People

CIS Robert E Wilhelm Fellow Hala Aldosari gave talks at the Fall 2019 Biannual McMillan-Stewart Lecture on Women in the Developing World, Panel on Freedom of Expression at the 67th Elijah Parish Lovejoy Award, New Yorker Annual Festival, the Arab Center Annual Conference, and the Starr Forum discussion on digital feminism in the Arab Gulf states with Mona Eltahawy. Aldosari was awarded the 2019 Leaders for Democracy Award from the Project on Democracy and Human Rights in the Middle East, and became Saudi Arabia’s ambassador for the Human Rights Measurement Initiative.

PhD Candidate Nasir Almasri testified at the Massachusetts Legislature's Joint Committee on State Administration and Regulatory Oversight Hearing on House Bills 1877, 2719, and 2722. He also testified in support of H1877 to change the state flag and seal and in opposition to H2719 and H2722, which attempt to make it illegal for individuals with state contracts to boycott other countries (primarily Israel).

Suzanne Berger was named Institute Professor, as the inaugural holder of the John M Deutsch Institute Professorship.

CIS Senior Research Fellow Joel Brenner was appointed a member of the Intelligence Community Studies Board, under the aegis of the National Academy of Sciences. 

Professor of Political Science Nazli Choucri presented at a meeting of the Science of Security and Privacy Program (US Department of Defense/National Security Agency Research Directorate) on the results of Year 1 of the MIT project on Analytics of Cybersecurity for Cyber-Physical Systems.

Professor of Political Science Fotini Christia (with Erik Demaine and Costis Daskalakis of MIT CSAIL) received a renewed grant award from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency for a project on “Decision Making via Hierarchy of Network Games: Algorithms, Game Theory, Artificial Intelligence, and Learning.”

Arthur and Ruth Sloan Professor of Political Science Taylor Fravel presented Active Defense in San Francisco, Chicago, Ann Arbor, New York and London from September to November. Fravel also testified before the US-China Security Review Commission on China’s military strategy in June. 

PhD Students Suzanne Freeman and Benjamin Harris, with faculty advisor Eric Heginbotham, started the Wargaming Working Group at MIT. 

CIS Principal Research Scientist Eric Heginbotham presented “Wargaming and Simulation: Strategic and Academic Applications” at Tufts University’s inaugural Applied IR Speaker Series. 

CIS Elizabeth Neuffer Fellow Shola Lawal received the Future Awards Prize for Journalism. 

Total Professor of Political Science and Contemporary Africa Evan Lieberman presented “Towards a Political-Economy of Dignity” (joint work with MIT PhD Candidates Paige Bollen and Blair Read) at the Meetings of the American Political Science Association in August, “Why Study the Politics of Development in Africa” to Total Executives at MIT in November, and “Validated Participation Promotes Self-Efficacy and Citizen Engagement in Development” (joint work with Yang-Yang Zhou) at the Meetings of the African Studies Association in November. Lieberman was also appointed as non-resident fellow to the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation with the Harvard Kennedy School, a Fellow of Boundaries and Belonging international working group at the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, and is the recipient of the MIT Digital Humanities Fellowship. 

Research Affiliate Professor Robert EB Lucas presented his report, “Migration and Development: the Role of Development Aid” to the Ministry for Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Justice in the Government of Sweden, Stockholm in August. 

PhD Candidate Andrew Miller received a research grant from the Templeton Foundation to conduct a study on the promotion of non-violence norms in Baltimore, Maryland.

PhD Candidate Kacie Miura presented work from her dissertation project, "Commerce and Coercion in Contemporary China," at the International Security Brown Bag Seminar series at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center in December. 

Stanton Nuclear Security Fellow Ryan Musto presented “Latin America’s Nuclear Governance: A Booster or Buster of the Liberal International Order?” at the Latin America in the International Order conference at John Hopkins University in November. 

Associate Professor of Political Science Vipin Narang received the “Emerging Scholar” award from the International Studies Association’s International Security Section.

PhD Candidate Rachel Esplin Odell has accepted a position as a Research Fellow in the East Asia Program at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. She is on leave from the Quincy Institute until August 2020, while she completes her PhD dissertation and predoctoral fellowship in the International Security Program at Harvard Kennedy School. Odell presented “The Contest for the ‘Free Sea’: Variation and Evolution in the Global Maritime Order” at Harvard Kennedy School on December 12 as part of the International Security Brown Bag Seminar Series, and “How Strategic Norm-Shaping Undergirds America’s Command of the Commons” at the American Political Science Association Annual Conference in Washington, DC, on August 31. She also gave a lecture entitled, “Whose Free Sea? International Variation in Approaches to Maritime Jurisdiction,” at the National Institute for South China Sea Studies in Hainan, China, on July 18, while visiting the institute to conduct dissertation field research.

Managing Director and Senior Policy Advisor of MIT’s CIS Policy Lab Dan Pomeroy became an N Square Innovators Network Fellow. 

SSP Senior Advisor Carol Saivetz presented “Putin’s Foreign Policy” at a CIS sponsored consuls briefing in September, “The ‘Drivers’ of Russian Foreign Policy” at a Texas A&M University’s conference on the future of US-Russia relations in October, “The Trump-Putin Bromance” at a benefit dinner for the Second Step (a private non-profit organization that serves victims of domestic violence) in November, and “Russia, Europe, and Energy” at Boston University’s Behind the Headlines series in November. 

Ford International Professor of Political Science and CIS Director Richard Samuels launched Special Duty in Berlin at the Freie Universität in October, in New York at the Japan Society in November, and in London at the Henry Jackson Soceity in December. Samuels also presented the book at Portland State University and Harvard University. 

Ford International Professor of Political Science Ben Ross Schneider presented “Contention, Coalitions, and Consultation in the Politics of Education Reform in Latin America” at the Institut Barcelona d’Estudis Internacionals (IBEI) and at Harvard University in June. Schneider also presented “Business Concentration and Inequality in Latin America” at the LACEA Annual Conference in Puebla, Mexico in November.

PhD Candidate Meicen Sun presented on China and the Transatlantic Alliance in November and on China’s digital rise and a US-EU response in December, both at the Harvard Kennedy School. 

Ford International Professor of Political Science Kathleen Thelen was awarded the Aaron Wildavsky Enduring Contribution Award at the 2019 APSA meeting (organized section on Public Policy). Thelen was also awarded the Michael Endres Research Prize of the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin. 

SSP Senior Research Associate James Walsh received grants from the MacArthur Foundation and Carnegie Corporation of New York to explore what public communication about nuclear weapons in the digital and social media space might look like. 

Publications

CIS Robert E Wilhelm Fellow Hala Aldosari, “Saudi Arabia must dismantle the male guardianship system,” The Washington Post (July 26, 2019). 

___________ “Its monarchy has left Saudi Arabia fragile and unbalanced,” The Washington Post (September 29, 2019).

PhD Candidate Marsin Alshamary (with Safwan Al-Amin), “Iraqi protesters demand constitutional change. Can they make it happen?” The Washington Post (November 7, 2019).

Professor of Political Science Fotini Christia (with Erik Demaine and Costis Daskalakis of MIT CSAIL, MIT PhD Candidate Tugba Bozcaga, and MIT student Elizabeth Harwood), “Assessing Syrian Refugee Integration Using Call Detail Records from Turkey” in Guide to Mobile Data Analytics in Refugee Scenarios, Cham, Switzerland: Springer, 2019. 

___________“Tehran Paints Over Its Anti-American Murals,” Foreign Policy (November 11, 2019). 

Arthur and Ruth Sloan Professor of Political Science Taylor Fravel (with MIT SSP alum Fiona Cunningham), “Dangerous Confidence: Chinese Views of Nuclear Escalation,” International Security, Vol 44, No 2 (Fall 2019).

CIS Principal Research Scientist Eric Heginbotham (with Jacob L. Heim and Christopher P. Twomey), “Of Bombs and Bureaucrats: Internal Drivers of Nuclear Force Building in China and the United States,” Journal of Contemporary China, Vol 28, No 118 (July 2019). 

___________ (with Joshua Eisenman), “Building a More ‘Democratic’ and ‘Multipolar’ World: China’s Strategic Engagement with Developing Countries,” The China Review, Vol 19, No 4 (November 2019). 

___________“Japan’s New NDPG and MTDP: An American Perspective on Operational Issues and Implications” in The New National Defense Program Guidelines: Aligning US and Japanese Defense Strategies of the Third Post-Cold War Era, Sasakawa (2019). 

Research Associate and IWMF Elizabeth Neuffer Fellow Shola Lawal, "End the ‘Global Gag Rule’," in The Boston Globe (December 10, 2019).

___________"Exporting the American dream," in The Boston Globe (December 6, 2019).

___________"Trump's asylum policy is a death sentence for Africans fleeing violence," in The Boston Globe (October 22, 2019).

___________"With trophy hunting, wildlife loses," in The Boston Globe (October 3, 2019).

Associate Professor of Political Science Vipin Narang (with MIT SSP alum Christopher Clary), “Why India wants to break its decades-old nuclear pledge,” BBC News (August 22, 2019). 

Associate Professor of Political Science Richard Nielsen (with Gary King), “Why Propensity Scores Should Not Be Used for Matching,” Political Analysis, Vol 27, No 4 (2019).

___________(with Santiago Segarra and Ali Jadbabaie), “Baghdadi’s Martyrdom Bump,” Foreign Policy (October 29, 2019). 

PhD Candidate Kacie Miura (with Jessica Chen Weiss), “Campaign Rhetoric and Chinese Reactions to New Leaders,” Asian Security (2019).

Stanton Nuclear Security Fellow Ryan Musto, “Antarctic Arms Control as Past Precedent,” Polar Record (November 5, 2019).

___________“Antarctic Arms Control at 60: A Precedent or a Pole Apart?” in Sources and Methods, History and Public Policy Program, The Wilson Center (December 2019). 

___________“Polish Perspectives on the Rapacki Plan for the Denuclearization of Central Europe” in Sources and Methods, History and Public Policy Program, The Wilson Center (December 2019). 

PhD Candidate Mina Pollmann, "The Ever-Evolving Importance of Japan's Coast Guard," in The Diplomat (December 12, 2019).

Ford International Professor of Political Science and CIS Director Richard Samuels, Special Duty: A History of the Japanese Intelligence Community, Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press, 2019.

___________“Japan’s whack-a-mole foreign policy,” The Boston Globe (September 30, 2019). 

Ford International Professor of Political Science Ben Ross Schneider (with Richard Doner), “Technical Education and the Middle Income Trap: Missing Coalitions for Skill Formation,” Journal of Development Studies (2019). 

___________(with Barbara Bruns and Isabel Harbaugh), “The Politics of Quality Reforms and the Challenges for SDGs in Education,” World Development, Vol 118 (June 2019).

___________(edited with Elisabeth Reynolds and Ezequiel Zylberberg), Innovating in Brazil: Advancing Development in the 21stCentury, London: Routledge, 2019. 

Ford International Professor of Political Science Kathleen Thelen (with Pepper Culpepper), “Are We All Amazon Primed? Consumers and the Politics of Platform Power,” Comparative Political Studies (June 2019 online). 

___________(with K Sabeel Rahman), “The Rise of the Platform Business Model and the Transformation of Twenty-First Century Capitalism,” Politics and Society (June 2019). 

CIS Executive Director John Tirman, “Saudi money in US horse racing is the sport’s next moral jam,” Los Angeles Times (November 25, 2019).

SSP Senior Research Associate James Walsh, “How Donald Trump pushed Iran to the bomb,” CNN (July 11, 2019).