This paper explores the discrepancy between the protection available to traditional refugees—as defined in art 1A(2) of the Refugee Convention—and other displaced people, including migrants and internally displaced people (IDPs), and the protection available to people displaced due to climate-related factors. This paper proposes changes to the current definitions as a way to secure protection rights for those displaced due to climate-related factors, without having to change the current legal framework or create a new one. The paper begins by examining the current legal definitions, highlighting precedents for changing the legal definitions of refugees over the years. It then presents the rationale for the proposed changes, describing three common scenarios to demonstrate the plight of those displaced due to climaterelated factors, before offering recommendations to secure their protection under both international and domestic law.
Is there a correlation between someone’s relationship to Biblical text and their views of gender equality? To answer this question, 159 individuals were surveyed, and five women were interviewed. Rather than focusing on more abstract questions to measure one’s perceived views of gender equality (e.g. you believe men and women are equal?), this study zeroed in on the question Do you believe that women can be in all forms of church leadership and carry the title of pastor? Focusing in on this question, the survey data revealed three data points which had a direct correlation—the self-reported gender identity of the participant, the participant’s believed gender of God, and the participant’s belief regarding errancy of Biblical text—while the interviews revealed one data point that had direct correlation: the believed gender of God.
Cold War historians tend to overlook Congress’s role in shaping U.S. foreign policy, focusing instead on the executive branch. As a result, scholars have not sufficiently scrutinized the legislature’s influence on foreign relations. The 1970s saw the rise of an unusually activist Congress after public trust in the presidency eroded due to the combination of the unpopular Vietnam War and the extended political fallout from President Nixon’s Watergate scandal. This article helps fill in the historiographic gap by honing in on a specific political flashpoint in the House over the military budget for 1974. In 1973, a bipartisan coalition of Congress members tried to find a “peace dividend” in the budget by making significant cuts to Pentagon appropriations for the following year. This effort broadly polarized the House into a dovish faction and a hawkish faction, each coalescing around a charismatic leader. The doves followed the lead of Congressman Les Aspin (D-WI), while the pro-war House members rallied around Congressman F. Edward Hebert (D-LA). Government records, the memoirs of many of the legislators involved, and Congressman Hebert’s personal records, a part of Tulane University’s Louisiana Research collection, reveal the budget fight’s important implications concerning the history of the U.S. militarism.
This exploratory research project investigates the ways in which formal and informal sex education during high school influences an individual’s development of their sexual identity. Due to changes in federal funding, formal sex education curriculum shifted from an abstinence-only model to a medical model, which focuses on information regarding birth control and self-health. Attending to this change, this research focuses on persons who attended high school during two specific periods: 2006-2010 and 2014-2016. After the primary investigator submitted an application to the UCCS IRB, IRB 19-079 and received approval, twelve semi-structured interviews, with six participants in each time period were conducted. This exploratory project used a snowball technique to recruit participants for this study. Based on analysis, participants’ narratives in the 2014-2016-cohort showed movement away from the use of abstinence-only (AO) education. In both cohorts three major themes were visible: a strong use of fear tactics in the delivery of sex education, a “Mean Girl” method of teaching, and a clear connection between messages learned by individuals during high school regarding sex that have contributed to the shaping of their overall and sexual identity. After conducting this research and analyzing the experiences and information shared by participants, it is clear that the formal and/or informal education individuals received from both cohorts was on a basis of fear and shaming tactics, which continues to affect the ways in which these individuals view and engage with sex in their own lives.
