Welcome to the latest edition of WWS News. The fall semester has been an exciting one, and I am pleased to report several positive new developments here at the Woodrow Wilson School, which include awards and honors bestowed upon our faculty.

To start, Michael Oppenheimer and Denise Mauzerall were involved in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. Oppenheimer was lead author of a report presented to the United Nations last April, and Mauzerall contributed to an IPCC report issued in 2001.

Also honored was Professor Daniel Kahneman, who received the American Psychological Association’s Award for Outstanding Lifetime Contributions to Psychology. The award—the highest bestowed by the Association—was presented in mid-August at its annual convention.
Kahneman, a psychologist who retired from the School at the end of the last academic year, was a co-recipient of the 2002 Nobel Prize for Economics.

Angus Deaton, the School’s Dwight D. Eisenhower Professor of International Affairs and professor of economics and international affairs, was named president-elect of the American Economic Association (AEA). Deaton’s appointment as AEA president, which will begin in 2009, highlights his significant scholarly contributions to the field of economics.

Other news of our faculty’s scholarly achievement includes Assistant Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs Elizabeth Armstrong MPA ’93, who received the Eliot Freidson Outstanding Publication Award from the Medical Sociology Section of the American Sociological Association for her paper, “Whose Deaths Matter? Mortality, Advocacy, and Attention to Disease in the Mass Media.”

Additionally, Jason Lyall, assistant professor of politics and international affairs, in August was named the recipient of the American Political Science Association’s (APSA) Helen Dwight Reid Award. The award, supported by the Helen Dwight Reid Educational Foundation, is presented annually for the best doctoral dissertation in the field of international relations, law, and politics.

In other developments, the School, Princeton’s Bobst Center for Peace and Justice, and the National Academy for Public Administration this fall announced a new partnership initiative, Institutions for Fragile States. Directed by the School’s Jennifer Widner, professor of politics and international affairs, the initiative is part of a global effort to understand how best to establish accountable and capable governments in fragile or post-conflict states.

This fall, however, did bring us some sad news: Charles Berry, who touched the lives of thousands of students at Princeton and the Woodrow Wilson School as a teacher of economics and as a residential college master at Princeton, died in September of complications from cancer. He was 77. Berry, a specialist in industrial organization and applied microeconomics, devised the “Berry Ratio,” a leading analytic tool embodied in U.S. tax law and now employed throughout the world. In addition, the School community in December mourned the passing of Lowell Livezey, administrative director of the Woodrow Wilson School’s undergraduate program from 1984 to 1988.

Finally, as you will read in the following pages, I am delighted to report that in December the School’s Center for Health and Wellbeing selected its first four Adel Mahmoud Global Health Scholars. The
Mahmoud Global Health Scholars program, designed to create new opportunities to engage Princeton undergraduates in international health policy, funds support for global, health-related internships and senior thesis research. You can read about these new undergraduate
scholars on page 13.

This issue of WWS News nicely encapsulates the ongoing, vibrant, dynamic scholarship and policy training and analysis at the School. I invite you to learn more by visiting the campus, attending our public affairs lectures and panels, or by visiting us online at the newly upgraded WWS website, wws.princeton.edu. As always, I look forward to seeing or hearing from you.