Maxwell School News and Commentary

Co-authored by Professor of Sociology Merril Silverstein, the article “Social Exchange in Intergenerational Relationships over the Family Life Course: Reciprocity Dynamics in Support to Older Mothers” was published in The Journals of Gerontology.

Vice Adm. Robert Murrett (Ret.), professor of practice of public administration and international affairs, says that since Trump's announcement, there is scant evidence that Putin and the Kremlin had modified their maximalist demands—for Ukrainian territory, disarmament and an absence of security guarantees.

“His intense ground game—you can’t underestimate the power of that,” says Grant Reeher, professor of political science. “Even from political science research, we know that the most effective way to get people to turn out is face-to-face contact. He’s doing a lot of that. …He’s got tons of volunteers.”

Baobao Zhang, Maxwell Dean Associate Professor of the Politics of AI, says that the administration may have been willing to give up on the moratorium in order to push through the rest of the bill by its self-imposed Independence Day deadline.

“It's the highest 35 years of covered earnings that count toward the benefit calculation,” says John Palmer, University Professor Emeritus and former public trustee for the Medicare and Social Security programs. If you don't have at least 35 years of work listed, zeros are averaged into the final calculation.

According to Professor of Sociology Shannon Monnat, “The rural U.S. is sick, poor, and losing population. And the health and longevity gap between rural and urban America is growing wider every year.”

“In theory, what we want is the election that really decides who is going to serve in government to be one that was a higher-turnout election where campaigns, candidates, platforms, policies made some sort of difference in the outcome,” says Assistant Teaching Professor Richard Barton. “But most of those general elections are just not competitive, and they’re not consequential.”

“So these challenges and headwinds are going to persist,” says Alex Wagner, adjunct professor in Maxwell's Washington programs. “And it's actually going to require continuation of the current initiatives, but also new initiatives, new efforts and new insights by an administration that's quick to claim credit but hasn't really put in place any new solutions to date.”

Ryan Griffiths, professor of political science, has co-written a new book, Before Colonization: Non-Western States and Systems in the Nineteenth Century (Columbia University Press, 2025). The book, written with Charles R. Butcher, challenges the Eurocentric view of the world by offering a comparative analysis of non-Western state systems in the 19th century, supported by an original dataset.