DEPARTMENT OF POLITICAL SCIENCE

"The media plays a fundamental role in any democracy, and all eyes are on the news on Election Day. From traditional news anchors, to independent reporters on Twitter, we have minute to minute election updates available right at our fingertips. But this overabundance of information can easily lead to confusion, misinformation, and the creation of echo chambers. Join our panel of experts: Mara Suttmann-Lea, Asst. Prof. of American Politics at Connecticut College; Christine Stuart, Editor at CT News Junkie; Belinha de Abreu, President of the International Council for Media Literacy; and Jerrod Ferrari, Director of Earned Media & Senior Account Manager at The Narrative Project who will discuss the role of news coverage and social media on Election day and the days leading up to it, and how we can protect ourselves from disinformation and find trustworthy sources.

"The Graduate School at Northwestern University and the Office of Graduate and Postdoctoral Success are honored to announce the following students have been selected to become Bouchet Honor Society members. 2025 inductees Tochukwu Dominic Eze, doctoral candidate, Computer Science Jojo Galvan-Mora, doctoral candidate, History Tiffany M. Mays, doctoral candidate, Life Sciences – Driskill Graduate Program (DGP) Eden Melles, doctoral candidate, Political Science Tre Wells, doctoral candidate, Human Development and Social Policy Anthea Weng, doctoral candidate, Life Sciences – Driskill Graduate Program (DGP)"

Under which conditions do social movement coalitions factionalize under parallel, and possibly contending, frames? We argue that social movements split along opposing collective action frames when development paradigm shifts create distinct opportunities or threats for factions within the coalition. Rooted in historical marginalization, these shifts impact factions’ responses unevenly, shaping how they frame their demands to align with evolving policies. Through a multi-method research design combining critical event analysis and postcolonial historiography, we show that previously united Campesino and Indigenous movements diverged into competing class- and ethnic-based frames in Colombia’s 1970 s in response to the rollback of redistributive land reform under Pastrana’s administration.

This article addresses recent work on empire and colonisation which calls for a reappraisal of how agency and resistance manifests among groups responding to structural marginalisation. We argue that approaching these questions from within the colonial order reveals important idiosyncrasies regarding how groups understood resistance, agency, and popular organising as possible responses that emerged from within imperial landscapes. Using the example of race as a central regulatory category and practice of colonial power, we analyse two cases which we suggest benefit from an account of agency and resistance within colonial order: the Black Loyalists in English America and the Indigenous royalists of New Granada, two groups which pursued emancipation by choosing to remain under colonial rule.

Before a congressional committee Wednesday, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson defended his city’s status as a “sanctuary city” — a jurisdiction that guides local law enforcement cooperation with federal immigration authorities. VOA’s Kane Farabaugh has more.

Moments before President Donald Trump delivered his address to Congress in the House chamber on Tuesday night, Rep. Lance Gooden (R-Texas) snatched a sign from the hands of Rep. Melanie Stansbury (D-N.M.), who held up a paper that said “This is NOT normal” in protest of the current administration. And there’s a lot to take away from that moment, according to an expert.

In a heated Land Use Commission meeting last Wednesday, resident after resident stepped up to the podium to provide their suggestions and complaints on the second draft of Envision Evanston 2045, a widely debated comprehensive and rezoning plan.

As the Trump administration moves forward with plans to gut U.S. foreign assistance programs, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, now also serving as acting administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), said the moves are necessary to ensure that every dollar spent abroad “furthers our national interest.” One area of USAID’s work that critics point to as “wasteful” is the agency’s LGBTQ program. In fact, these efforts comprise a critical part of the U.S. foreign policy toolkit and help ensure that more prosperous and stable societies exist to advance U.S. interests abroad.

There is a greater shift toward open science. Sharing sensitive and qualitative research data may present ethical and practical challenges for researchers aiming to promote openness. This webinar will discuss real-world dilemmas and innovative frameworks to address issues arising in qualitative research. Our speakers Professor Rebecca Campbell, Dr Sharon Cox, Dr Sebastian Karcher and Professor Alex Stevens will highlight a methodological approach for handling sensitive narrative data, developed through work with interviews involving vulnerable populations. We will explore broader issues in research, such as publication decisions, prioritising editorial work, and navigating the 'prestige game' associated with non-open-access journals.

"Nestled behind his desk in Carnegie Hall, between scattered house plants and a color coordinated display of writing utensils to my left, I bore witness to what keeps students coming back to Professor Sean Diament time and time again: an unfiltered, personable nature. For Diament, a visiting assistant politics professor at Pomona College, the line between his expertise in politics and his life experience, in many ways, seamlessly blend. Diament stands apart from many others, not just in appearance — his signature look is hard to miss, usually sporting a monochrome ensemble composed of a matching neon shirt, beanie and socks — but in the deeply personal nature of each of his classes. Throughout the semester, he slowly pulls back the layers of his own life, an act of vulnerability that brings the teaching of politics from the abstract to the concrete."

We are thrilled to announce the second cohort of Good Authority fellows. We look forward to sharing with you their insights across the wide range of their expertise, from political campaigns to corruption and international interventions as well as separation of powers, among other topical areas. Our fellows’ research and expertise offer more coverage and analysis on important events in Africa, Asia, Europe, and of course, the United States. Isabella Bellezza is a PhD candidate at Brown University and an incoming assistant professor of political science and College Fellow at Northwestern University. She studies the international politics of border control and the role of secrecy in international relations.

My guest in this episode is Dr Mkhaimar Abusada, He received his PhD from the University of Missouri-Columbia in 1996 and is an associate professor at Al-Azhar University of Gaza and the former chair of the university's political science department. He has authored one book, and many academic articles in local and internationally recognized academic journals. He has also written for Project Syndicate, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and Washington Institute for Near East Policy. We talked about his experience leaving Gaza at the beginning of the war and then we delved into international and Palestinian politics.

For the reformed financial architecture to respond adequately to differentiated needs, countries must play a central role in identifying these needs and implementing the response. By adopting a national perspective (i.e. based on the experience of African countries), this event will highlight the key considerations that the reformed global financial architecture should take into account to support the translation of countries' climate commitments into concrete actions.

"GOVERNING X SERIES: Governing (with) Emotions “Democracy with All the Feels” explores the relationships between emotions and political practices (e.g., deliberating, representing, voting, or resisting) and how their interactions affect political agents, shape political judgment, and organize political systems. From a variety of perspectives, the objective of this conference is to reflect critically on the conditions under which emotions can constructively contribute to democracy, especially in times of crisis and uncertainty."

"After the success of her first bestseller, The Sea Around Us, legendary environmental thinker Rachel Carson settled in Southport, Maine. The married couple Dorothy and Stanley Freeman had a cottage nearby, and the trio quickly became friends. Their extensive and evocative correspondence shows that Dorothy and Rachel did something more: they fell in love. In this video, Lida Maxwell explores how their love unsettled their heteronormative ideas of bourgeois life, and how this enabled Carson to develop an increasingly critical view of capitalism’s dangerous and loveless exhaustion of both nonhuman nature and human lives alike.

While the exact plans are unclear, Trump has suggested that Gazans would be relocated to surrounding countries. Other members of his administration contradicted his statements that Gazans would be permanently displaced and that the US would use military force. For Mkhaimar Abusada, a visiting associate professor from Al-Azhar University in Gaza, this suggestion from Trump is “unacceptable.” Abusada’s parents were expelled from Palestine during the 1948 war, or what Palestinians call the Nakba. He was born in a refugee camp in the Gaza Strip, and after getting his PhD in the United States, returned to Gaza to teach at Al-Azhar. He was forced to evacuate when the war with Israel broke out in 2023.

"In this episode of Heart to Hustle, my former professor Mneesha Gellman, an influential figure in education and social justice, explains how her lifelong activism led her to found the Emerson Prison Initiative (EPI), a program at Emerson College dedicated to bringing higher education to incarcerated individuals at the Massachusetts Correctional Institution - Norfolk (MCI Norfolk). Drawing on her extensive experience in education and advocacy, Mneesha discusses overcoming challenges like technological barriers in prisons and outdated curricula in schools, offering innovative strategies that empower marginalized communities and drive meaningful change. She also highlights how providing higher education in prisons transforms lives and reinforces the mission that education is a fundamental right for all, paving the way for societal reintegration and lasting reform.

"Professor Lamin Keita, a US-based Gambian political scientist has sounded the alarm bell, regarding the Gambia’s political landscape. He asserts that the relationship between political fervor and the fundamental services provided to the electorate reveals considerable governance failures that cannot be ignored. In a recent interview, Keita declared that since 2016, it has become increasingly clear that mere political enthusiasm fails to address the essential needs for clean water, electricity, food, and adequate housing for Gambians. “The political excitement in The Gambia has typically manifested through grandiose speeches and impassioned debates that stir public emotions. However, these fervent expressions by our politicians consistently miss the mark when it comes to genuine governance and fulfilling the real needs of our citizens,” he stated."

À quelques jours des Oscars, il convient de redécouvrir quelques grandes œuvres de fiction porteuses de leçons sur la réalité politique actuelle.

"Exhausted and parched, Eric Lin sat on a Los Angeles sidewalk while a man wearing gloves with glowing fingertips gave him an impromptu light show. The Weinberg third-year’s long pants and Doc Martens clashed with the scantily clad masses rocking to electronic dance music under the summer sun. It was his first EDM festival, and he was overwhelmed. “I needed a moment to sit down, take in my surroundings,” Lin says. “Just like when you go to some beautiful natural scenery and stand there for a moment and take it all in, that’s what I was doing.” At a club, Lin would be wary of people approaching, but the gloved stranger embodied the warm festival spirit, becoming Lin’s first rave friend. The following school year, Lin averaged 11 EDM shows per quarter – that’s more than one each week. He grew to love the brain-tickling music, diverse crowds and freedom to move in new ways.

Shortly after President Donald Trump took office in January, he fired former President Joe Biden’s nominee, Gwynne Wilcox. Wilcox has since sued Trump for her firing. “This leaves the current board with only two members. This is a five-member board, and they’re unable to act if they lack a quorum (of three members),” political science Prof. Daniel Galvin said. “By firing this Democratic-appointed member of the NLRB, Trump has effectively rendered the NLRB incapable of doing its job.”

"That the world was and will be crap, I already know," says the beginning of the Cambalache tango. It is not simple prophetic poetry, but a portrait of our present. From Lima to Washington, from Budapest to Jakarta, from New Delhi to Seoul, democracy is staggering like a drunkard intoxicated with fernet. The slap of reality that Donald Trump's return to the White House implies should serve as a warning: Peru is not an anomaly, it is part of a global trend. Our fragile democracy may have crumbled in a particular way, but we are not alone on this dance floor.

President Donald Trump’s administration has taken aim at diversity, equity and inclusion (D.E.I.) programs in both the federal government and private institutions through executive orders. While the exact implications of these actions remain to be seen, they carry the potential to affect life at Northwestern.

This article focuses on a crucial issue in Black politics: the spectrum of trust. Building on Monica Bell’s theory of situational trust, I explain how community members in three South Side Chicago neighborhoods – Greater Englewood, Bronzeville, and Calumet Heights – work with institutions and individuals they traditionally distrust to remedy state and community violence. Using focus groups, interviews, and community observations, I found that attitudes of distrust towards the police, local politicians, nonprofits, and certain neighbors were common among participants regardless of class. I show how community members engaged in these coalitions to focus on resource sharing and strategy input, and how the fruitfulness of these interactions varied according to class.

This study examines how exposure to counter- and pro-attitudinal fact-checking messages impacts the fact-checker’s perceived quality and ideological leaning. In a well-powered and pre-registered survey experiment conducted during the 2021 mid-term election in Argentina, when COVID-19 was a polarizing issue, we exposed 5757 respondents to real tweets reporting the number of COVID-19 cases, followed by fact-checking adjudications that appropriately confirmed or refuted the original publication. Results show that pro-attitudinal messages increased the quality rating of the fact-checker, Chequeado, and made respondents perceive the organization ideologically closer to their views. Counter- attitudinal fact-checking also increases the perceived quality but has no significant effect on the perceived ideology of the fact-checker. However, the intervention affects how voters perceive ideology.

"Northwestern University assistant professor Brian Libgober told Newsweek: "Trump, like many candidates, came into office promising a lot of things to a lot of different constituencies. When it comes time to make a budget, these multiplicity of promises become difficult or even impossible to maintain. "The result is that it is likely that the final compromise on budgetary issues like Medicaid will be significantly displeasing to important parts of his coalition, which will undermine his popularity and the popularity of his allies in Congress. Whether they pay a price at the ballot box will depend a lot on the ultimate economic fortunes, but it's pretty hard to convince people you are on their side when you've taken away their health insurance.

This week, Alina Utrata talks to Swati Srivastava, an Associate Professor of Political Science at Purdue University and a Faculty Associate at Harvard University's Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society. They discussed Swati’s work on hybrid sovereignty, private actors in global governance — and, yes, of course, Elon Musk. Listen to hear about why the classic distinctions between public and private power is much messier than we think, what discussions of sovereignty can tell us about corporate power, and what might be new about these new technology companies and algorithmic governance.

Leaders representing the United States and Russia met this week to discuss an end to the war in Ukraine as European NATO leaders and the Ukrainians themselves were iced out of the negotiations despite their enormous stake in the issue. But it’s only one snub in a long line of affronts to NATO at the hands of President Donald Trump, dating back to his first term.

"President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Feb. 10, directing government agencies to stop purchasing and distributing paper straws, while calling for a nationwide strategy to eliminate their forced use. Pomona College’s dining services and Bon Appétit, which manages three other colleges’ dining services, remain committed to sustainability efforts, maintaining that the order will not affect 5C dining. In an effort to return to plastic straws, the order reverses former President Joe Biden’s plan to reduce single-use plastic products from all federal operations by 2035, which Trump’s order describes as “caving to pressure from woke activists who prioritize symbolism over science.” Sean Diament, a politics professor at Pomona, also called the order symbolic, except for its potential influence in dining halls within federal buildings.

Gun ownership is a highly consequential political behavior. It often signifies a belief about the inadequacy of state-provided security and leads to membership in a powerful political constituency. As a result, it is important to understand why people buy guns and how shifting purchasing patterns affect the composition of the broader gun-owning community. We address these topics by exploring the dynamics of the gun-buying spike that took place during the COVID-19 pandemic, which was one of the largest in American history. We find that feelings of diffuse threat prompted many individuals to buy guns. Moreover, we show that new gun owners, even more than buyers who already owned guns, exhibit strong conspiracy and anti-system beliefs. These findings have substantial consequences for the subsequent population of gun owners and provide insight into how disruptions can alter political groups.

On Monday, Feb. 17, Swarthmore’s political science department hosted a panel to discuss the first month of President Donald Trump’s term and the characterization of the U.S. as in the midst of a constitutional crisis. The event, moderated by political science professor Jonny Thakkar, featured professors Sam Handlin, Susanne Schwarz, and Warren Snead as experts on the historical, contemporary, and comparative perspectives on the issue. Although the event was scheduled last minute in response to a flurry of controversial executive actions by Trump, a large group of students and faculty alike crowded into a Trotter Hall classroom to listen to the faculty’s insights and pose their pressing questions regarding the state of American democracy.

"Fast food workers, according to researchers, are more likely to experience wage theft than other industries such as health care and retail. Wage theft tripled for fast food workers from 3% in 2009 to 25% in 2024. “Fast food is notoriously a franchise-based model, which decentralizes the responsibility for labor standards to franchisers. Another part is that there’s unusually low rates of unionization in fast food,” Galvin explains. “Also, fast food workers tend to be younger and more likely to fear retaliation if they should complain about these forms of wage theft.” Galvin points out that educating workers about their rights in the workplace could reduce wage theft. “Many workers don’t know what their rights are, so they don’t always know that they can complain, whether that’s because of just a lack of information or language barriers,” Galvin says.

"Alisa Kaplan, executive director of Reform for Illinois, said she is concerned about the legal precedent that the case may set. She noted spouses are sometimes used to circumvent prohibitions on political activity. "It's a difficult issue. Perhaps not being politically active is the price a spouse pays for being married to someone holding such a position.""

This article focuses on a crucial issue in Black politics: the spectrum of trust. Building on Monica Bell’s theory of situational trust, I explain how community members in three South Side Chicago neighborhoods – Greater Englewood, Bronzeville, and Calumet Heights – work with institutions and individuals they traditionally distrust to remedy state and community violence. Using focus groups, interviews, and community observations, I found that attitudes of distrust towards the police, local politicians, nonprofits, and certain neighbors were common among participants regardless of class. However, some community members still built coalitions with these institutions and individuals. I show how community members engaged in these coalitions to focus on resource sharing and strategy input, safety and duty, and relatability with members of distrusted institutions.

Loin de promouvoir l’efficacité, le démantèlement de l’État entamé par le président et son alter ego risque de plonger le gouvernement américain dans le chaos.

Washington's rivals and adversaries, in particular Moscow, are "unquestionably leveraging the detention of U.S. citizens for political gain," said Danielle Gilbert, an assistant professor at Northwestern University who advises Western governments on hostage recovery. Russia has been engaging in hostage diplomacy, which is "when governments use their criminal justice systems to take foreigners hostage," she told Newsweek.

"The QDR was created by qualitative methods expert Colin Elman, professor of political science in the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs. It is now led by Sebastian Karcher, director of the University’s Center for Qualitative and Multi-Method Inquiry and research associate professor of political science. “This isn’t just an archive. We’re an active place of cutting-edge social science research and constantly engage with other qualitative data researchers. We’re interested in what the next generation of qualitative data looks like, what avenues it opens, how it can be challenging and can be shared ethically,” Karcher says. “There are a lot of questions we’re actively working on and we love to be involved in conversations with others who are doing that work.”"

"Evanston voters considered it and approved it, but cannot have it — unless, perhaps, a state nonprofit successfully resurrects it in court. The “it” is “ranked choice voting,” a new system for voting in local elections backed by 82% of Evanston voters in November 2022 that the Evanston City Council had slated to take effect in time for this April’s municipal elections."

Syracuse University is home to the only data repository in the nation dedicated to the archiving, storage and sharing of digital data collected through qualitative and multi-method research in the social sciences and related disciplines. The Qualitative Data Repository (QDR), established in 2014, provides social scientists with an avenue to share qualitative data for the benefit of others. It is now led by Sebastian Karcher (WCAS'14), director of the University's Center for Qualitative and Multi-Method Inquiry and research associate professor of political science.

Syria’s post-Assad transition faces many challenges, however, from crippled state capacity to issues of refugee resettlement, transitional justice, constitutional revision and unresolved territorial and military disputes. Most analyses of Syria’s path forward have focused on how interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa—who leads Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS, the rebel group that spearheaded the final offensive that toppled Assad—is navigating these perilous waters. But the focus on Sharaa, HTS and other armed groups misses the story of how Syria arrived at this moment: The uprising against Assad began in 2011 not with armed rebellion, but with courageous nonviolent activism. Assad sought to eradicate that nascent movement, but civic actors found ways to endure, even during the war. With Assad gone, civil society now has critical roles to play in Syria’s post-conflict recovery and political t

Commonsense morality suggests that an unjustly invaded democracy may conscript its own citizens and bar them from emigrating when such a policy is necessary to sustain resistance to the invader. What does this assumption regarding ‘internal conscription’ entail for ‘external conscription’ – for foreign countries who might close their borders to many citizens of the invaded democracy, to push them to fight? Could it have been morally appropriate for Ukraine’s neighbours, for instance, to close their borders to (many) Ukrainians at the onset of the Russian assault on Kyiv, with the aim of sustaining Ukraine’s resistance to Putin’s invasion? I take up such questions by examining the seeming discrepancy between internal and external conscription. I argue that, notwithstanding its surface appeal, a categorical divide between the two kinds of conscription is unwarranted.

Minimum wage violations are rising sharply at fast food restaurants in Los Angeles and surrounding areas, according to a report by researchers at Northwestern University and Rutgers University. At least one in every four workers was illegally paid below the minimum wage in 2024, costing the average victim nearly $3,500 and totaling $44 million in lost wages annually across the region. “When low-wage workers are underpaid by even a small percentage of their income, they face major hardships such as being unable to pay for rent, afford childcare or put food on the table,” said Daniel J. Galvin, director of the Workplace Justice Lab @ Northwestern University and the report’s lead author. “It’s more important than ever that fast food workers know their rights and how to exercise them.”

This article focuses on how the Mexican state remains unable to protect certain categories of people based on particular identity characteristics. I draw on examples of gang-related corruption within the police and the judiciary, as well as the impact of cultures of violence and impunity on vulnerable categories of citizens, especially women and girls. I also explain some of what expert witnesses can contribute to United States immigration courts. Based on my longitudinal scholarly research on violence in Mexico, combined with experience as an expert witness in U.S. asylum cases for claimants from Mexico, I argue that Mexico’s inability to protect women and girls coexists with its democratic status and has direct implications on forced migration from Mexico to the United States.

"Mauro Gilli, a senior researcher in military technology at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich), responded to Musk’s claims, pointing out the complexities of defence technology. "What makes the F-35 or the B-21 expensive is the software and electronics, not the pilot per se ... which is important because a reusable drone would need to get all that flashy electronics of an F-35, which is expensive," Gilli wrote on X. Gilli also underscored the strategic advantages of the F-35. "By simply existing, the F-35 and the B-21 force Russia and China into strategic choices they would not have to make otherwise, such as budget allocations," Gilli argued. He suggested that scrapping the F-35 programme might inadvertently benefit US adversaries by reducing their need to counter such advanced systems."

In this article, I discuss the Cold War as a label, meaning, and referent in academic research. I consider how the label “the Cold War” focuses attention on the conflict between the United States and USSR and draws attention away from the Global South. I show how academics often use the category the Cold War as a diminished subtype of interstate war, with the adjective cold calling attention to the absence of direct military combat. I analyze the meanings and referents associated with different ways of “casing” the Cold War: a case of cold war, a case of interstate rivalry, and a case of empire building. I also examine the separate meanings of the Cold War when it is treated as a world-historical time versus an event. Using the essays in this special issue, I examine how sociologists study the Cold War as an empirical referent. I find that the cultural orientation of sociology emphasizes

“The Trump administration traditionally has framed these victories as something that they got without giving anything up,” said Dani Gilbert, an assistant professor of political science at Northwestern University who studies hostage negotiations. “It’s really difficult for me to imagine a world in which the Trump administration’s statements about Ukraine in the last 48 hours were not quid pro quo for Fogel’s release.”

Institutional strategy in a post-information age cannot solely focus on platform development and employment but rather must emphasize ensuring a force has the right connections to operate and rapidly adapt to a flat and transparent operating environment. The three dimensions of interoperability outlined in Allied and Joint doctrine, technical, procedural, and human, provide a framework for force and concept developers to follow ensuring a modern force is connected and adaptable enough to meet the unforeseen demands of tomorrow’s conflicts.

The question of political theology is a recent topic in the study of political philosophy, political theory and political science. In continental philosophy and contemporary Italian thought, political theology had an intellectual boom in the 1990s, with the emergence of re-readings of Carl Schmitt and Walter Benjamin by the international academy, and the publication of a renowned international journal on the subject, Political Theology, in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Among the aforementioned re-readings, a notable event was the publication of the Homo Sacer series by the Italian Giorgio Agamben. In particular, the publication of Homo Sacer: Il potere sovrano e la nuda vita/Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life (1995) posed an explicit critique of the Schmittian idea of sovereignty.

On Jan. 20, President Donald Trump issued an executive order aimed at eliminating diversity, equity and inclusion programs and initiatives across the federal government. Northwestern faculty and students are worried about what the executive order means for classrooms and beyond. Although Northwestern is a private institution, it receives federal funding in grants and contracts and uses federally-owned resources as class materials. As such, it may be directly impacted by the executive order. Political Science Prof. Alvin B. Tillery suggested that the order is motivated by “white nationalism,” pointing to Black History Month being canceled as proof that it’s not really about DEI training programs. “Attacks on DEI are made to impact the consciousness of white people,” Tillery said. “(Trump) wants to overturn the equal protection clause, which has broader implications on society.”

Following the impeachment and removal from office of Gov. Rod Blagojevich, an ad hoc Illinois Reform Commission headed by the former federal prosecutor who had sent Blagojevich's predecessor, George Ryan, to prison produced an 89-page report. It addressed the state's well-documented culture of political corruption and asked: "What will Illinois' response to this current crisis of integrity be? Our nation is watching."

"OBSERVERS & GRADUATE STUDENTS IN THE ROME SUMMER SEMINARS ON RELIGION AND GLOBAL POLITICS* ANTONIO ANGELUCCI, UNIVERSITY OF INSUBRIA ANDREW DICKSON, UNIVERSITY OF SUSSEX CORA ALDER, LONDON SCHOOL OF ECONOMICS MOHAMMED AMER, UNIVERSITY OF SUSSEX FEDOR ARKHIPOV, UNIVERSITY OF INSUBRIA JEREMY BARKER, INSTITUTE OF DEVELOPMENT STUDIES SEDA BAYKAL, UNIVERSITY OF PITTSBURGH ELENA CAVUCLI, UNIVERSITY OF SIENA BETSELOT DEJENE, JOHN CABOT UNIVERSITY HAMZAH FANSURI, HEIDELBERG UNIVERSITY MAGDALENA FRANZ, TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY DORTMUND NEVAL GÜLLÜ, FREE UNIVERSITY OF BERLIN FADI HACHEM, LEBANESE UNIVERSITY JOHN KHALIL, KU LEUVEN DINA OSAMA LOTFY, CAIRO UNIVERSITY CORINA LOZOVAN, CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF PORTUGAL ANTÓNIO GILBERTO MARQUESES, PONTIFICAL GREGORIAN UNIVERSITY EMMANUEL OJEIFO, UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME ELY ORREGO-TORRES, NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY RAND SABER, UNIVERSITY OF SUSSEX"

"Alisa Kaplan, executive director of Reform for Illinois, said this bill allows judges to be impartial compared to how the current law is written. Illinois lawmakers react to Madigan convictions in corruption trial “The way judicial campaigns are currently funded it really allows for special interest groups to have potentially a lot of influence on who our judges are and how they make decisions, and that’s just not how anybody wants courts to run,” Kaplan said. “You want the decisions that they make to be based on the arguments that they see before the court. You don’t want them thinking about who’s funding their campaign.”"

On connaissait déjà le penchant autocratique de Donald Trump. L’amorce de son second mandat confirme qu’il entend prendre un net virage autoritaire.

Over 13 years, Northwestern University Professor Wendy Pearlman has interviewed more than 500 displaced Syrians around the world about their experiences of a brutal authoritarian regime, the popular uprising against it, and the subsequent war and refugee crisis. In this presentation, she shares and explores their stories collected in her two books, We Crossed a Bridge and It Trembled: Voices from Syria (available in Turkish as Bir Köprüden Geçtik: Suriyeli Direnisçiler Anlatiyor) and the newly published The Home I Worked to Make: Voice from the New Syrian Diaspora. These oral histories help explain the origins and trajectory of the Syrian conflict and the lived experience of displacement, while also shedding light on the dramatic questions currently facing Syrian refugees in Turkey and also offering broader lessons about migration, belonging, and the search for dignity.

"As a freshman senator in a swing state won by President Trump, Ruben Gallego is walking a legislative tightrope, especially when it comes to his views on immigration. With one of his first acts as a U.S. Senator, Gallego challenged the notion that Democrats can't give up an inch when it comes to Republican proposals on immigration.. While many Latino voters do tend to support more permissive immigration laws – and favor some sort of comprehensive reform that includes a path to citizenship – University of Arizona professor Samara Klar says lawmakers shouldn't ignore the community's concerns about issues at the southern border. "There is a great deal of concern among Latinos in Arizona about border security and about, you know, weapons coming across the border and drugs coming across the border, and even illegal immigration," said Klar, who spent years polling Arizona voters."

Today export controls are all over the news. The so-called October rules regulating U.S. advanced semi-conductor chip exports to China represent a significant expansion of U.S. efforts to control the export of upstream advanced technology where the direct military applications remain unknowable. The U.S. sanctions and export control policy against Russia involve the most far-ranging and internationally coordinated export control regime since the end of the Cold War. If the House Foreign Affairs Committee and the Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party get their way, export controls will become even more central to U.S. economic policy vis-à-vis China, and even more trade and research-collaboration restrictive. Not for the first time, U.S. export control policy is being called an act of economic war.

Alvin Tillery teaches political science at Northwestern University and leads their Center for Study of Diversity and Democracy. “The earliest sort of evidence of that would have been what we call the “Federal period of the Republic,” right after the War of 1812, where you had the African Methodist Episcopal Church denomination being founded in I believe the 1790’s,” Tillery said. “They became incredibly active in the anti-slavery movement and they were also the foundation of the back to Africa movement.”

"President Donald Trump is putting teeth into his pledge to take on the Mexican drug cartels. His new Executive Order redefines the war on drugs as a national security imperative and opens up new avenues to combat narcoterrorism. He recognizes that drug trafficking constitutes a clear and present danger to the American Homeland.Today host Lisa Dettmer spends the hour talking to Professor Lida Maxwell, the author of the new book out by Stanford press called “ Rachel Carson and the Power of Queer love.” Rachel Carson, for those of you who may not know, is considered one of the progenitors of the mainstream environmental movement who garnered major public attention in 1962 with her best selling book “Silent Spring.”

Attorney General Pam Bondi ordered the Justice Department to pause funding for jurisdictions that interfere with immigration enforcement. She issued the directive Wednesday, shortly after being sworn in as the nation’s top law enforcement officer. So-called “sanctuary cities” limit cooperation with federal immigration authorities, for example, by refusing to honor detention requests for illegal aliens. Bondi, in the memo that ordered the funding freeze, said that federal law prohibits such non-compliance. Critics of sanctuary cities say they undermine the rule of law and serve as a magnet for illegal aliens. Bondi also directed the Department of Justice to halt funding for non-governmental organizations that provide services to illegal aliens.

27 Kasim 2024'te mezunlarimizdan Ubeydullah Ademi ile kendisinin akademik yolculugunda edindigi tecrübeleri, lisansüstü ve doktora egitim sürecindeki önemli dönüm noktalarini dinledigimiz bir etkinlik gerçeklestirdik.

"The Edward Alexander Bouchet Graduate Honor Society commemorates the first African American to earn a doctorate degree from an American university (Physics, Yale University, 1876). The Bouchet Society seeks to develop a network of scholars who exemplify academic and personal excellence, foster environments of support, and serve as examples of scholarship, leadership, character, service, and advocacy for students who have been traditionally underrepresented in the academy—exemplifying the spirit and example of Dr. Bouchet. The purpose of the Edward A. Bouchet Graduate Honor Society is to recognize outstanding scholarly achievement and promote diversity and excellence in doctoral education and the professoriate. Northwestern University chapter of Bouchet scholars was established in 2017."

"The Daily: Could you describe what kind of actor China is? Prof. Karen Alter: My lens is limited because I focus on international cooperation, multilateralism and international law. I lay out that because there could be whole other realms that I’m not saying. (China was) really not engaged until Deng Xiaoping, and they really didn’t have the manpower capacity or knowledge until 15 years ago to be as internationally engaged. All the systems and all the rules were set up when they were not participating and did not have the means to make their way stand. If you take the South China Sea, when the Law of the Seas negotiations were happening in the 1970s, that was when China was just starting to engage in international politics, but not tremendously skillful at it. It did try to get its ideas about its claims in the South China Sea into the agreement, but it didn’t succeed.

In this thoughtful and intriguing book, Joseph Blankholm reflects on and learns from the tension generated by what he describes as “the secular paradox.” By “secular paradox” he refers to the curious “fact that secular people are simultaneously both not at all religious and very religion-like” (Blankholm 2022, 184). The book explores the consequences of the productive tension between shared norms and practices that come together as the contemporary American secular, and its blurry edges, and the simultaneous suspicion and fear by many secularists of any sign of overcommitment to these shared norms and practices as “too religious.” In the author’s words, “the secular paradox is so generative because it resists resolution even as it demands it” (Blankholm 2022, 66). To his credit, in this book Blankholm also openly wrestles with the secular paradox on a personal level.

""As a lawsuit, it was a little bit confusing, because there were no specific examples of any efforts that ICE had been pursuing that were pushed back against by any component of Illinois or Cook County or Chicago," said Jackie Stevens, political science professor at Northwestern University. Stevens, the founding faculty member of the deportation research clinic at Northwester, said President Trump attempted a similar lawsuit during his first term in California and the right of the state to make its own laws prevailed."

"There were no specific examples of any efforts that ICE had been pursuing that were pushed back against by any component of Illinois or Cook County or Chicago," said Jackie Stevens, Northwestern University political science professor.

"In Civilizing Contention, Rana B. Khoury asserts that to understand civilian and refugee activism in war, we must regard the international actors and organizations that enter the scene to help. When these organizations respond to crises, they work with local actors. In so doing, they facilitate activists' participation in something like a civil society even in the depths of war. Yet as aid imposes its structures and routines, it also leaves activists unprotected from the violence of war and its aftermaths. Khoury pursues these ideas through analysis of Syria's war that emerged from the 2011 Arab Uprisings. She traces the afterlife of a social movement that did not merely take up arms or capitulate to repression.

President of NU’s chapter of AAUP and Political Science Prof. Jacqueline Stevens said she considers the demonstration policy to not only be a means of deterring protests but a way for the administration to cause division among faculty members. “Northwestern has had demonstrations for over six decades, and what does it tell us that when the subject of discussion is Israel-Palestine, suddenly the University feels it needs to impose new rules on demonstrations?” Stevens said. Stevens said these new policies give the University authority that can be abused. There will be incentives for faculty and students to appease the University’s administration since the policy has been enforced arbitrarily, she said. In a letter sent to NU administrators last September, NU’s AAUP questioned how the demonstration policy would allow for the expression of unpopular ideas.

After watching Trump and Netanyahu, I spoke with Mkhaimar Abusada, a political scientist at Al-Azhar University, in Gaza, who has been teaching this year at Northwestern University. “I’m depressed, man,” he told me. “I don’t even know what will happen, but I do know that the Palestinians are against this and would rather live in tents and in the rubble of their destroyed homes than leave. And we all know that the neighboring countries, Egypt and Jordan, have said no to this idea.” King Abdullah II, of Jordan, and President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, of Egypt, both see an increased Palestinian population in their countries as a demographic and political threat to their regimes. Also, although both countries have long-standing peace treaties with Israel, it is unclear how Trump’s proposal and Netanyahu’s pleasure in its pronouncement might affect those arrangements.

"But Musk and Trump are a rarity. The majority of billionaires do not directly get involved in politics or aspire for political power, though this is becoming a much more common occurrence. Billionaires have a vast array of social and political interests that often pull in opposite directions. Some believe in climate change and reproductive rights, others fund climate disinformation and are anti-choice. Some build up an impressive philanthropic portfolio; others have no desire to donate to political or social causes. Some want to own a professional sports team and others are exploring space travel. But there is one interest the ultra-wealthy coalesce around: wealth defense. In other words, oligarchs want to protect their fortunes and assets from increased taxation or expropriation. It is a politics that strongly resists redistribution.

"This is the worst idea in American foreign-policy since the U.S. invasion of Iraq. It is foolish, counterproductive, and illegal. Taking territory by force and expelling the residents are war crimes—aggression is a crime, ethnic cleansing is a crime, and attacks on civilians are crimes. An American-Israeli takeover of Gaza is a textbook example of aggressive war and ethnic cleansing. The Trump White House is showing that it wants the U.S. to follow the example set by Putin with Russia's invasion of Ukraine. While most of the world saw Russia's invasion of Ukraine as a disaster for all involved, the Trump administration seems to see it as a model for American foreign policy. Anyone in the U.S. government who participates in planning such actions is liable for criminal prosecution for conspiracy to commit war crimes and crimes against humanity.

"To Palestinians, the proposal would constitute ethnic cleansing on a more terrifying scale than any displacement they have experienced since 1948, when roughly 800,000 Arabs were expelled or fled during the wars surrounding the creation of the Jewish state. “Outrageous,” said Prof. Mkhaimar Abusada, a Palestinian political analyst from Gaza who was displaced from his home during the war. “Palestinians would rather live in tents next to their destroyed homes rather than relocate to another place.”"

Excited my paper with @MichaelGoldfien & @m0joseph just won the Palmer Prize from @PeaceScienceSoc @cmpseditors. We use some fun data on leader biographies from the CIA. Here’s a summary of “When Do Leader Backgrounds Matter? Evidence from the President’s Daily Brief”: 1/

"Our Summer Opportunities Webinar explores programs designed to help high school students thrive. Hosted by three organizations, this session will introduce you to: • Veritas AI: Hands-on learning in artificial intelligence and machine learning • Lumiere Education: 1:1 research mentorship with world-class academics • Ladder Internships: Real-world experience through internships with innovative startups Whether you're looking to build cutting-edge skills, dive into impactful research, or gain career-ready experience, this webinar is your gateway to an incredible summer. Don’t miss out on this opportunity to plan your next big step!"

"Pour Pierre Martin, expert en politique américaine à l’Université de Montréal, le président dépasse déjà largement ses pouvoirs. «Par exemple, son décret pour réécrire la Constitution sur la citoyenneté à la naissance, c’est-à-dire sur le droit du sol ; le juge qui a reçu les contestations juridiques a dit que ça lui semblait hallucinant qu’un avocat certifié ait pu écrire quelque chose comme ça.» La Constitution américaine est claire à ce sujet depuis 150 ans, mais «le décret cherche à imposer une nouvelle interprétation de ce passage de la Constitution. Oui, de prime abord, ça semble entièrement illégal.»

The Latin Times

"Speaking to CNN before the announcement, Emerson College professor Mneesha Gellman said the US was “essentially proposing to send people to a country that is not the country of origin nor is it necessarily the country that they passed through.” “It is a bizarre and unprecedented proposal being made potentially between two authoritarian, populist, right wing leaders seeking a transactional relationship,” said Gellman, an international politics scholar. “It’s not rooted in any sort of legal provision and likely violates a number of international laws relating to the rights of migrants.”"

"“It’s preposterous,” Emerson College professor Mneesha Gellman, an international politics scholar, told The Post. “It’s a distraction that doesn’t address the real issues behind crime and immigration … and it’s certainly not a legal act.” Experts have also suggested El Salvador and the US would be violating a number of international laws by holding citizens from other countries at CECOT. “It’s an unprecedented move that’s not comparable to anything the US has tried before when moving detained people,” Gellman said. “It goes beyond detaining people at Guantanamo Bay … or in the Japanese internment camps in World War II,” she added. “It’s likely violating a number of international laws.”"

"And in what the State Department called “an extraordinary gesture, never before extended by any country,” it said Mr. Bukele had offered to house “dangerous American criminals, including U.S. citizens and legal residents.” Analysts say that such a move is likely to be challenged, even if it were to be embraced by the Trump administration. “I do not think that it will stand up in the courts,” Mneesha Gellman, an associate professor of political science at Emerson College, said, citing multiple domestic and international laws that govern the treatment of both undocumented people in the United States and U.S. citizens. However, the two governments could reach an agreement that would allow the United States to deport large numbers of people to El Salvador, including non-Salvadorans, Ms. Gellman said.

Respondent inattentiveness threatens to undermine causal inferences in survey-based experiments. Unfortunately, existing attention checks may induce bias while diagnosing potential problems. As an alternative, we propose “mock vignette checks” (MVCs), which are objective questions that follow short policy-related passages. Importantly, all subjects view the same vignette before the focal experiment, resulting in a common set of pre-treatment attentiveness measures. Thus, interacting MVCs with treatment indicators permits unbiased hypothesis tests despite substantial inattentiveness. In replications of several experiments with national samples, we find that MVC performance is significantly predictive of stronger treatment effects, and slightly outperforms rival measures of attentiveness, without significantly altering treatment effects.

Similarly, Dr. Alvin Tillery believes we need to shift our strategy for how we communicate what is happening. Tillery is a tenured professor at Northwestern University and founder of The Alliance for Black Equality. “I see so many beautiful Black kids on social media posting things like, ‘Donald Trump is a DEI hire.’ No, he's not,” Tillery corrected. “DEI hires are qualified and legitimate. Donald Trump is a white supremacy hire.” When conservatives co-opt progressive messaging, the answer isn’t to fall in line with their revisionism. “We don’t need to respond to racism by saying we’re excellent,” Tillery warns. “Rebranding our work won’t protect us or these programs because this fight isn’t rational. We have to fight back.”

"Summer Pappachen, a fourth-year doctoral student in political science at Northwestern, said she felt “energized” to fight after hearing Trump won again. His win even motivated her to step up into her leadership role as vice president of the Northwestern grad union. “As a union leader right now, you’re not really allowed to have any other feeling other than being ready to fight and stand up and organize harder than ever,” Pappachen said. What that action will look like will depend on the policies of the next administration, but the Northwestern graduate student union is already preparing themselves by attending symposiums on immigrant rights in Chicago. “The first step is definitely educating stewards … and members on rights and also on the risks that this administration poses,” Pappachen said."

"In one sense, countries can call geographic features whatever they want within their own jurisdiction, said Ian Hurd, a political science professor at Northwestern University who researches international law. “Countries name and rename features in their countries as they wish, and renaming is pretty common especially when a new government wants to differentiate itself from past practices,” Hurd told Business Insider. For example, he said, the Indian government has renamed many of the country's cities to emphasize decolonization or Hindu nationalism, and many Russian place names changed throughout the 20th century. And outside each country, "there is no formal body to decide on what things are called," Hurd said."

“All of this was filmed and intentionally shared,” said Danielle Gilbert, an expert on hostage-taking at Northwestern University. “Social scientists talk about the idea of a collapse of compassion. Audience pay more attention and are willing to take more of a risk to recover, or help, individual victims.”

According to the Government Accountability Office (GAO), between 2015 and March 2020, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrested 674 people who may have been US citizens, detained 121 of them, and “removed,” or deported, seventy. Between 2007 and 2015, the number of Americans held by immigration enforcement was more than 1,500. One researcher, Jacqueline Stevens, a political scientist at Northwestern University, crunched the numbers and found that between 2003 and 2010, more than 20,000 US citizens were detained or deported.

"Six months have passed since the so-called Nevzlin-gate, the high-profile investigation carried out by the Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK) into the involvement of Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s associate Leonid Nevzlin in a series of attacks on members of the Russian opposition. This scandal has clearly delineated the lines between key Russian players operating abroad. Political groups in exile continue to cluster around the «two and a half» poles: the Anti-Corruption Foundation, Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s network, and a group of Maxim Kats’s supporters. On the face of it, the reputational damage associated with the scandal could have undermined Khodorkovsky’s position. But this did not happen. Reactions to the investigation launched by the FBK, which was the injured party in this conflict, ranged from full support to aggressive denial and even accusations against the Foundation itself.

Research shows that positive voter experiences shape public views about election integrity, especially confidence that votes are counted accurately. Local election officials (LEOs) play a key role in shaping these experiences. They run elections in voters' local jurisdictions, and are the authoritative sources of official, accurate, and timely information. Despite enjoying “close to home” status however, election officials may not be every voter's top information source for information about how to vote. In this paper, we argue that relying on "close to home" sources — local election offices, local or regional TV stations, and print publications — increases the chances voters are exposed to accurate information about how to vote, which translates into higher confidence in ballot accuracy.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to advance health care, industrial productivity, and environmental sustainability but also presents risks such as job loss and uncontrolled superintelligent machines. Understanding public opinion about AI is key for anticipating its governance. This study examines how media framing affects U.S. beliefs about AI and support for its development. A survey experiment involved respondents reading articles highlighting either AI’s benefits or risks, revealing how such information can influence opinion on AI’s societal impacts. The findings emphasize the crucial role of framing in shaping public views on AI, with implications for policymakers and stakeholders.

Editorial Board, Michael Loriaux, Northwestern University, USA

Este libro recoge las contribuciones de la profesora Dra. Elizabeth Shakman Hurd en su visita a Chile en marzo de 2023 y establece un diálogo con investigadores/as locales sobre la recepción de su investigación en el contexto local y regional. El libro emerge como un producto del intercambio intelectual y académico que organizó “Otros Cruces” en colaboración con la Oficina Nacional de Asuntos Religiosos (ONAR) y el Magíster en Filosofía Política y Ética de la Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez (UAI). La presentación de su trabajo con diferentes audiencias produjo un productivo intercambio donde los y las participantes respondieron a su investigación incorporando epistemologías y discusiones desde la realidad chilena y regional de América Latina.

"Everybody who teaches health politics and policy has a list of their favorite anomalies: surprising facts about the policy landscape in which health policies contradict students’ expectations. The United States, as is to be expected, is particularly rich in anomalies (e.g.: You think the United States doesn't have a national health service system? Let me introduce you to the VA!). Everybody who has to explain the system will have their own favorite ones to discuss in class. Colleen Grogan's new book, Grow and Hide, does what good science should do. The book turns the anomalies not into a teaching trick or challenge but into data for a better theory. The book reframes the debate about American health policy around a basic question: Why is it apparently a market while awash in public expenditure?

Workers, Power and Society is a welcome new contribution to the study of workers’ power resources in the context of contemporary global capitalism, providing both conceptual clarity and empirical tools for scholars in industrial relations, political economy, and beyond. In this timely volume, Jens Arnholtz and Bjarke Refslund lead an impressive slate of contributors who draw on their own scholarly expertise and real-life experiences to revisit and expand upon power resources theory (PRT), inspired by earlier scholarship by the likes of Walter Korpi, Steven Lukes, Beverly Silver, and many more.

Stories of people being killed by police while experiencing a mental health crisis, especially Black people, frequently make the news and spark outrage – like the July 6 killing of Sonya Massey, an unarmed woman with a history of mental illness who was shot by police officers in her kitchen in Springfield, Illinois. Over the past 10 years, starting Jan. 1, 2015, the Washington Post has documented the killing by police of 2,053 people experiencing a mental health emergency. In fact, looking at data from just 16 cities during that same decade, a joint investigation by Medill Investigative Lab-Chicago and MindSite News has identified almost 5,000 incidents in which people experiencing mental health crises were beaten, shocked by a Taser, shot but survived, or had another form of non-fatal force used against them.

“We tend to think of climate change as an only political issue,” said sixth-year Ph.D. candidate Diana Elhard. “But it’s not only political, it’s a deeply unsettling cultural shift too.”

There is substantial evidence that various aspects of violent civil conflict are tied to natural resources, of which diamonds are perhaps the most notorious. While the presence of resources themselves have been given substantial attention, existing works have overlooked a key issue: substitute resources. This article focuses on the geographic distribution of violent conflict relative to natural resource sites as a provider of information on the geostrategic organization and extraction behaviors of insurgents. Using the rise of the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme, a multilateral regime aimed at regulating the illicit diamond trade, and accounting for the presence of potential substitute resources, empirical evidence indicates that the regulations disrupted and delocalized conflicts away from diamond sites.

Au terme de la première semaine de son deuxième mandat, Donald Trump a déjà démontré qu’il n’a aucune intention de respecter son serment d’office.

Why do so many Americans think tax breaks for the uber-wealthy will help the average person? According to Jeffrey Winters, the answer is simple: oligarchy. Today Winters breaks down how massive wealth distorts politics, and what can be done to combat it. Winters is professor of political science and director of the Equality Development and Globalization Studies (EDGS) program at Northwestern University. His research focuses on oligarchy in the US and around the world, historically and today. His forthcoming book, Domination through Democracy: Why Oligarchs Win, will be published by Penguin Random House later this year. Winters is also an expert on the politics of Southeast Asia, especially Indonesia.

A major challenge of governance in the United States is policy drift, the phenomenon wherein a policy’s outcomes are transformed due to a failure to update its rules or structures to meet changing circumstances. Policy drift has been prevalent in recent decades due to declining legislative productivity, a veto-riddled legislative process, and the rapid pace of technological and environmental change. We argue that the emergence of the “major questions doctrine” in Supreme Court jurisprudence is likely to exacerbate the problem of policy drift. This new doctrine enables courts to declare administrative actions as invalid if they are “novel” or of “economic or political significance” and lack “clear congressional authorization.”

"Future historians may judge that Executive Order 14156 marked the beginning of the end for American liberalism. But first, the American right must win the battle that President Donald Trump kicked off when he signed it. The order, which a U.S. district judge has temporarily blocked, ends birthright citizenship for those born on American territory to parents who are neither citizens nor permanent residents. Its title—“Protecting the Meaning and Value of American Citizenship”—points to its deepest purpose, which is not, pace the histrionics of liberal elites, to inflict suffering on minorities. The president is pushing the federal government toward a concept of citizenship that is bound up with ideals of ancestry and allegiance and consistent with the notion of nationhood.

"Political science graduate student Danielle Ortiz researched horizontal organizing, which is a form of advocacy in which authority is decentralized. They said the interdisciplinary nature of the delegation made the presentation more difficult. While she can use common political science jargon at workshops specific to the field, the variety of attendee backgrounds at the poster session made it hard to use that type of language. “It’s difficult terrain to navigate, especially in such a constrained time period of a five-minute presentation,” Ortiz said. Former Weinberg Prof. Kimberly Marion Suiseeya said the interdisciplinary nature of the class is challenging but has also helped her students learn from each other. Marion Suiseeya, now an environmental justice professor at Duke University, added that she hoped the style of education enriched students’ experiences and future goals.

Thousands of protesters marched down the streets of Washington on Saturday to voice their concerns over climate change, LGBTQ+ rights, and reproductive freedoms before Donald Trump’s inauguration. Protesters started in Franklin Park, McPherson Square, or Farragut Park for the 1.7-mile journey through the National Mall.

This paper examines public attitudes toward the “Ban the Box” policy in college admissions in Georgia. It investigates how exposure to framed messages affects support for or opposition to the policy, focusing on its potential impact on campus safety and overall effects.

"For much of America’s post-9/11 wars, the US military worked to build capable and effective security forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. This mission took on various guises. There were special operations forces conducting foreign internal defense, one of their core activities. In Iraq, there were military transition teams and national police transition teams. Conventional forces conducted patrols and missions with partner forces. And eventually, the US military services created dedicated jobs and entire units to the task—the Air Force’s air advisors and the Army’s security force assistance brigades, for example. And yet, in both Iraq and Afghanistan, US efforts struggled to overcome challenges and build capable partner forces.

For Wendy Pearlman, the choice to focus on the concept of “home” in her book “The Home I Worked To Make: Voices From the New Syrian Diaspora” helped make her various subjects’ stories relevant to all of her readers. “?Home is something that touches every human life. There are not necessarily all that many concepts that you can ask literally anyone, and the question should resonate in some way,” she says. “I think the question of what is home to you, or where is home, is something that every human being can relate to.”

“Occidente se ha desviado” y “debe ser reencausado”. Esta consigna, pronunciada por Javier Milei al inicio de su discurso en el Foro Económico Mundial en Davos, sintetiza una visión que atraviesa a las nuevas derechas. Según esta visión, Occidente se caracteriza por valores que son superiores a los de cualquier otra civilización, y esos valores son la causa del progreso humano en los últimos siglos. Desde hace algunas décadas, diferentes movimientos, tales como el feminismo, el anti-racismo, LGTB, trans y demás, han cuestionado dichos valores, debilitando la estructura social y frenando el progreso técnico y moral. Entonces, para “reencausar” a Occidente, es necesario volver a defender sus valores centrales: el binarismo sexual, la heterosexualidad como única orientación sexual normal y la no intromisión del Estado en cuestiones de género y de raza.

Chris Vernon has been the Chairman/CEO of the Vernon Company in Newton for more than 37 years. He is skilled in marketing planning, advertising, integrated marketing, sales and sales management. Under Vernon’s leadership, the Vernon Company has been recognized for five consecutive years as a “Best Place to Work” by the Advertising Specialty Institute and consistently earned a AAAA1 credit rating, the highest available, for the past 40 years from Dun & Bradstreet. The Vernon Company is engaged in proactive supply chain product safety, environmental sustainability and socially responsible initiatives. The Company also contributes more than five percent of annual profits to dozens of not-for-profit organizations.

This chapter investigates party realignment in the province of Québec. Drawing from the insights of the cleavage theory crafted by Lipset and Rokkan (1967) and the American experience, the study identifies three main conflict dimensions that have structured the party system over time. These overarching issues are economic redistribution, sovereignty, and diversity. The positions of parties on these cleavages are measured using the 2012, 2014, and 2018 Québec elections. The results confirm that the management of diversity is the most influential dimension of the new party system. The study concludes by drawing parallels between Québec’s experience and partisan polarization in the United States.

Rana B. Khoury is a professor of political science at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign who studies comparative and international politics, with a focus on the Middle East. Khoury, also an affiliate of the Center for South Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at the Illinois Global Institute, spoke with News Bureau business and law editor Phil Ciciora about what the future holds for Syria after more than a decade of civil war and more than five decades under rule by the Assad dynasty.

Dr. Alvin Tillery, director of the Center for the Study of Diversity and Democracy at Northwestern University, says Trump’s orders on DEI are “problematic” for a host of reasons. “It means essentially that our federal government is giving up on mitigating bias against racial minorities, women, LGBTQ, populations, disabled,” Tillery told theGrio, adding, “It’s going to drive everybody’s skills down. ”The political science professor also called out Republicans’ attempt to differentiate the word “equity” from “equality." “When you tamp down the use of equity language in your administrative processes, they’re really…trying to allow active discrimination to come back into play,” Tillery argued. “These are all things meant to put Black people and other people of color back into a racial caste system where discrimination against them was legal. This is his first step toward that.”

"U.S. Naval War College (NWC) faculty member, U.S. Air Force Lt. Col. Jahara Matisek, Ph.D., was recently awarded the first-ever Defense Security Corporation University (DSCU) grant for research spanning a wide array of security cooperation topics. The DSCU Research Grant Program was launched in March 2024 to produce research, analysis, and lessons learned that expand the intellectual foundations of security cooperation."

Where, when and how did civilians organize during the Syrian civil war that started in the aftermath of the Arab Spring in 2011 and lasted until the toppling of President Bashar Assad in late 2024? According to new research co-written by a University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign political scientist, civil organizing persisted during Syria’s armed conflict but also shifted to “translocal organizations” operating in rebel-held territory inside Syria and in neighboring countries. Civil organizing by Syrians was able to endure in the face of ongoing political violence and focus not only on the basic concerns of protection and survival, but also on more far-ranging issues such as governance and revolutionary politics, said Rana B. Khoury, a professor of political science at Illinois.

Congratulations to UTM's Professor Menaka Philips, recipient of the 2024 Research Prize in the Social Sciences for her contributions to the study of a range of issues in historical and contemporary political thought, especially in the politics of interpretation.

Fathom Entertainment has named Eric Becker as head of communications. Becker will report to Shannah Miller, the vice president of marketing and be responsible for overseeing all external communications activities for the company, including strategic media relations, corporate communications, and programming publicity campaigns.

Tech giant Elon Musk has been compared to an alien, has called himself a 3,000-year-old vampire and was once the inspiration for the screen depiction of Marvel superhero Tony Stark. But there is another descriptor following Musk around lately. An American government closely aligned with money and power is something that outgoing President Joe Biden warned about in his farewell address, referring to an oligarchy taking shape in America. Now, oligarchy is a word more commonly associated with rich businessmen in Eastern Europe, but it is being used increasingly here in the U.S.

Under what conditions can the Left become electorally competitive in exclusionary contexts where actors championing redistribution face barriers to entry? We argue that leftist parties can significantly increase electoral support during inclusionary institutional openings, such as peace processes, when previously excluded grassroots actors find new spaces to mobilize for redistribution. By engaging in hinge institutions—non-binding, nationwide platforms—grassroots movements strengthen their organizational and ideational endowments, becoming potent brokers for heretofore weak leftist parties. Using a difference-in-differences design and a novel database on citizen proposals to the Colombian peace table, we show that grassroots mobilization mainly increases the Left’s vote share in post-accord presidential elections at the municipal level.

This paper explores the determinants and distribution childhood obesity from a spatial dimension in Chile’s six most populated cities. We integrated data bases containing socioeconomic characteristics of households, biometric measurements of grade-school students and locations of food retail outlets. Using Geographic Information Systems (GIS), we created a depiction of urban food provision environments, spatial visualizations of socioeconomic segmentation and neighborhood-level childhood obesity rates which were mapped first separately, and then layered onto each other. City sectors with homogeneous socioeconomic characteristics were clustered into Grouped Socioeconomic Zones (GSZ) and the characteristics of neighborhood food commercial outlets synthesized generating a typology that integrates the distances to supermarkets, produce markets and small stores.

In The Persistence of Local Caudillos in Latin America, Tomáš Došek builds on this literature but also complements it in at least three ways. First, while works on subnational authoritarianism have tended to study federations, Došek focuses on unitary countries, namely Peru, Chile, and Paraguay. Second, while the persistence of authoritarian enclaves has usually been explained in terms of structural factors (e.g., economic underdevelopment, a peripheral position in the country’s geography) or the nature of intergovernmental interactions between the subnational authoritarian unit and the national authorities, the author proposes a theory based primarily on the agency and strategies of local leaders.

Trump promet d’apporter pouvoir et prospérité au peuple. On assiste plutôt à l’arrivée au pouvoir d’un autocrate et d’une caste de milliardaires déterminés à s’en mettre plein les poches.

"It's expected that they will be doing something pretty similar to what ICE has been doing in the past, which would be culling lists of people who have existing deportation orders targeting them and then showing up with far more numbers of agents then would be necessary to just arrest that one person, but rather for the purpose of trying to interrogate and snag a lot of other people who might be in the vicinity - either people who are living with the person or people just in a building that is shared with somebody who's targeted. So they might have one name, but then they'll try to collect dozens of people."

A deal with Riyadh would have "huge benefits" for Israel, said Alex Mintz, founder of Israeli artificial intelligence company, DecisionAdvantage.ai, specializing in national security, and a senior professor at Israel's Reichman University. "The peace dividend will be substantial for Israel, militarily, economically and diplomatically," Mintz told Newsweek.

Pero hoy, el reguetón también nos recuerda lo que significa vivir en países marcados por una fuerte dependencia de potencias extranjeras, atravesados por las venas abiertas de la herencia colonial y el mestizaje. Es la banda sonora de territorios fragmentados por diferencias de toda índole, pero también profundamente ricos en tradiciones que resisten y dialogan con las tensiones de un mundo globalizado.

Background The rapid global spread of the COVID-19 pandemic affected different regions, communities, and individuals in vastly different ways that interdisciplinary social scientists are well-positioned to document and investigate. This paper describes an innovative mixed-methods dataset generated by a research study that was designed to chronicle and preserve evidence of the pandemic’s divergent effects: the Pandemic Journaling Project (PJP). The dataset was generated by leveraging digital technology to invite ordinary people around the world to document the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on their everyday lives over a two-year period (May 2020-May 2022) using text, images, and audio.

""One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter." This phrase has long encapsulated the problem of trying to intervene in another country. For the United States, this enigma has embroiled its diplomatic and strategic actions for centuries. Yet, since the end of the Cold War, the US has been so committed to upholding the liberal rules-based order that it has largely eschewed the use of non-state actors, such as rebels and militias, in executing foreign policy. This must change. In the Cold War 2.0 era, the United States must prioritize rebels and other non-state actors as the primary tool for countering adversaries and their respective proxy forces."

On Monday, January 20th, Donald Trump will become the second President to serve two non-consecutive terms. Ahead of inauguration day, WGN's Micah Materre spoke with Dr. Jaime Dominguez, Political Science Professor at Northwestern University, about what a second Trump Presidency could look like.

Thailand’s 2023 general election reveals a political landscape undergoing significant transformation, where the traditional Bangkok-versus-countryside political dichotomy has given way to more nuanced urban-rural electoral dynamics unfolding within individual provinces and constituencies.

Las últimas horas antes de la esperada tregua tienen en vilo tanto a los gazatíes como a los familiares de los rehenes. Para conocer las claves del acuerdo, en Artículo14 preguntamos a la experta en Oriente Medio, Elizabeth Shakman Hurd, que es profesora de Ciencias Políticas y Catedrática de Estudios Religiosos en la Northwestern University de Evanston, Illinois, confía en que el acuerdo, aunque haya contratiempos por el camino, “funcionará”.

The APSA Committee on the Status of First Generation Scholars in the Profession works to bring focused attention to the ways in which class, economic inequality, and mobility can effect political scientists’ ability to thrive educationally and professionally throughout their careers. In December 2024, the Committee matched donations to the APSA Annual Fund to support the professional development of 38 first generation scholars in the political science discipline. The following scholars were awarded for the 2024 travel and accessibility reimbursement grant.

"Krcmaric and his colleague Stephen Nelson, also an associate professor of political science at Northwestern, question whether the 2024 election—and the participation of superwealthy individuals—represents a change. “We don’t have data right now to suggest out of the total pool of billionaires how many are currently serving in politics,” Nelson told Barron’s. But the composition of Trump’s incoming team “seems to be skewed more heavily toward ultrarich people, which suggests the U.S. is moving in a particular direction.” This shift raises a question: “Do they know something that the rest of us don’t know, which is that maybe the rule of law is weaker than we all think and that proximity to the Trump administration is the best way to protect one’s wealth?” Krcmaric says.

Dani Gilbert, assistant professor at Northwestern University, discusses what a ceasefire and hostage release may look like between Israel and Hamas.

In recent years, scholars have theorized that one factor enflaming public divides over science and technology is moralization: an individual’s perception that their position on an issue is rooted in fundamental moral right and wrong. In this article, I provide evidence for this proposition across five pre-registered hypotheses about the divisive attributes of moralized attitudes in the context of science and technology. Using public opinion data in the United States on three issues—combating climate change, developing gene editing therapies for humans, and labeling genetically modified food—this study demonstrates that moralized attitudes have the potential to exacerbate resistance to scientific evidence and hostility between those with opposing positions.

Dans le cadre du cours obligatoire de la maitrise en affaires publiques et internationales donné par Pierre Martin, plusieurs étudiants ont écrit des articles des journaux québécois et d’ailleurs.

“Imagine a kid who's 9 or 10 years old and goes in there, and maybe that's not the world view that their parents have told them about, and they feel like, ‘Oh, OK, well, I guess I don't really belong here. I guess I'm not really part of this community,’” said Elizabeth Shakman Hurd, a Northwestern University professor of political science and professor and chair of religious studies.

"Northwestern University researchers analysed the political participation of more than 2,000 individuals on the Forbes World's Billionaires List. Over a tenth of the world's richest people have held or aspire to political office. They also discovered that tycoons concentrate their political goals on powerful positions, have a strong track record of winning elections, and tend to lean ideologically to the right. Daniel Krcmaric, an associate professor of political science, said: "While billionaires informally wield influence 'behind the scenes' via campaign contributions, media manipulation and social ties with politicians, it's striking how many billionaires themselves seek and hold formal political offices.""

This week, Co-hosts Brandon Rottinghaus and Jeronimo Cortina discuss the Republicans choosing a new Speaker of the House of Representatives, what to expect from the upcoming Trump presidency, the dynamics of the 2025 Texas Legislature, how Governor Abbott and Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick plan to work with the Texas House of Representatives and will gambling finally come to Texas.

What explains counterinsurgency outcomes? Existing scholarship points to characteristics and strategies of incumbents and insurgents but neglects the role of insurgents’ weapons. Some studies discuss the effects of the firepower of insurgents relative to incumbents. Focusing on relative firepower, however, is problematic given the asymmetric nature of guerrilla warfare, with insurgents eschewing decisive engagements where incumbents would bring to bear their material superiority. We turn the spotlight, instead, on guerrilla firepower, i.e., insurgents’ absolute ability to inflict casualties on incumbents using small arms in hit-and-run attacks.

"Alvin B. Tillery Jr., a professor of political science and African American studies at Northwestern University, told HuffPost that commentators like Jennings and Kelly are seeking to “exploit the fact that this tragedy is happening under the leadership of a woman fire chief.” He said it’s a “real shame” Jennings continues to have a platform on TV to share such “outrageous statements.”"

Why would a politically centralized state embark on the path of economic decentralization? This Element delves into the political origin of the puzzling economic decentralization in mainland China. The authors contend that the intra-elite conflicts between the authoritarian ruler and the ruling elites within the state prompted the ruler to pursue decentralization as a strategy to curb the influence wielded by the ruling elites. By examining the composition of the Chinese Communist Party's Central Committee, they find that the Cultural Revolution, fueled by elite conflicts, shifted the elite selectorate's composition from favoring central agencies to favoring local interests. Subsequent low turnover reinforced this shift, aligning elite incentives with decentralization policies and committing the Chinese leadership to a decentralized path in the 1980s.

"“There has never been a better time to push Iran to a new deal or threaten them to use force,” Alex Mintz, founder of Decision Advantage AI, which specializes in national security and cybersecurity decision-making, told The Post in a Friday phone interview. “They have never been as exposed to a real attack as they are now, because Israel bombarded [Iran’s air] defenses and [air]-defense missiles and the entire structure and system, so they are vulnerable.” What’s more, Mintz said, Trump’s tough talk may finally push Iran to give up its nuclear weapons ambitions. “I think [Trump] has a lot of leverage here to get [Iran] to an important, much-improved nuclear deal than the one they signed in 2015, so definitely it’s the right timing,” he explained.

Actors gushing “I’ve always wanted to direct” has become a cliché. But Whitney White’s arc has been different. Her ambitions for the stage were long focused on performing. It wasn’t until she was nearly 30 that she leaned into directing. What followed was a quick rise to the A list. Less than a decade into a career on the other side of the footlights, the Chicago native scored a 2024 Tony nomination for her Broadway debut, Jaja’s African Hair Braiding. Now Chicago Shakespeare Theater remounts the slice-of-life comedy, opening a three-week run January 14. The cast will be new, but White returns, along with her Tony-winning design team. “I can’t say enough how important it is to me that this show is coming to Chicago Shakes,” she says. “It really feels like a homecoming. One of the first theater classes I ever took was with [CST artistic associate] Bob Mason.”

"The association between social media use and depressive symptoms has been documented in adolescents,2 young adults,3 and subsequently in adults across the lifespan.4 Untangling causation in this association has proven to be challenging, because most studies rely on cross-sectional data. The sole randomized clinical trial5 suggested that discontinuation of Facebook use was associated with improved mood; other longitudinal studies4,6,7 suggest that the association may be complex and bidirectional. In their focus on depressive symptoms, such studies have tended to neglect other forms of negative affect, most notably irritability, or being prone to anger. A more precise understanding of the range of affect associated with social media use could facilitate efforts to mitigate such symptoms.

"The Southern Political Science Association is one of the oldest and largest political science organizations in the United States. Founded in 1929, its primary purposes are to publish a professional journal, to improve teaching, to promote interest and research in theoretical and practical political problems, to encourage communication and to develop standards of competence and respect between persons engaged in the professional study and practice of government and politics. To support the above goals, the Association sponsors an Annual Conference and owns the Journal of Politics. The SPSA holds its Annual Conference in January of each year. It is one of the largest political science conferences in the United States presenting research in all major fields and subfields of political science."

Les menaces d’annexion du Canada, du Groenland et de Panama lancées par le président élu sont irréalistes, mais on aurait tort de ne pas les prendre au sérieux.

You say that today, oligarchs aren’t always where we expect to find them… Jeffrey Winters: When people hear the word “oligarch”, they think of Eastern European or Russian oligarchs – they don’t think of Jeff Bezos or Bill Gates. Why? Because in recent decades, there has been a concerted effort to define oligarchs, not based on the power they have, but on the source of their fortunes. If you become wealthy in a corrupt way and you use your wealth in politics, then you’re an oligarch. So if you are a “legitimate” wealthy person, you are what is in the US today called a “donor” or a “mega donor”. This is a very interesting political use of language : these wealthy people are not, strictly speaking, making donations, because a donation is something altruistic.

"PEARLMAN: The only way to understand these types of events is to get more background and we are a university. What we specialize in, is learning is asking difficult questions is Is having discussions together. That learning is never bad. We hope that, that bringing in programming and giving students this chance to learn will only empower them with the tools they need to to engage in informed, sensitive, respectful conversations with each other. Third year Ph.D candidate Issrar Chamekh attended the event. She said that as a graduate student currently teaching a class, she does not talk directly about Palestine in her classroom. However, she encourages her students to attend MENA’s programming to learn more.

Students of comparative law have long argued that undermining judicial independence is electorally costly, and that the norms against interference uphold institutional checks and balances essential to constitutionalism. However, evidence from countries with robust judiciaries suggests that exposing voters to deficiencies in the legal process or the courts’ partisan leanings can reduce perceptions of judicial legitimacy, making such interference on part of would-be authoritarians more likely. The rise of populist politicians poses additional risks: by emphasizing judges’ unelected status and counter-majoritarian tendencies, populists may erode legitimacy, framing judges as part of a “corrupt elite” opposing “the people.” This rhetoric challenges liberal-democratic norms that limit state interference with individual rights.

"Short Summary: His research examines how different types of criticism affect judicial legitimacy - the public's enduring trust in courts as institutions. Through careful survey experiments in the Czech Republic, he finds cautious but encouraging evidence that negative portrayals of court decisions - whether as partisan tools or elite institutions disconnected from the public - do not significantly reduce public perceptions of legitimacy in the short term, even in relatively newer democracies. The findings suggest that undermining courts may require more than isolated rhetorical attacks - perhaps sustained campaigns against judicial authority or a pattern of partisan decisions by the courts themselves.

Matej Jungwirth is a PhD candidate in Political Science in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences. His research explores the impacts of territorial loss and displacement, aiming to illuminate the experiences of displaced communities and guide the development of policy solutions. Matej’s work spans global contexts, including a current project on Ukrainian refugees in the Czech Republic. He is the recipient of many awards including the Buffett Institute Graduate Research Fellowship.

Can norm-based information campaigns reduce corruption? Such campaigns use messaging about how people typically behave (descriptive norms) or ought to behave (injunctive norms). Drawing on survey and lab experiments in Ukraine, we unpack and evaluate the distinct effects of these two types of social norms. Four findings emerge: First, injunctive-norm messaging produces consistent but relatively small and temporary effects. These may serve as moderately effective, low-cost anti-corruption tools but are unlikely to inspire large-scale norm transformations. Second, contrary to recent studies, we find no evidence that either type of norm-based messaging “backfires” by inadvertently encouraging corruption. Third, descriptive-norm messages emphasizing corruption's decline produce relatively large and long-lasting effects—but only among subjects who find messages credible.

Mayor-elect Daniel Lurie today announced the six staffers on his communications and community relations team, four of whom worked side-by-side with Lurie during his successful mayoral campaign.

What is the critical promise of reading for, listening for, and theorizing a Black patriotic form? By the end of “I, Too, Sing America: Black Patriotism from Frederick Douglass to Whitney Houston,” the double-voiced and potentially subversive character of the performances Simon Stow examines seem obvious. Their apparent self-evidence raises the question of how and why their readings have, until now, been so straight. What enables enlisting these subversive performances in support of an assimilationist notion of patriotism? I will suggest here that they may be read not simply as subversive uses of a patriotic form, but as expressing the duality inherent in patriotism itself. Despite the persuasiveness of Stow’s reading, the dearth of attention to the Black patriotic form is, on second look, not surprising. Stow’s readings—more on these soon—assume a readership of white outsiders.

Tai Brown is a PhD student in Northwestern's Political Science Department. His research interests are situated within the fields of international relations, international law, and comparative politics, with a regional focus in Southeast and East Asia. Currently, he is developing a research project investigating transitional justice in South Korea and Taiwan. Prior to beginning his graduate studies at Northwestern University he completed two bachelor's degrees in Asian and Asian American Studies and Political Science at the University of Connecticut, and a Master's Degree in International Affairs from Ming Chuan University in Taiwan. In his free time he loves reading manga, watching anime, skateboarding, and playing video games. Tai can be reached at: tarifbrown2029@u.northwestern.edu