Redefining Sovereignty: An Analysis of U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki Moon’s Rhetoric on the Responsibility to Protect Doctrine

This essay examines United Nations Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon’s rhetoric concerning the responsibility to protect doctrine (R2P). This essay seeks to rhetorically map the arguments concerning the nature of R2P and what its specific components are. Specifically, I argue that Ban Ki-Moon’s rhetoric serves to redefine and update sovereignty and the responsibilities of statehood for a twenty-first century world. The rhetoric of R2P has important implications for the debates surrounding military intervention on “humanitarian” grounds

The Good Citizen: Presidential Rhetoric, Immigrants, and Naturalization Ceremonies

This essay examines how American presidents define the “good citizen,” particularly as it relates to naturalized immigrants. Because citizens who are naturalized have to go through an onerous process to become citizens they can offer lessons to natural-born Americans who take their citizenship for granted. I argue that presidents construct naturalized immigrants as the lifeblood of American progress and power. The accomplishments of individual citizen heroes provide something for all to emulate. At the same time, presidents define the good citizen in a one-dimensional way that undermines the potential of communal activities to bring issues and problems to light that need to discussed, debated, and potentially solved

Contemporary conservative constructions of American exceptionalism

Ever since President Obama took office in 2009, there has been an underlying debate amongst politicians, pundits, and policymakers over America’s exceptionalist nature. American exceptionalism is one of the foundational myths of U.S. identity. While analyses of Barack Obama’s views on American exceptionalism are quite prominent, there has been little discussion of conservative rhetorical constructions of this important myth. In this essay, I seek to fill this gap by mapping prominent American conservatives’ rhetorical voice on American exceptionalism

Foreign Policy Rhetoric in the 1992 Presidential Campaign: Bill Clinton\u27s Exceptionalist Jeremiad

This essay examines presidential candidate Bill Clinton\u27s rhetoric regarding America\u27s role in the world during the 1992 presidential campaign. Despite the fact that foreign policy was George H.W. Bush\u27s strength during the campaign, candidate Clinton was able to develop a coherent vision for America\u27s role in the world that he carried into his presidency. I argue he did so by fusing together the American exceptionalist missions of exemplar and intervention. In doing so, Clinton altered a tension embedded in debates over U.S. foreign policy rhetoric. To further differentiate his candidacy from President Bush, Clinton encased this discourse within a secular jeremiad that offered Clinton the opportunity to attack President Bush on the one hand, while articulating his own vision for American domestic and international affairs

Developing a Community Group Ministry for Second Baptist Church in Liberty, Missouri

The goal of this project was to develop a small group program for Second Baptist Church in Liberty, Missouri that utilized specific spiritual practices to facilitate meaningful community, personal transformation, and synergistic missional engagement within the congregation. Liberty has experienced significant population growth, and this expansion, combined with cultural pressures and increasing busyness has weakened people’s sense of community, encouraging individualism and low ministry participation. To address these challenges, “Community Groups” was developed to meet stated goals and needs. This paper first examines the area surrounding Second Baptist, as well as the unique character of the church’s ministry. Sources of Liberty’s expansion are identified, as well as new related challenges. An examination of the practices, values, and beliefs of Second Baptist identify its identity and vision. The need for a new small group ministry at Second Baptist is explored, as well as obstacles and opportunities related to such a ministry. The paper then engages the relevant biblical and theological data, examining the strengths and weakness of Baptist ecclesiology for this initiative, as well as the supportive theological concepts of imago Dei, shalom, and “the priesthood of all believers.” Finally, the paper details the creation of a pilot project supported by the data. Church members were invited into high-commitment “Community Groups” with upward, inward, and outward foci. Groups were also informed by the Christian practices of hospitality, service, noticing, discernment, Sabbath, and celebration. The project succeeded in raising awareness about the importance of community, offered a holistic formational opportunity, and prompted the creation of new, member-driven ministries. The goal of personal transformation was difficult to measure, but was evidenced in the personal reflections of participants. The new ministry program is now in its second year and continues to serve as a catalyst for transformation within Second Baptist’s congregation and city. Theological Mentor: Kurt Fredrickson, Ph

The Role of Racial Climate in the Effects of Latino Immigration on the Representation of Latinos and African-Americans on Local School Boards

This dissertation analyzes the effects of Latino immigration on the representation of Latinos and African-Americans on school boards and attempts to explain under what conditions Latino immigrants provoke opposition among whites. I consider two measures of representation based on representative bureaucracy—the membership of Latinos and African-Americans on school boards and bias in the responsiveness of white school board members toward these two groups. Whites as the major racial group in the U.S. have been the subject of much intergroup relations research focusing on competition for scarce resources, perceived threat and group biases (e.g., Evans and Giles, 1986; Giles and Evans, 1985, 1986; Esses, Jackson and Armstrong, 1998), and I also focus on their racial behaviors as voters in school board elections and as school board members. I consider Latino immigration in this research because emerging evidence suggests that Latino immigration poses a growing threat to whites, leading them to shift their support from Latinos to a countervailing group, such as African-Americans (e.g., Meier and Stewart, 1991; Rocha, 2007). It is likely that the reactions of whites to Latino immigration are conditioned by their preexisting racial attitudes, so this dissertation also tests competing theories of community racial climate—group threat and group contact. I expect that racial tensions within a community should moderate the influence of Latino immigration on these two forms of Latino and African-American representation. Overall, this dissertation expands the study of representative bureaucracy by combining past research on community racial climates with conditions influencing minority representation

Modeling and Feedback Control of a MEMS Electrostatic Actuator

This thesis describes the mathematical modeling and closed-loop voltage control of a MEMS electrostatic actuator. The control goal is to extend the travel range of the actuator beyond the open-loop pull-in limit of one third of the initial gap. Three controller designs are presented to reach the control goal. The first controller design utilizes a regular fourth order Active Disturbance Rejection Controller (ADRC) and is able to achieve 97 of the maximum travel range. The second design also uses a fourth order ADRC, while additional modeling information is included in an Extended State Observer (ESO), which is part of the ADRC, to improve control performance. This controller achieved 99 of the travel range. The third design is a multi-loop controller with a second order ADRC in an inner loop and a Proportional-Integral (PI) controller in an outer loop. This design achieved 100 of the travel range. Transfer function representations of the three controller designs are developed. The controllers are successfully applied and simulated in a parallel-plate electrostatic actuator model. The simulation results and frequency domain analyses verified the effectiveness of the controllers in extending the travel range of the actuator and in noise attenuatio

Book Review: Can We Bridge America’s Political Divide?

Review of Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right, by Arlie Russell Hochschild. (New York: The New Press, 2016