Digital Commons Network^™

Student Self-Evaluation As Assessment: A Reflective Tool For Ungraded Pedagogy, Jennifer Corby

Open Educational Resources

This Google Form-based self-evaluation tool is designed to support a student-centered, ungraded approach to assessment in an introductory political science course. Rooted in critical pedagogy and Universal Design for Learning principles, the form invites students to reflect honestly and thoroughly on their own work. For each assignment, students are asked to articulate the expectations, assess the extent of their engagement, and reflect on their learning. The tool reinforces metacognition, accountability, and democratic participation in the learning process.

Finding Peer-Reviewed Research, Jamie Aroosi

Open Educational Resources

This is a short assignment that teaches studens about the role of peer-review as well as how to find and identify peer-reviewed research.

Threats To Democracy: A Danger To Social Justice For All, José Luis Irizarry, Rajade M. Berry-James, Duchess D. Humphrey, Rachel Emas, Bruce D. Mcdonald Iii, James Nordin, Michael Lee, Lindsey L. Evans, Anthony M. Starke Jr., Jay M. Grosflam

School of Public Service Faculty Publications

This essay argues that threats to democracy—both global and domestic—pose an existential risk to the advancement of social justice. It explores how democratic backsliding undermines efforts to achieve social justice for all, examining anti-democratic practices such as misinformation, voter suppression, institutional dismantling, and the politicization of public service. Highlighting the interdependence between democratic institutions and social equity in public governance, the authors propose a multilevel response framework to foster democratic resilience through civic engagement, institutional accountability, and collective action. In this essay, members of the Board of the Section on Democracy and Social Justice (DSJ) of the American Society for …

Operation Dumbo Drop: Cultural Memory, And Representations Of The Vietnam War In The 1990s, Sylvie Kromer

Scripps Senior Theses

In 1995, the film Operation Dumbo Drop was released by Walt Disney Pictures. This film, based on a true story of elephants being airlifted across Vietnam in 1968 by the American military, holds a unique position as a rare family-friendly comedy about the Vietnam War. As a reflection of 1990s-era cultural memory of the Vietnam War, the film rehistoricizes and sanitizes the war, following a similar trend in other pieces of media from the same era. Operation Dumbo Drop must be seen in this context and as a product of the moment in which it was made. In taking a …

Finding Futures: Refusing Canva And The Homogenization Of The D.I.Y. Political Post(Er), Cassidy Bensko

Scripps Senior Theses

The convergence of corporate technology and subversive political expression is not new. Canva, like Xerox, is but another made-for-the-office technological innovation employed to political ends. Its ease-of-use has made it a staple tool for students, office workers, event planners, and political organizers alike. However, it is easy to use because it eliminates the need for creative decision-making, empowering users to quickly and easily produce designs that all look the same. This paper asks: Is the homogenization of D.I.Y. political posters, a medium that has historically been characterized by design elements that are as subversive as the politics they represent, indicative …

“Democracy,” Usa, Marc Edelman

Publications and Research

What does it mean to be an effective citizen in a democracy? Answering this question requires unpacking “democracy” and an analysis of institutions that systematically disempower and alienate citizens. This paper briefly examines the contributions of psychoanalysis to understanding democracy and authoritarianism. It scrutinizes U.S. governance institutions and points to democratic deficits and backsliding present even before Trump 1.0 and 2.0. These range from the Electoral College, the Senate, and the Supreme Court to the Federal Communications Commission. All contributed to institutionalizing minority rule and elite capture. Governance institutions failed to deliver what the American people tell opinion pollsters they …

Pols 3014w Research Strategies In Public Policy, Sevdenur Koru

Open Educational Resources

Anthropological, psychological, political, social, and economic arguments and knowledge frequently depend on the use of numerical data. An anthropologist might examine how population differences in genes explain population differences in health outcomes; a psychologist might hypothesize that I.Q. is attributable to environmental or genetic factors; a politician might claim that handgun control legislation will reduce crime; a sociologist might assert that social mobility is more limited in the United States than in other countries, and an economist might declare that globalization lowers the incomes of U.S. workers. How can we evaluate these issues and arguments? Using examples from anthropology, psychology, …

“We Aren’T Dying Yet, But We’Re On The Hospital Bed.” An Analysis Of Scottish Culture And Desire For Independence, Emma Walker

Honors Papers and Posters

Scottish culture has long often been associated with barbaric clans and whiskey; however, there is much more to this culture than meets the eye. After centuries of oppression and pushback on expressing cultural aspects of Scottish identity post the Union of the Crowns in 1603, Scotland has now emerged as a leader in re-establishing its culture and protecting it as well. This paper will aim to analyze how Scotland's cultural pride over time has changed and how this uptick in pride has also led to a political movement for independence. I argue that the aftermath of the Battle of Culloden, …

A Woman’S World Through The Lens Of Socialized Politics: How Accurate Knowledge Politically And Socially Empowers A Woman’S Autonomy, Claire G. Herzog

Undergraduate Honors Theses

Women have dealt with being perceived as inferior to men, defective, and in need of control. My research draws a connection between the ways societal beliefs, judicial action and political action interact with each other to reinforce and reproduce these limiting beliefs about women. The interaction between these institutions result in underlying policies that target women's rights, silencing their voices and sense of independence, all while aiming to control the female body completely. Despite the perception that modern society has moved away from the sexist beliefs that had been created and ingrained into society centuries ago, we are left with …

Indopacom Force Structure: A Trajectory Into The 2030s, Robert Burke

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

Over the past ten years Taiwan has become a major point of friction between the United States and People’s Republic of China with both militaries preparing for a potential conflict over the island. China vastly expanded its military forces and capabilities over the past thirty years and is intent on obtaining the ability to both seize Taiwan by force and prevent the United States from generating enough combat power to intervene and defend the island. The Pentagon began to restructure its conventional forces in the Western Pacific at the end of the 2010s, implementing new operational concepts designed to fight …

Promises Of Prosperity: The Impact Of Constitutionalizing Economic And Social Human Rights, Arabella A. Lilleslåtten

Honors Program Theses

Does the attempt to have legal enforcement of economic and social rights in national constitutions positively influence other development outcomes? I hypothesize that economic and social outcomes are better in countries that enshrine these rights in their constitutions, and use a mixed methods approach of quantitative and qualitative analyses to test this. This study includes a regression analysis of 52 countries correlating a summary index of the strength of constitutional rights to education, health, housing and workers' rights in 68 countries with the 2019 Social and Economic Rights Fulfillment (SERF) Index, finding no significant correlation between the variables. A second …

Remixing Oer Assignment: "Advantges And Disadvantages Of State-Level Policies", Katie Zuber

Open Educational Resources

This assignment, created by Katie Zuber, uses OER readings to help students understand how federalism impacts their everyday lives. Using the United States’ response to the Coronavirus as a case study, students will see firsthand that where decisions get made (i.e., the state or federal level) often dictates who gets what, when, and how. This assignment was made as part of a workshop on remixing OERs at John Jay College in 2025.

Remixing Oer Assignment: Incarceration And Homicide Trends, Veronica Michel

Open Educational Resources

In this assignment, Professor Veronica Michel asks students to look for data in two different open access sources and combine them into a new, remixed dataset that they will use to conduct analysis and write a report. The assignment encourages students to play an active role in selecting, formatting and interpreting openly available data. This assignment was created as part of a seminar on remixing OER that ran in 2025.

Internal Or External: An Exploration Of The United States Police Chief Hiring Process, Kayleigh Walker

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

This paper explores the hiring processes of police chiefs across the United States, focusing on internal versus external hiring practices. The goal of this research was to identify common trends, legislative barriers, and the impact of leadership on the hiring process through historical context, legal analysis, and case studies. The findings suggest that internal hires dominate chief appointments, though external hires are often sought during crises. The paper concludes with recommendations for future research and highlights the need to more fully understand this phenomenon. Understanding the processes and limitations surrounding the appointment of new leadership is critical to reform and …

God’S Country: Perceptions Of Religious And Place-Based Candidate Identities, Levi G. Allen, James R.G. Kirk

Government: Faculty Publications

It is often assumed that the rural identity is linked to the Republican Party and the urban identity to the Democratic Party, but little scholarship has investigated how voters connect these identities to the parties in an electoral context and how that perception may influence their electoral preferences. Furthermore, recent elections have seen various political elites employ rural and Evangelical Christian identity labels in virtually synonymous ways in their association with the Republican Party. But are these partisan stereotypes really how Americans perceive these candidate identities? Utilizing a novel survey experiment, we find important distinctions between religious and place-based candidate …

A Social-Ecological Justice Approach To Ecotourism: Examples From Cockpit Country, Jamaica, Laurel Ann C. Curry

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Ecotourism aims to support local social, ecological, and economic systems sustainably, but its implementation often perpetuates social and environmental injustices. This work applies a new social-ecological justice (SEJ) framework to ecotourism, combining Pope et al.’s holistic approach with principles like ecological stewardship, economic repositioning, and collaboration tailored to specific contexts. Importantly, basic capabilities for full functioning of humans and other species were used in this research to measure areas of justice and injustice. Using a case study approach with the Southern Trelawny Environmental Agency (STEA) in Jamaica's Cockpit Country, co-created interview data were analyzed to evaluate its ecotourism program’s alignment …

Lessons Learned From The Trump Rule Of Law Stress Test: Beware Bad Faith Actors, Brian Z. Tamanaha

Scholarship@WashULaw

The second Trump Administration has engaged in a vast swath of actions that press against the outer boundaries of legality. These actions provide a unique opportunity to identify potential vulnerabilities and expose how the rule of law can be undermined. While I will elucidate well-known points along the way, my primary aim is to bring out aspects of the rule of law that usually go unnoticed or under the radar. After setting out basic aspects of the rule of law, I cover three topics: 1) adhering to the truth, 2) pretextual arguments, and 3) flooding the field with actions and …

Academic Freedom Under Attack: How Faculty And Students Can Protect Their Rights Situated In The Scholarly And Public Spheres, Emma Hansen

Honors Senior Capstones and Theses

This thesis project challenged me to apply my learning to the larger community and accomplish something that would make a lasting impact at Roger Williams University. When I was attempting to come up with my topic, I tussled with how my project could accomplish my main goal, to help people. With the current threats to academic freedom and institutional autonomy from the Trump Administration, I recognized that the faculty were expressing concern about the permanence of their jobs. The general feeling on campus and in the news was fear. So, I thought to myself, “How do I put these fears …

Race, Diversity, And The Development Of Political Attitudes On College Campuses, Nathan Chan, Tanika Raychaudhuri

Political Science and International Relations Faculty Works

Faced with demographic change, many colleges are offering courses about race and ethnicity. How does taking race-focused courses affect public opinion? We theorize that while White,Latino, and Asian American students develop more inclusive political attitudes through race-centered coursework, Black Americans may enter college with a deeper understanding of racial issues. We test these expectations using two longitudinal multi-racial datasets. First, using a national longitudinal survey of college students, we find that ethnic studies coursework is associated with increased recognition of racial discrimination among Whites, Latinos, and even Black Americans. Second, using an original panel survey from a public university, we …

Weaponizing Sexual Violence: Variations Between Conflict Related Sexual Violence And Genocidal Rape, Paige Liptak

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the differences between conflict related sexual violence and genocidal rape to advocate for future separate analysis of the two distinctly different forms of sexual violence. By examining 15 genocides from the end of WWII to the end of 2023 this study draws upon prior research from genocide studies, ethnic studies, political science, and feminist scholarship to observe trends that are present in the two forms of sexual violence. The findings indicate that there are distinctly different socio-economic and military conditions that are associated with the two types of sexual violence and therefore genocidal rape should considered separate …

The Impact Of Religiosity On Political Knowledge Among Youth Voters, Norah Sackett

Honors Undergraduate Theses

As political engagement trends among young voters have continued to shift in the United States' political atmosphere, understanding the cognitive factors that influence these decisions is becoming increasingly important. Political efficacy, or the feeling that individual political action can impact the political process, impacting their civic duties, has long been regarded as a key determinant of an individual's political engagement. This study investigates how young voters' understanding of prominent political arguments relates to their sense of political efficacy, with a specific lens on individual religiosity.

Through an examination of this relationship between religiosity and overall comprehension of political arguments, this …

Solving The National Security Threat Of The United States Drug Crisis, Anna B. Freehafer

Honors Undergraduate Theses

This thesis analyzes the current drug crisis in the United States with the intention of forming a sound National Security Report and Strategy to equip current and future administrations with the necessary tools and information to adapt to the modern crisis. The number of drug induced and related deaths are rising in the U.S., which arguably is cause for alarm at the federal level. With the country divided on how to properly attack this crisis, which affects hundreds of thousands of lives across the nation, this thesis aims to provide a solution to a drug crisis that is unlike any …

The Effects Of Demographic Variables On Covid-19 Attitudes Surrounding The 2020 Election, Shelby K. Dalbec

Honors Undergraduate Theses

The COVID-19 pandemic was a worldwide phenomenon, with far-reaching consequences in all sectors of society, including the 2020 election. To better understand the implications of this global occurrence, this research examines the extent to which demographic variables influenced public opinions surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic. This study takes a quantitative approach, analyzing datasets from the 2020 American National Elections Studies (ANES). It examines demographic, socioeconomic, and political factors as independent variables, with dependent variables that capture attitudes related to the COVID-19 pandemic. I hypothesized that there would be a strong relationship between party identification and COVID-19 attitudes. This study found that …

Partisan Divides In Environmental Spending Attitudes: A Two-Level Hierarchical Analysis, 1973-2022, Jordan Lipner

Honors Undergraduate Theses

Public attitudes toward environmental spending have become increasingly divided along party lines, with sharp shifts over the past five decades. This thesis updates and expands on Johnson and Schwadel’s 2019 study by applying a two-level hierarchical linear model to General Social Survey data updated to include data from 2015-2022, capturing how political affiliation, education, race, and economic context interact with broader political and economic contexts to shape environmental attitudes over time.
The results show that political affiliation remains the strongest and most reactive predictor of environmental spending attitudes. Republican respondents are significantly more likely to oppose environmental spending, especially under …

Florida’S Shift From Swing State To Republican Solid State, Alex Alonso Toledo

Honors Undergraduate Theses

This thesis seeks to understand better the changes in Florida’s recent state-level politics. Florida has recently been considered a competitive state on the national political stage, but in the last few years, it has favored the Republican Party. Using publicly-available data and information from databases allows me to lay the foundation for investigating the shift towards the Republican Party in the state. It is important to research this topic to show why specific political strategies adopted can cause significant changes in the political environment, thereby affecting how the public views and supports political parties.

Rethinking Trust In The Refugee Resettlement Process: How Service Providers Can Enable Refugee Agency Through Diasporic Connections, Mahfoudha Sidelemine, Emily D. Campion

Political Science & Geography Faculty Publications

Current guidance for refugee resettlement agency workers encourages the simultaneous pursuit of trust-building and administrative tasks (e.g., housing, transportation and employment). This dual goal is resource-intensive, and focusing on the former may come at a cost to the latter. The purpose of the current research is to challenge the importance of trust-building by resettlement agencies. Drawing from our qualitative data from in-depth interviews with resettled refugees (N = 20) and agency workers (N = 15), we adopt a grounded theory approach and find that the burden of responsibility for both caregiving and administrative responsibilities can overtax agency workers …

Still Making It Up As He Goes: Revisiting The Hyper-Rhetorical Presidency In Trump’S Second Term, Richard Holtzman

Politics, Law, and Society Faculty Journal Articles

In Fast Capitalism’s 2020 issue, “This is Not Normal,” I explored Trump’s propensity for improvised rhetoric during his first term; that is, his reliance on “making it up as he goes” in his public statements, whether communicated verbally or through social media. The primary goal of my original essay was not simply to identify the president’s ad-hoc communication style—which is clear for all to see—but to argue that the president’s tendency toward improvisational speech matters because it represents more than just his approach to communication. This tendency toward improvisation also constitutes much of his approach to governing.

In “Making It …

Who Speaks For The State?, Robert Young, Kristina Daugirdas, Diem Ho, Duncan Pickard, Larry D. Johnson

Articles

Who speaks for the state is a critical question in international relations. Statements by government representatives have normative force—capable of binding the state in numerous ways, from norm formation to staking out a litigation position. Governments choose their representatives carefully, and typically vet positions and even statements in advance. Indeed, the stability of international relations hinges on the assumption that state representatives act with governmental authority. The stakes of disputes over who speaks for the state are thus high.

Several such contestations have emerged in recent years, in a variety of international fora. At the United Nations General Assembly, the …

An Analysis Of The Russo-Ukrainian War, Daniel Braslavsky

Dissertations and Theses

This thesis is a deep analysis of Russia’s aggression against and full-scale invasion of Ukraine, commonly referred to as the Russo-Ukrainian War. This is the largest conflict in Europe since WWII with devastating implications for Europe and the world. First it examines the root causes and political ideologies at play to understand why Vladimir Putin decided to launch his invasion in the first place. Then it puts together a chronological history of the war broken up into the post-Euromaidan period including the Russian annexation of Crimea and war in the Donbas (2014-22), and Russia’s full-scale invasion (2022-present). Next it reviews …

Peacekeeping In Sierra Leone And Mali, Ishaka Kondeh

Dissertations and Theses

This thesis examines the effectiveness of peacekeeping missions in promoting democracy, protecting human rights, and implementing Disarmament, Demobilization, and Reintegration (DDR) programs in post-conflict Sierra Leone and Mali. By analyzing the United Nations Mission in Sierra Leone (UNAMSIL) and the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in Mali (MINUSMA), this research explores the impact of these missions on Mali still in conflict and long-term peacebuilding. The study focuses on three critical areas: supporting democratic governance, ensuring human rights protections, and successfully reintegrating former combatants into society. Through a comparative approach, this research analyzes why some peacekeeping missions succeed and then …