That’s why I agreed to support the NC Commission of Inquiry on Torture, a grassroots effort to build momentum for genuine national accountability. The federal government and courts won’t guarantee justice but people can if they insist on transparency and truth,” writes Robin Kirk, co-chair of the Duke University Human Rights Center at the Franklin Humanities Institute.
Read More in NewsweekCategory: Global
Trump Team to Meet on Paris Again
Nicholas School biologist Stuart Pimm and colleagues are seeking to force the Interior Department to restore webpages on climate change through a provision in the Freedom of Information Act. “The public has a right to know important scientific information, particularly when it threatens to unravel the web of life we all depend on,” Pimm says.
Read More in Politico
On Israeli Airstrikes in Syria — Lawful and No Need for Transparency
“… The facts are scarce about what intelligence or legal theory the Israelis relied upon to launch their attack (assuming it was them). However, my guess is that they knew there were Hezbollah weapons in the warehouses that were being transshipped to the Israeli frontier, and that for legal justification, they relied upon the concept of anticipatory self-defense,” writes law professor Charles Dunlap.
Read More at Just Security
What Will Kill Neoliberalism?
Suppose, indeed, that the age of capitalism is actually reaching its conclusion — but one that doesn’t involve the ascension of the working class. Suppose, instead, that we consider the existence of a third great social class vying with the other two for social dominance. …”
Read More in The Nation
Venezuela: From Richest Country in Latin America to ‘Basket Case’
Venezuela is on the verge of implosion. Inflation has skyrocketed, shortages of food and other basic necessities abound, and Venezuelans are increasingly fleeing the country and relocating around the region. “A country that was once the richest in Latin America is now a basket case, and the Bolivarians are to blame. The scope of their failure, with the world’s greatest reserves of oil, is just astounding,” says professor Patrick Duddy, a former ambassador to Venezuela.
Read More on The Cipher Brief
NAFTA and Global Value Chains
“A winning way to view the world is through the lens of regional value chains competing with each other. North America is competing with Europe and East Asia, rather than the U.S. competing with Germany and China,” writes Gary Gereffi, director of the Center on Globalization, Governance & Competitiveness at Duke. “The national approach is an outdated framework from the economic standpoint. Most industries today are organized into regional and global supply chains, which requires a new calculus of winners and losers involving both workers and companies.”
Read More at Brookings.com
Risky Brinkmanship With an Unstable North Korean Regime
“We should hope that the United States is not resolved to risk major catastrophe in an exchange in which a victory only produces marginal gains. In this case, an adage from another early 1980s movie, ‘WarGames,’ applies: ‘The only winning move is not to play,’ ” writes political scientist Kyle Beardsley.
Read More in The Cleveland Plain Dealer
French Voters Have Rejected The Establishment
Political scientist Herbert Kitschelt says the terms of political competition in France are shifting: Voters are increasingly gravitating toward either liberal positions on both economics and societal issues (immigration, LGBTQ rights, the place of Islam, etc.) or authoritarian positions on both sets of issues.
Read More in The Washington Post
U.S. Cyber Defense ‘Terrible,’ Former NSA Director Says
“Over the last decade cyber has become an element of national power used by us and by our adversaries. We need the defensive architecture that allows industry to defend itself long enough for government to (then) come in and help,” Gen. Keith Alexander, former commander of U.S. Cyber Command and former director of the National Security Agency said in a speech at Duke.
Read More on Duke Today
How Will Trump Draw Immigrant Scientists to The US?
This question comes from Duke’s “Glad You Asked” podcast. Molecular biologist Raphael Valdivia wonders if the country’s legacy of welcoming scientists and experts from all over the world is at risk because of the new administration’s crackdown on immigration and rejection of certain scientifically accepted concepts, like man-made climate change.
Read More on PRI
Khizr Khan: ‘The Country Remains Divided’
Khzir Khan is a lawyer whose son was killed while serving in the Iraq war. He and his wife, Ghazala, entered the national spotlight when he addressed the Democratic National Convention in July and offered to lend Donald Trump his personal pocket Constitution. Since then, he has continued to speak out on behalf of Muslim-Americans and veteran families. “Now, as we continue to speak, the country remains divided,” Khan told Zach Fuchs, managing editor of Duke Political Review.
Read More in Duke Political Review
Trump Reverses Course on Iran Deal; Free Speech on Campuses
Sanford School professor David Schanzer and Scott Briggaman of WPTF/NCN News in Raleigh discuss the deepening political crisis in Venezuela and President Trump’s admission that the Iran deal is working. In light of another student protests of a right-wing speaker, Schanzer offers his insight on the state of the First Amendment on college campuses across America.
Listen at On Security
