When automakers faced bankruptcy in 2008, auto workers faced a tough decision: lose jobs or agree to contract changes that would help the companies get a federal bailout. The union chose the latter. “This was a concession they had to make in order to sustain the bailouts and have some kind of recovery,” says Tod Rutherford, professor of geography and the environment.

“The UAW…strike action is ultimately trying to realize one of the Biden Administration’s core policy goals and political selling points: you can have good, family-sustaining union jobs alongside climate action. The problem is the automakers see EV production as a way to trim labor costs and shift production to non-union plants,” says Matt Huber, professor of geography and the environment.

"Action anthropology and public policy change: Lead poisoning in Syracuse, NY," co-authored by Distinguished Professor of Anthropology Robert Rubinstein, was published in the Annals of Anthropological Practice.

Brian Taylor, professor of political science, says that he believes Prigozhin is dead and he agrees with Biden. "Putin made clear at the time he saw the mutiny as 'treason' and 'a stab in the back,' which he was unlikely to forget or forgive," he says.

"Does Community-Based Adaptation Enhance Social Capital? Evidence from Senegal and Mali," co-authored by Hannah Patnaik, managing director of the Maxwell X Lab, and John McPeak, professor of public administration and international affairs, was published in the Journal of Development Studies.

The professor of political science will focus on historical trends of intrastate and interstate battles since the 18th century. 

"Sanctions: Greater Congressional Oversight Needed for Costly, Ineffective "Go-To" Policy," co-authored by Kristen Patel, Donald P. and Margaret Curry Gregg Professor of Practice in Korean and East Asian Affairs, was published in the Syracuse Law Review.

One of 15 geographers from 11 states and the West Indies, Farhana Sultana, professor of geography and the environment, will focus on climate and society. 

“This is a perfect sweet spot for a public power entity to take on some of that risk, to try to really get a technology that we need off the ground,” Matt Huber, professor of geography and the environment, says of TVA’s small modular reactor program. ​“They have the resources and the social mission to do that, where private capital wouldn’t.”

Six faculty members were granted tenure and promoted to associate professor and three were promoted to professor.

"There have been women involved for a long, long time. For example, there was a very active women’s branch of the Klu Klux Klan in the 1920s. And many of those women, but not all, had been members of the United Daughters of the Confederacy," says Margaret Susan Thompson, associate professor of history and political science.

Citing the work of organizations like Global Witness in conflict zones worldwide, Selina Gallo-Cruz, associate professor of sociology, points out that a significant part of the violence on this planet comes from the North's "extraction of natural resources through mining or deforestation—palm oil plantations are a big one—and mega-, mega-agricultural projects," all of which lead to "outbreaks of very violent conflict."

"A New African Elite: Place in the Making of a Bridge Generation," authored by Professor Emerita of Anthropology Deborah Pellow, focuses on a sub-set of the Dagomba of northern Ghana, and looks at the first generation to go through secondary school in the north.

"Africa and Urban Anthropology: Theoretical and Methodological Contributions from Contemporary Fieldwork," co-edited by Professor Emerita of Anthropology Deborah Pellow, offers valuable anthropological insight into urban Africa, covering a range of cities across a continent that has become one of the fastest urbanizing geographic areas of the globe.

The awards support undergraduate research projects.

The Maxwell School professor participated in a conference on climate and sustainability.

"This can't continue as systems that become more unstable and unpredictable will harm more in chaotic ways," says Farhana Sultana, professor of geography and the environment.

Brian Taylor, professor of political science, says that the mutiny fallout has put Putin in a position he's neither familiar nor comfortable with—often using his pulpit to blast political enemies, both inside and outside of Moscow. "Now he's applying that very same language to one of his own guys, someone he elevated to a position of power and responsibility," Taylor says.

"Research in a Closed Political Context, COVID, and Across Languages: Methodological Lessons, Messages, and Ideas," co-authored by Darzhan Kazbekova, graduate research associate in the Center for Policy Design and Governance, and Rebecca Schewe, associate professor of sociology, was published in the International Journal of Qualitative Methods.

"I think Putin emerges from this significantly weakened," says Brian Taylor, professor of political science. "I think if you're a member of the Russian elite or are in fact a member of the Russian population, you're going to look at this and think, 'Wow, a private army just drove on Moscow for most of the day. No one stopped them and they're allowed to leave and no real consequences.'"