“A Freedom Rider Before Freedom Rides:” Jackie Robinson Beyond Baseball

This paper seeks to evaluate the historical discourse surrounding the narrative of Jackie Robinson. Famed for being the first African American player to break the long withstanding color barrier in professional sports, a vast majority of discussion surrounding his story has centered solely on his athletic prowess and triumphs. However, as this paper will explore, Jackie Robinson’s contributions to the wider framework of racial equality and civil rights within America extend far beyond the baseball diamond. Evaluating both his laurels as an activist and socio-political figure as well as how these merits have been depicted, or neglected, in media representations of his life, this paper identifies the very important, yet often overlooked, aspects of Robinson’s life and accomplishments beyond baseball

Denmark and Sweden: The Collision Between Welfare State Politics and Immigration

The Scandinavian welfare states of Denmark and Sweden have famously similar socio-political and cultural systems, ones which have advanced the common perception of these nations as united in a common humanitarian and progressive global position. However there exists a significant divergence within either nation’s approach to immigration, asylum and integration policy, one indicative of the deeply ingrained deviations in popular understandings of national belonging and perspectives on greater European and global integration. By contextualizing the historical progressions of either nation and juxtaposing their individual responses to both the 2015 European refugee crisis and the contemporary Ukrainian conflict and resulting refugee crisis, it becomes apparent that these often-merged nations operate within starkly different realms of migration policy. This trend is emblematic of a more isolationist and nativist approach generally adopted in Denmark versus the more liberal and multilateral approach popularized in Sweden