2024 - 2025 Research Conference

After more than three decades of environmental justice activism and legislative reform in the United States, marginalized communities continue to face disproportionate impacts from environmental pollution. New Jersey is not an exception, and questions over the evolution and effectiveness of the state’s environmental justice movement are raised as communities of color continue to bear the brunt of environmental harms, despite a long history of community activism and environmental justice... Read More

New Jersey’s constitution guarantees every student the right to a “thorough and efficient” education, as affirmed in Robinson v. Cahill (1973) and reinforced in Abbott v. Burke (1985). Yet, despite legal victories, discrepancies in educational funding, access, and outcomes persist in Abbott districts, which primarily serve low-income students of color. Although court-mandated funding was intended to achieve equal educational outcomes, socioeconomic barriers and systemic resistance to such... Read More

The question of how to best define a state and its citizens–by their ethnic background or present residence–is one that claims essential importance across time periods and locales. One such context is that of Dublin, Ireland in 1904, one that is explored in James Joyce’s Ulysses. This paper seeks to analyze the presentation of nationalism within that text, using Benedict Anderson’s definition of nationalism as an imagined community to ground its analysis. It will begin by considering what will... Read More

Dogwhistles are a type of bi-level speech act that feature a surface, semantic meaning alongside an implicit secondary meaning that is designed to inappropriately, oftentimes pejoratively, and deniably mention some social group. They are particularly salient in political discourse as their ability to give ingroups, who believe in the content delivered by the secondary meaning, a means of escaping the social sanction their language would otherwise incur. This paper analyzes the usage of... Read More

This project aims to dissect the structure and function of drug courts and the transition from mandatory treatment compliance to inherent motivation on behalf of the drug court participant, using the Brooklyn Treatment Court as an exploratory case study. Using qualitative data composed of courtroom observations and interviews with current and former Brooklyn Treatment Court professionals, this study highlights the complexity of substance use disorder (SUD), the pervasive stigma surrounding it,... Read More

In recent years, scholars have turned increasing attention to the global phenomenon of populism and its consequences for democratic governance. This paper examines how populist leaders, despite differing ideological backgrounds, often erode democratic institutions and norms once in power. Through a comparative case study of Hugo Chávez in Venezuela and Donald Trump in the United States, this research analyzes the ways in which populism functions as a vehicle for democratic backsliding. Drawing... Read More

Caste in the Indian context does not move on a linear timeline. It flickers between past and present, between local forms of belonging and imperial technologies of rule. This project explores how colonialism restructured caste into a hardened, bureaucratized system, and how those transformations echo in unexpected places: not only in postcolonial India, but in American classrooms. Long before the British arrived, caste operated as a fluid, regionally specific system of social organization. It... Read More

The role of government in modern society remains one of the most contentious debates of our time, gaining urgency as populist political movements have gained traction across major democracies including the United States, France, Germany, and India. This heightened polarization underscores the need for evidence-based analysis of how government intervention correlates with various societal outcomes. This paper presents a systematic analysis of Indian governmental policies implemented... Read More

The pervasive integration of artificial intelligence (AI) in high-stakes decision-making across the criminal justice, healthcare, and finance sectors has increasingly revealed how these systems can perpetuate and amplify existing societal biases. People of color are subjected to disproportionate surveillance and sentencing recommendations in the criminal justice system because predictive policing algorithms and risk assessment tools rely on historical crime data that is frequently biased by... Read More

Natural disasters will become more frequent and severe as global climate change persists. Much of the public focus has been on the tangible impacts of natural disasters (i.e. monetary and casualties) rather than on the intangible impacts, such as mental health. Through a systematic review of the literature on the impacts of Hurricane Katrina on New Orleans, this study highlights the links between the impacts of natural disaster and mental health status. Survivors of Hurricane Katrina... Read More

Pro-Palestinian student activism does not unfold in ordinary time. It moves through histories of rupture and return, through the long shadow of the Nakba and the ever-pressing demand for liberation. This project explores how temporality—how time is felt, narrated, and politicized—shapes the strategies, endurance, and imagination of pro-Palestinian student organizers in the U.S. On campuses marked by surveillance, repression, and institutional delay, these students invoke a future that defies... Read More

In the wake of the Black Lives Matter and Stop Asian Hate movements of the early 2020s, Democratic members of Congress struggled to respond adequately to their constituents’ demands for retribution for acts of hate and rehabilitation for victims of bias-driven crimes. In response to this outcry, California Representative Ted Lieu (CA-36) drafted legislation known as the Stop Hate Crimes Act of 2023, calling for the lowering of the statutory burden of hate crimes in the United States. In this... Read More

Predictive policing technologies are algorithmic agents that can forecast when crime will occur in a particular area, the type of crime that will occur, and who is more likely to commit a crime. It was initially implemented by police departments to thwart acts of conscious or unconscious bias in human-based policing. However, there are concerns surrounding the effectiveness of these technologies, due to allegations of racial bias and a lack of neutral police contact embedded within the... Read More

The Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP for short) was an anti-immigration policy implemented during President Donald Trump’s first term in office by the Department of Homeland Security. They were justified as necessary in order to restore order and ensure safety at the U.S. Southwest border by forcing asylum seekers to wait in Mexico as their cases were being processed. I argue that the MPP constitutes a new form of border externalization, which refers to extraterritorial activities intended to... Read More

The results of the 2024 Election came as a shock to many, particularly in how voters in the 18-29 demographic swung towards Donald Trump, despite voting overwhelmingly in favor of his challenger four years prior. Moreover, overall turnout dipped significantly among young voters as compared to 2020. This study will seek to dive deeper into the political leanings, worldview, and motivations of young voters in order to give context to these developments in the American political landscape. The... Read More