Faculty Commentary

In The Hague last week at the Headquarters of the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP), policymakers and stakeholders discussed a coherent international approach to accounting for people who have gone missing as a result of conflict and migration, including the conflict in Syria. This is an issue that cuts both internationally and domestically across [...]

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“There is no longer a virtuous nation, and the best of us live by candlelight.” -William Butler Yeats From the beginning of his presidency, Donald Trump has presumed a hard and fast distinction between America’s national interest and the broader interests of our “state of nations.” Rather than recognize the indissoluble interdependence of all states, [...]

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On Tuesday, May 21, the Serbian National Assembly passed the Criminal Code amendment which introduced significant changes into the criminal justice system, out of which the most controversial one is the sentence to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole (LWOP). The LWOP is now prescribed as a possible sentence for some of the most [...]

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Targeted killing campaigns are still accelerating under the Trump administration, with fewer constraints and even less transparency. More precisely, it seems that the Obama-era Presidential Policy Guidance has been relaxed in two very meaningful ways: targets of “kill missions” are being expanded to include more Jihadist “Foot Soldiers” (rather than just identifiable terrorist leaders) and directed drone [...]

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Last month, tenants at a rent-stabilized apartment building called Atlantic Plaza Towers in Brooklyn filed a formal protest against their landlord’s plan to replace key fobs with facial recognition technology. The landlord claimed the new system would enhance security. The tenants, primarily women of color, countered that access to their homes should not hinge on [...]

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“I believe” is the one great word against metaphysical fear. Oswald Spengler, The Decline of the West At least one thing is clear. Those terrorists who carried out the Easter Sunday attacks on certain Sri Lankan churches and hotels would have resonated with Oswald Spengler’s urgent affirmation. “I believe” was plainly at the conceptual core of [...]

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In what may have been one of the most consequential decisions since the notorious Korematsu case of 1944, when the Supreme Court upheld the incarceration of Japanese-Americans during World War II, the Court (in June 2018) voted 5-4 vote to uphold President Donald Trump’s travel ban. Like the Korematsu judicial ruling, Trump v. Hawaii raises [...]

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