Gonzaga University Repository
Not a member yet
2718 research outputs found
Sort by
Preserving Public Lands in the Age of Climate Change
No full textThe Gonzaga Climate Center hosted the Washington Public Lands Commissioner Hilary Franz to discuss with Gonzaga students how we can preserve and protect Washington’s public lands in the face of a changing climate
Changing Attitudes About Refugees through Refugee Simulations
No full textThere are over 100 million refugees globally. Because of the September 11 attacks and the wars that followed, western host societies tend to hold negative attitudes toward refugees, such as hostility and mistrust2. These negative attitudes contribute to discrimination against refugees, which impacts them negatively. Improving understanding of the lived experiences of refugees may reduce negative attitudes toward them and promote positive interactions with this cultural group3. One way to develop this understanding is through refugee simulations, as they enable participants to experience parts of the rehoming process.
As such, we conducted a study to 1) investigate the effects of refugee simulations on one’s character growth and 2) describe refugee simulation participants’ experience with and reflection on the simulation. The study employed a mixed-methods design and included 27 community college students from the United States as participants. The participants experienced a refugee simulation. They completed the VIA Inventory of Strengths (VIA-IS4) on the day before and after the refugee simulation to provide data on potential character growth. They also completed the adapted Guide for Reflective Practice (GRP5) on the day after the refugee simulation to reflect on their experience and provider qualitative information about their experience and reflection.
The participants experienced individual character growth, as evidenced by increases in character strengths including bravery, curiosity, fairness, judgment, kindness, love of learning, social intelligence, and zest. These character strengths predispose individuals to approach unfamiliar events openly and enthusiastically with the consideration of others’ welfare. Additionally, the participants described the refugee simulation to be transformative. They developed changed perspectives about refugees, improved empathy towards refugees, and enhanced desire to offer refugees assistance.
The findings of this study revealed that refugee simulations are transformational activities that facilitate individual character growth, alter attitudes toward refugees, and potentially improve nonrefugees’ interactions with refugees. However, the benefits of these simulations may extend to other diverse, marginalized communities. It is recommended that practitioners employ simulations to reduce hatred toward and foster the inclusion of diverse, marginalized people
Flags, Insignia, and Hate Speech: When Speech is Not Linguistic
No full textIn response to the public display of several swastika and Confederate flags on vehicles assembled under the so-called Freedom Convoy that occupied Canada’s national capital for over 2 weeks during the Covid pandemic restrictions, a member of Parliament authored a bill to ban symbols of hate. This private member’s bill would expand Canada’s hate speech laws by including the wilful or reckless public displayof visual representations that identifies, or is associated with, a person or organization that promotes or incites, or has promoted or incited, hatred or violence against an identifiable group. The bill’s Preamble noted, in particular, Nazi, Confederate States of America and Ku Klux Klan symbols, emblems, flags and uniforms.
This paper will interrogate a number of questions that arise from this bill: do the Nazi swastika, the Confederate flag and other historically specific insignia, emblems and uniforms of political regimes rise to the level of hate speech, particularly under Canadian law? What protections to the expression of speech, as a Constitutional right, do this bill address? Can visual signifiers be equated with speech? Thatis, does the flying of a Nazi flag equate with the expression of hateful Nazi ideology
Ethical Concerns Regarding Use of Formers in Countering Extremism
No full textThis panel looks at issues of ethics and social justice related to involvement of former members of hate groups (“formers”) in “counter-extremism” and “deradicalization” organizations, projects, and campaigns. Formers are often assumed to have expertise and skills in preventing recruitment into, or disengaging individuals from, violent groups. However, a lack of transparency and oversight of programs makes formers’ skillsets difficult to assess. We argue that the fame, leadership roles, and expert status often conferred on formers is doing harm in several respects. Formers are sometimes less reformed than assumed. In some cases, they have continued to promote hate or have even gotten involved in far-right groups. Even in less concerning cases, centering formers as experts and conferring quasi-celebrity status on them, can serve to further marginalize and disempower those most impacted by hate groups. Rather than a victim/survivor-centered model, use of formers feeds an offender-centered model that tasks communities of color and other targeted populations with “compassionate” outreach to “heal” haters; this emphasis can undermine necessary boundaries that help protect communities from hate groups. The involvement of formers in government-funded Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) programs further contributes to a model that centers the individual psychology of members of hate groups, seeing life trauma as the cause of hate and relying on a securitized and medicalized theoretical framework, rather than addressing social injustice through activism
Preventing/Tackling Online Hate Speech and Discrimination through an Inter-legal Approach to Law in the Current Internet Governance. A European Perspective
No full textThe contestation of States’ sovereignty as the only source of law relies on a well-established body of literature. The “boundless” nature of the Web – considered “the network of networks” (Fiorinelli 2021, p. 405) – would have suggested that States would promptly converge towards global agreements on the legal protection against online hate speech and discrimination, a step that still seems hard to take. This is mainly due (though not limited) to two different orientations on the matter: the former one— guiding large platforms and, more broadly, the so-called U.S. approach – is based on the liberal “Marketplace of ideas” theory and extensively interprets the protection of freedom of speech; the latter one is the so-defined European approach to illegal contents, which admits justified limitations of freedom of speech that infringes other fundamental rights (Just 2022; Lee 2010; Rosen 2012; Waldron 2012).
These two approaches influence both the substantive protection against hate speech and discrimination as well as the Internet governance. In fact, today’s legal scenario appears to be still fragmented and, at the same time, very dynamic in the attempt to strike a balance between freedom of speech and tackling online hate speech and discrimination. It may be observed that this sphere is characterised by both centripetal trends (towards UN and CoE soft international governance and EU soft and hard supranational provisions) and centrifugal forces of some EU national legislations. Besides them, Platforms owners concur or even compete within these hybrid and polycentric legal spaces.
The metaphor of the transition from the “pyramidal system” to that (horizontal andeterarchic) of the “net” elaborated by François Ost and Michel Van De Kerchove (2002) is particularly relevant for both the offline and online spheres. In such context, the interconnection between norms from multiple legal orders, all simultaneously applicable to concrete cases on the basis of the impact on the very case under scrutiny, is at the core of a recent conceptualisation of inter-legality in legal philosophy (Palombella 2019; Chiti, diMartino and Palombella 2021;) that departs from socio-legal scholar Boaventura de Sousa Santos’ original elaboration (interlegality).
The hypothesis guiding my reflection is that, in the lack of a universally recognised definition of on hate speech as well as of a global regulation of online communication, an inter-legal approach to tackling online hate speech and discrimination may provide tools to legal and non-legal actors in handling hate speech-related “cases” in a loose sense, including judicial and non-judicial ones. My assumption is that, due to the characteristics of online hate speech and discrimination, inter-legality may have a strong impact if it is operationalised in all facets – that is, not only by judges but by lawmakers, independent authorities on communication, and even platforms
The Ethics of Using Formers in Prevent and Counter Violent Extremism
No full textAfter 9/11, the academic study of the terrorism flourished as more government resources were focused on counterterrorism efforts. As the focus slowly shifted towards P/CVE, more and more articles lauded the potential benefits of including Formers. The idea behind that was that experience equals expertise. Formers have been valuable data sources as research participants. However, the current trend has seen Formers leave that role and take on far more complicated and sophisticated roles, such as deradicalization experts, claiming to help people leave extremism. This policy paper focuses on the evidence, specifically the lack of evidence, to support the prevailing assumptions regarding the effectiveness of Formers and dissects the ethical issues arising from their involvement in P/CVE. The paper ends with policy recommendations to shift P/CVE activities and research towards a more empirically-grounded model and why the rise of the professional Former is unethical
An Anger Game: Asian Stereotypes, White Emotionalities, and Dominance in Leadership
No full textAsian American women face the “bamboo ceiling” where despite their competence, they lack representation in leadership positions. The current presentation examined the causes of the bamboo ceiling using autoethnography. The study explored an Asian American woman department chair’s failed attempt to be reelected as the chair in a predominantly white department using the emotionality of whiteness and Asian stereotypes as conceptual frameworks. The presenter’s counterstories suggest that not being able to build trustworthy relationships with the faculty was the primary cause of her election loss. She was perceived as “competent but disliked.” Along with racial stereotypes, the white faculty’s emotions played a role in cementing her image as disliked. The faculty were angry at her because she showed control and heightened their sense of being white by bringing up race issues. Their anger was to protect their wounded self, but also a weapon to restore their racial comfort. As a racial subordinate, she became a recipient of their anger, which served to solidify their dominance while making her powerless. In addition, the faculty cared little about the effects of their aggressions, which evidences that the ways Asian Americans are racialized are profoundly different from those of other racial/ethnic minority groups as critical race theory proclaims. The presentation concludes that leadership is hardly race- and gender-neutral and that it embeds a power struggle over which group gets to dominate which group through emotional practices
The Effects of Vacillating Leadership Style on Subordinate Voice Behaviors and Creativity and Its Mechanisms
No full textPrior studies (Acuna & Male, 2022; Watkins & Walker, 2021) have linked toxic leaders\u27 negative consequences to subordinates. For example, research has shown a yearly organizational-cost of 550billion in the United States because of toxic leaders. Nevertheless, the same organizations could save $12,500 if they avoid recruiting toxic leaders (Bremer, 2020). Another study revealed that toxic leadership cost the United Kingdom £15.7billion/per annum (Baker, 2020). Schmidt’s (2008) qualitative study explained toxic leadership on a five-dimensional pattern. Of these dimensions, existing studies focus on Abusive-Supervision, Narcissism, Authoritarian Leadership and Self-promotion. Yet, there is little research on vacillating leadership (Schilling et al., 2022), a core element of toxic leadership that makes a leader toxic (Schmidt, 2008), and its possible effects on voice behaviours and creativity. Vacillating/Unpredictable leadership has been associated with behavioural volatility that deteriorates communication, productivity, and approachability, instilling fear in subordinates (Schmidt, 2008). Scholars have expressed vacillating leadership as Unpredictable (Acuna & Male, 2022), Inconsistent (Vullinghs et al., 2020), Volatile (Swan, 2018), Erratic (Aravena, 2019) and Fickle (Spain, 2019). The empirical works of Greer et al. (2013) linked vacillation to a leader’s emotional expression and not behaviour. However, Acuna and Male (2022) argued that leader vacillation/unpredictability are behaviours that weaken morale, and adversely influence proactive behaviours. A recent follow-up study by Schilling et al. (2022) revealed that vacillating/inconsistent leadership is in its infancy with sparse research. Indeed, vacillating leadership is a social problem, and the contradictory studies, scarce research and unexplored dimensions justify scholarly investigation to determine its effects on voice behaviours and creativity, using social exchange theory
Equivalent Running Leg Lengths Require Prosthetic Legs to Be Longer than Biological Legs During Standing
Get PDFWe aimed to determine a method for prescribing a standing prosthetic leg length (ProsL) that results in an equivalent running biological leg length (BioL) for athletes with unilateral (UTTA) and bilateral transtibial amputations (BTTA). We measured standing leg length of ten non-amputee (NA) athletes, ten athletes with UTTA, and five athletes with BTTA. All athletes performed treadmill running trials from 3 m/s to their maximum speed. We calculated standing and running BioL and ProsL lengths and assessed the running-to-standing leg length ratio (Lratio) at three instances during ground contact: touchdown, mid-stance, and take-off. Athletes with UTTA had 2.4 cm longer standing ProsL than BioL length (p = 0.030), but their ProsL length were up to 3.3 cm shorter at touchdown and 4.1 cm shorter at mid-stance than BioL, at 3–11.5 m/s. At touchdown, mid-stance, and take-off, athletes with BTTA had 0.01–0.05 lower Lratio at 3 m/s (p \u3c 0.001) and 0.03–0.07 lower Lratio at 10 m/s (p \u3c 0.001) in their ProsL compared to the BioL of NA athletes. During running, ProsL were consistently shorter than BioL. To achieve equivalent running leg lengths at touchdown and take-off, athletes with UTTA should set their running-specific prosthesis height so that their standing ProsL length is 2.8–4.5% longer than their BioL length, and athletes with BTTA should set their running-specific prosthesis height so that their standing ProsL lengths are at least 2.1–3.9% longer than their presumed BioL length. Setting ProsL length to match presumed biological dimensions during standing results in shorter legs during running
Spokane\u27s Voices of the Holocaust
No full text“Spokane’s Voices of the Holocaust” is a 45-minute video produced by KSPS Spokane Public Television, in collaboration with the Spokane Community Observance of the Holocaust Planning Committee. Through narratives, photos, and movie clips, it chronicles the events that led to the 1930s take-over of the German government by the National Socialist German Workers\u27 (Nazi) Party and its campaign over 12 years to purge Germany, and ultimately all of Europe, of its Jewish citizenry. Woven into the telling are the stories of Jewish Spokane residents who somehow survived the terror and chaos of those years, three of whom shared their experiences with student groups all over the Inland Northwest. The video was created in response to the realization that most of those who survived the genocide are no longer with us and that this was one way to preserve their stories and messages. With Holocaust Remembrance Day (Yom HaShoah) falling just 2 days before this International Hate Studies Conference, it seemed appropriate to offer “Spokane’s Voices of the Holocaust” for viewing by the attendees. Following the video there will be an opportunity for the conference attendees to ask questions of a panel composed of some who appeared in the video as well as the Spokane Public Television producer of the video