May 2021

CGA professor John V. Kane and co-authors published their article, “Partisans Use Emotions as Social Pressure: Feeling Anger and Gratitude at Exciters and Recruits in Political Groups” in the peer-reviewed journal “Party Politics.” The authors studied how American and Danish individuals exhibit willingness to use emotion as a means of maintaining and building partisan groups. While politicians may use bribery, coercion and/or rhetoric to enhance their party’s strength, these findings reveal ways in which ordinary citizens can do so.
On May 6 and 7, Professor Jennifer Trahan participated in meetings (remotely) of the Use of Force Committee of the International Law Association.  The Committee has members from around the globe, with Trahan being one of three US representatives.  The Committee is examining legal questions related to outside military assistance requested by a state and what limitations exist to such a request.  
 
On May 19, 21, 28, 31, and June 3, Professor Trahan participated in the International Criminal Court-NGO “Round Table Meetings,” where NGO representatives met with key officials of the International Criminal Court, with meetings normally held in The Hague, Netherlands, but held remotely this year.  
 
Finally, on May 18, Professor Trahan spoke to the Human Rights Committee of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York on her book “Existing Legal Limits to Security Council Veto Power in the Face of Atrocity Crimes” (CUP 2020).  And, on May 25, she spoke (remotely) on her book at Uppsala University in Sweden, in a panel also featuring former UN Under-Secretary General for Legal Affairs and Head of the UN Legal Office, Ambassador (ret.) Hans Corell.
 
The International Criminal Court Committee of the American Branch of the International Law Association (which Professor Trahan co-chairs) and the U.S. Chapter of the Association Internationale de Droit Pénal, on May 4, issued a joint statement congratulating International Criminal Court Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda and the Office of the Prosecutor of the ICC for their joint nomination for the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize.
Prof. Christian Busch’s paper on social innovation in Africa won this year’s Academy of Management Masini Award for Innovative Scholarship! The paper is in the review process, but a link to his related article on growth strategies can be found here. 
Adjunct Assistant Professor Joshua Krasna published an article in War on the Rocks entitled, “Jordan: still stable, but less so” on recent developments in Jordan and on the prospects for stability in the Kingdom.
 
Prof. Krasna also published a paper with the Foreign Policy Research Institute on “A Wave of Smile Offensives in the Middle East: Why and How Real”, examining the motivations and interests behind various State tons in the region, between Egypt and Turkey, Turkey and Saudi Arabia, and Saudi Arabia and Iran.

On May 14th, Professor Mary Beth Altier presented her research in a brown bag discussion hosted by the United Nations Disarmament, Demobilization, and Reintegration Section.

Her article, “Criminal or Terrorist: Fear, Bias, and Public Support for Prisoner Re-entry Programs” was also published in the journal Terrorism and Political Violence. Drawing on research on public attitudes toward prisoner reentry in criminology and social psychological theory, this study offers a series of hypotheses about support for rehabilitation programming for terrorist offenders. These hypotheses are then tested through a survey experiment on a nationally representative sample of 1,021 adult citizens in the United States. The results show that the public is less supportive of postrelease rehabilitation programming for terrorists than other criminal offenders. Support is also lower when an Islamist, rather than a white nationalist, offender is referenced. Support increases when a referenced Islamist is described as a juvenile convicted of a less serious offense. Men, younger individuals, those with some college education, and self-identified liberals are more likely to support terrorist rehabilitation programming. Finally, irrespective of treatment, respondents are most likely to cite evidence of effectiveness as the factor that would increase their support for rehabilitation programming.