SIPA: School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University

SIPA Faculty in the Media 2006

The faculty of the School of International and Public Affairs are frequently called upon by the news media to provide analysis and commentary on current events. Listed below are a few recent examples of our faculty contributions to reporting on critical public policy issues. If the articles are available to the general public, we have provided a direct link; if not, the link will lead to the publication's homepage.

Steven Cohen on Former President Ford
Associated Press, December 27, 2006
"... While Ford rejected the city's entreaties, Washington ultimately agreed to guarantee $1.65 billion in loans with help from state and municipal unions, and New York eventually regained stability.
Professor Steven Cohen of Columbia University said Wednesday that history proved Ford right: 'President Ford insisted on a better deal. At the time we called it a culture war, but today we would call it fiscal prudence.'"

Stephen Sestanovich on Yeltsin and Russian Democracy
Washington Post, December 24, 2006
Byline: Stephen Sestanovich
“Was Boris Yeltsin the gravedigger of Russian democracy? The indictment against him looks strong. If you give people reason to link democracy with economic privation, political corruption and the trauma of national dismemberment, lots of them will miss the stability of the old order. (Some will miss Joseph Stalin!) And it isn’t much of a response to say that this wasn’t what you intended.”

Lisa Anderson on Libyan Verdict
Reuters, December 19, 2006
Lisa Anderson, a Columbia University North Africa scholar said, “Libya was disappointed that the relationship had not grown closer quicker and had chosen not to take some steps Washington wants. There really was a sense that perhaps this had gone a little too far, too fast from the Libyan vantage point and they wanted to slow down, to feel they are a little more in charge.”

Richard Clarida on Cary Trade
The Wall Street Journal, December 13, 2006
“Everyone is always looking for the magic signal on how to get out before the carry trade unravels,” says Richard Clarida, global strategic adviser at Pacific Investment Management Co. and a professor at Columbia University.  Richard states, “Carry trades work until they don’t.”

 Ecuador’s Correa on the Hot Seat
Forbes, December 11, 2006
Byline: R.M. Schneiderman
“Having soundly defeated his conservative opponent in the second round of Ecuador's presidential election, left-wing economist Rafael Correa is likely to prove more moderate than his rhetoric suggests. Yet in trying to govern a country notorious for its political instability, the 43-year old novice politician must tread a thin line just to stay in office. If the experience of past politicians is any indication, Correa's chances don't appear favorable. Over the last decade, Ecuador has had eight different presidents, the last two driven from office by mass protests. … Yet while Ecuador may renegotiate the terms of its debt and its contracts with oil companies, a default is unlikely as is further seizing of private assets. ‘He knows the realities of global economics,’ said Joseph Stiglitz, a professor of finance and economics at Columbia University and the former chief economist at The World Bank.”

Rashid Khalidi on Iraq Study Group Report
San Francisco Chronicle, December 7, 2006
“The United States is perceived as exacerbating and making (the Middle East crisis) worse by our extreme one-sided support of Israel,” said Rashid Khalidi, director of the Middle East Institute at Columbia University. He states, “In Iraq and in the Middle East generally, these things are very much held against us.”

Edward Luck on U.N. Ambassador Bolton
The Washington Post, December 5, 2006
Edward Luck, director of the Center on International Organization at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs said, “Bolton was effective at the 15-member council but faltered trying to build consensus in the much larger General Assembly, particularly in favor of reforms he long advocated. He’s been a strong American ambassador to the Security Council, but unfortunately the Security Council is just one piece of the puzzle up here.”

Gary Sick on Support from Iran and Syria
ABC News: Inside the Newsroom, December 4, 2006
Professor Gary Sick of Columbia University said, “I don’t think that having a conversation regionally with between the United States and Iran, and say, Syria, is a magic border that somehow this is going to solve all our problems. I do not think that it probably can’t be solved without that because it is so far gone now that we’re talking about desperation measures.”

Sylvia Hewlett on Women and the New ‘Extreme’ Jobs
The Boston Globe, December 2, 2006
Byline: Sylvia Hewlett
“In 2006, maternal responsibilities and spousal frailties have a new ability to shoot high-powered women down. High-level, high impact jobs got redefined to become even more time consuming, even more pressurizing. These top jobs increasingly exclude women who have serious family responsibilities, about two-thirds of the highly qualified female labor pool. Fully 80 percent of women in extreme jobs have one foot out the door they do not want to work this hard, under this pressure, for more than 12 months. The new extreme work model does not auger well for women’s progress.”

Sylvia Hewlett on Extreme Jobs
Financial Times, November 28, 2006
Byline: Sylvia Hewlett
“A study entitled Extreme Jobs: The Dangerous Allure of the 70-Hour Workweek, to be published next week by the Harvard Business Review, allows us to “map” the shape and scope of the extreme work model. In this study, survey respondents are considered to have extreme jobs if they work 60 hours or more a week and deal with at least five additional performance pressures. The data states that 58 percent of men and 80 percent of women do not want to continue working at this pace and with this intensity for more than a year. As the competition for talent heats up fuelled by tight labor markets and demographic shifts companies will be forced to develop alternatives to the extreme work model.”

Richard Betts on Iraq ‘Civil War’
The Newshour with Jim Lehrer, November 28, 2006
Richard Betts, professor of political science and director of the Institute of War and Peace Studies at Columbia University said, “There’s no definition of civil war that’s chiseled in stone. I’d call it an emerging civil war. It’s more complicated than the image most people have of civil wars as a two-way conflict between, say, one group of rebels and a government.”

Joseph Stiglitz on World’s Poor
Reuters, November 28, 2006
“The way we have proceeded with globalization has exacerbated the inequalities because it has been very asymmetric,” said Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel prize-winning economist and professor at Columbia University. He adds, “Capital moves more freely than labor and that means that the bargaining position of workers is disadvantaged relative to capital.”

Charles Armstrong on Korean War at Home
The New York Observer, November 27, 2006
Professor Charles Armstrong, a Korea expert at Columbia University, said that, aside from the more extreme groups, “There really is not a lot of discussion about North Korea near the surface.” He added that, for many Korean-Americans, “I think there is a sense that there is not much they can do.”

Edward Luck on China’s role in U.N.
San Francisco Chronicle, November 24, 2006
China’s emergence as an economic superpower has forced the government to rethink some of its foreign policy priorities, and it is quietly extending its influence on the world stage through the support of international peacekeeping operations. Edward Luck, a Columbia University historian who studies the U.N., said: “If they’re going to be the next superpower, they have to be pretty active on these kinds of things.”

Sachs on Conservative Economists in Africa
The New York Times, November 18, 2006
"... While Mr. Reed salutes his protégé as a “passionate advocate for liberty in an unlikely place,” Jeffrey D. Sachs, a Columbia University professor who is a leading aid advocate, calls Mr. Shikwati’s criticisms of foreign assistance “shockingly misguided” and “amazingly wrong. This happens to be a matter of life and death for millions of people, so getting it wrong has huge consequences,” Mr. Sachs said.

Gary Sick on Iran
Newsday, November 17, 2006
Gary Sick an Iran expert at Columbia University says, “it might be too late to stop Iran form developing weapons-grade nuclear fuel... it could well be another decade or more before Iran would actually have a deliverable nuclear weapon; we are not in a crisis now, and we shouldn’t be acting as if we were.”

Gerald Curtis on Prime Minister Shinzo Abe
Bloomberg News, November 16, 2006
“It’s very critical for Abe to have good relations with the U.S., so this is a very important meeting for him with President George Bush,” said Gerald Curtis, author of The Japanese Way of Politics and a professor of political science at Columbia University. Curtis said, “the North Korea issue is key and I would think Abe is going to push a hard line.”

Edward Luck on John Bolton
The New York Times, November 15, 2006
“In some ways, he seems to have been more an ambassador to the Security Council than to the United as a whole and I think he has done very well there,” said Edward Luck, Columbia University professor and U.N. expert.

Jeffrey Sachs on Sustainable Water
Scientific American, November 12, 2006
“While oil shortages grab the headlines, water scarcity is creating at least as many headaches around the world. The most dramatic conditions are in Asia, where the world’s two megacountries, China and India, are grappling with deepening and unsolved water challenges,” said Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University.

Edward Luck on Security Council
Los Angeles Times, November 8, 2006
“South Africa will have their differences with the United States. It is important to have states with a strong voice and real regional security role, which South Africa does. Indonesia, which has the world’s largest Muslim population, will be an additional voice for Islamic interests,” said Edward Luck, director of the Center on International Organization at Columbia University.

Joseph Stiglitz on Raising Minimum Wage
Businessweek, November 6, 2006
“It’s been shown very convincingly that there is no serious adverse affect on employment,” said Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel prize-winning economist and professor at Columbia University. Stiglitz said, “We saw unemployment plummet after it was last raised in 1997.”

Edward Luck on U.N. Dissent
The Washington Post, November 5, 2006
“People are afraid that it’s a slippery slope; that if they agree to sanctions today, they give the authority for military intervention tomorrow,” said Edward Luck, a Columbia University historian who studies the United Nations. Luck said, “the political dispute over the use of force has eroded the council’s credibility. It is a sign of weakness and division.”

Steve Cohen on Campaign Money
New York Daily News, November 5, 2006
From the hands of crooks straight to charity. Politicians under fire for receiving campaign money from dicey donors are increasingly taking funds and funneling them to not-for profits. “They are saying, ‘This is money that came from a bad source and I’m going to use it for good,’” said Professor Steven Cohen of Columbia University’s School of Public Affairs.

Elliot Sclar on Camden, NJ
The New York Times, November 5, 2006
Elliot Sclar,...who worked on an economic plan for Camden over a decade ago, said the city needed the kinds of community empowerment movements he had seen take root in countries like India and Kenya.... Mr. Sclar said of the current plan. “No one has been working on building the basis for good local government.”

Steve Cohen on Kerry Gaffe
The New York Times, November 2, 2006
“The way opponents have seized on the remarks by Kerry is a sign that of just how contentious, polarized and ‘poisonous’ American politics has become,” says political analyst Steven Cohen. “But now, it’s all magnified by electronic media and the Web. What’s lost in all of this is any genuine discussion of the issue,” says Cohen, professor of public policy at Columbia University.

Jeffrey Sachs on the Social Welfare State
Scientific American, November 2006
One of the great challenges of sustainable development is to combine society's desires for economic prosperity and social security. For decades economists and politicians have debated how to reconcile the undoubted power of markets with the reassuring protections of social insurance. America's supply-siders claim that the best way to achieve well-being for America's poor is by spurring rapid economic growth and that the higher taxes needed to fund high levels of social insurance would cripple prosperity. Austrian-born free-market economist Friedrich August von Hayek suggested in the 1940s that high taxation would be a "road to serfdom," a threat to freedom itself.

Edward Luck on North Korea
Reuters, October 29, 2006
North Korea has committed ‘crimes against humanity’ against its own people according to an independent report published on October 30, 2006 that made a long-shot appeal for the U.N. Security Council to deal with the issue. “On the one hand, it’s probably a moral imperative. On the other hand, I think it’s a political nonstarter,” said Columbia University Professor Edward Luck, a U.N. specialist.

Steve Cohen on the US Senate Race
The New York Sun, October 18, 2006
"She [Clinton] has to appeal to the blue state voters of New York at the same time that she has to appeal to the red state voters in the rest of the country," Mr. Cohen said. "Whenever she's doing anything in public that's an issue for her."

Al Fishlow on Brazilian Elections
Associated Press, October 17, 2006
"Brazilians are dividing mainly along class lines before their Oct. 29 runoff election, which pits their first working-class president against a patrician anesthesiologist who governed Brazil's wealthiest state...This differentiation is a novel phenomenon in Brazil," said Albert Fishlow, director of the Institute for Latin American Studies at Columbia University in New York. "I'm a little concerned about how Brazil survives this differentiation."

Ed Luck on the Security Council
The Wall Street Journal, October 16, 2006
"It's very possible that the U.S. has improved Venezuela's chances and harmed Guatemala by making this such a big deal," said Edward Luck, a professor at Columbia University who has written extensively about the Security Council. "In the U.N., when it's David vs. Goliath, most countries side with David."

Ken Prewitt on Immigration
The Washington Post, October 12, 2006
"As almost nothing else can, immigration-led growth signals the attractiveness of the American economy and polity," said Kenneth Prewitt, a former head of the Census Bureau and now professor of public affairs at Columbia University.

Ed Luck on the Secretary General
The Washington Post, October 8, 2006
It's not easy being the U.N. secretary general. The men who've held the post like to call it the most impossible job on Earth. Its duties are largely undefined, and the whole world claims the right to weigh in on how the job should be done. Some clamor for a crusading international leader, on the model of current Secretary Kofi Annan, others for a low-key administrator who'll stay out of the limelight and just make sure the organization runs smoothly.

David Stark on Historical Network Analysis
Le Monde, October 3, 2006
"Nous voulons introduire l'analyse historique des réseaux. [...] De la même façon que la signification d'un évènement ne peut pas être lue dans l'évènement lui-même,"a-t-il expliqué, "la signification d'un lien ne peut pas se lire dans le lien lui-même."

Doug Almond on Prenatal Health
Scientific American, October 2006
But an analysis by Douglas Almond indicates that problems for the less robust unborn extend to socioeconomic success, too. He zeroed in on people who were prenatally exposed to influenza during the 1918 pandemic...

Doug Almond on Prenatal Health
The New York Times, July 30, 2006
Dr. Almond found that the children of women who were pregnant during the influenza epidemic had more illness, especially diabetes, for which the incidence was 20 percent higher by age 61. They also got less education—they were 15 percent less likely to graduate from high school. The men's incomes were 5 percent to 7 percent lower, and the families were more likely to receive welfare. The effects, Dr. Almond said, occurred in whites and nonwhites, in rich and poor, in men and women. He convinced himself, he said, that there was something to the Barker hypothesis.