Browsing by Subject "U.S."

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America Needs to Care About the Dreamers
(2018-02-26) Baker, Candace
Analysis of the size, accessibility, and profitability of international defense sales in times of U.S. budget uncertainty
(2015-05) Massey, Daniel Lee; Gholz, Eugene, 1971-; Gilbert, Stephen
Immediately prior to and following cuts to the U.S. defense budget in 2013, executives and board members from Lockheed Martin, Boeing, BAE Systems, Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, and General Dynamics specifically cited the need to increase international sales to make up for lost U.S. revenue. Some statements predict aggressive international growth in the immediate future, while others take a more moderate or long-term approach. The purpose of this paper is to assess whether the international defense market is sufficiently large, accessible, and profitable for U.S. defense companies to maintain or grow overall revenue and profitability in the face of static or shrinking defense budgets in the United States.
Analyzing the motivations of U.S. development aid to Africa
(2013-05) Akram Malik, Izzah; Weaver, Catherine, 1971-
Research literature on foreign assistance suggests that the U.S. provides aid in order to serve both its own strategic interests as well as the development needs of aid recipient countries. Maintaining a focus on Africa, this report uses newly available data for official development assistance and attempts to verify whether prevailing hypotheses regarding the motivations behind U.S. aid giving still hold true. Specifically, the report analyzes whether aid giving patterns align with 1) the development needs of recipient countries as understood through the lens of internationally established priorities, or 2) with good political and economic policies within recipient countries vis-à-vis democratic institutions and open markets, or 3) with U.S. national strategic interests (be they political, military, or economic interests). A statistical analysis of U.S. Official Development Assistance (ODA) to 53 countries in Africa over the period of 1970 to 2010 was carried out for this purpose. The results suggest that, when it comes to aid that is specifically addressed towards development projects in Africa, the strategic considerations and political priorities of the U.S. are just as important, if not more important, than the development needs or economic performance of recipient countries. Political allies and countries that democratize receive more aid from the U.S., ceteris paribus. In addition, it was found that more aid is given to countries with larger populations - a result that contradicts earlier literature on aid's motivations. The report is organized as follows. I begin in Section 1 by providing a general overview of U.S. foreign aid. In Section 2, I detail why Africa is a significant continent for such an analysis of U.S. aid, and outline some of the trends in aid to Africa. The third section summarizes some of the most important existing hypotheses about why the U.S. gives development aid. Section 4 describes the data and methodology used for this study and provides a discussion of the results obtained from the statistical analysis. Finally, in Section 6, I conclude by offering broader policy implications and sketching out avenues for future research.
A "Bilingual" Approach to Language Rights: How Dialogue Between U.S. and International Human Rights Law May Improve the Language Rights Framework
(Harvard Human Rights Journal, 2012) Gilman, Denise
A Calm Conversation on Net Neutrality
(2018-02-13) Dodson, Wes; Dabir, Shoumik
The Case for Sanders’ Single-Payer Health Care System
(2018-02-05) Maksoud, Rylan
CNN's Two Minutes Hate
(2018-04-04) Sparkman, Brendon
Contingency on the Korean peninsula : collapse to unification
(2010-05) O, Tara C.; Galbraith, James K.
A collapsed North Korea would pose a momentous test to the future of the region. The five regional powers—South Korea, China, Japan, Russia, and the United States—are ill-prepared for such an event, partly because of the act of planning for it would upset North Korea. However, the potential challenges of a collapse are too great to ignore. This study presents an historical and political analysis of the increasing risk that North Korea may collapse. A comparison with earlier cases suggests that triggers and indicators of collapse can be identified, including increasing cross-border information flows, defections, and the possible death or incapacitation of North Korea’s leader. Further, the large and growing economic disparity between North Korea and its neighbors, South Korea and China, points to likely consequences of collapse, including possible mass migration. The study then examines the roles of South Korea, China, the U.S., Japan, and Russia in the future of the Korean peninsula; it concludes with a further consideration of the paradox of collapse planning, but argues that it would be better to run the risks entailed in the exercise than to be caught flatfooted when a collapse occurs. The analysis is based on interviews, surveys, and documents in English and Korean.
Deportation and Detention: ICE-y and Dangerous Conditions
(2018-03-19) Colston, Erica
Differences in ESG Investing in the EU and the United States: A qualitative investigation into factors and forces that created vastly different ESG markets
(2023-05) DSouza, Seann
ESG, a framework to consider and evaluate companies and investments, has become something of a major development within the financial industry in the past five years. Two major financial regions of the world that have similar financial innovations and adopt similar practices, the United States and the European Union, have adopted and integrated ESG investing to varying degrees. In fact, the EU ESG market is substantially larger, more regulated, less controversial, and more common than the US ESG market. The first task of this paper is to examine the sizes and demand for the respective ESG markets of the EU and the US. Secondly, to evaluate the belief and perspectives in climate change that individuals in the EU and the US have. Next, I will discuss the factors of determination that impact climate change belief and further analyze how they could affect integration of ESG within the EU and the US. The last task of the paper is to evaluate the regulatory or legal distinctions that allow for ESG integration to increase among the general public and/or institutions. I will then provide a conclusion that talks about the importance of minimizing factors that could limit ESG investing development within the EU and the U.S.
Distant intimacies : queer literature and the visual in the U.S. and Argentina
(2015-08) Francica, Cynthia Alicia; Cvetkovich, Ann, 1957-; Giunta, Andrea; Moore, Lisa; Richmond-Garza, Elizabeth; Carcamo-Huechante, Luis
This dissertation focuses on literary and visual works produced by queer/feminist Argentine press and art gallery ‘Belleza y Felicidad’ (1999-2007) and its encounter with ‘Belladonna*’ (1999-present), a U.S. reading series and publishing project. It seeks to describe the ways in which the precarious modes of production, circulation, and reception of the literary and visual artworks of ‘Belleza y Felicidad’ both enable and are enabled by local and hemispheric social networks grounded on embodied, affective approaches to aesthetic practices. I argue that those queer/feminist creative networks become embedded in works by authors such as Fernanda Laguna, Pablo Pérez, César Aira, and Roberto Jacoby. Bringing academic attention to the fragile materiality of the works produced by these authors, my research involves an effort to map, collect and register the ephemeral literary and visual archive of this crucial moment of Latin American queer cultural production. This dissertation crafts the notion of ‘distant intimacies’ to account for the formal, affective, and sensorial qualities of these works as well as for the local and hemispheric modes of queer relationality on which they are grounded. It shows that, through their investment in ‘distant intimacies,’ the literary and visual objects it studies consistently investigate experimental modes of community formation. That investigation of intimate bonds, in turn, grounds ‘Belleza y Felicidad’ chapbooks and visual artworks’ deployment of what I term ‘dystopian utopias’—queer imaginings, visuals, precarious materialities, and affectively charged performances which function to rethink radical politics at the moment of the Argentine neoliberal social crisis of the late 1990s and early 2000s. This dissertation claims that these works’ dys/utopian projections give account of the multiple ways in which recent and long histories of local and global economic, social, and political violence become enmeshed with queer affects and desires in the Argentine context.
Empire’s angst : the politics of race, migration, and sex work in Panama, 1903-1945
(2013-08) Parker, Jeffrey Wayne; Guridy, Frank Andre; Levine, Philippa; Makalani, Minkah; Mckiernan-González, John; Twinam, Ann
This dissertation explores the negotiations and conflicts over race, sex, and disease that shaped the changing contours of the nightlife in Panama from 1903 to 1945. It investigates why sexual commerce on the isthmus evoked an array of masculine anxieties from various historical actors, including U.S. officials, Panamanian authorities, and Afro-Caribbean activists. I argue that the conflicting cultural encounters over sex work remained at the heart of U.S. imperial designs, Panamanian nationalism and state-building efforts, and Afro-Caribbean visions of racial advancement during the first half of the twentieth century. Moreover, these global visions of manliness generated at the local level also took shape in dialogue with each other. This interconnected discourse on manliness highlights the intertwined histories of the United States, Latin America, and the Caribbean in the early twentieth century. Migrant women at the center of the drama, however, became particularly adept at navigating the multiple structures of patriarchal control. They manipulated the legal system, resisted abuses of power, participated in labor organizations, pursued economic opportunities, pressed moral claims, demanded respect, and highlighted injustices. Women embroiled in controversy selected from an array of ideas circulating the region. They also played off competing understandings of manhood in order to achieve their own ends. Often these various strategies of negotiation had contradictory outcomes. Active engagement with patriarchal institutions could simultaneously reinforce gender and racial norms while challenging the material reality of daily life. Nevertheless, the failure by the U.S. and Panamanian governments to curtail sexual deviancy and venereal disease underscored the limits of imperial power at a key global crossroads in the Americas.
Five Questions to Ask After Tillerson's Departure
(2018-03-18) Romanow, Nick
Food Deserts: A Review of Studies to Address Food Deserts in the U.S. & Proposed Directions for Research
(2023) Shokar, Kareena
Food deserts (FDs) are classified as low-income or low-access areas where individuals lack consistent access to nutritious foods. Redlining and gentrification have assisted in forming these areas, where individuals are more likely to be obese and have nutrient deficiencies. Researchers focus their efforts on the availability of healthy foods in local retailers, assess the impacts of new food retailers in a neighborhood, and seek to understand unique contextual factors that affect particular communities’ access to food. A literature review was conducted on 43 papers to assess current trends in FD research, determine gaps in methodologies, and propose directions for future inquiry. Inclusion of community members in the study design phase, incorporation of more thorough evaluations during and after the study, and further investigation into the dynamics of food distribution is needed to facilitate food access across the United States.
Framing populist campaigns in the age of social media : a study of news coverage of Trump and Brazil’s Bolsonaro
(2020-06-29) Wilkerson, Heloisa Aruth Sturm; Johnson, Thomas J., 1960-; Chyi, Iris; Reese, Stephen; Straubhaar, Joseph; Alves, Rosental
This study examines social media discourse of populist candidates as well as news coverage of the 2016 U.S. and 2018 Brazil presidential elections, with a focus on the extent to which social media have influenced how political stories are covered. Donald Trump in the U.S. and Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil are two of the most recent examples of candidates who successfully embraced right-wing populism and were able to capitalize on their social media exposure rather than relying on traditional news channels. A mixed-method comparative approach combining content analysis of election news coverage and social media as well as interviews with Brazilian journalists was adopted to (a) examine the frames, issues, and sources employed by journalists in their work, (b) analyze the extent to which social media was used in news coverage as a representation of public opinion, (c) examine candidates’ social media discourse, and (d) explore factors influencing media production as well as how journalists used social media in their reporting. This research adopted the theoretical framework of framing, hierarchy of influences, and the theory of affective intelligence, in order to shed light on audience engagement and influences on journalism production across two countries during presidential elections, contributing to the growing field of comparative media studies. Findings indicate that news outlets from both countries focused on the use of strategic frames, and similar patterns were found in terms of personalization and attacks. However, U.S. media was more likely to adopt the interpretative frame and to refer to horse-race frames and sensationalism, whereas Brazilian media employed target frames more often. Results also reveal that the social media rhetoric of populist candidates examined in this study was very similar in their frequency of attacks, sensationalism, and appeals to anger and enthusiasm, with little discussion of substantive issues of public concern. However, these strategies did not resonate with their audiences, nor with the media, in the same way. By combining a U.S./European theoretical framework and a Latin American system, this dissertation ultimately contributes to the growing body of research on news coverage of presidential elections in non-Western contexts.
Going back “home” : U.S. deportation law, return migration, and migrant belonging in the U.S.-Mexico region
(2017-05) Wheatley, Mary Christine; Rodriguez, Néstor; Rudrappa, Sharmila, 1966-; Roberts, Bryan R.; Young, Michael P.; Ward, Peter M.; Torres, Rebecca M.
The United States has deported more than four million noncitizens in the last twenty years largely because of changes to immigration law in 1996 via the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA). Taking the case of the U.S. and Mexico, my dissertation is a binational ethnography that examines the social impacts of current U.S. deportation laws and policies on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border. Tracing the process of deportation from detention centers to immigration courts to hometowns of undocumented return migrants in Mexico, the dissertation examines how these laws shape the experiences of noncitizens placed in deportation proceedings as well as the socioeconomic reincorporation and transnationalism among deportees and other returnees in Mexico. I conducted participant observation and in-depth interviews over a 22-month-period between 2010 and 2014 in Mexico and the U.S. I engaged in participant observation at deportation hearings in immigration courts and privately-run men’s and women’s immigration detention centers in Texas. In Mexico, I gathered participant observation and interview data in 10 towns. I conducted 83 formal and informal interviews with return migrants (33 with deportees and 50 with voluntary returnees) and 41 formal and informal interviews with non-migrants including family members, community members, researchers, government officials and others. Building on Menjívar and Abrego’s concept of “legal violence” (2012), I ask: How does legal violence, as a reflection of state power, reify and transcend the sovereign borders of the state? And how do non-citizens subjected to legal violence resist, escape, and cope with it within and beyond the state’s sovereign borders? I conclude that legal, state-sponsored violence produces legal, subjugated individuals. However, kinship networks mitigate such state violence. I use the term precarious citizenship to describe the tenuousness individuals experience between state-sponsored violence and their participation in kinship-based gift economies
GOP Minority Undermines Rule of Law
(2018-03-06) Maksoud, Rylan
Hollywood Hypocrisy: Devilry in the City of Angels
(2017-11-03) Sparkman, Brendon
It's Time to Make a New Deal: Solving the INF Treaty’s Strategic Liabilities to Achieve U.S. Security Goals in Asia (November 2018)
(Texas National Security Review, 2018) Cuomo, Scott A.
The Misunderstood Implications of the Electoral College
(2018-01-30) Coronado, Carson