USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences
USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences is the heart of the University of Southern California. The largest, oldest and most diverse of USC’s 19 schools, USC Dornsife is composed of more than 30 departments and dozens of research centers and institutes. USC Dornsife is home to approximately 10,000 undergraduate and graduate students and more than 750 faculty members with expertise across a spectrum of academic fields.
Our frontline scholars are working to find solutions to society’s toughest challenges by advancing human health, preserving and improving our environment, and strengthening our communities. Together, we are defining scholarship of consequence for the 21st century.
Wolf Gruner, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences
Finding the stories of individual Jews who fought the Nazis publicly and at great peril helped a scholar see history differently: that Jews were not passive. Instead, they actively fought the Nazis.
Kris Pardo, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences
Astronomer Caroline Herschel’s work discovering and cataloging astronomical objects in the 18th century is still used in the field today, but she didn’t always get her due credit.
Emily Lindsey, University of California, Los Angeles; Lisa N. Martinez, University of California, Los Angeles, and Regan E. Dunn, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences
New findings from the La Brea Tar Pits in southern California suggest human-caused wildfires in the region, along with a warming climate, led to the loss of most of the area’s large mammals.
Ian Anderson, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences; Gizem Ceylan, Yale University, and Wendy Wood, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences
Fighting misinformation doesn’t have to involve restricting content or dampening people’s enthusiasm for sharing it. The key is turning bad habits into good ones.
Pat Robertson, founder of the global Christian Broadcasting Network, blended religion into American politics and played an important role in the Republican Party.
Lindsey Schier, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences and Scott Kanoski, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences
The WHO report concluded that habitual use of nonsugar sweeteners is linked to a modest increase in diabetes, hypertension and stroke. But the research it’s based on has limitations.
Darby Saxbe, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences
How you tell the story of a momentous event can help you make sense of what happened. Research finds new moms’ and dads’ narratives around childbirth held clues about their transition to parenthood.
The constitutionality of the recent wave of proposed book bans is unclear, as the US Supreme Court has given states wide latitude to regulate what is read in public schools and libraries.
Ryan Leack, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences
Ancient Greek philosophers despised the Sophists’ rhetoric because it searched for relative truth, not absolutes. But learning how to do that thoughtfully can help constructive debates.
Patrick James, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences
It’s been more than 20 years since the US invaded Iraq, but the invasion still provides a cautionary tale about getting involved in an expensive war abroad.
The handling of US classified information received another stain as a 21-year-old Air National Guardsman stands accused of mishandling secret documents on US allies and the war in Ukraine.
Dana and David Dornsife Professor of Psychology and Director of the Wrigley Institute for Environment and Sustainability, USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences