Research

What’s that knocking in the trees?

Rachel Sauer — Wed, 04 Feb 2026 21:44:37 +0000

What’s that knocking in the trees? Rachel Sauer Wed, 02/04/2026 - 14:44

Kayleigh Wood

In new book, CU Boulder folklorist Jack Daly bridges the gap between academic research and Colorado legend

It was well into the evening when Jack Daly and a small group of legend trippers, organized by the Sasquatch Outpost in Bailey, Colorado, made their descent into the forests just 30 minutes outside of town. Owned and operated by Jim and Daphne Myers, the site hosts numerous Bigfoot events, from meetings to night hikes led by Bigfoot researcher Jim Myers himself.

During these hikes, which occur about once a month, Myers serves as the outpost’s liaison into what the Sasquatch Outpost’s booking website describes as “the realm of the Forest People.” Here, visitors might experience numerous encounters with Bigfoot in the form of vocalizations, footprints, knocking on trees and airborne rocks thrown in the direction of the group.

Folklorist Jack Daly, an instructor in the CU Boulder Program for Writing and Rhetoric, explores the supernatural, unexplainable and unnerving in his book Eerie Colorado: Mountain Folklore, Monsters and Tales of the Supernatural.

On that particular hike, deep in the forest, Daly and the group were startled—not by flying rocks or breaking branches, but by what he describes as “a giant silver orb just flying overhead, and we all saw it. We stopped, and it disappeared. There’s no flashing lights. It was not in, like, full orbit.”

This UFO encounter was notably different from the one he experienced in high school, when he and a friend witnessed a glowing blue orb hovering above a meadow, moving from one place to another at random intervals, for several minutes.

Daly shares this experience and more in his recently published book, Eerie Colorado: Mountain Folklore, Monsters and Tales of the Supernatural. Thursday evening, Daly will host an event at the Boulder Bookstore, where attendees will have the opportunity to learn more about Colorado’s supernatural folklore through the eyes of an expert.

Eerie Colorado

Jack Daly will speak about and sign his new book, Eerie Colorado: Mountain Folklore, Monsters and Tales of the Supernatural.

Where: Boulder Bookstore, 1107 Pearl St.

When: 6:30 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 5.

Learn more

In his book, Daly, a lecturer in the �Թ�� of Colorado Boulder Program for Writing and Rhetoric, explores all things supernatural, unexplainable and unnerving in the Centennial State. Beyond simply organizing these legends in one volume, Daly grapples with the role supernatural folklore plays in the historical and contemporary culture of Colorado. Enmeshing his own personal testimony and the testimonies of the individuals he interviewed on his own with existing scholarly research, he divides his findings into two categories: the corporeal, which he describes in his book as creatures of “‘flesh-and-blood,’” and the incorporeal, referring to the entities that lack physical bodies.

Daly used ethnographic methods in his research, conducting interviews and documenting participant observation, a qualitative research method in which scholars immerse themselves in a setting and attempt to observe as many individuals as possible to draw conclusions about a specific culture. He uses the term “memorate” to classify the personal experience narratives throughout the book, including some of his own, as well as the experiences of his family members. Jim Myers of the Sasquatch Outpost shared a personal Bigfoot encounter for the book—a sighting that Myers dubbed as a Class A experience, which is an encounter at close range, where the viewer can confidently rule out all natural explanations.

Monsters, legends and the supernatural

Beyond the memorates, Daly’s fieldwork has taken him to as many of the sites featured in the book as possible for his research.

As a folklorist, Daly’s research focuses on monsters, legends and the supernatural. In 2023, he received the American Folklore Society’s Warren E. Roberts Prize in Folk Art and Material Culture for his piece “Devil in the Skies, Stars on the Barns: The Snallygaster, Hex Signs, and Barn Stars.” He earned a master’s degree in folklore and is currently pursuing a PhD in American studies at Pennsylvania State �Թ��, where he was a recipient of the 2022-23 �Թ�� Graduate Fellowship.

Daly explains that his research champions scholarship while validating personal experience, noting that “people’s experiences with the supernatural are much more common than we give them credit for.” As a folklorist and scholar of belief, he says, he takes an “ethnographic, folkloristic [and] anthropological approach,” striving to avoid approaching all things eerie and inconceivable from “a position of disbelief in regards to the supernatural,” which he refers to in Eerie Colorado as a believer-skeptic binary.

In the book’s introduction, Daly makes clear that he is unconcerned with the reality of monsters, unexplainable phenomena and supernatural beings. He approaches his research from a place of neither belief nor disbelief, but with the aim of analyzing how these stories, which trend across time and place, function on a cultural and personal level.

In his book Eerie Colorado, author Jack Daly grapples with the role supernatural folklore plays in the historical and contemporary culture of Colorado.

Daly’s UFO encounter in the hills outside Bailey, which occurred only a couple of months ago, reinforces why his research approach for Eerie Colorado is helpful. Quite often, accounts of strange phenomena come from individuals who are skeptical themselves. Daly and the group simultaneously saw a silver orb enter their field of vision before it disappeared altogether; they couldn’t explain or verify it, but they all had the same experience.

Across the folklore field, Daly says, many scholars have begun to approach the supernatural through a similar, experience-based approach championed by David Hufford, a folklorist and ethnologist whose theories Daly draws from in Eerie Colorado. When Daly approaches legends, he says he strives to address them “more literally. As they literally happened,” adding that this approach “was heavily, heavily stigmatized for, you know, over 100 years when the processes of rationalism and empiricism and enlightenment [were] the overriding paradigms in academia and within intellectual culture more broadly.”

Yet the study of folklore appears to be changing, and Daly isn’t the only scholar in the field of belief studies who is interested in how legends function in a larger cultural context. He notes a newfound “openness that scholars are engaging with, in terms of thinking: This person literally did see a UFO. This person literally did see Bigfoot. This person literally did see a ghost, which is, I think, an interesting new movement that I want to keep on pursuing.”

‘I know what I saw’

In the process of writing Eerie Colorado, Daly notes his attempts to balance academic scholarship and theory with folklore in an approachable way. Tapping into existing scholarship and attempting to draw conclusions about the role of the legend in Colorado culture, Eerie Colorado takes on a new perspective—one supported by research.

Ready for a legend trip of your own?

Jack Daly uses the term “legend trip” in his book Eerie Colorado, which he describes as a visit to a site associated with a supernatural legend, where individuals often try to interact with a legend through rituals or “tests.” For those who want to get up close and personal with some of the local legends featured in Eerie Colorado, Daly has both visited and recommends these sites:

The Stanley Hotel in Estes Park. For Daly, the Stanley is a prime example of “the transformative effect that the supernatural can have in reality.” Before The Shining, he notes, the site was “in disrepair. It was falling apart. People weren’t really going to Estes Park. Stephen King goes there, he has a supernatural encounter ostensibly. It causes him to write the book… the book turns into a movie… And then that literally transforms the culture surrounding both Estes Park and the Stanley Hotel. It was repaired. It is now a destination. It’s super, super nice.”

The Vampire Grave in Lafayette, where, according to legend, a tree grew from a stake used to kill a vampire. Check out Daly’s viral TikTok at the Vampire Grave at @thefolklord

The Molly Brown House in Denver, which is rumored to be haunted by both Molly and her husband.

The Denver Botanic Gardens October Ghost Tours

Cheeseman Park in Denver, which some consider one of the most haunted sites in Denver as it was built over the Mount Prospect Cemetery, where thousands are still buried.

For those interested in legends they can explore from the comfort of their homes, Daly recommends the Digital Folklore podcast, hosted by Perry Carpenter and Mason Amadeus. Described on their website as a “fusion of audio drama and narrative documentary,” the pair dive into internet legends, monsters and conspiracy theories “through the lens of academic folklore.” Like Daly, they strive to use these legends to draw broader cultural connections, rather than simply collecting and platforming them.

After reading some of the existing books about Colorado folklore, Daly noticed a trend: “They don’t cite their sources. They are clearly unfamiliar with the broader scholarship that would give them a much deeper level [of understanding].” In Eerie Colorado, Daly describes how many previous publications on Colorado folklore will present a story and let it speak for itself, without attempting to interpret the function these stories might serve to the local people. Daly sought to remedy this gap in the literature with his book, attempting to make meaning out of popular Colorado legends by situating them within a broader cultural context and tracing their developments across time and place.

“There’s one thing you notice with legends: They migrate,” says Daly. He argues that legends, even those that appear specific to Colorado, can often be situated in “a broader legend complex [tied] into other variants that we see across not just the United States, but the entire world.”

For example, the Phantom Jogger of Riverdale Road in Thornton, which Daly covers in Eerie Colorado, closely mimics the more commonly known story of the Vanishing Hitchhiker, which has been well documented by folklorists since the 1940s, Daly notes in his book. According to Thornton legend, a jogger was killed in a hit and run on Riverdale Road and left to haunt the site of the crash.

Daly sets the scene: “You’ll be driving along the road, and you’ll see this jogger, and sometimes they’ll ask you for a ride. They’ll get in the car, and then they’ll disappear. And so that’s a variant of the Vanishing Hitchhiker, but it’s a Colorado version because it’s athletic. It’s a jogger.”

In both cases, the disappearing hitchhikers and Thornton’s jogger often leave behind a mark of their presence. According to the local legends Daly documents in Eerie Colorado, those who are eager to drive down Riverdale Road and are brave enough to pull over may hear footsteps approaching them or fists banging against the sides of their car, or they may find handprints left on the outside of their vehicle.

Daly’s UFO sightings can also be linked back to popular legends of the past. When he was in high school, Daly and a friend “saw a giant blue orb flying over a field.” He details in Eerie Colorado that similar visual experiences are not uncommon and have been well documented across history, often known by a host of different names. “They’ve been connected with fairies,” Daly shares. “They’ve been connected with Bigfoot as well. They’re a common thing that people have described seeing.”

Throughout history and the contemporary era, countless individuals have witnessed strange phenomena in the skies that they cannot explain. Regardless of whether they interpret these sightings as flying saucers, massive fireballs or ships of fairies on the way to Magonia, Daly’s book guides readers through trends in firsthand accounts of the supernatural while tracking them across history. Popular creatures and entities that have taken on legendary status may be known by various names, but like the Vanishing Hitchhiker and the Phantom Jogger, the original legend and its local offspring often retain the same key attributes.

As for where he falls on the spectrum of belief in the supernatural, Daly says, “I do believe, honestly. And part of it has come from my own personal experience.” Recalling the silver orb in the skies near Bailey, he reflects, “I don’t know what it was, but I had that encounter. Like, I know that I know what I saw, and that’s what people say: I know what I saw. My experience was my experience, and that’s what I found in doing my fieldwork as well.”

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In new book, CU Boulder folklorist Jack Daly bridges the gap between academic research and Colorado legend.

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Top image: the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado, with illustrative glow (Photo: Carol Highsmith/Wikimedia Commons)

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

CU Boulder 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 �Թ�� 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.”

CU Boulder 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 CU Boulder 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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CU Boulder 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

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? CU Boulder 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 CU Boulder 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 �Թ�� 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 �Թ�� 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 CU Boulder 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? CU Boulder economist Jon Hughes applies numerical modeling to understand campground no-shows.

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Top photo: Xue Guangjian/Pexels

What are the little red dots deep in space?

Rachel Sauer — Fri, 16 Jan 2026 15:28:58 +0000

What are the little red dots deep in space? Rachel Sauer Fri, 01/16/2026 - 08:28

Blake Puscher

�Թ�� of Colorado researchers work with an international team to uncover more about the mysterious objects detected by the James Webb Space Telescope

As the largest telescope in outer space, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has been able to view celestial objects that are too dim or distant for its predecessors to detect. As a result, it has helped astronomers look deeper into topics like galaxy formation. However, the JWST can see only so far, and at the edge of its vision some of the most interesting recent astronomical observations have been made, in the form of strange, seemingly impossible objects.

They are small, red-tinted spots of light and were descriptively named little red dots (LRDs). Information on them is limited, though they are known to be extremely dense and to have existed twelve to thirteen billion years ago (for context, the Big Bang was slightly less than fourteen billion years ago). What can be seen of them now are afterimages, because looking so far into space also means looking back in time; even light takes a while to make it between galaxies. There are several theories about what LRDs are, but none of them can completely reconcile the evidence with established astronomical principles.

CU Boulder astrophysicist Erica Nelson and an international team of research colleagues found evidence that the little red dot dubbed Irony is a growing supermassive black hole, which suggests that at least some of the other little red dots are as well.

Erica Nelson, an assistant professor of astrophysics at the �Թ�� of Colorado Boulder and one of the researchers who first discovered LRDs, recently published a study that focuses on a specific LRD dubbed Irony. The study was co-led by Francesco D’Eugenio at Cambridge �Թ�� and included CU Boulder PhD student Vanessa Brown as well as an international team of scientists. They found evidence that Irony is a growing supermassive black hole, which suggests that at least some of the other LRDs are as well.

Little red dots

According to Nelson, there are two main interpretations of what little red dots are. “Either they are really massive galaxies, or they are growing supermassive black holes,” she says. The two can be difficult to distinguish because both are very luminous. Massive galaxies are luminous because they typically have more stars, but “contrary to what most people expect, supermassive black holes are incredibly luminous” too, Nelson continues, “especially when they’re growing.”

Either of these possibilities would have implications for our understanding of the history of the universe. If LRDs are massive galaxies, “it could mean that early galaxies grow much more rapidly than we think they should be able to,” Nelson explains. That could be because their stars formed in a different way than how scientists have observed stars to form previously.

If they are supermassive black holes, they could be a phase in the development of black holes long hypothesized by CU Boulder professor Mitch Begelman, though never observed. “For a long time, we have tried to understand how supermassive black holes can grow so fast,” Nelson says. If LRDs represent an early phase of supermassive black hole growth, it could help narrow down the possibilities for how they form, “which has been a mystery for a really, really long time.”

Regardless of what the answer is, if it falls into one of these interpretations, it will provide insight into a broader question: whether galaxies or supermassive black holes formed first. That matters because most large galaxies, including the Milky Way, seem to have supermassive black holes at their centers. So, even if LRDs are black holes, that fact will have implications for galaxy formation.

The Irony is…

Irony is the name of the LRD with the deepest medium-resolution JWST spectroscopy to date. Spectroscopy is a way of determining what elements objects are made of, along with other characteristics like density and heat, based on the light coming from them. Irony is an incredibly bright object, giving off more light than other LRDs, so the researchers were able to get more details about it using spectroscopy. Upon examination, these details reveal several oddities.

Images of little red dots captured by the James Webb Space Telescope. (Photo: NASA)

“One is that it was the first time we have detected forbidden iron lines in any distant object,” Nelson says. Spectroscopy uses lines in a spectrum to represent the types of light coming from an object, and this pattern of lines corresponds to iron. The reason they are considered forbidden is technical and not immediately relevant; their detection is significant because scientists do not expect to find iron in something as old as an LRD. “The universe began with just hydrogen and helium,” Nelson explains. “There was no carbon, no oxygen and no iron.”

Heavier elements like iron were produced in the cores of stars over several generations through nuclear fusion. When older generations of stars went supernova, they launched heavier elements than what they formed out of into space, to be picked up by newer generations of stars and fused into even heavier elements. “So, seeing a lot of iron at very early cosmic times means that there had to have been a lot of generations of star formation very rapidly,” Nelson says. Iron in particular is the heaviest element that a star can create during normal hydrogen fusion (the others are only made during supernovae), so it is strange to find iron in older objects.

Another oddity is the strength of Irony’s Balmer breaks, which are breaks in the spectrum of light coming from an object. “The thing we have started to find in some of these little red dots, and especially in Irony, is that the breaks are too strong and too smooth to be produced by stars,” Nelson explains. “No model we can generate produces a break like that, so we think, instead of the atmospheres of a bunch of old stars, it is actually this single atmosphere around a growing supermassive black hole.”

These features suggest that Irony is a supermassive black hole rather than a massive galaxy. Other LRDs may not be the same as Irony, but making this determination about Irony strengthens the argument that some LRDs are supermassive black holes.

Black hole sun

All of this raises a question: What does it mean for Irony and potentially other LRDs to be black holes if LRDs do not fit cleanly into the category of either galaxies or black holes? “The kind of supermassive black holes that these things might be, and that a subset of them likely are, is nothing like any supermassive black holes we’ve seen before,” Nelson answers. They could be a new class of object, called black hole stars or quasi-stars that have been hypothesized by CU Boulder professors Mitch Begelman and Jason Dexter, that in some ways look like incredibly large stars but function differently.

“Instead of being powered by nuclear fusion like our sun and all other stars are, they’re being powered by the energy that is radiated when matter falls into the supermassive black hole,” Nelson explains. This energy comes from the gravitational potential of the objects. Similar to how charging a battery allows it to release energy later, moving an object into a place like the edge of a cliff “charges” it with energy that will be released when it falls. This gravitational potential would be especially strong because of how much gravity black holes of this size exert.

“It’s been a really cool time in extragalactic astrophysics because a big segment of our field is pitching in and collaborating to try to figure out a true mystery that the universe has shown us."

Another telling detail is the mention of an atmosphere around the supermassive black hole, which is not part of the common image of a black hole. “Normally,” Nelson says, “you have the supermassive black hole, and then an accretion disk around it.” The accretion disk is the glowing ring and halo that has appeared in many depictions of black holes in popular culture. “The new theory of these black hole stars is that there is almost spherical accretion.” However, this is a more theoretical aspect of the research, and there are different opinions about the structure that this type of black hole would have.

More research is planned to help resolve these ambiguities, and several JWST proposals for next year are designed to help. Two major points that Nelson identifies are collecting data on more LRDs to understand the variations that exist between them and collecting new data to see if previously observed LRDs have changed since they were first documented.

“Maybe some of them are massive galaxies, maybe some of them are black hole stars, maybe some of them are something else entirely,” she says. “It also helps to have information at different times because things as compact as black holes should show variation on very short timescales, so that will tell us a lot about the nature of the object.

“It’s been a really cool time in extragalactic astrophysics,” Nelson continues, “because a big segment of our field is pitching in and collaborating to try to figure out a true mystery that the universe has shown us. It’s also a strange time, because a lot of funding has been cut from astrophysics in particular. But with support, it could be a golden era in astrophysics. A lot of new discoveries will be made with James Webb. We really are just at the beginning of the data that we’re getting.”

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�Թ�� of Colorado researchers work with an international team to uncover more about the mysterious objects detected by the James Webb Space Telescope.

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Inferring the evolutionary tree of antelope ground squirrels

Rachel Sauer — Fri, 16 Jan 2026 15:25:19 +0000

Inferring the evolutionary tree of antelope ground squirrels Rachel Sauer Fri, 01/16/2026 - 08:25

Jeff Mitton

Desert dwellers offer evidence that genes carried by an individual store information that literally reaches back millions of years

Sitting in my campsite at Goblin Valley State Park, I saw an antelope ground squirrel standing erect on its back feet, which I found amusing. I soon found that this was a common posture evoked by vigilance. Antelope ground squirrels are in the genus Ammospermophilus, which has five species, all in North America. I was watching white-tailed antelope ground squirrels, A. leucurus, the only antelope ground squirrel in Colorado and Utah.

Antelope ground squirrels (AGS) occur primarily in deserts, including Great Basin, San Joaquin, Mojave, Peninsular, Sonoran and Chihuahuan. They also occur in dryland environments like sagebrush communities and some grasslands. Most species of ground squirrels hibernate, but living in relatively warm and dry environments allows AGS to be active year round.

AGS have several adaptations that allow them to live in the deserts of the western United States and Mexico. Later that day, in the heat of the afternoon, AGS were walking with their white tails coiled above their backs to shed their own portable shade. They would also linger in the shade of a piñon pine, dumping heat by stretching out their legs and pressing their bellies onto the soil. This posture is used frequently in their burrows, between bouts of foraging on the surface. Their body temperatures can rise to 108 to 110 degrees F without damage, much higher than most mammals.

AGS are adapted to deserts or drylands and A. leucurus occupies the greatest distribution, including Oregon, Idaho, California, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico and the Baja California Peninsula. Background reading turned up a paper in a scientific journal that nicely demonstrated, with AGS, how biologists can utilize DNA sequences to infer an evolutionary tree of the genus, and to not only estimate the date that the genus first arose but also infer when and where each species arose.

Antelope ground squirrels occur primarily in deserts and also in dryland environments like sagebrush communities and some grasslands. (Photo: Jeff Mitton)

From 10 million years ago to the end of the Miocene, 5.33 million years ago, a single lineage sustained the ancestors of AGS, but approximately 4 million years ago, as deserts were spreading and developing in the Southwest, the lineage split into three clades. That is, from a solitary trunk the tree of AGS sprouted three branches. A. interpres evolved east of the Sea of Cortez, A. leucurus south ranged from the southern tip of Baja to the middle of the peninsula and A. leucurus north ranged from the middle of Baja to Oregon and Idaho.

Fewer than 1 million years ago, another three species evolved. Pioneers from the leucurus south clade colonized two small islands east of Baja in the Sea of Cortez and evolved into A. insularis. The leucurus north form spread into the San Joaquin Desert in California and evolved into A. nelsoni, and subsequently the AGS in Arizona and northern Mexico evolved into A. harrisii. A. leucurus still ranges from the southern tip of Baja to Oregon and Idaho, but within A. leucurus nine subspecies are recognized today.

Dates on the AGS phylogenetic tree were estimated with mutation rates in three genes and with fossil data. A. insularis, A. harrisii and A nelsonii evolved recently, with an average of 0.32 million years ago. On a different continent, modern humans evolved around 0.20 to 0.30 million years ago—approximately the same time.

At first, the differentiation of A. leucurus into northern and southern forms or clades seems curious, but similar vicariances or taxonomic boundaries have been noted in systematic and biogeographic studies of other mammals, birds, fish and insects. The barrier has been attributed to the Vizcaíno Seaway, which is now the Vizcaíno Desert. While systematists agree that there was a barrier to gene flow near the middle of the Baja Peninsula, estimates from different studies yield different estimates, which vary from 1 to 3 million years ago. One description of the modern desert mentions multiple marine terraces, but another states flatly that there is no convincing evidence of an open, freely flowing seaway. Perhaps the marine terraces were formed by recurrent, ephemeral lagoons or marshes that were sufficient to disrupt gene flow.

Studies like this one emphasize the point that the genes carried by an individual store information that literally reaches back millions of years. Historical biogeographers working with genetic data in animals or plants or microbes can peer through the roiling mists of time to infer relationships among species, to detect speciations and extinctions and to map the migrations of species driven by glacial cycles. Similar techniques to those used in this study of AGS were used to map the migration routes that brought humans from southern Africa to every continent, archipelago and island in the world. Furthermore, our genome carries the evidence that humans hybridized with Neanderthals in Europe and the Middle East and Denisovans in Siberia.

Jeff Mitton is a professor emeritus in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the �Թ�� of Colorado Boulder. His column, "Natural Selections," is also printed in the Boulder Daily Camera.

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Desert dwellers offer evidence that genes carried by an individual store information that literally reaches back millions of years.

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Scholar highlights the Venezuela-Cuba connection

Rachel Sauer — Thu, 15 Jan 2026 23:37:58 +0000

Scholar highlights the Venezuela-Cuba connection Rachel Sauer Thu, 01/15/2026 - 16:37

Bradley Worrell

The two countries have developed deep ties over the past two decades, but it’s unclear what impact recent U.S. actions against Venezuela will have on Havana’s government, CU Boulder Latin America researcher Jen Triplett says

The United States military raid that snatched Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife from the presidential palace on Jan. 3 likely rattled the Cuban government in Havana as much as it did the Venezuelan regime in Caracas.

That’s because the two Latin American governments have become deeply intertwined during the past 25 years, says Jen Triplett, a �Թ�� of Colorado Boulder political and cultural sociologist whose research is heavily focused on Cuba in the 10-year period following the Jan. 1, 1959, revolution led by Fidel Castro. She also has studied Venezuelan history from 1999 to 2013, when former President Hugo Chavez ran the country as a socialist.

“I study how leaders leveraged ideological projects to bolster their consolidation of political, military and economic power. Usually, we think of consolidation in terms of politics, economy and military, but ideology—especially when a transitionary government is motivated by it—is another important factor,” Triplett explains.

Jen Triplett, a CU Boulder assistant professor of sociology, notes that the governments of Venezuela and Cuba have become deeply intertwined over the past 25 years.

While many people in the U.S. tend to think about Cuba in connection with the Cold War and its relationship with the Soviet Union, Triplett says Cuban politics in the 1960s and 1970s was equally focused on what was happening in Latin America. Its relationship with Venezuela during those years was largely fraught, she adds.

The Castro-Chavez partnership years

“Cuba didn’t have much to do with Venezuela until Hugo Chavez came to power in 1998,” she says. “Once it became apparent that Chavez had socialist ambitions—nationalizing the oil industry and redistributing wealth—that caught Castro’s eye.”

By the early 2000s, the two men had forged a bond that was both personal and political. That alliance was pragmatic as well as ideological, Triplett says.

Venezuela, rich in oil, could provide Cuba with the energy resources it needs. In return, Cuba could provide Venezuela with something of value it had: human capital.

“Chavez wanted to focus on giving impoverished Venezuelans what they’d been missing—basic needs and resources—by investing in public education and health infrastructure,” Triplett says. “Cuban doctors allowed him to establish the Barrio Adentro program, bringing health care into urban slums for people who historically lacked access to primary care.”

For Chavez, the relationship was a way to deliver on promises for social justice, while for Castro it was a means to sustain Cuba’s economy and extend its influence in the region, she says. For a time, the two leaders envisioned their relationship could help inspire a wave of socialist-leaning leaders in Latin America that could reshape hemispheric relations and challenge U.S. dominance in the region, she adds.

Maduro’s struggle and Cuba’s deepening role

After Chavez died in March 2013, he was succeeded by his vice president and chosen successor, Maduro. Officially, the Venezuelan-Cuban alliance continued, but the dynamics of the relationship changed, as Maduro lacked Chavez’s charisma and legitimacy, Triplett says.

“Chavez had multiple sources of authority—traditional, rational-legal and charismatic,” she explains. “Maduro is a poor imitation. From day one, people recognized this.”

Lower oil prices and economic mismanagement exacerbated problems, Triplett says. As Venezuela’s economy spiraled downward, reports surfaced that Cuban military and intelligence personnel were actively supporting Maduro—a claim underscored by the recent U.S. raid to capture Maduro, which killed more than 30 Cuban operatives.

“It’s not surprising,” Triplett says. “Cuba’s meager resources include people power. Loyal Cuban military personnel would support efforts to create similar governments elsewhere.”

In 2002, Chavez survived a coup attempt by his own generals. Given Maduro’s precarious position, it’s perhaps not surprising he believed he could trust Cuban military personnel over his own military, Triplett says.

“Maduro’s paranoia likely intensified because he never commanded the same authority as Chavez,” she adds.

For Hugo Chavez, the relationship with Cuba was a way to deliver on promises for social justice, while for Fidel Castro it was a means to sustain Cuba’s economy and extend its influence in the region, says CU Boulder scholar Jen Triplett. (Photo: Hugo Chavez, Fidel Castro and Nelson Mandela on a billboard in Cuba; Wikimedia Commons)

What comes next for Venezuela?

U.S. intervention in Venezuela—with attacks on reported drug boats departing Venezuela and the capture and extradition of Maduro to the United States—raises questions about the durability of the Cuban-Venezuelan alliance, Triplett says. Still, the removal of Maduro does not necessarily constitute regime change, she adds.

“Replacing him with his vice president, who is steeped in Chavismo, isn’t a real shift,” she says. “Cuba, meanwhile, is on high alert, wondering if they are next. If Venezuela’s new president were to play ball with the U.S., Cuba could lose petrodollars and a valuable lifeline. Whether that happens, I can’t say, but it could be an easy concession by Venezuela.”

Predicting what the future holds for Venezuela and Cuba is hazy at best, Triplett says.

“Both countries share high discontent and outward migration. People are exhausted—too tired to overthrow their governments,” she says. “Cuba’s opposition is even less organized than Venezuela’s. The key difference is foreign intervention. Without it, Maduro would still be in power.”

Prior to Chavez, Venezuela did have a functioning democracy, so Triplett says it’s possible to envision that under the right conditions it could return.

“Neither Venezuelans nor Cubans are monolithic, but Venezuelans largely want democracy—and they remember having it. That’s something that’s been largely absent from U.S. conversations,” she adds, noting America has a long history of military involvement in the affairs of Latin American countries.

Triplett is a member of the Venezuelan studies section of Latin American Studies Association, which recently issued a statement chastising the Maduro government for not honoring the results of the country’s 2024 presidential elections and for cracking down on political dissent. That statement also condemned the U.S. government’s capture of Maduro in a military operation as a violation of international law because it does not appear to be designed to restore democracy to the country but instead seems to be part of efforts to control the country’s resources.

Humanitarian crisis deepens in Cuba

Meanwhile, the conditions in Cuba are disheartening, says Triplett, who has visited the country regularly since 2012, most recently spending four weeks there last summer.

“This last trip was palpably different—an unprecedented struggle for daily survival,” she says. “Blackouts are routine. Outside of Havana, electricity is rarer than outages. Running water is unreliable, forcing residents to pay privately for water trucks, and mosquito-borne illnesses have surged. Meanwhile, Cuba has lost about quarter of its population in four years, mostly working-age people, creating a demographic crisis.”

Triplett soberingly describes Cuba’s near-term outlook as enduring a “polycrisis” that includes economic collapse, political dissent and unmet basic needs, largely because the government has not invested in its infrastructure since the Soviet Union’s collapse.

“People are disillusioned with the government,” she says. “Some had hoped the passing of the Castro brothers would change things, but it hasn’t. Endogenous regime change seems unlikely—too few people, too exhausted and too much repression. Fixing the situation would require massive resources and political will that the government lacks.”

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Top image: iStock

Modesty is not a solo sport

Rachel Sauer — Wed, 14 Jan 2026 18:21:49 +0000

Modesty is not a solo sport Rachel Sauer Wed, 01/14/2026 - 11:21

Clay Bonnyman Evans

If it doesn’t include social interaction, norms and a desire not to offend, it’s not modesty, CU Boulder philosopher Derick Hughes argues

When it comes to definition, “modesty” doesn’t seem all that modest.

Consider that Webster’s Dictionary offers nine definitions of the word, with a profusion of meanings. Modesty can denote everything from modesty in dress and appearance to the estimation or presentation of one’s abilities, the size of a house, reserve and prudishness.

Derick Hughes, a lecturer in philosophy at the �Թ�� of Colorado Boulder who specializes in moral psychology and ethics, says the concept of modesty is less concrete than perceived virtues.

Derick Hughes, a CU Boulder lecturer in philosophy, argues that the concept of modesty is less concrete than perceived virtues.

“No one really thinks that compassion, honesty or generosity are elusive traits. We don’t find them puzzling in any way,” he says. “But modesty and humility are much more elusive. There are so many ways to describe and interpret them, which makes them valuable.”

In his paper, “Modesty’s Inoﬀensive Self-Presentation,” published in the journal Philosophical Psychology, Hughes offers an interpersonal view of modesty “that requires an emotional disposition sensitive to causing others offense based upon one’s self-presentation.”

Following the lead of the 19th- and early-20th-century psychologist and philosopher William James, Hughes makes the case that self-contained modesty isn’t really modesty at all. It requires social interaction.

“Modesty cannot be purely internal and private,” he says. “It has to be something more deeply social and emotional. … There has to be a shared sense that some content, action or behavior could provoke offense” to another person.

For example, a person may minimize his or her talents, but if it’s not expressed somehow to at least one other person, that’s not quite modesty. “Inoffensive self-presentation,” whether in dress, behavior, estimation of one’s talents or something else, is about gauging how others will receive and perceive one’s actions.

Modesty depends on norms and therefore can vary widely within different cultures, religions, families, friendships and situations, Hughes argues.

For example, wearing flip-flops, shorts and no shirt to a job interview violates norms and could cause offense (not to mention the candidate being dismissed as unfit), as could boasting about one’s wealth in the presence of people of more—ahem—modest means, or a boxer standing over a vanquished foe and yelling about his feat.

Or consider worship ceremonies. In some traditions, silence is the norm, whereas in others, exuberant shouting, clapping and singing is expected.

Hughes observes that even seemingly similar circumstances can influence what’s perceived as modest.

“When you talk about two people sharing the same goal or directly competing to win a competition, that seems to be a case where you would temper your attitude and responses toward the other person,” he says.

Modesty is in the eye of the beholder

“No one really thinks that compassion, honesty or generosity are elusive traits. We don’t find them puzzling in any way. But modesty and humility are much more elusive. There are so many ways to describe and interpret them."

On the other hand, when not in an adversarial or competitive situation, “there is more room to poke and prod other people to keep at it, to do better. If I’m a successful author, and I know you are writing a book, I might not hold back because I want to cultivate your interest or keep [you] pursuing your goal,” Hughes says.

And modesty is often in the eye of the beholder. Russian mathematician Gregori Perelman declined the $1 million Clay Millennium Prize in 2010 and has kept himself in virtual seclusion ever since. He explained that “if the proof is correct, then no other recognition is needed,” noted that mathematics depends on collaboration, and declared, “I’m not interested in money or fame; I don’t want to be on display like an animal in a zoo.”

While many perceived his refusal as modesty, some thought he was engaged in “arrogant humility” and was “being braggadocious by declining participation,” Hughes says.

Norms are critical to perceptions of modesty, he notes. For example, one study found that Canadians consider concealing one’s positive contributions to society to be dishonest, whereas Chinese people did not. “Chinese adults rated deception in such situations positively while rating truth-telling in the same situations negatively,” according to the study. “These cross-cultural differences appear to reflect differential emphases on the virtue of modesty in the two cultures.”

Immodesty even can be considered virtuous in some situations. For example, women violated norms of modesty when some began driving in Saudi Arabia in contravention of societal rules and expectations. That societal “immodesty” ultimately led to women being extended the right to drive.

Though generally thought of as a virtue, modesty may not be so virtuous in the face of “problematic norms,” Hughes says.

To be truly modest, modesty requires social interaction, the acceptance of norms and “a disposition to avoid offending others,” Hughes argues.

That definition, he concludes, can account for “the variety of modesty norms concerning one’s merits and achievements, personal objects and traditional modesty norms in dress and self-presentation.”

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If it doesn’t include social interaction, norms and a desire not to offend, it’s not modesty, CU Boulder philosopher Derick Hughes argues.

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Top sculpture: "Modesty" by Giosuè Argenti (1866)

Flashpoint: Taiwan

Rachel Sauer — Fri, 09 Jan 2026 22:19:40 +0000

Flashpoint: Taiwan Rachel Sauer Fri, 01/09/2026 - 15:19

Bradley Worrell

In new book, CU Boulder political scientist Steve Chan highlights the dangers of a Sino-U.S. war over Taiwan and why the Chinese believe time is on their side in their goal for reunification

Just 110 miles off China’s coast lies Taiwan, an island described by some political pundits as “the most dangerous place in the world”—and the place most likely to ignite a war between China and the United States.

“Taiwan is the single greatest flashpoint for a possible conflict between the U.S. and China—and yet most Americans likely could not locate the island on a map,” muses Steve Chan, professor of distinction emeritus with the CU Boulder Department of Political Science, whose research focus is on Sino-American relations. “Nevertheless, the island’s significance is very real to both sides.”

Taiwan, which was ruled for a time by Japan as a colony, was returned to China after World War II. Following Japan’s surrender, China’s long-simmering civil war between the Nationalists and Communists broke out anew, resulting in a Communist victory in 1949 that forced the Nationalists to retreat to the island refuge, which they called the Republic of China on Taiwan.

Steve Chan, professor of distinction emeritus with the CU Boulder Department of Political Science, researches Sino-American relations and recently published the book Taiwan and the Danger of a Sino-American War.

Technically, the two sides are still at war.

Since President Richard Nixon visited Beijing in 1972, the United States had signed several communiques with China acknowledging that there is only one China—and that Taiwan is part of China. However, Washington continues to bolster Taiwan’s defense, stating that it wants to see the impasse between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait resolved peacefully.

For its part, Beijing has never renounced its goal to reunify Taiwan, by force, if necessary, claiming this goal involves its “core interest.” At the same time, continued U.S. support for Taiwan’s de facto independence fuels fears of an armed clash between it and China.

Chan explores these tensions in his book Taiwan and the Danger of a Sino-American War. Recently, Chan spoke with Colorado Arts and Sciences Magazine to get his thoughts on why China so badly wants to reclaim Taiwan, what’s at stake for both sides and what the future for reunification might look like. His responses have been condensed and edited for clarity.

Question: Why does China want Taiwan so badly, and why does America want Taiwan to remain independent?

Chan: I return your question with another question, which is: Why does Abraham Lincoln have such an exalted place in American history? Because he resisted the Confederacy’s secession and preserved the Union. That’s how Chinese think about Taiwan.

One of my quibbles with conventional reasoning is that people forget about their own history. They do not ask: What if the shoe is on the other foot? Therefore, the question is: How did the United States settle its own civil war? By bullets—not by ballots—in a very brutal civil war.

Taiwan is a flashpoint. The domestic political climate in neither the United States nor China is currently conducive to reasoned discourse. When it comes to national sovereignty and unity, these highly emotion-laden values do not yield to compromise.

It is abundantly clear, however, that should war break out over Taiwan’s status, it would be to the great detriment of all sides—China, Taiwan and the U.S., should it decide to intervene. It would be a disaster for the world to have the most powerful countries—the two leading countries in the world—to come to blows.

"Taiwan is important to the U.S. for strategic reasons. Washington cares about Taiwan because of its strategic position. It’s the linchpin—the pivot of the so-called ‘first island chain’ to contain China," says CU Boulder scholar Steve Chan. (Photo: Pixaby)

Question: You say in your book that U.S. backing for Taiwan is sometimes framed by policymakers as supporting democracy and human rights. You don’t agree?

Steve Chan: Not to make too fine a point, but U.S. invocations of human rights and democracy are, frankly, full of hot air, because the U.S. support for Taiwan was strongest under the Kuomintang (the Nationalists, in the 1950s and 1960s), when it was a single-party authoritarian government that ruled the island by martial law.

Taiwan is important to the U.S. for strategic reasons. Washington cares about Taiwan because of its strategic position. It’s the linchpin—the pivot of the so-called ‘first island chain’ to contain China. The first island chain seeks to box in China’s navy, preventing its access to the open Pacific.

The U.S. military is able to use Taiwan as a choke point, because Chinese ships—submarines especially—cannot transit to the open Pacific without going through some very narrow channels where the United States can monitor the Chinese ships’ movements.

If China were to conquer Taiwan, to control Taiwan, it would have broken through the first island chain, which goes from the Aleutian Islands, through Japan, Okinawa and Taiwan on to the Philippines. So, I see it more as a military contest rather than promotion of democracy and human rights. The U.S. containment policy continues today, and that’s how the Chinese see it.

Question: In your book you say that if China conquered Taiwan today it would be a Pyrrhic victory. Why is that?

Chan: In an invasion, Taiwan’s society would be shattered, and its economy would be destroyed. Also, the Chinese would lose the hearts and minds of the Taiwanese people. It would be a tough job for them to rule over a discontented, disaffected, angry populace. What do they have to gain by that?

As I say, Chinese leaders feel reasonably optimistic about the future, so why force your hand? Timing is everything. To paraphrase Otto von Bismark, Prussia’s chancellor, wise leaders try to hold on to God’s coattail to capitalize on an opportunity. The Chinese leaders have waited for over 75 years to reunify with Taiwan. They are patient, and they expect that ongoing trends would further increase their economic and military leverage over both Taiwan and the United States.

Question: You say that China is playing a ‘long game’ in Taiwan. What do you mean by that?

If war breaks out over Taiwan’s status, it would be to the great detriment of all sides—China, Taiwan and the U.S., should it decide to intervene, notes CU Boulder researcher Steve Chan.

Chan: As a country, your international standing depends on your international power, which in turn is based on your domestic economic strength. It’s your domestic economic growth and health that is the foundation for international power. Of course, domestic elite cohesion and elite-mass unity also matter for undertaking effective foreign policy.

In the U.S., we’ve been eating our seed corn—mortgaging our future and piling on debt. In effect, we are shifting the burden of paying back this debt to future generations of Americans—those who have not been born or who are not yet old enough to vote. In effect, current voters are borrowing from future generations.

For their part, the Chinese are betting on not only their own increasing strength but also the Americans’ own self-destructive behavior. Will the U.S. become disillusioned and distracted, as with its hasty withdrawal from Vietnam and Afghanistan, or become entangled in another part of the world such as Venezuela, Iran and Ukraine?

Meanwhile, Taiwan is still next door to China, and the Taiwanese realize that the Chinese will continue to be their neighbor, their largest trade partner and the destination of most of their foreign direct investment. Americans, in contrast, always have the option of “going home.” These are the thoughts on the Taiwanese people’s mind, and that’s what the Chinese are betting on.

Question: The U.S. has a policy called ‘strategic ambiguity’ as it relates to Taiwan. What is that exactly, and how does it help or hurt U.S. interests?

Chan: First of all, the United States itself does not recognize Taiwan as an independent country. Period. Unlike Ukraine, which is recognized by nearly all the countries in the world as an independent, sovereign country. The United States has agreed in several communiques with China that there’s only one China—and that Taiwan is part of China.

The United States has an interest in opposing China attacking Taiwan militarily and it is also opposed to Taiwan declaring its formal independence. So, in effect, the U.S. policy is to maintain the status quo, to sustain Taiwan’s de facto separation from China.

In his new book Taiwan and the Danger of a Sino-American War, CU Boulder scholar Steve Chan explores the tension between China's goal to reunify Taiwan—by force, if necessary—and continued U.S. support for Taiwan’s de facto independence, fueling fears of an armed clash between it and China.

The strategic ambiguity policy, in short, is something like this: We would decide later on whether or not we would fight, depending on the circumstances. In the meantime, we declare that we are opposed to China’s use of military force against Taiwan and, at the same time, any move by Taiwan to declare de jure independence. So, we’re keeping our policy ambiguous.

In that context, think of it like this: If someone threatens my daughter or my wife, people expect me to say, ‘I would definitely pummel you if you were to (attack) my daughter or wife,’ right? I would not say, ‘I may fight to you. I will keep my position ambiguous, so that I may fight you.’

People do not see that position as credible.

Recently, some former U.S. officials have promoted the idea of ‘strategic clarity’—to commit the U.S. definitely and publicly to Taiwan’s defense—a policy that is also fraught with many dangers.

Question: You say in your book that you could foresee a situation where the U.S. doesn’t fight for Taiwan if China invades. Given that the U.S. has supported Taiwan for seven decades and counting, how likely is that outcome?

Chan: The latest 2024 survey conducted by the Chicago Council of Global Affairs says that 65% of the American people are opposed to any military intervention on the part of the United States to fight for Taiwan. The majority are opposed to intervention; 35% are in support.

Now, there is usually a bump in public support for an administration's policy—whatever policy any administration adopts—at the onset of a crisis or war. It’s the so-called ‘Rally behind the flag syndrome.’

However, in six months, or in two years, when the conflict is not resolved in favor of the United States, we’ve seen that public support starts to decline precipitously. We’ve seen this with Vietnam and with Iraq and Afghanistan more recently. Some of these episodes have turned out very badly for the United States.

The tragedy of Vietnam and other conflicts stems from our exaggeration of national stake in a foreign conflict and over-estimation of our capability and stamina. We set up a test for ourselves, claiming that our intervention is a test of American will. We heighten the supposed stake we have in these places, and then when the end comes, the damage we have done to our reputation and credibility is all the more severe. We trap ourselves in our own rhetoric and self-defeating policies.

Question: If Taiwan hopes to avoid military clash with China, what might that look like? Perhaps like the former British colony of Hong Kong, which reunited with China in 1997 and which today theoretically operates under the ‘one country, two systems’ approach?

Chan: If they (Taiwan) negotiate with China now, maybe they can still get a reasonable deal. With the passage of time, their relative strength (compared to China) will continue to slip and they may not be able to count on continued U.S. support. Taiwan’s leverage is going to diminish over time.

But as long as Taiwan thinks that the U.S. has its back, they may still skate on very thin ice. Again, as some scholars have put it, it’s a matter of time—and China is playing the long game. The Chinese are betting that Americans will get distracted and tired, going to put out fires elsewhere, looking for other dragons to slay. The Taiwanese are also aware of this possibility.

"The United States has an interest in opposing China attacking Taiwan militarily and it is also opposed to Taiwan declaring its formal independence. So, in effect, the U.S. policy is to maintain the status quo, to sustain Taiwan’s de facto separation from China."

Question: Bottom line: Given the state of the world today, should we be more or less worried about the chance for a U.S.-China conflict over Taiwan?

Chan: So, a few quick points. No. 1: If there should be a war between the United States and China—and that’s a very big if—I believe Taiwan is the only flashpoint, the only reason for them to go to war. There are no other issues that are likely to get them into an armed conflict.

No. 2: I don’t see the Chinese initiating military actions against Taiwan today or in the near future, in the next, say, three, four, five or ten years.

No. 3: With that passage of time, China’s leverage will increase. Taiwan may very well end up succumbing to Chinese pressure—especially if the United States should prove unreliable.

No. 4: If hotheads in either Washington or Beijing come to power, then all bets are off. It very much depends on who will be the next president of the United States and the next president of China. I don’t expect war to break out today or tomorrow, but in the future, it matters who will be in charge. Also, it depends upon internal politics more than external politics, because wars can happen accidentally.

Question: If the president or a high-ranking government official asked you for a few foreign policy recommendations, what would you tell them?

Chan: Three words: Mind the gap. Watch your steps, that is. Avoid self-entrapment and self-inflicted wounds. Know when to place a big bet and when not to. I regret to say that, oftentimes, the United States has placed the wrong bet and backed the wrong horse: the Chinese Nationalists, the Saigon government, the Iraqi government and the government in Kabul, Afghanistan.

Make your domestic economy and domestic politics the priority over foreign policy. Get your house in order, economically and politically. That should be the No. 1 priority.

And understand the long-term and ongoing trends, so that you can go with the wind at your back rather than in your face. Finally, introspection and humility are important virtues in international as well as interpersonal relations.

Those are my simple pieces of advice for a prudent, wise foreign policy.

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In new book, CU Boulder political scientist Steve Chan highlights the dangers of a Sino-U.S. war over Taiwan and why the Chinese believe time is on their side in their goal for reunification.

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Scholar considers limits on God and freedom for humans

Rachel Sauer — Wed, 07 Jan 2026 16:50:59 +0000

Scholar considers limits on God and freedom for humans Rachel Sauer Wed, 01/07/2026 - 09:50

Clay Bonnyman Evans

CU Boulder philosophy PhD student Nathan Huffine offers ‘limited foreknowledge’ to solve the paradox of human free will and an all-knowing deity

For many believers, squaring belief in a traditional “omni” deity—a god that is omniscient, omnipotent and omnibenevolent—with the notion that human beings possess free will poses a quandary.

Here’s how �Թ�� of Colorado Boulder philosophy PhD student Nathan Huffine describes the paradox:

“If there is an omniscient being, such as God, who infallibly knows the truth-values of all propositions, including propositions about future human actions, then no human action can be performed freely. No human action is free, since any human action is subject to the implications of this eternal and infallible knowledge of God. Such knowledge implies that an agent cannot do otherwise than what God knows she will do.”

Nathan Huffine, a CU Boulder philosophy PhD student, argues that belief in both divine foreknowledge and free will are necessary to address the classic theological “problem of evil,” also known as the “problem of suffering."

Huffine argues that belief in both divine foreknowledge and free will are necessary to address the classic theological “problem of evil,” also known as the “problem of suffering”—if a deity is all-powerful, all-knowing and all-good, why is there suffering and evil?

“If one believes there is a god, one also ought to posit that humans have libertarian free will”—individuals are free to make, and therefore must take responsibility for, all their choices—“in order to deal with the problem of evil,” Huffine says.

But in his recent paper, “Limits on God, Freedom for Humans,” published in the International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, Huffine defends the foreknowledge-freedom problem from assertions that it’s merely a game—an intellectual bauble or “pseudo-problem” —and considers two potential solutions to the conundrum, settling on one as most viable.

“It’s an interesting subject because the ideas of God and free will are important to me, and to many other people in their daily lives,” Huffine says.

He first considers what’s commonly referred to as “the eternity solution,” which posits that an atemporal deity—one that exists “outside” of time and space—would be always and eternally aware of everything that is, was and will be. Or as he describes it, “all times are equally real.”

Huffine describes a hypothetical situation in which a woman, Ellie, skips work to go to the beach. While there, a bottle washes onshore, bearing a message predicting that she will skip work and go to the beach that day.

“Suppose Ellie does have the ability to choose otherwise, and that the prophetic statement … has existed since 102 BC. … Also suppose that Ellie actually goes to work … never visiting the beach,” he writes. “Given this, the prophetic object (the bottle) from 102 BC would be wrong, and consequently, God would be wrong.”

But if a deity is inerrant and infallible, such a “conclusion is absurd,” Huffine writes. Because under eternalism, there is no time at which the bottle and message did not exist, “Therefore, there is no moment in Ellie’s life where she can act otherwise.”

Limited foreknowledge

Huffine finds the next potential solution, that of “limited foreknowledge,” more viable and persuasive.

First, he argues, one must assume an omni-deity cannot “do the metaphysically impossible”—the classic example is that a deity cannot create a stone that is too heavy for it to lift; or, as Aquinas argued, God cannot make a circle a square.

But if one defines God as “that than which nothing greater can be ideally conceived,” Huffine writes, then “one cannot ideally conceive of any being that is capable of performing metaphysically impossible feats.”

And if it is metaphysically impossible—contradictory—to square human free will with a deity that is already is aware of every future event, then something has to give, Huffine concludes.

“Therefore, God does not know the truth-value of all propositions but only those propositions it is possible for God to know without threatening human freedom,” he writes. If that’s true, he acknowledges, then “Jesus’ prophecies had the potential to be wrong.”

Huffine acknowledges that his thesis includes complicated, debatable metaphysical arguments, such as whether a deity limited is truly omniscient or omnipotent, given that metaphysics and logic can appear to trump its abilities.

“But you have to explore all these crazy pretzels,” he says. He cites the field of quantum mechanics: “We have to try to make sense of it, and whatever the data says, we have to try to square it with macro-reality.”

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CU Boulder philosophy PhD student Nathan Huffine offers ‘limited foreknowledge’ to solve the paradox of human free will and an all-knowing deity.

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Classicist explores fantasy of law in an empire of violence

Rachel Sauer — Tue, 06 Jan 2026 21:23:34 +0000

Classicist explores fantasy of law in an empire of violence Rachel Sauer Tue, 01/06/2026 - 14:23

Cody DeBos

In new book, CU Boulder classics Professor Zach Herz focuses on the law, the bureaucrat and the Roman Empire

When Zach Herz talks about Roman law, he says things like, “Maybe the biggest misconception is that the Roman Empire had the rule of law.”

The idea might surprise those unfamiliar with the legal timeline of the world’s most famous empire. But Herz and other legal scholars who study the period know there is truth behind this confounding theory.

Herz, an assistant professor of classics at the �Թ�� of Colorado Boulder and trained attorney, explores the idea further in his newly published book, The God and the Bureaucrat: Roman Law, Imperial Sovereignty, and Other Stories. In it, he questions the long-standing assumption that Roman law was a systematic, even apolitical legal achievement.

Zach Herz, a CU Boulder assistant professor of classics, recently published The God and the Bureaucrat: Roman Law, Imperial Sovereignty, and Other Stories, in which he questions the long-standing assumption that Roman law was a systematic, even apolitical legal achievement.

Instead, beneath a layer of dry humor and self-awareness, Herz argues that the bureaucracy of Roman law functioned as a fantasy constructed to impose a sense of order on a world that was anything but ordered.

What we get wrong about Rome’s judicial system

Modern historians often describe Rome as a pristine model of legality adorned in tunics and stonework, the purest version of legal order and one that has persisted as long as its ideals.

“What I think happened is Romans lived in this world that was autocratic and violent and very scary,” Herz says. “Different people thought about this in different ways. For some, the thing they needed to do was think very hard about law.”

Viewing their ideas in an unblemished light ignores the political reality that existed throughout much of the Roman Empire. Emperors held unchecked power, assassinations were common and violence permeated daily life.

So, how did a society plagued by these problems end up producing one of the most detailed legal traditions in world history?

“The Romans were trying to imagine how a fairer state might be run. This exercise generated these massive tomes about how problems should be solved. Everyone who read them knew it wasn’t how problems were actually solved. So this thing we now see as perfect law coming from a perfect world was actually people in a very imperfect world imagining a perfect law,” Herz explains.

In other words, Roman law helped people imagine a world where the state operated predictably and justly—even if their lived experience told them otherwise.

Bureaucracy as comfort, law as theater

The illusion of a fair legal system in Rome was an important political tool. It helped stabilize Rome by giving people a language for justice and a sense they could navigate the state by rules, not whims.

In a world without modern civil institutions, that illusion was valuable. But even in today’s world, it’s still valuable, Herz argues.

“Law still does a lot of work in making our lives better by allowing us to just not think about things so much. It allows us to put certain possibilities of violence or extreme tragedy out of our minds so we can focus on the things we enjoy,” he says.

Roman law, in Herz’s view, was more about storytelling, allowing people to imagine what ethical government might look like, especially when the emperor—who held unchecked power—was corrupt, disinterested or 12 years old.

CU Boulder scholar Zach Herz argues that the bureaucracy of Roman law functioned as a fantasy constructed to impose a sense of order on a world that was anything but ordered.

“It's clear that Romans wanted to believe there were checks and balances. And in some ways, there were. There was a remedy for having a bad emperor, right? It was a knife,” Herz says.

“A lot of our legal sources come from a particularly turbulent period in Roman history, early third century. It's called the Severan period. And I don't think that's a coincidence. We see law moved to the center of Roman political culture when the emperor is an obviously ‘good’ guy. I'm not saying everyone agrees with that, I'm not saying it's true, but that's sort of how everything is represented,” he adds.

Known as the Pax Romana (Roman Peace), this second-century CE period is remembered for a stretch of “Five Good Emperors.” With a trusted leader in power, the legal system was not often on the minds of the populace.

But when a bad emperor took the throne, that narrative changed quickly.

“If everyone agrees the emperor is good, we don’t have a problem. He is going to be ethical. There are going to be checks and balances. It's when the emperor is bad, now you need rules,” Herz says.

When the emperor cites precedent

One case study in Herz’s book tracks how legal rhetoric changed under child emperors, of which Rome had several. Drawing on techniques he learned during a stint in a corporate law firm, Herz noticed something curious.

“Cites to precedent are pretty rare in imperial decision-making because you're the emperor. But they showed up a lot more when the emperor was a child,” he says.

One boy emperor from the Severan period was four times more likely to cite prior decisions than adult emperors. Herz argues this was a strategic effort by Roman officials to borrow credibility from past rulings.

“It was a way to say, ‘Even though the emperor is a kid, the system still works,’” he explains.

That system, of course, was fragile. Even so, its stories of order held power.

“If the emperor is 12, you do not want a 12-year-old boy making decisions for you. You’d rather have lawyers doing that. You’d rather have statues doing that. You’d rather have coherent prospective guidance than whims, right? So, people decided to lean into the legal system,” Herz says.

Vestiges of the past

Although the Roman Empire is long gone, its influence endures in ways that we can see traces of throughout the modern world. In fact, most of continental Europe still bases its legal codes on Roman foundations. Even Louisiana maintains vestiges of Roman law.

“It was that or witches,” Herz quips. “They built their own laws on that imagined Roman Empire because that’s just what they had to work with.”

More importantly, Herz argues that we’ve inherited the Roman idea that states ought to operate through law. From Rome, we came to believe that legitimacy comes from procedure and precedent.

“Even in places that don’t explicitly follow Roman law, those notions are still deeply, deeply classical,” he says.

"Law still does a lot of work in making our lives better by allowing us to just not think about things so much. It allows us to put certain possibilities of violence or extreme tragedy out of our minds so we can focus on the things we enjoy."

That belief can be comforting, but also misleading, Herz says. As in Rome, modern legal systems can sometimes obscure violence, exclusion or inequality under layers of ritualized language and illusory checks and balances.

Imagined order, real impact

So, what can we gain by not upholding Roman law as a perfect blueprint, but instead treating it as a cultural artifact? For Herz, the answer is a better way to understand the interplay between power and imagination in human society.

“A huge amount of what law does is create this mirage of order. And it's backed up by force in unpredictable and confusing ways, if you really want to get into it,” he says.

Despite that ambiguity, Herz doesn’t see law as sinister. Nor does he see Rome’s imagined structures for a utopian world as malevolent. He believes it is human.

Our instinct for structure and fairness drive us to create something bigger than ourselves to believe in.

“You don’t have to think something totally real to think it’s incredibly useful. For most of us, the lives we want to make for ourselves don't require us to get into deep thinking about violence or crime and law prevents us from having to get into it. That's a very important gift that law gives to us,” he says.

For Herz, what makes Roman law worth studying is not that it worked inherently, but that it worked because people wanted it to.

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In new book, CU Boulder classics Professor Zach Herz focuses on the law, the bureaucrat and the Roman Empire.

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