Digital Commons Network^™

Adam Smith: Social Imaginary And Religion, Jan Van Vliet

Pro Rege

No abstract provided.

Secretive Sheriffs: Opacity And Variation In California's Jail Responses To Covid-19, Aparna Komarla, Hadar Aviram

Nevada Law Journal

No abstract provided.

Criminal Organizations And Nuclear Threats In Southeast Asia, Gary Ackerman, Thomas Guarrieri, Justin V. Hastings, Steven Hoodjer

International Journal of Nuclear Security

Increasing global interest in nuclear energy and peaceful uses of nuclear technology has led to facilities in emerging countries with nuclear materials and radioactive sources that could be stolen, sabotaged, or otherwise accessed by criminals. In this paper, we created a framework to assess the motivations and capabilities of criminal networks and measure the threats they may pose to different stages of the nuclear fuel cycle in emerging nuclear states. We applied the framework to a unique dataset, capturing characteristics of criminal organizations active in Southeast Asia, which allowed us to assess which criminal organizations are most likely to pose …

Climate Resilience: A Typology, Shi-Ling Hsu

UMKC Law Review

No abstract provided.

Multiplicity As An Ai Governance Principle, Michal Shur-Ofry

Indiana Law Journal

As AI becomes increasingly embedded in our daily lives, this Article explores one of its critical, yet overlooked, societal implications: the propensity of large language models (LLMs) to generate mainstream, standardized content, potentially narrowing their users’ worldviews.

Taking a close look at the technological underpinnings of LLMs, the analysis suggests that—due to the combination of human judgments, training datasets, and inherent features of the underlying technological paradigm—LLMs’ outputs are likely to be geared toward the popular and to project to their users concentrated, mainstream worldviews, sidelining a broader spectrum of perspectives. This Article explores the asymmetrical power relations between LLMs …

Designing A Model To Empower Rural Communities For Self-Sufficiency In Zanjan Province, Iran, Azra Ganjkhanloo, Alireza Poursaeed, Roya Eshraghi Samani, Marjan Vahedi

The Philippine Agricultural Scientist

In this research, empowerment is conceptualized as the process through which rural villagers organize themselves to enhance their self-sufficiency, assert their right to independent decision-making, gain control over resources, and address and overcome poverty. This study aimed to develop an empowerment model for rural communities in Zanjan Province, Iran, focusing on achieving self-sufficiency and assessing the model using structural equation modeling. The study compared the main components of the model using the post-event technique and validated the variables of self-sufficiency in rural communities through a descriptive-correlational design and structural equation modeling. The sample comprised 384 villagers selected via stratified random …

Aging In Harwich: A Community Needs Assessment, Claire E. Wickersham, Caitlin E. Coyle

Center for Social and Demographic Research on Aging Publications

At a time of such significant population aging, the Harwich Council on Aging commissioned a community-wide needs assessment with support from the Friends of the Harwich Council on Aging. The specific goal of this report is to support the strategic planning of the Harwich Council on Aging. An additional goal is to present information useful to other Harwich departments and organizations interacting with older residents planning for the future of Harwich. This report presents the results of a comprehensive examination of issues relating to aging in Harwich. Results presented here focus on the characteristics and needs of Harwich residents aged …

An Intervention To Increase Belonging And Support Retention For Faculty Of Color And Women Faculty, Robyn K. Mallett, Zahra Naqi-Hasnain, Dana Garbarski, Christine Li-Grining, David Ensminger, Walter Tangarife, Badia Ahad

Sociology: Faculty Publications and Other Works

Faculty of Color and women faculty face significant obstacles (e.g., isolation, marginalization, tokenism) on the road to tenure and promotion. We translate social psychological research on the contact hypothesis and belonging and adapt previous interventions at other universities to deliver an institutional-level intervention designed to support faculty belonging and retention. This study utilizes a faculty climate survey and institutional-level demographic data to assess tenure-track faculty belonging and retention following the intervention. We observe greater perceptions of institutional support for diversity and lesser disparities in belonging and tenure rates among historically marginalized faculty over three years following the intervention. We discuss …

A Tale Of Two Cities: Collateral Consequences Of Misdemeanor Non-Convictions, Elizabeth Nevins-Saunders

Hofstra Law Review

No abstract provided.

Educational Change Through Bureaucratic Effectiveness: The Role Of Mid-Level Networks, Jose Eos R. Trinidad

Interdisciplinary Studies Faculty Publications

Studies of networks for educational change often focus on webs of teachers, school leaders, policymakers, and philanthropists, with little attention to staff at the middle level, who arguably have immense potential to effect change. This article explores an initiative for educational change through mid-level staff using the case of a nonprofit that places its members in large, public education bureaucracies in a developing country. I explore a mechanism for how the strategic patchwork of staff can support change through improved bureaucracy. First, staff are intentionally placed, reputationally distinct, and purposely connected. Second, these individuals influence bureaucratic effectiveness through coordinated policies, …

Dark Patterns As Disloyal Design, Johanna Gunawan, Woodrow Hartzog, Neil Richards, David Choffnes, Christo Wilson

Indiana Law Journal

Lawmakers have started to regulate “dark patterns,” understood to be design practices meant to influence technology users’ decisions through manipulative or deceptive means. Most agree that dark patterns are undesirable, but open questions remain as to which design choices should be subjected to scrutiny, much less the best way to regulate them.

In this Article, we propose adapting the concept of dark patterns to better fit legal frameworks. Critics allege that the legal conceptualizations of dark patterns are overbroad, impractical, and counterproductive. We argue that law and policy conceptualizations of dark patterns suffer from three deficiencies: First, dark patterns lack …

People Power And Police Policy: How Denying Intervenors In Pattern-Or-Practice Police Litigation Undermines Police Accountability, Alexander Lindenfelser

Minnesota Journal of Law & Inequality

No abstract provided.

Spirometry: For The Winds In Us, Kendall Allison

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Spirometers are devices used to measure lung capacity. This capstone is a creative study of what restores our breathing aptitude as a response to the suffocating and alienating consequences of whiteness for people racialized as white. The project is a sequence of lyric essays. The first lyric essay frames whiteness as a condition of exile and examines the cultural and emotional currents that shore it up. I use exile as a frame to emphasize the intensity of the spiritual and cultural alienation that people racialized as white experience. I also contextualize the dis-ease of suicide in my own lineage, and …

The Long Arm Of The Law: The Far-Reaching Effects Of The Carceral State On Families, Madison Squiers

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis investigates the extended consequences of mass incarceration in the United States, focusing on the social, economic, and psychological impacts on the nuclear families of incarcerated individuals. Through a comprehensive literature review of peer-reviewed studies published between 2000 and 2024, this study highlights how female partners and children of imprisoned men face significant hardships, including emotional trauma, financial instability, and social stigma. These burdens are most acutely experienced by low-income families and communities of color, reflecting broader patterns of structural inequality. The findings underscore how punitive criminal justice policies—especially mandatory minimum sentencing and the War on Drugs—have created ripple …

Love And Power: Narrative Resistance In The Contemporary Literature And Film Of The Americas, Tania Nicolaou

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This project analyzes the ways in which narratives of love, care, and intimacy support sociocultural change through cinema, literary fiction, and memoir in Indigenous, immigrant, and diasporic communities in the United States, Haiti, and Cuba. The project’s intervention revolves around how we compare and examine narratives of the marginalized, underrepresented, and misremembered in a way that does not focus primarily on pain and trauma, but on experiences that embody radical change, healing, and a shift in the colonial matrix of power. The chapters consider love as constructed through family, identity, memory, and nationhood, all in relationship to what love looks …

Placemaking And Belonging In Brooklyn: Bushwick City Farms, Marisa Cigliano

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Since the spring of 2022, New York City has seen an increased rate of newly-arrived migrants from countries in Latin and Central America, Asia, and Africa. In accordance with the city’s “right to shelter” obligation, NYC has provided shelter for migrants by converting hotels, office buildings, and even tents, into make-shift lodging designed for temporary stay. Within a year, anti-immigrant rhetoric from Mayor Eric Adams sparked activism from both immigrant rights organizations and long-term residents who don’t want migrant shelters in their neighborhoods. These shelters lack the necessary food, privacy, social services, and structure that is owed to homeless residents …

A Symbol For The Masses: Sergei Chakhotin And The Modern Crisis Of Propaganda, Benjamin J. Diehl

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation is an intellectual biography of Sergei Chakhotin, a Russian biologist whose most famous work, The Rape of the Masses (1939), represented an insightful, pioneering analysis of modern propaganda as it arose during Europe’s “Age of Catastrophe” (1914-1945). In this work and others, Chakhotin used the psychological theories of Ivan Pavlov to develop a system of thought that emphasized the scientific possibilities and political inevitability of mass conditioning through propaganda. In addition to Pavlov’s theory, Chakhotin also used other intellectual frameworks, such as Taylorism and microbiology, to buttress his own firsthand experience during World War I, the Russian Revolution, …

Running Their Own Race: A Quantitative Study Of The Relative Self-Perceived Influence Of Black Male And Black Female Principals, Drema Brown

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

K–12 public school principals are responsible for many daily decisions that affect their student body. Despite their importance, very little is understood about these principals’ experiences, and even less is understood about the experiences of Black principals, who represent less than 10% of all public-school principals. To fill a gap in the literature, this study used organizational management theory and intersectionality as theoretical frameworks. The study used hierarchical regression modeling to analyze the National Center for Educational Statistics’ (NCES) Schools and Staffing Survey (SASS) 1999–2000 principal survey data set. The aim was to investigate the impact of various factors, such …

Cuny In The News: A History Of Reporting On The Humanities At The City University Of New York, Jacqueline R. Cahill

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This project compiles newspaper articles concerning humanities at the City University of New York, placing them on a timeline to establish patterns and changes within media reporting and public perception. The archival research of this project explores four distinct eras, grouped around major events in the history of the university: 1961-1971, for the founding of the university and open admissions struggle; 1980-1990, for the response to the ‘70s fiscal crisis and introduction of the Board of Trustees; 2000-2010 for the post-open admissions era and the centralization of CUNY; and 2020-present, for COVID and a new fight for racial equity. Examining …

The Language Of Development: A Case Study Analysis Of Climate Development In Central America, Alexandra Altomare

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The purpose of this thesis is to better understand the impact of locally led development activities on local populations. The focus of this thesis is on climate mitigation and adaptation activities in Central America led by international donor organizations such as USAID. The research consists of an in-depth review of existing literature and analysis from the fields of environmental justice, political ecology, postcolonial studies, and Indigenous Studies. This is accompanied by a case study analysis of various development projects in Guatemala and Honduras, as well as auto-ethnographic observations. In addition, this thesis analyzes the power and impact of language and …

The Reimagined Past: Investigating Generational Trauma Through Visual Semiotics And Visual Autoethnography Of Recreated Family Photographs, Josephine A. Barnett

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Family photographs, and particularly the curation of family photo albums, serve as a source of data, providing researchers with the opportunity to illustrate the role of the visual in reproducing certain social norms and ideals by dictating the depiction or representation of specific types of families and experiences. Arguably, what is left outside the frame of a photograph is more revealing about familial norms, memory, and narrative than what is deliberately captured within it (Hirsch, 1997a; Kuhn, 2002a). In other words, the hegemony and standardization of family photos shed light on the need for an alternative visual narrative that depicts …

Not Meant To Be Read: The Stories They Silence, The Resistance That Speaks, Cristina Onea

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In this dissertation, I trace the evolution of surveillance from overt state violence to the more insidious forms of ideological policing embedded in everyday life. Through lived experience, oral history, and critical autoethnography, I explore how surveillance moves through bodies, families, institutions, and memory—not simply as external control, but as internalized rhythms of fear, vigilance, and self-surveillance. I move between my father's life under Romanian dictatorship, my own embodied inheritance, and the contemporary struggles of librarians facing ideological suppression to reveal surveillance as a structure that persists through generations, mutates across contexts, and demands new forms of resistance.

I argue …

The Invisible Hand Of Networked Repression, Thuy Anh Tran

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

U.S. history is awash with contentious episodes involving a legion of governmental and non-governmental actors operating through an array of means and arenas to destroy the political opposition. Yet, there has been little systematic examination in the repression literature of how and why repressive efforts proliferate so far beyond the police, military, and intelligence agencies tasked and equipped to preserve the existing order. This dissertation presents a novel framework for studying the relational basis of repression—particularly as it is organized, mobilized, and extended through a networked social structure. Social network analysis and interpretive case studies are conducted on two historical …

The Origins Of German Industrialization: The Transition To Capitalism In Prussian Agriculture, Daniel C. Colligan

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation seeks to explain the origins of German industrialization. Historical accounts of German industrialization often chronicle the process of its development but leave reasons for its initiation unexplained. Theories that have attempted to locate the roots of rapid German economic growth have been found to be empirically unsatisfactory, and thus the accepted story has defaulted to a gradualist narrative which conceptualizes economic behavior as fundamentally unchanging throughout German history. This dissertation challenges this reigning view, attempting to provide an explanation for why Germany embarked on a rapid economic growth trajectory in the nineteenth century whereas many other similarly situated …

Global Constructions Of Gender, Sexuality, And Migration: An Analysis Of Five Immigrant Memoirs, Grace Halvorson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This capstone analyzes five memoirs by LGBTQ+ migrants—Jose Antonio Vargas, Edafe Okporo, Staceyann Chin, Danny Ramadan, and Samra Habib—to explore how governments weaponize gender and sexual orientation to construct national identity and exert control over both citizens and migrants. Their diverse migration experiences highlight how “gender border control” operates across families, communities, and national government systems, reinforcing heteronormative structures that regulate queer identities. My analysis of their memoirs reveals how both formal tools, such as immigration policies, and informal tools, such as social exclusion, make individuals outside heteronormative identity categories susceptible to state and societal violence. These personal narratives shed …

Vol. 48 No. 1 (2025): Pacific Studies Front Matter, The Jonathan Napela Center For Hawaiian And Pacific Islands Studies

Pacific Studies

Front Matter for the Vol. 48, No 1-Jun 2025 edition of the Pacific Studies Journal.

Why Study Others?, Richard Feinberg

Pacific Studies

No abstract provided.

Prior Pay Parlay: The U.S. Federal Circuit Partly Adopts The Middle Ground Approach To Prior Pay Under The Equal Pay Act, Intisar Choudhury

Mercer Law Review

The United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit deepened the circuit split over whether consideration of prior pay is a non-sex-based factor that can be used when setting employee wages. In Boyer v. United States, the plaintiff sued the United States under the Equal Pay Act (EPA) for the pay disparity between her and her male equivalent. The court’s decision highlighted how consideration of prior pay alone in setting employee salary can perpetuate the historical sex-based wage discrimination in the United States and frustrate the primary purpose of the EPA which is “equal pay for equal work.” The …

The Administrative State's Second Face, Emily R. Chertoff, Jessica Bulman-Pozen

Faculty Scholarship

We often assume that there is one administrative state, with one body of administrative law that governs it. In fact, the administrative state has two distinct faces: one turned toward regulation and benefits distribution, and one turned toward physical force and surveillance. The two faces are growing further apart under the Roberts Court, which has hemmed in the first face with decisions like Loper Bright while showing solicitude for national security and law enforcement agencies.

This Article delineates the two faces of the administrative state. It provides a descriptive account of the second face and the distinctive administrative law that …

Addressing Missingness In Serialized Bureaucratic Data: The Case Of Chinese Courts, Xiaohan Wu, Margaret Roberts, Rachel E. Stern, Benjamin L. Liebman, Amarnath Gupta, Luke Sanford

Faculty Scholarship

Courts around the world are putting their data online, making information about caseloads, parties, and decisions available to the public. Yet, this data is far from complete, and often only reflects a portion of courts’ dockets. We offer and validate a set of tools for leveraging serialized bureaucratic data from courts to estimate the proportion of cases available to the public and the time courts take to make decisions. Using data from more than 3,000 courts in China, our methods allow us to assess patterns of missingness in court data across provinces and cities by type of case and to …