2026-04-26 19:30:00
在美国，有超过6300万人担任照护者，照顾孩子、父母或亲人。其中近一半的年龄在50岁以下的照护者同时照顾父母和孩子。如果你也是其中之一，可能正在努力平衡工作与生活，感到身心俱疲。通常我们想到“倦怠”时会联想到工作，但照顾亲人同样可能带来巨大的压力。
美国退伍军人事务局（AARP）的国家家庭与照护专家艾米·戈耶（Amy Goyer）亲身经历了这种压力。她从20多岁开始照顾家人，包括祖父母、父母和妹妹。她形容这种状态是“活了四个人的生活”，因为照护者不仅要承受身体、情感和经济上的压力，还要应对日常照护的负担，导致心理压力逐渐累积，这种现象被称为“二手压力”。
戈耶在《Explain It to Me》播客中分享了如何应对这种压力。她强调，照护者需要关注自身的情绪和精力，就像给汽车加油一样，通过小而频繁的自我照顾行为（如散步、喝咖啡、与朋友交流、参加线上照护小组等）来维持状态。她还提到，照护者应明确自己的责任范围，学会将部分任务外包，避免过度承担。
财务压力也是照护者面临的重要挑战。戈耶曾因照顾父母和妹妹而积累大量债务，最终陷入破产。她建议照护者积极寻找可用的福利资源，如长期护理保险、退伍军人福利，以及联系当地老龄事务机构获取帮助。此外，她指出，长期照护的费用高昂，大多数人在家中接受照护，而医疗保险通常不涵盖长期护理。
在情感和关系方面，戈耶认为与他人建立联系、加入照护支持小组至关重要，因为这些群体能提供理解与支持。她还提到，照护者应重视自己的心态，因为即使资源有限，积极的心态和情感支持也能帮助他们更好地应对困难。最后，她建议未来的照护者学会放松，调整自己的心理状态，因为这比资源本身更为关键。
More than 63 million people in America are caregivers — of kids, of parents, and loved ones. And nearly half of caregivers under the age of 50 are taking care of a parent and a child at the same time. Maybe you’re one of them. Maybe you’re also trying to hold down a job and handle everything else that life throws your way. And maybe it’s got you feeling spent. When we think of burnout, we often think of work, but caring for a loved one can leave you exhausted too.
Amy Goyer is the AARP’s National Family and Caregiving Expert, and she also knows this exhaustion first hand. Goyer has been a caregiver for most of her life, beginning in her 20s — first, for her grandparents, then, later, for her parents and her sister.
“I felt like I was living four people’s lives,” she told Explain It to Me, Vox’s weekly call-in podcast. “When you have someone, especially someone that you love, who is going through so much, and it’s physical stress, it’s emotional stress, financial stress, you know, every type of stress you can think of, you may be absorbing that. And that’s on top of the normal stress of caregiving. It’s like the membrane between the two of you kind of gets thin.”
Goyer says this phenomenon is known as secondhand stress. In the latest episode of Explain It to Me, Goyer explains the signs of secondhand stress, how you can recover from and prevent burnout as a caregiver, and more.
Below is an excerpt of our conversation, edited for length and clarity. You can listen to the full episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you’d like to submit a question, send an email to [email protected] or call 1-800-618-8545.
What is the definition of secondhand stress?
It’s the emotional strain of being with a person who is experiencing pain or trauma or stress. You start to find yourself also feeling those things — feeling the anxiety, the sadness, the frustration. It’s not your experience, but your experience with them. It’s almost like catching somebody’s emotions, like catching a cold from that person. It’s like you are absorbing those things and that starts to cause you stress as well.
Recently, we talked about burnout at work. And the thing about work is that you can quit if you absolutely need to. But with caregiving for a loved one, that’s not really the case. You can’t just walk away the way you would in another situation.
Wanting to walk away is one of the big red flags. I have a philosophy that I developed during those years when I was caring for so many people at once. I was driving my car, and I realized I was on fumes; I had no gas. You know, that feeling of, “I’m not going to make it.” So I went straight to the gas station and filled the car up.
As I pulled out of the station and started driving, I thought, “Wow, you know, the car runs better on a full tank of gas.” I could feel a difference in how the car was driving. That was my “aha moment.” I expected myself to run on empty all the time and be just as efficient. That doesn’t make sense. So I thought about what fills my tank, what fuels me so that I can keep going.
Mostly, it’s little fill-ups. You may not have $60 to fill your tank, but you’ve got $10. So maybe I have 10 minutes, and I’m going to do some stretches, or jumping jacks, or walk around the block, or I’m going to get a good cup of coffee or tea. I’m going to call a friend. I’m going to text with someone. I’m going to [join] an online caregiving group. I kept fresh flowers in the house; that filled me up. I had Pilates once a week. That was kind of my deal-breaker; I only canceled for a true emergency. You know what those premium fill-ups are for you.
The other big thing that I learned as a caregiver is that I can do anything, but I can’t do everything. So what are the things I can outsource and have somebody else do? What are the things that have to be me?
The cost of care is just so expensive. That can be stressful, and it gets harder over time. What role do finances play?
For me, the finances were one of the most stressful things. My parents planned. They had a financial adviser. They did the best they could. Their budget paid for caregivers while I was working. Then, I started absorbing the costs above their budget. When they moved in with me, I paid the mortgage, I paid for all the food, I paid for their clothing, and it added up as their needs increased.
After more than a decade of this very intensive caregiving, my mom passed away in 2013. My sister passed away the following year, and I had to empty her house and manage her estate and ended up still caring for dad at the same time. The upshot is by the time he passed away, I had so much credit card debt that I was using to try to catch up with things. And I kept thinking, “I can handle this. I’ll dig out.” And I ended up in bankruptcy. I can tell you that’s one of the most difficult, humiliating, terrible experiences. But I talk about it openly, because I know I’m not the only one. I know many, many caregivers are struggling financially, and nobody talks about money.
Try to look at any benefits they may be eligible for. I eventually got my dad enrolled in veterans’ benefits, which was a huge help. See if your loved ones have long-term care insurance that might help pay for some things. Some people may qualify for help just paying their energy bills. You can contact your area agency on aging and ask about any type of help with benefits and case management and care management. They will connect you with someone who can help you with those kinds of applications.
How does that also shape your relationship with the person you’re caring for? What are some things people can do to navigate that?
I think the most important thing is to have a financial adviser for yourself — somebody who looks at the situation and gives you some good advice.
There are things I probably should have done differently. Long-distance caregivers actually spend more than caregivers living nearby, and that’s partially because of the travel. They have to go back and forth, and they’re paying people to do things they can’t do. So look at the ways that you can maximize any services they can get, any benefits, anything like that. That’s one really important thing to do.
Also, just to have a handle on what the costs actually are. There’s still a lot of people that say to me they thought Medicare was going to pay for long-term care, and Medicare does not pay for ongoing long-term care. The vast majority of people are cared for at home, because the cost of assisted living in nursing homes is just exorbitantly expensive.
This can be a lot to process. Are there resources and tools that people can turn to when this part of life becomes emotionally overwhelming?
Emotionally overwhelming is kind of the biggest piece of it. I just wrote a Care for the Caregiver guide for AARP this past year, and it’s free. You can get counseling, even if it’s not ongoing. I really recommend that. Caregiver support groups — I think connecting with other caregivers is maybe your top priority, because we get it. We understand each other, and it is a relief sometimes just to talk about it.
If you could go back in time and say one thing to the version of you that began caregiving, what would you say to her?
I think I would say, chill out a little bit. I can’t control the diseases my loved ones have or what happens to them health-wise, but I can control my own mindset.
I think that’s the most important thing. I’ve seen thousands and thousands of caregivers across my career and different people will have very similar situations, but they have very different attitudes, and they come through it differently.
It’s not even the resources they have; it’s their mindset about it and how supported and at peace they feel with it. The biggest difference is their mindset.
2026-04-26 19:00:00
2026年4月6日，美国总统唐纳德·特朗普在白宫简报室召开新闻发布会。本文是《Today, Explained》每日新闻简报的一部分，旨在帮助读者理解当天的重要新闻。自2026年初美以两国与伊朗开战以来，冲突的起因和目的一直模糊不清，且目前仍未有结束的迹象。原定于周末在巴基斯坦举行的美伊谈判在周六破裂。特朗普在社交媒体上表示：“没有人知道谁在伊朗掌权，包括他们自己。此外，我们掌握所有筹码，而他们一无所有。” 为了回应读者对伊朗冲突的疑问，Vox的高级外交政策记者乔舒亚·基廷（Joshua Keating）解答了几个关键问题：
伊朗是否真的想制造核武器？
伊朗拥有约400公斤高浓缩铀，理论上足以制造10至11枚核弹。尽管伊朗曾否认发展核武器，并且最高领袖哈梅内伊曾发布反对核武器的声明，但其铀浓缩水平显然无法用于民用。伊朗可能认为维持“临界核国家”地位能为其在与西方的谈判中提供筹码和威慑力。然而，这一策略被证明是严重误判。目前，这些材料仍可能藏于伊朗主要浓缩设施地下。尽管伊朗可能试图挖掘并制造武器，但美国或以色列的军事行动可能已提前发现并阻止这一计划。此外，伊朗在一年内两次被轰炸，可能更倾向于发展核武器。
霍尔木兹海峡是否会无限期关闭？
这取决于“关闭”和“无限期”的定义。特朗普上周延长停火协议，可能表明他无意通过军事行动重新开放海峡，或是在等待更多军事资源到位。然而，无论是美国还是伊朗，都有经济动力重新开放海峡。伊朗可能希望通过扰乱对手来阻止其未来几个月发动攻击。专家认为，伊朗已为经济压力做好准备，并计算美国的承受能力较低。但其他海湾国家可能难以容忍伊朗继续对国际航道收费。目前，霍尔木兹海峡仍是全球能源运输的关键通道，没有替代方案。
是否有绕过霍尔木兹海峡的方案？
现有方案包括1980年代在伊朗-伊拉克战争期间修建的东-西输油管道，该管道从沙特东部油田通往红海西岸的亚丁湾港口延布（Yanbu），目前日输油量达700万桶，缓解了全球能源压力，但无法完全替代霍尔木兹海峡的2000万桶日流量。海湾国家正在考虑其他管道项目，但短期内难以解决当前危机。
美国的弹药储备是否因战争而耗尽？
战争已消耗了美国大量关键弹药，如超过1000枚战斧导弹（年产量约100枚）和约50%的THAAD导弹拦截器（年采购量约11枚）。这导致这些高需求系统被调往欧洲和东亚，可能影响未来的军事行动。美国国防部计划再投资300亿美元用于关键弹药，包括拦截器。然而，若战争持续，弹药短缺可能成为重大问题。
伊朗是否会通过网络攻击报复美国？
尽管伊朗可能无法发动大规模网络攻击，但亲伊朗的“黑客组织”已针对医疗设备制造商斯特拉克（Stryker）、社交平台Bluesky以及洛杉矶地铁等目标发起攻击。但这些攻击的破坏力远不及中国黑客组织“Volt Typhoon”和“Salt Typhoon”等长期活动的威胁。
This story appeared in Today, Explained, a daily newsletter that helps you understand the most compelling news and stories of the day. Subscribe here.
It’s been just over eight weeks since the US and Israel started a war with Iran for contradictory and incoherent reasons. Virtually nothing about the conflict — except maybe its stakes — has gotten clearer since then, and there’s still no end in sight: US-Iran talks, set to take place in Pakistan over the weekend, fell apart on Saturday. In a social media post, President Donald Trump said of Iran that “Nobody knows who is in charge, including them. Also, we have all the cards, they have none!”
I figured some of you might have questions, so Vox’s senior foreign policy correspondent, Joshua Keating, is stopping by to field a few reader-submitted questions about the Iran conflict.
Here’s what you wanted to know, and what Josh had to say:
I continue to hear people on the right defend the decision to attack Iran as a necessary measure to prevent the regime from obtaining a nuclear weapon. Is there any truth to that?
Iran has a stockpile of around 400 kilograms of highly enriched uranium, which in theory could provide enough material to make 10–11 nuclear weapons. Iran had denied that it wanted to build a bomb, and the last Ayatollah Ali Khamenei famously issued a fatwa against nuclear weapons, but there’s no credible civilian use for the level of enrichment it carried out.
At the same time, it’s also possible that rather than building a bomb, Iran believed that staying as a “threshold” nuclear state gave it leverage in negotiations with the West and a form of deterrence. This proved to be a serious miscalculation.
As far as we know, Iran still has this material — the “nuclear dust” Trump keeps talking about — buried underground at one or more of its main enrichment sites. Whether the Iranians could actually excavate the material and make it into a usable weapon before this activity was detected and attacked by the US or Israel is an open question. But having now been bombed in the midst of nuclear negotiations twice in the past year, Iran probably has even more incentive to build a nuke than it did before.
How likely is it that the Strait of Hormuz remains closed/mostly closed indefinitely?
Depends what you mean by “closed” and by “indefinitely.” Trump’s extension of the ceasefire last week might suggest he has little interest in launching military action to open the strait, or just that he’s waiting for more military assets to arrive in the region.
Either way, both sides clearly have an economic incentive to reopen the strait — though Iran may have a greater incentive to inflict enough of a disruption on its adversaries that they won’t consider attacking again in a few months. Experts believe Iran has planned for months of economic pressure and is calculating that the US has a lower pain tolerance.
It’s equally hard to imagine a world in which other countries, particularly Iran’s neighbors across the Gulf, tolerate it continuing to charge tolls for use of an international waterway. But we’re in unprecedented territory here. It’s hard to say anything for certain.
Aren’t there any options for bypassing the Strait of Hormuz? Why can’t Saudi Arabia or someone come up with a solution?
In fact there is. The East-West pipeline, built in the 1980s during the Iran-Iraq War with exactly this kind of scenario in mind, runs from Saudi Arabia’s eastern oil fields to the port of Yanbu on its western Red Sea coast. It has quickly become arguably the most important piece of energy infrastructure on the planet and was targeted several times by Iranian missiles and drones.
The pipeline is now operating at its full capacity of 7 million barrels a day, which has been an important relief valve for the global economy, but isn’t enough to replace the 20 million barrels that normally flow through Hormuz.
Gulf countries are now considering a number of other pipeline projects, but probably not on a timeframe that will do much to help with this crisis.
Ultimately, Hormuz isn’t like other “chokepoints” in the global economy. The geography of the region’s oil fields and the Persian Gulf means there’s really not an alternative to the Strait of Hormuz.
I understand that the war in Iran has depleted America’s stockpiles of key ammunition. How long will it take to rebuild those stockpiles, and how much of a problem is that? (Put differently: Don’t we plan for stockpiles to be used and rebuilt?)
It’s a serious problem. The New York Times reported last week that the US has used more than 1,000 Tomahawk missiles in this war, and it produces only about 100 per year. We’ve burned through about 50 percent of our THAAD missile interceptors — around 200 — and we only buy about 11 per year. This has led to diversions of these very in-demand systems from Europe and East Asia.
This would not be a great moment for the US to get into another major war, particularly with a peer adversary like China. But how serious a problem it is depends on how much longer this war lasts and how many targets the US still wants to hit. It is, certainly, a good time to be in the missile business. The Pentagon wants to invest another $30 billion into critical munitions, including interceptors.
I’m concerned about how Iran might retaliate against the US by means of cyberwarfare. Is there any evidence that their ability to do so has been affected by the US/Israel attacks?
Iran doesn’t appear able to launch the kind of major cyberattacks that would seriously disrupt Americans’ daily lives, but attacks by pro-Iranian “hacktivist” groups have been increasing, with targets including the medical device maker Stryker, the social network Bluesky, and the Los Angeles Metro. These attacks are a concern, but not on the level of the kind of damage that is feared from ongoing Chinese hacking campaigns like Volt Typhoon and Salt Typhoon.
2026-04-25 19:15:00
2016年11月28日，马萨诸塞州阿默斯特市汉普郡学院（Hampshire College）图书馆外的学生。| Joanne Rathe/The Boston Globe via Getty Images
美国高等教育正面临危机。上周，位于马萨诸塞州阿默斯特市的私立文理学院汉普郡学院宣布将在2026年秋季学期后关闭。该学院成立于1965年，旨在“重新定义文理教育”，其知名校友包括纪录片导演肯·伯恩斯（Ken Burns）和演员卢皮塔·尼永奥（Lupita Nyong’o）、利夫·施里伯（Liev Schreiber）。然而，汉普郡学院只是美国高等教育危机的一个缩影。美国共有约4000所大学，自新冠疫情以来已有约100所关闭，未来十年还可能有更多面临关闭风险。目前，大型公立大学和资金充足的私立名校如哈佛、耶鲁等仍相对稳定，但小型区域学院则面临更大压力。这种趋势可能导致学生选择高等教育的选项减少，甚至彻底关闭大门。
为了解为何学院会关闭以及这对美国高等教育的未来意味着什么，Today, Explained节目主持人兼合作者塞安·拉梅萨拉姆（Sean Rameswaram）采访了《Hechinger报告》的高级高等教育记者乔恩·马库斯（Jon Marcus）。马库斯解释了汉普郡学院的困境，以及影响学院的财务、人口和文化因素。以下是对话摘录（已删减并精简）：
汉普郡学院的关闭并非偶然。像许多小型学院一样，它长期面临隐性问题。该学院的问题早在疫情前就已显现，但依靠忠诚且成功的校友群体维持运营。然而，其基金规模较小，学生人数持续下降，最终仅剩不到800名学生，且背负2100万美元债务。债务是关键因素之一，常被忽视。人们通常只关注学生贷款债务，但学院本身也面临巨额债务，这会严重消耗其运营预算。为了吸引学生，学院普遍采取学费折扣政策，整体折扣率超过50%。对于私立学院而言，这相当于将一半收入返还给学生，长期来看难以维持。
自疫情以来，已有约100所学院关闭，其中许多依赖联邦援助才得以维持。若无援助，它们可能更早倒闭。最新估计显示，美国有442所私立非营利学院面临关闭风险，其中约120所处于严重风险中。造成关闭的原因包括学生人数减少、人口结构变化（18岁年轻人数量下降）以及高昂的教育成本。此外，特朗普政府对国际学生的政策收紧也对小型学院造成冲击，因为国际学生通常支付全额学费，是其重要收入来源。过去一年，国际学生签证发放量下降了36%。
当学生得知学院即将关闭时，通常面临严峻后果。研究显示，一半学生会转学，但其中一半最终未能完成学业。转学后，许多学院不接受原有学分，导致学生难以继续学业。此外，这些小型学院往往位于偏远地区，吸引年轻人定居并推动当地经济发展。随着学院关闭，这些地区的人口老龄化问题加剧，经济多元化管道也随之中断。
尽管有人认为“汉普郡学院关闭与我无关”，但若大量小型学院关闭，美国小城镇和城市将面临“死亡螺旋”效应。人们在社交媒体上对学院关闭的反应往往带有敌意，认为其过于精英化、政治正确或过于左倾。尽管这种看法未必准确，但学院未能有效应对这种负面舆论。然而，这些小型文理学院在培养具备特定技能的年轻人才方面仍至关重要，它们的消失将削弱美国的教育竞争力。
Higher education is in crisis. Last week, Hampshire College — a private liberal arts school in Amherst, Massachusetts — announced it will shut down after the fall 2026 semester.
Founded in 1965 to “reimagine liberal arts education,” Hampshire counts documentary filmmaker Ken Burns and actors Lupita Nyong’o and Liev Schreiber among its most notable alumni.
But Hampshire is just the latest casualty in a broader trend. There are roughly 4,000 colleges in the United States. According to Jon Marcus, senior higher education reporter at the Hechinger Report, a nonprofit publication covering education, around 100 have closed since the Covid-19 pandemic, and many more are at risk over the next decade.
For now, large public universities and well-endowed private schools like Harvard and Yale remain relatively stable. But smaller regional colleges are increasingly at risk. That shift could leave students with fewer options for higher education, and,, for some, close the door on higher education entirely.
To understand why colleges are closing and what it means for the future of higher education in the United States, Today, Explained co-host Sean Rameswaram spoke with Marcus, who explained the story of Hampshire College and some of the financial, demographic, and cultural elements afflicting colleges.
Below is an excerpt of the conversation, edited for length and clarity. There’s much more in the full podcast, so listen to Today, Explained wherever you get podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Pandora, and Spotify.
Last week it was announced that the private liberal arts college Hampshire College would close after its fall semester. Tell us the story of what happened to Hampshire.
Like a lot of small colleges, Hampshire had a lot of problems hidden just below the surface. In Hampshire’s case, they weren’t that well-hidden. It had been having problems for more than six years, since before the pandemic, but was being kept afloat by its very loyal alumni, who include some people that have been extremely successful, largely in the arts.
Its endowment was very small. Its enrollment continued to decline. It had fewer than 800 students left at the end. It had $21 million in debt.
Debt is a really important and largely misunderstood component of this. When people think of debt and college, they think of student loan debt, but there’s also institutional debt, and it is really piling up. Colleges and universities have borrowed significant amounts of money and, so, servicing that debt becomes a big drain on their operating budgets. To attract students, colleges do something else that isn’t widely known: They discount the tuition. Almost no one pays the list price you see on the website.
At Hampshire, specifically, or everywhere?
At colleges in general. The discount rate at colleges and universities is more than 50 percent. So, if you were a private business, and you gave back 50 percent of your revenue, you’d be out of business. And that’s what’s happening to a lot of these small colleges.
At Hampshire, they were giving back more than 75 percent of their revenue in the form of discounts just to continue to get people to come there and fill seats.
It sounds like this is happening far more often than we know — that four-year colleges and universities are going out of business.
About a hundred colleges have closed since the pandemic. Many of them only made it this far because they got federal aid during the pandemic to keep them open. Had they not, they would’ve probably closed sooner. And there’s a new estimate that shows that 442 private nonprofit colleges and universities — that’s one quarter of the total — are at risk. About 120 of them are at severe risk of closing.
What are the other causes for college closures?
We are running out of students. The number of 18-year-olds is way down. People stop having children during financial downturns. And if you do the math, the great recession was in 2008. So, in 2026 is when that hits us.
Eighteen years later, we’re running out of 18-year-olds, and that will begin to have an impact on college enrollment in the fall. The last big class was the one that enrolled in this most recent fall. The next fall is when the demographic cliff begins to hit.
And it’s just math. We have too many colleges, and we have too few traditional-age college students. Of the ones we still have, a smaller proportion of graduates from high school are choosing to go to college.
We hit a peak in 2016 of 70 percent of high school graduates going to college. That’s now down to just a little bit better than 60 percent. That is a big, big drop in a very short time. And that has to do with the cost of higher education and the growing skepticism about the return on the investment. So, that’s really taking a toll.
There is the demographic cliff and cost. There’s also a culture war around our colleges and universities currently being waged by [the Trump] administration. Does that have something to do with it?
That is not helping. Under this current presidential administration, we are seeing a lot of other impacts on higher ed[ucation] obscuring the reality of what’s going on. The sustainability of higher education has been the focus that we’ve all understandably had on this firehose of funding cuts and lawsuits and attacks on DEI [Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion].
In the end, though, the kinds of colleges that we’re talking about that are at risk of closing, this doesn’t affect them, because they don’t do federally funded research. The one policy under this administration that is hurting some of these small colleges is the crackdown on international students.
Some of these small colleges have recruited international students, because they’re profitable. They pay the full tuition. And so, we’ve seen now a 36 percent decline last year in the number of visas issued for new international students. That’s a giant hit.
Essentially, it’s just a perfect storm of all of these things happening at the same time to colleges that are already overextended, overly indebted, and don’t have enough students.
What happens to a student who goes to one of these schools when they find out their school is closing?
Nothing good happens to those students. There is research that shows that half of those students transfer, half of them don’t. Half of them end their pursuit of a degree. Of the half that transfer, half of them never graduate.
The reasons for that include the cost and the fact that the successor college often doesn’t take all of their credits or won’t accept their transfer credits toward the major. And, in many cases, students have left these small colleges that have closed; gone to another college; and then, it closed.
This is becoming a cycle. And one really fascinating thing that I started hearing a few years ago from a student tour guide at a small college was that parents were beginning to ask a question he never heard. And it wasn’t, “How’s the food?” It was, “Will this college still be here in four years?” So, people are beginning to pay attention.
To some degree, you’re speaking about market forces. There’s not enough students, the costs are too high, so the market’s correcting and these schools are closing. But what do we lose when we lose these smaller regional liberal arts colleges?
The first and most important thing is: Not everyone needs to go to college, but somebody needs to go to college. And college-going in the United States is down. In economic rival countries globally, college-going is way up. So, we’re losing the competitive edge that we’ve always had by having a well-educated, innovative, and entrepreneurial population. That’s the big picture.
The small picture is more immediate. As you might assume, a college that closes is a problem for its community, because you lose jobs. Housing values go down when you lose a major employer.
But here’s the one that surprised me that I never really thought about: A lot of these colleges are in remote, isolated places, often rural, and they draw young people to these communities. After they graduate, they stay, and they create businesses, or they work in jobs. And a lot of the colleges that have closed, they’re in places where the population is aging. All of these colleges that have closed are another kind of ending of the pipeline that was bringing in young people to a place where they were needed to diversify the economy.
For someone out there who’s like, “Hampshire College, never heard of her, doesn’t affect me,” what they might be missing is that if enough of these schools close, you’re going to see a bit of a death spiral, a doom loop, in smaller American cities.
Yes; I would say more small towns than cities. But even in some cities where colleges close, again, it’s a lot of payroll. There’s a lot of employees. There’s the add-on spending of the students who buy pizza or rent apartments. But ,to your point, the immediate reaction I’ve noticed on social media and elsewhere is, “Good, let ’em close.”
There’s a real antipathy toward colleges among some people in the public who feel that they are elitist, that they are woke, that they’re overly liberal, that they’re indoctrinating young people.
Whether that’s true or not, that’s the public perception, and I don’t think colleges have done a very good job at counteracting that narrative. But they’re also really important. We need them. We need them in some form to continue to educate young people for jobs that require those skills.
2026-04-25 18:30:00
杰弗里·爱泼斯坦（Jeffrey Epstein）并非第一个利用慈善事业来讨好权贵的富豪。尽管爱泼斯坦因性犯罪被定罪，但许多机构仍接受他的捐款，导致严重声誉损害。例如，麻省理工学院媒体实验室、帕尔梅拉斯芭蕾舞团等组织都曾接受他的资助。比尔·盖茨也曾与爱泼斯坦合作，但后来多次为此道歉。然而，即便在爱泼斯坦案后，大多数慈善机构仍未建立应对有毒捐赠者的明确政策。
文章指出，一些富豪通过捐赠来洗白自身形象，如萨克勒家族（OxyContin制造商）和沃伦·坎德斯（曾因制造催泪瓦斯被谴责）。心理学家认为，这种行为可能使捐赠者产生“道德许可”心理，即通过善举获得做坏事的借口。例如，爱泼斯坦的捐赠者可能认为，只要资金用于公益，便可忽视其过往罪行。
2023年的一项调查显示，超过半数的筹款人认为近年来有毒捐赠者的数量增加，但仅三分之一的机构有明确处理政策。公众对接受此类捐赠的态度也存在分歧，尽管多数人容忍种族主义或白领犯罪，但若资金直接来自犯罪所得，则持反对意见。此外，接受有争议捐赠者可能损害机构声誉，甚至影响未来筹款。
历史上，许多争议性捐赠者也曾获得支持，如安德鲁·卡内基（尽管其财富来自剥削劳工）和约翰·D·洛克菲勒（因开发奥施曼药物引发争议）。这些案例表明，尽管存在道德争议，但机构仍可能接受捐赠。然而，随着社会对透明度和道德责任的要求提高，组织需更加谨慎，避免与有争议的捐赠者合作，以免损害自身声誉。文章最后建议，若无法向公众解释某笔捐赠的合理性，应拒绝接受，以免“与魔鬼做交易”。
Not everybody acquiesced when Jeffrey Epstein came bearing gifts.
Harvard University barred Epstein’s donations after he pleaded guilty to solicitation of a minor in 2008, a development that frustrated his friends on the faculty, according to an internal review. One physicist, a woman whom Epstein had bragged about and racially misprofiled in an interview that Science published after his death, had pointedly refused a donation just months before his second arrest in 2019. “Would I be interested in receiving funding from a wealthy man who had also been convicted of a sex offense?” she told Science. The answer was no.
But others, many others, said yes when Epstein came calling. Among them: the Palm Beach Ballet, the Melanoma Research Alliance, the UJA-Federation of New York, and MIT Media Lab. Bill Gates once legitimized such giving, evangelizing to other would-be billionaire philanthropists over brunch at the convicted sex criminal’s mansion. Gates has since repeatedly apologized for his dealings with Epstein, but the multi-billionaire’s foundation has authorized an external review examining Gates’s ties and assessing their philanthropic vetting policies.
In recent years, the Epstein files have triggered mass public dismay over the idea that a sex criminal could buy — or, in these cases, donate — his way into elite circles. And yet today, over a decade after most of these checks were cashed, not much has changed about how organizations behave when bad people try to give to good causes. By using his giving to ingratiate himself with the rich and famous, Epstein may have embodied philanthropy at its absolute worst, most craven, and self-serving. But he was far from the only wealthy person wielding donations to win powerful friends, or to weasel his way into the public’s good graces.
“Many organizations will say they know their donors, especially the large ones,” said H. Art Taylor, president of the Association of Fundraising Professionals (AFP), the largest network of its kind in the country. “But do we really?”
Obviously, very few people, elite donors included, have committed crimes as vile as Epstein’s. And yet, a 2023 study found that a full half of fundraisers have encountered a donor who falls along a spectrum of unsavory behavior, be it a board member with a sleazy reputation or an environmental philanthropist who has made their money in the oil industry.
Every time such a donor gives, it sparks a difficult trade-off. Is it okay to accept money from a bad person if it goes to something good? There is, after all, not enough philanthropy on offer to go around as is. But if fundraisers inevitably tread into the gray areas, where should they draw the line?
The justifications of the scientists, charities, and academics who accepted Epstein’s donations clearly do not pass the sniff test. Their knee-jerk response should’ve always been a categorical no, something nearly everyone who accepted Epstein’s money now admits.
Epstein demonstrates just how bad the worst-case scenario can be for charities and universities that take money from the wrong person. MIT Media Lab’s association with Epstein ultimately led to an avalanche of bad press, resignations from key researchers, and a permanent reputational stain. Gates could’ve spent this year basking in the warm glow of his foundation’s historic decision to donate itself out of existence, the crowning jewel of his philanthropic legacy. Instead, he will spend it apologizing to his staff, testifying to Congress, and yearning for the one that got away, his ex-wife, Melinda French Gates, who reportedly left him in part over his Epstein ties.
But bad donors can still harm good organizations even when they are not as obviously bad as Epstein proved to be. Research shows that organizations that accept toxic donations, even from less catastrophically scandalous philanthropists, often struggle to build trust with new donors in the long run, because they come to be seen as morally complicit. What might feel like a justifiable trade-off in the short-term — a dollar from a bad person is still a dollar for a good cause — can quickly devolve into a long-term liability.
Many people who took Epstein’s money later pleaded ignorance of his crimes, despite his being an unusually clear case of a rotten donor. Sure, he paid a small army of digital advisers to clean up his image a smidge, but his 2008 arrest was still eminently Googleable.
But not every shady donor is so easy to spot. Instead, said Patricia Illingworth, a professor of philanthropy and ethics at Northeastern University and author of Giving Now: Accelerating Human Rights for All, the majority “are problematic mainly because of how they made their money” or because they’ve engaged in behavior that is morally dubious, but not outright criminal.
Think of the Sackler family, who made their fortune on the highly addictive painkiller OxyContin and went on to become major donors to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Guggenheim, and the University of Oxford, among other arts and cultural institutions. There’s also Warren Kanders, who was forced to step down from the Whitney Museum’s board in 2019 in response to public outrage over his company’s sale of tear gas.
Illingworth believes that such people opt to give for two main non-altruistic reasons. One is reputation laundering, which has a long history in philanthropy. In 1888, Alfred Nobel read a premature obituary calling him the “Merchant of Death” for getting rich off the sale of explosives. Nobel was so spooked by the moniker that he decided to give away all of his assets to establish the Nobel Prizes. Today, the name Nobel is more broadly associated with peace and science rather than blowing stuff up. Everyone prefers to be known for their gifts to charity, not for accelerating deforestation or covering up workplace abuse.
The other reason is somewhat counterintuitive: It’s called the moral licensing loophole, a psychological phenomenon identified by the researchers Benoit Monin and Dale T. Miller in 2001. This theory states that when someone does something nice — such as giving to charity — they subconsciously feel entitled to do something bad. It’s like somebody on a diet who’s “been eating healthily for a couple of months, and then they just eat a pint of ice cream,” said Illingworth. Only in this case, the pint of ice cream may portend something far more serious.
“If it’s Jeffrey Epstein, and he comes along and says, ‘Well, I really want to make a donation to the media lab at MIT,’ then you should think twice about that,” she said. “Because he’s done a lot of bad things, and there’s a good chance that he’ll follow the good act with a bad act.”
The clearest archetype of this thinking is probably Sam Bankman-Fried, the FTX cryptocurrency fraudster, who donated over $190 million to charity before his arrest in 2022. Bankman-Fried was temporarily the most successful disciple ever of the effective altruism (EA) movement’s idea of earning to give, which encourages people to make a lot of money primarily so they can give it all away. Ultimately, however, Bankman-Fried’s fraud tarnished the credibility of effective altruism as a whole, and embarrassed many of its leaders, some of whom had been warned before about Bankman-Fried’s unethical behavior. Some charities — especially EA darlings like the Centre for Effective Altruism — lost out on millions in promised funding, and EA itself is still digging itself out.
Many have speculated that Bankman-Fried justified, or morally licensed, his crimes under the utilitarian notion that it is okay to steal if it means more money for causes like pandemic prevention and AI safety. In Twitter direct messages with my former colleague Kelsey Piper, he implied that his decisions were mostly untethered to a genuine concern about ethics, but rather were part of a “dumb game we woke westerners play where we say all the right shiboleths and so everyone likes us.”
But even so, Bankman-Fried and some of those around him still appear to have found some justification for their behavior in charity. Bankman-Fried’s ex-girlfriend and onetime top adviser, Caroline Ellison, testified that he built his crypto empire on the idea they were making money for the “greater good,” and therefore he and those in his orbit were entitled to break the rules. “It made me more willing to do things like cheat or steal,” she said.
(Disclaimer: Bankman-Fried’s philanthropic family foundation awarded Vox’s Future Perfect a grant for a 2023 reporting project that was later canceled after his arrest. Another ex-colleague, Dylan Matthews, wrote an honest and illuminating piece in the aftermath of the tainted grant.)
But it’s easy to ignore — sometimes unwittingly — when a possibly sleazy donor comes along, especially if their crimes are only rumored or appear to be morally ambiguous at the moment. Sometimes those donors turn out to be monsters, or at the very least, crooks.
While “fundraisers do a tremendous amount of work understanding who their donors are,” Taylor told me, “no one is going to go up and ask, ‘Do you have any baggage? I want to take money from you, but have you committed any crimes?’”
Disquietingly, according to a poll conducted in 2023, more than half of fundraisers said that the prevalence of toxic donors had risen in recent years. While half of the nearly 700 fundraisers surveyed had encountered a “morally tainted donor” in their work, only one-third said their employer had a policy in place for handling such donations.
Again, these are rarely the Epsteins of the world, but more commonly a broad range of people who’ve engaged in questionable moral behavior: a tech CEO whose product has sparked privacy concerns, perhaps, or a Hollywood producer accused but never convicted of sexual misconduct.
“Rarely are institutions going to be confronted with such criminals, particularly known criminals,” said Zoe Rahwan, a research scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development, who conducted the poll. Rather, “it’s this area of moral ambiguity where there’s no criminal conviction” that “is really difficult territory,” she said, because “there may be a sense that the person or the company they work with does some good but also maybe does some ill for society.”
The majority of those surveyed said they would generally accept donations from people who’ve done or been accused of unethical things, but haven’t been convicted of a crime. While fewer fundraisers said they would accept a donation from someone with a criminal conviction, a full 37 percent made an exception for those convicted of white-collar crimes.
The general public, when asked a similar set of questions, said nonprofits should be able to accept donations from those accused of a broad range of unethical behavior, with 74 percent tolerating racism and more than half accepting of white-collar crimes like Bankman-Fried’s. However, they were less likely to approve of such donations if they knew the funds were directly obtained by criminal means. Over one-third said they were willing to accept gifts from donors convicted — not just suspected, but convicted — of sexual assault.
It’s not necessarily the case that people don’t care who’s giving them — or their favorite charity — money. Surely, every fundraiser would prefer to accept donations only from the most squeaky-clean sources they could find. But for most charities, there’s never been enough money to go around to be choosy. While funding shortages are particularly acute today — about 70 percent of the country’s nonprofits are facing funding cuts under the Trump administration — many groups are accustomed to operating on thin financial margins.
If an organization is in dire financial straits and “a slightly tainted donor comes along and says, ‘I’m willing to help and you don’t have to sacrifice too much of your reputation,’ you’re going to take the money,” Taylor told me. “You may even have somewhat of a fiduciary duty to at least consider taking the money.”
In the 1990s, many tobacco companies used predatory marketing practices to boost sales of menthol cigarettes in Black communities, a strategy that included offering donations to local nonprofits in those neighborhoods as a form of reputation laundering. Among them was a job training charity then led by Taylor, who said he accepted the donation with some unease.
“We felt that if they were extracting money from the Black community, then we should be using some of that money to help the Black community,” he said. “Some people were okay with that decision and that way of looking at it. Other people weren’t.”
When a shady donor comes around, there’s often no perfect way to respond. And while they may feel more conspicuous now, much of our modern social system was initially funded by very rich people who were very imperfect.
We have public libraries today partly because Andrew Carnegie decided to give away most of his fortune — which he earned in part through abusive, and sometimes deadly, labor practices — to charity. Way back in 1905, a $100,000 donation from eugenicist John D. Rockefeller sparked an impassioned debate in the Congregational Church over whether to accept a gift from an oil baron who accumulated his wealth in such an “unscrupulous and brutal way.” In the end, they took the money, as did countless medical researchers, some of whom went on to use those funds to develop a vaccine for yellow fever and popularize the use of insulin to treat diabetes.
“Controversial donors have always been here. It’s just that now we pay more attention to it.”
Marek Prokupek, KEDGE Business School
“There are those who would argue that all money in America is tainted” by some form of exploitation, even if it took place a century ago, said Taylor. “People will never always agree that the decision was right, and that’s a tension that we have to live with in the end.”
“Controversial donors have always been here,” said Marek Prokupek, a professor at KEDGE Business School who specializes in the role of ethics in arts funding. “It’s just that now we pay more attention to it.” There may be benefits to accepting money from an unsavory donor in the short-term, he said, but institutions “risk losing the trust of their communities” and losing out on new potential supporters in the long run.
And trust is everything for nonprofits, universities, museums, and other institutions whose mission is to serve a public that’s become increasingly cynical about their motivations. Fewer than one-third of Americans say they trust wealthy philanthropists to do the right thing, down from 36 percent in 2010, and nearly 60 percent believe they have too much influence over the nonprofits they fund. That skepticism appears to have also bled into their view of the organizations those philanthropists support, with just 35 percent of Americans reporting high trust in nonprofits as of September of last year. They have also themselves become less likely to donate, at least in part because they sense the charitable world’s acquiescence to the richest of the rich.
Remember the Sacklers? For decades, the Sackler name was an enduring presence across many of the world’s most storied cultural institutions, despite their patronage’s association with the development of OxyContin, which drove millions of Americans into opioid addiction. Over a five-year period alone, they gave over $60 million to prestigious universities around the world.
Then, in 2017, photographer Nan Goldin launched a protest campaign against those institutions accused of “artwashing” the Sacklers by accepting their support. She held protests at the Guggenheim and a die-in at the Louvre. “All the museums and institutions need to stop taking money from these corrupt, evil bastards,” Goldin said in a documentary about her activism. Eventually, one by one, almost all of them did.
The reputational damage and bad press that came with accepting the Sackler donations were corrosive enough that many institutions — including the Louvre, the Guggenheim, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art — decided that the money was not worth it. Research shows that tainted donors also affect institutions’ bottom line, making it harder for them to make connections with new donors or, in the case of museums, presumably sell tickets.
These days, “we expect organizations to be more accountable and more transparent, and to stand for good values,” Prokupek said, not allowing “controversial donors to wash their brand.”
You don’t want to wait until the protesters show up or the allegations accumulate to establish red lines. A good rule of thumb is that if it’s not something that you’d be willing to explain away if the world finds out, then maybe say no next time a sleazy billionaire comes knocking on your door.
Thou shalt not make a deal with the devil, even if nobody ever finds out about it. In the process of sanitizing someone else’s rotten moral character, you may well end up tainting your own.
2026-04-25 06:30:00
经过多年的投诉和诉讼，以及2022年泰勒·斯威夫特“时代巡回演唱会”门票销售争议引发的连锁反应，各州将此案提交至法庭并取得胜利。4月15日，联邦陪审团裁定Live Nation娱乐公司与Ticketmaster构成非法垄断，向粉丝过度收费并排挤竞争对手。尽管如此，现在的问题变得简单：门票价格真的会下降吗？事实证明，答案远不止是限制费用和增加竞争那么简单。了解更多关于Ticketmaster与Live Nation案件的信息：Live Nation在法庭上败诉。这将对演唱会行业产生什么影响？Ticketmaster垄断判决是否只是幻象？Ticketmaster在法庭上遭遇重大失利。
On April 15, a federal jury found that Live Nation Entertainment and Ticketmaster operated as an illegal monopoly, overcharging fans and shutting out competition.
After years of complaints and lawsuits, as well as the fallout from the 2022 Taylor Swift Eras Tour ticket sale controversy, the states took the case to trial and won.
So now the question is simple: Will ticket prices actually go down? The answer, it turns out, is more complicated than limiting fees and creating more competition.
Read more about the Ticketmaster/Live Nation case:
Live Nation lost in court. Here’s what it means for concerts.
Is the Ticketmaster Monopoly Verdict a Mirage
Ticketmaster’s Big Loss in Court
2026-04-25 06:00:00
史蒂夫·维特科夫（Steve Witkoff，右）和贾里德·库什纳（Jared Kushner，左）于2026年4月12日在巴基斯坦伊斯兰堡举行新闻发布会。| Jacquelyn Martin/pool/AFP via Getty Images
本文出自《Logoff》每日简报，旨在帮助您了解特朗普政府的动态，而不会让政治新闻占据您的生活。点击此处订阅。
欢迎来到《Logoff》：美国和伊朗外交官本周六将在巴基斯坦举行会谈，讨论结束伊朗战争的方案。以下是关键信息：
停火现状：目前停火协议仍然有效，并被延长至伊朗提交“统一方案”结束战争为止。根据特朗普本周早些时候在社交媒体上的声明，这意味着停火可能无限期持续，或直到特朗普决定改变立场。（此前停火协议将在周二晚间到期。）
谈判代表：此次谈判并非由副总统JD·范斯（JD Vance）主导。美国代表团将由中东特使史蒂夫·维特科夫和特朗普女婿贾里德·库什纳（虽非政府官员，但拥有与海湾国家的巨额商业利益）带领。与此同时，伊朗也不会派其与美国的主要谈判代表、议会议长穆罕默德·巴赫加尔（Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf）出席。根据《纽约时报》报道，伊朗外长将提交一份书面回应，以应对美国提出的和平协议。
霍尔木兹海峡情况：海峡仍然基本封锁，美国继续对伊朗船只和港口实施封锁，而伊朗则阻止其他船只通过这一关键航道。本周早些时候，伊朗据称袭击了至少三艘试图通过海峡的船只，而美国上周则扣押了一艘伊朗船只。封锁的持续导致油价居高不下，战争对全球经济的影响（包括食品、燃料和消费品的价格与供应）进一步加深。
接下来会发生什么：我们将关注谈判的结果，但一些观察人士认为范斯的缺席可能并非积极信号。与此同时，美国的封锁仍将持续。特朗普周四在社交媒体上表示：“我们完全控制了霍尔木兹海峡，它被‘严丝合缝’地封锁着，直到伊朗能够达成协议！”
我的同事艾莉·沃尔普（Allie Volpe）报道称，独处有很多好处，但关键是要适度，不要过度。您可以点击此处阅读她关于如何更好地“下线”的精彩建议（附赠链接）。
一如既往，感谢您的阅读！祝您度过愉快的周末，我们周一再见。
This story appeared in The Logoff, a daily newsletter that helps you stay informed about the Trump administration without letting political news take over your life. Subscribe here.
Welcome to The Logoff: US and Iranian diplomats will meet again in Pakistan this weekend to discuss an end to the Iran war. Here’s what to know:
What’s the status of the ceasefire? Still in effect and extended “until such time” as Iran produces a “unified proposal” to end the war, according to a social media post by President Donald Trump earlier this week. In other words, likely indefinitely — or until Trump feels like doing otherwise. (It had been set to expire Tuesday evening prior to the extension.)
Who’s negotiating? Not Vice President JD Vance. This time, the US delegation will be led by US special envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff and by Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law (who is not a government official, but does have billions of dollars of business interests with Gulf countries). Likewise, the Washington Post reports, Iran will not be sending its leading negotiating partner with the US, Parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf.
Instead, according to the New York Times, Iran’s foreign minister will present a written response to a proposed US peace deal.
How’s the Strait of Hormuz looking? Still largely closed, as the US continues its blockade of Iranian vessels and ports, and Iran continues to bottle up any other traffic through the key waterway. Earlier this week, Iran reportedly fired on at least three vessels trying to transit the strait, and the US seized an Iranian vessel last weekend.
The continued closure means that oil costs remain high as the war’s impact on the global economy — including on the prices and availability of food, fuel, and consumer goods — deepens.
What comes next? We’ll see what comes out of the negotiations, though some close watchers have suggested that Vance’s absence is likely not an encouraging sign.
In the meantime, the US blockade will remain in effect: “We have total control over the Strait of Hormuz,” Trump posted on Thursday. “It is ‘Sealed up Tight,’ until such time as Iran is able to make a DEAL!!!”
Solitude has lots of benefits, my colleague Allie Volpe reports — but it’s best if you do it right, and don’t overdo it. You can read her excellent advice here with a gift link (think of it as advice on how to log off better).
As always, thanks for reading! Have a great weekend, and we’ll see you right back here on Monday.