Watson Institute for International Studies News

New Yorker, New York Times Feature Work of Richard Locke

2013-05-17 00:00:00.0

Incoming Director Richard M. Locke is quoted in an opinion piece titled "Before You Buy That T-Shirt" in the May 19 issue of the New York Times.

Costs of War Research Continues Impact

2013-05-13 00:00:00.0

Research by the Costs of War project continues to inform a wide range of people, experts, and institutions about the ramifications of war in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan. Last week, the United Nations-affiliated IRIN News published a series on development indicators in Iraq 10 years after the toppling of Saddam Hussein, citing research by Costs of War contributor Mac Skelton in its piece on the health care implications of US invasion of Iraq.

Listen: Patrick Heller on Building an Inclusive India

2013-05-08 00:00:00.0

Listen to Patrick Heller talk about the challenge of creating an inclusive India in an interview on Almirah Radio, recorded in Delhi where he is currently a visiting fellow at the Center for Policy Research. Almirah Radio is produced by Meara Sharma '11 and Henry Peck '11, with support from the Brown-India Initiative.

Blyth on CNN

2013-05-07 00:00:00.0

Mark Blyth debates austerity with CNN's Richard Quest: watch the clip.

Reviews, debate pile up around Blyth's "Austerity"

2013-05-03 00:00:00.0

In the few weeks following the Institute's April 12 news piece about wide-ranging conversations sparked by Mark Blyth's Austerity: The History of A Dangerous Idea, more reviews and discussions have piled up around the book.

Incoming Director Richard Locke on Global Labor Standards

2013-04-30 00:00:00.0

Incoming Institute Director Richard M. Locke, currently deputy dean of the Sloan School of Management and head of the Political Science Department at MIT, authored the lead essay in a Boston Review forum on the challenge of creating "just" supply chains for global corporations.

Varshney Reflects on Boston Bombing in The Indian Express

2013-04-26 00:00:00.0

Earlier this week, Ashutosh Varshney reflected on the bombing in Boston in The Indian Express. "Just as Delhi and Bangalore are my Indian homes, Boston is my American home," writes Varshney. Boston, he explains to an Indian readership, is an inclusive, international, intellectually rich city. "What explains that some of those who grew up in the US, went through American institutions, lived in inclusive multi-ethnic towns, even took the oath of Citizenship ... would resort to terrorist violence on US soil?"

Latino Leaders Speak

2013-04-25 00:00:00.0

The Watson Institute and the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies welcomed what Professor Richard Snyder described as a "dream team" of panelists to discuss "Rhode Island's Emerging Latino Leaders." Panelists included Ricardo Lagos, former president of Chile and Brown professor at large, Providence Mayor Angel Taveras, Mayor James Diossa of Central Falls, Dr. Pablo Rodríguez of Latino Public Radio, Ana Cano-Morales of Roger Williams University, and Pawtucket School Committee member Sandra Cano. Each spoke briefly about the experiences that led them to become leaders, the challenges that they have faced, and their advice to future leaders. Above (L to R): Lagos and Taveras.

MES Faculty Elias Muhanna Wins Dissertation Prize

2013-04-23 00:00:00.0

Elias Muhanna, assistant professor of comparative literature and faculty in Middle East Studies, has been named the recipient of the 2012 Bruce D. Craig Prize for Mamluk Studies for his dissertation "Encyclopaedism in the Mamluk Period: The Composition of Shihāb al-Dīn al-Nuwayrī's (d. 1333) Nihāyat al-Arab fī Funūn al-Adab."

On Earth Day, President Lagos Envisions a More Conscious Planet

2013-04-22 00:00:00.0

Ricardo Lagos, former president of Chile and the UN Special Envoy for Climate Change from 2007 - 2010, shares his hopes for a greener future.

Melani Cammett: "Violence to Innocents Is a Tie That Binds"

2013-04-19 00:00:00.0

Melani Cammett comments in the Huffington Post about landing in Beirut just as bombs exploded in her Boston neighborhood on April 15. "The irony of the situation was hard to miss," she writes. "Here I was in Lebanon, a country that Western press reports depict as perpetually on the brink of a new civil war and that has witnessed more than its share of bombings, war, and terror."

The experience of watching terror unfold in her hometown and witnessing the fear and confusion at her own children's school made the horrors of daily violence across the Middle East all the more real. "Based on what our community in Boston has undergone, I can only begin to imagine the nightmares and terrors that families in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Afghanistan and elsewhere across the globe have experienced as violence has invaded their everyday lives. Sadly, violence to innocents is a tie that binds."

Blyth Reality Checks Austerity in "Time"

2013-04-18 00:00:00.0

Mark Blyth warns against the imaginary thinking of austerity policy in Time's Ideas section. In keeping with the mantra of his new book, he reminds readers that austerity is a "dangerous idea: it doesn't work in the world that we actually inhabit."

Marla Ruzicka International Public Service Fellowship

2013-04-17 00:00:00.0

The Institute is pleased to announce Neesha Nama '14 as the recipient of the 2013 Marla Ruzicka International Public Service Fellowship. With an interest in maternal and child health, Neesha will be working on a breast-feeding initiative and on an evaluation of the nutritional status of children under five years of age with AMOS Health and Hope in San Jose de los Remates, Nicaragua. Above: Revolutionary graffiti in Tunisia, photographed by Rahel Dette '13, last year's Ruzicka Fellow.

Larry Summers, Others Review Blyth Book

2013-04-12 00:00:00.0

Mark Blyth has been warning the world about the dangers of austerity for years. His new book, Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea, questions the logic that a government can "cut its way to growth," revealing austerity policy for what it is: "nonsense."

Lutz Wins Guggenheim

2013-04-11 00:00:00.0

Catherine Lutz, the Thomas J. Watson, Jr. Family Professor of Anthropology and International Studies, has been awarded a Fellowship by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to support work on a book about the contemporary moralities of American war.

Film Screening: "Two Who Dared"

2013-04-10 00:00:00.0

A free public screening of the documentary Two Who Dared: The Sharps’ War, will be held at the Institute on April 16 at 7 p.m. The film was also screened last week at the Institute as part of a series of worldwide premieres occurring simultaneously at churches, synagogues, theaters, and schools in honor of Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Cammett wins Mellon New Directions Fellowship

2013-04-10 00:00:00.0

Melani Cammett, Dupee Faculty Fellow at the Institute, has been awarded the Mellon New Directions Fellowship, which funds scholars to pursue training outside of their own fields. Cammett, a political scientist, will train at the Harvard School of Public Health as a full-time visiting scholar and postdoctoral student. She will take coursework on health and health systems from diverse public health, sociological and anthropological perspectives during 2013-14 to further advance her current research in Lebanon, Egypt and Jordan, where she specifically examines state- and non-state providers in welfare regimes. Above: A street clinic provides free medical care to protestors in Cairo's Tahrir Square in 2011.

(mis)Measuring Progress: Better GDP in Developing Nations

2013-04-05 00:00:00.0

Is Gross Domestic Product the best indicator of national success? Noah Elbot '14 explores the history — and future — of GDP. Above: Quotation from Jigme Singye Wangchuck, king of Bhutan, on a wall in Thimphu's School of Traditional Arts.

BIARI Alumni Return to the Institute

2013-04-04 00:00:00.0

Participants from the 2012 Brown International Advanced Research Institutes (BIARI) were at the Institute this week to workshop the chapters of their planned edited volume entitled "Urbanization in the Global South: Patterns and Processes." Above, from left: Jakob Alberto Augusto Eichman (Brazil), Varinder Jain (India), and Sagar Raj Sharma (Nepal)

Blyth on TV: Austerity is (still) a bad idea

2013-04-02 00:00:00.0

Mark Blyth stressed the message of his forthcoming book, Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea, in television interviews in Ontario and Rhode Island.