Whiteness and news: the interlocking social construction of "realities"

This dissertation examines how mainstream U.S. journalism consistently serves white racial interests and the racial status quo, or what I call white incumbency, despite its push for diversity and its stated aims to improve coverage of nonwhite communities. It is based on an in-depth ethnographic study of two daily newspapers and extensive one-on-one interviews with 61 journalists. I found that although journalists strongly identify with the need for more diverse coverage in newspapers, they emphasize individual and personal stories that avoid recognition of historical racial power imbalances, exhibiting what Ruth Frankenberg calls power-evasive race cognizance. Journalists also demonstrate a number of often contradictory identifications and self-understandings about themselves and their work, such as commitments to diversity and not taking sides, but these conflicts are almost always resolved in favor of white incumbency. Journalistic conventions and practices, such as the watchdog function and its emphasis on public institutions, routinely produce stories that replay and reinforce racial hegemony by portraying nonwhites as problems or people seeking “special privileges.” Also, journalistic repertoires about those conventions and practices avoid interrogations of journalists’ ongoing complicity in the maintenance of white incumbency.

Paths to peace: conflict management trajectories in militarized interstate disputes

When multiple third-parties (states, coalitions, and international organizations) intervene in the same conflict, do their efforts inform one another? Anecdotal evidence suggests such a possibility, but research to date has not attempted to model this interdependence directly. The current project breaks with that tradition. In particular, it proposes three competing explanations of how previous intervention efforts affect current intervention decisions: a cost model (and a variant on it, a limited commitments model), a learning model, and a random model. After using a series of Markov transition (regime-switching) models to evaluate conflict management behavior within militarized interstate disputes in the 1946-2001 period, this study concludes that third-party intervention efforts inform one another. More specifically, third-parties examine previous efforts and balance their desire to manage conflict with their need to minimize intervention costs (the cost and limited commitments models). As a result, third-parties intervene regularly using verbal pleas and mediation, but rely significantly less frequently on legal, administrative, or peace operations strategies. This empirical threshold to the intervention costs that third-parties are willing to bear has strong theoretical foundations and holds across different time periods and third-party actors. Furthermore, the analysis indicates that the first third-party to intervene in a conflict is most likely to use a strategy designed to help the disputants work toward a resolution of their dispute. After this initial intervention, the level of third-party involvement declines and often devolves into a series of verbal pleas for peace. Such findings cumulatively suggest that disputants hold the key to effective conflict management. If the disputants adopt and maintain an extreme bargaining position or fail to encourage third-parties to accept greater intervention costs, their dispute will receive little more than verbal pleas for negotiations and peace.

Searching for knowledge in the belly of the beast: diversity, social equity and the African graduate student mother's experience in US higher education

Diversity has become a buzz word in public discourse and in educational circles. Higher education institutions in the US have increasingly used this word as a cornerstone of their mission statements and have made increasing efforts to attract students from different backgrounds. As part of the increase in diversity efforts among US colleges, is a significant rise in the number of international students. Attracting international students has become a priority for U.S. universities regardless of size or location. This study examines the intersection between the structure of American educational environment and the blended identities of African Graduate Student Mothers. Within the context of contemporary diversity efforts in US educational institutions, this study examines both the structural environments and the socio-cultural constructs that affect the experiences of African graduate student mothers. Based on a qualitative research interview design, a total of nineteen African graduate student mothers at a Mid-Western University in the US were interviewed individually and in groups over a six weeks period. Results from this study show that apart from the difficult and often dehumanizing treatment African student mothers endure from immigration and consular officials in their various countries and ports of entry, they often find themselves at the margins of their various programs and departments with very little support if any. This is because most of them enroll into graduate programs after arriving as dependants of their spouses; a process that does not allow them to negotiate for departmental commitments and support prior to their arrival. Not only do these women face racial discrimination from white professors, staff and fellow students, but they also experience discrimination and hostilities from African Americans and other minority groups who see them as threats to the limited resources that are often set aside for minority groups in such institutions.