This paper will look at the Tibetan Sovereignty Debate, particularly the dialogue from advocates of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the Tibetan Autonomous Region (TAR). Through literary analysis, I will examine the religious, political, and historical elements of Tibetan Buddhist language rhetoric to build the case for a potential solution to the devastating, decades-long, modern Tibet Issue. I do this by scrutinizing books, news articles, journals, statements, speeches, online publications, and other forms of text that have come from notable actors involved in the Tibet Issue, such as the 14th Dalai Lama, the 10th Panchen Lama, Chairman Xi Jinping, and Chairman Hu Jintao. Questions about the role of Tibetan Buddhism and the use or “weaponization” of it by both parties for this geopolitical issue are brought to light. Additionally, this paper will briefly discuss the implications and repercussions of the political actions that the central Chinese government and Tibetan advocates have taken, as well as the expectations for the Tibet Issue in the future.

Organized Crime is one of the most prevalent issues in Latin America, touching every aspect of peoples’ lives. Studying Organized Crime is not only difficult for scholars and journalists but also dangerous. The lack of available information requires researchers to rely on in-the-field research: confiscated documents provided through connections with state officials and departments, in-depth interviews with locals, and other related statistics. This study presents a different approach to studying crime, making use of the widely available data online. This approach to mapping criminal activity provides a much-needed way of collecting standardized results using widely available data. By examining crime at the state level, we can map the spread of gangs over the last 15 years. This study utilizes this data to test how the number of prisons in a state affects its susceptibility to criminal activity by a prison-based gang, using Brazil’s Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC) as a case study.

Colombia’s 2016 peace agreement failed by a narrow margin in the public referendum but passed in the legislature, officially ending the 52-year armed conflict between the Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia [FARC]. Despite the agreement, violence and conflict persist. Understanding the referendum’s failure may suggest the means to increasing support for – and the effectiveness of – the agreement. Survey data from 2016 suggest that support for the peace agreement may be predicted based on a person’s trust in the government, trust in the FARC, belief in FARC demobilization, and proximity to violence.