Gordon S. Rentschler Memorial Professor of Economics and Professor of Economics and Public Affairs Alan Blinder has been quoted in numerous media outlets regarding the current U.S. financial crisis. Recent articles have included “Humiliation for high priest of U.S. capitalism,” Sydney Morning Herald, Australia, October 24, 2008; “What should be done next?,” The Washington Post, October 19, 2008; “Blanket Deposit Insurance Is a Bad Idea,” The Wall Street Journal, October 15, 2008 (with R. Glenn Hubbard); “Got $700 Billion? Sweat the Details,” The New York Times, October 12, 2008; and “FDIC Caps Should Be Retained,” Bloomberg.com, October 3, 2008 (with R. Glenn Hubbard).

Ambassador Barbara Bodine, a Diplomat In Residence and Lecturer of Public Affairs spoke on a panel on U.S.-Gulf Defense Cooperation at the National Council on U.S.-Arab Relations’ 17th Annual Conference for Arab-U.S. policymakers in Washington D.C. in early November. She also recently participated on a panel at the Department of State’s Foreign Service Institute on interagency cooperation in post-conflict and crises situations, and was involved in a Rand Exercise on policy options in the Middle East for the next president.  During the summer, she traveled to Amman, Jordan with Acting Dean Nolan McCarty to discuss a cooperative venture between the Woodrow Wilson School and the Jordanian Institute of Diplomacy. Bodine was also part of a series of lectures and seminars on civil-military relations, democratization in the Middle East post-Iraq, and U.S. policy challenges in the Persian Gulf region held at the Naval Post-Graduate School in Monterey, Calif.

Professor of Astrophysical Sciences and International Affairs Christopher Chyba spoke on “The Nuclear, Biological, and Space Arms Control Challenges Facing the Next Administration” as part of the Meridian Lecture Series at Johns Hopkins University on October 30. His talk surveyed nuclear, biological, and space weapons proliferation and arms control challenges. He provided an account of the current landscape, identified where the challenges or opportunities are the greatest, and proposed possible ways forward over the coming years.

Michelle DeKlyen, a research scholar at the Center for Research on Child Wellbeing, has been named to the Board of Directors of Children’s Futures, Trenton.  An expert in the fields of child development, early childhood behavior disorders, and parent-child attachment, she serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology and has been a consulting editor for numerous publications including Child Development, the Journal of Marriage and Family, and the Infant Mental Health Journal.  She has also served for the past two years on Newark’s Council on Family Success. Established in 2001 with support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF), Children’s Futures works to improve child health and development outcomes, so that every child in Trenton has the opportunity to enter pre-school healthy and ready to learn. 

Professor of Politics and Public Affairs, Emeritus Jim Doig’s MPA ’58, PhD ’61 essay on the strategies used by Canada’s chief justice, Brian Dickson, was recently published in a UBC Press book, and his paper “Judicial Independence in the United States” will be included in a volume on judicial behavior to be published by the University of Toronto Press in 2009.  He was recently appointed to a subcommittee of the Connecticut River Joint Commission, which monitors water pollution on the River.  In addition, Doig will be teaching a course on federalism in the winter term at Dartmouth College.

Jacob Viner Professor of International Economics and Professor of Economics and International Affairs Gene Grossman was elected a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations.  He also was invited to join the Global Agenda Council on the Global Trade Regime, organized by the World Economic Forum, and will participate in the first Summit on the Global Agenda, which will take place in Dubai in November.  

On October 21, Lecturer and Diplomat in Residence Robert Hutchings delivered the keynote address on “A National Security Strategy for the Next President” to the U.S. Army War College’s National Security Seminar, consisting of more than 300 senior officers from the U.S. Army and several foreign military services. He was a principal speaker at the annual conference of the European Union’s Institute for Security Studies in Paris, October 30-31, where his address on “The Global Grand Bargain” was the focus of the opening panel.

Professor of History and International Affairs Harold James gave the keynote address at the Arab-German Family Business Congress in Cairo in October 2008, and also gave a keynote lecture on the history of globalization at a conference organized by the Banque de France and the European Banking History Association in Paris.

On September 24, The Times of Trenton published an op-ed by Lecturer of Public and International Affairs and Director of the Policy Research Institute for the Region Richard Keevey. The op-ed discussed the looming fiscal problems facing the state of New Jersey in the current year and projecting ahead for FY 2010. Keevey pointed out that the problems will probably intensify as revenue projections falter because of the growing national financial crisis. Another op-ed appeared in The Star Ledger on October 20 that focused on the national mortgage and financial crisis, and emphasized the importance of ethical conduct and transparency in whatever solutions are proposed and implemented. Keevey suggested that we will not effectively address this historic challenge without absolute integrity, transparency, accountability and exceptional management skills from the key players.

Visiting Lecturer of Public and International Affairs David Kinsey MPAUP ‘71, PhD ‘75 presented the topic “Affordable Housing American Style, Innovations from Key States: Massachusetts, California, and New Jersey” at the University of Aberdeen’s (Scotland) School of Geosciences, on June 30.

The book “State Directed Development: Political Power and Industrialization in the Global Periphery” (Cambridge, 2004) by David K. E. Bruce Professor of International Affairs and Professor of Politics Atul Kohli was translated into Chinese and published in Beijing in July, 2008. Earlier this year, he presented a paper on “Nationalist vs. Dependent Capitalist Development” at a Brown University conference held to honor Fernando Henrique Cardoso, the noted scholar and the former President of Brazil.  He also gave lectures on “Imperialism and the Developing World” at the London School of Economics and on “State and Redistributive Development in India” at Oxford University in June 2008.

Alan Krueger, the Bendheim Professor of Economics and Public Policy, was invited by the Society of Government Economists and the American Economic Association to give the Distinguished Lecture on Economics at the annual Allied Social Science Association meeting in San Francisco in January, 2009.  He has also contributed to the weekly Economist feature on The New York Times website.

Associate Professor of Public and International Affairs Denise Mauzerall chaired a session on recent research, “Interconnections between Air Pollution and Climate Change:  Opportunities for Co-Benefits” at the International Geosphere Biosphere Program (IGBP) Congress in Cape Town, South Africa in May.  In June she presented “Health and Agricultural Impacts of Hemispheric Transport of Air Pollution” at an international workshop on Regional and Intercontinental Transport of Air Pollution in Washington D.C. The meeting was organized by the United Nations Task Force on Hemispheric Transport of Air Pollution (TF HTAP) under the Long Range Transboundary Air Pollution Convention and the Acid Deposition Monitoring Network in East Asia (EANET).  Mauzerall also spoke on the “Present and potential future contributions of sulfate, black and organic carbon aerosols from China to global air quality, premature mortality, and radiative forcing” at a meeting on Chinese challenge in addressing and mitigating climate change at Tsinghua University in Beijing, China and gave a presentation entitled “Estimating the Health Impacts of Intercontinental Transport of Aerosols” to the National Academy of Science panel on The Significance of International Transport of Air Pollutants at Harvard University in October.

Professor of Psychology and Public Affairs Eldar Shafir, along with co-authors Michael Barr of the University of Michigan Law School and Sendhil Mullainathan of Harvard University, presented a paper “Behaviorally Informed Financial Services Regulation” on October 17 at the Asset Building Program of the New America Foundation. The paper looks at new approaches to the way rules for buying homes, getting credit cards, and managing finances are written, based on real-world human behavior and not just economic theory. The authors posit that regulations governing these transactions can play an extremely constructive role if they are better attuned to both consumers’ and producers’ behavior, incentives and self-interest. A copy of the paper may be found on the New America website.  In September Shafir participated in a policy discussion with The Brookings Institution’s Hamilton Project, The Future of Housing and Credit Markets. Shafir and co-author Barr presented their paper, “An Opt-Out Home Mortgage System,” which develops a new framework for understanding the mortgage markets as the interaction between individuals with specific psychological biases and firms that respond to those psychologies within specific markets. In the paper the authors argue that regulation needs to take account of that interaction. The presentation and paper may be found at the Brookings website.

Dean Anne-Marie Slaughter is the lead author of the report “Strategic Leadership: Framework for a 21st Century National Security Strategy” published in July by the Center for a New American Security. In the report Slaughter and co-authors Bruce W. Jentleson, Ivo Daalder, Antony Blinken, Lael Brainard, Kurt Campbell, Michael A. McFaul, James O’Brien, Gayle Smith, and James Steinberg argue that the next president of United States must develop a new national security strategy at a time when America’s international standing and strategic position are at a historic nadir. Now more than at any time since the late 1940s, Slaughter and her colleagues assert, it is vital to chart a new direction for America’s global role. The report is the product of three years of discussions and debate on U.S. foreign policy that address a range of issues spanning fundamental assumptions about the nature of the international order in the 21st century to U.S. policy toward the Middle East. The authors are part of CNAS’s Phoenix Initiative, a project designed to provide an intellectual and policy framework for the next presidential administration.

Stuart Professor of Communications and Public Affairs Paul Starr offered a response to critics, “Paul Starr and the Transformation of American Medicine,” on May 31 at the Policy History Conference in St. Louis, Mo. The session was in recognition of the 25th anniversary of his book, “The Social Transformation of American Medicine,” and the 15th anniversary of the Clinton plan. He delivered a talk “The Chosen Public,” at the Conference of Anglo-American Historians on July 3 in London; spoke on “Professionalism and Public Health: Historical Legacies, Continuing Dilemmas” at a conference at the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta in August and in late November, discussed “The Future of News and Political Corruption” at the New Jersey Judicial College’s annual meeting of the state’s judges.

Professor of History and Public Affairs Julian Zelizer co-authored with MIT professor Meg Jacobs to publish “Swinging Too Far to the Left,” in the October 2008 issue of the Journal of Contemporary History. Zelizer also published a number of articles in the media, including  “Here We Go Again—Maybe,” in  Newsweek and “Will ‘Intellectual’ Label Hurt Obama?” on CNN.com. In May, The Huffington Post launched a new feature entitled “Zelizer Book Corner.” He also presented a paper about the politics of national security since WWII at the Social Science History Association. The topic was based on his book, “Rightward Bound: Making America Conservative in the 1970s.”