Student Connections

The Sultanate of Oman is a politically stable nation, especially when compared to many of its neighbors. Since the conclusion of the Dhofar Rebellion in 1978, after all, it has not experienced widespread internal strife and has generally refrained from involving itself it armed conflicts abroad. The Dhofar conflict solidified Oman’s relations with a diverse […]

After two decades out of power, The Taliban has reinstated its control over Afghanistan, creating a motif of their past tyrannical policies implemented to marginalize religious minorities, women and girls. Around its initial inception, the Taliban is one of the biggest Sunni Islamist national movements in modern history (National Counterterrorism Center). They established the Islamic […]

With the culmination of the 2022 FIFA World Cup and events such as the 2023 World Baseball Classic and the 2024 Summer Olympics on the horizon, the use of sports as more than a game is becoming continuously more important. Soft Power, as defined by Joseph Nye, can be defined as “a nation’s ability to […]

Eight years after the initial onslaught, the Bundestag, Germany’s federal parliament, recognized the 2014 massacres against northern Iraq’s Yezidi community by the Islamic State, also known as Da’esh, as a genocide. Hosting the largest Yezidi diaspora outside of Iraq (150,000), Germany joins the 18 governments and international bodies that officially recognize the scale of the […]

Yesterday, southern Türkiye (Turkey) and northern Syria experienced one of the most significant earthquakes ever recorded in their respective histories. According to the US Geological Survey, the first tremor occurred at 04:17 a.m. local time near Gaziantep at a depth of 17.9 kilometers and measured 7.8 on the Richter scale (BBC). Around 1:24 p.m., twelve […]

Sweden and Finland have applied for accession to NATO and are expected to become members by 2023. However, a major challenge they will have to overcome first is Turkey, who has stated that both nations, especially Sweden, need to meet a series of criteria before they accept their admission, becoming the only member of the […]

Russia and Ukraine have entered into their sixth month of armed conflict. After invading Ukraine on February 24th, 2022, Russia forced Ukrainian forces out of all of the Luhansk region and the majority of the Donbas region[i]. In March, Russia redefined its military objective to liberate the Luhansk and Donetsk provinces instead of the entirety […]

The unilateral severing of Algerian and Moroccan diplomatic relations in the summer of 2021 occurred days after the President of Algeria, Abdelmadjid Tebboune, declared that the diplomatic situation between the two countries would be under review (Rachidi). In reference to the declaration, Foreign Minister Ramdane Lamamra of Algeria said that the Moroccan Kingdom had been […]

Baltimore, Maryland, is a magnet for human trafficking due to the highways, hotels, casinos and airports that are in proximity. Additionally, the juxtaposition of severe poverty beside substantial wealth has fostered an environment allowing the human trafficking industry to prosper. A long history of racial, economic, and environmental inequality has negatively influenced Baltimore’s minority population. […]