Digital Commons Network^™

The Etiology Of A New Era: Where Heroes Become Zeros And Victims Become Villains, Traci Jo Harmon

Doctoral Dissertations and Projects

The United States is in a state of turmoil. Unlike any time before this, division in the country is overtaking the COVID-19 pandemic as the biggest threat to life and liberty. Previous research is contradictive in identifying the etiology of anti-police rhetoric, anti-Christian rhetoric, and victim-blaming. The current research attempts to find out if mainstream and or social media is the etiology of the racial, religious, and victim division in The United States. Attitudes towards law enforcement, Christians, and victims were measured against platforms for current events, hours per day on mainstream and social media, age, gender, and race/ethnicity. Significant …

The 2011 Somalia Famine, Aya Ahmed

The Undergraduate Research Journal

In early 2011, the citizens of Somalia became unable to access basic human necessities such as food and water until the situation changed dramatically, leading to the daily death of thousands of human beings. This research paper tackles the negative consequences resulting from the Al-Shabaab movement, a movement who has the belief that applying the Sharia (Islamic Law) is the only valid solution to any issue as it is supported by the Sunni Islam, political issues, and the delay of the famine’s declaration. This research begs several questions which are: what were the factors which led to Somalia’s famine in …

Prof. James Green, President Of The Washington Brazil Office: Interview By Patricia Freitas Dos Santos, James Green

Spect-actor: A Journal of Pedagogy & Theatre of the Oppressed

The Washington Brazil Office has been active until the date of publication (August 2023), producing content in English with open access to the public. All Washington Brazil Office publications, including the Brazilian Electoral Bulletin, opinion pieces, reports, and podcasts, are available at https://www.braziloffice.org/

Against The Tide: Indigenous Knowledge And Education For Humanization, Arturo Rodriguez, Kevin Russel Magill

Journal of Multicultural Affairs

Power brokers and their market economies enforce education on a global level. According to the United Nations, the effects of global neoliberal capitalism cause human rights violations in all parts of the world, yet democratic countries scoff at these findings (Pogge, 2002 & 2005). People of the world continue to believe that tying minoritized students to existing structures and ensuring enculturation is the best possible outcome for all involved (Suárez-Orozco & Suárez-Orozco, 2015). That is, minoritized children are educated to ensure first-world countries produce a minimally educated and willing labor force. In this paper we argue the following: 1) power …

The Plight Of Threatened Afghan And Iranian Scholars And Students, Mehrzad Boroujerdi

History and Political Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

In the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan religious ideas and laws seek to control all spheres of private and public life and state-sponsored restrictions hinder access to education and academic freedom for numerous citizens. The prevailing sedimented culture in both countries has resulted in the dismissal of many experienced scholarly personnel and an ensuing “brain drain.” This research project has cataloged some of the conditions that have impinge upon scholarly inquiry in Iran and Afghanistan and have led many scholars to leave their countries of birth. Based on an extensive literature review and personal interviews …

The Complex Intersections Of Being A Latina Immigrant Survivor: How Multiple Systems Of Oppression Enable Intimate Partner Violence, Zulema Aleman

sprinkle: an undergraduate journal of feminist and queer studies

The realm of intimate partner violence education, prevention and awareness is one that is currently growing. Even though there are improvements happening, there are communities being left out of both the movement and body of research. This paper aims at connecting the stories of undocumented Latinas who are survivors of intimate partner violence in the central coast of California with the current body of research on immigrant survivors. In doing so, it seeks to explore the areas where the body of research matches the stories of these women in the central coast of California and where there is a lack …

The Normalcy In Solomon Islands-Australia Asymmetric Relations Post-Ramsi, Faqih Faqih

Jurnal Politik

Solomon Islands – China security deal has concerned Australia. Despite this, the relations between Solomon Islands and Australia have still been maintained through negotiated interaction. This article seeks to explain how Australia and Solomon Islands have sustained their normal relations even though Australia, as the larger power, has the means to exert its dominance over the Solomon Islands. The study employed a qualitative method by analyzing Solomon Islands and Australian leaders' statements collected from news media, official government websites, and official documents. Using Brantly Womack's conception of normalcy, the research found that the Solomon Islands still recognize the disparity of …

Nongovernmental Organizations As The Fifth Estate, Stuart E. Eizenstat

Journal of Diplomacy and International Relations

No abstract provided.

Globalization, Civil Society, And Democracy?: An Organizational Assessment, John Barkdull, Lisa A. Dicke

Journal of Diplomacy and International Relations

No abstract provided.

African States And African Interests: The Representation Of Marginalized Groups In International Organizations, Kathryn C. Lavelle

Journal of Diplomacy and International Relations

No abstract provided.

Freedom Song: Uncovering A Politics Of Dignity In Black Feminist Thought And Praxis, Abegail M. Dobson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This master's thesis delves into Intersectionality as an organizing framework and critical social theory, emphasizing the significance of Black feminist thought to social justice initiatives that challenge prevailing intersectional violence. The central inquiry of this project is uncovering a Black feminist conceptualization of dignity as articulated in foundational texts. I scrutinize the essence of dignity within Black feminist theory and praxis, particularly addressing the question: How valuable is a "right" when societal experiences consistently undermine one's basic needs and protections required to live a dignified life beyond survival?

Black feminist thought, encompassing praxis, is posited as a profound space for …

Donald Trump’S Contribution To The Study Of Politics And The Life Sciences, John Hibbing

Department of Political Science: Faculty Publications

If the life sciences are to have much to say about politics, there needs to be a universal element to political orientations. In this essay, I argue that the recent prominence of nativist, law-and-order, populist politicians reveals the nature of this universal element. All social units have to address bedrock dilemmas about how to deal with norm violators and how welcoming to be to outsiders as well as to proponents of new lifestyles. Might differences on these core dilemmas be the universal element of political life? Using the followers of one of the most prominent examples of a nativist political …

Demographic Structure And Voting Behaviour During Democratization: Evidence From Malaysia's 2022 Election, Sebastian Carl Dettman, Thomas B. Pepinsky

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

Malaysia’s fifteenth general election (GE15) was a milestone in the country’s democratization process, with new parties and political movements competing with established political coalitions. In this paper, we investigate how Malaysia’s cleavage structure—a central feature of Malaysia’s prior authoritarian regime—shapes electoral competition in a newly competitive political environment. We find that the “race paradigm” (Milner, Embong, and Tham 2014) remains central to explaining party strategy and coalition behavior in GE15, but that more democratic competition has increased the salience of regional differences—both between peninsular Malaysia and East Malaysia, and within peninsular Malaysia itself. Our analysis reveals the structural foundations of …

Chinese Visions Of Self And Other: The International Politics Of Noses, William A. Callahan

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

How does China view the world? While much has been written about how China's international relations are best seen as intercultural relations that do not exclude the Other, this article examines how self/Other relations are visualized in terms of the human face in China, in particular through iconic images that construct the Chinese self with and against foreigners with large noses. It employs interpretivist methods to consider the interplay of social relations and international relations in order to see how ‘external appearance’ and ‘external relations’ inform each other in Chinese theory and practice. It mobilizes the classical Chinese concept ‘deep-set …

From Voting Rights To Voter Turnout: Three Papers On The Interplay Of Racial Resentment, Racial Threat, And Politics, Kevin Morris

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Paper 1 begins by exploring the role of white racial anxieties in the formation and furtherance of narratives about election fraud. It argues that white Americans face a psychological dilemma: despite having a strong desire to reject the outcomes of recent elections that disproportionately benefit nonwhite Americans, they nevertheless seek to justify a political system that has long accrued benefits to their own racial group. This tension might be discharged by accusing nonwhite voters of fraud, thus maintaining the legitimacy of electoral politics. The paper uses three tests to show that this process is likely at play. First, public rhetorics …

Grand Strategy At The End Of History: Chinese Strategic Thought In The 21st Century And Its Western Perceptions, Daniel A. Rogers

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Too often does the study of grand strategy, especially as it is conducted by academics based in the United States, take on an ethnocentric perspective which would lead American audiences to believe it is their country alone which possesses a coherent grand strategy that seeks to secure the national interest and nothing more. This chauvinistic approach not only leaves the majority of the world out of the conversation of grand strategy, but also results in the characterizing of the strategic approaches of non-Western states as disruptors of the foreign policy goals of the United States. The People’s Republic of China …

Collect Cosmic Dust, Make It Into Bright Stars: The Use Of Temporal Data In Regeneration Of Life Space And Time Via A Construction Of The Political-Sociological Theory Of Justice, Yi Wang

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis argues for an argument-counterargument approach to the atypical classics of Franz Kafka and Emily Dickinson. This approach to the literature is useful for a construction of the political-sociological theory of justice, which claims that the state of a just world is each individual’s lifetime moving in a dialectic-of-anti-violence-and-non-violence manner.

Party Time: The Working Families Party And The Us Political System, 1998–2018, Luke P. Elliott-Negri

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In 1998, an upstart “third party” called the Working Families Party (WFP) limped onto the political scene in New York State. Ten years later, the WFP was at the center of the electoral effort that wrested control of the New York State Senate from the Republican Party for the first time in many decades, and a torrent of progressive legislation ensued. This dissertation is a history of the WFP from 1998 to 2018, when the Republicans were again—and this time stably—vanquished at the state level and socialists began to enter state and federal office in a new way. To develop …

Rewiring The Spokes: The Future Of U.S. Bilateralism In Asia, Gian Marc Lombardo

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Since the end of WWII, multilateralism has consistently grown as the go-to alliance structure for the United States. Despite this, the U.S. opted to create a series of bilateral alliances after WWII in Asia, dubbed the Hub-and-Spokes system. This alliance system has not only sustained itself, but also continues to fortify itself in the face of a rising threat in Asia. China has increased its assertiveness and has shifted the balance of threat in the region, while also being the primary economic and development option for regional states. This major change in the structure of Asian power has surfaced the …

The Relationship Between “Black Lives Matter” Movement Protests And Police Arrests In New York City, Chicago, And Los Angeles: An Empirical Analysis, Lukas Louwagie

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The summer of 2020 marked a boiling point of protest and frustration at long-criticized police behavior in the United States. The events that summer revealed the “Black Lives Matter” (BLM) movement as something that could not be ignored and was capable of drawing national support and attention across many dividing lines (Mitchell 2020). Today, it seems evident that the BLM movement has had a substantial impact on modern political discourse—yet its impact on police behavior and reform, the primary target of the movement, is murky. Police departments across the nation are pushing back against calls to defund and reform their …

The Promise Of Universalism Deferred: Political Economy Of Social Policy In 21st Century Latin America, Juan C. Ferre

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In the first decade and half of the 21st century, most Latin American countries experienced a long-overdue reduction in income inequalities and significant social policy expansion. While this welfare expansion has been widely documented, scholars have paid less attention to the persistent or increasing segmentation: inequalities in transfers and in the quality of services across population groups continued unabated. This dissertation employs mixed-methods to respond to the following questions: have governments in Latin America, and Left governments in particular, made significant progress toward universal social policy?

For 17 Latin American countries in the period 2000-2020, I measure three dimensions …

Understanding Immigration-Based Intractable Conflict Behaviors Through The Lenses Of Social Identity And Emotions, Caryn Cade Moir

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of this post-intentional phenomenological study was to understand how participants experience social identity, emotions, and cognitive freezing in the context of immigration-based conflict. Immigration-based conflict in the United States exemplifies intractable conflict; it increases polarization, negative emotions, and intolerance among individuals in the United States. This study included action research; learning more about how participants experienced immigration-based conflict contributed knowledge that mediators can use to better serve parties in conflict, particularly during premediation interviews. The researcher used semistructured interviews to gather data from six participants. The data indicated that immigration-based conflict in the United States is consistent with …

Flashpoints In Small State Diplomacy: The Effects Of Strategic Alignment, Democratic Norms, And Domestic Support In Ukraine And Taiwan On Us Commitments, Cooper T. Wilson

Senior Theses

In the field of international relations, the fate of small and mid-sized nations is often analyzed through the lens of great power politics, but this perspective misses half of the story. In this paper, I ask the question: what factors internal to smaller states affect their ability to court Western support? I compare the cases of Ukraine and Taiwan, as both are geopolitical flashpoints with a much larger aggressor, are widely researched for their implications on the global balance of power, yet lack sufficient research regarding their own actions on the world stage. Looking at the history of both states …

A Christian Case For Racial Reparations, Daniel Philpott

The Journal of Social Encounters

National healing for the persistent wounds of racism, America’s original sin, can be advanced through a national apology, reparations and forgiveness. The frequent practice of apologies and reparations around the world in the past generation provide precedent for such measures. Christianity’s teaching of reconciliation and accompanying notions of sin, repentance, forgiveness, and atonement provide a strong moral basis for these measures and resonate with the rationales through which the United States’s greatest champions of civil rights and equality have fought against racism and slavery. Because racism and slavery were supported with the sanction of the state, in the name of …

Sociocultural & Leadership Transmission In The Somali Diaspora: Community Values, Cohesion, Family Unity & Patriarchal Leadership, Farhia A. Abdi

The Journal of Social Encounters

This research explores the Somali Diaspora community in Ottawa, Canada’s intercultural understanding between their homeland and their host country. The task of this limited study is to assess the changes occurring in the contemporary Somali diaspora culture and changes in leadership perceptions, particularly those of male leadership, and changes in family integration, community cohesion and solidarity, and the transmission of cultural values across generations. This research confirms that changes did occur in the Somali Diaspora community in various ways, including family dynamics, community cohesion and the concept of transmitting cultural values to their younger generation. Themes are identified by the …

African Ethnopolitical Rivalry In A Public Theological Lens: Building Bridges Between The Luo And Kikuyu, Dan Kidha Kidha

The Journal of Social Encounters

This research explores African ethnopolitical rivalry within a public theological framework, aiming to build bridges between the Luo and Kikuyu communities of Kenya. It argues that as a community enterprise, theology should engage with the public and be concerned about the wellbeing of God's people. Ethnopolitical conflict is a major impediment to human flourishing in sub- Saharan Africa, causing loss of life, displacement, and fractured identity. The paper draws on practical and public theologies to understand the lived contexts of human experience and argues that a robust interdisciplinary approach is necessary to uplift those affected by ethnic conflicts. As an …

Urban Resistance To Occupation: An Underestimated Element Of Land Warfare, Kevin D. Stringer, Jelle J. H. Hooiveld

The US Army War College Quarterly: Parameters

With the world trending toward urbanization, and Russia and China acting aggressively toward Ukraine and Taiwan, respectively, the conduct of irregular warfare in built-up environments—specifically, urban resistance to occupation—merits greater study. The authors’ Dutch-language and primary source research on the Netherlands’ World War II urban resistance to German occupation makes this article unique. It provides deeper insights into the occupation experiences of a highly urbanized, densely populated country in which clandestine underground and auxiliary elements played paramount roles in resistance efforts for most of the occupation period. It also illustrates the feasibility of overt, guerrilla-based activity in urban environments during …

A Call To Action: Lessons From Ukraine For The Future Force, Katie Crombe, John A. Nagl

The US Army War College Quarterly: Parameters

Fifty years ago, the US Army faced a strategic inflection point after a failed counterinsurgency effort in Vietnam. In response to lessons learned from the Yom Kippur War, the United States Army Training and Doctrine Command was created to reorient thinking and doctrine around the conventional Soviet threat. Today’s Army must embrace the Russo-Ukrainian conflict as an opportunity to reorient the force into one as forward-thinking and formidable as the Army that won Operation Desert Storm. This article suggests changes the Army should make to enable success in multidomain large-scale combat operations at today’s strategic inflection point.

The Strategic Importance Of Taiwan To The United States And Its Allies: Part Two – Policy Since The Start Of The Russia-Ukraine War, Luke P. Bellocchi

The US Army War College Quarterly: Parameters

Taiwan has become increasingly important to the United States and its allies as the Russia-Ukraine War has united democracies against authoritarian expansionism and indeed has developed an international democracy-authoritarianism dynamic in global affairs. Part one of this article clearly outlined the geopolitical, economic, and soft-power reasons why Taiwan is strategically important. Part two reviews the development of US and allied policy statements on Taiwan—from the invasion of Ukraine in 2022 to the present—and provides policymakers and military strategists with incremental but realistic recommendations for understanding the current dynamic of the region and fashioning responses to deter further authoritarian aggression.

Autumn Book Reviews, Usawc Press

The US Army War College Quarterly: Parameters

No abstract provided.