June 2009

Anne Nelson published Red Orchestra: The Story of the Berlin Underground and the Circle of Friends Who Resisted Hitler. Nelson is an adjunct associate professor who specializes in media development, democratization and human rights. Red Orchestra documents the true story of domestic resistance to the Nazi regime through a German working mother, Greta Kuckhoff. More

Read The New York Times review here.

Bentley MacLeod co-authored a paper, “Performance Pay and Wage Inequality,” published in the Quarterly Journal of Economics. Professor MacLeod and co-authors Thomas Lemieux and Daniel Parent document that an increasing fraction of jobs in the U.S. labor market pay workers for their performance using bonuses, commissions, or piece-rates. They also find the growing incidence of performance-pay explains 24 percent of the growth in the variance of male wages between the late 1970s and the early 1990s. More

Wolfram Schlenker co-authored a paper, “Fisheries Management under Cyclical Population Dynamics,” published in Environmental and Resource Economics. Professor Schlenker, with co-authors Richard T. Carson, Clive W. J. Granger and Jeremy B. C. Jackson, analyze fishing policy as it relates to a constant growth rate vs. a cyclical growth rate. More

Robert Lieberman authored a review of the controversial book The Israel Lobby and U.S.Foreign Policy for the journal Perspective on Politics. The book, written by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt, argues that U.S. support for Israel is due to the “Israel lobby” in American domestic politics, and does not serve American interests. Professor Lieberman offers a political analysis, writing that the book is principally an attempt to make a causal argument about American politics and policymaking. Read Professor Lieberman’s essay and his exchange with John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt here.

Ahmet Kuru published Secularism and State Policies toward Religion: The United States, France, and Turkey. Kuru is a post-doctoral research scholar and assistant director of the Center for the Study of Democracy, Toleration, and Religion. Kuru addresses the question of why secular states pursue different policies toward religion. More

Michael Doyle has been elected to membership in the American Philosophical Society, the nation's oldest learned society. Professor Doyle is the Harold Brown Professor of U.S. Foreign and Security Policy, specializing in international relations theory, international security and international organizations. He previously served as assistant secretary-general and special adviser to United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan. More

Jeffrey Sachs received the American Whig-Cliosophic Society’s James Madison Award for Distinguished Public Service. Whig-Clio is a political, literary, and debating society at Princeton University. Its precursors, the American Whig Society and the Cliosophic Society, were founded at Princeton in 1769 and 1765 by James Madison and other Princeton students. More

Global Fellows Program: SIPA’s new Global Fellows Program will bring to campus each year a distinguished group of global leaders, each of whom has played a significant role in designing, shaping, or implementing solutions to critical global problems. The first cohort of SIPA Global Fellows includes former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan, former Chancellor of Austria Alfred Gusenbauer, and Tung Chee Hwa, former and first Chief Executive of Hong Kong. More

Congratulations to the SIPA Class of 2009! On May 18, SIPA awarded 737 students a Master of International Affairs or a Master of Public Administration. SIPA also recognized thirteen graduating students for their achievements. More

Fund for Global Environment and Conflict Resolution: SIPA's Center for International Conflict Resolution (CICR) and the Italian Ministry for the Environment, Land and Sea announced the establishment of the Fund for Global Environment and Conflict Resolution. Through the Fund, the Center for International Conflict Resolution will promote research conducted by prominent scholars at Columbia University, in Italy and around the world, as it pertains to issues of global environment and conflict resolution. More

Learn more about the Fund's call for proposals here.

"Because Someone Needs It": During 2008 – 2009, more than three dozen SIPA students completed projects under faculty supervision for the U.S. Treasury Department, the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank. They completed the projects for academic credit, but also in the words of one student, “because someone needs it.” This kind of hands-on learning experience is a central part of a SIPA education. More

The Obama Administration Faces Afghanistan: The Arnold A. Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies presented the forum “The Obama Administration Faces Afghanistan." The two panels were entitled:
1. Afghanistan in Regional and Global Perspective
2. Can the West ‘Win’ in Afghanistan?

Download a program and watch the videos here.

Workshop: Making Older Apartments More Energy Efficient: A group of students in the MPA program in Environmental Science and Policy (ESP) worked with the New York City Housing Authority in an effort to scale up its energy-efficient building retrofit efforts to an “enterprise” level. This workshop group was asked to describe and assess comparable efforts to enhance the energy efficiency of older multi-family residential buildings in order to provide a benchmark study of current potential technologies.

Download the final report here.
Watch a video of the final presentation here.

Agustin Torres-Ibarrola (MPA '06) is expected to become a member of the Mexican Federal Congress by September. He has been placed eighth in the national list of party representation, a system designed to balance political forces in the lower house. Torres-Ibarrola went back to Mexico after graduating from SIPA and worked on the campaign of President Felipe Calderon. Later, he became a public servant in charge of improving the quality of government services such as medical consultation in public hospitals, passports and customs operations.

Zaina Arafat (MIA '09) was a guest on National Public Radio, reacting to President Barack Obama's address in Cairo, Egypt, entitled "A New Beginning." Arafat, a native of the West Bank, said "I thought President Obama ... showed a deep understanding and respect for Muslims. As a woman, I was pleased to hear him address women's access to education in the Muslim world." More

Constructive Candor in the Workplace: SIPA's Center for International Conflict Resolution and Consensus are jointly offering a series of executive workshops. The next workshop, "Constructive Candor in the Workplace," is scheduled for June 25 - 26. It will teach participants how to constructively broach conversations that normally generate anxiety and cause them to avoid dealing with a disturbing situation. More

Arvind Panagariya on India’s national elections, World Focus

Joseph Stiglitz on the financial crisis, Bloomberg

Kofi Annan on the Sri Lankan civil war, Associated Press

Arvind Panagariya writes "Mr. Singh's History Lesson," The Wall Street Journal

Stephen Sestanovich writes “Cold War Leftovers,” The New York Times

Steven Cohen on NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s campaign spending, The New York Times

Lincoln Mitchell writes "Georgia’s Mutiny Mystery," Foreign Policy

Jeffrey Sachs podcast from the Pen World Voices Festival, WNYC

Arvind Panagariya on India’s growth rate, The New York Times

Lincoln Mitchell on Russian-Georgian relations, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty

Dorian Warren on President Obama and Al Sharpton, Politico

Bill Eimicke on Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor, The New York Times

Joseph Stiglitz on President Obama's response to the financial crisis, Bloomberg

Robert Lieberman on “What to Read on Lobbying”, Foreign Affairs

Gary Sick on U.S. diplomacy in Iran, Time

To contribute news and information for Inside SIPA, contact Alex Burnett, Communications Officer, at 212-851-1818 or ab3178@columbia.edu.