Digital Commons Network^™

How Patents Became Politics, Steven Wilf

Faculty Articles and Papers

Political mobilization in the digital age often coalesces around opposition to the far-reaching protection of intellectual property. Both copyright and patent have materialized as the centerpiece of major political and legal debates that take a variety of forms, including the European pirate parties, NGOs such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation in the United States, and the call for Open Source software. The commonplace narrative is that self-interested stakeholders over the past century successfully fashioned an ever-expanding intellectual property system, and that resistance to such legal control of knowledge only emerged in our times. By contrast, this article recovers a little-known …

Analysis Of The Contributions To The Statement On The War In Ukraine Of The World Council Of Churches 2022, Kia Peränen

Occasional Papers on Religion in Eastern Europe

This essay is structured around a review and analysis of the statement "War in Ukraine, Peace and Justice in the European Region" discussed at the 11th General Assembly of the World Council of Churches in Karlsruhe, Germany in 2022 in Business Session 6. The material for the essay will include both the written statement and the related discussion that took place at the discussion on the topic. My intention is to draw on both the statement and the discussion to highlight strong and useful points, but also to try to bring to the surface the weaker or somewhat flawed arguments …

Commentary On Healthcare And Disruptive Innovation, Hilary Finch, Affia Abasi-Amefon, Woosub Jung, Lucas Potter, Xavier-Lewis Palmer

Electrical & Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

Exploits of technology have been an issue in healthcare for many years. Many hospital systems have a problem with “disruptive innovation” when introducing new technology. Disruptive innovation is “an innovation that creates a new market by applying a different set of values, which ultimately overtakes an existing market” (Sensmeier, 2012). Modern healthcare systems are historically slow to accept new technological advancements. This may be because patient-based, provider-based, or industry-wide decisions are tough to implement, giving way to dire consequences. One potential consequence is that healthcare providers may not be able to provide the best possible care to patients. For example, …

The “Broken Reed Of A Staff”: The Pawnee Agency, Pawnees, And Agent W. De Puy, 1861–1862, R. Paul Collister

Department of History: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

In January 1863 Henry W. De Puy published an open letter to the President. Through the previous year De Puy’s administration at the Pawnee Agency at Genoa, Nebraska Territory (N.T.), had been wrecked and he had been accused of stealing from the Pawnees and his own employees. The Indian Commissioner’s Office had turned him out of office without a hearing. Even President Lincoln had not seen fit to intervene on the agent’s behalf in a department of the President’s own executive branch. De Puy did not want his old job back. He seems to have been sincere in his desire …

Understanding American Nationalism And White Supremacy Through The Legacy Of Christopher Columbus, Júlia Da Silva

Capstone Showcase

Christopher Columbus’ landfall in 1492 was a pivotal historical event which set in motion several political, economic and social processes. Despite the horrors and atrocities instigated by his actions, Columbus continues to be celebrated across the world, particularly in the United States. Although there has been a recent rise in critical scholarship on Columbus, his legacy remains an intrinsic part of the construction of American nationalism. I argue that American national identity and the representations of Christopher Columbus are intertwined, as they have sustained each other across time and collectively reinforce colonial tools.

Strategic Litigation In Wartime: Judging The Russian Invasion Of Ukraine Through The Genocide Convention, Michael Ramsden

Vanderbilt Journal of Transnational Law

Ukraine's recent initiation of legal proceedings against Russia under the Genocide Convention is a prominent example of what has been termed "strategic litigation," denoting the bringing of a case with a goal to produce a wider impact beyond the courtroom. In Allegations of Genocide (Ukraine v. Russia), Ukraine sought a series of declarations from the International Court of Justice (ICJ) that Russia's decision to use force in Ukraine, and its ongoing operation, was unlawful, insofar as such a decision rested on the prevention of genocide. Given that the ICJ does not have the jurisdiction to determine whether Russia has committed …

The Wehrmacht Experience In World War Ii, Tyler Masterson

Theses and Dissertations

German soldiers who were in the Wehrmacht during World War II faced many different experiences from the beginning of the war when it seemed they were in control to later parts of the war were they were being driven back by the Allies. Along with the different experiences from different times of the war, they also faced different experiences when it came to what front they were fighting on. Fronts and theaters that stretch from North Africa and the Mediterranean Campaign to Eastern Europe and Russia to Western Europe. When it comes to the troops that were fighting in the …

War On Covid: Warfare And Its Discontents, Catherine Powell

Faculty Scholarship

This essay analyzes the wartime framing of “fighting” a war on COVID-19—to “fight that invisible enemy,” coronavirus. How might lawmakers address social crises, such as COVID, with the urgency of an emergency without reinforcing our overly-militarized, securitized, and policed state? The problem with a securitized approach is that the notion of security combines conceptual ambiguity with heightened urgency and this indeterminacy can shape and even distort legality in exceptional moments.

I examine the use of the security framework in the context of war-related legal authority to address the pandemic and steps necessary for building a post-pandemic recovery. Importantly, this project …

(Re)Constructing National Memory In Neoliberal Chile Through Patricio Guzman's The Cordillera Of Dreams (2019), Mica Barrett

Scripps Senior Theses

One of the most renowned Chilean exile filmmakers is Patricio Guzmán. Best known for his documentary work regarding the Allende years, Guzmán has continued to make films regarding his homeland in the decades following his initial exile.

The Cordillera of Dreams is the concluding film in a trilogy exploring the natural lands of Chile and their relationship to physical remnants of the human past. The initial and most renowned film in the series, Nostalgia for the Light, centers the Atacama Desert and Chileans’ relationship to the geography as a gateway to revealing artifacts of Chile’s recent history of genocide …

The Burden Of Artificiality: Always The Servant, Never The Patron, Alia Biswas

Scripps Senior Theses

I examine three robots in Science Fiction, Data from the television series Star Trek: The Next Generation, David from the movie A.I.: Artificial Intelligence, and Deckard from the novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? to examine how they are analogous to marginalized bodies. I analyze how the marginalization of robots works to disorient robots so their labor can be extracted, as I focus through their embodiment of a happy object, and how their desire is directed towards the narrative of the good life, the myth that a happy life is achieved through adhering to heteronormativity. I use heteronormativity as …

“Decorate The Dungeon With Flowers And Air-Cushions:” Virginia Woolf And War, Claire Dumont

Scripps Senior Theses

Virginia Woolf was particularly interested throughout her career in writing about war, ranging from the perspective of a depressed World War I veteran and his wife in Mrs. Dalloway, a dinner party held during an air raid in 1917 in The Years, an argument for the connections between patriarchal society and war in Three Guineas, and a pageant of British history held before World War II in Between the Acts. Woolf specifically writes of war as it impacts spheres away from the battlefield, in a way that is inherently gendered to her experience as a woman …

Treasure Island: Gold Dust Or Radioactive Soil?, Ari Daniels

Scripps Senior Theses

Former Naval Station Treasure Island in the San Francisco Bay is undergoing an expensive redevelopment process to be turned into a sustainable living community. However, the area has a long history of mishandled radioactive material, irresponsible behavior on behalf of authorities, environmental instability, lawsuits, and administrative complaints. This research project focuses on Treasure Island’s history and redevelopment plan, utilizing San Francisco government documents, local newspapers, literature on environmental justice and racism, and state legislation to draw conclusions on the efficacy of the project from a sustainability standpoint and the responsibilities of the planners and developers. After providing a historical overview …

The Prison Industrial Complex: A Microcosm Of Environmental Justice As A Human Rights Issue, Isabella Brusco

Scripps Senior Theses

Many scholars have established a connection between Environmental Justice (EJ) and the Prison Industrial Complex (PIC), EJ and human rights, and the PIC and human rights.. The aim of this thesis is to encourage a conversation that connects these three concepts: EJ, the PIC, and human rights. This will be accomplished by scrutinizing a legal case called Rutherford v. Luna, in which American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) lawyers contend that individuals incarcerated in the inmate reception center of Los Angeles County are enduring inhumane conditions. I employ this case as an example of the PIC, illustrating that the PIC represents …

The United States’ Stringent Sovereignty: How Foreign Policy Framing Prioritizes Security Over Human Rights, Kathryn Parker

Scripps Senior Theses

American policymakers utilize valence framing, purposeful descriptions of outcomes as positive or negative, to influence the opinions of voters while maintaining the moral superiority felt by many citizens in the liberal Western hegemon. This study intended to combine the political theories of Constructivism and Realism to form Constructive Realism, a theory that emphasizes the significance of state power and norms as joint influences on constituents. Constructive realism was then applied to four case studies – the UN Security Council, International Criminal Court, Convention on the Rights of the Child, and Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination Against Women. This study …

Brrr! It’S Cold In The Fridge: The Treatment Of Women In The Marvel Cinematic Universe, Madison Green

Honors Program Theses

Female characters depicted within the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) have faced unequal treatment and significant erasure since the origin of the franchise. As the series gained popularity and cultural discussions of representation grew, the MCU has since introduced more female characters. This then prompts concerns regarding the quality of that representation and how those female characters are treated within the franchise, and if that treatment has changed over time. Six films were selected from across the four first phases of the MCU for content analysis and data was compiled into two tables to quantifiably measure the depowerment aspect of fridging, …

Visualizing The Permanent Lie: An Examination Of Dystopian Literature Using Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’S Model, Anthony Mitchell

Master’s Theses

This thesis argues for the formation of an evolving canon of literature critical to continued resistance to totalitarianism, focusing primarily on the works of George Orwell, Aldous Huxley and Ji Xianlin. In crafting the theoretical basis of my study, I rely primarily on Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s concept of the “permanent lie” and its related concepts, “survive at any price” and “only material results matter” as formulated in his magnum opus, The Gulag Archipelago. In Solzhenitsyn’s view, the “permanent lie” is rooted in the creation of a virtual reality among individuals trapped in a totalitarian society, in which they must hold …

Judge Frankel’S Fifty-Year-Old Invitation To Reconstruct Sentencing, Jelani Jefferson Exum

Faculty Publications

(Excerpt)

America was a different place at the time Judge Marvin Frankel penned his now-famous text Criminal Sentences: Law without Order in 1973. Richard Nixon was the U.S. president. The Vietnam War was ending. The Watergate scandal was unfolding. There was much to grab the public’s attention, and criminal sentencing was not a national or international headline. Just two years earlier, President Nixon had declared a war on drugs and targeted drug abuse as “public enemy number one,” but it would be over a decade before punitive mandatory minimum drug sentences would become our sentencing norm. At the time of …

Joint Force Quarterly 108 (1st Quarter, January 2023), National Defense University Press

Joint Force Quarterly ARCHIVES

No abstract provided.

The Story Of Beauharnais V. Illinois, Samantha Barbas

Journal Articles

No abstract provided.

Blood And Oil: How Vampiric Literature Bolsters Big Oil’S Power, Sarah Marie Demond

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This thesis examines the relationship between blood and oil, that is, the multitude of ways in which the petromodernity industries harvests and threatens vitality. The introduction of this thesis is concerned tracking how petromodernity is a byproduct, offspring, or extension of colonialism. In this way, petromodernity can be thought about as “petro-colonialism.” Ursula K. LeGuin’s “Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction” informs the argument that the way thay petro-colonialism came to be and also maintains itself is by utilizing the “killer story.” This thesis also employs autorheoretical techniques informed by Lauren Fournier to show how petro-colonialism or “oiliness” sticks to its …

Evaluating The Ocean State Ocean Model For Studying Coastal Dynamics Of Rhode Island Sound, Thomas Lawrence

Open Access Master's Theses

Computer models are important tools for understanding coastal environments, predicting the impacts of human activity and climate change, and managing finite marine resources. This study examines performance of the new Ocean State Ocean Model (OSOM), an implementation of the Regional Ocean Modeling System (ROMS) optimized for research on the coastal waters of Rhode Island, including the Narragansett Bay (NB) estuary and the inner shelf waters of Rhode Island Sound (RIS). Along the way, we investigate the dynamics of RIS, focusing on the processes by which RIS receives and exports water via a well-documented coastal current, using spatially-temporally detailed current meter …

Explainable Ai For Android Malware Detection, Maithili Kulkarni

Master's Projects

Android malware detection based on machine learning (ML) is widely used by the mobile device security community. Machine learning models offer benefits in terms of detection accuracy and efficiency, but it is often difficult to understand how such models make decisions. As a result, popular malware detection strategies remain black box models, which may result in a lack of accountability and trust in the decisions made. The field of explainable artificial intelligence (XAI) attempts to shed light on such black box models. In this research, we apply XAI techniques to ML-based Android malware detection systems. We train classic ML models …

The Code^Shift Model: A Data Justice Framework For Collective Impact And Social Transformation, Srividya Ramasubramanian, Mohan Dutta

Media Studies - Open-Access Faculty Scholarship

In this article, we present an alternative framework that resists hegemonic social sciences within data-driven communication theorizing through a culture-centered approach (CCA). Building on the CCA in co-creating voice infrastructures at the margins, we argue that data justice requires transforming interpretive data framings, disrupting the hegemonic registers of knowledge production constituted around data, and working with/through data to challenge the structures of capitalism and colonialism that circulate the practices of exploitation and extraction. We build upon community-engaged projects emergent from the CCA in/with/from the Global South to propose the CODE^SHIFT Model, grounded in principles of equity-mindedness, collective impact, purposiveness, and …

Improving Social Bot Detection Through Aid And Training, Ryan Kenny, Baruch Fischhoff, Alex Davis, Casey I. Canfield

Engineering Management and Systems Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Objective: We test the effects of three aids on individuals' ability to detect social bots among Twitter personas: a bot indicator score, a training video, and a warning. Background: Detecting social bots can prevent online deception. We use a simulated social media task to evaluate three aids. Method: Lay participants judged whether each of 60 Twitter personas was a human or social bot in a simulated online environment, using agreement between three machine learning algorithms to estimate the probability of each persona being a bot. Experiment 1 compared a control group and two intervention groups, one provided a bot indicator …

Diversity, Equity, And Inclusion Post George Floyd And Covid-19: Reflections From Global Business Leaders On A Changing Paradigm, Charles Edward Bray Jr.

Theses and Dissertations

This global study of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), encompassing the lenses of sixteen corporate executives with multi-country influence, examines efforts to address marginalization in the workplace based on identity characteristics such as race, gender, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or ability. Othering is a global phenomenon. Corporations were awakened to the magnitude of othering, shocked into reality by the murder of George Floyd and other acts of political and social violence, including femicide, globally. The COVID-19 global pandemic further exposed the impact of marginalization seen through wide health disparities across communities. The Russian invasion of Ukraine further augmented the corporate …

Slava Ukraini: A Psychobiographical Case Study Of Volodymyr Zelenskyy’S Public Diplomacy Discourse, Amber Brittain-Hale

Theses and Dissertations

Volodymyr Zelenskyy's public diplomacy during the Russo-Ukrainian conflict was examined in this dissertation. Zelenskyy’s discourse emphasized his action-oriented traits, Ukrainian identity, and nationalism. The study employed LTA, and LIWC-22, for natural language processing analyses of Zelenskyy's public speeches and diplomatic discourse. Zelenskyy demonstrated agency, adaptability, collaboration, and positive language patterns, suggesting confidence and optimism, according to the data. In addition, the research emphasizes how domestic and international factors influence state behavior, as well as how political demands, cultural, historical, and political factors influence Zelenskyy's decision-making.

This dissertation sheds light on a global leader's psychobiographical characteristics, beliefs, and motivations during a …

Reflections Of Young Black Adults On The Ecological Systems And Educational Factors That Shaped Their High School Experiences Within The Urban Communities Of South Los Angeles, Carol Ann Carson

Theses and Dissertations

Educators strive to prepare learners to become productive citizens, provide comprehensive knowledge concerning cultural literacy, and equip them to enter the workforce. A quality education develops critical thinkers to compete globally. Unfortunately, many Black students encounter barriers to academic achievement. The purpose of this qualitative study is to better understand ecological systems and educational factors and their impact on the lived experience of young Black students within south Los Angeles, California. Specifically, an exploration of their high school experiences and perceptions will be emphasized. Some educators have little readiness in race scholarship, comprehending social character related to race, and acknowledging …

Know Thyself - Embracing The Ambiguity Of War By Other Means, Anne Leslie

Cardozo Journal of Conflict Resolution

On paper, nothing predestined me for a career in cybersecurity. Much in the same way as nothing on paper predestined me for being involved in a multinational effort like Project Seshat to study and respond to the rising threats of 'hybrid warfare' and 'gray zone conflict', or to give a keynote address at the Cardozo Journal of Conflict Resolution Melnick Symposium themed "Negotiation Strategies for War by Other Means."

Where Is Negotiation In Hybrid Warfare?, Art Hinshaw, Adrian Borbely, Calvin Chrustie

Cardozo Journal of Conflict Resolution

The question of what negotiation has to do with hybrid warfare was the starting point for Project Seshat, a project gathering a global group of academics and practitioners from many walks of life. Their shared interest is in exploring what the fields that fit generally within the concepts of "security" and "dispute resolution" have to offer each other in the context of hybrid warfare grey zone conflict, and how these two "sets" of fields interconnect. In trying to better understand what hybrid warfare is, how it works, and how best to respond to it, negotiation and dispute resolution academics have …

A Theory Of Interests In The Context Of Hybrid Warfare: It's Complex, Cynthia Alkon, Sanda Kaufman

Cardozo Journal of Conflict Resolution

In the 2020 British TV series The Undeclared War, the Russians launch a series of attacks against the United Kingdom that destabilize key sectors in the UK and (spoiler alert) almost end in a full-scale conventional war. In this fictionalized account, the UK only considers fighting back against cyber warfare with cyber warfare. There is no negotiation. Despite knowing who is responsible for these attacks (the Russian government), negotiation is never even considered.