Maxwell School News and Commentary

Retired U.S. Army Lt. Col. Theresa Cross ’99 B.A. (IR) will be the guest speaker at the University’s official observance of Veterans Day this year. Cross says that to her, Veterans Day is as “American as apple pie.”

“When you are looking at the Gulf countries, you see that a lot of these sustainability projects are very large, and they’re very loud about them, but they hide the fact that, in fact, the rest of society is not at all sustainable,” says Natalie Koch, professor of geography and the environment.

The undergraduate and graduate students received the recognition at the school’s Syracuse Centennial Celebration.

“In recent decades the country has gotten incredibly polarized politically. Both candidates have 43% in the bank no matter what. I think what the last week is about—it's not about persuasion, we're done with that—it's about mobilization, it's about turnout. The election is going to turn on turnout,” says Grant Reeher, professor of political science.

“We know that Catholics are probably as divided as the rest of the electorate right now,” says Margaret Susan Thompson, associate professor of history and political science. “The election is extremely close by almost any standard and Catholics seem to be in many ways mirroring the American population in that regard,” she says.

Associate Professor of Economics Kristy Buzard and her co-author open up a new rationale for mediation: to increase the efficiency of signaling in a preliminary round of negotiations and to overcome the concern that concessions could be used against the giver in the future. Published in the Quarterly Journal of Political Science.

Using the military for domestic law enforcement would be a fundamental shift, one which too few Americans have considered or grappled with, says William Banks, professor emeritus of public administration and international affairs. “It would turn our whole society upside down…all these arguments about him [Trump] being an autocrat or dictator, it is not a stretch.”

Among those selected are Maxwell students Tommy DaSilva, a policy studies and citizenship and civic engagement major, and Sabrina Lussier, a triple major in geography, citizenship and civic engagement, and environmental sustainability and policy. 

Proposition One “would add sex and gender to the non-discrimination provisions of New York's constitution” and would expand protections beyond a person’s biological sex, “to include orientation, gender identity and gender expression,” says Thomas Keck, Michael O. Sawyer Chair of Constitutional Law and Politics.

University Professor Hamid R. Ekbia attended the NASPAA conference in Washington, D.C., and led a workshop and panel discussion on AI policy at SEICon in New York City.