Student Connections

Since Puerto Rico’s economic crisis in 2006, the island’s housing market has faced a growing and evolving set of challenges. The widespread devastation of hurricanes, earthquakes, and natural disasters in general, severely worsened an already existing housing problem. Hurricane Irma and Maria alone damaged over 725,000 households, representing nearly 60% of all occupied housing units […]

On February 28th, 2023, three days after the Nigerian Presidential elections started, Bola Tinubu from the All Progressives Congress Party was declared the winner (AJLabs. 2023, March 1). Even though the former governor of Lagos, Nigeria’s economic capital, beat Atiku Abubakar of the People’s Democratic Party by over a million votes, there are claims of […]

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has emerged as a key player in the shifting power balance of the Middle East, serving as the Iranian government’s primary power projection tool abroad. Formed in the aftermath of the creation of the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) in 1979, the IRGC’s paramount mission is to preserve and […]

On March 7th, our very own, Dr. Ted Reynolds presented at the Learning Institute for Elders at the University of Central Florida event. His presentation, titled “When the Lights Go Out: The Evolving Threat to the U.S. Power Grid” served as a way to educate participants on the impact of a potential grid collapse, and […]

The Chinese government recently issued official statements that its population is shrinking. With a reported birth rate of 9.56 million and a death rate of 10.41 in 2022 (CNBC), the country’s population fell for the first time since the 1960s (Statista 1). The dependency ratio in 2021, which indicates the growing population that must be […]

In the last several decades, pornography has gone from being a shameful, taboo topic to one that is widely accepted as a viable career path. While porn can be financially beneficial to those involved (Glassdoor), if unchecked, it can also have negative effects on the lives of its subjects and “stars”. Many people who begin […]

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 […]