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Trump’s Lies: An Examination of the Fictitious Perception of Latin American Immigrants as Violent Criminals
No full textTrump’s presidency created a heightened scrutiny of immigrants, specifically Latin American immigrants, as his initiative focused on building a wall on the Mexico-US border. Trump’s extreme xenophobic speech was disseminated by the media, influencing the public to perceive Latin American immigrants as dangerous individuals responsible for violent crime. This is despite Latin American immigrants committing crimes at lower rates than native-born citizens. Further, his presidency continued the American criminalization of immigration as he enacted punitive and discriminatory policies and legislation. This thesis expands on previous scholarly work by examining the impact Trump’s anti-immigrant messages had on the media and public opinion. The data obtained through a discourse analysis of CNN and Fox News articles and transcripts determined an increase in negative immigrant sentiments, immigrant-crime conversations, and Latin American immigrant political blaming throughout Trump’s candidacy and presidency when compared to before his involvement in the political sphere. This is noteworthy as the media and domestic audience influence the enactment of policies that disproportionately target immigrants, misconstruing crime rates and further perpetuating the wrongful criminal-immigrant narrative (CIN)
Fostering Black Maternal Survivorship and Mothering through Initiatives to Reduce the Individualism and Racism within Biomedicine
No full textMany scholars have studied Black maternal health disparities—their causal factors, effects, and concrete interventions to help eliminate them. Many of the life-ending occurrences pregnant Black women disproportionately face are preventable, demonstrating that a significant call to action is long overdue. My primary research question asks whether Gen-Z Black women will be receptive to an alternative prenatal care model (APCM) instead of the current American Care Model (ACM). The APCM is centered on the four guiding components of doula care: care navigation, health education, health literacy, and culturally congruent social support, and the components of critical race theory: race consciousness, contemporary orientation, centering the margins, and praxis. Upon my search of the literature, I found disciplinary divides on the best approach to dismantle maternal racial health disparities, such as incorporating alternative models of prenatal care into OB-GYN practice, limiting cesarean births, etc. Using a qualitative focus group method, two sessions were conducted, the first with 5 female UConn students and the second with 4. Based on the participant responses, I found that my sample of Gen-Z Black would be open to tailored programs that center collaboration between obstetrics and alternative care models, such as doula care and midwifery. The insight gleaned from my literature review and the focus group sessions provides evidence that to save pregnant women\u27s lives, care delivery must prioritize kinship, racial equity, and compassion
Exercise as an Intervention for Postpartum Depression (PPD)
No full textObjective: To illustrate the applications of exercise for preventing the development of postpartum depression (PPD) and addressing associated risk factors identified in the literature. Data Sources: PubMed and EBSCO: Academic Search Premier were accessed using the search terms exercise OR physical activity OR yoga AND postpartum depression OR postnatal depression. A secondary search of PubMed was conducted using the search terms exercise AND pregnancy AND depression OR gestational diabetes OR weight gain OR sleep quality.
Study Selection: Studies selected for inclusion were peer-reviewed, published after January 2012, written in English, and relevant to the PPD risk factors examined. Only clinical trials, randomized controlled trials, and observational studies were reviewed.
Data Extraction: Initial searches using both sets of search terms yielded 33,564 articles. After screening by inclusion criteria, 2,538 articles remained. Of those remaining, articles not pertaining to the risk factors examined or studies conducted in women with pre-existing PPD diagnoses were excluded. A total of 22 articles were included in this review.
Data Synthesis: Articles were categorized based on exercise modality or investigation of depressed mood during pregnancy, history of prenatal depression, excessive gestational weight gain (EGWG), gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM), fatigue and poor sleep quality.
Conclusions: Women who exercise during pregnancy were observed to report lower scores of depression, better sleep quality, and lower incidence of both EGWG and GDM compared to women who did not exercise. Aerobic exercise and yoga during pregnancy may be accessible interventions for addressing risk factors of PPD and preventing its onset
Impact of Social Motivation and Communication on Friendship and Loneliness in Autism
No full textFriendships and loneliness are both major contributors to happiness and life satisfaction. This study probes group differences in friendship and loneliness in autism, and their links to social motivation and social communication skills. This study includes participants with autism (n = 28), loss of autism diagnosis (n = 29), and neurotypical developmental histories (n = 36). Participants completed an online survey including measures of social motivation, social communication, friendship, and loneliness. Findings indicated group differences in social communication, friendship, and loneliness, but not social motivation. There were significant associations between social motivation and friendship, social communication and friendship, age and friendship, and friendship and loneliness across diagnostic groups. In addition, social communication was the strongest predictor of friendship among the tested variables. Age, but not social motivation, moderated the relationship between friendship and loneliness. These results suggest that age and challenges with communication may be important to friendship-making and maintenance in individuals with ASD, emphasizing the need for social skill interventions to decrease loneliness among autistic individuals
Activist Directors: The Evolution of Hedge Fund Activism in the S&P 500
No full textThe prevailing rhetoric associated with hedge fund activism is almost universally negative. This Article provides new evidence of activist hedge fund behavior that contradicts this dominant narrative. The principal argument of the Article is that the conventional picture of hedge fund activism requires updating to account for the phenomenon of activist board representation.
This Article makes two general contributions to academic and policy debates on hedge fund activism. First, it analyzes original, hand-collected data on all activist hedge fund campaigns at S&P 500 companies from 2010 to 2019. Currently, there is continued reliance on empirical studies of hedge fund activism that originate from the mid-2000s. However, hedge fund activism has evolved considerably over the past twenty years since these studies were published. Activist hedge funds now increasingly target America’s largest companies—the S&P 500. An analysis of such campaigns has never before been seen in the literature. The study therefore contributes up-to-date insights on the activist campaigns most likely to have an outsized impact on companies, the economy, stakeholders, and society. Second, it demonstrates that a relatively new form of activism—activist board representation—manifests very differently to traditional perceptions of hedge fund activism. Now the most common campaign strategy, the appointment of activist directors can have a positive impact on target companies. In particular, activists seeking board seats often propose changes to corporate strategy and operations. This signifies a longer-term approach to substantive value creation, rather than the short-term financial engineering that activist hedge funds are commonly criticized for engaging in. The striking differences observed in campaigns where activist directors are sought, versus those campaigns where they are not, prompts some necessary reflection of the pervasive critiques of hedge fund activism
A Restorative Justice Alternative for Trafficking Survivors: The Need for a Collaborative Approach in Establishing a Pilot Program Addressing Survivor-Articulated Needs
No full textHuman trafficking survivors not only suffer physical and psychological harm during the commission of the crimes against them, but also are often further harmed through forced involvement in the criminal justice system. With the current focus on apprehending and punishing perpetrators as the primary tool promoted in the United States to prevent trafficking, survivors forced to be witnesses against their perpetrators lose their self-determination in ways replicating the abusive patterns of their traffickers. To aid investigation and prosecution of traffickers, they are required to provide testimony reliving their experiences. Forced testimony is also often the only option available for avoiding prosecution for crimes they were coerced to commit by their traffickers. Tragically, evidence-based research and interviews with survivors and those involved in combatting trafficking conclusively demonstrate that this carceral approach has failed. Moreover, this misguided emphasis monopolizes the limited resources available to combat trafficking, diverting them from addressing survivors’ most pressing needs on their road to recovery and from adopting truly effective measures to prevent or reduce trafficking. It has the further negative effect of impeding efforts to address the mass incarceration epidemic plaguing the criminal justice system. This Article highlights the need for collaboration among all participants in the anti-human trafficking movement, i.e., survivor leaders/lived experts, law enforcement, prosecutors, government agencies, and service providers, to actively support a survivor-focused and survivor-informed pilot program for trafficking survivors modeled on the restorative justice approaches currently available as an alternative for survivors of other violent crimes. Having witnessed firsthand the harm that trafficking survivors face, and fully aware of the ineffectiveness of the current approach, the anti-trafficking community must come together to instigate this essential reform
Scènes à Faire: Cliché as Legislative Fact
No full textIn the last ten years, federal courts have quietly begun to apply copyright’s scènes à faire doctrine to dismiss infringement claims before party discovery has occurred. This move theoretically should not be possible, because applying the doctrine requires evidence of the conventions and tropes of the artistic genres at issue—something unlikely to be reflected in the parties’ pleadings.
This Article identifies this trend and explores the workarounds district courts use to achieve these dismissals without a factual record before them. The most common methods courts use are inconsistent with both the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure and Evidence and risk bias and baseless decisions.
The Article then places these dismissals in context. It suggests two causes, working in concert, for the recent shift to early scènes à faire rulings. First, the Supreme Court’s decisions in Iqbal and Twombly encouraged federal judges to dismiss more claims earlier, on the basis of their personal experience and “common sense.” Second, technological advances in the last twenty years have severely undermined access as a barrier to copyright infringement claims. Deploying the scènes à faire doctrine early provides an alternate way for judges to dismiss weak claims. The Article argues that this shift, and the methods judges have used to make it happen, has had both positive and negative consequences. These early dismissals prevent windfalls and lockup and preserve positive spillovers—but their procedural and evidentiary weaknesses undermine these benefits.
Lastly, the Article suggests a simple, though perhaps controversial, procedural solution. It argues that courts should treat genre conventions as legislative facts, rather than case-specific adjudicative facts, and embrace the use of “factual precedents”—earlier decisions in which courts have determined that certain elements in a genre or theme are scènes à faire—as long as certain procedural safeguards are in place. Repeated use of reliable factual precedents to support application of the scènes à faire doctrine would create a one-way ratchet in favor of the public domain, preserving the benefits of early dismissals based on scènes à faire while ameliorating some of their downsides
Reconstructing Art and Evidence: Forensic Architecture in Institutional Settings
No full textForensic Architecture (FA) is a London-based multidisciplinary research collective and human rights agency that uses digital modeling, architectural and spatial analysis, and open-sourced images to investigate and present visual evidence of human rights violations committed by state governments, militaries, and corporations. The team of architects, software developers, filmmakers, investigative journalists, scientists, and lawyers, collaborates with civil society groups, witnesses, and victims to establish a counternarrative in the service of human rights and social justice, exhibiting their investigations in institutional settings as varied as legal courts and parliamentary tribunals, citizen assemblies, mass media, universities, and art museums. My research focuses on FA’s critical reception within these institutional settings and questions how the evidentiary and aesthetic nature of such exhibitions impact the viewer’s experience, specifically within the space of the art institution. Comparing three FA exhibitions—The Long Duration of a Split-Second at the 2018 Turner Prize (London), Triple-Chaser at the Whitney Museum of American Art’s 2019 Biennial (New York City), and Forensic Architecture: Hacia una Estética Investigativa (2017) at the Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo (Mexico City)—I ask how the categories of “art” and “evidence” are upended, broadened, or otherwise transformed through the interaction between FA’s particular aesthetics and the museum spaces in which FA often exhibits projects. What are the social responsibilities of “art” in the face of human rights crises? How does the institutional setting impact the public’s aesthetic experience and understanding of human rights violations
The Politics of the Black Womb: How Education and Power Reinforce the U.S. Black Maternal Health Crisis
No full textThis study investigates the alarming maternal mortality rates among Black women in the U.S. today first by exploring the historical exploitation of Black maternal bodies during enslavement and with the rise of professionalized gynecology. It challenges the narrative that attributes these outcomes to individual choices or supposedly inherent biological factors, arguing instead that the devaluing of Black women’s well-being and authoritative knowledge have been constructed along with the United States itself. To advance a constructive response, the paper analyzes curriculum competencies for obstetric and midwifery healthcare providers, surveys of Black women\u27s birthing experiences in the previous 20 years, and interviews with midwives to explore how conceptions of care are formally and informally conveyed through medical training with implications for how power is exercised in provider-patient relations in obstetric and midwifery care. Preliminary findings indicate that midwifery does contribute to reducing health risks for Black birthing individuals by distributing power in ways that increase feelings of autonomy and practices of communication, collaboration, and shared decision-making among practitioner, birthing person, and family supporters. Additionally, in neighboring and peer countries that have integrated midwifery services, including normalized postpartum care, there has been a clear reduction in maternal mortality. The work therefore ultimately concludes that effective, long-lasting solutions to the maternal health crisis exist with increasing support by relevant experts, however, they fundamentally challenge the norms and deeply entrenched incentive structures of the contemporary U.S. healthcare system. We know how to address power imbalances in the birthing process and how to empower critical insights that would counteract the structural subjugation of Black women in obstetric healthcare. We need the commitment and political will to translate the lessons of past and present midwifery into healthcare that prioritizes and translates into well-being for all
Gesture and Fine Motor Skills in Minimal-low Verbal Autistic Adolescents
No full textAutism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is a neurodevelopmental disorder that affects several aspects of an individual’s cognition, social skills, and even motor ability. One domain commonly impacted by ASD is spoken language, however, the root cause of this speech impairment is still a topic requiring significant research. The current study sought to explore how manual modes of communication are impacted by ASD. This study used a variety of parent-reported measures to assess children and adolescents’ fine motor ability, expressive and receptive language skill, and the extent to which they use communicative gestures. Analysis of these data revealed striking patterns that suggest language impairment associated with ASD is not rooted in manual or oral motor deficits alone