Campbell Institute News

"No matter how strong or dominant a personality the president has, he is going to have trouble taking on an American political institution as powerful as the U.S. Senate," says Grant Reeher, professor of political science.

According to Shana Kushner Gadarian, associate professor of political science, "Images matter. The emotions that you evoke really do have implications for how the public feels about whether or not they are safe, what kinds of beliefs they want to support, and their feelings about fellow citizens and whether or not they want to take liberties away from fellow citizens."

“The two parties are very close in number—it’s a very even split—and they are polarized,” says Grant Reeher, professor of political science and director of the Campbell Public Affairs Institute. “Those things tend to reinforce each other, make it harder to work across the aisle, which makes it harder to pass any big bill.” 

According to Grant Reeher, professor of political science and director of the Campbell Public Affairs Institute, Trump's basic policy framework for energy—reducing regulation, producing and consuming more of America's own energy resources—has more obvious appeal and is easier to sell to voters.

Grant Reeher, professor of political science and director of the Campbell Public Affairs Institute, theorized that Gillibrand's language could be an effort by the senator to closely connect with critics of Trump.

"Not sure it’s a big deal that @SenKamalaHarris gets interrupted more than her male colleagues during committee meetings? Here’s some reading," tweeted Shana Gadarian, associate professor of political science. She proceeded to share multiple examples and links to published reports of women being interrupted more than their male colleagues.

Grant Reeher, professor of political science and director of the Campbell Public Affairs Institute, says without key people pushing the administration’s agenda, "the government is going to have a tendency to kind of trundle along in the same direction it was beforehand."

"We're at a point now where I would think that the pressure to not be seen as toeing the party line for the White House would probably be more powerful than the pressure to protect the president in some way," says Grant Reeher, professor of political science and director of the Campbell Public Affairs Institute.

The Campbell Conversations, a public affairs interview radio program hosted by Professor Grant Reeher, was awarded first place from the New York State Associated Press Association. The half-hour show features extended, in-depth interviews in which Reeher goes beyond and behind the current news cycle to explore more lasting questions about public affairs.

"I'm not sure that WikiLeaks has made people more critical consumers of news as much as less trusting in authority," says Shana Gadarian, associate professor of political science.

The FY 2018 New York State Executive Budget established the County-wide Shared Services Property Tax Plan requiring local governments to consider ways of sharing services in order to save taxpayer money, and improve the delivery of those services. To support the implementation of this new law, the New York State Department of State contracted with the Campbell Institute to develop a non-partisan guide to help public officials and citizens more usefully consider the possibility of sharing services within their counties.

The Excellence in Graduate Education Faculty Recognition Award, which honors faculty who have a significant, positive influence on graduate education at Syracuse University, was awarded to Azra Hromadžić, assistant professor of anthropology, and Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn, professor of history.

Keith Bybee, professor of political science, talked about finding common ground in our public discourse, on PBS's public affairs program The Open Mind.

"The relationship between scientists and government is arguably at a low point today. But that’s the culmination of a trend that had been building for some time," says Harry Lambright, professor of public administration and international affairs.

"Now is the time to find more and better ways to harness the $2 trillion in global R&D spending lying just beyond the Pentagon’s reach. It is also time for the Pentagon to incubate a larger volume of potential defense technologies to outpace an ever-growing range of threats," says University Professor Sean O'Keefe.