Summer Fellowships Awarded for International Research
April 27, 2010
The Institute has awarded summer fellowships to 10 Brown undergraduates, under its ongoing McKinney, Ringer, Ruzicka, and Smoke programs.
News Archive 2010
Andreas Co-Edits 'Sex, Drugs, and Body Counts'
April 26, 2010
The inaccuracy and manipulation of big, attention-grabbing statistics in policy debates and media reporting is exposed and analyzed in Sex, Drugs, And Body Counts: The Politics of Numbers in Global Crime and Conflict (Cornell University Press, June 2010), co-edited by Institute Associate Professor Peter Andreas and Tufts University Assistant Professor Kelly M. Greenhill.
Blyth and Colleagues Look Beyond Materialism in 'Constructing the International Economy'
April 26, 2010
Watson Faculty Fellow Mark Blyth and colleagues have written the forthcoming Constructing the International Economy (Cornell University Press, June 2010), taking a new tack on an increasingly complex world economy.
Chicago Citizens Budget City Funds
April 25, 2010
Citizens of Chicago’s 49th Ward this month selected 14 community improvement projects to receive $1.3 million in city funding as part of a year-long experiment in grassroots democracy. Their participatory budgeting process, which Institute Associate Professor Gianpaolo Baiocchi helped design and facilitate, is now being considered elsewhere in Chicago and other US municipalities. The model is already in use in over 1,200 municipalities in other parts of the world – including one of the earliest examples, the Brazilian city analyzed in Baiocchi’s Militants and Citizens: The Politics of Participatory Democracy in Porto Alegre (Stanford University Press, 2005).
Hassner and Hoffman See Politics of Passion
April 25, 2010
Passion, not rationality, drives contemporary world politics, agreed Pierre Hassner and Stanley Hoffman at a recent talk at the Institute. As part of the Innovating Global Security lecture series, the two scholars – the former of Sciences Po Paris and the latter of Harvard University – challenged the notion of “rational choice” and explored how much of today’s violence and conflict can be traced to a less savory aspect of human psychology: fear.
Grads Share Challenges of Transnational Research
April 25, 2010
Recently at the Institute, graduate students studying the Americas shared wisdom gained from transnational research. The panel provided an opportunity for cross-disciplinary dialogue about the logistical and theoretical challenges of researching across national boundaries.
On Video: A World Tour of Intellectual Property Issues
April 25, 2010
Watch the video as Attorney Chris Watson, of CMS Cameron McKenna, describes the legal minefield of intellectual property issues on the web, from court actions against Google to individual digital rights. The video captures his recent talk at the Institute on "Commercial Rights vs. Communications Rights: Walking the Tightrope."
AT&T New Media Fellows Selected; Call for Content Issued for New 'Global Conversation' Website
April 23, 2010
People’s lives shaped by violence on the US-Mexico border. Poor kids in Mali, finding an outlet in dance at a local community center. Indian mothers resorting to starting a school of their own. These are some of the people around the world whose stories will be shared online by the University’s first cohort of AT&T New Media Fellows this summer – through documentary films, podcast series, photography, and other media. The fellowships are part of the Institute's planned launch of a new Global Conversation website, where all Brown students, faculty, and alumni are invited to submit their content and join the Conversation.
'Unknown Khrushchev' Published in Russia
April 23, 2010
Institute Senior Fellow Sergei Khrushchev returned Sunday from a 14-day book tour in Moscow for his new volume, Unknown Khrushchev: A History of his Reforms (Moscow: Vremya, April 2010, in Russian). The book tour included talks at such key forums as the Institute for International Relations, as well as several interviews in the press and guest appearances in the media.
Questioning US Policy on Cyberattacks
April 22, 2010
How can the United States prevent cyberattacks against its national and commercial interests? How feasible is the traditional concept of deterrence in the cyber realm, and what needs to be done to build an international regime to constrain cyberattacks? Institute Senior Fellow Sue E. Eckert is engaging these questions at Brown and in Washington. At Brown, Eckert is hosting cybersecurity expert Herbert S. Lin, chief scientist for the National Research Council’s (NRC’s) Computer Science and Telecommunications Board, to give a talk on “Cyberattack as a Tool of US Policy?” on Friday, April 30. Last month, another NRC committee on which Eckert serves issued a separate paper on strategies for deterring cyberattacks.
'Human Terrain' to Premiere at Hot Docs
April 20, 2010
How do we tell friend from foe? Liberator from occupier? Can a soldier be a diplomat? A scholar be a warrior? Human Terrain, produced at the Watson Institute, is making its Canadian premiere at North America's largest documentary film festival, Hot Docs, in Toronto in May. The film maps the US military’s highly controversial use of academics to win hearts and minds in Iraq and Afghanistan. Human Terrain cuts through the fog of the 21st century battlefield to bring home some hard truths after a young scholar dies in the thick of it.
In Paris: Berman Gives Book Talk on 'Passions et Ambivalences'
April 13, 2010
Last month, a conference was held in Paris on Passions et Ambivalences: Le Colonialisme, le Nationalisme et le Droit International (Paris: Pedone 2008) by Nathaniel Berman, Rahel Varnhagen Professor at the Watson Institute.
Shadid Addresses Brown on Day of Pulitzer Award, Cites Ongoing Danger in Iraq
April 13, 2010
New York Times reporter Anthony Shadid spoke this week at Brown about war and nostalgia in the Middle East, on the very day he won his second Pulitzer Prize for international reporting.
In Poland: Solidarity Beyond Tragedy
April 12, 2010
A message from Watson Institute Director Michael D. Kennedy
The death of Lech Kaczynski, president of Poland, and his wife, the vice marshal of the Sejm, Jerzy Szmajdzinski, himself a presidential candidate for the scheduled fall elections, the president of the Polish National Bank, Slawomir Skrzypek, the leader of Poland’s Institute for Historical Memory, Janusz Kurtyka, and 83 other prominent passengers plus eight members of the crew in Saturday’s terrible crash is profound tragedy by itself. That this plane was headed toward the commemoration of the Katyn Massacre of 1940, where over 20,000 of Poland’s military, political, and intellectual elite were killed on Stalin’s direct orders, means that today’s sadness rests on historical trauma. [more]
Reflecting on Poland's Tragedy
April 11, 2010
Following the accident this weekend that killed Poland's President Lech Kaczynski and many other Polish leaders traveling with him, Watson Institute Director Michael Kennedy noted as encouraging the fact that both Russian and Polish reports on the plane crash have focused on sympathy and grief rather than politics. “If this were 20 years ago, people would be spreading stories about some sort of dastardly motive. I cannot imagine any foul play,” he told New York Times reporter Liz Robbins. Kennedy, a scholar of Poland, suggested that this tragedy could in fact bring Russia and Poland closer together.
Conference Planned on Vatican's Impact on World in the 1920s and '30s; Call for Papers
April 8, 2010
The Vatican's opening in 2006 of its archives for the period of the papacy of Pius XI (1922-1939) has prompted a burst of historical research which is not only shedding new light on the role of the Holy See and the Church in this period of extraordinary political and social turmoil, but also on some of the major world events of this period. In an effort to bring scholars from the many different countries who are working in these archives together and to highlight this emerging work to the broader scholarly community, a number of institutions have come together to create a research network. The principal sponsors of this initiative are the Fondazione per le Scienze Religiose Giovanni XIII in Bologna; the University of Münster; the École Française de Rome; the Biblioteca Ambrosiana of Milan; and Brown University (USA). Following a June 2009 conference in Milan and a March 2010 conference in Münster, a conference is planned for October 28-30, 2010 at Brown University.
Project on 'Engaging Afghanistan' Aims to Fill Gaps in Expertise and Public Engagement
April 2, 2010
The Watson Institute is developing collaborations among researchers, policy makers, and the media for more meaningful public engagement on Afghanistan. The Social Science Research Council and its initiative on Academia in the Public Sphere: Islam and Muslims in World Contexts are providing a two-year, $100,000 grant to support the project, known as “Engaging Afghanistan: Creating Avenues of Engagement between Academics and Thank Tanks, the Media and Policy Makers.”
Watson's 'Prominenci' Agenda Brings Together Former Leaders of Austria, Chile, and Italy
April 1, 2010
Three former national leaders will be in residence together at the Institute in early April, as part of Watson's "prominenci" agenda for bringing leading policymakers and academics into collaboration to shape alternative futures for a better world. Emblematic of this approach is a public panel on April 14 on "The World in 2030: Tomorrow's Scenarios, Today's Responsibilities," featuring all three leaders: former Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi, Chile's past President Ricardo Lagos, and former Austrian Chancellor Alfred Gusenbauer. But there is much more on their schedules.
Global Complexity Drives Institute's Evolution
March 30, 2010
Created during the Cold War to diminish the risk of nuclear confrontation between two superpowers, the Watson Institute is at work today in a world of far greater complexity. Indeed, in this time of global transformation, “one of the most pressing issues facing us is precisely the absence of a single problem defining threats to global well being,” according to Institute Director Michael D. Kennedy. “The Watson Institute should be the site in the world known for recognizing this global complexity – for addressing the relationships among critical international issues with innovation and consequence,” Kennedy says.
ProJo Video: Choices' Teens Voice Global Views
March 24, 2010
Watch a video of US Sen. Jack Reed addressing high school students in the Rhode Island State House, where they were brought together by Brown's Choices Program to discuss global issues. The Providence Journal captured the event and interviewed children on their views.