Penn Calendar Penn A-Z School of Arts and Sciences University of Pennsylvania

2019 Undergraduate Research Conference Abstracts

Dillon BERGIN
Writing, Righting, and Rioting: Student Revolt in Post-apartheid South Africa

The present paper analyses the South African student movement #FeesMustFall through students’ own writing about the ideas and demands that shaped the movement. These protests began under the banner of #RhodesMustFall in 2015 when students demanded that a statue of Cecil Rhodes, infamous British imperialist, be removed from the University of Cape Town campus. The protests continued from 2015 to 2016 as they expanded to universities across South Africa and became known as #FeesMustFall. As they the movement grew, so did its demands. This paper will argue that because the movement had many different meanings for the students and South African society at large, and one must first engage with the plurality of the students’ voices themselves.

Alexandra Breckenridge
Legal Battles Against Government Failure in Democratic South Africa

This paper focuses on the efforts of public-interest lawyers in post-apartheid South Africa to curtail and solve key public-administration failures of the nation’s democratic government. I will examine, in particular detail, the work of self-described activist lawyers at SECTION27 (“S27”) —  a nonprofit law centre in central Johannesburg known for its defence of the health and education rights protected by Sections 27, 28 and 29 of South Africa’s Constitution. I use four of S27’s cases to show how public-interest litigation has dealt with the key socioeconomic dilemmas of post-apartheid South Africa. I argue in that today’s public-interest lawyers are emboldened by South Africa’s unusually complicated, historical relationship with the law and — as they work to hold the African National Congress government (“ANC”) to its promises — echo the approaches taken by politically active lawyers through the last century and a half of South Africa’s history. Moreover, while complicated by the confounding realities of governance, fund-raising and political discourse in South Africa, I suggest that today’s public-interest legal battles are essential for maintaining the country’s progressive goals.

Amanda DAMON
The Immigration Debate in America: the Civil Rights Question of our Time?

This thesis examines key aspects of the contemporary polarized and escalating undocumented immigration situation in America. It assesses the importance of executive discourse via signing statements, administrative memorandum, and public speeches, on the matter. Using a three-phase series of historical, transitional, and contemporary textual analyses of presidential rhetoric, it draws a connection between civil rights struggles of the past and immigration today. Lyndon B. Johnson’s civil rights and immigration rhetoric during the 1960s and that of today, as exemplified by Obama and Trump, are compared. Ultimately, President Johnson’s rhetorical and legislative success in the area of civil rights is used as a model and standard for evaluating the current immigration debate and for establishing why present rhetoric is ineffective and how it must change. This thesis urges Democrats and Republicans alike to recognize that both parties must share responsibility for the current immigration situation in America and come together to construct timely and beneficial legislative remedies.

Eric EISNER
"The Most Generous, Disinterested, and Philanthropic Motives": Religion, Race, and the Maryland Jew Bill

In 1826, after an eight-year debate, the Maryland legislature amended the state constitution to allow Jews to hold political office—a law known to supporters and opponents alike as the “Jew Bill.” Just sixteen years earlier, however, the state had disenfranchised free blacks. Whereas previously all men with property could vote, after 1810, the state restricted the franchise to white men. What can explain Maryland expanding political rights for Jews and reducing political rights for free blacks in the same generation?

The experience of Jews and blacks in Maryland illustrates America’s Jacksonian turn in the early nineteenth century, as the eighteenth-century grounding of political rights in property and faith gave way to the nineteenth century emphasis on race and sex. The basis for political inclusion shifted from “exterior” qualities—what a person possessed—to “interior” ones—what a person was. At the same time as Maryland was disenfranchising its black population, it also eliminated the property requirement to vote.

In a speech in favor of the Jew Bill, a Maryland legislator insisted that Thomas Kennedy, the law’s principal champion, had only “the most generous, disinterested, and philanthropic motives.” Kennedy supported slavery as a positive good, and the proponents of the Jew Bill, in fact, opposed black rights more vigorously than the critics of Jewish rights. There has not been a linear path to equal rights in the United States. In the early nineteenth century, Jews pressed ahead and African Americans fell back on the winding road to equal rights.

KaJaiyaiu HOPKINS
Citizenship in the Refugee Camp: How Religion Organizes Social Life

In recent years there has been increasing attention to the importance of religion in refugee contexts, particularly in the role of religion in providing hope for refugees and in structuring faith-based humanitarian aid. Yet, sociological research has overlooked the importance of religious institutions in allocating material resources and structuring status in refugee camp life.  This study draws on over fourteen months of ethnographic observation in Kakuma Refugee Camp in Kenya, interviews with refugees and refugee leaders, and surveys of refugee households. We find that for many refugees—across nationality groups—religion is an integral part of daily life. Religious institutions provide a crucial safety net in a context of scarce resources from governmental and nongovernmental organizations. These institutions formally and informally structure how resources are shared and distributed among refugees in the camp in ways that are embedded in larger structures of nationality, gender, and class. These findings suggest that we need to pay more attention to the material consequences of religious structures, and particularly in the case of resource scarce refugee camps, which lack other survival mechanism, such as governmental safety nets and well-resourced social networks.

John Matthews
Democratic Engagement with Pre-Trial Detention Reform

Prosecutorial discretion has been highlighted as a key cause of high incarceration rates throughout the United States, as few structures exist to discourage prosecutors from inflicting heavy penalties. This thesis addresses one aspect of the criminal justice system, the bail arraignment process, for insight into the incentives for prosecutors and causes of high detention rates.Through observations of the arraignment process and review of contemporary literature on bail, I examine the decision-making undertaken in the assignment of pre-trial detention and investigate alternatives being developed using contemporary machine learning approaches.

Kevin MYERS
Voter Turnout and Monetary Incentives

In the United States, voter turnout is low. This problem is particularly prevalent in state and local level elections. The difference in the composition of the group of voters versus the group of nonvoters results in disparate impacts on policy outcomes with non-voters faring worse than voters. In this thesis, I will discuss the magnitude of this problem, the history of efforts to curb this problem, potential causes for this problem, and one major solution. 

Melanie XU
Chattel Slavery in the Cherokee Nation: A Legal History

In the early nineteenth century, the United States sought to expand westward, using the rhetoric of "civilization" to justify Indian Removal – the forced migration of indigenous people in what is now known as the American South across the Mississippi River. As part of their resistance, Cherokee leadership made efforts to incorporate the very principles of civilization that white Americans used to justify removal -- including the enslavement of people of African descent. This paper focuses on the development of chattel slavery in Cherokee society in the first half of the nineteenth century, and how Cherokee political elites were able to use the law to create a racial hierarchy in a society where concepts of race had previously not existed. Through the enactment of legislation, Cherokee leaders were able to create and enforce a system of slavery that personally benefitted themselves, which existed until its abolition during the American Civil War.