In his article, America Needs Unity on China, Strauss Distinguished Scholar Joshua Eisenman and co-author Devin Stewart argue that bi-partisanship is essential for the U.S. to develop an effective strategy towards China. The United States and China are engaged in a “systems level” competition which includes influence campaign propaganda, cyber war, intellectual property theft, and election meddling. Chairman Xi Jinping is clear that China is opposing the liberal world order. China is implementing the massive Belt and Road initiative and sharing its surveillance technology around the world. Eisenman and Stewart argue that Beijing has realized that if the United States is united both internally and with its allies, it is unbeatable and therefore they are trying to exploit and enhance existing social cleavages in a fashion that reduces pushback from the US, Europe, Australia, or New Zealand.

Women around the world are facing unprecedented levels of targeted political violence. According to new data on political violence targeting women collated by the Robert Strauss Center and Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED), the threat to women has grown in recent years, currently reaching some of the highest levels ever recorded.

Stephanie Leutert, Director of the Mexico Security Initiative, has been awarded the Mexico Center Award for Opinion Writing by the LLILAS Benson Mexico Center. The award recognizes five U.T. faculty members for publications relating to UT Mexico work.

In partnership with ACLED Data, The Strauss Center has begun a new project analyzing political violence events. Some of our UT Austin undergraduate student coders in the program have agreed to talk about their work for the project, in anticipation for the program's imminent report release.