Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Politics For Angels, William Kanwischer

Honors Projects

How many idealizing assumptions may we make when doing political philosophy? May we assume our citizens more rational than they are, or our governments more efficient than in reality? These questions lie at the center of the debate between ideal and non-ideal theorists. Ideal theorists believe it permissible to engage in counterfactual assumptions about citizens and states when doing political philosophy, and non-ideal theorists think the opposite. In this paper, I will argue against a particular defense of ideal theory given by David Estlund, who argues that the low probability that a standard of justice will be met does not …

Diabolus Ex Machina? A Comparative Case Study To Test Whether Automatic Weapons Can Disproportionately Benefit Irregular Forces, Harrison Durland

Honors Theses

Researchers in the field of irregular conflict have observed that irregular forces such as insurgents and guerrillas have been victorious or forced draws in a greater percentage of conflicts over the past century compared with the century prior. More generally, researchers and practitioners have sought to better understand why seemingly weaker, irregular forces are able to win some wars against enemies who have significant material and other conventional advantages. This thesis engages with some of the literature in this field and focuses on what appears to be a particularly understudied issue: the potential role of shifts/innovations in military technology. Specifically, …

Coming Attractions

Insights

With the pandemic prohibiting in-person learning and campus visits, the college offered an assortment of creative online offerings this summer to give newly admitted DePaul students a taste of the LAS experience. Among the offerings were a mini-course, "Critical Perspectives on Our Current Moment," taught using Zoom, an introduction to the Center for Black Diaspora and the Center for Latino Research, and panel discussions with current students and faculty in the Honors program.

Women's Political Participation Aided By Constitutional Provisions In Post-Conflict African Nations, Roksana Gorgolewski

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

After two major continental conflicts, many African countries were forced to re-evaluate their constitutions and inherent political structures. This left a window of opportunity for greater female political participation as political leaders and members of the peacemaking process. This project will focus on selected African post-conflict states during the 1970’s to 2000’s that have re-written their constitutions. The general query asks whether those rewritten constitutions have contributed to greater gender equality in the legislature of those states and which constitutional provisions work best at promoting and maintaining gender equality. By studying Geisler’s book Women and the remaking of politics in …

Failure To Protect: Why The International Community Will Fail To Respond To The Cultural Genocide Of Turkish Cypriot People, Hilmi Ulas

Peace Studies Faculty Articles and Research

The international community has time and again committed to never let genocide occur again – however, multiple bouts of genocide have occurred since the Holocaust. This, in addition to the current quandaries surrounding the Uyghurs of China, points to the fact that the international laws and institutions have loopholes that allow for genocides – especially those that enact structural and cultural violence without necessarily employing direct violence – to ‘slip through’.

This has been the case in spite of R2P policies being in place. In this paper, I examine the inability of international systems to capture ‘cultural genocide’ or intervene …

Resisting Hyper-Partisan Silencing: Arendt On Political Persuasion Through Exemplification And Truth-Telling As Action, Andrew D. Spear

Articles, Book Chapters, Essays

A central frustration of recent political discourse is the consistent reduction of politically relevant factual and critical speech to mere expression of partisan commitment. Partisans of “the other side”—members of the other tribe—are viewed as de facto wrong, because partisans, even when their speech invokes mere facts or purportedly shared political principles. Ideally, democratic political discourse operates along at least two central dimensions: a dimension of shared factual, historical, and political assumptions, and a more contested dimension of interpretation, prioritization, and evaluation that results in diverse and often competing understandings of what is good, and so of what is best …

Boesak's "Dare We Speak Of Hope? Searching For A Language Of Life In Faith And Politics" (Critical Book Review), Andrew C. Stout

The Christian Librarian

No abstract provided.

Vandrunen's "Politics After Christendom: Political Theology In A Fractured World" (Critical Book Review), Andrew C. Stout

The Christian Librarian

No abstract provided.

A Rivalry Of Necessity: An Analysis Of Mechanisms Of Contention Between The Islamic Republic Of Iran And The Kingdom Of Saudi Arabia, Aras Syahmanssuri

Graduate Program in International Studies Theses & Dissertations

The 1979 Iranian Islamic revolution that extremely concerned the Saudis leaders culminated after the overthrow of a monarchical regime of the Iranian Shah and the power rise of a theocratic Shia government led by Ayatollah Khomeini. From the early days of this revolution, Khomeini raised a unique slogan, which was “exporting the revolution” to neighboring countries. Through targeting the Shia minority in neighboring countries, this slogan highly concerned the Gulf countries including the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Examining four decades of hostility, which starts from the 1979 Islamic Revolution of Iran, this study indicates that the rivalry between the Islamic …

Smith's "Awaiting The King: Reforming Public Theology" (Critical Book Review), Andrew C. Stout

The Christian Librarian

No abstract provided.

الإخوان المسلمون في الأراضي الفلسطينية المحتلة 1967-1987, Adnan Abou Amer

Al Jinan الجنان

جاءت الدراسة لتبحث واقع الإسلاميين الفلسطينيين، وتحديدا جماعة الإخوان المسلمين، في الأراضي الفلسطينية المحتلة، بين عامي 1967-1987، من خلال تناولها لمراحل تطور عملهم بدءا بالدعوة والعمل الوعظي، وبرد فعلهم على هزيمة يونيو 1967، وصولا للبحث في أسباب المد الإسلامي في الأراضي المحتلة، بما فيها الأسباب الداخلية والعوامل الخارجية ، وأثر وجود الاحتلال الاسرائيلي للضفة الغربية وقطاع غزة على انتشار مظاهر الصحوة الإسلامية، واتجاهات الرأي عقب الاحتلال، وبما يتعلق بظاهرة انتشار المساجد، والدور القيادي للشيخ أحمد ياسين في إرساء دور الإخوان المسلمين، إضافة إلى أساليب العمل الإخوانية، والجوانب التنظيمية والمالية لديهم، وانتهاء بنظرة الإخوان إلى العمل المسلح ضد الاحتلال الإسرائيلي، وما …

War, Media, And Memory: American Television News Coverage Of The Vietnam War, Brock J. Vaughan

Bridges: An Undergraduate Journal of Contemporary Connections

Social and political impacts of television news coverage of the Vietnam War are often glorified and grossly overestimated. This paper argues that the role of the American media during the war did not directly affect public support for the war, nor did it profoundly impact American nationalism and military policy. Television news coverage did, however, influence how events were perceived and remembered. The commonly held belief that the American news media was directly responsible for the decline of public confidence in the U.S. government, ultimately contributing to the public’s distaste for any further involvement in Vietnam, is a narrow viewpoint …

Ua12/2/1 College Heights Herald, Vol. 96, No. 13, Wku Student Affairs

WKU Administration Documents

WKU campus newspaper reporting campus, athletic and Bowling Green, Kentucky news. This issue contains articles:

• Burned Out – COVID-19
• Payne, Michael. 15 Years with the Bagel Brothers – Sandra Hurley
• Hargrove, Matthew. Hilltoppers Get in the Win Column, Home Finale Up Next - Football
• Kieser, Nick. All Eyes on the Spring – Basketball, Softball, Soccer, Baseball
• Leboutier, Addison. Little Flock of Jesus Christ Fellowship Comes Home – Clarence Tapp
• Cox, Alex. Editorial Cartoon re: Kamala Harris
• What a Kamala Harris Vice Presidency Means for Young People of Color
• Lattimer, Jacob. Student Government Association Sustainability Committee Looks to Make an Impact …

The Charismatic Revolutionary Leadership Trajectories Of Fidel Castro And Lázaro Cárdenas: From Guerrillas To Heads Of State In The Age Of Us Imperialism, Joseph J. Garcia

Journal of Global Initiatives: Policy, Pedagogy, Perspective

After attempting to overthrow the government of Fulgencio Batista in 1953, Fidel Castro fled to Mexico where he, his brother, Raul Castro, Ernesto Che Guevara, and other revolutionaries were later jailed by the Mexican government under the orders of the Batista dictatorship to be returned to Cuba. Using his knowledge of the Mexican Revolution, Castro wrote a letter asking for help from former president and revolutionary general, Lázaro Cárdenas, appealing to his sense of revolutionary history and social justice. Cárdenas was impressed by this young revolutionary and worked to obtain political asylum for he and his comrades. This allowed Castro …

Muslims’ Religious Freedom And Religiosity: Measurement And Impact, Hannah M. Ridge

Political Science Faculty Books and Book Chapters

Multiple measures of religious freedom and states’ regulation of religion are at work in sociology of religion. These scales apply one score to a country or to a subset of its policies. A uniform state score conceals the internal religious diversity and the heterogeneous experiences of religious freedom that can result. These, in turn, encourage ecological fallacies and mask the disparate impact that religious freedom for one’s own community and for other groups can have on individuals’ preferences and decisions. To demonstrate the value of measuring and studying religious freedom at the individual level, this study applies individual-level assessments of …

Understanding Myanmar’S Buddhist Extremists: Some Preliminary Musings, Kumar Ramakrishna

New England Journal of Public Policy

This article examines Buddhist extremism in Myanmar. It argues that Buddhist extremism—like other types of religious extremism—is an acute form of fundamentalism. The article begins with a survey of how extremism is usually understood in the theoretical literature, showing that its religious variant is best conceived of as an acute form of fundamentalism. It then fine tunes this understanding, arguing that religious extremism is a fundamentalist belief system that justifies structural violence against relevant out-groups. The article outlines seven core characteristics of the religious extremist culled from the various theoretical approaches to extremism. It employs these seven characteristics to examine …

The Administrative And Legal Procedures That The British Mandate Applied To The Palestinian Municipalities Between 1917 - 1948., Jamal Habash

Journal of the Arab American University مجلة الجامعة العربية الامريكية للبحوث

This study aims to identify the nature of the administrative and legal procedures that the British Mandate applied to the Palestinian Municipalities during the British Mandate in Palestine between 1917 - 1948, that has resulted in the establishment of the Zionist State of Israel on the greatest and major part of the Palestinian homeland. The study shows that the British administration restricted the power of the Palestinian Municipalities through issuing laws and regulations by the British governor. Consequently, these municipalities were brought under the control of the British administration and its supportive policy to the Jewish Zionist State. This was …

Ua12/2/1 College Heights Herald, Vol. 96, No. 11, Wku Student Affairs

WKU Administration Documents

WKU campus newspaper reporting campus, athletic and Bowling Green, Kentucky news. This issue contains articles:

• Murray, Debra. Campaigning During COVID-19
• Stryker, Shane. Third Party Candidates Present Options Outside Democrats & Republicans
• WKU Young Democrats
• WKU College Republicans
• Serrano, Francisco. A Voice of Change for the Young Generation
• Thornton, Maggie. Kentucky’s 1^st Congressional District
• Holland, Kelley. Kentucky’s 2^nd Congressional District
• Latimer, Jacob. Senate Candidates on College-Level Issues – Mitch McConnell, Amy McGrath
• Collins, Michael. District 20 Candidates on the Issues – Patti Minter, Leanette Lopez
• Who’s Running for City Commission?

H-Diplo/Issf Forum 25 On The Importance Of White Housepresidential Tapes In Scholarship, Matthew Evangelista, James Goldgeier, Elizabeth N. Saunders, Luke A. Nichter, Marc Trachtenberg

Presidential Studies Faculty Articles and Research

A forum discussion on the importance of White House presidential tapes in scholarship.

Instrumental Vs. Expressive: A Study Of Voter Behavior Models Through The Lens Of Identity In The 2016 Presidential Election, Kaitlyn Fales

Honors Projects in History and Social Sciences

Studying voter behavior through the lens of identity is central to making sense of the 2016 presidential election. The traditional models for explaining voter behavior are rational choice and behavioralism. The former is grounded in instrumental partisanship and a voter’s issue positions, with the latter grounded in an expressive, psychological attachment to partisanship. More recent, social identity theory related models discuss voter behavior through group belonging and the partisan mega-identity (Mason 2018). My analysis used the ANES 2016 Time Series Study. To measure a voter’s issue positions, I created a new Identity Index alongside the expansion of an established Issue …

Table Of Contents, Rory J. Conces

International Dialogue

Table of Contents for Volume 10

Notes From The Editor, Rory J. Conces

International Dialogue

Notes from International Dialogue's Editor-in-Chief, Rory J. Conces for Volume 10.

Aspects Of Counterterrorism: New Approaches To Countering Terrorism: Designing And Evaluating Counter-Radicalization And De-Radicalization Programs; Hacking Isis: How To Destroy The Cyber Jihad; Inside Al-Shabaab: The Secret History Of Al-Qaeda’S Most Powerful Ally, Kenneth Christie

International Dialogue

Terrorism and the term ‘jihadism’ have become a global phenomenon, a product of modernity and globalization which shows no sign of abating. The number of radicalized young people in Western and non-Western countries who are willing to travel overseas in the cause of jihad and violent extremism has increased significantly since 9/11. In the 20 years since the largely driven U.S. counter-terrorism efforts began in response, jihadism in force and numbers has risen at least by fourfold in terms of the numbers of Sunni jihadist fighters in the field from the Middle East to North Africa, Afghanistan and beyond according …

Das Emanzipatorische Potenzial Der Performance Art (The Emancipatory Potential Of Peformance Art), Gwyneth Cliver

International Dialogue

Sophia Firgau’s Das Emanzipatorische Potenzial der Performance Art (The Emancipatory Potential of Performance Art) is both a helpful introduction to performance art that could be well employed in both undergraduate and graduate classrooms, and a convincing scholarly argument for the transformative power of performance aesthetics. Firgau defines the genre of performance art, distinguishes it from both theater and public ritual performance, and explains the potential for personal, community, and civic transformation inherent in its formal characteristics. Firgau demonstrates that performance art transforms by crossing a number of conventional formal boundaries—for instance, those separating artist and audience and separating art and …

Being Unfolded: Edith Stein On The Meaning Of Being, Robert Mcnamara

International Dialogue

What is the meaning of being? More concretely, “What do human beings and quarks, ideal geometrical shapes and possible worlds, ‘sickness’ and ‘health’, the number three and gravity all have in common that allows us to say that each of them is?” (xvii). In Being Unfolded, Thomas Gricoski attempts to get to the bottom of this perennially valid question by exploring the question of the meaning of being in one of Edith Stein’s later philosophical works, the phenomenological and Scholastic study, Finite and Eternal Being: An Attempt to Ascend to the Meaning of Being [Endliches und ewiges Sein: Versuch eines …

A Savage Order: How The World’S Deadliest Countries Can Forge A Path To Security, Thomas Manig

International Dialogue

Rachel Kleinfeld studies international conflicts and methods of reducing violence. Previously she published Advancing the Rule of Law Abroad: Next Generation Reform (2012). She is a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. She has advised government officials on problems of international security. Kleinfeld’s new book, A Savage Order: How the World’s Deadliest Countries Can Forge a Path to Security, is characterized by social scientific methodology rather than abstract theorizing. This book disposes of simplistic generalizations, like the belief that violence is inevitable in certain ethnic groups or localities, or the contrary belief that we can end violence …

Das Emanzipatorische Potenzial Der Performance Art (The Emancipatory Potential Of Peformance Art), Gwyneth Cliver

International Dialogue

Sophia Firgaus Das Emanzipatorische Potenzial der Performance Art ist sowohl eine hilfreiche Einführung in die Performance Art, die im universitären Unterricht didaktisch gut anwendbar wäre, als auch ein überzeugendes wissenschaftliches Argument für die transformative Macht der Performanceästhetik. Firgau definiert die Gattung Performance Art, unterscheidet sie von dem Theater sowie dem öffentlichen Ritual und erklärt ihr Verwandlungspotenzial für Individuen, das Gemeinwesen und die Gesellschaft. Firgau zeigt, wie Performance Art transformierend wirkt, indem sie gebräuchliche formale Begrenzungen überschreitet—zum Beispiel, die, die die Künstlerin vom Publikum oder Kunst vom Alltag trennen—und wie sie daher eine Schwellenerfahrung schafft, die emanzipatorisch wirkt, indem sie den …

When Montezuma Met Cortes: The True History Of The Meetings That Changed History, Maria S. Arbeláez

International Dialogue

November 8 of 1519, Moctezuma II, Mexica Tlatoani, the “one who speaks,” leader and emperor, and Hernan Cortes, head of the invading Spanish military force, met on what currently is downtown Mexico City. A memorial plaque marks the site of the meeting alongside a colonial church and the remnants of a hospital. There is a tile picture with a representation of the event. The Spanish conquest of Mexico and the fall of Tenochtitlan is one of the most studied and controversial episodes in the history of Mexico and the Americas. It is a story never settled. Matthew Restall's book is …

The Morals Of The Market: Human Rights And The Rise Of Neoliberalism, Shane Darcy

International Dialogue

There are no doubt human rights advocates who would baulk at the claim that somehow human rights serves to advance the cause of neoliberalism. An important tool for protecting human dignity, advancing equality and supporting demands for justice cannot surely be complicit in the evident harms of neoliberal economic policies? Such harms are increasingly recognized by human rights practitioners, including non-governmental organizations and United Nations experts. To take a recent example, Philip Alston, the Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, described on a country visit to Spain in February 2020, how the country’s self-image as “a close family-based …

Trust, Ethnicity, And Political Approval In 21st Century South Africa, Alecia Anderson, Jonathan Bruce Santo

International Dialogue

Trust is a requirement for state legitimacy, however, the relationship between trust and political approval in South Africa is under-investigated, leaving the legitimacy of the South African state questionable. In this study, we use Afrobarometer data from 2004, 2008, and 2012 to investigate citizens’ perspectives on trust and political approval. Using structural equation modeling, we analyze the impact of ethnicity on the relationship between trust and political approval in South Africa. The results are clear that ethnic identity continues to influence the relationship between trust and approval of political offices and policies in South Africa.