Seven Government Assumptions to Challenge Regarding Natural Resource Damages

Three federal statutes (the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA); the Oil Pollution Act (OPA); and the Clean Water Act (CWA), as well as some state-specific statutes, allow for the pursuit of monetary or nonmonetary damages if a release of petroleum products or hazardous substances has resulted in injury to natural resources, such as waterways, wetlands areas, and wildlife, that are held in trust for the public. Placing a monetary value on these priceless resources necessarily involves subjective analysis, but some recent government claims have been for amounts far in excess of what a reasonable analysis of the facts would suggest. These claims have typically calculated monetary damages using unrealistic assumptions. Seven examples of common unrealistic assumptions include ignoring historical baseline contamination, overstating the area of resource injury, exaggerating levels of resource injury, assuming excessive timeframes for resource injury, inflating injured resource values, undervaluing restoration credit, and overstating restoration costs.     

Teaching Chinese Politics: Microblogging and Student Engagement

This article reflects on some of the issues involved in teaching Chinese politics in the west and assesses the rationale for incorporating technology into teaching. The article specifically addresses the potential benefits of using microblogging (Twitter and Weibo) as a supplementary teaching tool in Chinese politics classes. The article argues that microblogging has benefits in terms of helping students develop professional networks, extending contact hours without placing an onerous burden on instructors, contributing to the construction of a supportive and collaborative learning environment and demystifying China for non-Chinese majors. Furthermore, in classes where students possess Chinese language skills, China??s domestic Weibo provide a fascinating window onto social and political issues as they are experienced contemporaneously by Chinese netizens. An assessment of the potential uses of microblogging is timely as the learning preferences of current and future cohorts change and commercial and pedagogical imperatives increasingly impel university teachers to consider the effectiveness of their teaching methods.     

IPV Survivors’ Perceptions of How a Flexible Funding Housing Intervention Impacted Their Children

An estimated 15.5 million American children are exposed to intimate partner violence (IPV) every year. Such exposure negatively impacts children’s health, development and academic performance and may also be accompanied by housing instability or homelessness. Children growing up with periods of homelessness or housing instability are at risk for many of the same detrimental outcomes as children exposed to IPV. To date there are few studies examining the interrelationships among IPV, housing instability and the impact of housing interventions on children’s well-being. The current qualitative, longitudinal study examined mothers’ perceptions of how receipt of flexible funding designed to increase their housing stability may have also impacted their children’s safety, stress, mood and behavior. Forty-two mothers in the Washington, D.C. metro area were interviewed three times over a six-month period about their own safety and housing stability, as well as their children’s. Ninety-five percent of the mothers and their children were housed at the six-month interview. Mothers described improvements in children’s stability and safety, decreases in children’s stress levels, and improvements to their mood and behavior. They also discussed the symbiotic relationship between their own stress and well-being, and their children’s. The provision of flexible funding to assist domestic violence survivors with their housing also collaterally impacted their children’s safety, stress, mood and behavior.     

Barriers and Supports to Dating Violence Communication between Latina Adolescents and Their Mothers: A Qualitative Analysis

Few Latinx parents and adolescents talk with one another about dating violence, yet communication with parents could help adolescents make better decisions about dating relationships. Seventeen Latina adolescents (15–17 years old) and their mothers living in Washington D.C and central Virginia participated in semi-structured interviews to explore their perceptions of dating violence behavior and communication with parents about dating violence. Interviews were digitally recorded, transcribed, and coded for emergent themes using a grounded theory approach. Seven themes emerged and were grouped into three domains: (a) Parental Messages about Problems in Dating Relationships; (b) Barriers and Supports for Parent-Adolescent Communication about Dating Problems; and, (c) Cultural Values and Differences. The results of this study can be used to inform future work focused on improving parent-adolescent communication about dating violence and to enhance healthy adolescent Latina dating decisions.     

Embattled authoritarians: continuity and collapse in Central and Southwest Asia

ABSTRACT

Why are some authoritarian leaders able to stave off violent challengers to their rule while others falter? This article analyzes several case studies involving a series of nondemocratic governments and violent non-state actors waging war and posits that different combinations of variables lead to dissimilar outcomes (ranging from “civil war/insurgency”, “regime implosion” or “foreign-based overthrow”, “negotiated peace”, to “strategic advance and retreat”). Accordingly, “embattled authoritarians” require a high level of “political-military aid” over time from a supportive foreign power to effectively combat “violent non-state challengers”. However, it is difficult for such governments to completely escape from “embattled” status, particularly if a supportive foreign power does not exert influence to set parameters for peace between the warring parties and the level of international interference (i.e. political-military aid abetting violent non-state challengers courtesy of other foreign powers) does not recede over time. This article concludes with a forecast on Afghanistan and Tajikistan’s respective futures and discusses how the onset of political instability within the former may serve to destabilize the political situation in the latter.