Written in Their Own Voice: First-Year and Older Students' Perceptions on Their University's Identity

Undergraduate students (218 women, 57 men) attending a Roman Catholic, suburban university with a Franciscan charism tradition completed open-ended items assessing their perception on the mission, vision, and values of their university. However, only 41 lower division, first-year students (33 women, 8 men) and 29 upper division students (22 women, 7 men) actually wrote about different aspects of their school's identity. Qualitative themes emerged in regard to students' assessment of their school identity, such as university mission activities are perceived important, and overall support for different institutional values within the university community.     

‘I'm glad I'm not a Saudi woman’: the First Gulf War and US encounters with Saudi gender relations

On 6 November 1990, nearly 50 Saudi women staged a protest against the ban on women operating motor vehicles in Saudi Arabia. Occurring in the midst of the First Gulf War, the women's protest was a political statement about the harsh restrictions placed on women in the Middle Eastern country which both reflected and influenced Saudi society’s encounter with their American allies during the war. When United States (US) military personnel flooded into Saudi Arabia during the war, they were shocked at the way American servicewomen were treated by their Saudi allies and the second-class status of Saudi women throughout the country. This article explores Americans' reactions to their encounter with Saudi gender relations during the war and argues that the poor treatment of women in Saudi Arabia—which Americans dubbed ‘gender apartheid’—caused many Americans to question the longstanding US alliance with the conservative Muslim country. In doing so, US journalists, military personnel, scholars and the general public began to demand that concern about women's rights should be integrated seriously into US foreign policy towards the Muslim world.     

Prevalence and mental health correlates of harassment and discrimination in the workplace: results from a national study

This study describes past-year prevalence and effects on mental health and drinking outcomes for harassment and discrimination in the workplace (HDW) in a nationally representative random digit dial phone survey conducted in 2003-2004 (n = 2,151). HDW measures included experiences and perceptions of sexual harassment (SH) and generalized workplace harassment (GWH), and perceived harassment or discrimination because of race or ethnicity. Prevalence was examined by sex, race, age, occupation, marital status, and education. Effects of HDW were assessed controlling for demo-graphics and job and life stressors. Experiencing multiple types of HDW was common. SH was more prevalent among women, and Blacks and those of other or mixed race or ethnicity experienced the highest levels of HDW overall. HDW variables explained additional variance in problem drinking and mental health beyond life and job stressors, particularly for women. This study demonstrates that HDW is a prevalent problem associated with poor mental health and problem drinking in the U.S. workforce.     

Exhibitionism: findings from a Midwestern police contact sample

This study used a police sample to examine offense characteristics, recidivism rates, and other types of sexual offending among individuals suspected of exhibitionism. The sample consisted of 202 incidents of indecent exposure perpetrated by 106 identified individuals. Demographic information showed that one quarter of the sample had symptoms of a mental illness and one quarter had a history of substance abuse. More than 84% of the sample had other nonsexual criminal charges. Approximately 30% of the perpetrators were charged for more than one exposure incident. Masturbating during the offense, exposing to child victims, and speaking to the victim did not show any relationship to the occurrence of more sexually aggressive behaviors. However, individuals who had subsequent rape or molestation charges (16.9%) were more likely than those who did not to have had multiple exposure incidents and a history of physical assault charges.     

On Finding for Defendants Who Plead Insanity: The Crucial Impact of Dispositional Instructions and Opportunity to Deliberate

One hundred twenty participants functioned as mock-jurors and as members of deliberating juries in an experiment designed to assess the impact of dispositional instruction on verdicts rendered in an insanity trial. Consistent with prior research (K. E. & J. R. Ogloff, 1995), dispositional instruction had no effect on the verdict preferences of individual jurors prior to deliberating. Yet, as expected, the instruction manipulation had a major impact on postdeliberative decisions (i.e., group verdicts; individual juror verdict preferences). Content analyses of jury deliberations revealed that postdeliberative shifts toward harsh verdicts in uninstructed juries and toward lenient verdicts in instructed juries were mediated by the impact of the Instruction manipulation on the content of jury deliberations: uninstructed juries feared that an acquitted-insane defendant would be freed to act again, whereas instructed juries recognized that finding for an insane defendant implied his retention and treatment. Implications of these results for both legal policy and the conduct of mock-trial research are discussed.     

Quebec’s resilient redistribution model: Activation policies in the 2010s

Compared to the rest of Canada, Quebec has an ambitious and redistributive social model, which includes an elaborate set of Active Labour Market Policies (ALMP), with higher expenditures as a percentage of GDP, an encompassing coverage, and collaborative, multipartite governance arrangements. Since the 2008 recession, however, most OECD countries have implemented retrenchment measures, market enforcement, and individual action plans to their ALMP. Using provincial, federal, and OECD data and reports, this article maps the recent evolution of Quebec’s ALMP in light of these trends. Quebec’s model appears largely resilient, despite declining expenditures and modest concessions to conditionality in social assistance.     

The Effects of the Canadian Supreme Court's Charter Interpretation on Regional and Intergovernmental Tensions in Canada

Canada's adoption of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms in 1982had a number of unexpected consequences. Many Canadians hopedthat the Charter's adoption would help unify the country bycreating a shared set of civil liberties; yet, it was also fearedthat the Charter would tip the balance federal power in favorof the federal government because it allowed the national SupremeCourt to oversee provincial policymaking. Neither of these predictionshas come to pass. In its Charter cases, theSupreme Court hasneither made the national government its constitutional favoritenor helped to unify Canadians.The Court's language-rights caseshelped catalyze Quebecois resentment toward the rest of Canada.preferentialtreatment of laws and court decisions from Ontario has the potentialto increase Canada's regional antagonisms as well. These findingsdemonstrate that judicial power can have significant politicaleffects that are not anticipated by constitutional reformersor the constitutions they adopt.     

Revenue Strategy on the Gold Coast: The Case of Stamford, Connecticut

This study investigates the effects of federal policy and budgetchanges during the Reagan years as well as the revenue strategiesof governmental and private, nonprofit agencies in Stamford,Connecticut. Systematic examination of agency budgets and interviewswith agency directors in 1982 found widespread anxiety aboutpossible revenue decline, but few departures from traditionalrevenue strategies. In Stamford, federal changes produced revenueproblems for only a few agencies, most of which went about "businessas usual" and did not experience a budget crisis. This situationremained unchanged in late 1985.     

United Nations Peacekeeping and Civilian Protection in Civil War

Does United Nations peacekeeping protect civilians in civil war? Civilian protection is a primary purpose of UN peacekeeping, yet there is little systematic evidence for whether peacekeeping prevents civilian deaths. We propose that UN peacekeeping can protect civilians if missions are adequately composed of military troops and police in large numbers. Using unique monthly data on the number and type of UN personnel contributed to peacekeeping operations, along with monthly data on civilian deaths from 1991 to 2008 in armed conflicts in Africa, we find that as the UN commits more military and police forces to a peacekeeping mission, fewer civilians are targeted with violence. The effect is substantial—the analyses show that, on average, deploying several thousand troops and several hundred police dramatically reduces civilian killings. We conclude that although the UN is often criticized for its failures, UN peacekeeping is an effective mechanism of civilian protection.     

From Rights to Claims: The Role of Civil Society in Making Rights Real for Vulnerable Workers

This article examines the contextual factors driving legal mobilization of workers in the United States through an analysis of national origin discrimination charges under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act (2000–2005). Consistent with previous studies, this analysis confirms that high unemployment levels and weak labor protections promote legal mobilization. The findings also highlight the positive role that civil society may play in promoting claims-making. I argue that nongovernmental organizations fill the gap in places where organized labor is weak, and may help support claims-making particularly in places with a larger vulnerable workforce. The article concludes by offering suggestions for a renewed sociolegal research agenda that examines the role of 501c(3) civil society organizations for the legal mobilization of an increasingly non-unionized and immigrant workforce.