By Daisy Ni (PO ’21) In the summer of 2018, the United Nations finalized the text of the Global Compact for Safe, Orderly, and Regular Migration, the first international agreement laying out a comprehensive framework addressing international migration. The Trump administration, however, withdrew from participation in December of 2017, citing the Compact’s incompatibility with national...
By Daisy Ni (PO ’21) Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, has long been a controversial figure. He, alongside with his site, are best known for their release of 25,000 cables of classified government information stolen by former U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning. Since then, Assange has had a strained relationship with the U.S. government. President Trump, for example, has...
By Daisy Ni (PO ’21) “A government of the people, for the people, and by the people” emblemizes American democracy, and indeed many other democracies around the world today. The United States’ government draws its legitimacy from its citizens, holding a duty first and foremost to the population that constitutes it. Popular sovereignty, however, can sometimes come apart from the government which...
By Daisy Ni (PO ’21) In light of the caravan of migrants, thousands in number, traveling from Central America toward the United States, President Trump has released a new series of startling anti-immigration policy Tweets, including the idea of banning asylum seekers. The administration has already taken steps over the past few years to reduce the number of asylum cases, which it sees as...
By Daisy Ni (PO ’21) The debate surrounding the merits of our electoral system has been intensifying over the past few years. Under the current plurality system (also called winner-take-all or first-past-the-post), each voter votes for only one candidate, with the candidate who polls more votes than any other candidate elected. The plurality system, however, can, and has, led to occasions...
By Daisy Ni (PO ’21) First introduced by George Kelling and James Wilson in 1982, the broken windows theory transformed the field of criminology. Writing in an Atlantic article, Kelling and Wilson claimed that “if a window in a building is broken and is left unrepaired, all the rest of the windows will soon be broken.” The theory thus suggests that visible signs of disorder in a...
By Daisy Ni (PO ’21) As the highest court of the land, the Supreme Court was created alongside our executive and legislative branches to keep their power in check. To do so, the Court’s role requires an immunity from political pressure. The appointment process and life-long tenures of judges, for example, remove the pressures of direct elections and public opinion so judges can administer...
By Daisy Ni (PO ’21) The past year saw the rise and fall of California Proposition 3 (Cal 3), an initiative proposing to split California into three states. Sponsored by venture capitalist Tim Draper, it aimed to divide California into three: Northern California, Southern California, and California. Although Cal 3 gained enough voter signatures to qualify for the November ballot, the...
By Daisy Ni (PO ’21) The United States’ military, the strongest military in the world, has depended upon an all-volunteer force (AVF) since 1973. Since then, our military conflicts have been disproportionately burdened by less than one percentage of our population. Although our military efficacy remains as stable as ever, the AVF model contains moral concerns, with opponents doubting its...
By Daisy Ni (PO ’21) In the fight to bridge the gender pay gap, pay transparency has long been a tool suggested by civil rights groups. Theoretically, pay transparency—referring to a company’s public release of the salary information of all their employees—would reveal gender discrepancies where they exist. Such disclosure could force businesses to think about the gender pay gap in ways...
