A Course Correction for Homeland Security: Curbing Counterterrorism Abuses

In the wake of 9/11, Congress estab­lished a new cabinet agency with a singu­lar mission: to keep the coun­try safe from terror­ism. The Depart­ment of Home­land Secur­ity (DHS) brought together 22 agen­cies with dispar­ate func­tions under one roof. Two decades on, it struggles to carry out its work effect­ively and equit­ably.With the Home­land Secur­ity Act of 2002, Congress tasked the new depart­ment with keep­ing the coun­try safe from terror­ist attacks. DHS carved out a role for itself in two main areas: part­ner­ships with state, local, tribal, and territ­orial author­it­ies and screen­ing of trav­el­ers and immig­rants.Section I of this report iden­ti­fies the agency's coun­terter­ror­ism collab­or­a­tions with state and local author­it­ies and private firms. These programs have routinely surveilled Amer­ican Muslims, trau­mat­iz­ing entire communit­ies and cast­ing them as hotbeds of terror­ism. DHS agents have deployed these very tools against protest­ors, activ­ists, and journ­al­ists.Section II turns to travel and immig­ra­tion screen­ing programs. DHS has accu­mu­lated vast stores of inform­a­tion about people who travel into, out of, and over the United States. The Trans­port­a­tion Safety Admin­is­tra­tion (TSA) and Customs and Border Protec­tion (CBP), among other DHS compon­ents, use this data to draw infer­ences about them, docu­ment their move­ments, and subject them to warrant­less searches and inter­rog­a­tions. Agents do all of this without suspi­cion of poten­tial wrong­do­ing. Unsur­pris­ingly, reports of reli­gious or ethnic profil­ing are common.Section III analyzes DHS's over­sight infra­struc­ture. Three primary offices — the Privacy Office, the Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liber­ties (CRCL), and the Office of Inspector General (OIG) — have curbed some of the depart­ment's trans­gres­sions. But they have allowed many other civil rights and civil liber­ties viol­a­tions to continue.Finally, this report iden­ti­fies five aven­ues for reform: stronger safe­guards against profil­ing; better protec­tions for privacy and free expres­sion; rigor­ous eval­u­ations of program effic­acy; mean­ing­ful trans­par­ency about data hold­ings and the implic­a­tions DHS programs have for civil rights and civil liber­ties; and more robust internal over­sight. Forth­com­ing Bren­nan Center reports will delve into these recom­mend­a­tions in greater detail

The Wound That Makes Whole - Bleeding and Intersubjectivity in Middle English Romance

This dissertation, “The Wound that Makes Whole: Bleeding and Intersubjectivity in Middle English Romance,” analyzes bleeding as a metaphor for expression, physical healing, spiritual purgation, and nourishment in Middle English (ca. 1350 – 1500) romances, in concert with contemporaneous medical texts concerning bloodletting, nursing, and menstruation. I argue that the forms of bleeding detailed in the romances ultimately enable the texts’ characters to develop a more robust intersubjectivity, as the vulnerability inherent in bleeding both allows and necessitates the formation of identities based on bodily boundaries and their transgressability. My approach to bleeding as a “metaphor” draws on Lakoff and Johnson’s conception of metaphor as fundamentally embodied, and on recent research on physiological responsiveness demonstrating the power words have to change bodies. My project is, at the same time, fundamentally historicist, arguing for the genealogical importance of medieval medicine to current reconsiderations of organic sensitivity to putatively cultural phenomena. Hence my work also affiliates with that of scholars like Louise Bishop, who has shown that the power of language to alter bodily processes was a central notion in medieval materialism. My project approaches the intersections between medical texts and romances to argue that it is often the words used in medical manuscripts – technical, specialized physical terminology – that have the most power to change bodies in medieval literature. That is, the language of medical care has profound effects on the creation of identity and community in medieval romance. The theoretical framework of my projectisbased fundamentally in the growing fields of medical humanities and narrative medicine. I turn to scholars such as Louise Bishop, Elaine Scarry, Rita Charon, Arthur W. Frank, and Jonathan Shay to consider the complexities of the wounded body, and how that body communicates with and relates to others. Other theoretical works I turn to are primarily psychoanalytical and neurological theories of the relation between body and mind (in particular Giovanna Colombetti), as well as neighbor theory (especially Derrida and Žižek). Each of these bodies of critical thought helps me parse the ways in which bleeding, vulnerability, care, sacrifice, and identity and community formation interact in medieval romantic texts. My dissertation distinguishes itself most notably from previous scholarship on blood in the Middle Ages by utilizing the primary interdisciplinary framework of contemporary medieval medical texts, as well as the philosophy of the medical humanities, to analyze the romances