Maxwell School News and Commentary

"One thing that has not been clearly delineated about violence in South Sudan is the role of corruption as a most insidious driver of the ghastly inequities that have now come to characterize the young state as one of the most unequal societies in Africa," writes Jok Madut Jok, professor of anthropology.

"There are AR-platform guns that shoot legal hunting rounds, from a .308 on down. I don’t know what that would do if we’re thinking of the lethality it provides somebody," says Grant Reeher, professor of political science.

According to Gladys McCormick, Jay and Debe Moskowitz Endowed Chair in Mexico-U.S. Relations, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard are anticipated to resist and challenge the designation of Mexican cartels as terrorist groups by the United States.

A whole series of sort of mid-tier and lower level and smaller kind of up-and-coming, wannabe cartels are trying to set up shop in this terrain," says Gladys McCormick, associate professor of history and Jay and Debe Moskowitz Endowed Chair in Mexico-U.S. Relations. "They're striking deals with each other, with the big players."

Gladys McCormick, associate professor of history and Jay and Debe Moskowitz Endowed Chair in Mexico-U.S. Relations, says Thursday’s apparent capitulation to the Sinaloa Cartel was "sending a loud message to other organized crime networks…that if they show up with enough firepower to a fight, they will win and get their way because the government does not have the wherewithal to fight back."

"What is incontrovertible is that the Sinaloa Cartel won yesterday’s battle," said Gladys McCormick, associate professor of history and Jay and Debe Moskowitz Endowed Chair in Mexico-U.S. Relations. "Not only did they get the government to release Ovidio, they demonstrated to the citizens of Culiacan as well as the rest of Mexico who is in control."

"What's happening, at least in my research, is that young people have been organizing for a great deal of time. And what they've been saying is that, you know, enough is enough," says Jenn Jackson, assistant professor of political science.