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News Archive 2011

In the FT: Cornel Ban Weighs Assad against Ceausescu

December 16, 2011

In today’s Financial Times, Institute Postdoctoral Scholar Cornel Ban looks at comparisons made between popular protests against Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu in the late 1980s and against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad today. “The comparison is apt but it requires some major qualifications that may explain the survival of Mr Assad’s regime,” Ban writes. Among the differences: “While Ceausescu’s personal command over the state’s repressive apparatus simply withered away in a matter of days, after nine months of bloodshed Mr. Assad’s army and police were more likely to take their orders and click their heels than to break ranks.”

Researching Contraception in the Middle East

December 16, 2011

Angel Foster, a medical doctor and Middle East expert, spoke to an audience at the Watson Institute this semester about reproductive health in the Middle East, in a presentation entitled “Building the Case for Expanding Access to Emergency Contraception in the Arab World.”

Looking Back: The Year in Video

December 15, 2011

Media is at the core of the Watson Institute’s strategy to engage policymakers and the public in its research on global policy and to train new generations of leaders in international affairs. Here we present a media highlights reel. It excerpts videos produced or in circulation during 2011, as they capture Institute faculty, research, training, events, and collaborations at Brown.

Former Argentinian Minister Tells Latin America's Cautionary Tales to Botin Scholars at Brown

December 14, 2011

Domingo Cavallo, a former minister of economy and minister of foreign affairs in Argentina, spoke to 40 university students from across Latin America this semester when they visited Brown University as part of the Botín Scholars program. The Botín Scholars were part of a multi-week program seeking to support a network of university students from the region who are committed to public service and reform of civic organizations. The program is led by Fundación Marcelino Botín in association with the Watson Institute and the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies at Brown. After their week of study on campus, the Botín Scholars traveled to Europe, where they spent several weeks engaging in sessions with academics and policymakers.

Announcing: Summer Undergraduate Fellowships

December 14, 2011

The Watson Institute announces fellowship opportunities for undergraduate research and community service overseas during the summer of 2012: the AT&T New Media Fellowships, Jack Ringer Summer in Southeast Asia Fellowship, and Marla Ruzicka International Public Service Fellowship.

CLACS Defines New Agenda: Globalized Area Studies

December 12, 2011

“Do we still need area studies in a globalized world?” asks Richard Snyder, director of Brown's Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies. Posing this provocative question to open the pages of CLACS’ new annual report for 2010-2011, he goes on to argue that both place-based and global perspectives are needed to advance understanding and address today’s pressing social, economic, and political issues. “Globalization creates a dual demand for knowledge that is broad and deep, alert to cross-regional patterns and commonalities yet also carefully attuned to contextual specificities,” he says. To meet the challenge, CLACS is setting a new Globalized Area Studies agenda at Brown, together with its sister area studies programs and the Watson Institute.

Kennedy: Activists Reach across the Globe in Solidarity

December 12, 2011

Reflecting an increasingly common practice, activists from the Egyptian democracy movement at one point sent a letter of solidarity to Occupy Wall Street that began: “To all those in the United States currently occupying parks, squares and other spaces, your comrades in Cairo are watching you in solidarity. Having received so much advice from you about transitioning to democracy, we thought it’s our turn to pass on some advice.” Institute Professor Michael Kennedy highlights these and other peer-to-peer connections among activists across the globe in an essay on the Social Science Research Council’s “Possible Futures” blog. In another act of solidarity, flowing in the opposite direction: “On December 1, 2011, twenty-four people joined together in a small Pennsylvania town to show their solidarity with the protesters of Tahrir by targeting a company that makes tear gas used in the suppression of crowds in Tahrir Square.”

Der Derian Gives Multiple Perspectives on Diplomacy

December 11, 2011

Institute Professor (Research) James Der Derian has been contributing his research on sustainable diplomacy, quantum diplomacy, and the media's influence on diplomacy to recent dialogues with policymakers and academics in European capitals. Meeting last month with Armenian Foreign Affairs Minister Edward Nalbandian in Yerevan, for instance, he emphasized the important balance between open borders and state sovereignty. Der Derian, co-editor of Sustainable Diplomacies: Studies in Diplomacy and International Relations (Palgrave MacMillan, 2010), met with the minister as part of a visit that included a lecture on “Diplomacy and Global Media” at the ministry’s school of diplomacy.

Top Chinese Economist Lays out China's Future Path

December 9, 2011

A change in economic model is necessary if China is to continue sustaining its economic growth. That was the message delivered by Hong Yinxing, Chancellor of Nanjing University, who spoke at the Watson Institute on Tuesday. His talk was part of Brown's Year of China program for 2011-12.

In Memoriam: Jalal Alamgir PhD'00

December 8, 2011

Jalal Alamgir PhD’00 is being remembered at Brown and the Watson Institute for his fine scholarship, sentiment, and purpose, following his accidental death earlier this month. He had been a doctoral student in political science who got his Brown PhD in 2000, a visiting scholar at Watson, and an associate editor on the International Studies Review published here at the time. When he died, he was a professor at UMass-Boston.

Li Presents Model to Address China's Growing Pains

December 5, 2011

Li Xiguang, dean of the Tsinghua University International Center for Communication, presented the city of Chongqing as a model and “message of hope” for the rest of China in a lecture last month at the Watson Institute. Speaking in a presentation titled, "From American Dream to Chongqing Dream: The Making of Soft Power in China,” Li said the major manufacturing city in southwest China serves as a shining example of Chinese development.

Global Conversation: Follow Brown's Climate Change Team at the COP 17 Negotiations

November 30, 2011

Faculty and students from Brown University’s Climate and Development Lab are in Durban, South Africa, supporting some of the world’s poorest countries in their negotiations at the United Nations’ COP 17 climate change talks. Led by Professor Timmons Roberts, director of Brown’s Center for Environmental Studies, and supported in part by the Watson Institute, the Brown team is aiming to influence the negotiations to produce more just and effective processes and outcomes concerning climate finance and other relevant climate policy. The team is working closely with the chair of the Least Developed Country Group to support its negotiations. The team has been blogging in the run-up to the event and will continue throughout the proceedings on the Institute's Global Conversation media platform. Follow their blog here. You can also follow them on Twitter here.

Libya Presented as Case Study in Multilateralism

November 29, 2011

“The world is not a classroom,” Gabriel Swiney '98, an international lawyer for the US Department of State, told a group of undergraduates at Brown University earlier this month. “The real world has lots of interests. Democracy is an interest; the prosperity of your own people is an interest; maintaining relationships with necessary allies, sometimes distasteful, sometimes not, is an interest. They all have to be balanced in policymakers’ minds.” Swiney, who graduated from Brown with a BA in political science before earning his JD at Harvard Law School, returned to Providence to discuss the international response to the situation in Libya.

Latin American Studies Major Named Rhodes Scholar

November 28, 2011

David Poritz '12, a major in anthropology and Latin American and Caribbean studies, has received a Rhodes Scholarship. Poritz started and maintains two organizations focused on the environmental effects of the oil industry on the lives of people in the Amazon. He plans to pursue a master’s degree in Latin American studies at Oxford University.

On Marketplace: Structural Problems May Lead to Euro-contagion

November 17, 2011

Institute Professor Mark Blyth suggested that European contagion from Greece’s financial issues is likely, in an interview on public radio’s Marketplace program. In fact, there are too many structural problems right now for the contagion not to spread.

On NPR: Der Derian's Psychogeography of Berlin

November 15, 2011

Institute Professor James Der Derian was recently featured on NPR’s Berlin Journal and “Life in Berlin” series, where he discussed quantum diplomacy, German-American relations, and the “psychogeography” of Berlin. Der Derian, a research professor who focuses on global security and media studies at the Watson Institute, has been a Bosch Public Policy Fellow this semester at the American Academy in Berlin.

Varshney Describes Trends in Indian Political Economy at WEF's India Economic Summit

November 15, 2011

A new round of economic reforms has been much discussed but slow to materialize in India, and Institute Professor Ashutosh Varshney discussed why in an interview this week in the New York Times India Ink blog. In separate interviews, with Reuters TV, Varshney also discussed India's "Gilded Age," the differences in economic growth in India ("a messy democracy") and China (with "an authoritarian political dispensation"), the awakening of urban politics in India, and India's current anti-corruption movement. His "Gilded Age" metaphor was also echoed in the International Herald Tribune. Varshney was interviewed on the occasion of the World Economic Forum's India Economic Summit, where he was invited to speak on a panel on "India's Policy Outlook."

Radio Open Source Features 'Another Pakistan'

November 14, 2011

Radio Open Source, an online radio conversation hosted and produced by Christopher Lydon in partnership with Brown University and the Watson Institute, recently produced a two-hour podcast of selections from its latest long-running series, “Another Pakistan.”

Blyth on Bloomberg: Monti's Honeymoon Over in Italy

November 14, 2011

Investors' honeymoon with new Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti is already over, but Institute Professor Mark Blyth said this morning on Bloomberg TV that this should come as no surprise. Trying to shore up confidence by bringing in a Euro-technocrat did not really address the real problem. "They're not facing a confidence problem, they're facing a liquidity problem," he said. "And the way you solve that is by having a lender of last resort, and that's what the European Central Bank doesn't want to be."

Strait Talk Student Initiative Convenes Young Delegates, Academics, and Policymakers

November 14, 2011

This week, for the seventh year, the Strait Talk Symposium is bringing young delegates from Taiwan, Mainland China, and the United States together at Brown to develop consensus and steps toward ending the Taiwan Strait conflict.

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