Thesis advisor: Laura E. Rumbley / This study examines the experiences of four higher education institutions as they respond to the current U.S. political climate and to the Trump administration’s policies on travel and immigration. It aims to understand and analyze the potential impact on the institutions’ internationalization priorities and engagement with their international students and to describe how those universities have reacted to national policies on foreigners and U.S. immigration. The study gathers information from six semi-structured interviews with university administrators and international student leaders at Babson College, the University of Massachusetts Boston, Boston College, and Bentley University. Data drawn from document-based research, including university webpages containing mission and vision statements, strategic plans, and press releases, among other data, help bring to symmetry the full scope of the institutions’ interpretations and actions in response to the political climate. The case study institutions report various levels of impact on their international activities as a result of the Trump administration’s immigration policies and the national politicization of anti-foreigner rhetoric. For example, heightened sensitivity to international recruitment and enrollment priorities demonstrates a prime area of concern among institutions. Senior administrators are motivated to express a campus-wide commitment to global engagement on their campuses. Institutions’ international offices respond ad hoc during critical times to accommodate increases in international student support and to solve pressing issues. Opportunities for sustaining the drive of institutions to engage deeply and meaningfully in activities that foster and enhance support for their international student populations and internationalization strategies, and future areas of research are also discussed. / Thesis (MA) — Boston College, 2018. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Educational Leadership and Higher Education.

Many scientists have described the anthropogenic climate changes as one of the most pervasive threat of our time that will form this and future generations. Despite that is the climate change is still controversial and missing from the American security agenda. The purpose of this study is to empirically analyse the American environmental discourse under the administration of Donald Trump and the omission of climate changes in the security agenda. To be able to explain the absence of the climate changes in the American security agenda, the environmental discourse will be analysed and the theoretical framework of Copenhagen’s school of securitization will be used to define the current description of the environment, the climate threats, and the global warming. By using a qualitative text analysis, consisting of a discourse analysis, lectures, debates, and documents from the Trump administration are examined, to be able to understand how the discourse is constructed and thus how the omission of the climate changes from the security agenda can be understood by using the securitization theory. The study indicates that the approach taken by the Trump administration on the American environmental discourse is produced can prevent the climate changes, the global warming, and the environment to be securitized, which in its turn can contribute to understanding of why it has not been brought up in the American security agenda. In the analysis it can be concluded that the Trump administration have moved towards a morepoliticized discourse, but also towards a depoliticized discourse.

This paper examines the potential impact of the Section 232 Tariffs on Steel and Aluminum on employment using county-level data. This study finds that although employment has increased in steel and aluminum related manufacturing industries, it has decreased in a significant downstream industry of manufacturers of steel products. Furthermore, I analyzed the difference in employment trends between counties that voted majority Trump in the 2016 presidential election and counties that voted majority Clinton, and between counties that experienced marginal victories and counties that voted solidly Democrat or Republican. I find that Trump counties have experienced the impact of the tariffs more strongly than Clinton counties, whether positive or negative. Similarly, swing counties have seen a much larger positive trend in employment in the primary metal refinement and processing industries, and a much larger negative trend in steel product manufacturing from purchased steel compared to non-swing counties.

On January 3, 2020, Iranian major general Qasem Soleimani was killed through a targeted drone strike at the authorisation of the US President Donald Trump. This thesis examines if, and in that case how, the arguments presented by the Trump administration used to justify the killing of general Soleimani are in line with the principles of Just War theory. By conducting a case study, through a qualitative content analysis, analysing four official statements made by the Trump administration during a two months period after the killing, this thesis will examine the moral discourses in the arguments presented. Drawing on insights from studies regarding the justification of War on Terror, preemptive war, and targeted killings according to the Just War theory, lays the foundation for a deeper reasoning of the legality of the argumentation based on the principles of Just War. This thesis will show that in some aspects, the arguments presented by the Trump administration can be interpreted to be in accordance with one of the principles, but none of the statements satisfy the criteria in all of the principles. Therefore, the overall conclusion of this analysis is that the Trump administration has the intention of justifying the attack, but the arguments used are not rooted in Just War theory. Further, this thesis will also show an inconsistency over time in the arguments presented. The contribution from this study lays in the analysis of the arguments on the basis of the principles of Just War theory, not from the perspective of international law. The intention from this thesis is not to analyse if the attack itself can be seen as just according to Just War theory but looking at the argumentation presented by the Trump administration.