Capitolio Nacional Seat of the Congress. Bogotá, Colombia. 2008. Wikimedia / CC BY-SA 3.0 Transitional Justice in Colombia In the past ten years, under the flag of transitional justice, Colombia has sought to implement a series of measures to confront the legacy of the conflict regarding property and land tenancy. In 2011, the government enacted…
“Mount Nebo” by Maya-Anaïs Yataghène / Wikimedia CC BY 2.0 The doctrine of subsidiarity is most closely associated with modern Roman Catholic Social Teaching, particularly as codified in the social encyclicals Quadragesimo Anno (1931) and Centesimus Annus (1991). In the latter document, Pope John Paul II defines subsidiarity as the principle that “a community of…
Civil unrest in Philadelphia, PA. June 2, 2020. / Rob Buhlman / Flickr / CC-BY-2.0 The murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis on May 25, 2020 triggered an unprecedented wave of protests in the United States and all around the world from Australia to the UK, France, Tunisia, and Iraq. This worldwide wave of protests…
Image by Sonny Sixteen from Pexels The racialization of security currently playing out is nothing new. Security has often been racialized and racism has always been securitized. Historically, the incestuous relationship between these two issues has been anchored in a logic of instrumentalization. Definitionally, racism is essentially a threefold dehumanizing construct representing a vision of…
Image by Pexels from Pixabay “The Blaine Amendment was ‘born of bigotry.”’ Reasonable people can certainly disagree over whether Chief Justice John Roberts’ forceful words in the opinion of the five-to-four judgement in Espinoza v. Montana Department of Taxation, which produced seven different opinions, was the stake through the heart of the anti-Catholic Blaine Amendments…
Photo by Fifaliana Joy (Pixabay) Americans looking for a way forward in this national crisis are calling for prioritizing anti-racism, demilitarizing American society, and democratizing the political and legal system. To do so will require understanding which institutions are most in need of reform. My research on the American border suggests that border policy should…
Image by Rudy and Peter Skitterians from Pixabay The images have already become iconic: militarized police using tear gas and rubber bullets to clear peaceful protesters from Lafayette Park, positioned across from the White House, so that President Trump and his entourage could walk to the historic St. John’s Episcopal Church for a photo op…
Photo by Alex Holyoake / (Flickr, CC BY 2.0) Growing up in the Black Church, I have been raised in a context in which call-and-response is invoked often. In call-and-response, a singer sings or a preacher issues a call, and others respond with an answer. One may greet another with “God is good all the…
Photo by michael_schueller on Pixabay Over the last decade, the internet has been abuzz with complaints from white American Christians that they are the victims of a broad secularist and leftist persecution. Stung by the decision in Obergefell v. Hodges, bewildered by demographic research demonstrating their new minority status, and ever more desperately aligning their…
Black and Silver Laptop Computer, Jolo Diaz, Pexels Last month, for the first time ever, Twitter fact-checked two presidential tweets. In response, President Donald Trump issued an executive order which would, in essence, eliminate a pillar of U.S. internet law, the protections contained in Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA 230). CDA 230…