In The News

Spiegel Online: EU Seeks to Ward Off New Refugee Crisis

Christiane Hoffmann, Walter Mayr, Peter Müller, Christoph Schult and Wolf Wiedmann-Schmidt May 6, 2017
European leaders value the Schengen zone for border-free travel, but recognize it will lose allure for citizens if external borders are not secure, reports a team from Spiegel Online. “Schengen, [Chancellor Angela Merkel] said, means that Germany's neighbors are no longer Austria or Poland, but Russia, Turkey and Libya,” notes the article. Europe has little control over so many countries in...

Washington Post: Trump and “America First” Philosophy

Greg Jaffe April 6, 2017
Citizens around the world expect to international leaders to speak out against wartime atrocities and offer policies that promote moral values including justice and concern for human rights. “President Trump has vowed to follow a radically new approach to foreign policy that jettisons the costly mantle of moral leadership in favor of America’s most immediate economic and security interests,”...

Spiegel Online: Eight Myths of Migration

Hein de Haas March 23, 2017
Migration continues to top political agendas, but a failure to understand the phenomenon will cause new problems. Fear of an “uncontrollable influx…. has fueled the rise of extreme nationalist parties,” explains Hein de Haas for Spiegel Online. The professor of sociology refutes myths of migration. Migration is circulatory; closed borders do not automatically lead to less migration and actually...

Brookings: How the Syrian Refugee Crisis Affected Transboundary Freshwater

Steven Gorelick, Marc F. Muller and Jim Yoon February 27, 2017
Researchers from Stanford University have demonstrated that the massive flow of people into Jordan due to the Syrian civil war has resulted in an increased flow of water as well. The Yarmouk River, which begins in Syria and terminates at the Jordanian border, has experienced an “unexpected, rapid increase in flow” since 2013, reports Brookings. Upstream Syrian refugees abandoning irrigated...

Project Syndicate: ASEAN and the Rohingya Crisis

Syed Munir Khasru February 10, 2017
Muslim Rohingya communities lack citizen rights in Myanmar and are under military attack as well. “The United Nations considers the stateless Rohingya to be among the world’s most persecuted minorities,” writes Syed Munir Khasru for Project Syndicate. “Now, other countries in an otherwise stable region are becoming embroiled in the crisis; indeed, countries such as Bangladesh, Thailand, and...

Confusion of the Trump Travel Ban: CNN

Evan Perez, Pamela Brown and Kevin Liptak January 30, 2017
The Trump administration, eager to demonstrate he will follow through on his most extreme campaign promises, issued an executive order abruptly banning travel from seven Muslim-majority countries and also blocking admission of refugees. Authorities in the seven countries and US agencies were caught off guard, with the order released before processes were put in place. “The result was widespread...

Turkey’s Effort to Join the EU Is on Life Support

December 19, 2016
In the aftermath of a bloody failed coup in Turkey – including arrests of political opponents and journalists – European leaders are assessing Turkey’s bid to join the EU. They admit that the crackdown in Turkey goes against European principles, particularly as President Recep Tayyip Erdogan adopts increasingly hostile language toward Europe. Talks have been flailing for years, especially since...