October 4, 2010
The Global Conversation is now officially launched – as an online media platform for Brown University students, student groups, faculty, and alums to share their international research and initiatives.
October 4, 2010
With global flows of trade and power in flux, scholars of and from Brazil, Russia, India, and China gathered at the Watson Institute in late September for a workshop on “Dreaming with the BRICs: Neoliberal Ideas and Policy Change Outside the Core.” The main objective of the workshop was to explore the rise and ambiguous denouement of the Washington Consensus from an interdisciplinary perspective and with a special focus on the BRIC countries. The workshop brought together sociologists and political scientists who have studied the history of this economic policy paradigm over time.
September 28, 2010
As US-mediated Mideast peace talks stumble forward, University of Chicago Professor John Mearsheimer suggested yesterday at Brown that the Obama administration is essentially impotent in its role, according to a report in the Brown Daily Herald.
September 28, 2010
The Watson Institute and its distinguished visitors continue a global dialogue on progressive policy this week with a workshop on “The Next Left: Globalized Social Democracy in the North and South.” The workshop will be chaired jointly by former Chilean President Ricardo Lagos, a Brown professor at large, and former Austrian Chancellor Alfred Gusenbauer, a Watson Institute visiting professor and leading figure in the Socialist International. The Brown community is invited to attend any or all of the 1-1/2 days of panel discussions on Wednesday and Thursday in the Joukowsky Forum.
September 28, 2010
The integration of the Roma minority in Romania is at the same time encouraged by European Union social policy and discouraged by EU fiscal policy, according to Institute Visiting Fellow Cornel Ban. “The elephant in the room is the trilemma of minority integration, majority welfare, and the austerity demanded by the EU,” he wrote today in the Financial Times.”The Roma getting the short end of the stick is just one consequence of a larger fiscal tragedy,” he added.
September 27, 2010
With governments formulating policies of austerity as the global economic crisis recedes, a new animated video short describes the thinking behind such policies as inherently flawed. Austerity features Faculty Fellow Mark Blyth, an international political economist whose views are captured by director Joe Posner ‘07.
September 24, 2010
Brown Alumni Magazine (BAM) this month features Human Terrain, a documentary produced by Institute Professor James Der Derian and David Udris ’90 and Michael Udris ‘91, of Brown’s Modern Culture and Media Department.
September 21, 2010
Over the past several decades, discussion about human rights has permeated international relations, creating a surge in treaties, institutions, and social movements. Yet while the general principle of human rights has been broadly accepted, human rights abuses persist and questions about the subject remain hotly contested. The Choices Program is aiming to increase deliberation about human rights in secondary school classrooms, with the recent publication of a curriculum unit on Competing Visions of Human Rights: Questions for US Policy.
September 21, 2010
Last week, the European Union and Korea agreed to implement a new free trade regime by July, but the United States lags behind on a similar arrangement. Yesterday, South Korean Ambassador Han Duk-soo warned in a lecture at Brown that the United States faces resulting trade losses unless progress is made on the proposed Korea-US Free Trade Agreement.
September 21, 2010
Institute Senior Fellow Xu Wenli toured 14 European countries this summer in the name of Chinese democracy.
September 20, 2010
The Institute is entering this academic year with new faculty appointments and visiting scholars. Watson is building new research capacity in such areas as finance and religion in international relations, among others, as it also continues to host a changing cohort of visiting faculty and fellows from around the world to bring a diversity of views and expertise to bear on its exploration of the range of its global issues.
September 19, 2010
The South American countries of Chile and Peru have both enjoyed a boom in their mining industry, which is credited with supplying about two-thirds of national exports but blamed for environmental pollution. However, the countries’ narratives diverge significantly when assessing how they have dealt with the contamination, according to a talk by José Carlos Orihuela, visiting fellow in international studies. State legacy, opportunity, and agency make crucial differences in formulating “green” policies.
September 17, 2010
From September 18 - 26, the the New England Ibero-American Film Festival (NEFIAC) is a ground-breaking competitive film festival dedicated to the promotion of the Hispanic and Portuguese cultures.
September 17, 2010
Mexico's drug war is now being described as a "commercial insurgency" by some US federal officials, who are arguing for a counter-insurgency strategy similar to those in the US military, according to Institute Professor Peter Andreas. His remarks in the Los Angeles Times came amid growing concern from officials in US border states watching Mexico's drug war spill over into their communities.
September 17, 2010
With the next G20 meeting taking place in South Korea in November and a US-Korea Free Trade Agreement advancing in Washington and Seoul, the stage is set for Korean Ambassador Han Duk-soo's lecture at Brown on Monday. His talk, "Korea-US Relations: Past, Present, and Future," will be introduced by Brown University's newest professor at large, William R. Rhodes, a renowned international financial diplomat and until recently a top executive at Citigroup.
September 14, 2010
Animosity between Portugal and Spain (as expressed in the saying, “never a good wind or a good marriage from Spain”) spiked after the Spanish Empire engulfed Portugal in 1580. But Portugal’s successful war of liberation that followed was prompted by factors both in and outside the Iberian Peninsula, said Yale Professor Stuart Schwartz at a talk at the Institute during the past academic year.
September 13, 2010
Watch a video of the summer's BIARI gathering of young scholars from around the world.
September 10, 2010
“The breakdown of caste hierarchy has broken the traditional links between caste and profession, and released enormous entrepreneurial energies in the south,” according to Ashutosh Varshney, the Institute's new Paul Dupee Faculty Fellow. Varshney was recently cited in the New York Times, in an article about caste and economic progress in India.
September 9, 2010
William R. Rhodes '57 LHD'05 (hon.), an international financial diplomat known for leading the resolution of economic crises in Asia and Latin America, has accepted a five-year appointment as a Brown professor at large based at the Watson Institute. Rhodes is the recently retired senior vice chairman at Citigroup Inc. and Citibank, and an emeritus member of the Institute's board of overseers. “At a time when international economic turmoil dominates affairs among nations and commands the attention of scholars and financial executives, Bill Rhodes brings a wealth of experience and expertise to the understanding of these issues,” Brown President Ruth J. Simmons said upon his appointment.
September 9, 2010
Institute Professor James Der Derian has won a Berlin Prize fellowship from the American Academy for the spring of 2011, to pursue his research on the US military’s strategy to deploy cultural awareness as a key element in its counterinsurgence strategy in Afghanistan and Iraq.