Reactionary politics have never been kind to academia. While a well-educated population is deemed a pillar of a democratic society and strong economy, authoritarian regimes in contrast have a dark history of mistreatment of students and academics. China’s cultural revolution, Mussolini’s persecutions of leftist intellectuals, and the Nazi book burnings show how order and state […]
Power defines nearly all aspects of American society, whether covert or obvious. It impacts the way in which people behave, shapes workplace environments, and determines relationships between people by granting some power over others who have no choice but to be subordinate. Historical patterns of domination in this country have put men at the top […]
In my previous column, I touched upon the fraught history of the international counter-trafficking regime, including the rhetoric of white slavery, the Mann Act, and the Alien Act. This installment will focus on international legislative actions on human trafficking and the continued impact of moral panics and crusades on trafficking rhetoric. Before I begin, I […]
Flying into Cape Town, the city’s water crisis becomes apparent even before the plane’s wheels touch down. As the sprawling coastal hub comes into view below, framed by craggy mountains on one side and the Indian and Atlantic oceans on the other, the pilot’s voice crackles over the intercom to welcome passengers to “the Mother […]
For five years of my life, I lived openly and unapologetically as a gay man. Twelve years old and gay as all hell, I was not a typical middle-school student you would find in 2012, even in my hometown of Long Beach in Southern California. And when the world didn’t end that December, I thought, […]
Take a moment to remember your first cell phone. Mine was a blue LG env3 flip phone that was virtually indestructible and had a mysterious internet button that I was never allowed to press. In 7th grade, this was the epitome of freedom; all of a sudden, I had the power to text or call […]
A few weeks ago, a couple of my closest friends and I attended a concert at a small venue. We were blithely dancing, concerned only with the live music before us, when I was struck by a thought that inspired a moment of panic—what if someone were to open fire at the crowd? The room […]
It is a sad but inescapable truth about the history of international law—and internationalism more broadly—that much of it is fraught with racism, imperialism, and moral crusading. The counter-human trafficking regime is no exception. The earliest legislative action against human trafficking on an international level was conceived of as the International Agreement for the suppression […]
I will not use names, for there are far too many victims for us to remember. I won’t use dates or towns, because this crisis doesn’t answer to time and place. I refuse to use numbers and statistics, as numbers are lost on those who are numb to the demands of tragedy. Another mass shooting […]
Few regimes in international law pack as much of an emotional punch as human trafficking. Whether through its portrayal in various media—including the Taken movies or in the music video for Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance”—or as championed by various human rights organizations on both the right and left, there is a definite consensus that human […]
