People

SSP PhD alumnus and Assistant Professor of Political Science at Georgia State University Dan Altman won the University of Pennsylvania’s Perry World House and Foreign Affairs Magazine’s Emerging Scholars Global Policy Prize in October.

SSP Military Fellows LTC John Black, LTC Molly Solsbury, LTC Brian Novchich, Col Scott Synowiez and Commander Trevor Prouty will present a five-day series on “Contemporary Military Topics” in January. Presentations include “Marine Corps Tips for Peak Performance," "Afghanistan Negotiations 2019-2020," “Fighter Fundamentals," "Perspectives from a military advisor: Advising the Iraqi Army, Kurdish Peshmerga, and Saudi Army," and "Freedom of Navigation Operations (FONOPS): Brinkmanship from a Birds-Eye View."

Professor of Political Science Nazli Choucri was elected a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in November.

Professor of Political Fotini Christia was named Director of the MIT Sociotechnical Systems Research Center (SSRC) in October. Additionally, she, postdoctoral fellow Kiran Garimella and PhD student Erin Walk, received a $25K grant from UKAID, UNHCR and the World Bank for their research on Refugee Return in the Internet Era: Social Media Narratives from North Syria.

Arthur and Ruth Sloan Professor of Political Science and Director of SSP Taylor Fravel gave the following talks: “Debate: China Will Not Use Significant Force Against A Neighbor in the Next Five Year,” hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies in December; “The India-China Border Dispute: Past, Present, and Future,” hosted by the University of San Francisco in November; “China’s Military Strategy and US-China Relations,” hosted by the University of Albany in November; “China and the Challenge of Maritime Disputes,” hosted by the Association of Chinese Political Science Annual Conference, keynote, in October; “The Current Situation in the South China Sea,” hosted by the National Committee on US-China in October; “Active Defense: China’s Military Strategy Since 1949,” hosted by the John Quincy Adams Society in October; and “The India-China Border Clash,” hosted by the Brown-Harvard-MIT South Asia Symposium in September.

The MIT Wargaming Working Group (WGWG) hosted a wargame to simulate a possible conflict in the Taiwan Strait for MIT graduate students and fellows, and students at the Naval Postgraduate School on November 12-13. The game was organized by CIS Principal Research Scientist Eric Heginbotham; Ford International Professor of Political Science and CIS Director Richard Samuels; Assistant Professor of Political Science Erik Lin-Greenberg; PhD students Suzanne Freeman and Ben Harris; and SSP alumnus and Associate Professor of National Security Affairs at the Naval Postgraduate School Christopher Twomey. 

SSP alumnus and Director of the International Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies Kathleen Hicks (PhD’10) was nominated by President Joe Biden to be Deputy Secretary of Defense.

Associate Professor of Political Science at Boston College and SSP Research Affiliate Peter Krause presented “Field Research in the Middle East Before and After the Pandemic” at the Brandeis University's Crown Center for Middle East Studies in October.

Associate Professor of Political Science and Director of the MIT International Science and Technology Initiatives (MISTI) Chappell Lawson and PhD candidate Sean Atkins organized and participated in a CIS-sponsored event on “Defining Success and Mapping the Road Ahead: Public-Private Partnership and Cybersecurity for Critical Infrastructure” in December. Joel Brenner, a Senior Research Fellow at CIS, was among the panelists.

Total Professor of Political Science and Contemporary Africa and Faculty Director of the MIT Africa Program Evan Lieberman presented a virtual talk on “Whose Pandemic? The Politics of Race and Danger” at Harvard’s Weatherhead Center in December. 

Assistant Professor of Political Science Erik Lin-Greenberg was named the recipient of the American Political Science Association's 2020 Merze Tate Award, awarded annually for the best dissertation successfully defended during the previous two years in the field of international relations, law, and politics.

Associate Professor of Political Science Vipin Narang was interviewed in “There is No Legal Way to Stop Trump from Ordering a Nuclear Strike If He Wants to, Expert Says” by the Washington Post in January. He was also interviewed in “Vipin Narang on the Global Nuclear Landscape: Hype and Reality” by The Diplomat in October.

PhD candidates and students Sara Plana, Rachel Tecott, Eleanor Gladding-Freund, Suzanne Freeman, and Emma Campbell-Mohn partnered with Center for Strategic and International Studies at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, Bridging the Gap and two other graduate students to present the third annual Future Strategy Forum on Cooperation and Conflict in the Time of COVID-19.   

Ford International Professor of Political Science Barry Posen took part in a debate hosted by the Kissinger Center for Global Affairs at John Hopkins on “Is it time for a grand strategy of restraint?” in October.

Ford International Professor of Political Science and Director of CIS Richard Samuels gave virtual books talks on Special Duty: A History of the Japanese Intelligence Community at Princeton University, University of Central Florida, the US-Japan Leadership Program, and George Washington University. He also moderated a Starr Forum event “Democracies on the Rocks?” in October. In December, he was a speaker at the roundtable on Japanese foreign policy honoring Okamoto Yukio at University of Toronto.

PhD Candidate Meicen Sun was featured in a podcast with the Denver Law Review in November on "Regulating Big Data."

PhD candidate Rachel Tecott became an adjunct fellow at the CNAS Defense Program's Wargaming Lab Team. 

PhD student Raymond Wang presented at the Center for Strategic and International Studies Project on Nuclear Issues (PONI) Virtual Winter Conference 2020 on "Organizational Challenges to AI Adoption: Implications for Strategic Forces" in January.  

Stanton Nuclear Security Fellow Heather Williams presented “After New START: Engaging Other Nuclear-Armed States in the Disarmament Enterprise” to the Arms Control Association Annual Conference in December.  

Professor of History and Faculty Director of the MIT Russia Program Elizabeth Wood explored the history of infectious disease in her Fall 2020 course, “History of Now.” The weekly class was made available to the public as a live webinar.

Publications

MIT PhD alumnus Marsin Alshamary, “Important Iraqi Archives are Now Back in Baghdad. Where Were They, and What Happens Now?” Washington Post (September 15, 2020). 

PhD candidate Sean Atkins and Associate Professor of Political Science and Director of the MIT International Science and Technology Initiatives (MITSI) Chappell Lawson, “An Improvised Patchwork: Success and Failure in Cybersecurity Policy for Critical Infrastructure,” Public Administration Review (October 2020).

SSP PhD alumnus Michal Ben-Josef Hirsch (with Jennifer Dixon), “Conceptualizing and Assessing Norm Strength in International Relations,” European Journal of International Relations (September 3, 2020).

PhD students Emma Campbell-Mohn and Suzanne Freeman, "Pandemic Politics: COVID-19 and Grand Strategy,” Chatham House’s International Affairs blog (August 10, 2020).

Professor of Strategy at the US Naval War College and Research Scientist in Political Science and Security Studies at MIT Jonathan Caverley (with Peter Dombrowski), “Too Important to Be Left to the Admirals: The Need to Study Maritime Great-Power Competition,” Security Studies, Vol 29, No 4, 579 – 600 (October, 2020). With Caverley and Dombrowski serving as guest editors, this special issue of Security Studies featured MIT alumnae Fiona Cunningham, Jon Lindsay and former SSP Paul van Hooft.

Former Robert Wilhelm Fellow at CIS and Distinguished Fellow at the Center for the National Interest Paul Heer, “Understanding U.S.-China Strategic Competition,” The National Interest (October 20, 2020). 

Associate Professor of Political Science at Boston College and SSP Research Affiliate Peter Krause (with Ora Szekely) eds Stories from the Field: A Guide to Navigating Fieldwork in Political Science, New York, NY: Columbia University Press (June 2020).  

___________“The Dilemma for Rebel Leaders: Power or Victory?,” Manara Magazine, No 3, (December 2020).

Former CIS Elizabeth Neuffer Fellow and Nigerian journalist Shola Lawal, “Nigeria Forces Fire on Protestors,” New York Times (October 20, 2020).

___________“A Dozen Protesters in Nigeria Reported Killed by Security Forces,” New York Times (October 21, 2020).

___________“As Lawlessness Roils Nigeria, Police Chief Vows to Take Back Streets,” New York Times (October 24, 2020).

Associate Professor of Political Science and Director of the MIT International Science and Technology Initiatives (MISTI) Chappell Lawson (with Alan Bersin and Juliette N. Kayyem), eds, Beyond 9/11: Homeland Security for the Twenty-First Century, Cambridge: MIT Press (August 2020).

Associate Professor of Political Science Richard Nielsen (with Margaret Roberts and Brandon Stewart), "Adjusting for Confounding with Text Matching," American Journal of Political Science, Vol 64,  No 4, 887-903 (October 2020). 

___________“Recite! Interpretive Fieldwork for Positivists," in Stories from the Field: A Guide to Navigating Fieldwork in Political Science, Peter Krause and Ora Szekely eds., New York: Columbia University Press (June 2020).

___________“Statistical Matching with Time-Series Cross-Sectional Data: Magic, Malfeasance, or Something in Between?" In The SAGE Handbook of Research Methods in Political Science and International Relations, Robert Franzese and Luigi Curini, eds., Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage (April 2020). 

Total Professor of Political Science and Contemporary Africa and Faculty Director of the MIT Africa Program Evan Lieberman and SSP alumnus Andrew Miller, “Do online newspapers promote or undermine nation‐building in divided societies? Evidence from Africa,” Nations and Nationalism (October 8, 2020).

___________“Risk for “Us,” or for “Them”? The Comparative Politics of Diversity and Responses to AIDS and Covid-19,” items: Insights from Social Sciences (May 14, 2020) (featured in the Washington Post on May 21, 2020). 

Assistant Professor of Political Science Erik Lin-Greenberg (with Theo Milonopoulos), “Private Eyes in the Sky: Emerging Technology and the Political Consequences of Eroding Government Secrecy,” Journal of Conflict Resolution (forthcoming). 

PhD candidates Sara Plana and Rachel Tecott, "Pandemic Politics: How the Future Strategy Forum Amplifies the Expertise of Women," Chatham House's International Affairs blog (August 5, 2020). 

PhD candidate Sara Plana, “Seven Bad Options to Counter State Sponsorship of Proxies,” Lawfare (September 13, 2020).

Arthur and Ruth Sloan Professor of Political Science Roger Petersen, “Review of The Last Card: Inside George W. Bush’s Decision to Surge in Iraq,” H-Diplo Roundtable, XXII-7 (October 12, 2020).

___________“Emotions and Backlash in US Society and Politics,” The British Journal of Politics and International Relations (September 2020). 

Ford International Professor of Political Science Barry Posen, “Scarcity and Strategy: The Foreign Policy of the Biden Administration,” Royal Institute for International Relations, Egmont (Brussels, Belgium) (December 17, 2020).

___________“Europe can defend itself,” Survival: Global Politics and Strategy, Vol 62, No. 6, (December 3, 2020).

Ford International Professor of Political Science and Director of CIS Richard Samuels, 日本の諜報コミュニティの一世紀 (the Japanese translation of Special Duty: A History of the Japanese Intelligence Community, Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press (2019).

___________“Writing About Japan,” in Nora Kottmann and Cornelia Reiher, eds. Studying Japan: Handbook of Research Design, Fieldwork and Methods, Baden-Baden: Nomos Verlagsgessellschaft (2020).

___________“Review of Marc Gallicchio’s  Unconditional: The Japanese Surrender in World War II, The New York Times Sunday Book Review (August 30, 2020).

Assistant Professor at Boston University and SSP Research Affiliate Joshua Shifrinson (with Patrick Porter), “Why We Can’t Be Friends with Our Allies,” Politico (October 22, 2020).

Ford International Professor of Political Science and Director of the MIT Brazil Program Ben Ross Schneider (with Richard Doner), “Centripetal Politics and Institution Building in Exiting the Middle-Income Trap.” In José Antonio Alonso and José Antonio Ocampo, eds., Trapped in the Middle?: Developmental Challenges for Middle-Income Countries, New York: Oxford University Press (2020).

Stanton Nuclear Security Fellow Heather Williams, “What the Nuclear Ban Treaty means for America’s Allies,” War on the Rocks (November 5, 2020).