Maxwell School News and Commentary

University Professor Sean O’Keefe says whoever is appointed at Boeing will need to be able to listen to the concerns of the industry. In particular, they will need to work hand in hand with its airline customers—from Alaska Airlines to United—to make sure safety issues will be the focus in the months ahead, he says.

“Really, we have 24 years of watching Putin build an increasingly repressive, authoritarian state. So the main purpose of elections like this in an authoritarian country is to show everyone that Putin is forever, there is no alternative to Putin, there's no point in resisting his state,” says Brian Taylor, director of the Moynihan Institute of Global Affairs.

“It was definitely always a long shot and the ruling is not surprising,” says Thomas Keck, professor of political science and Michael O. Sawyer Chair of Constitutional Law and Politics. But, he adds, the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling opened up larger questions about what guardrails exist to protect US democracy.

With little indication that the U.S. will attempt to assert leverage over Israel, Blinken’s latest trip to the Middle East is fundamentally “performative,” says Osamah Khalil, professor of history. “There is a face-saving domestic consumption element for [the Biden administration] and a separate face-saving element to allow Israel to claim some kind of victory,” he says.

“At several different levels, this is just a pure pipe dream,” Osamah Khalil, professor of history, says of handing Gaza to the Palestinian Authority. Khalil says the Biden administration is facing mounting pressure over its support for Israel, due to the atrocities it is accused of committing in Gaza.

“Biden’s strong support for Israel has contributed to the heightened anger and frustration in the region. As we have seen in the protests of the last 24 hours, that anger is palpable and will only grow as long as the United States continues to block a ceasefire or even a humanitarian pause at the U.N.,” Osamah Khalil, professor of history, tells El País.

“Israel had no intention of agreeing to the emergence of a viable, contiguous, and independent Palestinian state,” says Osamah Khalil, professor of history. “Israel was able to pursue its occupation and settlement policies with the political cover of endless negotiations,” he says.

The “dominant theme” of the court’s recent term is that the bench remains staunchly conservative. Over the last two years, the conservative supermajority has overseen “multiple, rapid” shifts in the law that appear “ideologically driven,” says Thomas Keck, professor of political science.

"People in the Balkans are trapped in ethnic grids, in a monstrous bureaucracy that doesn't work, brought to a 'status quo' that is paralyzing," says Azra Hromadžić, associate professor of anthropology.