This paper will discuss how USA Gymnastics (USAG), Michigan State University (MSU), and the United States Olympic Committee (MSU) failed to properly investigate and take corrective action of former physician and now convicted serial pedophile, Larry Nassar. This includes a description of the powerful individuals who worked with or oversaw Nassar, how they received complaints of his sexual assault, and an explanation of the institutional environment that fostered a culture of silence and obedience. To provide a comparative analysis, this paper will analyze other athletic organizations (such as USA Swimming and USA Diving) which are also overseen by the USOC in order to compare their previous cases and reactions to sexual assault. This will be followed by recommended corrective policies for athletic organizations if claims of sexual assault arise. These policies and procedures will aim to prevent sexual assault in the future, reduce any culture of silence and vulnerability within similar organizations, and hopefully be implemented throughout athletic organizations everywhere.

Prison dog training programs, which emerged in the 1980s, have been gaining popularity at both a national and international level. The programs allow inmates to train dogs as service animals for veterans and first responders. After reading several different research projects that examined the impact of dog training programs in prison, the majority of them show that there are a lot of benefits and a few challenges. The beneficial impact was examined both with an in-person walkthrough of a prison with the program and through a series of interviews conducted for the purposes of this study. Interviews were conducted with Sister Pauline Quinn, the founder of prison dog training programs; Patricia Barnhart, who previously managed a dog training program at a Florida prison; the director at New Life K9s, Nicole Hern, and all the inmates in the New Life K9s prison program at the Men’s Colony prison in California. Bringing dogs into prisons has created a change in inmate behavior, staff behavior, and a safer, calmer environment for those within the prison. Calming the prison environment allows inmates to develop skills they can take with them when they leave prison, which in turn will help reduce recidivism. The research suggests that starting a dog training program in the state of Arizona could significantly benefit the state prison system, community and everyone involved.

America has been widely considered a great democratic experiment, which is a characterization attributed to Thomas Jefferson. An experiment can be designed to use trial-and-error methods to find a certain outcome. While not a conscious effort, the United States has experienced a trial-and-error experimental process in developing legislation that will restrict dangerous misinformation without violating the speech and press clauses of the First Amendment. In several of his personal writings and official speeches, Jefferson advised against additional government intervention with regard to filtering true and false information published by the press or distributed by citizens. His argument is a guiding theme throughout this thesis, which explores that experimental process and its relation to contemporary efforts to address and prevent future phenomena like the fake news outbreak of 2016.
This thesis utilizes an examination of examples of laws designed to control misinformation, past and present, then using those examples to provide context to both arguments in favor of and opposing new misinformation laws. Extensive archival research was conducted to ensure that accurate historical reflection could be included in offering information about historical examples, as well as through application of relevant literature. The possible effects on the electorate and the practices of the press by those laws of the past and potential proposals for new legislation are also discussed in an effort to provide further context to, and support for, the conclusions reached. Those conclusions include that additional regulation is necessary to discourage the creation and distribution of fake news and misinformation in order to protect the public from the violence or imminent unlawful action they may cause.

There has long been conflict between the First and Sixth Amendments, particularly press freedoms and the right of a defendant to have a fair trial. This thesis expands on this conflict, and potential solutions, by looking at the 2013 trial of Jodi Arias. It further elaborates on what responsibilities the courts, and the media, have in protecting a defendant’s right to an impartial jury. The first section of this thesis addresses conflict between the First and Sixth Amendments, the ways that the justice system works to resolve these conflicts, and similar high-profile cases demonstrating the conflict. The second part of this thesis explains the complex events of both the trial and the sentencing retrial. Next, media coverage of the trial will be compared with how the presiding judge attempted to protect Arias’ rights. By the end of this thesis, readers will be able to understand the evolution of the First and Sixth Amendments, how the justice system reconciles differences between the two and how coverage shifted throughout the trial. Finally, readers will be able to see how saturated media coverage impacted Arias’ right to a fair trial, and what this means for high profile criminal cases in the future. This thesis makes recommendations both for the justice system and for media organizations, on how to prevent similar issues seen in the Arias trial from occurring in future trials. The hope is that through an analysis of the Arias trial, and the recommendations made at the conclusion of the thesis, judges and media organizations will be able to work together to better protect both the First and Sixth Amendments to the best of their ability.

This paper looks at case studies, legal journals, and legal commentaries to examine the history of plea bargains and determine how such a practice slowly crept its way into the American judicial system. Next, I discern both the two specific benefits and three disadvantages of utilizing plea bargains in a system that was traditionally renowned for its unique form of adversarial / trial based justice. By analyzing case studies and legal texts, I find that the administrative advantages and cost benefits used to rationalize continued usage of plea deals does not outweigh its extremely negative effects on significant aspects of law and the American legal system. These significant negative effects as a product of the plea bargain are a definitive hindrance to justice and further characterize the system as no longer fair and certainly not equitable. Consequently, I assert that in order to maintain the ethics of the system, plea bargains should be removed. I also generally outline the Philadelphia Bench Trial as a prospective and viable alternative to plea bargains that could act as an intriguing substitute. The Philadelphia Bench Trial represents a highly viable alternative to the plea bargain and consequently preserves many of the advantages plea bargains offer the system without sacrificing the adversarial element necessary to receive correct and accurate verdicts.

Despite the reactionary Habsburg regime under Emperor Franz Joseph, forces within the government and leading intelligentsia proposed various reforms to solve the issue of ethnic discrimination across the Austro-Hungarian Empire, attempting to resolve the tensions that the Ausgleich of 1867 had further aggravated by the inclusion of Hungarians as a privileged class to the detriment of the remaining minorities. This paper will look at the Austro-Marxist and Federalist reformers and the ways in which their concepts, if implemented, could have saved the Empire from its downfall in 1918. Ultimately, neither the Austro-Marxist concept of a centralized system of universal rights across the borders of all nations within the existing empire nor the Federalist idea of a national territorial sovereignty allowing for a certain degree of individual autonomy managed to be adopted by the Allied victors of World War I. The myopic focus of the ‘Big Four’ on the German Empire blinded them to the intricate economic and political balance needed for peace in the Balkans. While France, Britain, and Italy exhibited a general lack of concern to the outcome in the Balkans, Wilson’s ‘self-determination’ doctrine is most responsible for creating the unsustainable, irredentist-driven states that the reform-minded intellectuals—Austro-Marxist or Federalist—most had sought to avoid. In addition to a discussion of the reform movements in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, this paper will explore the reforms’ strong similarities to the present struggles within the European Union, particularly the divide between Euro-federalists and Euro-sceptics. The crisis situation and reform efforts of the Austrian Empire from 1867 to 1914 reveal significant policy lessons applicable to the European Union as it navigates the current crossroads between further federal integration or a return to medieval disintegration.

Russian President Vladimir Putin is a revisionist leader seeking to restore Russia’s status as a great power and rival U.S. global dominance by constructing a multipolar world order at the expense of the United States. Putin’s aggressive tendencies are not limited to Europe and the former Soviet sphere as Putin has expanded his revisionist ambitions into other regional theaters, including the Middle East. Putin has pursued an active foreign policy in the Middle East, exploiting the volatile region plagued with a historical predisposition to great power competition as a crucial part of his revisionist grand strategy. Putin is a realist, and employs a ruthless strategy of pragmatic flexibility, capitalizing on historical relations between the Soviet Union and Middle Eastern regimes when possible, but is also skilled at adapting to new circumstances and developments, and exploiting them for Russia’s strategic benefit. Putin has engaged in heightened relations and involvement with Turkey, Iran, and Syria. In Turkey, Putin has taken advantage of that country’s central location and used Turkey as a hub for the expansion of the Russian energy industry, placing pressure on NATO and the European Union. Putin has opportunistically used Iran’s controversial nuclear program to Russia’s benefit by acting as Iran’s primary international sponsor and patron for its nuclear program, elevating Russia’s regional prestige as a rival to the United States, and countering American foreign policy objectives. Putin intervened decisively on behalf of the Assad regime in the Syrian civil war, thwarting U.S. calls for regime change in Damascus and forcefully asserting Russia as a formidable regional power with veto-authority in matters of global power dynamics at Washington’s expense. Putin’s achievements with Turkey, Iran, and Syria serve to complement his larger grand strategic objectives to rival the United States as a great power and to create a multipolar world order. Putin’s ruthless, opportunistic foreign policy poses significant challenges to U.S. foreign policy and endangers the liberal world order. Washington must come to terms with the threat posed by a revisionist Russia and adopt a more assertive policy toward Putin.

From the Crusades to the Russian Pogroms and the Holocaust, Jews have had their citizenship taken away, and in some instances, been brutally beaten and tortured. The wide array of societies, which have partaken in the systematic subjugation of the Jews across centuries and millennia, has shown that anti-Semitism knows no bounds. As is the case with many groups of persecuted people, Jews are peripatetic, diasporic, and exilic. However, for the purpose of this thesis, the focus will revolve around the diaspora of Jews to America and their resulting involvement in American culture.

The United States is in a period of political turmoil and polarization. New technologies have matured over the last ten years, which have transformed an individual’s relationship with society and government. The emergence of these technologies has revolutionized access to both information and misinformation. Skills such as bias recognition and critical thinking are more imperative than in any other time to separate truth from false or misleading information. Meanwhile, education has not evolved with these changes. The average individual is more likely to come to uninformed conclusions and less likely to listen to differing perspectives. Moreover, technology is further complicating and compounding other issues in the political process. All of this is manifesting in division among the American people who elect more polarized politicians who increasingly fail to find avenues for compromise.

In an effort to address these trends, we founded a student organization, The Political Literates, to fight political apathy by delivering political news in an easy to understand and unbiased manner. Inspired by our experience with this organization, we combine our insights with research to paint a new perspective on the state of the American political system.

This thesis analyzes various issues identified through our observations and research, with a heavy emphasis on using examples from the 2016 election. Our focus is how new technologies like data analytics, the Internet, smartphones, and social media are changing politics by driving political and social transformation. We identify and analyze five core issues that have been amplified by new technology, hindering the effectiveness of elections and further increasing political polarization:

● Gerrymandering which skews partisan debate by forcing politicians to pander to ideologically skewed districts.
● Consolidation of media companies which affects the diversity of how news is shared.
● Repeal of the Fairness Doctrine which allowed media to become more partisan.
● The Citizens United Ruling which skews power away from average voters in elections.
● A Failing Education System which does not prepare Americans to be civically engaged and to avoid being swayed by biased or untrue media.

Based on our experiment with the Political Literates and our research, we call for improving how critical thinking and civics is taught in the American education system. Critical thought and civics must be developed pervasively. With this, more people would be able to form more sophisticated views by listening to others to learn rather than win, listening less to irrelevant information, and forming a culture with more engagement in politics. Through this re-enlightenment, many of America’s other problems may evaporate or become more actionable.