Tracing The Khmer Rouge Movement in Cambodia–Nina Wei

The Khmer Rouge Movement

As promised in my last post, this week’s blog begins exploring the second unit: Communism in Cambodia. My interest in Cambodia’s Communist regime was sparked by my trip to Cambodia in 6th grade. Having Angkor Wat as the sole impression of the country before traveling, I was absorbed in learning more about Cambodian history during the visit. Our tour guide’s horrific accounts of the Khmer Rouge first introduced me to its violent communist era, and made me question historical backgrounds inducing such an appalling chapter in Cambodian history. In this unit of my independent, I will trace the origins of Cambodian Communism and examine the contexts that shaped the Khmer Rouge’s radicalized interpretation of Communist ideologies.

RFK: Beginnings of Politics & Race Relations – Nawal

Economy:

Robert F Kennedy was born into a wealthy family in 1925. Although they were in the Great Depression, his family never faced poverty like many Americans around them. The reason behind how exactly they got their fortune is very interesting. It would later be a surprising turn of events that Kennedy would focus on the country’s poverty problem when it had never affected him personally. Although the country was struggling financially, WWII was a major success for the economy. Before, there was concern that the economy would not get better after its plummet in 1929. Similar to Lyndon Johnson’s accomplishments being blinded by the Vietnam War, Herbert Hoover’s legacy as a president was overshadowed by the Great Depression. Poverty rates decreased by 21% between 1935 and 1950. It would decrease by another 6% from 1950 to 1960. Because of the prosperity, not much attention was paid to the country’s poverty. Although poverty had been significantly reduced over the 25 years, much of it was disproportionately racialized. There was a direct correlation between race and wealth. More black families were below the poverty line than white families. However, when it came to racial issues, many politicians did not think much about them, instead deciding to focus on foreign relations. Kennedy was one them, especially during the 1950s. 

Nigeria and Sub-Saharan Africa – Jason

Nigeria is located in West Africa (Nigeria).

To acquire well-rounded learning on my research topic, I decided to learn the demography of the type of countries that is different from the two past posts I have written for my independent study.

Managing the Tanks Over Break and Returning from Break – Nick

      I was extremely excited over break as well as my return because of how much the experiment would progress. The next phase of the project was organizing the stabilization of the water in the tanks, figuring out the specifics on our actual coral specimens, then we had to sort out how we are going to set up the platform in which we are going to place the corals, and we had to finalize plans on the lighting fixture.

Meet Leah Juliett! – Sabrina

Today, The Girl Narrative released our November addition: our article with the extraordinary young activist Leah Juliett. The following blog will talk a little bit about who Leah Juliett is and why I decided to interview them.

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Who is Leah Juliett?

Leah Juliett (they/them ) is a non-binary 21-year-old student, actor, and activist from Connecticut, and is the founder of the March Against Revenge Porn Movement and the National LGBTQ+ Townhall.

The March Against Revenge Porn is a “cyber-civil organization” started by a young, queer survivor for other survivors of varying identities. Their intention behind the organization is to “combat revenge porn through federal lobbying, cyber-sex-education, and a series of nationwide protests.”

Initial Data Exploration – Alina

In this blog, I am going to share with you my initial exploration of the data that I collected last month. I am also experimenting with visualizing the data with R, which is a statistical programming language, but we will talk about that another time.

This time, I first looked at the data collected from two sites, US and Chinese, separately. I graphed the data as a line graph. The graphs contained data from all categories of dates – next-day, next-week, next-month, 6/4 (a date far in the future), and 11/1 (a date in the very near future) – as 5 series of lines of different colors.

Medicine in the Renaissance Era– Yuchen

Medicine in the Renaissance Era
Yuchen Cao

My initial plan for the first semester was to finish studying the timeline of medical history– from the simple but ingenious tools used by the Neanderthals to the highly advanced diagnostic and treatment technologies used in modern-day hospitals. However,    as I moved along the timeline, I found that there are many aspects intertwined with the progress of medicine: religion, culture, politics and many more. It is such a rich field of study that I am only able to reach the Renaissance period by the end of the semester. In this blog post, I will be looking at medicine during the Renaissance era in Europe, the Middle East and China, and touch upon medicine during the Early Modern Age. Next semester, I will pick up from here and move forward. 

The Fourier Series: An Introduction – Baiting

The Fourier Series

In the past few weeks and Thanksgiving break, I finished Unit II and moved on to Unit III. In this unit, I will primarily focus on the Fourier Series, Laplace Transformation, their connections with Differential Equations, and their applications in reality. In this blog, I will introduce the Fourier Series of periodic functions, including the trigonometry functions, the sin and cos.

Genitourinary Cancer Research: a setback – Dhillon

(University Seal [Photograph]. (n.d.). Retrieved from West Chester University
database)

I thought it would be smooth sailing after Thanksgiving break, and I could begin my research. However, after meeting with T. Mariska who brought into light some issues. We have decided to push back research till after Winter break. During our meeting, we discussed possibilities regarding storage as well as the length it would take to culture my cells. After further discussions, we have established that it may be best for me to begin research after winter break. This is because of the short turnaround between Thanksgiving and Winter Break. The estimated cost of the needed FBS (Fetal Bovine Serum), NBT-ii cell line, and the medium is about $1,189.00.

LBJ Part II – Nawal

As I mentioned in my last blog, I looked at how Lyndon Johnson planned to alleviate poverty and the related racial discrimination through his programs. Soon into his presidency, he created the Office of Economic Opportunity and under it, the Economic Opportunity Act was created in 1964 and contained different government funded programs to combat domestic poverty. Although he had other initiatives such as Head Start, and the Job Corps, I wanted to look more into the economic side of his thinking.

Lyndon Johnson giving his State of the Union address; 1964

 

Economic Opportunity Act:

The Economic Opportunity Act was passed in 1964 and would pave the way for the rest of the decade. Funding was given to each state with no specific regulations about how they were to spend their money which was to attack the root of the problem, local poverty. Different areas had differing economic needs, for example inner cities would need more funding than suburban areas. The equitable funding would allow for customized programs based on the needs of the area. This would allow the federal government to focus on the widely spread segregation in the US. Poverty was decreased during this time.

The Act gave birth to almost a dozen programs to help with poverty. A focus was on education and volunteer programs. Johnson had emphasized that education was at the core of aiding poverty, so the Economic Opportunity Act initiated programs to provide further education in low income neighborhoods, and even a program which would educate adults whose illiteracy hindered their ability to find jobs.

 

Did it work?

There are very differing opinions on whether the Economic Opportunity Act, or even the War on Poverty worked. Although billions of dollars were put into the EOA, there was no significant change in poverty. On the other side, some of the programs it created would have lasting effects on the US and are still in progress today. It is true that poverty has declined since 1964, and some of that can be attributed to Johnson. One of the reasons the War on Poverty does not have a long lasting legacy is because of the Vietnam War. With the US involving itself into the War despite much criticism, many people focused on the negatives of what Johnson was doing, instead of his anti-poverty initiatives. His legacy has been the Vietnam War, as opposed to what he did to aid the US.

 

Demonstration of Learning Starting Point:

As of a few weeks ago, I have a plan for my Demonstration of Learning. I am going to create a small exhibit in the school library using the ends of the bookshelves to have posters displaying the research I have accumulated over this semester. I am in the process of figuring out what information I will put on each poster and the aesthetics of it. I will wait until I have all the pieces I need for the “pre-RFK” Lyndon Johnson era, and then move to Kennedy’s ideology, before I can fully map out the plan. I will be working closely with the librarians to figure out what it will look like, and will hopefully have another update soon.

 

Citations:

Bailey, Martha J., and Duquette, Nicolas J. “How Johnson Fought the War on Poverty: The Economics and Politics of Funding at the Office of Economic Opportunity.” The Journal of Economic History, vol. 74, no. 2, 2014, pp.351-388. ProQuest, https://search.proquest.com/docview/1524968046?accountid=5746, doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0022050714000291.

Davies, Gareth. “War on Dependency: Liberal Individualism and the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964.” Journal of American Studies, vol. 26, no. 2, 1992, pp. 205–231. JSTOR, JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/27555646.

Goodwin, Doris Kearns. “The Divided Legacy of Lyndon B. Johnson.” The Atlantic, 7 Sept. 2018, http://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2018/09/the-complicated-legacy-of-lyndon-johnson/569068/. Accessed 18 Nov. 2018.

Muncy, Robyn. “Great Society.” American Governance, edited by Stephen Schechter, et al., vol. 2, Macmillan Reference USA, 2016, pp. 362-366. Gale Virtual Reference Library, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/CX3629100311/GVRL?u=west66701&sid=GVRL&xid=1913d588. Accessed 26 Oct. 2018.

Ushistory.org. “Lyndon Johnson’s ‘Great Society.'” US History, 2018, http://www.ushistory.org/us/56e.asp. Accessed 30 Oct. 2018.

Picture:

Uncredited. LBJ State Of The Union. Edited by XMB, Dec. 2012. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspxdirect=true&db=apg&AN=595487ff19d4485cac3740000c33cf6c&site=ehost-live.