The extraordinary political success achieved by the Austrian Freedom Party (FPÖ) under the leadership of Jörg Haider during the 1990s is widely known as the ¿Haider Phenomenon¿ in academic literature. This thesis is a cultural-historical investigation into the roots of Haider¿s political breakthrough in Austrian politics during the 1990s. My aim has been to try to understand this political phenomenon in the context of Austrian cultural and historical forces and set out the political developments that enabled Haider (almost) to achieve the Austrian Chancellorship in 2000. There is already a considerable amount of scholarship available on this subject ¿ particularly in German. This thesis aims to enrich this scholarship by uncovering some previously neglected cultural-historical aspects relating to the rise of Haider. During my research, I found a rich vein of sources pointing to the centrality of Kultur in any understanding of political-historical developments in 20th century Austria. This is certainly the case in regards to Haider¿s FPÖ, which actually initiated a Kulturkampf as part of their populist political strategy in the 1990s. This study will also add to the body of work about the growth of right wing populism throughout Europe in the last twenty years. More importantly however, my thesis highlights the importance of focusing on local and country-specific aspects of such a political phenomenon in order to explain the causes of its success. Otherwise, there is a danger of superficial or generalized conclusions being made that distract from a deeper comprehension of events.

For the past several decades, the neoliberal school of economics has dominated public policy, encouraging American politicians to reduce the size of the government. Despite this trend, the power of the state to surveille, criminalize, and detain has become more extensive, even as the state appears to be growing less powerful. By allowing information technology corporations such as Google to collect location data from users with or without their knowledge, the state can tap into a vast surveillance network at any time, retroactively surveilling and criminalizing at its discretion. Furthermore, neoliberal political theory has eroded the classical liberal conception of freedom so that these surveillance tactics to not appear to restrict individuals' freedom or privacy so long as they give their consent to be surveilled by a private corporation. Neoliberalism also encourages the proliferation of information technologies by making individuals responsible for their economic success and wellbeing in an increasingly competitive world, thus pushing more individuals to use information technologies to enter into the gig economy. The individuating logic of neoliberalism, combined with the rapid economic potentialities of information technology, turn individuals into mere sources of human capital. Even though the American state's commitment to neoliberalism precludes it from covertly managing the labor economy, it can still manage a population through criminalization and incarceration. Access to users' data by way of information technology makes the process of criminalization more manageable and allows the state to more easily incarcerate indiscriminately. / Master of Arts / Since the era of President Reagan, the American economic and political tradition has been committed to opening trade, limiting government regulation, and reducing public benefits in the interest of expending freedom from the government. Despite this commitment to shrinking the size of the government, the government still considers it responsible for public security, including both national security and criminalization. At the same time as this wave of deregulation, information technology companies such as Google have expanded their ability to collect and store data of individual users—data which the government has access to when it deems such access necessary. The deregulation of private markets has ushered in an era of extreme labor competition, which pushes many people to use information technology such as computers and cell phones, to market their labor and make extra money. However, whenever a person is connected to GPS, Wi-Fi, or uses data on their phone, their location information is being stored and the government has access to this information. Neoliberalism therefore encourages people to use technology that allows them to be watched by the government. Location information is one of the main factors of criminalization; historically, a persons’ location informs the police’s decision to arrest them or not. Enforcing laws against vagrancy, homelessness, prostitution, etc. require law enforcement agencies to know where someone is, which becomes much easier when everyone is connected to their location data by their cell phone. This gives the state a huge amount of power to find and criminalize whoever it wants.

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The purpose of this case study was to explore learner experiences of collective free musical improvisation. Specifically, the research examined how participants perceived that they developed and expressed musical voice when they improvised with others. To that end, the researcher tried out a Bakhtinian approach to the pedagogy of collective free improvisation in four workshops with six secondary school chamber musicians—musicians trained in Western classical music who had little or no previous collective free improvisation experience. Workshops were designed to support participants in learning by improvising with the researcher becoming one of the improvisers. Bakhtinian dialogism provided a lens through which to focus the investigation, and tools, tones, and concepts to inspire participants as they improvised together for the first time. In addition to the perception of expressing musical voice, the study explored how participants perceived that they invented utterances as they created music with others. Further, the research considered participant descriptions of the experience of addressivity—turning and responding to communicate—during collective free improvisation. Data were collected in the following ways: pre-workshop interviews, video and audio recording of the four improvisation workshops, journals and discussions during the workshops, post-workshop interviews, and researcher notes and reflections. In addition to spoken and written words, improvisations played during the workshops were analyzed as discourse using a method—Musical Utterance Analysis—developed by the researcher for this study. Data were initially coded using concepts from Bakhtin (1981, 1986): voice, utterance, addressivity, heteroglossia, polyphony, and carnival. Analysis was completed by reviewing and reassembling the words and actions of participants during the workshops and interviews to create a novella with dialogue. This final phase of analysis revealed a holistic perspective of musical dialogue in collective free improvisation that emphasizes the importance and impact of listening. In this study, musical dialogue is explained as synergies of listening. Participants perceptions and experiences of voice, utterance, and addressivity are explained as synergies: creative empowerment, knowing and being known, emergence of a collective voice, catharsis, and freedom. Notably, participants reported that by listening and responding to one other improviser, they could connect better with the group of improvisers. Overall, for the participants of the study, the implementation of and the experimentation with a Bakhtinian approach to the pedagogy of collective free improvisation was effective. / 2026-05-15T00:00:00Z

Although research identifying and addressing extreme forms of control exists, all relationships experience some amount of control and some amount of the opposite of control, which is freedom. Large gaps in prevalence estimates and varied definitions of control suggest a need to better define the spectrum of control from mild to extreme forms, including looking at non-physically violent forms of coercive control. The purpose of this study was to expand knowledge of control in intimate relationships by examining the continuum of mild and extreme experiences of both control and freedom. Using constructivist grounded theory methods, the two categories of control and freedom were taken from a larger qualitative project on healthy and unhealthy themes in intimate relationships and analyzed to examine how partners describe control and freedom in relationships. This study contributes to systemic family therapy research by expanding binary conceptions of controlling/non-controlling relationships. Clearer conceptions of milder and non-physical forms of control in relationships may aid clinicians in identifying present but elusive processes of control, and help partners understand and support each other's freedom.

Thesis advisor: Dermot Moran / In this dissertation, I critically evaluate the contributions of Dietrich von Hildebrand (1889-1977) to the relatively neglected topic of the phenomenology of freedom. We can have, I argue, an experience of a “bias” of freedom in favor of the morally good: willing what is morally good renders one freer, and willing against what is morally good renders one less free. Attempts to reconcile freedom and morality have often identified freedom with autonomy, most famously in Immanuel Kant, or even rendered freedom determined by the morally good, as in Socratic intellectualism and in Scheler. These attempts neglect what Hildebrand finds to be the central feature of the will and freedom: the free self-donation (Hingabe) of the person, the will’s fiat (let it be); which is the key to the reconciliation of freedom and morality. The height of freedom, I argue, is embodied particularly in our freedom to sanction and disavow value-responses (Wertantworten) of the heart (esp. affective love), which Hildebrand calls “cooperative freedom” (mitwirkende Freiheit). In order to give ourselves to what has value, what has value must first be given to us. In Chapter One, I show that doing justice to this givenness requires, for Hildebrand, holding the radically realist epistemological claim that consciousness is directly receptive to being. Receptivity is prior to any activity on the part of the person; it comes before freedom. Chapter Two explores how things are given as having “importance” (Bedeutsamkeit) and “value” (Wert). Values issue a call (Fordern, “demand”) to give a proper response (Antwort). Chapter Two also outlines Hildebrand’s conception of phenomenology as involving “reverence” (Ehrfurcht). Reverence is openness to value’s word (Wort) and call to give that response. Reverence is defined as freely allowing oneself to be formed by the “laws” of values, and it is essential to freedom. Chapter Three argues that freedom’s most fundamental aspect is defined as “self-donation” (Hingabe), encapsulated in the fiat of the will. Building on William James and Edmund Husserl, Hildebrand expands the phenomenological account of willing as giving the person’s fiat to being moved by potential motives according to their objective importance, in what amounts to an act of giving oneself (Hingabe) in one’s free response. It is this notion of self-donation that enables Hildebrand to secure the independence of the will from affectivity (in contrast to Scheler) and from the mind (in contrast to James and Husserl). Yet this independence rests upon a dependence on values being given for the will to will. Reversing Kant and aligning more with Emmanuel Levinas, Hildebrand finds reverent “heteronomy,” not just autonomy, to be the foundation of the independence of the will and “invests” it with meaning and purpose. Chapter Four explores Hildebrand’s notion of cooperative freedom to sanction or disavow experiences according to their value. For Hildebrand, the sanction can only be actualized in accord with a “general will to be morally good,” or else it is an arbitrary pseudo-sanction. Unlike our freedom to do actions, cooperative freedom is a freedom that can only be fully actualized as a moral freedom. Hildebrand claims cooperative freedom does not pertain to the will, but to a separate “free personal center” (freies Personzentrum), because he associates the will with action. I will argue, nonetheless, that every fiat of the will includes what I term the “cooperative moment” of freedom, so that only a morally good fiat is fully actualized as a fiat. Chapter Five defines this general will to be morally good. It is a will composed of fundamental moral attitudes, particularly reverence for the hierarchy of values, that are the core of the virtues. In this concept of the general will, Hildebrand unites a Kantian concern for willing what is good-in-itself with Scheler’s concern for willing higher values over lower values. In so doing he comes to a unique synthesis of Kantian ethics, virtue ethics, and value-ethics in his conception of good will, which all rest on the concept of self-donation. Chapter Six argues that any ethics that is based on what is good-in-itself necessarily, if it recognizes the unique preciousness of the person, becomes a love ethics, for love is the fullest and most proper response to the value of the person. Without recognizing this connection of ethics to love, one almost inevitably misses the connection between morality and happiness. In that case a morality based on the good-in-itself ends up appearing somewhat depersonalizing and burdensome. Just as it is legitimate to pursue one’s own happiness in love by making the beloved the condition of one’s happiness, so too with morality it is legitimate to pursue the happiness that only being moral can bring. So it is in the person who has a quality of loving goodness (Güte) for all where we experience the height of personal freedom as moral freedom. From a phenomenological analysis of this person, I derive four ways moral value enhances freedom: 1) it recollects the person to his or her deepest subjectivity (Eigenleben, “own life”), 2) it “supports” the will and prevents it from being arbitrary, 3) the happiness being moral can bring “nourishes” freedom by giving it energy and strength, and, finally, 4) the happiness being moral brings “intensifies” good activities, i.e., it makes the person readier to do them in the future. Chapter Seven argues that while one is free to reject value in favor of what Hildebrand calls the merely subjectively satisfying, doing so subverts freedom itself into prideful self-enclosure. It also annuls freedom in that it enslaves one to one’s desires. In contrast to Kant, this identification of freedom with moral freedom is not because freedom is the autonomy of following a law given in pure practical reason, but rather it is the reverent acceptance (fiat) of the “heteronomy” the word and law of values impose on us. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2021. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Philosophy.

This thesis will explore the media's increasing impact on the criminal court system, specifically through prejudicial publicity given to criminal trials. In our society, the primary responsibility for gathering and disseminating information rests on the media. The media, consisting primarily of television and written publications, feel that they have a duty to provide citizens with important information about the community and the world. While the media have traditionally gathered news for informational purposes, they also provide news coverage of people and events for entertainment value. This is accomplished by focusing on the out-of-the ordinary and on stories of intrigue that capture the public's fancy. The media's desire to inform and entertain has carried over into the legal process, specifically the criminal court system. The media are typically drawn to cases that either provide a shocking, outrageous storyline, or that have a high-profile, famous defendant. The media love to exploit criminal trials for the suspense, drama, and sensationalism that they produce, as the viewing audience is longing for inside gossip and pure outrageousness. However, the media have the capability of publicizing a case beyond just mere hype, essentially turning the trial into a "media circus." Concerns arise when media outlets release prejudicial information before the case has been tried in front of the trier-of- fact, the jury. If the potential jurors consume this prejudicial, often-times inadmissible, information, then this increases the chances that jurors will pre-form opinions as to the guilt or innocence of the defendant prior to hearing the in-court evidence. If this occurs, the defendant's Sixth Amendment right to a fair trial by an impartial jury is in serious jeopardy. The media's First Amendment rights of free speech and press, coupled with a presumed right of access to criminal proceedings, lie in direct conflict with the defendant's Sixth Amendment due process rights. Exactly how courts go about balancing these rights delineated by the United States Constitution is still not definitive. The media feel that they can publicize criminal trials in any way they deem appropriate, while defendants argue that the jury pool is tainted by the media's coverage of the case. This prevents a truly unbiased jury from being chosen. Because of these constitutional issues, the United States Supreme Court has seen fit to enter the media publicity debate. While not providing, any definitive rules on when media publicity violates a defendant's Sixth Amendment's rights, the members of the Court have provided some recommendations and direction on these issues. When a case arouses the interest of media outlets nationally and internationally, the primary focus turns to the jury pool. Since jurors are seen as the trial participants most influenced by the media coverage, methods to keep the jury from being exposed to prejudicial pretrial publicity are utilized. At times, a skillfully and thoroughly conducted voir dire can find jurors unexposed to media coverage about the case. The judge's role has expanded in recent years as the media have become more pervasive in the criminal court system. The judge is responsible for supervising the media and for making sure that they do not infringe on the defendant's Sixth Amendment right to a fair trial by an impartial jury. To accomplish this duty, the trial judge has a number of mechanisms that he or she can employ against the media in order to ensure that a fair and unbiased jury is chosen for the case. However, these mechanisms are loathed by media outlets as they assert that these tools violate their First Amendment rights. Attorneys have been impacted by the media; however this relationship is unique in that it is a reciprocal one. The media publicize the trial of the attorney's client. In turn, the attorney uses this publicity as a weapon to advocate his or her client's case and proclaim guilt or innocence. Concerns about these extrajudicial statements arise when attorneys themselves release prejudicial information through the media to the representative community from which the jury will be chosen. As a result, the American Bar Association and various states have enacted rules designed to limit attorney speech so as to prevent any possibility of prejudice to the defendant in his or her trial. Indeed, the media have become more pervasive in the criminal court system, projecting events to the world as they happen. The coverage also tends to focus on the entertainment value of the case, releasing details that play on the viewer's emotions. However, an aggressive media impacts the due process rights of the accused, thus harming the search for justice. These are all issues and concerns that would not have arisen in this context, but-for the media's continuing impact on the criminal justice system.

A person's right to publicity may often contradict with another person's rights under the First Amendment. While a person's legal protection over their right of publicity is relatively new in the eyes of our court, this topic of law and other related matters seem to be at the center of attention in current large profile civil litigation cases. The First Amendment seeks to promote speech, whereas the right of publicity laws seeks .to limit speech. If civil action is brought against a defendant for violating the plaintiffs right of publicity, a First Amendment exception may apply as a valid defense. This contradiction in the nature of these laws is forcing our court system to review applicable cases on a case by base basis, resulting in some degree of unpredictability in the courts. Because many of the parties in these cases are large commercial companies, more money is at stake as suits of misappropriation are filed. The issue of what direction(s) the courts should take in this matter spawns opposing views. While some views suggest that bright lines be drawn within right of publicity laws in order to avoid redundant and excessive cases and appeals, opposing views contend that bright lines cannot be drawn given the unique and sometimes artistic expression protected under the First Amendment. Our courts have applied the basic framework of copyright law in order to aid in their decision-making. Courts must weigh the right of publicity against the First Amendment.

Approved for public release, distribution is unlimited / This thesis examines how globalization has affected Vietnam's view and treatment of religious institutions. In a larger context, it argues that the conditions of globalization foster increased liberalism and the latent development of civil society. The implications of globalization on religion in Vietnam are explored through a case study of the Catholic Church in Vietnam from 1975 to 2004. The Catholic Church is examined during two different periods: during autarky from 1975 to the Doi Moi reforms in 1986, and during international interdependence from 1987 to 2004. Isolated from international norms and pressures during its period of autarky, Vietnam suppressed, rigidly controlled, and severely restricted the Catholic Church. As Vietnam entered its present period of global integration and interdependency, Vietnam's view and treatment of the Catholic Church improved: suppression lessened, controls eased, and many restrictions lifted. The thesis concludes that in order to foster religious freedom and build civil society, policy makers should implement policies that engage rather than isolate. Engagement policies tend to increase a country's degree of global interdependency and integration with the world economy and community. As the level of interdependency increases, countries tend to become more subject to international norms and standards. / Captain, United States Air Force

This thesis examines the views of freedoms of press and speech held by the twelve earliest justices of the U.S. Supreme Court, as the Sedition Act of 1798 raised their earliest First Amendment questions including the breadth of those freedoms and of seditious libel. The thesis discusses three aspects of the early justices' views, which add to existing studies. First, the context of those justices' views was growing challenges to the restrictive Blackstone and Mansfield definition of freedom of press as only freedom from prior restraint (licensing) and as not also freedom from subsequent restraint such as seditious libel prosecution. Those challenges were reflected in broad language protecting freedoms of press and speech, and in the absence of language stating that the English common law of rights or of seditious libel was left unaltered. That crucial context of growing challenges has not been detailed in existing literature. (Chapter 3.) Second, the views of each early justice on press and speech are chronicled for the period 1789-1798. That discloses express commitments to those freedoms, which are absent from existing literature, and no adoption of the Blackstone definition before the 1798 crisis. (Chapters 4-5.) Third, the cases and reasoning of the six sitting justices upholding the Sedition Act of 1798 are chronicled and assessed, along with the views of the six remaining justices. That reveals that most remaining justices and also a significant minority within the Federalist party rejected the Sedition Act. Yet positions on the Sedition Act have been only cursorily discussed for four sitting justices and have been overlooked for the other eight justices, as well as for the Federalist party's minority, for the critical period 1798-1800. (Chapters 6-7.) The thesis proposes reasons for that divergence between the pre-1798 commitment of all justices to freedoms of press and speech, and the support given by most sitting justices to the Sedition Act, in contrast to apparent opposition by most remaining justices. The primary reasons are their opposing positions on several connected issues: the extent of rights to dissent, the challenges to the Blackstone definition and to seditious libel, the effect of new state and federal constitutions on seditious libel and on common law rights, strength of attachment to freedoms of press and speech and to seditious libel, and most sitting justices' changes of position to embrace the Blackstone definition. The thesis calls into question conventional views in existing literature on each of those three aspects. First, Levy and others express the dominant view that freedom of press in state declarations of rights and the First Amendment 'was used in its prevailing common law or Blackstonian sense to mean a guarantee against previous restraints and a subjection to subsequent restraints for licentious or seditious abuse,' so that contrary evidence 'does not exist,' and that 'no other definition of freedom of the press by anyone anywhere in America before 1798' existed. Instead, opposition to the essence of seditious libel had been mounting over the decades. Second, the early justices are usually portrayed as having nothing to say about freedoms of press and speech before 1798. Instead, nearly all exhibited commitment to those freedoms before that crucial year, though half the early justices upheld the Sedition Act during 1798-1800. Third, the Federalist party, the early justices, and the states except Virginia and Kentucky are all usually described as unanimously supporting the Sedition Act. Instead, the Federalists divided over the Act, and the early justices did as well, with an unrecognized but significant minority of the party, and nearly half of the early justices, opposing the Sedition Act, as did several additional states.