Opposing International Justice: Kenya’s Integrated Backlash Strategy Against the ICC

The government of Kenya has employed a wide range of strategies to undermine the recently-dismissed prosecutions of President Uhuru Kenyatta and Deputy President William Ruto before the International Criminal Court (ICC). This Article argues that these strategies are part of an integrated backlash campaign against the ICC, one that encompasses seemingly unrelated actions in multiple global, regional and national venues. We identify three overarching themes that connect these diverse measures— politicizing complementarity, regionalizing political opposition, and pairing instances of cooperation and condemnation to diffuse accusations of impunity. By linking its discrete acts of opposition to these three themes, the government ultimately increased the effectiveness of its campaign against the Court. Our findings provide new evidence to analyze others instances of backlash against international courts and institutions

Opposing International Justice: Kenya’s Integrated Backlash Strategy Against the ICC

The government of Kenya has employed a wide range of strategies to undermine the recently-dismissed prosecutions of President Uhuru Kenyatta and Deputy President William Ruto before the International Criminal Court (ICC). This Article argues that these strategies are part of an integrated backlash campaign against the ICC, one that encompasses seemingly unrelated actions in multiple global, regional and national venues. We identify three overarching themes that connect these diverse measures— politicizing complementarity, regionalizing political opposition, and pairing instances of cooperation and condemnation to diffuse accusations of impunity. By linking its discrete acts of opposition to these three themes, the government ultimately increased the effectiveness of its campaign against the Court. Our findings provide new evidence to analyze others instances of backlash against international courts and institutions

Doctor of Philosophy

dissertationAdult second language (L2) learners often experience difficulty with novel L2 phonological contrasts, limiting their ability to establish contrastive lexical representations of L2 words. It has been demonstrated that the availability of orthographic input (OI), and variables interacting with OI, can shape the inferences learners make about L2 words' phonological forms. The present dissertation focuses on grapheme familiarity and congruence, in addition to L2 experience and the effect of instruction, in the case of native English speakers learning L2 Russian(-like) words presented in Cyrillic. Few studies have directly investigated effects of grapheme familiarity and congruence on phono-lexical acquisition simultaneously, systematically investigated the variables' effects on naïve and experienced L2 learners, or investigated how explicit intervention can mediate OI effects. The present dissertation addresses these gaps in our understanding. The two studies in this dissertation employed the artificial L2 lexicon paradigm. Taken together, the results indicate the following: (i) native language orthographic interference effects are robust in L2 word learning, especially when grapheme-phoneme correspondences are incongruent (unfamiliar and congruent stimuli did not cause difficulty); (ii) experience with the Russian language mediates this interference, with advanced learners performing near ceiling on all stimuli types and naïve learners performing least accurately; and (iii) naïve learners do not seem to benefit from textual enhancement and instruction prior to word learning in an experiment. The results of the present dissertation suggest that more research is needed to address the challenges associated with the interference effects of OI in L2 acquisition

Master of Arts

thesisRecent research indicates that knowledge of words' spellings can influence memory of phonological forms of second language (L2) words. For example, L2 learners whose first language uses the Roman alphabet remember newly-learned words more accurately when provided spelled forms in Roman orthography than when spelled forms are unavailable. Research also indicates that learners exposed to novel suprasegmental tone marks are more likely to remember tones associated with novel words and create tone-tone mark correspondences than learners not exposed to tone marks. However, while learners can use familiar letters and novel suprasegmental marks to make inferences about phonological forms, it is unknown whether learners can use entirely unfamiliar orthographic symbols. I therefore asked: Can learners use their knowledge of the alphabetic principle to infer phonological forms of new words when presented an unfamiliar L2 orthography? (Experiment 1). Did learners create graphemephoneme correspondences given orthographic representations? (Experiment 2). Native English speakers (no Arabic experience) were randomly assigned to Orthography or Control word learning groups. Six nonword minimal pairs contrasting Arabic velar-uvular contrasts (i.e., [k] and [q]) were randomly assigned picture "meanings". During a word learning phase, subjects saw pictures and spelled forms (either the word spelled in Arabic script-Orthography condition, or a meaningless sequence of Arabic letters-Control condition), and heard auditory forms. In Experiment 1, subjects determined whether a picture associated with, e.g., [kaʃu], matched an auditory form [qaʃu]. There was a significant effect of item type (p<.005), with matched items being easier, but no significant effect for subject group (p=.661) and no significant interaction of item type and subject group (p=.867). In Experiment 2, subjects determined whether orthographic representations and auditory words matched. Neither group performed significantly above chance on test items (Orthography mean = .513; Control mean = .539). Results suggest there are conditions under which novel scripts may not aid in learning L2 contrasts. However, it is unclear whether the lack of positive impact of orthographic representations results from difficulty associated with the Arabic script and/or perception of the target contrast

Information Systems For Shuttle Processing: An Enterprise Approach

The purpose of this paper is to describe a process being utilized by Lockheed Space Operations Company (LSOC) for planning, developing and supporting an integrated information system for the Shuttle Processing Contract (SPC). This process was developed by Electronic Data Systems (EDS) to address the complex modernization and integration issues facing General Motors (GM). LSOC has contracted EDS to participate in adapting the process to the environment at Kennedy Space Center (KSC) for shuttle processing