The War on Terror
Read: Whitlock, C. 2019. “At war with the truth”, Washington Post, Dec. 9, 2019.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/investigations/afghanistan-papers/afghanistan-w
ar-confidential-documents/?tid=bottom_nav
Watch the 17-minute documentary film: “The Afghanistan Papers: A Secret History of
the War”, which is part of the above-mentioned article.
Read: Lutz, C. 2017. The war in Afghanistan might not be effective—but, for some, it’s
profitable. Pacific Standard Sep. 6, 2017.
https://psmag.com/.preview/cn02141e0f700025dc?auth=c5630c8a6b888bbf4c3b6edfdd9fa4d41b
c8a7f2&nonce=1504650340665
Read: Bennis, P. 2020. The Pentagon took COVID-19 money for PPE and bought
weapons instead. National Priorities Project, Oct. 2, 2020:
https://www.nationalpriorities.org/blog/2020/10/02/pentagon-took-money-ppe-and-bought-weap
ons/
Recommended additional source for this assignment (This is a required reading for the
final exam): Emilie Beck’s 2018 honors thesis, “Re-contextualizing the war on terror”,
from page 38 to 63:
https://www.hofstra.edu/pdf/academics/colleges/hclas/geog/geog_beck_emilie_thesis_final.pdf
In your discussion board thread, answer this question: What do you feel are
the most important things you learned from each of these sources?
The general guidelines for discussion board posts can be found in the document “Discussion
Board Guidelines” posted under Course Documents. Make sure to cite your sources and
avoid plagiarism! Any copied words (also partial sentences) must be put in quotation marks!
(see the Guidelines document for details.)
● Each student has to respond to the questions by posting a thread. This response should be around 250
words minimum.
Our Food System
Watch this documentary film about our food system: “Eating Animals”:
https://www-filmplatform-net.ezproxy.hofstra.edu/product/eating-animals/ What are the most important things
you learned from the film? Whose responsibility do you feel it is to make improvements?
Your thread should be at least 250 words, and your reply to a fellow student’s thread
should be at least 50 words.
The general guidelines for discussion board posts can be found in the document
“Discussion Board Guidelines” posted under Course Documents. Make sure to cite your
sources and avoid plagiarism! Any copied words (also partial sentences) must be put in
quotation marks! (see the Guidelines document for details.)
● Each student has to respond to the questions by posting a thread. This response should
be around 250 words minimum.
The True Cost
Watch the documentary film: “The True Cost” (92 min.). What are the most important
things you learned from the film? Whose responsibility do you feel it is to make
improvements? https://ezproxy.hofstra.edu/login?url=https://docuseek2.com/v/a/LpK
The general guidelines for discussion board posts can be found in the document
“Discussion Board Guidelines” posted under Course Documents. Make sure to cite your
sources and avoid plagiarism! Any copied words (also partial sentences) must be put in
quotation marks! (see the Guidelines document for details.)
● Each student has to respond to the questions by posting a thread. This response should
be around 250 words minimum.
The Black Lives Matter movement
Read the four articles on the Black Lives Matter movement that are posted on Blackboard
under Course Reserves (they are listed alphabetically by author’s last name):
Asmelash, Leah. How Black Lives Matter went from a hashtag to a global rallying cry.
CNN, July 26, 2020.
Buchanan, Larry, et al. Black Lives Matter May Be the Largest Movement in U.S. History. The
New York Times, The New York Times, 3 July 2020
Reynolds, Barbara. I Was a Civil Rights Activist in the 1960s. But It's Hard for Me to Get behind
Black Lives Matter. The Washington Post, WP Company, 24 Aug. 2015
Singer, Alan. Does Google Believe Black Lives Matter? Daily Kos, Aug. 31, 2020.
You should also read this one-page article, which is required reading for the next exam:
Graves, Earle. (2018). “Memo to America: Belonging is a civil right, not an option.” (posted on Bb)
In a thread of at least 250 words, answer these questions:
Were you surprised by anything in the articles? If so, by what? Does the history of the
Black Lives Matter movement match up with how it is portrayed in the media?
Based on the readings, do you believe the Black Lives Matter movement has been
effective in solving social problems? Why or why not? Do you believe the protests will
have long-lasting implications? If so, in what ways?
Sample Solution
Critical criminology has gained traction in recent years, with its devotion to questioning the definitions of crime and measurements of official statistics, its critical view of agents, systems, and institutions of social control, and the connections with social justice and policy change (Carrington & Hogg, 2002). Theories of critical criminology are rooted in the structure of society, focusing on power systems and inequality. This paper will focus on labeling theory and crimes of the powerful, as they have a certain dichotomy regarding public vs. private criminality. With labeling theory, those in power have the authority to decide what is the “norm” and what is the “other,” ostracizing the “other” from the rest of society. The stigmatization of public shaming for the common citizen is carried out in all aspects of public life – the labeled individual is looked down on by family, peers, community, and employers, and it is very hard for them to shake the label (Denver et al., 2017; Kroska et al., 2016). Regarding crimes of the powerful, those in power have the privilege to escape stigmatization and consequences of illegal actions. Those in power protect their own through deciding what is illegal or not, and deciding the consequences for illegal actions. These crimes occur in private and are often underreported and under prosecuted, allowing the powerful to escape consequences. Critical analysis will address these dichotomies, challenging theoretical assumptions and criminal justice practices to advocate for structural change. Labeling Theory Background Labeling theory discusses the structural inequalities within society that explain criminality. It can be traced back to Mead’s theory of symbolic interactionism in 1934, which discusses the importance of language regarding informing social action through processes of constructing, interpreting, and transmitting meaning (Denver et al., 2017, p. 666). From there, labeling theory was further developed with Lemert’s distinction between primary and secondary deviance in 1951, which explained how deviance of an individual begins and continues (Thompson, 2014). Finally, and perhaps most influentially, we have Becker’s labeling theory of deviance in 1963, which is the version of the theory that will be guiding this discussion in the essay (Paternoster & Bachman, 2017). In Becker’s labeling theory, he describes crime as a social construct: