Maxwell School News

“It is in the government’s interest to do everything possible to avoid any appearance that rights violations are being permitted or encouraged,” says Elizabeth Cohen, professor of political science.

“Trump is not reading judicial decisions and criticizing constitutional arguments. He is denouncing a so-called judge and saying decisions are ridiculous. Those pointed attacks from a sitting president are for sure unusual," says Thomas M. Keck, professor of political science.

According to Professor Emeritus William C. Banks, terrorist groups like ISIS use Trump’s "anti-Islam rhetoric to say that the U.S. is waging war on Islam," but he is not aware of specific incitements or attacks based on the executive order.

Tom Keck was featured in The Daily Orange article, "SU political science professor evaluates President Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nominee." "(Gorsuch) has also publicly praised Justice Scalia and indicated his hope to follow in his footsteps," he says, and notes that many Democrats and independents are unhappy with the nomination.

"One of the most significant things that's happened since the presidential campaign began is the spread of conspiracy theories, largely through Donald Trump and his representatives. In a sense, that's both a product of trends that were out there before the campaign began, but it was also a significant innovation," says Michael Barkun, professor emeritus of political science.

"Trump has an uncanny ability, in part through his 'brute force' use of language, to force difficult conversations and get us to break through on the sensitivities and political correctness barriers that had held the public back from dealing with some basic obligations of governance,'' says Corri Zoli, director of research at the Institute for National Security and Counterterrorism.

Margaret Susan Thompson, associate professor of history and political science, compares the volume of leaks coming out of the Trump administration to the Nixon administration and its handling of the Watergate scandal.

University Professor James Steinberg says that Secretary of State Rex Tillersor "needs to be able to convey to the world that the administration is going to pursue an orderly process in which there is a deliberate thoughtful development of policy that takes various points of view into account." 

"Muscular tweets and orations will not intimidate an Iranian leadership that has dealt with five other American Presidents over the last 38 years," says Mehrzad Boroujerdi, professor of political science.

According to Professor of Political Science Grant Reeher, President Donald Trump "is doubling down, and I think the reaction on the part of those who are not favorably oriented toward him is going to harden.”

Judge Neil Gorsuch will be vetted and reviewed by the Senate, and needs the votes of at least 60 senators to be confirmed. "That requirement is not in the Constitution, but it's one that Congress itself, the Senate has chosen to impose. It's been that way for a long, long time,"  says William C. Banks, professor of public administration and international affairs.

Mehrzad Boroujerdi, professor of political science, has been working to get an Iranian scholar to teach Iranian politics at Maxwell for the last ten months and now the whole process has been called into question because of the ban.

"Since the 1940s we've been not only recruiting nurses from other countries but actually in some cases getting people into training abroad and then bringing them to America," says Elizabeth Cohen, associate professor of political science. "This H-1B shift could really reduce the population of highly skilled doctors and nurses."

Next week, Professor of Political Science Mehrzad Boroujerdi said, the University planned to host a scholar who has been imprisoned in Iran. Now, he is unsure if the scholar will be able to come to SU at all. “It’s a serious infringement on our academic rights,” he said.

According to University Professor James Steinberg, Steve Bannon's formal inclusion in the U.S. national security policymaking process "is such an explicit rejection of the well-entrenched principle that when it comes to matters of national security that politics doesn’t have any place in the room.”

"This ban leaves thousands of our wartime allies to fend for themselves against the very enemies we asked them to fight," writes Maxwell alumnus Matt Zeller, co-founder and CEO of No One Left Behind. "We are permanently harming the fabric of U.S. national security. Our credibility is forever tarnished if not eroded."

William Banks, professor emeritus of public administration and international affairs, says "since 9/11, no one has been killed in this country in a terrorist attack by anyone who emigrated from any of the seven countries," on President Trump's travel ban.

Sarah Pralle, associate professor of political science, says Republican opposition to climate change evidence and advocacy is not new. What's different now, she says, is that "they have a bigger platform and megaphone in the voice of Donald Trump" and the executive power to disrupt federal scientists' work.