Maxwell School News and Commentary

Barrett served on the University’s Board of Trustees for more than three decades. He also was a member of the Maxwell School Advisory Board from 1991-97, and supported various academic and athletic initiatives. He passed at the age of 82 after a brief battle with leukemia.

"What is incontrovertible is that the Sinaloa Cartel won yesterday’s battle," said Gladys McCormick, associate professor of history and Jay and Debe Moskowitz Endowed Chair in Mexico-U.S. Relations. "Not only did they get the government to release Ovidio, they demonstrated to the citizens of Culiacan as well as the rest of Mexico who is in control."

"Even with the enormous emphasis President Trump places on restarting U.S. agricultural exports to China, details about the pace of expected Chinese purchases of $40 billion to $50 billion of American farm products are murky," says Mary Lovely, professor of economics.

"Citizenship" (Polity Books, 2019), co-authored by Elizabeth Cohen, professor of political science, takes the reader through the authors' approaches to the concept of citizenship and begins by highlighting how it is not always or often consistently applied and understood.

Leonard Burman, Paul Volcker Chair in Behavioral Economics, says raising significantly more tax revenue to fund Medicare for All "is plausible in the sense that it is theoretically possible. But the revolution that would come along with it would get in the way." 

Kenneth Meier, a distinguished scholar in residence in the School of Public Affairs at American University, received the Duncombe Award in 2019. The award honors former Maxwell professor of public administration William Duncombe.

"We have to remember that every other country in the world will be doing business with China. That puts our companies at a severe disadvantage in doing business," says Mary Lovely, professor of economics.

Maria Zhu, assistant professor of economics, says that the University of California’s decision could be "a sign that the tides are shifting" on universities’ economic views of investing in fossil fuels. “If it has a positive impact, I do believe more schools will eventually divest for financial reasons, given that most of them tend to think social implications of divesting are positive or neutral at worst."

"What's happening, at least in my research, is that young people have been organizing for a great deal of time. And what they've been saying is that, you know, enough is enough," says Jenn Jackson, assistant professor of political science.