Global Tides

Global Tides is Pepperdine University's interdisciplinary undergraduate research journal featuring work from the humanities, religion, social science, and international studies. This publication is intended to showcase the finest writings of undergraduate students at Pepperdine and to further the academic standing of the university by encouraging students to produce work of the highest quality. Global Tides is a student-led, peer-reviewed journal in which papers are subjected to a rigorous review process to determine their suitability for publication.

List of Papers (Total 185)

The Ethics of Insider Trading

In business ethics, insider trading has gone untouched by scholars, as the consensus is that insider trading is morally indefensible, however, questions have emerged regarding the moral responsibility of insiders. This paper engages with Analyzing Insider Trading from the Perspectives of Utilitarian Ethics and Rights Theory by Robert McGee to evaluate the relationship between...

The Role of Intuition in Knowledge

In this paper, McSpadden challenges Climenhaga's use of intuitions as evidence by arguing that one does not have to cite memories, sensory experiences, and testimony in order to subconsciously use them to form her beliefs. McSpadden argues that there is a psychological definition of what intuitions could be, that intuitions do not always make philosophers more confident in their...

From Explanationism to Pragmatic Explanationism: A New Framework for Knowledge and Stakes

In "From Explanationism to Pragmatic Explanationism: A New Framework for Knowledge and Stakes", Guise defends the thesis that Pragmatic Explanationism helps overcome Explanationism's limitations in addressing pragmatic encroachment, specifically in high stakes scenarios and situations involving hidden practical factors. Guise argues that Pragmatic Explanationism should be adopted...

Colonial Legacies and Gender Equality: A Study of Women’s Rights in Angola & Namibia

Angola and Namibia, neighboring countries in southwestern Africa, share a history of colonial exploitation and rich natural resources, yet diverge sharply in their post-independence trajectories concerning gender equality. This paper employs the method of difference to investigate how Namibia emerged as a continental and global leader in advancing women’s rights, while Angola...

The Increasing Prevalence of Cyber Operations and the Inadequacy of International Law to Address Them

This paper is a synthesis research article analyzing the legality of cyber operations within the international legal sphere. It works to define cyber operations and differentiate them from similar identifiers. The study looks to existing contributions to international law and explores how some existing some existing regulation is challenging to apply and it is difficult to...

Talking Trash: The Development of International Legal Governance Over Marine Plastic Pollution

Increasing amounts of marine plastic pollution entering into the ocean endangers the lives of sea animals, harms the health of human seafood consumers, degrades the marine ecosystem, and contributes to climate change. Despite these consequences, there remains no international legally binding treaty that is solely devoted towards mitigating marine plastic pollution. While there...

La puissance douce française manifestée par les politiques linguistiques en Afrique

Du premier étape des colonisateurs français sur la terre africaine jusqu’à le français étant l’une des langues primaires en Afrique, les français avait eu une influence en Afrique. Pour comprendre comment les politiques linguistiques agissent comme une passerelle de l'implémentation de la puissance douce française en Afrique, nous explorons les politiques linguistiques et...

Measuring the Paris Agreement’s Impact on Wind Energy Usage in Member Countries

This review examines the impact of the Paris Agreement's implementation on the development of wind energy across three regions, the European Union (EU), Brazil, and Saudi Arabia. These selected regions respectively represent developed, developing, and OPEC member countries. The Paris Agreement aimed to limit the global warming temperature 1.5 C by 2030, encouraging actors to...

Microfinance in Latin America: Sustainability, Growth, and Efficiency

The subsequent research addresses the question: Within populous Latin American countries (Ecuador, Mexico, Panama, Argentina, Chile, and Peru), are microfinance institutions associated with differences in GDP and household consumption equally between 2010 and 2018? Which do they have a stronger correlation with? The essence of this question seeks to answer whether the correlation...

Violent Infrastructure: Natural and Unnatural Barriers to Climate Migration

This paper attempts to compare and contrast the impact of immigration policy on climate migrants in three Global North countries, Italy, the United States, and New Zealand. Climate migration will continue to be one of the most significant international concerns as global temperatures increase and previously habitable areas of the globe become uninhabitable. Climate migrants are...

Un-Silencing Dickinson: Emily Dickinson's Aversion to the Male Body and Heterosexuality in "My Life had stood–– a Loaded Gun"

This paper examines Emily Dickinson's aversion to heterosexual marriage and sexual initiation in her poem "My Life had stood-- a Loaded Gun". The ethics of deciphering through identifying and categorizing potentially Queer authors and texts impacts our understandings of frequently canonized authors such as Emily Dickinson. Emily Dickinson's nineteenth-century American context...

Criticisms of Evidentialism:A critique of Jonathan Way’s solutions to the issues of Evidentialism

This paper will begin with a brief introduction of Richard Feldman and Earl Conee’s definitions and examples ascribed to their original argument for Evidentialism in order to provide context for the remainder of the paper. The paper will turn to Jonathan Way’s concerns surrounding the original argument for Evidentialism, and break down his revamped definitions of Evidentialism...

The Development of International Law in Relation to Crimes against Humanity

This paper will look at the development of international law in relation to crimes against humanity. First, juridically applied at the Nuremberg Trials, crimes against humanity has historically offered a compelling juxtaposition between naturalist and positivist law. Hence, this paper attempts to shed light on these juxtapositions, as seen by the respective arguments taken up by...

Race and Religion: Gen Z’s Religious Participation Along Racial Lines

In a time of widespread religious decline, Generation Z students on college campuses continue to engage in evangelical campus ministries. Building on the Landscape Study of Chaplaincy and Campus Ministry (LSCCM 2019-2022), this study examines the motivations behind the religious engagement of BIPOC students within the secular environment at Harvard College, specifically within...

The Ethical Motive as Counter to Benatar’s Anti-Natalism

In multiple works, David Benatar defends the view that it is immoral for parents to have children under any circumstance due to the suffering inherent in human life. This essay argues that Benatar’s anti-natalist argument is not successful because of its misidentification of the proper motive humans should have if they are to exist. Instead, I argue, the benefits of an ethical...

TERRORISM IN AFRICA: AN ANALYSIS OF THE EFFICACY OF U.S. COUNTERTERRORISM

This paper seeks to identify whether United States aid to Africa has impacted violent terrorist activity on the continent. The existing literature has produced a range of critiques. Many have voiced concern about foreign terrorist organizations (FTO) growing and blame ineffective efforts by the U.S. for this reality. Instances of African nations, in the face of persisting...

Une investigation des raisons pour la continuation ou l’ abandon d'études de langue dans le contexte d’un programme d'étude à l’étranger du modèle île

Dans ce travail, nous investiguons l'étude de langues à l’étranger au niveau universitaire, particulièrement dans un programme île. En nous appuyant sur les interviews avec des étudiants, dans le texte, nous examinons les propos de cinq étudiants, participants à un tel programme à l’étranger, qui ont choisi soit de continuer avec leur étude de la langue française, soit de l...

Concealment and Darkness in Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto

This paper examines the relationship between darkness and fear in Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto, widely recognized as the first Gothic novel. Walpole wrote Otranto soon after the rise of Enlightenment thought, which stressed sensory observation as the foundation for human reason. Walpole engages with Enlightenment ideas through Otranto’s dark setting, which invokes fear...

Diversity in the American Church: A Case Focus on the Korean Immigrant Church

There are ethnic factions that exist within the Christian Church in the United States, and every ethnic faction seems to be marked by a set of theological or cultural features that distinguish it from other factions. This paper explores the socio-political history, function, and future direction of the Korean Immigrant Church (KIC). Specifically, this paper analyzes the origins...

Contradiction and Juche, Philosophical Deviations from Traditional Dialectical Materialism by Kim Il Sung and Mao Zedong Necessitated by Socio-Political Conditions

This work will attempt to attribute the deviations from the traditional Marxist dialectic in the cases of Mao Zedong and Kim Il Sung to their necessitated governing philosophies, and thus their geopolitical conditions. In the case of Mao, this governing philosophy is ‘State-Building Socialism’, a hyper-materialist reappropriation of Marxist materialism crafted to raze internal...

Coffins and Pancakes: Eschatological Experiences in the Brothers Karamazov

This paper investigates the roles of perspective, community, and memory in shaping experience in the lives of the characters of The Brothers Karamazov. Eschatology, in Christian theology, refers to the study of the end times and the ultimate destination of humankind. Dostoevsky elicits an eschatologically blurred vision of the present and the future, where characters experience...

Taking Down Descartes Trademark: An objection to Descartes Ontological Argument

Descartes attempts to prove God's existence by arguing we have an innate idea of perfection that could have only been created by an infinite source. In this paper, I object to Descartes by arguing our idea of perfection is not equatable to God. This is because our innate idea of perfection does not have enough representational content necessary to exceed our formal reality...

Women In Silence: Paul's Words about Disruptive Women in Church Gatherings

This research seeks to understand the meaning behind Paul's words in 1 Corinthians 14:31-35. Paul's direct command, "women should keep silent," seems quite clear on paper, but more context is needed when contemporary churches decide how to apply these words. This article examines three theories: the passage being a rebuttal, the passage being an interpolation, and the passage...

A Fake Future: The Threat of Foreign Disinformation on the U.S. and its Allies

This paper attempts to explain the threat that foreign disinformation poses for the United States Intelligence Community and its allies. The paper examines Russian disinformation from both a historical and contemporary context and how its effect on Western democracies may only be exacerbated in light of Chinese involvement and evolving technologies. Fortunately, the paper also...

Les traductions et comparaisons d’un discours d’Emmanuel Macron et un entretien de Mohammed Moussaoui

Ce papier va expliquer l’importance de la rhétorique, spécifiquement des dirigeants. Il fait une explication de l’histoire de la laïcité en France et puis de la politique de Macron. Puis, il va traduire deux discours du président actuel de la France, Macron, et un dirigeant d’un groupe musulman qui s’appelle Mohammed Moussaoui. Après, il essaye de faire une comparaison entre la...