PEOPLE

Michal Ben-Josef Hirsch accepted a post-doctoral fellowship with the Schusterman Center for Israel Studies at Brandeis University and will also teach in the politics department. Hirsch successfully defended her dissertation “And the Truth Shall Make You Free: The International Norm of Truth-Seeking” in March.

Assistant Professor of Political Science Fotini Christia received a post-doctoral fellowship at the Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies for the 2009-10 academic year.

SSP Associate Director Owen Cote was quoted in an NPR article entitled “Gates Looking to Speed Up F-35 Production” in April. During March and early April, Cote and SSP Principal Research Scientist Cindy Williams conducted an interagency policy case study and a crisis simulation on the subject of dealing with a more confident Russia for the National Security Studies Program of the U.S. Department of Defense.

Jennifer Dignazio joined CIS last summer as an office assistant. Her duties include supporting the Center’s Robert E. Wilhelm fellows, coordinating the Myron Weiner Seminar Series on International Migration, and assisting CIS headquarters’ faculty and staff.

Ph.D. candidate Keren Fraiman presented a paper entitled “Three to Tango: Coercion and Violent Non-state Actors” at the annual meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association in April.

Cecil and Ida Green Career Development Associate Professor of Political Science Taylor Fravel hosted a CIS workshop assessing China’s rising power in February where he delivered a lecture entitled “China’s Military Rise: Assessing Military Capabilities and National Influence.” Fravel presented a paper entitled “China's Territorial Future: Will Conquest Pay?” at Cornell University in April.

Ph.D. candidate Brendan Green received a pre-doctoral fellowship from the Miller Center at the University of Virginia as well as a pre-doctoral fellowship from the Belfer Center at Harvard University, where he will be in residence for the 2009-10 academic year.

Annette Kim was promoted to Associate Professor by the Department of Urban Studies and Planning and is now Ford International Career Development Professor.

Ph.D. candidate Peter Krause presented a paper entitled “The Political Effectiveness of Terrorism: Theory and Method” at the International Studies Association Conference in February. Ph.D. candidate Jon Lindsay presented a paper entitled “Commandos, Advisors, and Diplomats: Special Operations Forces and the Challenge of Counterinsurgency” at the International Studies Association Conference in February.

Ph.D. candidate Austin Long accepted a tenure track position at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs that will begin this fall. Ph.D. candidates Austin Long, Reo Matsuzaki, Andrew Radin, Paul Staniland, Caitlin Talmadge, and Sarah Zukerman all received the Smith Richardson Foundation World Politics and Statecraft Fellowship. MIT received six of the 20 fellowships awarded, more than any other school.

Topher McDougal, Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning, presented a paper “Survival Strategies of Production Firms in Civil War: The Case of Liberia” at the UNU-WIDER “Entrepreneurship and Conflict” conference in Londonderry, Northern Ireland, in March.

Rebecca Ochoa joined CIS in the fall as an administrative assistant to CIS Director of Public Programs Michelle Nhuch and Associate Professor of Political Science and Director of the Program on Emerging Technologies (PoET) Kenneth Oye.

Professor of Regional Economy and Planning Karen Polenske received recognition recently when colleagues and former students created the Karen R. Polenske Best Student Paper Award in honor of her leading work as a scholar of China’s sustainable development. The $1K award for best student paper will be presented annually to a student member of the International Association for China Planning.

Professor of Political Science and Director of the Security Studies Program Barry Posen served as a member of The Study Group on Strategic Reactions to American Preeminence, which was sponsored by the National Intelligence Council and the Bureau of Intelligence and Research of the U.S. Department of State in Washington, D.C. Posen was a speaker at the 10th Military Power Seminar “NATO at 60: Challenges Ahead – Implications for Norway” sponsored by the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI) and The Norwegian Defense Education Command in Oslo in December. Posen appeared on WBUR's On Point for a discussion of Obama’s antiwar critics in March. He was a panelist on “American Grand Strategy and the Obama Administration” at The Center for International Security Studies’ Inaugural Symposium at Princeton University in May.

Professor of Political Science Ben Ross Schneider was named co-director of workshops on “Revitalizing Development Studies” in the Social Science Research Council program for Dissertation Proposal Development Fellowships in 2009. Schneider delivered a talk entitled “Hierarchical Market Economies and Varieties of Capitalism in Latin America” at the Watson Institute of Brown University in February. He gave a talk entitled “Varieties of Capitalism and Labor Markets in Latin America” at the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard University in February.

Ph.D. candidate Paul Staniland has been awarded a 2009-2010 pre-doctoral fellowship at the Program on Order, Conflict, and Violence at Yale University's MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies. Staniland presented a paper entitled "When Does Ethnic Mobilization Lead to Ethnic War? Comparative Evidence from South Asia" at the International Studies Association Conference in February. He delivered a talk entitled "The Poisoned Chalice: Explaining Cycles of Regime Change in Pakistan" at the Naval War College in March.

Senior Research Scholar Sharon Stanton Russell spoke at the Roundtable at the 2009 National Security Institute event “U.S. Grand Strategy After George W. Bush” held at MIT in January. Russell has recently begun to advise the Feinstein International Center at Tufts University regarding development of its Humanitarian Horizons Project, which is coordinating with the King’s College London’s Humanitarian Futures Programme.

Ford International Professor of Political Science and Director of CIS Richard Samuels delivered the Henry Wendt III Lecture at Princeton University in May. Samuels also currently serves as co-chair of the MIT Global Council.

Ph.D. candidate Caitlin Talmadge presented a paper entitled “Assessing the Iranian Threat to the Strait of Hormuz” at the Gulf and the Globe Conference on January 28 at the U.S. Naval Academy. Talmadge also received a Certificate of Distinction in Undergraduate Teaching from Harvard University for her instruction in the spring of 2008.

CIS Executive Director and Principal Research Scientist John Tirman produced a 50-page report entitled “A New Approach to Iran: The Need for Transformative Diplomacy” in April. The report is available here: http://web.mit.edu/cis/Publications/IRANTirman_2009.pdf. Tirman appeared on NPR’s "Diane Rehm Show" in April as part of a discussion on U.S.-Iran relations.

Ford Professor of Political Science Kathleen Thelen delivered the inaugural keynote speech for the lecture series of British Journal of Industrial Relations at the London School of Economics in November. Thelen also gave invited lectures as part of the Comparative Politics Seminar Series at Princeton University in October and at Yale University as part of the Leitner Political Economy Series in February. Thelen delivered the Vilhelm Aubert Memorial Lecture at the University of Oslo in January.

Professor of Political Science Stephen Van Evera was a panelist at the conference “Foreign Policy Challenges for the New Administration: Iran and the Middle East” held at Tufts University in March. Van Evera appeared on NPR’s program “The World” in April.

SSP Research Associate Jim Walsh participated in a Pugwash Track II meeting with Iranian officials in Vienna in December. In February, Walsh delivered briefings for senior White House and State Department officials. He gave a presentation on nuclear terrorism to the Cato Institute Conference “Shaping the Obama Administration’s Counterterrorism Strategy” in January. Throughout the past four months, Walsh has appeared numerous times on CNN, Fox, and Iran TV discussing these and other issues.

SSP Principal Research Scientist Cindy Williams is chairing the National Academy of Public Administration panel on Science and Technology in the Department of Homeland Security. Williams participated in an external peer review of the fiscal allocation process of the Coordinating Office for Terrorism Preparedness and Emergency Response (COTPER) of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). She was a panelist on the symposium “People, Policy, and Outcomes after the U.S. Elections” at the Geneva Center for Security Policy in Switzerland in January. Williams was part of a discussion entitled “Budgets for National Security” with Congressman Rick Larsen (D-WA) and staff at the Cannon House Office Building in March. Williams conducted a radio interview with Jessica Mador of Minnesota Public Radio in February, in which she discussed U.S. military recruiting and outreach using Facebook and other social networking sites.

Ph.D. candidate Sarah Zukerman has been awarded a 2009-2010 pre-doctoral fellowship at the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) at Stanford University's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. Zukerman also received a Carroll Wilson Award for her project "Guns, Campaigns or Bankruptcy: Disentangling the Determinants of Armed Organizations' Post-War Trajectories". Zukerman presented a paper entitled “Disarm or Rearm: The Internal Politics of Colombia’s Paramilitary Groups” at the International Studies Association Conference in February. She presented a paper entitled “Achieving Post-War Peace: The Internal Politics of Colombia’s Demilitarizing Paramilitary Groups” to the Households in Conflict Network Annual Workshop at Yale University in December.

PUBLISHED

Annette Kim, Ford International Career Development Professor Learning to be Capitalists: Entrepreneurs in Vietnam's Transition Economy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008).

Sigrid Berka, Managing Director of the MIT-Germany Program “Institutional Strategies of International Engineering Programs” in John Grandin and Dan Hirleman, eds. “Educating Engineers as Global Citizens: A Call for Action/ A Report on the National Summit Meeting on the Globalization of Engineering Education,” in Online Journal of Global Engineering Education Vol.4, No. 1 (2009).

Topher McDougal, Ph.D. Candidate in the Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning “The Liberian State of Emergency: What Do Civil War and State-Led Industrialization Have in Common,” Journal of Peace Economics, Peace Science and Public Policy, Vol. 14, No. 3.8.

Richard Samuels, Ford International Professor of Political Science and Director of CIS “Japan’s Lost Leaders,” Newsweek, April 20, 2009.; “Wing-Walking: The U.S.-Japan Alliance,” Global Asia, Vol. 4 No. 1.

Ben Ross Schneider, Professor of Political Science “Inequality in Developed Countries and Latin America: Coordinated, Liberal, and Hierarchical Systems,” (co-authored with David Soskice) Economy and Society, Vol. 38, No. 1 (February 2009): 17-52.; “Economic Liberalization and Corporate Governance: The Resilience of Business Groups in Latin America.” Comparative Politics, 40, no. 4 ( July 2008), pp. 379-98.

Paul Staniland, Ph.D. Candidate in Political Science "What Makes Terrorists Tick," International Security, Vol. 33, No. 4 (Spring 2009): 180-202.

Caitlin Talmadge, Ph.D. Candidate in Political Science “Costs and Difficulties of Blocking the Strait of Hormuz,” correspondence with William D. O’Neil, International Security, Vol. 33. No. 3 (Winter 2008/09): 190-198.

Kathleen Thelen, Ford Professor of Political Science “Institutional Change in Varieties of Capitalism” (co-authored with Peter A. Hall), Socio-Economic Review, Vol. 7, No. 1 ( January 2009): 7-34.

Jim Walsh, SSP Research Associate “Obama, Europe, and Iran: The Nuclear Question and the Future of Atlantic-Iranian Relations.” Proceedings of the conference “After the Elections in the United States: New Chances for a Compromise in the Nuclear Dispute with Iran?” Bonn: Deutsche Welle-BICC, 2009.; James Walsh, Thomas Pickering, and William Luers, "How to Deal with Iran,” New York Review of Books, Vol. 56, No. 2 (February 12, 2009).; James Walsh, Thomas Pickering, and William Luers, “Iran, Iran, Iran,” International Herald Tribune ( January 17, 2009): 6.

David Weinberg, Graduate Student in Political Science "An Energy Pact for the Pacific" and "Is Japan the Weakest Link?," www.163.com; "Obama Knocked it out of the Park," MIT Tech, Vol. 129, No. 8, February 27, 2009.; "Three Myths about the President's Budget" MIT Tech, Vol. 129, No. 11, March 10, 2009.

Cindy Williams, SSP Principal Research Scientist “Commentary” in Part IV, “Benefit Structure for the Future” in John D. Winkler and Barbara A. Bicksler, eds., The New Guard and Reserve (San Ramon, CA: Falcon Books, 2008): 247-251.