Conversation on Transatlanticism and Europe Blog

By Jessica Mrase CEURO participants visit Brussels. Jessica is fourth from the right, in the beige trench coat. When the CEURO project was in its early stages, I had already fully committed to it. Nothing had been set, and we weren’t sure of any details, but I knew that somehow, I would be a part of it. I believed in the project, the course, and the trips abroad. It was something original and being part of that would be an honor. Returning to Leuven was something I had always thought of doing, but never knew if it would happen. With the CEURO course, I was able to travel back to Leuven and revisit the city that captured my heart two years before when I had studied there for a semester in my undergrad. I had a grand plan of sleeping the entire way across the Atlantic so that I would be ready to hit the ground running as soon as we landed, and that was very much the case. I wanted to serve the others in my group as a guide and show them all the wonderful parts of Leuven. Showing t...

By Rafael Rodríguez This blog post was written for the course "Current Issues in Global and EU Affairs", which took place from February 12-April 30, 2018. It is a well-known fact that defense and security remain some of the main scopes of the transatlantic relations between the European Union (EU) and the United States (US). Yet, there are many different areas that cover other fundamentals of these relations, such as education. Education, and more specifically, the Internationalization of Higher Education, has had a tremendous growth in terms of the number of educational institutions tailoring efforts to attract the international market of students. Quacquarelli Symonds (QS), best known for publishing the QS World University Rankings, state in their website that international student enrollment has grown exponentially to reach five million between 1990 and 2014; by 2025, this number is expected to reach 8 million globally (West, 2018). The EU’s marketing efforts to pr...

By Javier Zenil Peña This blog post was written for the course "Current Issues in Global and EU Affairs", which took place from February 12-April 30, 2018. The US presidential elections in 2016 had a pronounced impact in the transatlantic negotiations between the EU and the US.  As the new US president, Trump began new protectionism initiatives with the intention of prioritizing the interests of the American people. Consequently, trade negotiations such as the Transatlantic Trade Negotiations (TTIP) were halted as “US president-elect Trump campaigned furiously on a promise to scrap international trade deals, throwing the ambitious pact with the European Union into serious doubt.” (Euractiv 2016). With the uncertainty direction of the TTIP, one of the most ambitious transatlantic trade agreements, the Asian markets seemed to open their market to the EU.  Nevertheless, the EU and the US’ relations are not only important but these relations are essential for the internat...

By Jessica Mrase This blog post was written for the course "Current Issues in Global and EU Affairs", which took place from February 12-April 30, 2018. Transatlantic relations between the US and the EU have been some of the most powerful relations in the world. Out of them, the concept of “transatlanticity” was born, housing core topics such as politics, culture, history, and economics. As leaders of the West, the US and the EU are often argued as normative powers and take it upon themselves to be global actors in other areas of the world. This is not limited to a strictly governmental capacity, as it also takes shape in the form of civil society. Civil societies are communities of citizens that come together in common interests and causes. For example, the Red Cross, Peace Corps, Habitat for Humanity, and many others, are all civil societies. However, through sponsorship of the government, we are now seeing networks consisting of civil society organizations and busines...

By Victoria Prince Illinois students and staff explore Brussels with representatives from Leuven Our semester of exploring transatlantic relations happened not only in two separate classrooms across the world, but were intertwined when students from each side were able to personally travel this distance. I was fortunate enough to be a part of the University of Illinois delegation that traveled to Leuven, Belgium to meet our international classmates in person. The trip was filled with amazing experiences and unforgettable people that have made a huge impact on me and whom I hope to maintain friendships with throughout my lifetime. I would say that the first full day of the program best exemplifies how incredible the entire journey was. On the Monday morning of our trip, we met in person with the professors of our course and the five students that would be our counterparts traveling to the United States a few weeks later. We saw the diversity in the student body and the impressiv...

By Lindsay Ozburn This blog post was written for the course "Current Issues in Global and EU Affairs", which took place from February 12-April 30, 2018. Protest at the Bourse du Travail in Paris Photograph by Rama, Wikimedia Commons, Cc-by-sa-2.0-fr Immigration patterns into the European Union (EU) over the last few decades have brought about a myriad of discussions of how to care for, integrate, assimilate, and/or “deal with” the presence of sometimes vastly different cultures and sheer volume of new individuals across the EU member states. These questions and discussions are by no means ‘new’. As a hub of economic freedom, democracy, and multiculturalism, the EU is routinely a landing zone for the disenfranchised, those fleeing persecution, and those wanting to experience the successes and freedoms offered by this powerful area of the world. Discussions about the strength of a common European culture and identity are ongoing (see Council of Europe, 2005), recognizi...

By Victoria Bauer This blog post was written for the course "Current Issues in Global and EU Affairs", which took place from February 12-April 30, 2018. Earlier in May 2018, President Trump killed the Iran Deal which sends a strong message that the United States does believe that Iran’s nuclear programs are peaceful and nothing to worry about despite what the international community thinks and Europe’s best interests to keep the deal alive. Historically this issue has been problematic since 2003 after the US attack on Iran and how European leaders want to handle the situation. Smith and Steffenson describe the origins of the Iran Deal as such: “During 2003–4, differences surfaced between the EU member states and the US over how to handle nuclear weapons programs in Iran. These tensions reflected a longstanding divergence of approaches, with the Europeans having emphasized the value of ‘critical dialogue’ with Tehran and the Americans having adopted a strategy based o...