occurred eight decades ago?

Justice is not a partisan issue. After all, the incarceration was perpetrated by the administration of FDR, perhaps the most consequential liberal president of the 20^th century.
Unchecked federal executive power can lead to abuses of fundamental civil and human rights, especially when militarized forces are unleashed on civilians.
Compliant courts and legislatures cannot be relied upon to provide the checks and balances necessary to ensure that constitutional rights are protected.
Mass incarceration camps can be built in the United States and filled with both U.S. citizens and aliens alike without due process. Indeed, they have been.
History will remember the words and deeds of those who support justice and due process.

So today, and indeed every day, we are obliged to remember and to learn.

Daryl J. Maeda, interim dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, has been a faculty member at 91��ý since 2005. He holds a PhD in American culture from the University of Michigan, MA in ethnic studies from San Francisco State University and BS in mathematics from Harvey Mudd College.

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The Day of Remembrance, Feb. 19, should focus our attention on how a constitutional republic can shun its first principles.

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Top image: Boys imprisoned at Manzanar Camp in California (Photo: Toyo Miyatake)

Scholar considers language, identity and the fight over shared symbols

Rachel Sauer — Mon, 16 Feb 2026 17:42:36 +0000

Scholar considers language, identity and the fight over shared symbols Rachel Sauer Mon, 02/16/2026 - 10:42

Cody DeBos

91��ý linguistics researcher Kate Arnold-Murray studies what a Facebook fight reveals about identity

In 2019, Washington, D.C.’s Pride celebrations became a flashpoint—but not just for the usual political tensions. Organizers of the annual Dyke March barred participants from carrying the Jewish Pride flag, sparking a wider debate about symbols and the meanings they carry.

Organizers claimed the flag too closely resembled the Israeli flag and could be insensitive to pro-Palestinian participants. Jewish LGBTQ+ activists, many of whom had marched in the event for years, were stunned.

“I was actually living in Washington, D.C., at the time,” says Kate Arnold-Murray, a PhD candidate in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Colorado Boulder. “I was out of town at the time, so I was looking at things involving the march on Facebook and saw all these arguments going on. I wanted to get to the root of what people were upset about—what people who presumably should be on the same page were arguing about.”

91��ý scholar Kate Arnold-Murray has studied how the six-pointed Star of David became the center of conflict in a space that promotes solidarity.

What began as curiosity while browsing turned into years of research for Arnold-Murray, culminating in her recent publication in the Journal of Linguistic Anthropology.

Her study looks at how a single symbol—the six-pointed Star of David—became the center of conflict in a space that promotes solidarity.

Bridging language and politics

In her doctoral work at 91��ý, Arnold-Murray focuses on how language produces and reflects political identity in America.

“Most of my work involves language and politics on the left in the United States. This piece ties into that work because these are presumably mostly political actors on the left in arguments with each other,” she says.

In her paper, Arnold-Murray examines a trove of public Facebook comments from individuals and organizations reacting to the 2019 Dyke March decision.

“As a member of both the Washington, D.C., queer community and the Washington, D.C., Jewish community, it was like my two sides were fighting, and I wanted to understand why,” she says.

The problem of misrecognition

The controversy centered on the Jewish Pride flag: a rainbow background with a white Star of David in the middle. For some, the star was a proud symbol of Jewish identity that dates back thousands of years. For others, it was too reminiscent of the Israeli flag—and thus a political statement they opposed.

To understand the disagreement, Arnold-Murray turned to the concept of indexicality, or the connection between a sign and its social meaning.

“Indexical misrecognition is accounting for the possibility that we might have misunderstandings based on our lived experiences shaping how we interpret signs like a symbol or word,” she explains.

In other words, what one person sees as an expression of faith or cultural belonging, another may see as a symbol of state violence or exclusion.

“In this instance, each group came with a different notion of what the Star of David means based on their lived experiences—and that’s where we get that misrecognition.”

Arnold-Murray’s paper takes it further. She argues that not only do symbols connect with personal and cultural identities, but they can lead to conflict because their meanings are not fixed. That’s especially true when it comes to symbols like the Star of David, whose associations stretch across religion, nationalism, ethnicity and more.

“If we can find ways to stop arguing about symbols and come together a little more, we can have more political unity. But that has to start with listening to the voices of marginalized individuals and understanding that the signs we use might carry multiple meanings,” says 91��ý linguistics scholar Kate Arnold-Murray. (Photo: Tom Morris/Wikimedia Commons)

“Another example is the phrase ‘Are you a friend of Dorothy?’ which has been used within the queer community to indicate that someone is queer. But to someone who is not queer, they might not share that same meaning and they might say, ‘Dorothy who?’” Arnold-Murray says.

One flag, many meanings

Arnold-Murray also uses the term bricolage to describe the Jewish Pride flag. In the art world, bricolage refers to a construction created from layers of different materials.

“Here, we have the Jewish Pride flag as a construction of bricolage, where there are the meaningful horizontal rainbow stripes of the queer pride flag and then the white Star of David, which can indicate Judaism or potentially Israel, depending on one’s reading,” she says.

The ambiguity of meaning in signs consisting of multiple parts is what often leads to misrecognition. Since the Jewish Pride flag combines two strong identity symbols, any interpretation is bound to stir deep emotions, Arnold-Murray explains.

“It’s when we have these signs that are so tied up with our identity and who we are that we get these big conflicts among, presumably, a queer community where a lot of people agree on political issues overall.”

For many Jewish participants in the 2019 Dyke March, banning the flag was more than a debate over a symbol.

“A lot of the commenters who were against the ban of the Jewish pride flag were claiming that the ban was anti-Semitic and against them as Jews and that they felt excluded from the march,” Arnold-Murray says.

For organizers, allowing the flag could have been seen as endorsing a political stance they didn’t share. It was a lose-lose situation made worse by how personal it felt for everyone involved.

What’s at stake

Arnold-Murray is careful to warn that there isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution to symbolic conflict. But she does suggest that understanding how symbols work, and why layered meanings can spark conflict, can lead to more empathetic conversations.

“I think the stakes are huge. When we have these signs that are tied to identity, it can feel like a personal attack to be contesting what they mean,” she says.

“If we can find ways to stop arguing about symbols and come together a little more, we can have more political unity,” she adds. “But that has to start with listening to the voices of marginalized individuals and understanding that the signs we use might carry multiple meanings.”

In a political landscape increasingly fractured by culture wars and identity debates, that goal may feel out of reach. But for Arnold-Murray, it all comes back to understanding.

“Meaning isn’t fixed. When it comes to situations like this, what’s really important is listening, being willing to apologize, and being willing to move forward while being as inclusive as possible,” she says. “Understanding that meanings come from lived experiences is a good starting point.”

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91��ý linguistics researcher Kate Arnold-Murray studies what a Facebook fight reveals about identity.

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Top photo: Ted Eytan/Wikimedia Commons

Colorado has the mountains … but not the Olympics

Rachel Sauer — Wed, 04 Feb 2026 17:38:57 +0000

Colorado has the mountains … but not the Olympics Rachel Sauer Wed, 02/04/2026 - 10:38

Jared Bahir Browsh

Fifty years ago, Denver was supposed to host the Winter Olympics, but fiscal and environmental concerns halted plans and highlighted difficult truths about hosting

With its infrastructure, mountains and the presence of the Colorado Springs Olympic and Paralympic Training Center, Colorado seems like the ideal Olympics host—and many wonder why the state has never hosted a Games.

Fifty years ago, Denver was scheduled to host the XII Olympic Winter Games during the state’s 1976 centennial celebration and the United States’ bicentennial. Denver’s bid was accepted by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in 1970, but in November 1972—after a statewide referendum rejected funding for the games—the IOC was left scrambling to find another host city. Although Salt Lake City, Utah, and Lake Placid, New York, offered to host, the IOC, frustrated by the rebuff by Colorado voters, elected to move the games back to Europe in Innsbruck, Austria, just eight years after the city hosted in 1964.

Jared Bahir Browsh is the Critical Sports Studies program director in the 91��ý Department of Ethnic Studies.

The Denver episode taught both the IOC and event organizers as a whole to secure funding, infrastructure and the support of stakeholders before granting any city or country the rights to host major events—although Olympic host cities continue to navigate imperfect planning, as the 2026 host, Milana-Cortina, Italy, races to complete the hockey arena in time for the Games.

From underdog to host

Denver was seen as a dark horse when the bid process began, competing against Sion, Switzerland; Tampere, Finland; and Vancouver, Canada, for the rights to host the Olympics. Denver won the first round of votes but came in second to Sion in the second round (Vancouver and Tampere were eliminated in the first and second rounds, respectively). Most of the IOC voters for the Finnish town ultimately shifted to support Denver’s bid, which was granted in May 1970.

After significant cost overruns and losses during the previous two Games in Grenoble, France, in 1968 and Sapporo, Japan, in 1972, Denver was promoted as the economical Olympics. The Grenoble Games posed a loss of more than $250 million, so when Denver submitted a budget of $14 million, the IOC voters may have seen Denver ushering in a new strategy for a more affordable Winter Games.

However, as the planning moved forward, it was clear the $14 million budget fell far short of what would be needed. By 1972, some estimates surpassed $100 million with a number of unanswered questions regarding the venues and facilities. The University of Denver was floated as a potential location for the Olympic Village, but university officials were never informed of this plan, which would have occurred during the school year.

The original plans also called for the alpine events to be held at Loveland Basin and Mount Sniktau, which did not receive reliable snowfall and were airbrushed with “snow” to cover bald spots in the promotional materials. Many of the plans for events like cross-country skiing had routes that ran through residential neighborhoods in Jefferson County, and plans for the biathlon—a mix of cross-country skiing and rifle shooting—included ranges near Evergreen High School.

Planning goes off course as the election nears

Because the IOC preferred bids that allowed for the vast majority of events to occur close to the host city, the original Denver Olympics plans promoted Loveland Basin and Mount Sniktau as being only 45 minutes away from the city—which may have been possible if I-70 was shut down. Officials then decided to move the ski events to Aspen and Steamboat Springs, both more than 100 miles from the originally proposed Olympic Village. They floated plans to have multiple villages and even discussed having a helicopter usher athletes between sites.

Along with having cross-country skiing events in Evergreen, planners wanted to have the ski jump there as well, which would have required demolishing a hill, rerouting a residential road and pouring concrete over Bear Creek. Maybe Evergreen residents would have enjoyed watching events out their windows—and through their yards—even if it meant dodging bullets and finding new roads to get to work or school, but it is doubtful.

Then-state legislator—and future governor—Dick Lamm, political organizer Sam Brown and environmentalist Eileen Brown (unrelated to Sam) formed Citizens for Colorado’s Future (CCF), which campaigned against the Games. The group collected signatures and ran an information campaign in the lead-up to the 1972 election that included a ballot initiative for the $5 million promised by the state hoping to convince voters to not approve the funding.

A bumper sticker produced before Colorado residents voted on a 1972 referendum to fund the 1976 Olympic Games, which voters rejected. (Photo: History Colorado)

The CCF looked to secure a meeting with the IOC, and when group leaders were rebuffed, they traveled to the Sapporo Olympics, where the IOC executive committee was meeting. CCF members ultimately crashed the meeting, to the consternation of the committee, and presented their findings regarding the true cost and environmental impact to the IOC. This caused Avery Brundage, who was attending his last Winter Games as IOC president, to threaten to pull the Games from the Denver Organizing Committee, which quickly put together a presentation to reassure the IOC.

The cost overruns at the 1972 Sapporo Winter Games and the summer games in Munich further reinforced the cost concerns in Denver. Munich also faced one of the worst terrorist events in sports history, which cast a cloud over the Olympics just months before the 1972 election. Groups like Protect Our Mountain Environment (POME) also held well-publicized protests in places that would be impacted by the Games, including Evergreen.

On Nov. 7, 1972, these myriad problems led Colorado voters to reject the $5 million Olympics contribution from the state, with 60% of voters choosing to say no to the state spending the money on the Games. The following week, Denver officially withdrew from the Games and then-Governor John Love, who championed the bid, resigned the following year to serve as “Energy Czar” under President Richard Nixon. In 1974, Lamm was elected governor, eventually serving three terms and running on a campaign focused on environmentalism and limited development.

Ultimately, Colorado voters were proven right. The 1976 Innsbruck Games cost an estimated $58 million, even with the use of existing facilities from 1964. The Montreal Summer Games the same year were one of the worst financial disasters in Olympic history, with the city, its province, Quebec, and Canada shouldering a debt of more than $1 billion, which was not paid off until 2006.

The early ‘70s bid was not the last time that Denver tried for the Olympics. Federico Peña, mayor of Denver from 1983-1991, pushed to bid for the Olympics even as the city faced financial difficulties. Denver also bid to be the United States Olympic Committee pick for the 2002 Winter Games, with plans that had the University of Colorado Boulder campus serving as the Olympic Village. Denver was beat out by Salt Lake City for the 2002 Games, which faced a bribery controversy over its winning bid.

Ultimately, the politics of Colorado, which include ballot initiatives and the Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights (TABOR), create a difficult path for Denver to host an Olympic Games. The concerns of 1976, including rising costs and environmental concerns, have only gotten stronger as some have questioned the long-term impact of hosting. Also, with the 2028 Summer Games in Los Angeles and the 2034 Winter Games in Salt Lake City, it may be decades until another Olympics makes it back to the United States—and odds are Colorado voters would not approve of the exponentially higher cost of the Olympics in the future.

Jared Bahir Browsh is an assistant teaching professor of critical sports studies in the 91��ý Department of Ethnic Studies.

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Fifty years ago, Denver was supposed to host the Winter Olympics, but fiscal and environmental concerns halted plans and highlighted difficult truths about hosting.

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Faster, higher, stronger (at any cost)

Rachel Sauer — Fri, 30 Jan 2026 21:49:55 +0000

Faster, higher, stronger (at any cost) Rachel Sauer Fri, 01/30/2026 - 14:49

Jared Bahir Browsh

Cheating scandals throughout the Olympics’ 130-year history highlight how the pursuit of victory can often conflict with Olympic values

"Faster, Higher, Stronger." The Olympic motto, chosen by the father of the modern Olympic Games, Pierre de Coubertin, expresses the aspirations of the Games in competition and in morality. However, as the many cheating scandals throughout the 130-year history of the Games have shown, the pursuit of victory can often conflict with the effort to maintain the perceived values of the Olympic Movement.

On Jan. 15, after an 11-month investigation, the International Ski and Snowboard Federation announced an 18-month suspensions for two coaches and an equipment manager from Norway’s ski jump team after they were caught on video manipulating the suits of jumpers following inspection at the Nordic World Ski Championships. Although the two skiers whose suits were manipulated—reigning Olympic champion Marius Lindvik and 2018 silver medalist Johann André Forfang—will still compete, it has cast a cloud over the event just weeks before the Winter Olympics Opening Ceremonies in Italy on Feb. 6.

Jared Bahir Browsh is the Critical Sports Studies program director in the 91��ý Department of Ethnic Studies.

Cheating is as old as sport, and much like at the ancient games, athletes and their coaches have been willing to bend—or break—the rules to gain an advantage for the sake of Olympic glory. The biggest scandals are often followed by rule changes and more intense oversight by the International Olympic Committee and sport officials.

Hitchhiking and strychnine at the 1904 marathon

The 1904 Games in St. Louis is rightfully considered one of the worst Olympics in history. Though Chicago unanimously won the bid to become the first U.S. host of the Olympics, politicking by the Amateur Athletic Union, the postponement of the World’s Fair to 1904 and opposition to an Olympic Stadium in Chicago led to the Games being transferred to St. Louis.

At the time, St. Louis was about a third the size of Chicago and offered fewer transportation options, leading to decreased participation compared to the 1900 Games in Paris. Also, the associated World’s Fair focused heavily on white supremacy and imperialism, which was reflected in the disorganized Games.

One of the most famous examples of the poorly executed Games was the marathon, which was filled with cheating, scientific misinformation and the same racism that was associated with the World’s Fair. The length and difficulty of the marathon has tempted cheating since the first games, but the marathon in St. Louis was especially controversial.

The 1904 event, which began in the middle of the afternoon as temperatures soared past 90, saw only 14 of the 32 two runners finish the race, including Len Taunyane (ninth) and Jan Mashiani (12th), two members of South Africa’s Tswana tribe who were included in the race to prove white superiority, coming to St. Louis as a part of the Boer War Exhibition. They were the only Black South Africans to represent their country until 1992.

James E. Sullivan, who organized much of the 1904 Olympics, also wanted to prove that dehydration improved performance and had only one water station on the entire route. American runner Frederick Lorz began to cramp and dropped out of the race, soliciting a ride from a local driver. When the car broke down, Lorz finished the route and walked into the stadium, celebrating as the winner before a spectator revealed he had hitched a ride. Another American runner, Thomas Hicks, crossed the finish line more than 20 minutes later, boosted by strychnine sulfate and brandy after his own brush with dehydration. The chaotic race almost led to the elimination of the marathon from the Olympic program.

The straight dope

Thomas Hicks (center) crossed the finish line of the 1904 Olympic marathon with the help of strychnine sulfate and brandy, after a brush with dehydration. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

As the 1904 marathon debacle shows, some athletes will risk their health if a substance, including poison or liquor, can give them an edge. Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson may be the most famous individual example of performance-enhancing drug use at the Olympics—disqualified after testing positive for steroids at the 1988 Seoul Games following a world record-setting performance in the 100-meter dash. Carl Lewis, who placed second, was awarded the gold medal after Johnson was disqualified. Johnson had also tested positive for stimulants at the U.S. Olympic Trials, but was still allowed to compete.

The United States was again embroiled in a doping scandal in 2007 when sprinter Marion Jones admitted to steroid use as a part of the larger BALCO banned substance scandal and was stripped of her medals from the 2000 Sydney Games. Cyclist Lance Armstrong was stripped of his bronze from the 2000 Games as well.

However, the largest doping scandal spans more than 74 years, after the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) joined the Olympic Movement in 1952. The Soviet Union's promotion of communism put the nation at odds with capitalist nations—specifically with fellow superpower the United States—making the Olympics a proxy battle in the Cold War. The USSR was at odds with many Western countries as the Soviet Union’s athletes were given nominal jobs within the Soviet government, allowing them to train and compete full time through their athletic primes. This often led to competitions between older Soviet and much younger amateur athletes.

It was later revealed many of these athletes were also involved in state-sponsored doping programs, with Soviet labs working to stay a step ahead of testing, especially after testing for steroids began in 1976. In spite of this, East Germany, which had its own doping program, placed second in gold medals at the 1976 games in Montreal, motivating the Soviets to accelerate their own doping program for the 1980 Moscow Games and the 1984 Los Angeles Games, although they boycotted the latter.

The same doctor who signed off on the Soviet doping program for the 1984 Games, Dr. Sergei Portugalov, was instrumental in renewing the state-sponsored doping program through at least 2008, when seven runners from Russia were banned from competing at the 2008 Beijing Games. In 2017, Portugalov was permanently banned from working with athletes by the Court of Arbitration for Sport while Russia was banned from the Olympics for doping from 2019-2023. Russian athletes were allowed to compete under the Olympic Flag—as they did in 2024 and will in 2026, the result of a separate ban related to the invasion of Ukraine.

For many years, Soviet athletes (here entering the opening ceremony of the 1964 Summer Olympic Games in Tokyo) fought proxy Cold War battles with western nations in the Olympics. (Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

Conspiring for glory

As enforcement has intensified, efforts to cheat have become more complex, with multinational conspiracies behind more recent controversies. The most famous of these efforts occurred during the 2002 Salt Lake City Games, which was already clouded in controversy after it was revealed in 1998 that the Salt Lake Organizing Committee had bribed Olympic officials to obtain the bid. Although other bid processes have faced claims of bribery, this was considered the largest corruption scandal in IOC history, prompting an overhaul of the bid process.

During the pairs figure skating competition, Canadians Jamie Salé and David Pelletier performed a near-flawless routine but were awarded silver due to a 5-4 split among judges that favored Russian competitors Elena Berezhnaya and Anton Sikharulidze. Judge Marie Reine Le Gougne alleged soon after the event that she was pressured by the head of the French skating federation, Didier Gailhaguet, to give the Russian pair favorable marks in exchange for Russian support for French ice dancers Marina Anissina and Gwendal Peizerat, who were scheduled to compete later in the Games and ultimately won gold.

Judged sports like gymnastics and figure skating have long faced criticism over their judges, especially during the Cold War, when there were frequent claims of bias for either Eastern and Western bloc nations. Le Gougne eventually recanted her story, but the damage was already done and Salé and Pelletier were eventually named gold medalists alongside Berezhnaya and Sikharulidze, who kept their gold. The incident led the International Skating Union to implement a new system to score performances in an effort to limit impropriety in judging.

Typically, when Olympians cheat, they cheat to win, but the 2012 London Games saw several badminton teams take a different approach. After securing a place in the knockout stage in women’s badminton doubles, two South Korean pairs, along with a pair from China and one from Indonesia, attempted to lose on purpose in their last group stage match to obtain a preferred matchup in the next round. All four teams were disqualified for uncompetitive behavior and future tournaments included another draw for runners-up from each group. Some countered that even though they tried to lose matches on purpose, their intent was to win the tournament.

As the common saying goes, “If you ain’t cheating, you ain’t trying,” which is often quoted after a cheating scandal. However, as the incidents involving the Russian Olympic Committee and others have shown, many of these incidents go beyond mere rule breaking and risk the health and well-being of the athletes involved. The IOC tries to remain free of controversy, but as we have seen across the 130 years of the modern Olympics, the organization is not immune to politics, socioeconomics or human nature. Athletes and even entire federations are so tempted by Olympic glory that they are willing to bend sporting ethics for the sake of winning.

Jared Bahir Browsh is an assistant teaching professor of critical sports studies in the 91��ý Department of Ethnic Studies.

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Cheating scandals throughout the Olympics’ 130-year history highlight how the pursuit of victory can often conflict with Olympic values.

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Top photo: Vegar S. Hansen/Wikimedia Commons

Scholar studies humanity through skin and ink

Rachel Sauer — Thu, 29 Jan 2026 17:51:52 +0000

Scholar studies humanity through skin and ink Rachel Sauer Thu, 01/29/2026 - 10:51

Chris Quirk

In his new book Indigenous Tattoo Traditions, 91��ý alumnus and Tattoo Hunters host Lars Krutak highlights traditional techniques that sometimes date back millennia

Lars Krutak is not the kind of scholar who is content to simply write about his field. Krutak, a 1993 University of Colorado Boulder graduate in art history and anthropology, is an internationally recognized researcher of the history and culture of tattoos and has about 40 of them himself. He even went under the knife for his research—a scarification ritual of the Kaningara people of Papua New Guinea, during which an elder made more than 400 incisions in his skin.

91��ý alumnus Lars Krutak (left) has studied with indigenous artists around the world, including Pius (right), one of the last Makonde tattoo masters of Mozambique. (Photo: Lars Krutak)

“That technique of incision tattooing where they cut you to create a scar and then they rub in the pigment is by far the most painful,” he says. “You're getting cut open like a piece of chicken, and then you're just bleeding all over place. It's hard.”

It’s one of the traditional techniques described in his recent book, Indigenous Tattoo Traditions: Humanity through Skin and Ink, lauded as a best science pick in the journal Nature.

The author of four books on tattooing and host of the Tattoo Hunters series on the Discovery Channel, Krutak became fascinated with the art and custom of tattoos 20 years ago. After completing his bachelor’s degree at 91��ý, Krutuk began work on his master’s degree in anthropology and archaeology at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. “I moved there in January of 1996,” he says. “When I got off the plane it was minus 55 degrees.”

Krutak was walking across the Fairbanks campus one day and saw a woman with three chin tattoos. “I didn't have any tattoos. I didn't know anything about tattoos. I didn't know indigenous people had tattoos,” Krutak recalls. “I could recognize that she was indigenous, and I got to know her later on, but that moment opened my eyes.”

His scholarly interest piqued, Krutak began digging through the university’s archives and extensive collection of artifacts. “I quickly realized that basically every indigenous society across the circumpolar north, from East Greenland to Siberia and seemingly everywhere in between, had a tattooing tradition at one time or another, but almost all I could find were records from 100 years ago and a few things from the 1950s.”

Krutak resolved to change that. “My main goal when I started doing this research was to preserve a history. No one in academic circles seemed interested in studying indigenous tattooing,” he says. “There were a lot of stigmas attached to tattooing at that time, and there are still some to this day. But I always felt that this was a significant part of the world's cultural heritage, and it was vanishing rapidly around the world, with no one going out there to document it.”

Permanent records

After learning about the tattooing tradition of the Yupik people of St. Lawrence Island in the northern Bering Sea, Krutak wrote to village councils and received permission to visit. What he found was that tattooing was on the wane among the Yupik, with just a small number of women who were in their 80s or 90s sustaining the custom.

In his recent book Indigenous Tattoo Traditions, author and 91��ý alumnus Lars Krutak highlights work from indigenous artists around the world.

But he also found that the tradition went back about 2,000 years. The Yupik had, for two millennia, created anthropomorphic dolls, carved out of walrus ivory, that most likely represented ancestral personages. And the dolls had careful renditions of Yupik tattoos.

The significance of tattoos, for the Yupik people and for other cultures across the globe that Krutak has since visited—more than 40 to date—can be widely varied.

“If there is something that needs to be permanently recorded, tattoos can do that,” he says, adding that a tattoo can function as a record of hunting prowess, tally enemies killed in warfare or identify a person as a member of a particular clan or family. There are tattoos that denote a rite of passage, tattoos that invoke ancestral spirits and tattoos that relate to medicinal purposes, Krutak says.

One important meaning that bearers of tattoos have cited, across many cultures, is to identify the person in the afterlife, he says. In the case of the Yupik people of St. Lawrence Island, there are tattoos to help ancestors recognize the person so they can enter the sanctity of the afterlife. “I've been told, by many elders, that they would not be recognized as a true person from their culture without certain tattoos,” Krutak says. “This is one of the most common beliefs and purposes for tattoos across the indigenous world.”

‘Ancient marks of humanity’

What began with that serendipitous moment in Fairbanks has turned into a lifetime pursuit and a synthesis of two threads of Krutak’s interest that he cultivated at 91��ý as an undergraduate: art history and anthropology. “I had two very formative professors,” he says. “Roland Bernier encouraged me to explore more deeply the connection between anthropology and art history, hence my double major. John Rohner was in charge of the museum studies program and introduced me to what a career in the museum field would look like.”

In some of Krutak’s travels, including his experience with the Yupik, he has encountered some of the last people in the culture who had or could share the history of tattoos in their culture, which increases his sense of urgency. “I firmly feel that indigenous tattooing deserves our attention, because it speaks volumes about what it means to be human,” says Krutak. “I think we can learn a lot about each other by studying and appreciating these ancient marks of humanity.”

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In his new book 'Indigenous Tattoo Traditions,' 91��ý alumnus and 'Tattoo Hunter' host Lars Krutak highlights traditional techniques that sometimes date back millennia.

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Research sheds light on unintended consequences of money laundering regulations

Rachel Sauer — Wed, 28 Jan 2026 15:37:54 +0000

Research sheds light on unintended consequences of money laundering regulations Rachel Sauer Wed, 01/28/2026 - 08:37

Bradley Worrell

91��ý economist Alessandro Peri finds that when authorities cracked down on offshore money laundering, criminals redirected that money into domestic businesses and properties

Economists traditionally focus on economic indicators such as growth, inflation and trade—not on organized crime. Yet a recent paper co-authored by Alessandro Peri, an economist and associate professor in the University of Colorado Boulder Department of Economics, dives deep into the economics of money laundering, exploring how international regulations meant to tamp down the practice in one part of the world can inadvertently cause it to take hold in different areas and in different ways.

Peri says his interest in money laundering was sparked in 2018 after attending a presentation on the topic. He also notes that his interest in the phenomenon of riciclaggio di denaro—Italian for money laundering—was partly shaped by his father, who worked for Guarda di Finanza, the Italian tax enforcement agency tasked with fighting financial crimes.

“I have always been fascinated by the phenomenon,” says Peri, whose research focuses on the macroeconomic implications of economic policy and legislative changes. “Specifically, on the process through which illicit profits—from drugs, counterfeit goods or other illegal activities—find their way into legitimate businesses and the real economy.”

91��ý economist Alessandro Peri and his research colleagues find that international regulations meant to tamp down money laundering in one part of the world can inadvertently cause it to take hold in different areas and in different ways.

To understand money laundering, Peri says it’s important to grasp its purpose. Criminal enterprises—from drug cartels to counterfeit goods networks—generate mountains of “dirty” cash that needs to find its way into the legitimate economy. Traditionally, banks were the preferred channel to make “dirty” money look “clean.”

In their research, Peri and his co-authors take a step further and explore the question: What happens when governments make it harder for criminals to hide illegal money in offshore banks? The answer, they discovered, is that criminals don’t stop laundering money. They often just switch to other methods and re-channel dirty funds from offshore financial account to domestic activities (such as local businesses) in the United States, a process they call “money laundering leakage.”

“If you target only one channel, the money leaks into others,” Peri explains. “It’s like squeezing a balloon.”

Tightening regulations

To address this question, the authors focused on a tightening in anti-money-laundering regulations that in 2009 involved Caribbean nations, historically considered havens for both tax evasion and money laundering. Peri says both of those activities exploit weak oversight, but their economic impacts differ, as stricter tax enforcement may reduce domestic investment, given that firms can no longer save on taxes, whereas tighter laundering controls can cause criminals to look for new domestic channels to “clean” their illicit gains.

Facing international pressure, Peri says Caribbean countries formed the Caribbean Financial Action Task Force, and from 2008 to 2015 underwent a mutual evaluation process aimed at curbing money laundering activities by strengthening oversight of financial institutions and enforcing compliance across jurisdictions.

“Passing laws is not enough. Enforcement of the law is just as important, and over time these countries did a really good job of that,” Peri says. As a result, laundering operations via financial havens became more difficult and expensive.

At the same time, Peri and his co-authors document how that action resulted in unintended consequences, by providing indirect evidence of a re-channeling of these offshore laundering operations into the United States.

Measuring the impact

How do you study an activity designed to be invisible?

Peri’s team employed some creative methods, including using information uncovered by investigative journalists in the Panama Papers—which documented financial linkages between U.S. localities and Caribbean jurisdictions—to determine which counties had stronger exposure to the regulatory changes happening in the Caribbean jurisdictions.

The researchers then used county-level data from U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics from 2004 to 2015 to look at patterns in business activities. In U.S. counties with stronger financial connections to Caribbean jurisdictions, Peri and his co-authors were able to determine that there was a measurable uptick in business establishments—particularly small, cash-intensive firms. Peri says such businesses often exhibit telltale signs of “front companies”: few employees, unusual revenue patterns and operations in cash-intensive businesses such as liquor stores, laundromats, florists, restaurants and car dealerships.

Additionally, Peri says he and his colleagues found that cash-based real estate purchases increased—another common way criminals use to clean illegal money. “Someone seeking to clean criminal proceeds may purchase a home and quickly resell,” he says.

“If a crook were to launder money, they wouldn’t buy a multi-million-dollar company (like Apple), as they would get detected. They’d buy a car wash, which makes it much less likely to get audited,” says 91��ý researcher Alessandro Peri about money laundering. (Photo: Jason Leung/Unsplash)

“This started as a theory paper, but in the end, we were able to provide some indirect evidence of how offshore AML (anti-money laundering) efforts impacted money laundering (in the U.S.) and its impact on local economies,” he says.

Notably, the evidence suggests a more pronounced increase in the use of front companies in high-intensity drug-trafficking areas, suggesting a link between local illicit economies and laundering demand, Peri says.

Ultimately, laundering decisions hinge on a cost-benefit analysis, Peri says, as criminals weigh the risk of detection against the need to legitimize funds.

“If a crook were to launder money, they wouldn’t buy a multi-million-dollar company (like Apple), as they would get detected,” he says. “They’d buy a car wash, which makes it much less likely to get audited.”

He says the smartest operations focus on diversification—buying a handful of businesses across sectors and locations rather than concentrating their operations in one sector.

“Hypothetically, if they went out and bought every restaurant in Boulder, they would probably get detected and audited,” Peri explains. “But if they buy just a few restaurants, as well as some florists and auto dealerships to diversify their operations, it likely reduces their risk of getting caught. That’s what we believe is at the heart of this process of diversification.”

The scale of the challenge

In pop culture, money laundering is portrayed as a shadowy process involving suitcases full of cash and offshore accounts. From Scarface to Breaking Bad, the trope is familiar: illicit profits transformed into legitimate wealth through clever schemes.

Peri says those cinematic dramas don’t do justice to how sophisticated modern money laundering schemes have become or the scope of such operations today. The United Nations Oﬃce on Drugs and Crime estimates that money laundering is a trillion-dollar problem, accounting for nearly 5% of global gross domestic product (GDP) annually. That’s roughly equivalent to the entire economic output of Germany, he notes.

What’s more, Peri says money laundering isn’t just a criminal issue—it’s an economic one. He says that by injecting illicit funds into legitimate markets, money laundering can distort local markets, misallocate resources and crowd out legitimate firms. For example, when illicit funds flood into real estate, housing prices can soar, pricing out ordinary families.

“Are these firms creating jobs? Yes,” he notes. “But at what cost to the local economies? The answer is unclear and requires further research.”

The scope of the challenge is daunting, Peri says, and the field of money laundering is evolving. In addition to traditional channels for cleaning currency, he says he believes criminal organizations engaged in money laundering are now purchasing cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and engaging in complex trading schemes that can add layers of opacity to their operations.

“Partial measures create leakage. To be effective, enforcement must be coordinated across financial and non-financial channels, and across borders.”

“We just scratched the surface,” he says of what his research uncovered. “There are always new methods.”

A call for vigilance

What should governments do about money laundering?

Peri’s paper stops short of prescribing detailed enforcement strategies, but he says his research does underscore two imperatives. First, domestic agencies including financial regulators, tax authorities and law enforcement must collaborate, and international agencies must harmonize standards. Second, Peri says targeting one channel is insufficient, so efforts must span financial systems, real estate and emerging technologies such as cryptocurrencies.

Peri draws an analogy to climate policy, which is also a research focus of his. Just as carbon emissions shift to countries with lax regulations, he says dirty money flows to jurisdictions—or sectors—where oversight is weakest.

“Partial measures create leakage,” he warns. “To be effective, enforcement must be coordinated across financial and non-financial channels, and across borders.”

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91��ý economist Alessandro Peri finds that when authorities cracked down on offshore money laundering, criminals redirected that money into domestic businesses and properties.

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Top image: iStock

Film addresses the dark side of aging

Rachel Sauer — Tue, 27 Jan 2026 22:39:05 +0000

Film addresses the dark side of aging Rachel Sauer Tue, 01/27/2026 - 15:39

Megan Clancy

91��ý sociologist Laura Patterson makes screenwriting debut with short horror film “Silent Generation”

Laura Patterson of the University of Colorado Boulder Department of Sociology does a lot in her field, teaching courses in research methods and environmental sociology. She also teaches about the sociology of horror in courses such as Gender, Race, and Chainsaws and co-hosts the podcast “Collective Nightmares,” which examines the sociological implications of horror films.

Now she’s added screenwriter to her resume. After years of development, writing and filming, Patterson recently completed an eight-festival circuit, including the Denver Film Festival in late 2025, showing her new film, “Silent Generation.”

Laura Patterson, a 91��ý assistant teaching professor of sociology, screened her short horror film "Silent Generation" at the recent Denver Film Festival.

“I think one of the things that horror can do well is make us look at the stuff that we don’t want to look at,” says Patterson.

“Silent Generation” is an eight-minute horror film that explores the dark side of aging and isolation. It follows an octogenarian as he goes about his day alone at home, watching TV and doing the laundry—a perfectly mundane task that turns bloody. And the inspiration for the film’s gruesome moment is rooted in a true story.

“It happened to my grandma, but she wasn’t living alone. My grandpa was there and my grandma was downstairs doing laundry,” Patterson recalls. “She calls to my grandpa and says, ‘Eddie, bring down the scissors.’ And so he brought the scissors down and she had got her hand stuck in the wringer washing machine, and it tore the top of her finger off. And she wanted him to just cut it off—which he wasn’t going to do. He took her to the emergency room, and they fixed things.”

But this incident got Patterson thinking about what would have happened if nobody else had been there. Thus, the idea for “Silent Generation” took hold.

“It stood out to me as a really important moment in life. The time when you notice that the people who were your caregivers now need care. And just the thin thread connecting older people to the rest of society, and how needed that connection is, because when that gets cut off there’s real danger just in the house where people are living,” says Patterson. “And you realize things that used to be normal become a threat.”

The idea stayed with Patterson for years, but she struggled to piece together how to make it into a movie.

“Since it is so short, writing the screenplay was not a big undertaking, because I kind of had the vision. But then to actually figure out how to make it, I just tried to take off like one piece at a time.”

One of the most difficult parts of creating the film, Patterson says, was actually finding the machine that would be centered in the climactic scene. The search took over a year. She eventually found the dated appliance in the 1,500-washing-machine collection of retired CSU professor, Lee Maxwell, who had curated the warehouse full of machines to represent the story of women’s liberation.

Laura Patterson's eight-minute horror film "Silent Generation" explores the dark side of aging and isolation.

Sitting with discomfort

To produce the film, Patterson connected with director Francisco Solorzano, producer Kenny Shults and cinematographer Kesten Migdal.

“They knew how to take this idea and put it onscreen. And they were amazing. Frank knew how to shoot the things and what sort of emotional tone I wanted. They knew how to actually evoke it on screen,” says Patterson. “Frank was really able to bring out the loneliness of the whole script. He was great at thinking about the timing and the way it was shot. Just to let you as an audience member really sit in that was very much something that I think he pulled out or leaned into very well.”

When it came to casting, Patterson turned to Leo Smith, the father of her podcast co-host, who readily agreed to be the film’s sole actor. Smith was making his film debut at 90 years old.

“He’d never acted before in a film, but he was excited about doing this project and kind of commenting on mortality. And this was just his house, and his laundry. We brought in the ringer washing machine, but otherwise, he just did what he does.”

Patterson sees her film as making an important comment on the peril that comes in the solitary life of a stoic generation.

“I wanted to make a film that would have a positive social impact,” she says. “The line on the poster for the film says, ‘When was the last time you called?’ I’ve gotten a lot of feedback from audiences. First you see people cringing when they’re watching the film. And then it’s kind of nice, because it seems to be accomplishing what we wanted it to accomplish. Afterward, they’re like, ‘I need to call my, you know,’ fill in the blank.

“We can all think of people—especially of that generation—that that sort of resonates with,” Patterson adds. “So, there's been a lot of audience discussion around that, and around this sort of generational divide between then and now.”

Patterson aimed to make audiences sit with the discomfort.

“It's like, no, this isn’t pleasant,” says Patterson. “But it’s even worse if you don’t look, because then this person’s sitting alone having to navigate this.”

As for whether she has another film in the works, Patterson says she’s unsure.

“I think the pieces came together so well for this to happen. And I had wanted to do it for so long, in part to inform the other things I do. I think it makes sense to have some idea what it’s like to be on the other side of the camera and just understand what that process feels like. I have a lot of film students who come into my class. Now I can have a little bit of a connection point with them, having gone through this experience.”

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91��ý sociologist Laura Patterson makes screenwriting debut with short horror film “Silent Generation."

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Welcome to the Camping Games (now please show up)

Rachel Sauer — Tue, 20 Jan 2026 15:06:01 +0000

Welcome to the Camping Games (now please show up) Rachel Sauer Tue, 01/20/2026 - 08:06

Rachel Sauer

The world of campsite reservations is increasingly cutthroat, so why are so many campers not showing up? 91��ý economist Jon Hughes applies numerical modeling to understand campground no-shows

Throughout the United States, and especially here in the West, snagging a preferred public-land campsite has become a take-no-prisoners battle royale with little room for weakness or sleep or mercy.

If your friends seem especially haunted and jittery these days, it’s possibly because they’ve been up for hours, hitting refresh every 30 seconds on every computer, tablet and smartphone in the house, trying to reserve a summer campsite the millisecond it becomes available online—six months to the day in advance and at midnight for Colorado state parks and 8 a.m. MST for federal lands.

With so much summer enjoyment on the line, then, and reservations more precious than gold, it’s a central mystery of outdoor recreation why park managers and users report high summer campground vacancy rates due to no-shows.

Jon Hughes, a 91��ý associate professor of economics and Renewable and Sustainable Energy Institute fellow, found through numerical modeling that that increasing fees, either overnight fees or no-show fees, decreases campsite no-shows.

“I think we’ve all probably had this experience,” says Jon Hughes, a University of Colorado Boulder associate professor of economics and Renewable and Sustainable Energy Institute fellow. “You show up and the campground is half empty, and you think, ‘How is this possible? It was so hard to get this reservation.’

“I think part of it is it’s hard to know what our schedule’s going to look like in six months, so we make these reservations and optimistically tell ourselves we’ll be able to go camping—even up to the last minute.”

Based on his experiences as an outdoor recreator seeing no-shows firsthand and as an economics researcher who has long studied transportation and climate issues, Hughes wondered: How do park pricing policies contribute to no-shows—and the associated inefficiencies—and can policy changes correct these inefficiencies while meeting park managers’ goals of adequate revenue and improved access?

In research recently published in the Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Hughes aimed to answer these questions via numerical modeling, simulating pricing policies at a hypothetical but representative national park. He found, among other results, that increasing fees, either overnight fees or no-show fees, decreases no-shows, which on one hand is a positive outcome but doesn’t address the perennial issue of equitable access to public lands.

“One of the things park managers are always really worried about is equity,” Hughes says. “This is all of our land—this isn’t only for rich people. If you want to design a system where every site is used and sites go to people who most want to camp, you could just auction (reservations) off. In economic terms, that would be very efficient, but if you think your desire to camp is maybe positively correlated with income or wealth, it might create a system where certain folks are able to camp and others aren’t.”

The economics of no-shows

In part because of his own experiences trying to get a summertime campground reservation, and based on his previous research studying access to and use of public lands, Hughes began considering how to understand the economic impact of campground no-shows: “We have finite capacity (on these lands), so how we best use these resources I think is a really interesting question.”

He consulted with Montana State University Professor Will Rice, a former park ranger, whose research on management of public lands inspired Hughes to call him—a conversation that highlighted the growing problem of no-shows.

“I got off the phone with him and wrote down a simple, intermediate microeconomics model for how consumers would think about this decision (to cancel or no-show),” Hughes says. “There’s some desire to go camping, some understood utility you’d get from having a campground reservation and you pay some monetary fee to take that reservation, but then there’s some uncertainty.

“If you don’t go, you might have to pay a fee or you might have to pay with your time if you decide to cancel. If you can’t go, you think about, ‘How do I minimize the cost?’ That lends itself to a really simple economic model that generates some interesting predictions: If you make it more costly to cancel, people aren’t going to cancel and you’ll have more no-shows. If you charge a fee when people don’t show up, they’re less likely to no-show. The theory model predicts that raising (reservation) fees will discourage no-shows, but it actually leads to another effect where if you increase fees, that just makes it more expensive for everyone, whether they camp or no-show.”

“When I decide to no-show, I’m robbing you of the benefit of camping. My decision negatively impacts you, so how do we ensure that people who want to enjoy public lands are able to?” says 91��ý economist Jon Hughes. (Photo: Dave Hoefler/Unsplash)

Through numerical modeling, Hughes found that cancellation fees can increase or decrease no-shows when campground capacity constraints are not binding, but they strictly increase no-shows when capacity constraints are binding. Further, he found that increasing trip prices strictly decreases no-shows and that increasing no-show fees strictly decreases no-shows.

Simulating a $40 increase in reservation fees or no-show fees, he found that higher reservation prices could increase park revenue by as much as 56% but reduce consumer surplus. However, a $40 no-show fee might modestly increase park revenue but increase consumer surplus by as much as 12%.

Further, he notes in the paper, a $40 increase in reservation price increases the mean income of reservation holders by $2,900, or 2%, while a $40 increase in no-show fee causes little change in income. This could mean that no-show fees wouldn’t push access to public lands further out of reach for those in less wealthy income brackets.

He also estimated outcomes under an optimal no-show fee of $150—equal to the marginal external cost of a no-show, or the lost consumer surplus of a user denied a reservation—which eliminates no-shows and increases consumer surplus by 14%. But even the more modest $40 fee captures nearly all of the benefit of the optimal fee, Hughes found.

Enjoying public lands

All of this, of course, leads to the question of how to collect no-show fees.

“Your doctor is going to charge you if don’t show up, your car mechanic will charge you if don’t show up, my barber will charge me if I don’t show up,” Hughes says. “Logistically, charging a no-show fee is one of the challenges in managing public lands. The only places where it’s currently possible are staffed campgrounds, because hosts are there seeing who hasn’t shown up, but oftentimes a host doesn’t want to cause problems.

“I think technology can save us here. Recreation.gov has implemented an app with the added benefit of your phone knowing where it is all the time, or there are some areas now where you use geofencing. If you want to do the Wave at Coyote Buttes in Arizona, you can get a permit a day or two before your trip, but you have to be within a certain geographic area to get it. It might be possible to do the same with no-shows: You reserved this site, you go, your phone knows if you were there. This is a problem that’s solvable with technology.”

These findings, which Hughes will present to a group of economists with the U.S. Department of the Interior next month, solve two problems, he says: how to best optimize the limited capacity of America’s public lands, which are increasingly in demand, and how to address a “negative externality.”

“When I decide to no-show, I’m robbing you of the benefit of camping,” Hughes explains. “My decision negatively impacts you, so how do we ensure that people who want to enjoy public lands are able to?”

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The world of campsite reservations is increasingly cutthroat, so why are so many campers not showing up? 91��ý economist Jon Hughes applies numerical modeling to understand campground no-shows.

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Top photo: Xue Guangjian/Pexels

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