October 16, 2012
Today marks the 50th anniversary of the Cuban missile crisis, a 13-day nuclear standoff between the United States and the Soviet Union and Cuba. The Armageddon Letters, a transmedia project that grew out of collaborative research begun at the Institute, explores some of the lingering lessons and puzzles of those days in October 1962.
October 15, 2012
The latest findings of the Institute-based Costs of War project have just been released. They include a revised tally of direct war deaths across all categories of people in Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan over the last 11 years.
October 15, 2012
Sergei Khrushchev, past Senior Fellow at the Institute and son of former Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, recalls what it was like 50 years ago when his father and President John F. Kennedy were locked in a war of nerves and the world inched closer and closer to a nuclear war.
October 12, 2012
During a visit to Brown yesterday, Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof engaged with students in James Der Derian's Global Media Seminar.
October 10, 2012
On October 8, Syrian journalist and author Samar Yazbek was named by British Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy as the international writer of courage whom Duffy will share the PEN/Pinter prize. Yazbek, the author of A Woman In The Crossfire, has been an influential figure in the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad and his regime, advocating for universal human rights and lending voice to the Syrian people.
In September, Yazbek was invited to Brown by Director of Middle East Studies Beshara Doumani to talk about her book and the situation in Syria. Before the event, which was co-sponsored by the International Writers Project, Yazbek sat down with Annika Lichtenbaum '14 to discuss her experiences since the start of the revolution.
October 10, 2012
United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has named Romano Prodi, professor at large at the Institute, to be his Special Envoy for the Sahel region.
October 3, 2012
Leonel Fernández, former President of the Dominican Republic, engaged Ricardo Lagos, former President of Chile and Professor at Large at Brown University in a public conversation about "Democratic Leadership and the Challenges of the 21st Century" at Brown on Monday. [Above: President Lagos and Professor Richard Snyder]
October 2, 2012
Renowned scholar of South Asia Partha Chatterjee led the opening session of the Brown-India Seminar. In a talk titled "Soccer and Collective Identity in Colonial Calcutta," Chatterjee explored the racial and colonial discourses that played out between the segregated soccer teams of British India.
October 1, 2012
Lively discussion filled the lobby of the Watson Institute this morning as Botín Scholars mingled with politicians and scholars over coffee. Now in its third consecutive year, the program brings together 40 university students from eight Latin American countries and Puerto Rico who have high potential and a vocation for public service.
September 28, 2012
The Brown-India Initiative was formally inaugurated with a lecture by SM Krishna, India's Minister for External Affairs. The Initiative, housed at the Institute, is a hub for the study of modern India, engaging academics, policymakers, and other public figures to produce interdisciplinary research and contribute to public discourse.
September 21, 2012
Paulo Sérgio Pinheiro, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Syria and a leading human rights expert, will receive the Leo Nevas Human Rights Award at the UN's Global Leadership Awards Dinner in New York next month. Pinheiro, who is adjunct professor of international studies at the Institute, currently chairs a group tasked by the UN Human Rights Council with uncovering human rights abuses in Syria.
September 19, 2012 The New York Times
Richard Locke comments on the inspection of a Pakistani factory that was deemed safe, by a factory monitoring group, weeks before a fire broke out killing nearly 300 of its workers.
September 17, 2012
Yazbek, a novelist and journalist, is a member of the ruling Alawite sect but has harshly criticized the regime. Hosted by Middle East Studies and the International Writers Project, she will speak at the Watson Institute on Thursday, September 20. Her story is featured on CNN.com.
Watch event video.
September 10, 2012
Three Brown faculty join the Institute this semester as faculty fellows: (from left) Beshara Doumani, Nitsan Chorev, and Melani Cammett
August 14, 2012
Ashutosh Varshney observes that the world-class infrastructure rising on China's East Coast raises two questions: "Is China overbuilding? And who is bearing the costs of such development?"
August 8, 2012
The European Central Bank and the Federal Reserve are making the same mistake, Mark Blyth writes on the Harvard Business Review blog. Both are trying to solve a fiscal problem — stagnant growth — with a monetary instrument — the interest rate — that is already at the limit of its usefulness.
August 7, 2012
The power outage that hit more than half of India's population last week reveals the peril of India's incomplete embrace of capitalism, writes Ashutosh Varshney, Professor of Political Science and Director of the Brown-India Initiative. In a Financial Times op-ed co-authored with Jayant Sinha, Managing Director of Omidyar Network India Advisors, Varshney urges India to "unshackle India's entrepreneurial energies" and allow the profit motive to streamline market sectors restricted by political interests.
July 31, 2012
Commenting to a Discovery News reporter, Professor of Anthropology and International Studies Catherine Lutz called for more nuanced assessment of violent risk. Lutz responded to the public's dramatically increased attention to violent crime in the wake of a midnight shooting in a Colorado movie theater earlier this month."We need to ask why we're paying attention to this risk now after this one case where a dozen people died, even though that many people times 10 died in car crashes today and that many people times some number died at the hands of a partner today," she said. "We have attentional deficit disorder regarding certain kinds of violent risks."
July 13, 2012
The Watson Institute is pleased to announce expanded support for Brown students and faculty pursuing policy-relevant research in international studies. Undergraduate and graduate students and faculty at the University are invited to apply for a range of funding opportunities for the 2012-2013 academic year.
July 13, 2012
Professor of Economics Andrew Foster, a member of the Brown-India Initiative steering committee, will deliver a keynote address at a conference in Delhi this month.