By Daisy Ni (PO ’21) The past week proved to be a tense time for the Afghan population, who faced a major change in facets of everyday communication. On November 2, the Afghan government released an order to ban Facebook-owned WhatsApp and Telegram. The deputy director of the telecoms regulatory authority justified the decision on the grounds of national security, stating that the two apps are...
Interview by William Zheyuan Shi (CMC ’20), Staff Writer Karl Eikenberry is the Oksenberg-Rohlen Distinguished Fellow and Director of the U.S-Asia Security Initiative at Stanford University’s Asia-Pacific Research Center. He is a Stanford University Professor of Practice, and an affiliate at the FSI Center for Democracy, Development, and Rule of Law, Center for International Security...
Jacob Wang (PO ’21) Since the Tiananmen Square student demonstration movement in 1989, the People’s Republic of China has been repeatedly accused of violating international human rights law. The international community condemns China’s practices on two fronts: China’s restrictions on freedom of speech, religion, and political participation are seen as abuses against civil and political...
By Nicole Hsu (SCR ’20) The Japanese Imperial Army forced thousands of comfort women into sexual servitude during World War II. However, these women never received formal compensation nor an apology from the Japanese government for their suffering. Under international human rights and criminal law, the Japanese Imperial Army’s systemic facilitation of comfort stations was a form of wartime...
By Daisy Ni (PO ’21) China has gone through momentous changes in the past few decades, growing to become the second largest economy in the world. This progress, however, has been accompanied by political corruption, a fact acknowledged by President Xi Jinping, General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). During his past term, Xi made anti-corruption a core priority and had...
By Carlisle Micallef (PZ ‘18) Legalism holds that human beings are inherently selfish and ought to be governed using to harsh, cruel punishments. It is a philosophy that actively advocated for using fear to control the masses. Legalism served as the governing ideology of the Qin dynasty but was quickly abandoned and actively rejected by the following Han dynasty. Han Feizi (c. 280-233 B.C.E) is...
Allie Carter (CMC ’19) India’s Supreme Court asserted privacy as a basic right in August of 2017, formally joining the United States, Canada, South Africa, the European Union, and the United Kingdom in doing so. While privacy as a right does not have an explicit definition, it has generally initially applied to data protection and eventually incorporated the disclosure personal information...
Dina Rosin (CMC ’20) The United States Embassy in Israel is currently located in Tel Aviv, despite the state of Israel considering Jerusalem as its capital city. This is unusual because the U.S. typically situates embassies in capital cities and all other countries’ embassies to Israel are currently located in Tel Aviv. Jerusalem is considered to be a holy city for three major religions...
By Blake Plante (PO ’19) When reactionary sanctions are the international community’s only major response to North Korea’s dash for nuclearized ICBMs, it becomes essential to evaluate the possible results of sanctions on North Korea: is it likely that sanctions will prevent Pyongyang from developing nuclear warheads? What comes next if sanctions fail? How should North Korea be engaged with...
Interview[1] by April Xiaoyi Xu (PO ‘18), Editor-in-Chief Transcribed by Lathan Liou (PO ‘19), Kaela Cote-Stemmermann (SCR ‘18), and Annie Wan (PO ‘20), Staff Writers Dr. Bernhard Schwartländer took up his position as WHO Representative in China in September 2013. Before joining WHO in China, he served as Director for Evidence, Policy and Innovation at the UNAIDS headquarters in Geneva...
