In the News: Kristi Andersen

"She was tough,” Kristi Andersen, professor emeritus of political science, says of Margaret Chase Smith, the first woman to serve in both houses of Congress and whose most enduring victory was the passage of her Women's Armed Forces Integration Act giving women permanent roles in the U.S. military. "She held her own, for sure—as most of these people did."

Kristi Andersen, professor emeritus of political science, discussed Gina Haspel, President Trump's nominee for director of the CIA, Congresswoman Claudia Tenney and New York's 22nd congressional district, and the resignation of New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman.

"We don't want to press our interests in citizenship upon the students," says Amy Lutz, associate professor of sociology, who will be teaching the new MAX course on research methods and civic engagement. "We want them to develop it themselves. We're there as mentors. So it shouldn't be that we give them the Action Plan and they fill it in. It should be initiated by the student's desire to engage with a particular social problem."

Now in her third year as Chapple Professor, Kristi Andersen works with the diverse MAX Course teaching teams to identify the critical issues and debates that will be the focus each year — such as the electoral process, health care reform, education, and Social Security. "One of its goals is to teach students how to be critical consumers of data as citizens as well as potentially as policy analysts or working in some social science-related occupation," Andersen says.

Kristi Andersen, professor emeritus of political science, discusses the release of the Nunes memo, John DeFrancisco's announcement to run for Governor of New York state, and the dropping of a historic logo in Cleveland.

Ralph Ketcham taught citizenship at Maxwell longer than most of us have been alive. And, while doing so, he championed an approach to citizenship education that virtually defines the Maxwell School.

The FY 2018 New York State Executive Budget established the County-wide Shared Services Property Tax Plan requiring local governments to consider ways of sharing services in order to save taxpayer money, and improve the delivery of those services. To support the implementation of this new law, the New York State Department of State contracted with the Campbell Institute to develop a non-partisan guide to help public officials and citizens more usefully consider the possibility of sharing services within their counties.

“She has no expertise or experience in the educational world,” Kristi Andersen, professor emerita of political science, says. “She has not been a teacher, she has not been an administrator, she has not been a policymaker, she has not worked for an educational think tank and she has not written about education.”

“More information cannot easily be provided (to) the public—the classification is required to preserve the secrecy of the sources and methods we used to learn about the hacking,” says William Banks, professor of public administration and international affairs. “It creates a dilemma that is difficult to resolve.”

Maxwell’s Kristi Andersen is part of a small cast of Central New York scholars who convene weekly to reflect on public events and issues — all for the benefit of a local television audience. This they have done now more than 500 times!