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When Are States Kicked Out of International Organizations?

Since World War II, international organizations – entities like the African Union, Arab League, Council of Europe and the Commonwealth – have suspended member states ninety-five times. While some intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) suspend states after financial, economic, or military violations, the vast majority of IGO suspensions happen in response to political backsliding – such as human rights violations, coups democratic recession, or flawed elections.

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Orchard Pond Parkway Shows Private Path for Addressing Infrastructure Gap

Public-private partnerships may be the solution to road construction and maintenance amidst budget shortages and population growth. The success of Orchard Pond Parkway can serve as a model for increased public-private partnerships within Florida and the rest of the nation.

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We Shouldn’t Stop Gentrification, But We Can Make It Less Painful

Change doesn’t always benefit everyone affected by it, and it’s understandable that cities want to help residents who are struggling with the changes caused by the recent urban revival. But change is part of growth, and helping people adapt to redevelopment is a better approach than stifling it.

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Teacher Strikes: Why Now?

Will teachers in Oklahoma, Kentucky and Arizona win their battles? It is difficult to say if teachers will get some or any of their demands met. Politicians, however, would be wise to note that there isn’t a groundswell of parents calling for teachers to get back in the classroom – and that, in some cases, parents are joining their kids’ teachers on the proverbial picket line. This suggests that a new kind of Parent-Teacher Organization may be in the works – one that politicians’ may find difficult to ignore.

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Immigrants Fitting In: Challenging the All-Or-Nothing View of Acculturation

But when you move half-way around the world to start a new life in a strange foreign land, this process of trying to fit in is called acculturation. Researchers who studied the last great wave of immigrants to America, writing two or three generations ago in the mid-20th century, tended to give an either-or answer to this question. You could be either German or American. You could be either Chinese or American. We often assumed that becoming an American meant giving up on being German or Chinese.

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What Does Fixing Social Security Mean?

Fixing Social Security is not rocket science.  There is money available to fix it.  Consider the $1.3 trillion of annual tax expenditures that are made each year.  While some of these benefit low income households, it is estimated that over half benefit higher income households.  Annual expenditures on Social Security are about $946 billion, so taking a knife to tax expenditures that favor the wealthy has promise. 

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Tropical Flowers and Tropical Forests: What Climate Change Means for Both

Does this mean that climate change is good for tropical forests? The answer is no. First of all, we need to understand what more flowers mean for the entire life cycle of plants – seed production, dispersal, recruitment, growth, and survival. More flowers by themselves is not enough to indicate the overall integrity of the forest. Second, we need to understand species-specific responses to climate change. If some species are favored more than others, there may be shifts in the species compositions of these forests. Those shifts mean that the countless ecosystem functions that tropical forests perform, such as providing habitat and food for hundreds of species that live in tropical forests as well as carbon storage and biogeochemical cycling, may be altered.

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From the Classroom: Students Co-Create A Social Movement Photovoice Blog Following the Parkland, FL School Shooting

Engagement in visual-centric blogging introduces students to a popular form of public sociology that develops the sociological imagination. As Lisa Wade and Gwen Sharp, founders of Sociological Images, note, sharing compelling images and social scientific analysis in blog form is an effective way to engage a non-scholar audience in developing understandings of social science principles.

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Sustainable Ocean Development: It’s All about Location, Location, Location

As we look towards a new era of increasing industrialization of the ocean, it is critical that we use scientific approaches that can guide the “blue economy” on a sustainable pathway.

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The Common Denominator of Mass Violence: Guns AND Men

The United States has a unique problem with gun violence, but the solutions to this social problem are more complex than curving access to weapons of war. If we are truly committed to building a society free from all forms of violence, we cannot limit ourselves to proximal solutions. We must be honest about a fundamental source from which violence emerges in our culture: the socialization of boys and men.