Suzette Grillot

While pop-culture references to Oklahoma frequently involve depictions of either tranquil farm folk or tornadic American sharpshooters, few Americans realize the distinctly international role of that the state has. Along with over 200,000 immigrants who call Oklahoma home, both Tulsa and Oklahoma host international delegations through an organization known as Global Ties.

Since 2013, European Union officials have seized hundreds of tons of hashish, worth more than $3 billion, from 20 ships traversing a lucrative drug trafficking route across the Mediterranean.

The drugs flow through multiple countries – Morocco, Libya, Egypt, and some Balkan states – and even areas controlled by self-proclaimed Islamic State militants, who are taxing the shipments as it goes through their territory.

Maria Armoudian’s first book explored the role radio played in exploiting deeply-held divisions between Hutus and Tutsis during the 1994 Rwandan Genocide.

An Olympic hallmark since the 1932 games, the Olympic Village in Rio de Janeiro hosted University of Oklahoma men’s gymnastics coach Mark Williams and his team this summer. Of all the spectacles he saw in Brazil, Williams found the facility one of the most striking.

“The Olympic village is just an amazing place. You can sit down and have lunch and have five different languages in your ear,” Williams said. “One day I just started to count, and I think I got up to 35 different countries represented within about 100 feet of me.”

As the United States gears up for the 2016 presidential election, voters must tackle the ever-present concerns of foreign policy and international engagement. In an era of globalization, increasingly open channels of information, disputes over land and growing trans-national trade, Americans are trying to figure out America’s role in the world.

In the years since its selection as the site of the 2016 Summer Olympics, Rio de Janeiro has drawn strong opinions both domestically and abroad about the sustainability and feasibility of the global sporting event.