Ask me about 27

Worldwide, there are 27 million victims of trafficking. With that in mind, this project intended to help students (a) gain an understanding of social issues throughout the world, (b) become activists on behalf of victims of social injustice, and (c) educate others about social injustice and what can be done to reform it. A 26-item survey assessed student knowledge about trafficking. Clemson students correctly answered just over half of the survey questions (M = 16.84; SD = 2.37). The team then designed activities to raise awareness about trafficking. Activities included a venue for students to create Valentine\u27s for trafficking victims, a campus showing of the film Not My Life and an invited speaker an expert on trafficking. At all events bookmarks containing survey results were distributed

The Political Economy of Failure: The Euro as an International Currency

How do international currencies get established and consolidated? What domestic and international political foundations support an international currency? And what kinds of macro-economic flows enable an international currency? In this essay we consider these perennial questions of modern IPE scholarship in reverse order to ask whether the euro could ever have become, or seek to become, a true international currency rivalling the US dollar, used not only for passive foreign exchange reserves but also as a major commercial currency outside the EU. We argue that the EU lacks the will, the ideas and the capacity to promote the euro into the status of an international currency. In this article, we concentrate on this final issue of capacity, as the will and ideas issues have already been well explored. Capacity is an issue coeval with, if not prior to, the first two issues. The EU's current institutional arrangements and its economic geography create macro-economic consequences that diminish the euro's capacity to operate as a top currency. These conflicts go beyond the well-recognized issue that the euro-zone is not an optimum currency area. Examining the euro's debilities sheds light not only on the euro's (in)capacity to rival the dollar as an international currency, but also on the future of both the euro and the dollar in the aftermath of the euro-zone crisis