Elizabeth Armstrong MPA ’93, assistant professor of sociology and public affairs, has 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.” The paper, co-authored with Dan Carpenter of Harvard University and Marie Hojnacki of Penn State University, examines the link between media attention—both print and broadcast—and diseases, mortality rates of those with diseases, and community intervention or interest in diseases.

Roland Benabou, Theodore A. Wells ’29 Professor of Economics and Public Affairs, gave the Joseph Schumpeter Lecture at the annual Congress of the European Economic Association in August. The topic of his lecture was “Groupthink and Ideology.”

Alan S. Blinder, Gordon S. Rentschler Memorial Professor of Economics and professor of economics and public affairs, testified in June before the House Science and Technology Committee on off shoring. In July, he joined a rotating panel of columnists writing for The New York Times Sunday Business Section. In addition, he delivered a lecture on off shoring at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York on July 16, participated in the Aspen Institute’s Program on the World Economy in August, and in September keynoted the Bank of Norway’s conference, “Decisionmaking by Committee,” in Oslo .

Carles Boix, professor of politics and public affairs, has coedited a new book, The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Politics (Oxford University Press, 2007), with Susan C. Stokes, director of the Yale Program on Democracy at Yale University. The book is a compilation of works written by 47 scholars. Divided into six parts, it offers a comparative analysis of political institutions and behavior. The book is part of the Oxford Handbooks of Political Science, a 10-volume set of reference books focusing on specific areas within the discipline of political science, including public policy, political theory, political economy, contextual political analysis, comparative politics, international relations, law and politics, political behavior, political institutions, and political methodology. Each volume is edited by a group of authorities in their respective fields.

On July 16, Professor of Astrophysical Sciences and International Affairs Christopher F. Chyba gave an invited briefing at the U.N. to the Secretary-General’s Advisory Board on Disarmament Matters on “Outer Space Weapons.” In October, he was asked by the directors of Los Alamos National Laboratory and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory to co-chair, with former Deputy National Security Advisor J.D. Crouch, a working group titled “Understanding Key Divergent Views on U.S. Nuclear Policy,” for the upcoming January 2008 meeting in Washington, D.C., “Strategic Weapons in the 21st Century.”

Lecturer of Public and International Affairs Wolfgang Danspeckgruber in May delivered the opening address for the Globalization Symposium in Vienna, Austria, on “God, Gold, Gender, and Generations.” In July, he convened and chaired a high-level negotiation in Liechtenstein on aspects of Iran nuclear endeavors. In the epilogue of his new book, edited with Ambassador Robert Finn, Building State and Security in Afghanistan, Danspeckgruber drew conceptual conclusions on state building, security creation, and conditions for a functioning economy in a post-conflict society and on the example of the international communities’ experience in Afghanistan.

Angus Deaton, Dwight D. Eisenhower Professor of International Affairs and professor of economics and international affairs, was awarded a laurea honoris causa from the University of Rome, Tor Vergata in June, as well as an honorary Doctor of Science in economics (D.Sc.) from University College in London in September. He also was elected recently to lead the American Economic Association, to serve as presidentelect in 2008 and president in 2009.

Aaron Friedberg, professor of politics and international affairs and a former advisor to Vice President Dick Cheney, has been appointed to the Department of Defense’s Defense Policy Board. The Board provides the Secretary of Defense, Deputy Secretary, and Under Secretary for Policy with informed advice and opinions concerning major matters of defense policy. It focuses on long-term issues central to strategic planning for the Department of Defense and is responsible for research and analysis of addressed topics, both long- and short-range.

Frederick H. Shultz Class of 1951 Visiting Professor of International Economic Policy William Frist ‘74 was unanimously confirmed by the U.S. Senate to the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) Board of Directors in October. The MCC works to reduce global poverty, promote sustainable economic growth, improve global health, and enhance education under the guiding principle that foreign assistance is most effective when emphasizing transparency and accountability. Former Senator Frist also joined Africare’s Board of Directors in June, and joined Save the Children’s Board of Trustees in September, where he will serve as chair of its global Survive to 5 campaign, which seeks to provide basic health interventions that can save more than six million children around the world annually. In June, he launched ONE Vote ’08, the ONE Campaign’s presidential initiative, which will be co-chaired by Frist and former U.S. Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle. As a member of the Clinton Global Initiative’s (CGI) Global Health Working Group, Senator Frist moderated the “Proven, Low-Cost Strategies to Improve Child Survival and Maternal Health” session at the CGI Annual Meeting in September. After co-chairing a global health conference at St. Petersburg State University (Russia), Senator Frist published “Improving Russian-U.S. Collaboration on Health” in August. His paper and information on the conference are available at www.csis.org/globalhealthforum.

Noreen Goldman, Hughes-Rogers Professor of Demography and Public Affairs, is serving as the acting director of the Office of Population Research for the 2007-08 academic year. She also has received a new grant award from UCLA (The National Institutes of Health is the prime sponsor). The five-year grant in the amount of $1.3 million is earmarked for a project that will systematically investigate the relationship between socioeconomic status, immigrant status, health behavior, and health outcomes for Latinos in the United States. The overall goal is to develop a more comprehensive understanding of Latino health. Although the principal focus will be the Latino population, the project also will examine these relationships for other ethnic groups.

David Goldston, scholar-in-residence with the Program in Science, Technology, and Environmental Policy, authored the editorial “Spending Stalemate” for the October edition of Nature. In the article, Goldston discusses the 2008 budget impasse between President Bush and the U.S. Congress, which has left the fate of science funding— deemed discretionary versus mandatory—in limbo. Goldston writes, “Although, not counting defense, discretionary spending constitutes only about 20 percent of the nearly $3 trillion federal budget, it is the subject of most of the annual political wrangling.”

Assistant Professor of Politics and International Affairs Emilie M. Hafner-Burton recently was awarded a Princeton University Dean of Faculty book grant. Forthcoming in the Journal of Peace Research is an article “The Hegemon’s Purse: No Economic Peace Between Democracies,” co-authored with Alexander H. Montgomery. Also forthcoming in the upcoming issue of International Sociology is the article “International Human Rights Law and the Politics of Legitimation: Repressive States and Human Rights Treaties,” with Kiyoteru Tsutsui and John Meyer.

Professor of International Affairs Robert O. Keohane gave the Harold K. Jacobson Memorial Lecture at the University of Michigan in October on “Voice, Exit, Loyalty, and the Reform of Multilateral Institutions;” and the Castle Lectures at Yale on October 29 and 30 and November 8, on “Designing Multilateral Institutions.”

David K. E. Bruce Professor of International Affairs and Professor of Politics Atul Kohli delivered a paper this summer at a United Nations-sponsored conference in Bombay, India on “The State and Redistributive Development in India.” During the same visit he also delivered a paper, “Imperialism, Old and New,” at the Institute for Policy Research in New Delhi. More recently, he delivered a paper on states and economic development at a Ford Foundation-sponsored conference in Sao Paulo, Brazil. His article, “State, Business, and Economic Growth in India,” was just published in Studies in Comparative and International Development.

Alan Krueger, Bendheim Professor of Economics and Public Policy, has authored the book, What Makes a Terrorist: Economics and the Roots of Terrorism (Princeton University Press, 2007). Krueger examines the factors that motivate individuals to participate in terrorism, drawing inferences from terrorists’ own backgrounds and the economic, social, and political conditions in the societies from which they come. The book outlines economic and psychological consequences of terrorism, and describes countries that are the most likely breeding grounds for terrorists and those most likely to be targeted. Krueger analyzes the terrorist threat objectively and with the tools of economic science, revealing how our nation’s sizeable economy is diverse and resilient enough to withstand the comparatively limited effects of most terrorist strikes. He also calls on the media to be more responsible in reporting on terrorism.

Ambassador Daniel Kurtzer, S. Daniel Abraham Visiting Professor of Middle East Policy Studies, authored the op-ed, “Middle East Summit: A Recipe for Failure?” for the October 9 edition of the International Herald Tribune. In the article, Kurtzer discussed the summit to be hosted by the U.S. in November, and cautioned against the Bush administration’s approach of hosting the talks with key leaders involved in the Mideast peace process without establishing clear goals for the meeting.

David S. Lee, professor of economics and public affairs, has been awarded the 2007 John T. Dunlop Outstanding Scholar Award by the Labor and Employment Relations Association. The award recognizes the research contribution of an academic for the best contribution to research addressing an industrial relations/employment problem of national significance. The award is given to a scholar who has completed their terminal degree in the last 10 years.

Marlaine Lockheed, visiting lecturer in public and international affairs and a visiting fellow at the Center for Global Development in Washington, D.C., published the book, Exclusion, Gender, and Education (Center for Global Development, 2007), co-edited with Maureen Lewis. She gave lectures related to the book at the World Bank’s Global Symposium on Education in Washington, D.C. in October, and at a Conference on Women’s Empowerment in Istanbul in November. An article, “Getting All Girls into School,” appeared in the June 2007 issue of the International Monetary Fund’s Finance and Development, based on her earlier book Inexcusable Absence.

Assistant Professor of Politics and International Affairs Jason Lyall has been named the recipient of the American Political Science Association’s 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. Lyall’s dissertation, “Paths of Ruin: Why Revisionist States Arise and Die in World Politics,” examines how a state’s collective identity shapes, and often undermines, its grand strategy and military effectiveness.

Denise Mauzerall, associate professor of public and international affairs, recently spoke on the linkages between climate change and air pollution. Her talks, given at the World Bank in Washington D.C. in May and for the National Academies Institute of Medicine in San Francisco in September, were on “Air Quality and Climate Change: Opportunities for ‘Co-benefits.’” In the lectures, she described how climate change might result in worsening air quality while also highlighting opportunities for simultaneously reducing emissions of air pollutants that have both a direct adverse impact on human health and welfare and that contribute to climate change.

Nolan McCarty, acting dean of the Woodrow Wilson School and Susan Dod Brown Professor of Politics and Public Affairs, and Julian Zelizer, professor of history at the School, have contributed to The Transformation of American Politics: Activist Government and the Rise of Conservatism (Princeton University Press, 2007). In the chapter titled “The Policy Effects of Political Polarization,” McCarty examines why American politics are increasingly more polarized, and discusses the link between polarization and policy outcomes, the quality of policy outcomes in a polarized arena, and the effects of polarization on social policy. The chapter, “Seizing Power: Conservatives and Congress since the 1970s,” by Zelizer examines the unintended consequences of congressional reform in the 1970s. Zelizer focuses on the rise of a conservative movement that proved adept at working within the new institutional structures created by liberals in the aftermath of the 1960s, such as the rules that allow for Congress to be televised and ethics regulations enacted in the aftermath of Watergate.

William S. Tod Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs Sara McLanahan, along with Kathy Edin of Harvard University and Ron Mincy of Columbia University, presented papers at a recent conference at Harvard entitled “The Moynihan Report Revisited: Lessons and Reflections after Four Decades.” The papers will be published in a forthcoming volume of the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, edited by Doug Massey and Rob Sampson.

Katherine Newman, Malcolm S. Forbes Class of 1941 Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs, has co-authored The Missing Class: Portraits of the Near Poor in America (Beacon Press, 2007) with Victor Tan Chen. Newman and Chen address the plight of nearly 57 million Americans—21 percent of whom are children—sandwiched between the poor and the middle class, and thus just out of reach of public assistance. This “missing class,” the authors assert, is largely invisible and ignored. Drawing on interviews conducted with nine families and public service professionals in the New York metropolitan area from the mid ’90s to 2002, the authors trace the unique problems faced by individuals in this large and growing demographic— the “near poor”—who have transformed their lives through hard work and determination.

Associate Research Scholar Deborah Pearlstein penned an editorial “Is Justice Possible After Torture?” for the August 17 edition of The American Prospect. In the article, Pearlstein argues that the use of torture on detainees to extract information about terrorist plots is backfiring and crippling America’s justice system. Pearlstein writes, “The United States’ decision five years ago to torture detainees has infected a generation of terrorism cases where it might have once been possible to do justice—but may not be anymore.”

This summer, Uwe Reinhardt, James Madison Professor of Political Economy and professor of economics and public affairs, was elected president of the International Health Economics Association (IHEA), a global association of health economists. He also was selected to chair New Jersey Governor Jon Corzine’s Commission on Rationalizing Health Care Resources. He has signed on David Grande MPA ’06 to help write and manage the production of the final report, due out at the end of this year.

Professor of Psychology and Public Affairs Eldar Shafir was the keynote speaker in August at the Roundtable on Behavioral Economics and Public Policy convened by the Australian Government Productivity Commission in Melbourne, Australia. He was also the keynote speaker at the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) Stakeholder Forum in Sydney, Australia in August, and was an invited speaker at Moscow’s Kurginyan Center in September.

Alexander Todorov, assistant professor of psychology and public affairs, presented a public lecture for the Foundation for the Advancement of Behavioral and Brain Sciences in Washington, D.C. in October. The event, “Science Cafe,” was dedicated to contributions of psychology to understanding voting behavior. His paper, “Predicting Political Elections from Rapid and Unreflective Face Judgments,” co-authored with Charles C. Ballew II of the University’s Department of Psychology, was published in the November 13 print issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and Public Affairs Dave Wilcove’s new book, No Way Home: The Decline of the World’s Great Animal Migrations, was published by Island Press in October. Wilcove explores the reasons why so many of the great animal migrations around the world have disappeared or are declining, the ecological consequences of these losses, and the scientific and political challenges associated with protecting the habitats of species that cross numerous—especially international—administrative boundaries.

Professor of History and Public Affairs Julian Zelizer delivered a paper at an October conference about détente at the State Department, entitled “Détente and Republican Politics in the 1970s.” Other speakers at the conference included Henry Kissinger, James Schlessinger, and Condoleezza Rice. Also in October, he presented a paper, “The Conservative Presidency,” at Boston University Law School, and participated on a panel about the 2008 elections that was broadcast on WHYY’s Radio Times. In November, he presented a paper at the Harvard University Law School workshop on presidential war power.