Event Reflection #3

I attended Societies Under Stress: Welfare and Penal Policies amid Rising Insecurity, a two-day conference on November 30th and December 1st at the Mershon Center for International Security Studies. I used this as my Non-IA event. I sat in on one of the sessions on the second day: Violence, Inequality, and Racialized State Failure in the Americas. Lisa L. Miller, a professor at Rutgers University, led it based on a book she wrote, with leading discusser Peter Enns from Cornell University. I was intrigued by the lecture and discussion following, which focused on gun violence in particular. The audience was composed of primarily fellow academics also speaking at the conference at some point. Some came from the Ohio State University, but the majority came from outside of the university and some from outside of the United States. Participants represented colleges including the University of Chicago, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, New York University, and the University of Southern Denmark. Miller referred to five decades-worth of data from researchers who collected from countries around the world, comparing the nations of the Americas with other continents. The group talk attempted to assess why the violence occurs and what the role the government plays in regulation over weapons based on some of this data. Unfortunately, I found that much of the conversation went over my head because I had not read the lecturer’s book nor had much familiarity with the subject from an academic perspective. Due to this, I struggled to gain much from it on an educational, personal, or professional level. However, from what I understood, it emphasizes the necessity for some form of regulation and the disparity between public opinion and senators voting records, which was something I was already vaguely aware of by following the news and gun violence in the media. I have never attended such a highly academic conference before, and the experience was quite enjoyable. I bet that if I had come more versed on the subject, I would find it to be even more pleasurable, and would have the ability to contribute to the conversation.

The event relates to the topic of International Affairs by focusing not just on America’s violence, compares America to other countries around the world. I was familiar with some of the terminologies from my Intro to Intelligence class, particularly regarding failed states, as I have been writing papers about failed states throughout the semester in that class. If I had the opportunity to speak to the lecturer, I would have liked to ask her what she believes the correlation may be between the kind of violence we were discussing, terrorism, and failed states.