IR Honors Students

In 1834, less than 15 years after the introduction of the printing press by New England missionaries, the literacy rate in the Hawaiian Kingdom reached a recorded 91-95%. This rate surpassed that of many Western nations during the time period, but has historically been attributed primarily to the work of Christian missionaries and ignores major contributions by Hawaiian scholars and teachers. Similarly, histories of Hawaii have privileged the perspectives, narratives, skills and intellect of white foreigners to justify the illegal overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom in 1893 and continued American occupation. Nascent scholars have challenged these histories, revealing how the Hawaiian monarchy exercised political prowess to defend their sovereignty and obtain international recognition as a nation-state from the major Western powers (including France, Britain and the US). Following the illegal overthrow, American businessmen took control of the kingdom and education system, banned Hawaiian language in all public schools and annexed Hawaii to the US in 1898. Today minority students in Hawaii, particularly Native Hawaiians, suffer disproportionately from low academic performance, high illiteracy and high-school drop out rates. Extensive literature has shown that within settler colonial polities, education is a form of ideological warfare frequently used as a tool to eradicate Native identities, cultural practices and histories. This is well studied regarding boarding schools and Native communities in the continental United States, but less so in Hawaii. My research uses the framework of settler colonialism to explore the role of education in the American occupation of Hawaii as a tool of eradication and control. 

Thesis:

Makalua-Yee, Ma'ili (2020): Confronting Settler Colonial Histories: Education, Race and Politics in the Hawaiian Kingdom

Stanford Digital Repository. Available HERE.

The Responsibility to Protect (R2P) doctrine, which was unanimously signed by UN member states in 2005, declared that states have a responsibility to protect their citizens from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity. R2P was revolutionary for the time given that previously the UN considered domestic state sovereignty as inviolable and was only allowed to intervene if the state threatened international peace and security. Fourteen years later, R2P has been invoked in humanitarian interventions in Libya and Côte d’Ivoire but has been ignored in other cases of mass atrocities such as in Syria. This thesis examines how R2P has changed the way the UN performs interventions in conflicts and whether it has succeeded in preventing and abating mass atrocities. Specifically, this thesis takes a quantitative approach in analyzing how R2P and other factors have affected how fast the UN intervenes in civil wars and then examines these causal mechanisms qualitatively using three case studies of Libya, Côte d’Ivoire, and Syria.

Thesis:

Anderson, Grace (2019): Living up to Responsibilities: UN Humanitarian Interventions and the Impact of R2P

Stanford Digital Repository. Available HERE.

On November 7, 1916, Jeanette Rankin (R-MT) was the first woman elected to the House of Representatives. Half a century later, 1992 became the “Year of the Woman” as 48 women were elected to the House, and six were already sitting in the Senate. Since this watershed movement, women’s advancement into Congress has continued at a slow yet unremitting pace. While female Congresspersons now compose twenty-three percent of the overall legislative body, the existing gains have not translated to equal participation and legislative productivity. This raises the central question of this thesis: Between 1992 and 2015, how did the increase in women’s representation in the United States Congress affect legislative outcomes? To analyze the question, this thesis evaluates four hypotheses about differences between men and women’s legislative outcomes – including productivity, diverse legislative outcomes, distinct leadership styles, and representational focus. Through both a quantitative and qualitative approach, this thesis seeks to make the case for Congresswomen.

Thesis:

Hossain, Tashrima (2019): The Case for Congresswomen: Gender Equality in Congress as a Determinant of Political Outcomes

Stanford Digital Repository. Available HERE.

Although there has been extensive documentation of the atrocities committed by the U.S. military during the Vietnam War, little to no academic literature exists on the sexual violence perpetrated by the U.S. military against Vietnamese civilians. In 2018, I identified a massive archive of U.S. military records that details cases of sexual violence committed against over 400 Vietnamese civilians. Using these case files as an initial evidentiary basis, my thesis explores the following research question: What is the history of the sexual violence perpetrated by the U.S. military against Vietnamese civilians during the Vietnam War, and what legal and political mechanisms existed to bring justice to victims? Through qualitative analysis of U.S. military records, tribunal transcripts, American soldiers’ and Vietnamese survivors’ memoirs, and interviews with Vietnamese and American civilians, I construct a comprehensive account of the sexual violence that occurred during the Vietnam War and explore the U.S. government’s silence surrounding these crimes. I also evaluate the viability of several different mechanisms of transitional justice within the context of addressing wartime sexual violence in Vietnam. Ultimately, I outline recommended frameworks for transitional justice for Vietnamese survivors and their families, with the goal of holding the U.S. more accountable for war crimes they commit and setting a precedent for rule of law and justice for wartime sexual violence.

Thesis:

Huynh, Audrey  (2019): The “Black Blouse Girl": The History of Sexual Violence in the Vietnam War and Opportunities for Justice

Stanford Digital Repository. Available HERE. 

The transition from military regimes to democratic governments is a difficult one for all states, particularly those with a history of human rights abuses. This thesis explores the differences in human rights prosecutions after military dictatorships in Chile and Argentina through the lens of the following two questions:  How did the number and type of human rights prosecutions differ between Argentina and Chile, and to what extent did political legitimacy influence the decision to prosecute? To answer the first question, details of how the prosecutorial patterns differed between the two countries are examined, including trial location, level of crime prosecuted, the rank of those prosecuted, and verdict. Next, qualitative evidence from newspaper articles, speeches by public officials, and public opinion polls is used to build a causal story about how the trials were both a reconciliation tool and a political negotiation point in each country. In Argentina, democratic actors found it advantageous to prosecute immediately after the transition.  However, when democratic stability was challenged, amnesty was often granted, suggesting political motivations for prosecution trends. Human rights prosecutions in Chile after the democratic transition were sparse and avoided high ranking officials. The trends were also a political compromise to protect democracy given the negotiating power of the exiting military regime. Argentina and Chile differ in their prosecution details, yet in their causal stories share a similar thread of being heavily influenced by the political repercussions that came with the trials. The story in these two countries can be used to better understand how, when and why countries use prosecutions for reconciliation as well as how to encourage accountability for human rights violations in the future.

Thesis:

Kapasi, Hana (2019): The Decision to Prosecute: Accountability for Human Rights Violations in Chile and Argentina after Military Regimes

Stanford Digital Repository. Available HERE.

In an age when a politically and militarily resurgent China is beginning to reshape the liberal international order, it is instructive to look backward to a time when a weak and fragmented China turned to foreign powers for tutelage. My thesis explores the evolution of Sino-German military cooperation between 1919, when Germany was stripped of her colonial possessions, and 1938, when the last German military advisors were recalled from service in China, to show how the German military missions created the first truly national Chinese armed forces. To this end, I use English-, German-, and Chinese-language sources across a variety of media and disciplines to shed light upon this little-known chapter of diplomatic history, about which little scholarly material exists in English. I conclude that the Sino-German relationship was, to a remarkable degree for its time, grounded in reciprocity and equality, and that it was National Socialist ideology, German bureaucratic politics and a shift in German geopolitical motives that unilaterally ended their military cooperation and possible alliance. Throughout my examination of what the German military missions to China could and could not accomplish, a recurring lesson is for policymakers to "mind the gap" between expectations and reality. By examining an earlier period of cooperation with a Western power, I hope my thesis can be of use in predicting how and why China decides to cooperate within the international system.

Thesis:

Kinnie, Kyle (2019): The Eagle and the Dragon: Sino-German Military Cooperation 1919-1938

Stanford Digital Repository. Available HERE.

Do terrorist groups that have been victims of mass killings commit more transnational acts of terrorism than other terrorist groups? In answering this question, my thesis will add to the literature on the causes of transnational terrorism, the motivations of terrorists, and the broader ramifications of mass killings. With this work, I hope to shed more light on the connection between mass killings and transnational terrorism which is not only understudied in the political science literature, but is also underestimated by the international community.

Thesis:

Lund, Elena Diane (2019): Do Mass Killings Breed Transnational Terrorism?

Stanford Digital Repository. Available HERE.

After domestic conflict, why do some settlements recover faster than others? I explore the variation in recovery speed among Iraqi villages after the 2014-2017 Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) insurgency and focus primarily on the role of ethno-religious diversity in explaining the differences. Using satellite-observed nighttime light emissions as a proxy for economic activity, I construct an 81-month panel of economic output in 348 Iraqi settlements occupied by ISIL that captures activity before, during, and after their occupation. This information is combined with settlement-level data on ethno-religious composition. In regression and matching approaches, I evaluate the causal effect of ethno-religious diversity on post-conflict recovery across space and time. The results show that diversity has a large and significant negative influence on recovery, and the magnitude of this effect grows over time. I argue that diversity slows reconstruction because it alters the costs and benefits of revenge, aggravates a post-conflict security dilemma, and alters local elites’ choices of where and how they compete for power.

Thesis:

Lyall, Lloyd (2019): Ethno-religious diversity and recovery after conflict in post-ISIL Iraq: a geospatial approach

Stanford Digital Repository. Available HERE.

In the 1965 Hart-Celler Act, the US Congress placed a cap on immigration from the Western Hemisphere for the first time. Previously, the number of Latin American immigrants who entered per year was not restricted by a quota. Why did Congress enact this policy at the time?  My thesis combines statistical analysis and historical methods in order to provide a comprehensive answer to this question. At a time when the debate over immigration, especially immigration from Latin America, is front and center in our national politics, it is important to understand the roots of our policies.

Thesis:

Miller, Renata (2019): Closing the Floodgates: The Origins of U.S. Immigration Policy Towards Latin America in the 1965 Hart-Celler Act

Stanford Digital Repository. Available HERE.

Located in the heart of Southeast Asia, Myanmar is a majority-Buddhist country that recently transitioned from an authoritarian regime to a nominal democracy. Despite this, violence against the nation’s minorities has escalated. In August 2017, Myanmar’s military began a scorched-earth campaign against the majority-Muslim Rohingya people of Rahkine State. In August 2018, the U.N. accused the military of the worst crime in international law: genocide. Forcing hundreds of thousands of stateless Rohingya across the Myanmar-Bangladeshi border, the military claims that the Rohingya are “illegal immigrants.” What is the true narrative of the Rohingyas’ history, and how does their history shed light on the historical and religious roots of Myanmar’s genocide of the Rohingya? From a contemporary human rights perspective, this thesis analyzes the historical, political and religious origins of today’s genocide of the Rohingya people. Using history as a means to understand the Rohingyas’ current suffering, I aim to construct a narrative of the Rohingya that situates their history in the context of Myanmar’s state-building, employs awareness as a clarion call for international action, and makes a case for the Rohingyas’ human right to national belonging.

Thesis:

Schnider, Kanani (2019): Erasing the Rohingya: The Historical Roots of Myanmar’s Genocide

Stanford Digital Repository. Available HERE.