Maxwell School News

The coronavirus pandemic has profoundly disrupted Americans' lives. The share of U.S. adults reporting unmet mental health treatment needs has been rising steadily over the past couple of months. Rates are even higher for adults with children in the household.

"The Mexican attorney general may follow through on the pretense of investigating Cienfuegos, but nothing will come of it because he is untouchable," says Gladys McCormick, associate professor of history and Jay and Debe Moskowitz Endowed Chair in Mexico-U.S. Relations.

Kristen Patel will teach undergraduate courses in policy studies and graduate courses in public administration and international affairs. 

Earlier this week, retired Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn promoted the idea that the U.S. military should oversee a new nationwide presidential election, ordered under martial law by President Donald Trump. Professor Emeritus William C. Banks calls  the idea "preposterous" and adds, "martial law has no place in the United States absent a complete breakdown of civil governing mechanisms."

"We know to expect, clearly from his history, that President-elect Biden will work more closely with Western allies and use international institutions to promote new global initiatives," says Mary Lovely, professor of economics. 

Professor Emeritus William C. Banks assesses that "the world is out there, and our adversaries are all aware... that we're more vulnerable as a nation and national security apparatus than any other time during the last four years." He adds, "without a coordinated effort between the outgoing Trump people and incoming Biden people, things could quickly lose control."

"'Britain at Bay'...might be the single best examination of British politics, society and strategy in these four years that has ever been written," said reviewer Paul Kennedy about Associate Professor of History Alan Allport's book.

Policy has long been considered a core element of public health practice. The COVID-19 pandemic has made clear that public health practice and research exist within a political context that cannot be ignored.

"The forces he is up against are much bigger than President Trump and are tectonic in nature. There are a set of forces that push us apart rather than bring us together," says Grant Reeher, professor of political science. But, he adds, "I do think having a period of time for the country to experience the absence of the daily melodrama of the Trump presidency will help."

"CCE [Citizenship and Civic Engagement] stresses how important it is that we resist the tendency towards imposing our own understanding onto communities, and instead equip communities with the tools to share their own understandings with the rest of the world," says sophomore Maggie Sardino.

Professor Emeritus William C. Banks thinks the delay by the Trump Administration to share information to Biden will be "negligible to none." However, he feels it comes with other costs. "I feel a great deal has been lost symbolically and I believe our democratic institutions have been severely beat up by the bruising battles that have been fought for no good reason," Banks says.

"All in all, freeing Cienfuegos without any charges or penalties showcases that his arrest was a complete debacle for both the DEA and DOJ [Department of Justice]," says Gladys McCormick, Jay and Debe Moskowitz Endowed Chair in Mexico-U.S. Relations.

Mark Jacobson, assistant dean of Washington programs says that "the [John] Kerry pick [as Biden's special presidential envoy for climate] is really incredible from a structural standpoint." His selection, Jacobson says, is "an admission that our mid-20th century national security structures were not designed to deal with some of the more holistic and potentially existential threats, in this case, climate change."

"If there’s going to be some type of rapprochement with China on this [trade deals], there’s going to have to be negotiations before that between the Chinese and the Americans that deescalate the conflict and result in some other wins from both sides," says Mary Lovely, professor of economics.

Shannon Monnat talks with NPR about the negative effects of COVID 19, especially the urban/rural divide where rural hospitals do not have the capacity to treat sick patients, and when they are sent to urban hospitals, puts strain on cities to keep up with the influx of hospital patients.