News features across the United States scream of gun violence on an all-too-frequent basis. The stereotypical images of gun violence were once gang-related shootouts or drug deals gone wrong. Now they are school shootings. Grocery store shootings. Synagogue shootings. Seemingly safe spaces have become scenes of gun violence. Big cities and small communities are not exempt, and this includes South Bend, Indiana.
Gun violence has become ubiquitous in the United States; when you mention a recent mass shooting, you need to clarify which one. How does our country allow for this? What kind of a country fails to provide the most basic of all needs – security?
It is said that guns don’t kill people. Tell that to the thousands of family members, not only in our community but across the country, that have watched a loved one suffer or have buried a loved one as a result of gun violence. And the worst part is, the ripple effect goes on and on. No one wins.
What have peacebuilding experts learned from twenty years of counterterrorism? Here are seven reflections. 1. Violent extremism results from fear and frustration paired with the fantasy of a “pure” society. Since 2001, Muslims have spoken out about the stigma they...
According to UNCHR, the United Nations refugee agency, at the end of 2019 there were 79.5 million people forcibly displaced worldwide, including 26 million refugees and 4.2 million asylum seekers. The percentage of the world’s population that are displaced is at an...
The children who cross Mexico and arrive at the U.S. border are not “immigrants,” not “illegals,” not merely “undocumented minors.” Those children are refugees of a war, and, as such, they should have the right to asylum. But not all of them have it.[1] In the summer...
Emmanuel Cannady “Daddy changed the world.” - Gianna Floyd In those words, George Floyd’s six-year-old daughter succinctly captured the global significance of her father’s tragic murder. Together with the outrage of Breonna Taylor and Amaud Arbery’s murders, the...
Ann Mische In recent months we have seen clashing imaginaries (the set of values, narratives, and symbols through which people make sense of the social spaces they occupy) at play in the wave of protests for Black lives after the killing of George Floyd in...
Helina Haile In May 2015, Chicago became the first municipality in the United States to pass reparations for racially-motivated police torture. The reparations ordinance provided redress for the survivors of police torture under Chicago Police Commander Jon Burge...
Clara Portela is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Singapore Management University and Visiting Professor at the College of Europe. When the Iran nuclear deal was signed, it was celebrated as a diplomatic success, especially for the United States. Media...
Kelsey Davenport is Director for Nonproliferation Policy at the Arms Control Association. Donald Trump faces a tough array of foreign policy challenges, but noticeably absent from that list is the threat of a nuclear-armed Iran. If Trump plays his cards right, he can...
George Lopez is the Rev. Theodore M. Hesburgh, C.S.C., Professor Emeritus of Peace Studies at the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies. Since the election of Donald Trump, members of the arms control community have argued that the new administration must...
David Cortright is the Director of Policy Studies and the Peace Accords Matrix at Notre Dame’s Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies. The Trump administration will face one of its most difficult foreign policy tests in Syria, with a high likelihood of...
Jennifer Mason McAward is associate professor of law at the University of Notre Dame and director of the University’s Center on Civil and Human Rights. I’m often asked what the difference is between civil and human rights. My response is that they are, in large part,...
Cora Currier is on staff at The Intercept and a journalist with a focus on national security, foreign affairs, and human rights. Her work has been published in Stars and Stripes, The Nation, Al Jazeera America and many other outlets. Last fall, my colleagues at The...
David Cortright is Director of Policy Studies at the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies. He is coeditor of Drones and the Future of Armed Conflict (Chicago University Press, 2015) and author of Ending Obama’s War (Paradigm, 2011). Michael Hayden, the...
Mary Ellen O'Connell Mary Ellen O’Connell is the Robert and Marion Short Professor of Law and Research Professor of International Dispute Resolution at the University of Notre Dame’s Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies. Opponents of the Iran nuclear deal...
Marilyn Young Marilyn Young is Professor of History at New York University. She is author of The Vietnam Wars: 1945-1990. As we reflect on how the war began, it is worth considering how things might have played out differently. We know that Ho Chi Minh used the U.S....
David Cortright David Cortright is Associate Director for Programs and Policy Studies at the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies. As an enlisted soldier during the Vietnam War, he spoke out against that conflict. There are many lessons of Vietnam, but three...
Aysegul Keskin Zeren As the war against ISIS unfolds, acknowledging the conditions and events that paved the way for ISIS is crucial for rethinking strategy. As a result of a decade of instability in Iraq and more than three years of civil war in Syria, ISIS had...