,Watson Institute,Watson International Institute,Brown University,Brown u,Brown,Public Affairs,3-Gxnb2NLI4,UCok8bs3XNbyU93LMwQ4A55w, Society, channel_UCok8bs3XNbyU93LMwQ4A55w, video_3-Gxnb2NLI4,In January of 2019, journalist Elizabeth Rush joined 56 scientists and crew people aboard an ice-breaking research vessel to study the Thwaites glacier in Antarctica. The glacier, which is about the size of the state of Florida, has been nicknamed the “Doomsday Glacier” for the effect its disintegration would likely play in the rise of global sea levels.
“If we lose Thwaites, there's great concern that we will lose the entirety or big portions of the West Antarctic ice sheet and that those glaciers combined contain enough ice to raise global sea levels 10 feet or more,” Rush told Dan Richards on this episode of Trending Globally.
Rush recounts her voyage aboard the Palmer and how it reshaped her understanding of our changing climate and planet in her 2023 book, “The Quickening: Antarctica, Motherhood and Cultivating Hope in a Warming World.” However, as the title suggests, the book is also about another, more personal journey: Rush’s decision to have a child.
The resulting book is part adventure travelogue, part mediation on the meaning of motherhood, and part climate change manifesto. It also offers some much-needed wisdom on how to envision a future when it feels like the world is falling apart.
Learn more about and purchase “The Quickening” (https://milkweed.org/book/the-quickening)
Learn more about “The Conceivable Future” (https://www.conceivablefuture.org/)
Transcript coming soon to our website (https://trending-globally.captivate.fm/)
,Watson Institute,Watson International Institute,Brown University,Brown u,Brown,Public Affairs,Diplomacy,Foreign Affairs,International Relations,American Governance,Career Diplomat,u1uD8IYSww8,UCok8bs3XNbyU93LMwQ4A55w, Politics,Society, channel_UCok8bs3XNbyU93LMwQ4A55w, video_u1uD8IYSww8,Ambassador Victoria Nuland is Shelby Cullom Davis Professor in the Practice of International Diplomacy and Director of the International Fellows Program at the Columbia School of International and Public Affairs. A U.S. diplomat for 35 years, she served six U.S. Presidents and 10 Secretaries of State of both political parties and holds the rank of Career Ambassador. She was Acting Deputy Secretary of State from July 2023 until March 2024, and served concurrently as Under Secretary for Political Affairs. Her tenure as U/S for Political Affairs began in April 2021.
,Watson Institute,Watson International Institute,Brown University,Brown u,Brown,Public Affairs,SMugglers,North Africa,Africa,Maritime Law,Middle East,International Relations,hayN4yS138Y,UCok8bs3XNbyU93LMwQ4A55w, Society, channel_UCok8bs3XNbyU93LMwQ4A55w, video_hayN4yS138Y,Smuggling is typically thought of as furtive and hidden, taking place under the radar and beyond the reach of the state. But in many cases, governments tacitly permit illicit cross-border commerce, or even devise informal arrangements to regulate it. Drawing on extensive fieldwork in the borderlands of Tunisia and Morocco, Max Gallien explains why states have long tolerated illegal trade across their borders and develops new ways to understand the political economy of smuggling. His book, “Smugglers and States – Negotiating the Maghreb at its Margins” examines the rules and agreements that govern smuggling in North Africa, tracing the involvement of states in these practices and their consequences for borderland communities. It demonstrates that, contrary to common assumptions about the effects of informal economies, smuggling can promote both state and social stability. States not only turn a blind eye to smuggling, they rely on it to secure political acquiescence and maintain order, because it provides income for otherwise neglected border communities. More recently, however, the securitization of borders, wars, political change, and the pandemic have put these arrangements under pressure. Gallien explores the renegotiation of the role of smuggling, showing how stability turns into vulnerability and why some groups have been able to thrive while others have been pushed further to the margins.
ABOUT THE SPEAKER
Max Gallien is a political scientist specialising in the politics of informal and illegal economies, the political economy of taxation and the modern politics of the Middle East and North Africa. He is a research fellow at the Institute of Development Studies and a Research Lead and the International Centre for Tax and Development. He is the author of “Smugglers and States – Negotiating the Maghreb at its Margins” (Columbia University Press, 2024).
,1,Jeff Colgan, Director of Climate Solutions Lab (CSL) and Richard Holbrooke Professor of Political Science and International and Public Affairs, explains the Climate Syllabus Bank project at Climate Solutions Lab, located at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University.
The Climate Solutions Lab syllabus bank fosters and improves university-level courses on climate change in the social sciences. At many universities, such courses are scarce — despite student demand on the world's most important global problem. For potential instructors, developing a new syllabus from scratch can be a barrier to teaching the course. So, we offer existing syllabi, for free, to anyone in the world. Different courses have different features, such as documentary films or class simulations.
We are extremely grateful to the instructors who have volunteered their syllabi for this purpose. More syllabi are welcome.
To submit a syllabus, please use this form: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdTDGnl7u1_evbPhJ_MMSTqyUXEQMyJX6xrbGQo6C0ZemlIcQ/viewform
,1,On June 4, results came in from the largest democratic election in history. Over 640 million people voted in India’s election, which took place at over one million polling places across the country over the course of six weeks.
Many predicted that India’s prime minister Nerandra Modi and his party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) would dominate the election, grow their ranks in Parliament, and further impose their Hindu-nationalist ideology on the country.
However, that wasn’t what happened. Modi was reelected, but his party lost over 60 seats in the lower house of Parliament. The BJP will have to govern as part of a multi-party coalition, and most likely moderate their Hindu-nationalist aspirations.
On this episode, you’ll hear from Ashutosh Varshney, a political scientist at Brown University and director of the Watson Institute’s Saxena Center for Contemporary South Asia (https://watson.brown.edu/southasia/) , about this historic election: what led to its surprising outcome, what it means for the Hindu-nationalist movement embodied by Prime Minister Nerandra Modi, and what it might tell us about the struggle for democracy occurring in countries around the world.
*Trending Globally will be taking a brief summer hiatus, but we’ll be back in July with all-new episodes*
Learn more about the Saxena Center for Contemporary South Asia (https://watson.brown.edu/southasia/) at the Watson Institute
Learn more about the Watson Institute’s other podcasts (https://home.watson.brown.edu/news/podcasts)
Transcript coming soon to our website (https://trending-globally.captivate.fm/)
,1,About the Event
Hosting four panelists working with different communities of the Middle East, this webinar will unravel diverse uses of creative and experimental methods in anthropology beyond the conventional modes of academic writing – such as poetry, graphic novel and documentary. Through examples from the panelists’ works, the webinar will explicate how using such methods facilitate and complicate ethnographic knowledge production. It will also provide insights to people interested in utilizing creative methods in their analytical thinking.
About the Organizer
Alomran Postdoctoral Research Associate Fulya Pinar
About the Panelists
Nayrouz Abu Hatoum (Concordia University)
Lana Askari (University of Amsterdam)
Sherine Hamdy (University of California, Irvine)
Leah Zani (public anthropologist, author, and poet).
Cosponsored by the Department of Anthropology and the Cogut Institute for the Humanities
,1,Mark Blyth, political economist at Brown University's Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, and Carrie Nordlund, political scientist and Assistant Dean for Undergraduate Programs at Brown University, share their take on the news.
On this episode:
Trump’s domination of the GOP primary after winning Iowa and New Hampshire, and what the MAGA-ficaiton of the GOP means for 2024
The E. Jean Carroll decision against Trump and what does this and the rest of the court cases mean for Trump’s candidacy
Making sense of America’s “vibe-cession” and disinflation
Claudine Gay’s resignation as Harvard’s president, and the Right’s strange relationship to the Ivy League
Where does China’s economy go next?
Unpacking the calls to ban Germany’s right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) party.
Why is the UK trying to send asylum-seekers to Rwanda?
The Super Bowl meets the Taylor Swift-industrial complex
,1,William Miles first came to Niger as a Peace Corps Volunteer in the 1970s. He was last there during the July 2023 coup d’état. Locked down and eventually evacuated by the French Air Force, he will share his reflections on the coup and its implications in light of his forty + years of ethnographic fieldwork in the Niger-Nigeria borderlands and research into governance and counterterrorism in West Africa.
,1,Backlash is hardly a new political force — since America’s founding, change has often been driven by citizens mobilizing in opposition to policies, programs, or social movements.
But recently, as our guest on this episode explains, backlash movements have come to dominate our politics in unprecedented ways. He argues that to build a more stable and healthy politics, we need to better understand how these forces work.
Why do certain policies, movements, or individual politicians incite powerful backlash movements while others don't? And why — whether we’re talking about immigration, healthcare, reproductive rights, or countless other issues — has backlash come to dominate so many different policy realms?
On this episode, Dan Richards explores these questions with Eric Patashnik, a political scientist at the Watson Institute, and author of the book “Countermobilization: Policy Feedback and Backlash in a Polarized Age.” In the book, Patashnik provides a theory of political backlash — what causes it, why it’s diffused through our politics over the last few decades, and how policymakers and politicians can learn to remain effective in a political moment dominated by backlash and countermobilization.
,1,About the Event
In conversation with conceptual artist Sama Alshaibi, Brown University professor Nadje Al-Ali and Columbia University professor Kathryn Spellman Poots will discuss her art and the significance of war, exile, borders and environmental destruction in her work. What role do gender and her body play in her work? And how does her art draw on historical sources and contemporary realities to express exploitations of freedom?
This conversation is part of a joint Center for Middle East Studies at Brown University and the Middle East Institute at Columbia University series on gender, art and body politics in the Middle East and its diasporas. The series examines intersecting inequalities and body politics expressed, represented and transgressed in both visual and performance art.
About the Speaker
Born in Iraq and now based in the United States, Sama Alshaibi is an artist working between photography, video and installation. Her practice explores the notion of aftermath—the fragmentation and dispossession that violates the individual and a community following the destruction of their social, natural and built environment. She often complicates the coding of the Arab female figure found in the image history of photographs and moving images.
In 2021, Alshaibi was named a Guggenheim Fellow and the recipient of the Phoenix Art Museum’s Arlene and Morton Scult Artist Award. Her work has been exhibited in numerous biennales and museums, including the 55th Venice Biennale, the 2020 State of the Art (Crystal Bridges Museum of Art), Museum of Modern Art (NYC), Institut Du Monde Arabe (Paris) and Barjeel Foundation (U.A.E.), among others. In 2015, Aperture published her monograph Sama Alshaibi: Sand Rushes In, featuring the artist’s Silsila series. Alshaibi is a Regents Professor of Art at the University of Arizona, USA.
,1,Mark Blyth, political economist at Brown University's Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, and Carrie Nordlund, political scientist and Assistant Dean for Undergraduate Programs at Brown University, share their take on the news.
On this episode:
Trump potentially gets removed from the GOP primary ballot in Colorado, and the risks of involving the courts in a presidential election
How the politics of immigration will affect the 2024 race in the US
Elise Stefanik grills University presidents on Capitol Hill, highlighting the thorny politics of Israel, Gaza, and free speech on college campuses
The political economy of Argentina’s new president Javier Milei
The Fed decides to hold interest rates steady, and the market reacts with…enthusiasm
China’s economic slowdown, and the limits of growth in authoritarian societies
Where the Israeli-Gaza conflict goes from here, and how it might affect US politics going forward
Google’s loss in court to Epic Games, and American’s very mixed record regulating monopolies.
,1,Join us for Crafting Cuisine: A Celebration of Food and Art in South Asia with subject matter experts Andrea Gutierrez, Sarah K. Khan, Deepa S. Reddy, Sylvia Houghteling and Yael Rice.
“Nala as a Mirror to Buttermilks: Accessing Place and Time” with Deepa Reddy and Andrea Gutierrez
“Ephemeral Tie-and-Dye” with Sylvia Houghteling
Engage with your sense of smell while creating a foldable book that highlights the ovens depicted in an illustrated recipe book from early sixteenth-century central India. Art historian Yael Rice and artist Sarah Khan will guide you through the process and reveal invisible histories and narratives untold that include the migration of people, plants and ideas.
Andrea Gutierrez teaches at the University of Texas at Austin in the Department of Asian Studies. Andrea uses Sanskrit, Prakrits, and Tamil languages to conduct research on projects concerning food history of South Asia and animal studies for the region. Andrea has recently published on medieval temple food in the Journal of Hindu Studies (“Toward a Better Understanding of Medieval Food Practices: The View from Srirangam” https://doi.org/10.1093/jhs/hiad016) and on medieval captive elephant training (“Elephant Education, Linguistic Articulation, or Punishment? Gajasiksha as Interspecies Communication in Elephant Manuals of Early India” https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/conversations-with-the-animate-other-9789356403055/). Gutiérrez is presently preparing a book manuscript tentatively called Royal Pleasures: Recipes & Dining in India’s History.
Sylvia Houghteling is an Associate Professor of History of Art at Bryn Mawr. She specializes in early modern visual and material culture with a focus on the history of textiles, South Asian art and architecture, and the material legacies and ruptures of European colonialism. Houghteling’s first book, The Art of Cloth in Mughal India (Princeton University Press, 2022), a recipient of a College Art Association Millard Meiss Publication Fund Grant, examined the textiles crafted and collected across the Mughal Empire in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, showing how woven objects helped to shape the social, political, religious, and aesthetic life of early modern South Asia. Her ongoing research is concerned with questions of temporality and the unique material histories of the Indian Ocean trade.
Sarah K Khan (b. Mangla, Pakistan) utilizes food to provoke thought about injustice towards people and the planet. She explores food, culture, women, migration, and identity in urban and rural environments. A maker and scholar, she uses photography, films, print-making, maps, ceramics and writing. A two-time Fulbright recipient, Khan earned a BA in Middle Eastern history and Arabic (Smith College), two Masters (public health and nutrition, Columbia University) and a Ph.D. (traditional ecological knowledge systems, plant sciences, New York Botanical Garden-CUNY). She has received numerous grants, fellowships, and residencies to pursue her work. Most recent residencies include Anderson Ranch Residency (2024), Women Studio Workshop (2023), Kohler Arts/Industry Residency (2022), Princeton Artist-in-Residence ArtHx (2021-22), Ellis Beauregard (2021), Monson Arts (2021), Project for Empty Space Feminist Residency (2020), Indigo Arts Alliance (2019), and as the Boren Chertkov Residency for Labor and Justice at Blue Mountain Center (2019).
Deepa S Reddy is a cultural anthropologist with the University of Houston-Clear Lake: tenured faculty and then part-time working from India since 2000. Her book, Religious Identity and Political Destiny, was published with Rowman and Littlefield in 2006; she was part of an editorial collective that curated a volume on public expressions of hinduness, Public Hinduisms (Sage, 2010), which is currently being revised for re-publication. From 2004-8 she was co-investigator on an NIH-funded project to understand “Indian and Hindu perspectives on Genetic Variation Research”; between 2017-18, she was lead researcher (Chennai) for “The Asthma Files”: a global, multi-city study of air quality and environmental governance in cities around the world, including six in India. She has also published on the Indian women’s movement, caste politics, and religious nationalism, as well as on Indian and Hindu perspectives on human genetic variation, bio-politics, and constructions of the civic.
Yael Rice is associate professor of art history and of Asian languages and civilizations at Amherst College. She specializes in the art and architecture of South Asia, Central Asia, and Iran, with a particular focus on manuscripts and other portable arts of the fifteenth through eighteenth centuries. She is the author of the recently published The Brush of Insight: Artists and Agency at the Mughal Court (University of Washington Press, 2023).
,1,On this episode, political economist and Watson professor Mark Blyth talks with Nobel Prize-winning economist Sir Angus Deaton about his new book, “Economics in America: An Immigrant Economist Explores the Land of Inequality.”
You may not know Angus Deaton by name, but you probably know a phrase he helped to make famous: “deaths of despair.” In 2015, Deaton and his wife and research partner Anne Case published a paper that revealed something startling: an increase in mortality rates among white middle-aged men and women in the 2000s and 2010s in the United States.
Deaton and Case attributed this to a confluence of factors, including economic stagnation, social isolation and the opioid crisis. In explaining this topic, they did something economists usually avoid doing: They told a sweeping but still complex and nuanced story about American society and economy in the 21st century.
In this conversation, Mark and Angus Deaton discuss Deaton’s new book, as well as its relationship to his work on deaths of despair. They also explore why the field of economics ignored the issue of inequality for so long, and why in the last decade that’s started to change.
,1,Andrea Gutierrez, Sarah Khan, Sylvia Houghteling and Yael Rice — Crafting Cuisine: A Celebration of Food and Art in South Asia
Friday, December 1, 2023
2:00 PM to 4:00 PM EST
McKinney, 111 Thayer Street
Join us for Crafting Cuisine: A Celebration of Food and Art in South Asia with subject matter experts Andrea Gutierrez, Sarah Khan, Sylvia Houghteling and Yael Rice.
Andrea Gutierrez is an Assistant Professor of Instruction at The University of Texas at Austin. In her work, she researches Pre-modern South Asia, South Asian Food History, and Animal Studies in South Asia. She has delved into the historical intersections of food and spirituality in early India, and has not only explored diverse topics such as animal language in ancient texts and temple rituals but has also been recognized for their exceptional research through prestigious awards such as the ICAS Book Prize and the Getty Library Research Grant
Sarah Khan is the EPE Director of Undergraduate Studies/Assistant Professor at Yale University. She researches gender and comparative politics, with a regional specialization in South Asia. In her work, she studies gender gaps in political preferences, and the barriers to women’s political participation and representation. She also researches strategies to prevent and address violence against women in the developing world.
Sylvia Houghteling is an Associate Professor of History of Art at Bryn Mawr. She specializes in early modern visual and material culture with a focus on the history of textiles, South Asian art and architecture, and the material legacies and ruptures of European colonialism. Houghteling’s first book, The Art of Cloth in Mughal India (Princeton University Press, 2022), a recipient of a College Art Association Millard Meiss Publication Fund Grant, examined the textiles crafted and collected across the Mughal Empire in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, showing how woven objects helped to shape the social, political, religious, and aesthetic life of early modern South Asia. Her ongoing research is concerned with questions of temporality and the unique material histories of the Indian Ocean trade.
Yael Rice is the Chair of Architectural Studies/Associate Professor of Art & the History of Art and of Asian Languages and Civilizations at Amherst College. She specializes in the art and architecture of South Asia and Greater Iran, with a particular focus on manuscripts and other portable arts of the fifteenth through eighteenth centuries. Between 2009-12, she held the position of Assistant Curator of Indian and Himalayan Art at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and in that capacity curated exhibitions of court portraits from South Asia, ragamala paintings, and works by Rabindranath Tagore and other seminal Bengali artists of the early twentieth century.
,1,Apart from its feminist edge and the extraordinary bravery of the youth, one prominent feature of Iran’s 2022-23 Woman Life Freedom uprising has been the prolific production and creative use of arts, music, and poetry as major means of political activism and protest. Since the tragic murder of the 22-year-old Mahsa Zhina Amini by the “morality police,” protesters have put together words, images, music, and movement to express their frustrations against the injustices of the state and to demand their rights to life, youthfulness, and freedom. Slogans, poetry, songs, video clips, paintings, graffiti, and dances are produced and performed by young artists and ordinary participants alike. In this online event, we will be in conversation with two distinguished experts in Iranian politics, culture, and arts to discuss how women have reclaimed their voices for life and freedom and to analyze the emerging characteristics of Iranian art of protest since the start of the uprisings.
Panelists:
Nadje Al-Ali, Brown University
Nahid Siamdoust, University of Texas, Austin
Pamela Karimi, University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth
,1,In 2015, economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton published a paper that revealed something startling: an increase in mortality rates in the United States among white middle-aged men and women between the years of 1999 and 2013.
They published a book in 2020 that aimed to explain the trend, which they attributed to — among other factors — economic stagnation, social isolation, and the opioid crisis. The book, titled “Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism,”, caused a stir inside and outside the field of economics, as people tried to make sense of America’s economy and society in the Trump years.
On this episode, Rhodes Center Director Mark Blyth talks with Deaton about his newest book “Economics in America: An Immigrant Economist Explores the Land of Inequality,” which takes a broader view of the issues brought up in “Deaths of Despair.” They explore the pervasiveness of inequality in America, how it relates to the “deaths of despair” phenomenon, and why the field of economics often seems blind to the most pressing issues facing individuals and communities.
,1,Join the Watson Institute and Derek Penslar for an informal discussion on the current events in Israel-Gaza.
Derek Penslar, is the William Lee Frost Professor of Jewish History, Harvard University.
Moderated by, Omer Bartov, Samuel Pisar Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies
,1,Borrowing heavily from the unwritten Constitution of the United Kingdom, and after 2-years of debates in the Constituent Assembly, India adopted its Constitution, the basis for its Republic. Join us for a talk with Dr. Palanivel Thiaga Rajan, former Finance Minister of Tamil Nadu, that will touch upon core constructs such as administration and governance, representation of citizens, and the separation and execution of powers to consider whether the outcomes over the last roughly 75 years have delivered on the vision of the Constituent Assembly.
Dr. Palanivel Thiaga Rajan serves as the Minister for Information Technology & Digital Services, Earlier he served as the Minister for Finance & Human Resources Management in the Government of Tamil Nadu, India. During his stint as Finance Minister, Hon’ble Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu Thiru M.K.Stalin nominated Dr Palanivel Thiaga Rajan to the Goods & Service Tax Council (GST Council) as a GST Council Member to represent the Government of Tamil Nadu. Dr Palanivel Thiaga Rajan was also a member of the Group ofMinisters (GoM) on (1) System Reforms (standing committee) & (2) Casinos, Race Courses and Online Gaming as nominated by the Chairperson of the GST Council i.e., Hon’ble Union Minister for Finance,Government of India.
,1,Mark Blyth, political economist at Brown University's Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, and Carrie Nordlund, political scientist and Assistant Dean for Undergraduate Programs at Brown University, share their take on the news.
On this episode:
The state of the Israel-Hamas War, and its geopolitical and economic implications
Discouraging polls for Biden, promising victories of Democrats in November’s special elections – what does it mean for 2024?
The new Speaker of the US House does the same thing his predecessor got kicked out for doing
Mark and Carrie push their Bible knowledge to the limit
Xi warms up to the United States…a little
Don’t worry about the UK – David Cameron is back!
David Beckham – more interesting than his looks would suggest?
Mark doesn't think much about the Roman Empire
,1,How do our individual experiences shape our political views? What role do our own stories and memories play in how we think about the world around us? How can we use our memories — even our most painful ones — to help build a more peaceful politics?
These are complicated questions, and not of the variety we often ask on this show. But historian Omer Bartov thinks that trying to answer them is essential to finding political solutions to our most vexing problems. And in his new book “Genocide, the Holocaust and Israel-Palestine: First-Person History in Times of Crisis,” Bartov powerfully makes the case.
On this episode of Trending Globally, Dan Richards talks with Bartov about the book — which weaves together personal stories, historical analyses and a moral critique of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians — and how individual stories and personal memories are inextricably linked to the politics we create.
Although this podcast was scheduled before the current Israeli-Palestinian crisis, the interview took place in the wake of the events of October 7 and therefore those events are a big part of the conversation. But as this conversation hopefully makes clear, Bartov’s book and analysis are even more important and relevant in our current moment.
,1,Join Lyle Goldstein, Visiting Professor of International and Public Affairs, for a conversation with Mike Mochizuki, Japan-U.S. Relations Associate Professor of Political Science and International Affairs at George Washington University. This is the final event in a series of talks about the China-Japan relationship, “Stepping Back from the Brink: An Exploration of Contemporary China-Japan Relations.”
Professor Mochizuki holds the Japan-U.S. Relations Chair in Memory of Gaston Sigur at the Elliott School of International Affairs at The George Washington University. Dr. Mochizuki was director of the Sigur Center for Asian Studies from 2001 to 2005. He co-directs the “Memory and Reconciliation in the Asia-Pacific” research and policy project of the Sigur Center. Previously, he was a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution. He was also Co-Director of the Center for Asia-Pacific Policy at RAND and has taught at the University of Southern California and Yale University.
,1,Michael D. Kennedy, Professor of Sociology and of International and Public Affairs
The Polish Solidarity movement of 1980–81 inaugurated the decade ending communist rule in Europe. We can’t know the global consequence of Ukrainian solidarity since 2022, but it has been presented in similarly definitive fashion, as a struggle to end Russian imperialism – now reinforced with рашизм/rashism – in defense of principles, as in Poland 1980–81, of sovereignty, democracy, and civil society. In this epoch end, and despite Putin’s efforts, there is no global polarization as in the Cold War, but universal platitudes about freedom and peace, and even planetary survival, seem to crash on the contradictions of the multiple catastrophes through which we live. I propose an alternative method for engaging our world’s cataclysms by seeking how solidarities within crises can be rearticulated with emergent global transformations, beginning with the relationship between Poland and Ukraine in these times, and concluding with the contradictions and possibilities of more global solidarities in defense of peace and justice.
,1,Yamini Aiyer is the President and Chief Executive of the Centre for Policy Research. In 2008, she founded the Accountability Initiative at CPR, which is credited with pioneering one of India’s largest expenditure tracking surveys for elementary education.
Yamini’s work sits at the intersection of research and policy practice. Her research interests span the fields of public finance, social policy, state capacity, federalism, governance and the study of contemporary politics in India. She has published widely in academic publications and the popular press, and writes regularly on current affairs and policy matters in mainstream Indian newspapers.
Yamini serves on a number of government and international policy committees as well as boards of nonprofits and think tanks. Her recent policy commitments include: Commissioner and Chair, Governance Working Group, Lancet Commission on Reimagining India’s Health System; Member, Chief Minister’s Rajasthan Economic Transformation Advisory Council; Member, United Nations Committee of the Experts on Public Administration; Council Member, United Nations University; and Member, Technical Advisory Group, National Data and Analytics Platform, NITI Aayog.
Yamini is an alumna of the London School of Economics, St. Edmunds College, Cambridge University and St. Stephen’s College, Delhi University.
,1,Join the Watson Institute, Shaul Magid and Yuval Evri for an informal discussion on the current events in Israel-Gaza.
Shaul Magid is a Distinguished Fellow in Jewish Studies, Dartmouth. He will present on Decadence, Sickness, and Death: Mourning and the Israel-Hamas War
Yuval Evri is Assistant Professor of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies on the Marash and Ocuin Chair in Ottoman, Mizrahi, and Sephardic Jewish Studies, Brandeis University. He will present on Mizrahi-Palestinian contact zones between Ofakim and Gaza
Moderated by, Adi Ophir, Mellon Visiting Professor of Humanities and Middle East Studies
,1,Chandra Bhan Prasad is an Indian scholar, political commentator, and author of the Bhopal Document, impacted the policies of the Indian state of Madhya Pradesh and has been widely cited in discourses on Dalits. Prasad is the co-author author of Defying the Odds: The Rise of Dalit Entrepreneurs (with D Shyam Babu and Devesh Kapur), Dalit Phobia: Why Do They Hate Us?, What is Ambedkarism?, and Dalit Diary, 1999-2003: Reflections on Apartheid in India. He is also the founder of the ByDalits.com platform and the editor of Dalit Enterprise Magazine and has been widely quoted by the world press on issues of caste and the treatment of Dalits in India. Prasad’s main areas of research and writing are Dalit capitalism, India’s march to modernity, and Westernization in India.
,1,Join us for a book discussion on Migrants and Machine Politics with author Tariq Thachil on November 23, 2023.
Commentators:
Lisa Bjorkman, University of Lousiville, Patrick Heller, Brown University, Siddharth Swaminathan, Brown University
Tariq Tachi is the Madan Lal Sobti Chair for the Study of Contemporary India and professor of political science at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of Elite Parties, Poor Voters.
As the Global South rapidly urbanizes, millions of people have migrated from the countryside to urban slums, which now house one billion people worldwide. The transformative potential of urbanization hinges on whether and how poor migrants are integrated into city politics. In Migrants and Machine Politics: How India’s Urban Poor Seek Representation and Responsiveness, SIS Professor Adam Auerbach and Tariq Thachil (University of Pennsylvania) draw on years of fieldwork in urban north India to argue against conventional portrayals of migrant settlements as politically subdued, bought-off, or polarized by local dons and political ‘machines.’
Auerbach and Thachil show how migrants actively construct and populate the political networks that connect them to city governments. To do so, they generate and wield intense political competition to sow unexpected, important, and imperfect seeds of accountability within urban politics.
Praised by reviewers as “pioneering,” “pathbreaking,” “a tour de force,” and “a model of social-science research,” Migrants and Machine Politics sheds new light on the political consequences of urbanization across India and the Global South.
Migrants and Machine Politics was published in 2023 by Princeton University Press. For more information, click here.
,1,The Watson Institute hosts a panel of Brown faculty for an analysis of the complexities of the ongoing war on Ukraine. Panelists will be exploring a wide range of critical topics ranging from biosecurity threats to deescalation. Moderated by Edward Steinfeld, director, Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs.
Panelists:
Volha Biziukova, Postdoctoral Fellow in International and Public Affairs
Lyle Goldstein, Visiting Professor of International and Public Affairs
Wilmot James, Senior Advisor to the Brown Pandemic Center, Professor of the Practice of Health Services, Policy and Practice at the Brown University School of Public Health
Rose McDermott, David and Marianna Fisher University Professor of International Relations
,1,Last year, President Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act into law. Considered by many to be the biggest climate and energy bill ever passed, the IRA included roughly $370 billion to help shift the U.S. to cleaner forms of power. And it was just one of three laws passed by the administration that will play into the United States’ move away from fossil fuels.
The impact of these policies, however, will go far beyond our climate. Indeed, they form the core of “Bidenomics,” and they’re going to reshape our economy and our politics for decades to come. They will do so in ways we can predict, and in ways we can’t.
On this episode, Dan Richards speaks with two experts on the politics of climate change about this unprecedented collection of legislation and how it will transform our economy, change our planet and possibly realign our politics.
Guests on this episode:
Jeff Colgan is a political scientist, and director of the Climate Solutions Lab at the Watson Institute.
Robinson Meyer is a contributing opinion writer at The New York Times and the founding executive editor of Heatmap, a new media company focused on climate change.
,1,An expansive study of the problems encountered by educational leaders in pursuit of reform, and how these issues cyclically translate into future topics of reform.
School reform is almost always born out of big dreams and well-meaning desires to change the status quo. But between lofty reform legislation and the students whose education is at stake, there are numerous additional policies and policymakers who determine how reforms operate. Even in the best cases, school reform initiatives can perpetuate problems created by earlier reforms or existing injustices, all while introducing new complications. In Reforming the Reform, political scientist Susan L. Moffitt, education policy scholar Michaela Krug O’Neill, and the late policy and education scholar David K. Cohen take on a wide-ranging examination of the many intricacies of school reform.
With a particular focus on policymakers in the spaces between legislation and implementation, such as the countless school superintendents and district leaders tasked with developing new policies in the unique context of their district or schools, the authors identify common problems that arise when trying to operationalize ambitious reform ideas. Their research draws on more than 250 interviews with administrators in Tennessee and California (chosen as contrasts for their different political makeup and centralization of the education system) and is presented here alongside survey data from across the United States as well as archival data to demonstrate how public schools shoulder enormous responsibilities for the American social safety net. They provide a general explanation for problems facing social policy reforms in federalist systems (including healthcare) and offer pathways forward for education policy in particular.
Conversation with the Authors
Susan Moffitt, Professor of Political Science and International and Public Affairs, Director of Academic Programs, Brown University
Michaela Krug O’Neill, Research Investigator, University of Michigan
Discussants:
Andrea Louise Campbell, Arthur and Ruth Sloan Professor of Political Science, MIT
Magdalene Lampert, Professor Emerita, University of Michigan, Boston Teacher Residency Design and Development Coordinator 2011 - 2017
Domingo Morel, Associate Professor of Political Science and Public Service, NYU
Suzanne Wilson, Neag Endowed Professor of Teacher Education, UCONN
,1,California Series in Public Anthropology and the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs present the third New Books in Public Anthropology Virtual Café, with readings and comments by:
Nicole Fabricant, Professor of Anthropology at Towson University, co–executive editor of NACLA Report on the Americas, and author of Fighting to Breathe: Race, Toxicity, and the Rise of Youth Activism in Baltimore.
Ryo Morimoto, Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Princeton University, and author of Nuclear Ghost: Atomic Livelihoods in Fukushima’s Gray Zone.
Victoria Sanford, Professor of Anthropology at City University of New York, and author of Textures of Terror: The Murder of Claudina Isabel Velasquez and Her Father’s Quest for Justice.
The event will be moderated by Ieva Jusionyte, Watson Family University Associate Professor of International Security and Anthropology and editor of the California Series in Public Anthropology.
,1,Join us for a book panel to discuss Black Grief/White Grievance: The Politics of Loss by Juliet Hooker, Professor of Political Science at Brown University. The other panelist include Cristina Beltran (NYU), Kevin Quashie (Brown University) and Thomas Zimmer (Georgetown).
In this book, Juliet Hooker, a leading thinker on democracy and race, argues that the two most important forces driving racial politics in the United States today are Black grief and white grievance. Black grief is exemplified by current protests against police violence—the latest in a tradition of violent death and subsequent public mourning spurring Black political mobilization. The potent politics of white grievance, meanwhile, which is also not new, imagines the U.S. as a white country under siege.
,1,Join us for a Graduate Student Seminar - Misinformation and its Moderation on WhatsApp with subject matter expert Kiran Garimella.
Kiran Garimella is an Assistant Professor in the School of Communication and Information at Rutgers University. Kiran’s research is focused on building innovative, opt-in, privacy preserving data-collection tools for platforms like WhatsApp, with the goal of developing interventions to stop/slow the spread of misinformation.
,1,Join us for a panel discussion of Grow and Hide: The History of America’s Health Care State with author Colleen Grogan, Deborah R. and Edgar D. Jannotta Professor at the University of Chicago Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy, and Practice, James Morone, John Hazen White Professor of Public Policy and Professor of Political Science and Urban Studies at Brown University, Miranda Yaver, Assistant Professor of Political Science at Wheaton College, and Eric Patashnik, Julis-Rabinowitz Professor of Public Policy, Professor of Political Science, Chair, Department of Political Science at Brown University.
In her newly published book, Grow and Hide, Professor Grogan provides a sweeping history of the American healthcare state that reveals the public has been intentionally misled about the true role of government. The US government has always invested federal, state, and local dollars in public health protection and prevention. Despite this public funding, however, Americans typically believe the current system is predominantly comprised of private actors with little government interference. In what Grogan terms “the grow-and-hide regime,” the US has created a publicly financed system while framing it as the opposite. Today, the state’s role is larger than ever, yet it remains largely hidden because stakeholders–namely, private actors and their allies in government–have repeatedly, and successfully, presented the illusion of minimal.
,1,Join us for a conversation between Parth Jindal ’12 and Ashutosh Varhsney that will explore Indian economic growth, business and entrepreneurial opportunities, building an athletic franchise and pipeline for competition at the highest level of sport. Parth will also be promoting a range of internship opportunities for Brown students at JSW Group.
This event is Co-sponsored by the Brown Center for Career Exploration .
,1,Watson Institute and the Brown Center for Philosophy, Politics, and Economics is excited to welcome Professor John Aldrich for the John Hazen White, Sr., Lecture. Professor Aldrich specializes in American politics and behavior, formal theory, and methodology.
“Power, Policy, and Democratic Principles: Challenges Facing Congress” Dissatisfaction with government – including Congress perhaps above all – runs uncommonly high, and the practice of governing in the Congress is increasingly distasteful to nearly every observer. How has Congress changed so much over the last few decades? Are its practices really worse than in earlier eras? Does it matter that Members seem to dislike one another, that it is difficult for the Republican Party to select a leader, that narrow majorities appear to make governing even harder? Are there any silver linings?
JOHN H. ALDRICH. (Ph.D., Rochester), Pfizer-Pratt University Professor of Political Science, Duke University. He specializes in American and comparative politics and behavior, formal theory, and methodology. Books he has authored or co-authored include Why Parties, Why Parties Matter, Before the Convention, Interdisciplinary, Change and Continuity in the 2020 and 2022 Elections. He is past President of the Southern Political Science Association, the Midwest Political Science Association, and the American Political Science Association. He has been a Guggenheim Fellow and is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. https://sites.duke.edu/aldrich/
,1,This is part three in our companion series to the book “Diminishing Returns: The New Politics of Growth and Stagnation” (co-edited by Mark Blyth, Lucio Baccaro and Jonas Pontusson).
On this episode, Mark talks with four contributors for the book: Alex Reisenbichler, Aidan Regan, Oddný Helgadóttir, and Jonas Nahm. They look at case studies in a handful of countries, as well as some of the cross-cutting trends affecting all growth models across the world. They explore the role of finance and politics in growth models, and how the climate crisis is making us rethink this all even further.
,1,About the Event
This event takes up queer subjectivity and resistances in the Caribbean, with a focus on LGBTQ+ women, through the launch and discussion of new and forthcoming books by Dr. Nikoli Attai, Defiant Bodies: Making Queer Community in the Anglophone Caribbean, and Dr. Preity Kumar, An Ordinary Landscape of Violence: Women Loving Women in Guyana (tentative title). Central are questions about the conceptualization of queerness outside of a global north or western framework, how violence is resisted, and how we can embrace gendered and sexual diversity in our imaginings of the Caribbean.
About the Speakers
Moderator: Kamala Kempadoo
Panelists:
Nikoli Attai, Colorado State University
Preity Kumar, University of Rhode Island
Cosponsored by the LGBTQ Center
,1,Join Professor Wendy J. Schiller for a discussion around domestic violence and gun safety reform in the United States. Professor Schiller will offer a short lecture on her research, followed by a Q&A moderated by Daniel Poloner ’24, Chair of the Watson Student Advisory Council, and a research assistant on Professor Schiller’s project on this critical policy issue.
Wendy J. Schiller is Professor of Political Science, Professor of International and Public Affairs and Director of the Taubman Center for American Politics and Policy at the Watson Institute. She teaches popular courses including, The American Presidency, Introduction to the American Political Process, and Congress and Public Policy. Among her many publications, Professor Schiller recently co-authored a new book titled, Inequality Across State Lines: How Policymakers Have Failed Domestic Violence Victims in the United States.
Cosponsored by the Watson Student Advisory Council and IAPA DUG.
,1,Please join us as we welcome the following 6 writers to discuss their work.
Angie Cruz
Fred D'Aguiar
Francisco Goldman
Shara McCallum
Tiphanie Yanique
Javier Zamora
There will be a book signing and reception following the event.
Sawyer Seminar Series
,1,Robinson Meyer will give our keynote fall lecture covering some of the most pressing questions in climate politics, and the interesting answers that many people aren’t yet seeing. Meyer is the founding executive editor of Heatmap, a new media company focused on climate change. He is also a contributing Opinion writer at The New York Times and was previously a staff writer at The Atlantic, where he covered climate change, technology, and science. In March 2020, he co-founded the COVID Tracking Project, an award-winning volunteer effort that collected coronavirus data from every U.S. state and territory.
,1,Out of a pre-war Syrian population of 24 million, at some point during the ongoing conflict, there were about 250,000 Syrians detained in its many prisons, a percentage of the population (1%) that dwarfs that of many other authoritarian regimes. Imprisonment may well be a defining characteristic of postcolonial Syrian history, and its widespread violence under especially the Assad regime since 1970 has made a profound impact on Syrian society. Yet due to the strict secrecy, censorship, and pervasive fear surrounding prisons, as well as the ‘conspiracy of silence’ between perpetrators and victims, Syrian prisons have not been examined systematically. The initiative for Syrian Gulag emerged out of a 2017 meeting between novelist, documentary filmmaker, human rights activist, researcher, and former detainee Jaber Baker, and Üngör. The book offers an examination of Syria’s prison system, using a combination of sources and methods, including published sources such as memoirs, social media data, leaked regime files, and oral history interviews. It looks into the structure and functioning of arrest, detention, and torture, discusses the identities of the perpetrators, and probes the experiences of the survivors, including how they overall fared after fleeing abroad.
About the speaker
Uğur Ümit Üngör is Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at the University of Amsterdam and the NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust, and Genocide Studies. His main area of interest is the history and sociology of mass violence, with a particular focus on the modern and contemporary Middle East. He has won several academic awards and held visiting positions in Dublin, Vancouver, Budapest, Toronto, Los Angeles, and Edinburgh. He has published books and articles on various aspects and cases of mass violence and genocide, including The Making of Modern Turkey: Nation and State in Eastern Anatolia, 1913-1950 (Oxford University Press, 2011), Paramilitarism: Mass Violence in the Shadow of the State (Oxford University Press, 2020), and the forthcoming Assad’s Militias and Mass Violence in Syria (Cambridge University Press, 2024).
,1,Rohini Somonathan is Professor of Economics at the Delhi School of Economics. She received her Ph.D in 1996 from Boston University and held faculty positions at Emory University, the University of Michigan and the Indian Statistical Institute before joining the Delhi School of Economics in 2005. Her research focuses on how social institutions interact with public policies to shape patterns of economic and social inequality. She is particularly interested in exploring the intellectual and ideological environment within which state policy is created and justified. Within the broad area of development economics, she has worked on group identity and public goods, gender equality, child nutrition and environmental quality.
,1,Please join us Monday, October 2nd from 3:00pm-5:00pm In the McKinney Conference Room, 3rd Floor, located at 111 Thayer Street to support our NIH- funded Brown/UCT training partnership and program: BRIDGES- geared to increase the diversity and quality of doctoral training in public heath in South Africa.
,1,The Political Science Department presents A Distinguished Lecture Series on Emerging Trends in 21st Century Domestic and Global Politics
Generously sponsored by Herbert H. Goldberger Lectureships Fund and Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs
October 4, 2023 at 4:30pm
Stephen Robert Hall/280 Brook Street with reception to follow
Protecting the ballot: How first wave democracies ended electoral corruption
Isabela Mares, Yale University
Between 1850 and 1918, many first-wave democracies in Europe adopted electoral reforms that reduced the incidence of electoral malfeasance. Such reforms came in a variety of forms. Some reforms imposed harsher punishments for bribing or the politicization of state resources during campaigns. Other changes improved electoral secrecy, providing better protection of voters’ autonomy. By mandating the presence of candidate representatives supervising electoral operations, reforms also reduced the incidence of electoral fraud. Drawing on an analysis of parliamentary deliberations and roll call votes in France, Germany, Belgium and the United States, this study explores how these electoral changes came about. It documents how elite splits facilitated the formation of parliamentary majorities in support of electoral reforms. The political composition of these majorities varied across countries and across reform dimension, depending on the distribution of political resources and the economic and electoral costs incurred by politicians with opportunities to engage in malfeasance. Unpacking the electoral determinants of the demand for reforms, the study provides an alternative to theories of democratization that emphasize economic considerations alone.
Isabela Mares is the Arnold Wolfers Professor of Political Science and the Director of the European Union Center at Yale. She specializes in the comparative politics of Europe. Professor Mares has written extensively on labor market and social policy reforms, the political economy of taxation, electoral clientelism, reforms limiting electoral corruption. Her current research examines the political responses to antiparliamentarism in both contemporary and historical settings.
Professor Mares is the author of five books. These include The Politics of Social Risk: Business and Welfare State Development (New York: Cambridge University Press 2003), Taxation, Wage Bargaining and Unemployment (New York: Cambridge University Press 2006), From Open Secrets to Secret Voting (New York: Cambridge University Press 2015), Conditionality and Coercion: Electoral clientelism in Eastern Europe (co-authored with Lauren Young, Oxford University Press 2018) and Protecting the Ballot: How First Wave Democracies Ended Electoral Corruption (Princeton: Princeton University Press 2022).
The Politics of Social Risk was awarded the Gregory Luebbert best book in comparative politics award by the American Political Science Association and the best book in European Politics by the Council for European Studies. Conditionality and Coercion was awarded the William Riker award for Best Book in Political Economy by the American Political Science Association, the Best book in European Politics and was a runner up for the Gregory Luebbert Award. Her articles have been awarded best prizes by the APSA sections on Comparative Politics, Representation and Electoral Systems and History and Politics, among others. Professor Mares is a Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a fellow of the Simon Guggenheim Foundation.
,1,Join Lyle Goldstein, Visiting Professor of International and Public Affairs, for a conversation with Admiral Scott Swift USN (Ret.), former Commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet.
Adm. Swift served in the U.S. Navy for more than 40 years, rising from his commission through the Aviation Reserve Officer Candidate program to become a Navy light attack and strike fighter pilot. He commanded at all levels including F/A-18 weapons school, aircraft carrier-based squadrons, Carrier Air Wing, Carrier Strike Group and the U.S. Seventh Fleet forward deployed to Japan, finally completing his uniformed career as the 35th Commander of U.S. Pacific Fleet in 2018. During his years of service, he participated in combat Operations Praying Mantis, Southern Watch, Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom, and received a master’s degree from the Naval War College, Newport, Rhode Island.
He is a graduate of San Diego State University and the U.S. Naval War College.
As founder of The Swift Group LLC, previous MIT Center for International Studies Robert E. Wilhelm Fellow, MIT Research Affiliate, Senior Fellow at the Center for Naval Analysis, Adjunct Professor at the Naval War College, US Naval Institute Board Member and Spirit of America Advisory Board Member, Admiral Swift continues to explore opportunities to serve where his interests, abilities, experience and national need align.
,1,As Watson celebrates Hispanic Heritage Month, join the Master of Public Affairs students Jessica Saenz Gomez, and Lizbeth Lucero for a fireside chat with Dr. Laura Lopez-Sanders. Dr. Lopez Sanders is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Brown University, whose work and research interests include public policy, immigration, race and ethnic relations, social inequality and more. Join us to hear about Dr. Laura Lopez-Sanders’ important policy work and research, and get to learn more about her journey and story as a Latina scholar in academia.
,1,As Watson celebrates Hispanic Heritage Month, join the Master of Public Affairs students Jessica Saenz Gomez, and Lizbeth Lucero for a fireside chat with Dr. Laura Lopez-Sanders. Dr. Lopez Sanders is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Brown University, whose work and research interests include public policy, immigration, race and ethnic relations, social inequality and more. Join us to hear about Dr. Laura Lopez-Sanders’ important policy work and research, and get to learn more about her journey and story as a Latina scholar in academia.
,1,The United States has witnessed an explosive expansion of mass surveillance since the 9/11 attacks. The pervasive fear, Islamophobia, xenophobia, weakened civil liberties protections, and exponentially increased funding and surveillance capitalism of the post-9/11 era have enabled an unprecedented breadth and scale of surveillance reigning across the United States today—disproportionately impacting Muslims, immigrants, and protesters for racial, environmental, and labor justice.
In this one-hour webinar, Dr. Jessica Katzenstein, Postdoctoral Fellow in the Inequality in America Initiative at Harvard University, will present findings from a paper she authored for the Costs of War Project entitled, “Total Information Awareness: The High Costs of Post-9/11 U.S. Mass Surveillance,” and will be joined by Joanna YangQing Derman, Director of Anti-Profiling, Civil Rights and National Security at Asian Americans Advancing Justice and Elizabeth Goitein, Senior Director of the Liberty and National Security Program at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law to discuss current mass surveillance policy issues. Moderating will be Dr. Sahar Aziz, Distinguished Professor of Law and Director of the Center for Security, Race and Right at Rutgers Law School.
,1,bout the Event
This book narrates the history of America and Iran, and its diplomacy, by shifting attention to social and cultural concerns. As Iranians observed global crises such as apartheid and race riots unfold in South Africa and the United States, they sharpened their understanding of racial politics. At the same time, Iran tried to assume a prominent role in these debates by hosting the UN Human Rights Conference in 1968 at a time when the US was mired in an unpopular war in Vietnam. American culture gained ascendancy in Iranian urban life. Much of the country’s business filtered through American hands. Persian popular culture, however, derided American politics and reflected growing suspicions about America’s international relations.
About the Author
Firoozeh Kashani-Sabet is the Walter H. Annenberg Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania, where she has been teaching since 1999. Her research deals with identity politics, diplomatic and ethnic relations, and gender relations. She currently serves as president of the Association for Iranian Studies.
,1,One day in the year 2000, in the midst of the Second Congo War, Honoria* fled her home in the Democratic Republic of Congo and never returned. After 16 years in a refugee camp in Uganda, she relocated to Philadelphia, where she became one of the roughly 80,000 refugees who entered the U.S. that year.
Honoria’s family was one of the dozens that Blair Sackett, a sociologist and postdoctoral fellow at the Watson Institute, followed as they navigated life in the U.S. Sackett, whose work focuses on the experience of refugees in the U.S. and abroad, wanted to understand why some refugees thrived in the U.S. while others faltered.
The result of Sackett’s research is a new book, co-authored with sociologist Annette Lareau, called “We Thought It Would Be Heaven: Refugees in an Unequal America.” On this episode, Dan Richards talks with Sackett about the book, and about the under-explored factors that play a surprisingly large role in the wellbeing and success of refugees in the U.S.
*All names of displaced persons in this episode, and in "We Thought It Would Be Heaven," are pseudonyms.