DEPARTMENT OF POLITICAL SCIENCE

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.

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.”

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.

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.”

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.

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.”

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.