“Women’s rights and their defenders are really often caught in the cross-hairs of these very risk-averse banks and overzealous regulatory authorities,” says law professor Jayne Huckerby, an author of a study that found institutional donors such as Western governments and large foundations — as well as banks — are increasingly neglecting human-rights organizations that focus their work on women’s issues and operate in areas such as Syria and Iraq.
Read More in The Washington PostCategory: Global
Opposing Immigration Wasn’t Always Racist
“Trump, no doubt, played to racial sentiments. But he also saw something his opponents didn’t: that even if Democrats refuse to acknowledge some of the complexities of immigration, many voters still see a need for limits,” writes Peter Skerry, a senior fellow at the Kenan Institute for Ethics.
Read More in The Boston Globe
Trump, ‘Fake News’ And Russia Coverage
President Donald Trump offers a consistently defiant response to allegations about the Kremlin’s meddling in the 2016 campaign: “fake news.” The Reporters’ Lab at Duke catalogued 111 Trump statements about “fake news” over the five months following his election. “Of all the times we found Trump referring to ‘fake news’ from Nov. 8 to April 7, 41 percent were either direct or indirect responses to news coverage about Russia’s role in the presidential campaign,” writes student researcher Riley Griffin.
Read More at Poynter.
3 Questions Trump Must Answer After His Syria Strike
“Candidate Trump repeatedly promised that he would not simply conduct American foreign policy in the way Obama did. By punishing Assad for his brazen violation of international law and basic human decency, Trump took a significant step forward in fulfilling that campaign promise,” writes political scientist Peter Feaver. “But Trump also promised that his approach would produce more lasting success than Obama’s. Whether he fulfills that promise will depend on what comes next, not on what happened Thursday.”
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How to Handle North Korea? Apply Pressure — Then Wait
“Last year alone, North Korea conducted two nuclear weapons tests and 24 missile tests, with more this year, including a new missile test on April 5, clearly intended to overshadow and complicate the first meeting this week between President Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping. To avoid past failures in trying to thwart North Korea, the Trump administration should initiate bilateral diplomatic talks with the communist nation immediately,” writes Andrew Byers, a visiting assistant professor of history and an intelligence analyst.
Read More in The Hill
Trump and His ‘America First’ Philosophy Face First Moral Quandary in Syria
President Trump has vowed to follow a radically new approach to foreign policy that jettisons the costly mantle of moral leadership in favor of America’s most immediate economic and security interests. But it’s unclear how the crises in Syria would produce a significant shift in policy. “They have not yet figured out what they are trying to do,” says political scientist Peter Feaver. “What looks like recalibration might be multiple voices.”
How to Solve Controversial Issues Like Climate Change
“The lesson for all leaders: Start with problems, not solutions. People will discount the evidence if they don’t like the fix you are proposing. This is particularly important in today’s extremely fractured world. The first step in moving forward during such great polarization isn’t offering solutions, it’s agreeing a problem exists,” writes Fuqua School Dean Bill Boulding.
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The U.S. Response to Syria and North Korea
Law professor Charlie Dunlap shares insights on Trump’s foreign policy challenges. “I think the jury is still out as to how exactly Trump’s ‘America first’ stance will influence foreign policy. My bet is that it will be very situation-specific, and in the case of North Korea, it won’t differ, initially anyway, too much from the Obama approach except to say that Trump may believe he can better motivate China to help with a solution than his predecessor was able to do,” he says.
Read More at Duke Today
Is Repeal of Bathroom Bill a Good Deal for Anyone?
The NCAA’s deadline was “the symbolic hammer that finally worked,” says public policy professor Pope “Mac” McCorkle, a former lawyer who has worked as a policy consultant for North Carolina’s representatives. He says the deal worked out Thursday looks more like “a plea bargain. “The NCAA isn’t liberal or conservative (by nature) so it became kind of the default judge in this case.”
Read More in The International Business Times
Civilians In Mosul Remain Trapped As ISIS Digs In
Law professor Charlie Dunlap, a retired major general in the U.S. Air Force, talks about U.S. military operations and urban warfare in Mosul, where some 400,000 civilians remain trapped. More than 100 civilians were reportedly killed in a recent U.S. air strike, and Dunlap and military officials have noted that ISIS is using civilians as human shields. “In the case of Mosul the enemy has had 2 1/2 years to prepare for this assault” and they have burrowed in, Dunlap says. He added that urban combat is always very dangerous for civilians. “Every civilian casualty is a tragedy and the military has to work very hard to avoid them.”
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Admiral: U.S. Relies Heavily On Allies in Latin America
The biggest security challenge facing the U.S. in in the Caribbean and Central and South America is monitoring the smuggling networks that operate there and have connections to other parts of the word, says Adm. Kurt Tidd, the U.S. Navy admiral in charge of the region. Also speaking at the event this week at Duke were U.S. Army Gen. Martin Dempsey, retired Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman and a Duke alum who’s now a researcher at the university. Political scientist Peter Feaver moderated the talk.
Read More in the Herald-Sun
Why the Foreign Policy Sky is Not Falling
“In my view, it’s vitally important for national security law professionals to separate whatever personal dislike they may harbor for the president from their assessments of what the U.S. government writ large is doing. Moral outrage has its value, but it can also be counter-productive,” writes law professor Charlie Dunlap, a former deputy judge advocate general of the U.S. Air Force. “Likewise, we need to recognize that reflexively and indiscriminately opposing every initiative of the Trump administration creates the very real danger of throwing out the proverbial baby with the bath water.”
Read More in Just Security
