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Women in the Religious Wave of Terrorism and Beyond: The West Versus the Rest An analysis of women’s motives and agency in Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State
Get PDFAs terrorism expands and changes in this globalized world, women’s involvement in terrorist groups remains to be an object of fascination, particularly Western women who choose to join terrorist groups in the Middle East. This paper aims to reveal and analyze the motivations that women have for joining terrorist groups, without merely labeling them as delusional or misguided by men. While it is true that women have roles in many different terrorist groups, this paper chooses to focus solely Al-Qaeda and largely the Islamic State as they (and increasingly the Islamic State) are extremely important for today’s global security. Furthermore, the paper juxtaposes the differences in the motivations and recruitment between women from the West, and Middle Eastern women who are closer to the conflict areas. Ultimately, this paper finds that there is a vast amount of differing reasons why women choose to join Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State. However, geography and historical context play a large role in these factors, thus showing a difference between motivations of women in the West versus women who are closer to the conflict in the Middle East. Overall, this paper finds that women have diverse and legitimate motivations and reasons for joining terrorist organizations, and female terrorists will continue to need to be researched and analyzed as terrorism evolves
Learning by Osmosis or Intervention? Preparing Faculty to Lead Short-Term Programs Abroad
Get PDFThis Course Linked Capstone (CLC) paper focuses on the rationale for and design of a publically accessible handbook for faculty teaching, or interested in teaching, undergraduate courses overseas through Babson’s Electives Abroad (BEA) program. BEAs, run out of the Glavin Office of Multicultural & International Education, are four-credit Advanced Liberal Arts and Advanced Elective Courses taught by Babson faculty that involve a one to three-week international travel component.
The goal of the handbook is three-fold: to enhance internal materials and codify unwritten policies and procedures; to address key gaps in the current development, management, and assessment of BEAs; and to make the process for proposing, developing, managing, and assessing BEAs available to the larger Babson community. The proposed handbook would invite faculty to design and evaluate their courses in light of the following learning theories: Experiential Learning Theory, the Learning Zone Model, Baxter Magolda’s Learning Partnerships Model, Backward Design, and Emerging Adulthood.
In its finished form, the handbook will provide prospective and current faculty with the tools and resources necessary to partner with the Glavin Office to write a course proposal, develop and manage their course, appropriately handle student issues and crises abroad, and evaluate their program upon return. While this CLC paper focuses on the rationale for and design of the BEA Faculty Handbook, the hope is that this capstone will ultimately result in the creation of a handbook that would be publically available in the fall of 2016 prior to the start of the 2017-2018 course proposal process
A Sustainable Approach to Health Systems Strengthening in Developing Countries: Lessons from the Ebola Crisis
Get PDFThe research paper started with emphasizing the importance of health security as an issue of global concern under the UNDP theory of human security. The research then proceeded with a focus on the approaches to health systems strengthening and a reflection on lessons learned from the Ebola virus outbreak to answer the question: How do we approach health systems strengthening (HSS) to achieve sustainable impact? Scholarly articles, and literature from other authoritative sources on health systems strengthening, like the World Health Organization (WHO) and the US Agency for International Development (USAID), were reviewed to determine a clear definition of HSS, and understand past approaches that succeeded and challenges that ensued in the pursuit of HSS. The literature review also highlighted and sought to clarify the perceived ambiguity that have blurred the distinction between health systems strengthening and health systems support. The research sought to understand the successes and challenges of donor-led HSS programs, by reviewing and analyzing USAID’s approach to HSS programs in five Central Asian countries. Maternal mortality data from the World Bank Group (WBG) was analyzed and used as benchmarks for assessing the Central Asian countries’s rate of change in health indicators. With a streamlined definition of HSS and reference to successes and pitfalls of the practice, the research proceeded to analyze findings from lessons learned from the Ebola outbreak that overwhelmed fragile health systems in West Africa. These findings shed light on the advent of the Ebola virus, and the subsequent international response and related challenges and catalyst. Recommendations for sustainable approaches to health systems strengthening were proposed after analyzing the literature reviews, and lessons learned from the Ebola virus outbreak. The paper was concluded with a reflection on Sustainable Development
ENLACES: Transformative Educational Policy for the Latin American and Caribbean Region
Get PDFThis capstone paper explores ENLACES, the Latin American and Caribbean Meeting Space for Higher Education, or in Spanish, Espacio de Encuentro Latinamericano y Caribeño de Educación Superior (ENLACES). In the same fashion that the UNESCO-Bologna Accords gave rise to the European Higher Education Area, so, too, did the UNESCO-International Institute for Higher Education in Latin America and the Caribbean give rise to ENLACES. ENLACES is an evolving, transformative education policy that promotes the region’s integration and internationalization of higher education through collaborative means. This paper explores the region’s educational environment during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries that led to the creation of the ENLACES, presents a stakeholder analysis of the policy, examines its goals, objectives, and strategies of implementation, and evaluates its strengths and weakness. Records from regional and global conferences are the primary sources for this policy analysis
Ease on Down the Road: From Diagnosis to Graduation and Beyond, An Auto-Ethnography
Get PDFThis study was envisioned following a personal acknowledgement of perceived suppression of the author’s “unorthodox” approach to the research design process resulting in the desire to explore the role of the researcher’s experience in research design and ultimately in higher education. The author began feeling lost and overwhelmed in the pursuit of her Master of Arts degree. She felt that her particular values and methodology were not being validated or supported. Through the use of narrative, the author analyzes her own experience navigating higher education as one of the first in her entire family to do so, with the added challenge of a mental health diagnosis. Follow along as the author takes you on a journey to the past in order to understand how the challenges she faced can lead to changes in the way mental health is perceived in higher education
Capacity Building of Health Workforce: Investigation of Training Process for Community Health Volunteers (CHVs) Serving Refugee Populations in Host Communities, as Perceived by Participants and Trainers
Get PDFThe health system in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, which hosts 1.4 million refugees from the Syrian Arab Republic—more than 636,000 of whom are registered with UNHCR—is over-extended (UNHCR, 2016). Non-governmental organizations fill gaps in service delivery by injecting health personnel to deliver care, however, nationals and refugees must be integrated in the response to ensure sustainable health care delivery (UNHCR Handbook for Emergencies, 2007). Leveraging the capacities of lay citizens and refugees by task shifting and training CHVs can alleviate the increased health burden. Research into training programs is significant because the quality of training is directly related to the effectiveness of CHVs. This research project investigated the training of CHVs serving refugee communities, as perceived by the trainees and the trainers. The objectives of the study were to characterize the process of training CHVs, assess the extent to which the training programs build their capacities and prepare them to fulfill their responsibilities, and identify the perceived areas of improvement for the training process. The researcher formed a relationship with Noor Al-Hussein Foundation Institute of Family Health in Amman to administered questionnaires to CHVs as well as conducted interviews with trainers. The findings indicate that the trainings adhere to standards and manuals developed by donors that operate under the same mandates concerning training CHVs. However, participants and trainers reported that a wider array of topics, longer trainings to cover more in-depth information, and increased resources to allow for use of effective techniques would improve the quality of the trainings and build the capacity of CHVs. This study can inform process improvement if applied by training institutions. Additionally, research field is important to policy makers who can apply findings to advocate for scale-up of CHV programs and increased investment in the capacities of human resources
Goals of Aid Organizations and Perspectives of Employees: Urban Integration of Syrian Refugees in Jordan
Get PDFThis research aims to explore the perspectives of aid workers in Amman among various aid organizations, both local and international, and how aid workers feel the country should move forward from both a policy and social standpoint regarding urban integration of Syrian refugees. This research includes a review of literature in urban studies and sociology of economics, drawing on absorption theory and the concept of parallel structures of services to contextualize the argument that the role of urban refugees in urbanization and urban economic development should be considered within the systems of relief in place in Jordan, and it is the role of aid organizations to link overall development to relief work with the help of governing bodies. The researcher hypothesizes that the lack of absorption theory practiced in aid organization programming reinforces the detrimental parallel structure of service provision in Jordan. This study’s significance is related to the precarious position Jordan is in economically and socially following the Syrian crisis, and the importance of finding a sustainable solution for the future. Interviews and questionnaires were completed with employees of aid organizations in Amman in order to inform this research. In conclusion, while tenets of absorption theory was practiced in many organizations in this sample, the obstacles to further programming are significant, and parallel structures of services remain an issue to social cohesion of Syrians and Jordanians. This study contributes qualitative perspectives of aid workers with experience in this matter to the broader academic discussion of how emergency relief affects host countries and seeks to contribute perspectives on how the international aid community can restructure responses to fit the needs of Jordan
Life in the Collective Era: How Land Cooperatives Tried (and Failed) to Promote Local-National Integration in Tunisia
Get PDFThe frequent metaphor of Tunisia as an island requires reevaluation. An island demands continuity unto itself, a feature that Tunisia distinctly lacks. Despite higher than usual levels of ethnic and religious homogeneity, Tunisia has historically maintained low levels of local-national interaction and accommodation. This analysis examines how the post-independence government of Habib Bourguiba sought to coax rural and agrarian communities into participation in the national identity and thereby promote continuity throughout the country via disruptive, large-scale government projects as part of the “modernity drive.” Specific attention is given to agricultural cooperatives and land collectivization in the 1960s. This analysis is further built on a case study of the application and lingering effects of such land policy in the village of Chebika – a rural mountain oasis of the Tunisian south representative of the closed off, subsistence based lifestyle common at independence
Backpacking Brothers: An Experiential, Adventure Education Program to Transform Rape Culture and Prevent Sexual Violence
Get PDFSexual violence is a public health crisis in the United States and globally, that has devastating interpersonal, social, psychological, spiritual and economic impacts. The root causes of sexual violence are tied to all forms of oppression. The normalization and perpetuation of sexual violence is buttressed by cultural paradigms used by media, religion, education and other systems that maintain rigid gender roles and power dynamics. There are promising initiatives for preventing sexual violence before it occurs. This paper explores one of those initiatives called Backpacking Brothers. The purpose of Backpacking Brothers is to engage middle school boys in an adventure education program aimed to address attitudes, beliefs and actions that uphold and perpetuate sexual violence. Through experiential, liberatory education the program strives to transform rape culture, a form of cultural violence that creates an environment that allows sexual violence to thrive. The paper explores the newly created programming through the lens of a trainer, highlighting important learnings about principles and theories of primary prevention, experiential and social justice education, innovative training design, and evaluation of programming. It offers practical examples, resources, lessons learned and guideposts for social justice educators and trainers to understand and dismantle rape culture and prevent sexual violence
Multi Identity Conflict: A Case Study of Sudanese Refugees and Asylum Seekers in Jordan
Get PDFThis inquiry was a completed as part of the requirements for earning a Master\u27s of Arts degree in Peacebuilding and Conflict Transformation for the student William Clifton at SIT Graduate Institute. It was an independent practitioner inquiry based on the methodology of Grounded Theory that utilized qualitative research by way of in depth interviews and a focus group to understand how the identity shaped the experience of Sudanese migrants living in Jordan. In addition to these qualitative methods, a review of the literature was conducted on Sudanese populations in Sudan and in outside communities to help guide the process and provide information to compare as well as information about how these populations were treated by their host countries, with principal emphasis on the country of Jordan. The purpose of the research was to gain better understanding of this under researched minority population, to explore ways that identity conflict can affect them from various ways related to their identities, and to gather information about their level of institutional support and how that can be changed to further contribute to their well-being. The findings indicated that the participants expressed Geographical, Ethnic, and Religious Identities while also experiencing Racial Discrimination and Ascribed Identity. In addition, the participants expressed their reasons for coming to Jordan, described their livelihoods and institutional support. The author than wrote a 9 track diplomacy plan as a type of holistic intervention to serve the needs of that population