Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Democracy Later, Dave A. Gentile Mr

Capstones

My idea was to investigate what happened during the Queens County Committee debacle over the summer. If you aren't familiar, the NYTimes covered it a bit, but basically a whole bunch of candidates associated with the New Queens Dems, myself included, running for Queens County Committee got screwed and forced off the ballots in favor of candidates who did not even know they were running.

I have access to virtually every one of the candidates who was forced off the ballot, as well access to some of the candidates who replaced us unknowingly and unwillfully. I also have total access …

Kinder Carnage, Talib Visram

Capstones

In the wake of school shootings, including Parkland, states and school districts have scrambled to protect against threats. But faced with no federal focus on gun control and little funding, schools have to make tough safety choices. Some have adopted novelty security gadgets; others have discussed arming teachers and even giving children tools to defend themselves. To some, this is the ideal solution; the answer to violence is more violence. And so, some schools are starting to resemble military camps. With reporting from a security conference in Florida, and a military camp for kids in Kentucky, this story takes a …

Insecure Hegemony: The Cultural Construction Of 'Righteous Retaliation' In The Hunt For Osama Bin Laden, Marisa Tramontano

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study examines the American “authorized discourse” about the hunt for and killing of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden to better understand it as an episode in American cultural hegemony maintenance. Through a structural hermeneutic analysis of presidential speeches and widely-circulated national strategy documents, high distribution news coverage, and entertainment media, alongside one-on-one interviews and focus groups, I illuminate the symbolic mechanics by which the death of Osama bin Laden was constructed as righteous and legitimate retaliatory violence in response to the unprompted, offensive violence of the 9/11 attacks.

Drawing on an array of theoretical approaches including classical sociologists Karl …

The Relationship Between Right-Wing Authoritarianism & Support For Military Action Among Millennial Voters, Jessica A. Nemet

Student Theses

This thesis examined the relationship between Right-Wing Authoritarianism (RWA) and Militarism among millennial students at John Jay College. Previous studies have already suggested a relationship between RWA, heightened perceived individual or communal threat, and aggressive attitudes – especially towards outsiders. Confirmatory Factor Analysis was used to gauge the level of authoritarianism and that was endorsed by each subject and these RWA factor scores were contrasted between participants who endorsed Militarism as a viable U.S. foreign policy tactic and those who did not. Consistent with our hypothesis, results suggest that individuals who supported militarism as a viable means to solving international …

Islamic Terrorism In The United States – The Association Of Religious Fundamentalism With Social Isolation & Paths Leading To Extreme Violence Through Processes Of Radicalization., Shay Shiran

Student Theses

This exploratory study focuses on identifying motivations for religious terrorism and Islamic terrorism in the United States in particular. Terrorism is a crime of extreme violence with the end purpose of political influence. This crime is challenging to encounter for its multi-faced characteristics, the unusual motivations of its actors, and their semi-militant conduct. The hypothesis of this study asserts that religious terrorists are radicalized by passing from fundamental to extreme devout agendas, caused by isolation from the dominant society, and resulted in high potential to impose those agendas by extreme violence. Under the theoretical framework of subculture in criminology, this …

Proposition 47 And Crime: A Difference In Differences Analysis Of Incarceration Rates And Crime Using Border Counties, Brian J. Fischer

Theses and Dissertations

California passed Proposition 47 by vote and changed the way the state punishes drug and theft. I find an increase in crime using a difference in differences model by computing the change in thefts with the change in inmates. This effect sides with anecdotal claims and disagrees with empirical studies.

Politics As Loot: Reflections On Theories Of Decline In Political Thought, Milo Ward

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This thesis responds to the perennial theories of political decline in Western political thought by reimagining politics as a part of the loot plundered by the victors of history. It unpacks and critiques prognostications of the impending end of politics, specifically those of theorists Wendy Brown and Hannah Arendt, by dredging up the colonial and the capitalist logics that covertly underpin assumptions that politics is something that can be exclusively possessed. The forensic treatment of narratives of political decline reveals the unmistakable tracks of the rationality of property relations behind laments over the fate of political traditions that also withhold …

Persistence Of Cultural Heritage In A Multicultural Context: Examining Factors That Shaped Voting Preferences In The 2016 Election, Anna M. Schwartz

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The prevailing discourse about the myth of the “melting pot” of American culture implies that heritage cultures are eliminated in favor of a homogenous “American” norm. However, this myth belies the persistence of our cultural heritage in forming our attitudes, morals, and habitual patterns of thought, each of which shape how we participate in our democracy through voting. By contextualizing voting predictors such as authoritarianism, social dominance, and sexism in developmental and ecological theories, this dissertation shows how they are shaped by culture and transmitted through consumption of media and interaction with members of one’s community and family. In an …

Angelenos, Vivian Liang

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The purpose of this paper is to explore the effects of Los Angeles’s city myth on the lived realities of its minority populations. I assert that the abstract erasure of the city’s Mexican past is mirrored in the physical concealment and removal of its minority populations. This paper pays particular attention to the ways in which the city’s foundational myth is intertwined with both the racialization of Mexican-Americans in the early 20th century and the rising prominence of neoliberal urbanism in the latter half of the 20th century. The LAPD and city council’s racialization of Mexican-Americans as dangerous and undesirable …

The State Of Hate In America: A Study Of Hate Group Permeation In The United States By State, Michelle Rogers

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This paper will analyze some of the statistics regarding hate groups. The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has studied hate groups in the United States in depth for decades, developing tools and providing some useful statistics. They have developed a hate map that describes the quantity of hate groups in America individually by state and helps specifically identify trends in year over year comparisons. However, the hate map does not offer per capita breakdowns for a state or reasons for hate group permeation unique to the demographics and culture of each state. Factors and elements in conjunction with the hate …

A Discourse Of True And False: An Analysis Of The Publications Of The Afl-Cio Between 1955-1965 As Archived In The Tamiment Library, John J. Gorham Jr.

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In 1955 the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations healed their twenty-year schism. Provisions of the NIRA and the Wagner Act had given promising opportunities for union organization in the early 1930’s. Unions in coal and steel saw possibilities in organizing vertically entire industries, rather than according to traditional crafts. In 1935 some unions left the AFL to form more aggressive organizations under the banner of the newly formed CIO. The public perception of aggressive strikes led to anti-labor laws, most noticeably the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947. The increasingly hostile political climate, as states enacted the “right …

The Politics Of United States Army Doctrine, David C. Rasmussen

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The US Army made four significant shifts in the content of its capstone operations doctrine, Field Manual (FM) 100-5 / FM 3-0, along a spectrum of war since the end of WWII: 1) in 1954 it made a shift from a doctrine focused almost exclusively on mid-intensity conventional warfare to a doctrine that added significant emphasis to high-intensity nuclear warfare; 2) in 1962 it made an even greater shift in the opposite direction toward low-intensity unconventional warfare doctrine; 3) in 1976 it shifted back to an almost exclusive focus on mid-intensity conventional warfare content; 4) and this is where Army …

Evangelizing Neoliberalism Through Megachurches In Latin America And The United States, William O. Collazo

Dissertations and Theses

The most prominent and influential feature of worldwide Evangelicalism, is the megachurch. In Latin America megachurches have proliferated and grown in political influence when they first came into contact with neoliberalism during Pinochet's dictatorship in Chile. As Latin America's poor first migrated out of rural areas into Latin American cities, then north, to the United States, they have brought with them their religion. Increasingly, this religion is Protestant, evangelical, and for many, it is Pentecostalism. Misunderstood by the early literature on Pentecostalism, is the strain of neoliberalism that has become infused in the religion's most powerful institution - the megachurch. …