Maxwell School News

“Nepal is owed something more substantial than sympathy and more useful than a loan charging interest on damage it did not cause. Monitoring of unstable ice and glacial lakes concerns the whole basin and should be funded on a standing basis, with hydrological data crossing borders as a matter of routine rather than negotiation,” writes Farhana Sultana, professor of geography and the environment.

“I just don’t see how they can, at least in good faith. Several other outlets made similar statements about his endorsements and recent upsets in primaries,” says Johanna Dunaway, professor of political science and research director of the Institute for Democracy, Journalism and Citizenship.

Andrew Wender Cohen, professor of history, talks about his new book, Gangster of New York: A Violent Life in Nineteenth-Century America, that follows the remarkable career of Louis Bieral—a boxer, gambler, political enforcer and American Civil War veteran.

“Over the last few years, election denialism has become something of a litmus test within the Republican Party,” says Richard Barton, assistant teaching professor of public administration and international affairs.

“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.

“You’re going to have businesses on both sides of the border that are dealing with higher costs and more uncertainty, both of which are not sort of conducive to good business and to providing products to consumers at their sort of most efficient prices,” says Ryan Monarch, associate professor of economics.

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.

“There is some support for the claim that ideologues can more effectively mobilize the base and activate new voters, but they are also more effective at mobilizing opposition,” says Richard Barton, assistant teaching professor of public administration and international affairs.

Five Syracuse faculty, including Maxwell professors Ryan Griffiths and Colleen Heflin, share findings on food policy, AI, architecture, political science and marine biology on the nationally broadcast program “The Academic Minute.”

“These are both terrible policy and politics,” says Leonard Burman, professor emeritus of public administration and international affairs. The benefits of both would “disproportionately accrue to the wealthiest households,” given the existing distribution of assets in the U.S., he says.

Bruce Blakeman should concentrate on pocketbook issues that could appeal to independent voters, says Grant Reeher, professor of political science. 

“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.”

“Deployments of this length put a great deal of pressure on the ship and its crew, with long-term impact on personnel, sustainment of the ship and the turnaround cycle for future deployments,” says Vice Adm. Robert Murrett (Ret.), professor of practice of public administration and international affairs.

“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.”

“If leaders come in and they seem to be particularly partisan...if they really lean into that partisanship and they begin to forget their larger purpose is that ‘I represent all Americans and not just my party’ then that creates that pendulum effect and it keeps energizing both sides and that's very dangerous,” says Ryan Griffiths, professor of political science.

“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.

“When similar decisions [to contact mothers first] are repeated thousands of times across schools and other organizations, they can reinforce the unequal division of caregiving responsibilities that already exists within many families,” says Kristy Buzard, associate professor of economics.

“Humans have a lot of failure of imagination. We just can’t imagine that it will happen to us,” says University Professor Emeritus Sean O'Keefe. “All it’s got to do is show up in a major metropolitan area,” he adds.

“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.

“We’ve known for decades that extreme heat and drought are becoming more common due to anthropogenic climate change. So the general outline of these events, if not all the details, was tragically predictable,” explains Jacob Bendix, professor emeritus of geography and the environment.