Maxwell School News

The gift honors Nancy Mattison’s international career in healthcare policy and will prioritize Maxwell students studying international relations.

“I think Putin's strategy is unlikely to work and unlikely to change the basic trajectory of the war, which is still that his strategic objectives that he set out at the very beginning of the invasion, which is basically to control Ukraine will not be achieved. And he's only made the Ukrainian population more resistant to any kind of submission to Russian political domination,” says Brian Taylor, director of the Moynihan Institute of Global Affairs.

The originality of Associate Professor of Political Science Glyn Morgan’s book “lies in its claim that European unification—first the European Coal and Steel Community, in 1951, then the European Economic Community, in 1957, and finally the European Union, in 1993—was more an American creation than a European one. Postwar Europe, he argues, was made in America’s image,” says reviewer Ian Buruma.

“Russians generally are tired of the war and want it to end,” says Brian Taylor, director of the Moynihan Institute of Global Affairs. “They are well aware that the full-scale war against Ukraine started in 2022 has already lasted longer than the ‘Great Patriotic War’ against Nazi Germany.”

“A strong military makes a currency more appealing because it’s a signal to foreign investors that their assets are safe,” says Daniel McDowell, Maxwell Advisory Board Professor of International Affairs. “It matters because a strong defense projects security of assets in a way that is distinct from the financial regulations in a country.”

“The Iranians have put several other conditions on reopening this [Strait of Hormuz] in addition to the traffic separation scheme that has been put together between Iran and Oman, which may or may not be easy to digest by the White House and other actors,” says Vice Adm. Robert Murrett (Ret.), professor of practice of public administration and international affairs.

“In fact, that statistic was completely wrong. It was not like those deaths were not excess deaths. They were just South Asians who happened to die in Qatar from this time period,” says Natalie Koch, professor of geography and the environment, about the report in The Guardian that stated more than 6,500 guest workers died since the cup was awarded to the country.

Ryan Monarch tells Marketplace that a trade deficit is not necessarily a bad thing, “If you have a trade deficit, another way of saying that is that your country is a place in which a lot of other countries really want to invest, where they want to put their money into.” 

Yingyi Ma observes impact of policy shifts under President Trump on Chinese international students, “We have seen some signals, such as a stronger willingness among some Chinese students to return to China, and an overall decline in the number of Chinese students going to the U.S.”

The program brings senior international professionals to Syracuse for intensive executive education on disrupting the global drug supply chain.

Robert Murrett told Newsweek that President’s talk of "massive attack" on Iran likely means "a dramatically escalated air campaign." Murrett added, "I don't see any evidence of large deployments of ground forces, or indicators that any kind of significant ground activity would take place." 

“There's real danger here of an escalating conflict that could spill over into the broader Persian Gulf region with profound consequences, not just for the regional stability, but for the global economy. So there's no military solution here. What needs to happen is a good faith, negotiated settlement,” says Osamah Khalil, chair of the International Relations Undergraduate Program.

Vice Adm. Robert Murrett (Ret.), professor of practice of public administration and international affairs, says he isn't terribly surprised by the long-range drone capabilities that Ukraine has been able to develop based on “the technology that Ukraine has brought to the battle so far and their ability to pivot very quickly and to do both short-range, medium-range and now long-range strikes over the vastness of the Russian land mass.”

Devashish Mitra, Gerald B. and Daphna Cramer Professor of Global Affairs, argues that tariffs can't do what they promise: trade balances are governed by macroeconomics, not trade policy, and the cost of a tariff falls largely on the country that imposes it. 

“I think we're in a tit-for-tat right now, which it actually represents a new phase of the conflict between the United States and Iran. Certainly, we're on our fifth consecutive day of strikes, which seem to be getting more aggressive on both sides,” says Vice Adm. Robert Murrett (Ret.), professor of practice of public administration and international affairs.

“The role of politics in shaping the global currency hierarchy is seen as secondary to…baseline economic fundamentals,” wrote Daniel McDowell, professor of political science, for the Atlantic Council’s Geoeconomics Center. But that’s changing. “In the great global currency debate, market forces have never been more passé and political forces have never been so prominent.”

The article, co-authored by Assistant Professor of Political Science Minju Kim, was published in The Review of International Organizations.

Devashish Mitra, professor of economics and Gerald B. and Daphna Cramer Professor of Global Affairs, has co-edited a new reference work, Elgar Encyclopedia of International Trade (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2026), with Priyaranjan Jha, professor of economics at the University of California, Irvine. The volume is part of the Elgar Encyclopedias in Economics and Finance series.

“I think his strategy now is the same as it's really been from the very beginning, which is to try and figure out how to subjugate Ukraine. And that's the goal he's been after. And he's using really most of the means at his disposal to try and achieve that. If you look at his recent interviews, he does not want to concede at all that Russia is facing any serious problems,” says Brian Taylor, professor of political science.

“This disaster throws a wrench in the White House and State Department plan for securing and stabilizing the circum-Caribbean region that includes Venezuela,” says Gladys McCormick, Jay and Debe Moskowitz Endowed Chair in Mexico-U.S. Relations.