DigitalGeorgetown
Not a member yet
425578 research outputs found
Sort by
The Russian Thinker: Isaiah Berlin and the Liberal Predicament
No full textPh.D.Isaiah Berlin is best known for his two concepts of liberty and theory of value pluralism. But Berlin also made other contributions to liberalism, in particular his idea of “the liberal predicament.” This contribution does not originate in the predominantly European liberal canon but is instead a phenomenon that springs forth from the personal histories of the nineteenth-century Russian intelligentsia, transplanted “onto British soil”. This contribution to liberalism by Berlin fits less conveniently into dominant models of interpreting his thought in the context of the postwar rise of the welfare state, the conditions of the Cold War and later the various 1960s protest movements. Though these contexts were critical, Berlin’s use of specifically Russian sources give his liberalism its specific and unique character. The liberal predicament is a mature version of Berlin’s thinking about the intelligentsia and its ethos of political commitment to social justice. The dissertation traces the origins of the ideas that underpin it, explains why the intelligentsia are a vitally important context to understanding Berlin, how intelligentsia ideas and influences echo in Berlin’s thought, and what theoretical problems may be caused by the insights Berlin draws from them
NATIONS AS NARRATIONS: NEOCOLONIALISM IN CARIBBEAN LUXURY TRAVEL
No full textM.A.L.S.Within the powerful global industry that is luxury tourism, themes of colonialism are rampant, and exact detrimental effects on both local populations and, to a lesser extent, the tourists who consume these neocolonial travel products. The Caribbean in particular is home to a bustling tourism economy, and, as a region, plays a critical role in the development of Western tourism in its contemporary neocolonial form. Through a survey of the history; a consultation of the relevant literature, including foundational post-colonial writers such as Said, Césaire, and Kincaid; and a case study examination of one all-inclusive resort in the Bahamas, this paper establishes luxury tourism as a destructive force enabling and perpetuating neocolonialism in the Caribbean and across the globe
2023 Annual Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act Report to Congress (Apr. 30, 2024)
No full textFirst page of documen
The Local Effect of State Climate Policies in the San Francisco Bay Area: Measuring Impact Through Electric Vehicle Charging Station Installations
No full textM.P.P.Because the effects of climate change are global and especially serious at the local level, it is important to understand the impact of high-level policies on local circumstances to create the most impactful policies possible. This study tests the local effect of state climate policies in the context of the California Bay Area, using Governor Edmund G. Brown Jr.’s Executive Order B-16-2012 on the development of California’s electric vehicle (EV) ecosystem. The hypothesis is that this executive order has resulted in an increase in the number of EV charging stations found in the Bay Area compared to the control group. This effect is tested using a difference-in-differences regression analysis to compare the Dallas-Fort Worth region (control group) to the Bay Area (treatment group). Based on this test, Executive Order B-16-2012 does have a statistically significant effect on charger stations installed post-order. This result demonstrates that state policies pushing EV usage focus governments and the private sector on EV infrastructure development. These findings allow policymakers to consider how their influence over market, research, and development as well as their ability to influence permitting for EVs, renewable energy, and other environmentally friendly infrastructure developments can have a powerful local effect, creating better environmental policies. Further research can explore how these types of policies influence other localities in California as well as how other states’ environmental policies influence local circumstances
The Effect of School Safety Measures on Student Performance
No full textM.P.P.Given the current climate around school violence, researchers are increasingly attempting to examine how the implementation of school safety measures impacts students. Much of this analysis focuses specifically on School Resource Officers (SROs) or is considered from the perspective of the administration or school safety team. Given the relationship between a student’s environment and their school performance, it is important to consider the impacts these measures can have on their academic achievement. This thesis utilizes the National Crime Victimization: School Crime Supplement to assess the impact different security measures have on student’s self-reported average school performance. Regression analysis shows that more overt school safety measures, such as SROs and metal detectors, negatively correlate with student performance. From a policy perspective, these findings underscore the importance of considering the unintended consequences of well-intended policy measures protecting students’ learning environments and considering an enhanced degree of evidence-based methods for decision-making in re-calibrating existing school safety measures and initiatives
Three Essays on the Political Economy of International Labor Migration
No full textPh.D.This dissertation examines the interplay between government policies, economic strategies, and labor migration through three essays. It highlights the critical roles of currency undervaluation, repressive wage policies, and government initiatives promoting emigration for remittances as key drivers of labor migration. The first essay explores why some countries export labor instead of importing Foreign Direct Investment (FDI). It posits that autocratic governments tend to undervalue their currencies to boost export competitiveness, which depresses domestic wages and drives low-skilled workers to seek opportunities abroad. This essay presents empirical evidence from a panel dataset covering 93 origin countries from 1990 to 2020, showing that low-skilled workers are more likely to migrate when their origin country undervalues its currency. This trend is observed in both autocracies and young democracies. The second essay provides a historical case study of South Korea from the early 1960s to the late 1980s. It examines how strategic currency undervaluation, combined with wage and labor repression, fostered export-led growth while driving significant emigration. The undervalued Korean Won and repressed wages made overseas employment more attractive, prompting the government to formalize labor export programs. U.S. support for South Korea’s autocratic regimes made this strategy viable until democratization in the late 1980s ended labor exports. The third essay extends the analysis to a bilateral context, considering destination countries. It focuses on how differences in currency valuations between origin and destination countries influence migration flows. Using a bilateral panel dataset covering 93 origin countries and 92 destination countries from 1990 to 2020, it confirms that low-skilled workers from countries with undervalued currencies are likely to migrate to countries with overvalued currencies. Integrating theoretical insights, historical analysis, and empirical data, this dissertation provides a nuanced understanding of the economic and political factors driving labor migration. It underscores the complex trade-offs that governments face in pursuing economic growth and the resulting impacts on labor mobility
Structural Language Connectivity in Typical Development and After Early Brain Injury
No full textPh.D.Understanding how the brain is organized to understand and generate language has long been a key question in the field of neuroscience. From the earliest stages of post-natal life, infants are exposed to constant linguistic information that must be organized and filtered without explicit instruction or conscious understanding. We know from work in children, adults, and those with injury to the language network across the lifespan that language processing relies on a highly cohesive network of cortical regions interconnected by white matter fiber pathways. However, key questions remain as to how these white matter connections are organized during development such that they support a consistently left-lateralized network, and what role they play in language system plasticity.This dissertation investigates the neural organization of structural connectivity in the language network through assessments of its development in infancy and following early left hemisphere injury. The first study uses diffusion weighted imaging data from typically developing infants to assess the longitudinal development of two white matter pathways in the developing left and right hemisphere. We examined the development of organization, coherence, myelination, and macrostructure to determine if hemispheric asymmetry begins to emerge during this period of intense language development. The second study examined the long-term effects of white matter tract organization in two populations with early life left hemisphere injury: those with perinatal stroke and those with early-onset chronic focal epilepsy. These cohorts are important models of developmental plasticity, as they allow us to examine how the larger language network system reorganizes along a spectrum of spatial (focal vs widespread) and temporal (acute vs chronic) lesion dimensions. Together these two studies have important implications for white matter organization and plasticity in the developing language network and for models of early life neural injury
Legacy of Inequality: Analyzing the Relationships Between Education, Race, and Income in Post-Apartheid South Africa
No full textM.P.P.This research aims to utilize multivariable regression analysis to answer this central research question: To what extent do higher levels of educational attainment correlate with income level in post-apartheid South Africa? To answer this question, this study employs individual data over three years—1996, 2001, and 2011—to evaluate the association between education and income and see how race may affect that dynamic. Additional variables are included in the analysis as well. This analysis determines that higher levels of education—particularly completion of secondary education and higher education—are positively and statistically significant associated with income levels. Additionally, we find that there is a differential effect on income when education is interacted with race in early years of the post-apartheid era. Race remains a statistically significant factor in predicted income levels over the period analyzed, with white South Africans retaining an economic advantage over nonwhite populations. These findings reflect the underlying and persistent systemic inequalities that continue to define South Africa in the post-apartheid era. Despite lingering racial inequality, the decreasing relevance of the differential effect of education on income between racial groups indicates that education remains a critically important tool for socioeconomic advancement in South Africa