���ϲ����� will honor eight distinguished members of the Orange community during the , which is being held on Friday, April 4, in the National Veterans Resource Center at the Daniel and Gayle D’Aniello Building (NVRC). All members of the community are invited to attend this complimentary program. Registration will open in February.

This annual event recognizes and celebrates the exceptional accomplishments of alumni and students who exemplify what it means to be Forever Orange.��The honorees were selected by the awards committee of the Board of Directors.��The committee will soon announce the 2025 Outstanding Future Alumni Award, which goes to a most deserving student.

The George Arents Award is ���ϲ�����’s highest alumni honor and recognizes individuals who have excelled in their fields.��This year’s honorees are Paul Greenberg ’65, P’03; Melanie Littlejohn G’97; and Judith “Judy” C. Mower ’66, G’73, G’80, Ph.D.’84.

Chelsea Ransom-Cooper ’15 will receive the Generation Orange Award, which recognizes graduates from the past decade for career success, community engagement and overall commitment to ���ϲ�����.

Jack Kreischer ’65 will receive the Melvin A. Eggers Senior Alumni Award for his loyalty and service to ���ϲ����� over the past 50 years.

Jamieson R. Ritter ’19 will posthumously receive the Military/Veteran Alumni Award. Ritter passed away in the line of duty while serving as a police officer in Cleveland, Ohio. This award highlights his bravery and dedication to our country and community.

Kimberly Wolf Price L’03 will be awarded the Volunteer of the Year Award for her commitment to ���ϲ����� as a volunteer.

The Outstanding Future Alumni Award honoree will be announced in February.

and plan to join us in April for the celebration.

Lamis Abdelaaty

The research team for the project titled “RefLex: Is International Refugee Law Effective?” includes principal investigator Cathryn Costello, a professor of global refugee and migration law at University College Dublin Sutherland School of Law, and fellow co-principal investigator Ashwini Vasanthakumar, an associate professor and Queen’s National Scholar in Legal and Political Philosophy at Queen’s University Law School in Canada. The research team will also include two post-doctoral researchers and two Ph.D. students.

The team will use statistical analysis, qualitative methods, case studies and conceptual analysis for their comparative study. They hope to create a new dataset—the Refugee Protection Index—to explore the effectiveness of international refugee law in terms of delivering protection for refugees, changing states’ behavior and motivating social, political or legal mobilizations by refugees themselves.

“Whether and how international refugee law can be effective are pressing questions for scholars of international refugee politics,” says Abdelaaty. “I am looking forward to collaborating with this stellar research team and to extending my previous work on refugee rights and policies through this project.”

The funding is a consolidator grant, which supports scientists and scholars with seven to 12 years of experience as they establish independent research teams. The European Research Council, a public body that funds scientific and technological research, awarded over $700 million to 328 researchers across Europe under the European Union’s Horizon Europe program.

“This project will answer important questions about what types of laws can protect some of the most vulnerable people—refugees,” says Shana Kushner Gadarian, associate dean for research and professor of political science. “During a time of significant change to the international community, Professor Abdelaaty is helping to illuminate where refugees are safe, integrated and adding to their new home countries.”

Previously, Abdelaaty has received support from the Gerda Henkel Foundation for her second book project, “Refugees in Crisis,” which analyzes the designation of situations as “refugee crises.” Her first book, “Discrimination and Delegation: Explaining State Responses to Refugees” (Oxford University Press, 2021), received the Distinguished Book Award from the International Studies Association’s Ethnicity, Nationalism and Migration Studies section and the Best Book Award from the American Political Science Association’s Migration and Citizenship section.

At the Maxwell School, Abdelaaty is a senior research associate at the Campbell Public Affairs Institute, the Program for the Advancement of Research on Conflict and Collaboration and the Moynihan Institute of Global Affairs. She teaches courses on refugees in international politics, humanitarian action in world politics, international law and human rights.

Story by Michael Kelly

Hamid Ekbia

��is director of the Autonomous Systems Policy Institute at ���ϲ����� and founding director of the��. He took time to answer a few questions about the current state of AI regulation.

Q: How do government regulations shape AI development?

A: The federal government has a decisive role in creating the environment in which different players in the AI space operate.�� This could happen through regulation or in the absence of regulation. In the past, when the federal government was inclined to regulate technology through executive orders (and this included both the first Trump and Biden administrations), companies indicated interest in getting some measure of guidance from the government in establishing guardrails around AI technology in the hope of establishing an even playing field of transparent and ethical AI.

The rescinding of Biden’s executive order is going to unravel the minimal steps taken to regulate AI in the U.S., dampening the momentum that was being built in places such as the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and putting us behind others, especially the European Union, in this space. This will exacerbate current gaps in regulation even further, putting control in the hands of a small number of big corporations who have shown the ineffectiveness of self-regulation again and again.

The change of direction by Meta is a good example of this. In his testimony to the Senate in September 2023, Mark Zuckerberg, among other executives, endorsed AI regulation. In the last few weeks, in anticipation of the changing administration, Facebook changed course, replacing the internal mechanism for fact-checking, leaving the door open for the spread of even more misinformation to the society. This is just the beginning of a decline in transparency and accountability, the deeper impacts of which we will see down the road.

Practices such as patent shelving clearly show that companies cannot be trusted to prioritize innovation on their own; a regulated environment is much more conducive to innovation than an unregulated market.

Hamid Ekbia, Autonomous Systems Policy Institute Director

Q: Could rescinding the order help spark innovation, as some companies have argued?

A: The idea that less regulation leads to more innovation is a myth propagated by major corporations who currently have a monopolistic position in the AI space. History has shown that these corporations use their position not to expand innovation but to dampen and suppress it in all kinds of ways.

A primary example of this is patent shelving, where big corporations buy out innovations by small players or startups, not to implement the innovation but to protect their own monopolistic position in the market. There are numerous examples of this — for instance, when Google bought Motorola Mobility in 2012 just to shelve a large portion of the 17,000 patents that were included in the purchase.

Practices such as patent shelving clearly show that companies cannot be trusted to prioritize innovation on their own; a regulated environment is much more conducive to innovation than an unregulated market.��

Q: The European Union has imposed stricter regulations on AI than the U.S. What might that mean for the companies behind this technology?

A: The key issue is the regulatory gap that corporations have to navigate between the U.S. and the E.U. Big corporations will each find a way of dealing with this gap by complying differently with different requirements in the two contexts. But whatever they do, the American public will get the shorter end of the bargain in terms of the safety, privacy, trustworthiness, and perhaps even financial cost of technology.

To request interviews or get more information:

Chris Munoz
Media Relations Specialist
cjmunoz@syr.edu

The 40th Annual Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration Planning Committee is proud to announce the 2025 Unsung Hero Award winners: Andrea-Rose Oates ’26, James K. Duah-Agyeman G’99, Student Coalition on Race and Equity (SCORE), Laurence Segal and Jamie Jackson (posthumously).

The Unsung Hero Award is given to community members, students, faculty and staff who have made a positive impact on the lives of others but are not widely recognized for their contributions. The awards were created to honor Dr. King’s vision of creating positive change in a troubled world.

The award winners will be recognized at the 40th Annual Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration on Sunday, Jan. 26, featuring keynote speaker Sarah Willie-LeBreton, president of Smith College. Tickets for the celebration are available��.

The Unsung Heroes are:

Andrea-Rose Oates ’26 (���ϲ����� student)

Oates, a public relations major in the and policy studies major in the and , has dedicated her life to community service, leadership and social justice. She is the president and founder of “Girlz Rize,” a nonprofit initiative focused on fighting for girls’ education opportunities.

Through her work last summer with NBCUniversal, Oates amplified underrepresented voices by highlighting community challenges and successes. Her summer internships with Comcast and Hilco Redevelopment Partners demonstrated her ability to translate corporate resources into meaningful community outreach.

Oates’ leadership roles at ���ϲ����� have included serving as president of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority’s Iota Upsilon chapter; co-secretary for the Black Student Union; events chair for the Women in Communications Club; a member of the Newhouse Student Representative Committee and an account associate for Hill Communications. She is dedicated to fostering inclusive, collaborative spaces that inspire academic and social growth and sustainable, generational change.

“Andrea-Rose doesn’t merely identify problems; she acts, empowering others to take part in solutions,” says nominator Diya Gupta. “Her actions reflect Dr. King’s enduring call to serve others and create a world where equity and justice prevail.”

James Duah-Agyeman G’99 (���ϲ����� Faculty/Staff)

Duah-Agyeman, former director of the Office of Multicultural Affairs and special advisor to the Men of Color Initiative, has a 38-year record of achievement at ���ϲ�����—as a graduate student, teacher, academic counselor, administrator and leader.

“There are many who talk the talk of service, inclusion and integrity, but in the context of engagement with the world, Dr. D has walked the walk again and again,” says nominator Barry L. Wells. “In the process, he has set a powerful example for students, faculty, staff, and community members in how one person can make a significant difference in the development and expansion of a community that values service and inclusion.”

Duah-Agyeman most recently led Multicultural Affairs in developing programs to advance inclusion on the SU campus by creating best-in-class programs like the WellsLink Leadership Program; Dimensions, a peer mentoring program for women of color; and the Men of Color Initiative. He was instrumental in piloting and introducing the Conversations About Race and Ethnicity (C.A.R.E.) intergroup dialogue programs on campus. He also advocated for inclusion through his community work with Interfaith Works of Central New York and the Ghana Society of CNY.

Student Coalition on Race and Equity (SCORE) (Youth Community Organization)

��The Student Coalition on Race and Equity (SCORE) was launched in 2020, after the murder of George Floyd. SCORE harnesses the talent and leadership skills of high school students across Onondaga County to combat oppression and foster equity. It empowers youth, known as SCORE leaders, to educate adults on topics related to race and equity, sharing insights from their unique perspectives as young people.

After completing five weeks of training in equity-based topics and being equipped with the skills necessary to facilitate interactive workshops, SCORE Leaders take on the role of educators, leading workshop sessions for community stakeholders each August. SCORE has provided workshops on implicit bias and Black history to almost 3,000 community members.

“SCORE is a powerful program that not only centers and draws from the creativity and expertise of youth, but it also engages youth in meaningfully powerful professional experience,” says nominator Jenny Dombroske. “Our community is fortunate to have this access to the insights of youth and the opportunity to learn some of the hardest lessons from them, so that we may contribute to the future that they want for themselves.”

Laurence Segal (Community Member)

Segal quietly fights every single day for cancer patients, the homeless, the downtrodden and people the rest of society cast aside, says his brother and nominator, Andrew Segal.

Laurence has been known to stop his car and help stranded motorists, using his own AAA card to help them. Through his organization, , he has returned millions of bottles and cans for cancer patients and research and pulled millions of pop tabs for the Ronald McDonald House of CNY. He hosts multiple every month that impact thousands of people, and he constantly strives to make the world a better place.

This summer, Segal cleaned up trash on city streets and passed out hot meals, cold drinks, sanitizers, masks and first aid kits to people experiencing homelessness. He has spent countless hours with cancer patients holding their hands while they go through chemotherapy, radiation and long hospital stays.

“He makes a difference constantly, but just chooses to keep it silent,” Andrew Segal says. “He is the gem of our family, and a gem in CNY.”

Jamie Jackson (Special Posthumous Recognition)

Jackson, a longtime employee with ���ϲ�����’s Parking and Transportation Services, was in a unique position to connect with almost every person on campus for over 20 years. He was assigned to the Quad lot outside Hendricks Chapel, where he offered assistance to campus visitors and befriended many members of the campus community. Jackson passed away unexpectedly in September 2024.

He was a graduate of Onondaga Community College and a U.S. Navy and U.S. Army veteran. In his obituary, he was remembered as a “wonderful son, beloved husband, fantastic father, a devoted veteran, terrific brother, great friend, kind uncle, good outdoorsman, strong record keeper and avid sports fan.”

Dara Harper, communications director at Hendricks Chapel, got to know Jackson well.

“In my opinion, Jamie’s role on campus was utterly unsung. He, a veteran, a dad, a confidante, a judge, a quiet and constant friend, touched every person on campus,” she says. “To tell you that he was the parking attendant limits his story to a singular piece of who he was. And for many of us, he is still just right outside.”

Jackson’s loss is felt every day on the University campus. “Jamie embodied the kindness, fortitude and patience that we all should strive for in this world,” says Harper. “He was a GOOD man, which is just the simplest way of saying that he was a hero.”

Audie Klotz

Founded in 1959, the ISA is comprised of more than 7,000 members around the world, including academics, practitioners, policy experts, private sector workers and independent researchers. A hub for the exchange of ideas, networking and programmatic initiatives, its conferences, virtual programs and sponsored journals (published by Oxford University Press) encompass a range of topics that foster the development of new ideas, relationships and skillsets.

Klotz will serve a three-year term—as president-elect, president and past-president—starting at the annual convention in March 2025. She previously served a two-year term as a vice president-elect and vice president (2016-2018), among other roles within the association.

Shana Kushner Gadarian, associate dean for research and professor of political science, praised Klotz for her selection and says she is highly qualified to lead the prestigious organization.

“Over the course of her career, Professor Klotz has developed a body of scholarship that is well-known and widely cited and that has influenced several distinct areas of research in political science and international studies,” Gadarian says, adding that the position will be mutually beneficial, as it will “create opportunities for Maxwell faculty and students to more deeply engage with critical international issues of our time.”

A specialist on global migration and international norms, Klotz has received awards and accolades for her scholarship and teaching, including the 2023 Wasserstrom Prize from ���ϲ�����, the 2020 Distinguished Scholar Award from the International Organization Section of ISA, and the 2018 Distinguished Scholar Award from the Ethnicity, Nationalism and Migration Studies Section of ISA.

Klotz is the author of “Migration and National Identity in South Africa, 1860-2010” (Cambridge University Press, 2013), and Cornell University Press will publish a second edition of her book, “Norms in International Relations: The Struggle against Apartheid,” later this year. Her research has been supported with a Fulbright fellowship and by several funders including the National Science Foundation, the Social Science Research Council and the MacArthur Foundation.

This story was written by Mikayla Melo

The liberal arts offerings through the (A&S) and the have always equipped students with the critical and creative thinking skills needed throughout their lifetimes.

Today, thanks to an important revision of the foundational (LAC), the two schools will offer a reimagined, robust and contemporary curriculum that will prepare students for adaptability and success in a constantly evolving world. The new LAC, slated to be implemented in the Fall 2025 semester, will apply only to those students matriculating beginning in the fall of 2025.

The College of Arts and Sciences and the Maxwell School will offer a reimagined, robust and contemporary curriculum that will prepare students for adaptability and success in a constantly evolving world.

The class was selected after a rigorous application and review process. Scholars were chosen based on their leadership growth potential and the strength of their personal leadership projects aimed at addressing a critical challenge or need in a community, profession or organization.

Ray Toenniessen

“I am honored to be selected as a Presidential Leadership Scholar,” Toenniessen says. “This is a tremendous opportunity to learn from outstanding leaders across different sectors, exchange fresh ideas and collaborate on solutions to some of our country’s most pressing challenges. I’m eager to bring the knowledge and network gained through this program back to our work here at the D’Aniello IVMF, where we can continue driving meaningful impact for our nation’s service members, veterans and their families.”

Toenniessen, who served four years as a commissioned officer in the Army, leads more than 100 employees at the D’Aniello IVMF, both on campus and across the nation. He advances the Institute’s 16 national training programs and community services, its research and evaluation capabilities, its coalition for veteran-owned businesses and employers, the alumni and engagement network and the D’Aniello Institute’s policy work in Washington D.C.

Toenniessen’s work with the IVMF began upon his return to his alma mater in 2010 after transitioning out of the military, and he became the first national program manager of the Entrepreneurship Bootcamp for Veterans. In his time with the IVMF, he has been instrumental in the development and growth of the organization’s programs and services, which have impacted more than 230,000 service members, veterans and military family members.

“���ϲ����� and the D’Aniello IVMF are proud of Ray Toenniessen’s selection as a 2025 Presidential Leadership Scholar,” says , vice chancellor for strategic initiatives and innovation and the executive director of the IVMF.��“Throughout his career, Ray has consistently advanced the interests of veterans and military families. We look forward to Ray’s continued leadership and significant contributions that only will be enhanced by his PLS experience.”

Throughout the program, Toenniessen and the other scholars will travel to each participating presidential center to learn from former presidents, key former administration officials, business and civic leaders and leading academics. They will study and put into practice varying approaches to leadership and exchange ideas to help strengthen their impact.

Scholars have consistently reported remarkable growth in skills, responsibilities and opportunities for impact since the program began in 2015, including 96% of scholars reporting an improvement in how confidently they can lead social change, and 97% reporting they are inspired to accomplish more since beginning the program.

The 2025 program will begin on Jan. 29.

A ���ϲ����� senior and an alumna were recently chosen for prestigious graduate fellowships that prepare students for careers in the Foreign Service.

Linda Baguma ’25, an international relations and political science major in the and , has been named a 2025 Rangel Fellow. Alexandria Johnson ’24, an international relations graduate from the Maxwell School and College of Arts and Sciences, has been selected as a 2025 Pickering Fellow.

The Charles B. Rangel Graduate Fellowship aims to attract and prepare outstanding young people for careers in the Foreign Service of the U.S. Department of State where they can help formulate, represent and implement U.S. foreign policy. The Rangel Program supports fellows through two years of graduate study, domestic and overseas internships, mentoring and professional development activities.

Funded by the U.S. Department of State, the Thomas R. Pickering Fellowship awards recipients two years of financial support, mentoring and professional development to prepare them for a career in the Foreign Service. Fellows will also complete a domestic internship at the U.S. Department of State in Washington, D.C., and an overseas internship at a U.S. embassy.

Linda Baguma

Baguma, a 2024-25 Remembrance Scholar, participated in a Public Policy and International Affairs Junior Summer Institute (PPIA) at Carnegie Mellon University over the summer. Her interest in the Foreign Service started with her desire to build stronger relationships between the U.S. and Africa, especially in diplomacy and international security.

Baguma was born in Africa and raised in the United States and feels a strong connection to both places. “Growing up in a refugee camp and then resettling in the U.S. gave me a unique perspective on the importance of diplomacy in building stronger global relationships,” Baguma says. “It helped me understand how important it is to foster cooperation and support across nations and communities to create positive change in the world.”

In addition to her PPIA experience, Baguma spent the Fall 2024 semester studying in South Africa. “Studying abroad allowed me to see how international relations works in a country with a very different history and set of challenges. I learned about South Africa’s policies and how they impact local communities. This experience has made me even more excited about pursuing a career in the Foreign Service, particularly focused on improving U.S.-Africa relations,” she says.

“The Rangel Fellowship will give me the resources, mentorship and hands-on experience to deepen my knowledge of foreign service and diplomacy. It will provide me with training, internships and access to a network of professionals, all of which will help me develop the skills I need to navigate U.S. foreign policy,” Baguma says. “The chance to work in the U.S. Foreign Service will allow me to directly address global issues and contribute to solutions that benefit people around the world. With the Rangel Fellowship, I believe I will be in a stronger position to pursue my goal of working in international affairs, peace and security for Americans and the rest of the world.”

Alexandria��Johnson

Johnson’s interest in the Foreign Service was sparked in high school in Cleveland, Ohio. “I had the privilege to hear from a retired ambassador through the global studies program, which changed my perspective,” Johnson says. “The conversation helped me understand that there are more opportunities beyond my immediate community and it led me to research and learn more about U.S. foreign affairs and the Foreign Service.”

In the summer of 2022, Johnson interned at the Cleveland Council on World Affairs, acting as a liaison between visiting professionals and professionals in her local community. “I learned a lot more about international relations and diplomacy, multilateral issues such as human rights and rule of law, my own city, and ultimately about myself. It was a challenging experience that I will never forget,” Johnson says.

In the spring of 2023, Johnson studied abroad in Strasbourg, France, where she interned with the Arab Center for International Humanitarian Law and Human Rights Education. She was also a 2023 Rangel Scholar, which funded a short-term summer program that gave her a comprehensive introduction to professions in U.S. foreign affairs. “I was surrounded by a cohort of 14 like-minded peers and I loved my experience. It inspired me to contribute my perspective as a Black woman from the Midwest to the field of diplomacy,” Johnson says. “The Rangel Summer Enrichment Program ultimately affirmed my commitment to pursuing a career in the Foreign Service to bridge global divides and advocate for inclusive and impactful diplomacy.”

“All of these experiences have taught me about diplomacy in different ways and have allowed me to make an impact. They all speak to a commitment to service in the field, which I will continue to strive for,” Johnson says.

Johnson currently works with the Truman Center for National Policy, a national security think tank in Washington, D.C. There, she focuses on subnational diplomacy and democracy building.

“The Pickering Fellowship will help me to attain my goal of public service. When I reflected on what I wanted out of a career, it had to be public service first and foremost. Coupled with my passion for foreign affairs, it is a perfect fit,” she says. “I hope to make positive change and to bring more awareness to what Foreign Service Officers do.”

Baguma and Johnson worked closely with the Center for Fellowship and Scholarship Advising (CFSA) on their applications and to prepare for their fellowship interviews. Students interested in learning more about the Pickering Fellowship and the Rangel Fellowship should contact CFSA.

Robert Wilson

is an associate professor in the Geography and the Environment Department at ���ϲ�����. His expertise area includes how animals interact with society and humans.

He is available for interview and his comments below can be quoted directly.

Professor Wilson says:

“This month, a man in Louisiana died from bird flu (H5N1), which he probably got from exposure to wild birds or chickens in his backyard. And in recent months dairy workers have been sickened by the virus. While H5N1 is not yet spreading from person to person, the continued transmission of the virus from animals to people is very worrisome.

“The U.S. raises billions of animals a year, and the virus has travelled quickly among the nation’s chickens, pigs, and dairy cows. In the U.S., each year we raise and slaughter nine billion broiler chickens—the sort of chickens that people eat. At any one time, hundreds of millions of hens are laying eggs. H5N1 has infected many of these birds, leading egg and poultry producers to cull the chickens in an attempt to limit the virus spread. Even so, other domestic animals, such as pigs and dairy cows, are now infected as well.

“Many of these animals are raised in factory-like conditions where they are stuffed close together. In such cramped quarters, viruses can spread easily among the animals and increase the chance of a zoonotic spillover of H5N1 from animals to humans.

“Animal right activists have highlighted the terrible living conditions endured by chickens, pigs, and cows raised under industrial agriculture. But the way we treat these animals places us all at risk. We have, in effect, created incubators for the birth of new, more virulent pathogens while detaining animals in spaces that make virus outbreaks nearly inevitable.

“To protect ourselves, we need to alter the way we raise animals in our modern food system.”

To request interviews or get more information:

Daryl Lovell
Associate Director of Media Relations
Division of Communications

M��315.380.0206
dalovell@syr.edu |
news.syr.edu |

���ϲ�����

The 53-minute film, “Raise the Roof: Building Tenant Power in ���ϲ�����,” depicts the formation and activism of the ���ϲ����� Tenants Union (STU), a grassroots organization that advocates for tenants’ rights and legislative change. Purser, associate professor of sociology, partnered with the STU on the project in collaboration with Franklin Thompson of August Fifth Productions, who served as director of photography and producer.

“The film seeks to reveal how, due to the imbalance of power with their landlords, tenants can make few changes as individuals, sometimes face retaliation for reporting code violations, and often wind up stuck due to the cost of relocation and rent,” says Purser. “We wanted to show how tenants organizing collectively can challenge the uneven power imbalance with landlords.”

The film is a culmination of a through the Interdisciplinary Research Leaders (IRL) program sponsored by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The IRL program supports action-oriented scholarship undertaken in collaboration with community partners and focuses on equity and health research.

In addition to Purser, the research team included Jamila Michener, professor of government and public policy at Cornell University, and Palmer Harvey, an organizer with STU. The team conducted focus groups throughout the City of ���ϲ����� to better understand tenants’ experiences and introduce them to tenant organizing as a strategy to improve community health. The project was designed to help build STU’s membership base, and data from the focus groups was incorporated into the documentary.

“This is a great example of using social science research to have a real-world impact in our local community,” says Shana Kushner Gadarian, associate dean for research and Merle Goldberg Fabian Professor of Excellence in Citizenship and Critical Thinking. “Professor Purser’s work on tenants’ experiences in ���ϲ����� and how they are working together to advocate for policy change can be a valuable resource for other communities facing challenges with power imbalances between renters and landlords and inadequate housing.”

Filming began in October 2023 in numerous locations across the City of ���ϲ�����, including tenants’

Gretchen Purser, associate professor of sociology, is shown during filming with producer and photography director Franklin Thompson of August Fifth Productions.

homes, at union meetings, in offices and at public protests and rallies. Union organizers and tenants are interviewed in the film, along with city officials and Michener.

The tenants shared their experiences with mold, infestation, large rent increases, lead poisoning, structural and plumbing issues, caved-in ceilings and broken furnaces as well as eviction, sexual harassment and predatory rental arrangements.

Purser says the collective organizing aims to achieve tangible improvements in housing conditions for poor and predominantly Black families in the ���ϲ����� community.

Participants in the film offered various proposals to improve conditions for tenants. For example, Good Cause Eviction legislation would cap rent increases and limit evictions to cases of non-payment or lease violation, prohibiting the kinds of retaliatory evictions that Purser and her colleagues documented throughout their research.

Speakers at the screening at Salt City Market also presented ideas, including an updated rental registry and code enforcement system that would mandate lead inspection, charge additional fees for landlords renting unregistered properties, revoke registry for code violators and allocate funds from penal fees to repair damages. City Auditor Alexander Marion, who participated with organizers in a question-and-answer session, said the eventual goal is to use money from violations, fines, registrations and inspections to better fund code enforcement.

Jocelyn Richards, an STU organizer, hopes the documentary inspires viewers and sparks curiosity about tenant organizing.

“This documentary reveals that nearly every tenant in ���ϲ����� is encountering or has encountered similar issues: we’re not alone,” says Richards. “And it’s normal to be fearful of taking action as an individual, but when we come together, we have both more power and more protection from retaliation.”

Film organizers are planning additional screenings in 2025, starting with a showing at the Maxwell School. Members of the University community are invited to join a at 3:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Feb. 11, in the Dr. Paul and Natalie Strasser Legacy Room. Still other viewing opportunities are planned for New York City and Ithaca, New York. The documentary will eventually be publicly available online and accessible on the STU website.

Purser is director of the Law, Society and Policy Integrated Learning Major, research co-director on Advocacy and Activism at the Program for the Advancement of Research on Conflict and Collaboration, and a senior research associate at the Center for Qualitative and Multi-Method Inquiry. Her research and teaching focuses on the housing struggles of the urban poor, work and labor market transformation, and the policies and practices of poverty management in the U.S. She has written numerous op-eds and public-facing articles on criminal justice reform, inequality and precarious work in the U.S.

Story by Michael Kelly

Professor Geuorguiev writes: “While this rumored proposal remains entirely speculative, the possibility should not be dismissed outright. President-elect Trump has indicated a desire for a political resolution to the TikTok dispute, and Elon Musk is uniquely positioned to facilitate such an outcome. His significant financial resources, established business ties in China through Tesla, and prominence in the social media industry via X make him a potential candidate for brokering a deal acceptable to multiple stakeholders. Additionally, Musk’s recognition and favorability in China could render the arrangement more appealing to Beijing. However, such a move would inevitably raise serious concerns among the American public and the U.S. national security establishment. Musk’s growing web of business and political influence, especially as he gains prominence in the incoming Trump administration, could create significant conflicts of interest that warrant close scrutiny.”

Josh Fine

The inaugural class of IDJC fellows for the Spring 2025 semester includes investigative reporter and producer Josh Fine and former U.S. Public Delegate to the United Nations Andrew Weinstein.

“We are thrilled to announce this new program and to have Josh Fine and Andrew Weinstein as our inaugural fellows,” says Margaret Talev, Kramer Director of the IDJC and professor of practice of magazine, news and digital journalism in the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications. “This fellows program is designed to give thought leaders in the fields of journalism and public affairs an opportunity to delve more deeply into subjects that matter to all of us.”

The program provides workspace for fellows at IDJC headquarters in Washington, D.C., as well as access to University scholars and resources, and a stipend for their travel and projects. The fellows will convene events or pursue projects while developing nonpartisan thought leadership in issue areas that align with the IDJC’s mission to explore the challenges to—and connections between—democratic governance and journalism.

Fine, whose award-winning sports journalism has examined the International Olympic Committee, FIFA and the NFL, plans to use his time as a fellow to explore better ways to fund investigative sports journalism, with a focus on the challenges that go beyond the scoreboard and directly impact communities, including the public financing of stadiums, the health impact of certain high school programs and the profit behind youth sports.

“I’m delighted to be one of IDJC’s inaugural fellows,” says Fine. “As the journalism industry changes, it’s critical that accountability-based sports journalism endures. I’m grateful to have the support of ���ϲ����� to explore new ways to sustain this crucial work.”

Andrew Weinstein

Weinstein, who in addition to his role as public delegate, previously served on the board of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and as a member of the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities during the Obama administration, will work to develop nonpartisan public dialogues and workshops aimed at addressing the rise in antisemitism, religion-based hatred and intolerance, and bridging divides between the American Jewish and Palestinian communities.

“I look forward to expanding on my work at the United Nations and am proud to do so in affiliation with such a prestigious academic institution. It’s an honor to help launch the Visiting Fellows program at the Institute for Democracy, Journalism and Citizenship,” says Weinstein.

The launch of the IDJC Visiting Fellows program is made possible by a gift from Gary Greenberg ’72. For information on how to support or engage with the visiting fellows program, please email democracy@syr.edu.

The inaugural event, “Life Together: A Community Conversation for Election Season and Beyond,” was held on campus on Oct. 22. Hundreds of University community members, including students, staff and faculty representing diverse backgrounds and perspectives, engaged in facilitated dialogue on important issues related to democracy, civic engagement, economic opportunity and the political climate. The event featured a moderated discussion among experts, followed by small group conversations led by trained facilitators who also were members of the campus community.

University community members engage in conversation during the October 2024 Life Together event (Photo by Chuck Wainwright)

The Life Together initiative is led by Gretchen Ritter, vice president for civic engagement and education; Margaret Talev, Kramer Director of the ; and Tina Nabatchi, director of the Maxwell School’s (PARCC).

This next phase of the Life Together initiative includes several events planned for the Spring 2025 semester:

• Life Together Leadership Fellows: Ritter, in collaboration with PARCC, will lead a four-part training session for students, faculty and staff interested in developing the civic skills needed to promote democratic engagement in a diverse community. There will be four, two-hour required training sessions that focus on active listening, critical reasoning, inclusive advocacy and advancing the common good. for the Life Together Leadership Fellows program and are due by Jan. 31.
• “Civic Stories” Digital Storytelling Project: The project will collect and share personal and community-driven stories in the form of short video and audio recordings and reflective writing. “Civic Stories” aims to deepen our understanding and practice of civic engagement by humanizing complex issues, promoting empathy and connection, amplifying voices from marginalized communities, challenging assumptions and stereotypes, encouraging reflective dialogue, highlighting shared goals and collective action, and building civic identity and agency.
• Life Together Online Community Conversations Modules: Building on the fall’s facilitated community conversation, and in collaboration with PARCC and the College of Professional Studies, online modules will be developed that can be used to facilitate community conversations for members of the ���ϲ����� community who are not in residence in ���ϲ�����. The modules can also be used by instructors in various settings, such as part of the First Year Seminar curriculum for non-residential first-year students.
• Life Together Lecture Series: The series will bring speakers to campus who will deepen campus conversation and understanding around the initiative’s four critical civic engagement skills. Four colloquiums are expected to be offered in the spring.

��Further details on how the University community can participate will be shared early in the spring semester.

The Economist described “Venice: The Remarkable History of the Lagoon City” (Oxford University Press, 2024) as “a sparkling account of Venice’s past and future” and said it “will become the history of choice for readers who want to better understand the lagoon city.”

In the book, Romano provides a comprehensive account of the political, economic, cultural, ecological, military and art history of Venice from the city’s origins to the present. Drawing from a wealth of archival material, he traces Venetian history across a long range, from the Ice Age emergence of the lagoon, its first permanent settlements and the rise of Venice’s maritime and commercial empire to industrialization, 20th-century fascism and contemporary tourism. In addition to covering elites like merchants and doges, the book offers portraits of Venetian commoners, drawing from documents such as diaries and last wills and testaments.

Emeritus Professor Dennis Romano

In an April��, The Economist wrote, “The result is a triumph.” It continued, “This is contemporary historical writing of the highest quality: clear, entertaining and yet academically rigorous.”

Romano has published eight books and over 20 articles on medieval Italy and Venetian history, politics, culture, art and kinship. He has received numerous grant awards spanning five decades from institutions such as the Guggenheim Foundation, the Folger Shakespeare Library, the National Gallery of Art and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Romano’s academic work explores medieval and Renaissance Italy, early modern Europe, and Venice’s social and cultural history.

Story by Mikayla Melo

Two ���ϲ����� faculty experts weigh in on the historic natural disaster impacting California this week. Their comments below can be quoted directly. They are also available for interviews.

***

Fires burning now cannot be dismissed as anomalous events

Jacob Bendix

is professor emeritus in the Geography and the Environment Department in ���ϲ�����’s Maxwell School. His research areas include impacts of disturbance (principally fire and floods) on plant communities and media coverage of the environment. He has spoken extensively with journalists about the , and the .

Currently, he is available to answer questions via email.

Bendix says:

“The fires currently devastating multiple neighborhoods in the Los Angeles area serve to remind us of the impact of climate change. The fires are driven by the infamous downslope Santa Ana winds that become hotter and drier as they descend, creating particularly incendiary conditions. These winds are strongest in the winter, but historically by winter there was enough rain to soak fuels and limit wildfires. Thus, Santa Ana-driven fires were usually concentrated in the fall, when the winds had begun but fuels were still dry.

“This is where climate change comes in. It is already January, but Southern California remains dry, gripped by drought and high temperatures. Both drought and heat are known to be more likely in the context of human-caused climate change, so the fires burning now cannot be dismissed as anomalous events. We must recognize that such fires are likely to become more common in the future. The news stories each time will fade after a few days or weeks, but the impacts in terms of lost homes and workplaces will last far longer for local residents, and virtually everyone in the region is likely to face escalating insurance costs, or difficulty obtaining insurance at all.”

This is the ‘new reality’ for Southern California communities

Tripti Bhattacharya

is an associate professor in the Earth and Environmental Sciences Department in ���ϲ�����’s College of Arts and Sciences. Her work focuses on understanding the sensitivity of regional rainfall to global climate change.

She is available for interviews by phone, web video conferencing or email.

Bhattacharya says:

“It’s really devastating to see what is unfolding.

“It is a combination of several factors: one is drought, as Southern California has seen very little precipitation this winter, resulting in extremely dry vegetation and soils. On top of that, recent days have seen gusts of dry wind, typically known as ‘Santa Ana’ winds. These gusts have the ability to cause fire to propagate quickly.

“We cannot attribute a single event to human-caused climate change per se, but we do know from peer-reviewed scientific literature that the length of the fire season is increasing. Moreover, state of the art models analyzed in peer reviewed studies have shown that climate change is responsible overall for higher temperatures and drier vegetation, amplifying forest fire activity.

“This is the new reality communities in places like Southern California are facing.”

To request interviews or get more information:

Daryl Lovell
Associate Director of Media Relations
Division of Communications

M��315.380.0206
dalovell@syr.edu |

���ϲ�����

Ghael Fobes ’22, an alumnus of the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, has been named a 2025 Marshall Scholar.

The Marshall Scholarship program was created by an Act of British Parliament in 1953 as a living memorial to former U.S. Secretary of State Gen. George C. Marshall and American assistance provided following World War II. The scholarship allows up to three years of fully funded graduate study in any academic topic at any university in the United Kingdom. Fobes is one of 36 students selected from around the country and is ���ϲ�����’s seventh Marshall Scholar.

“Marshall Scholars continue to represent the very best of American society, dedicating their time and effort to address some of the great challenges of our time, from cyber security and artificial intelligence to advancing our knowledge of the universe,” says Dame Karen Pierce, British ambassador to the U.S. “The Marshall Scholarship remains an integral part of the U.K.-U.S. relationship, established through British gratitude to General Marshall at the end of WWII. We are delighted to welcome such a diverse and talented group of students to the U.K. next year as they continue their studies at some of the U.K.’s top academic institutions.”

Fobes plans to pursue two master’s degrees—in data and artificial intelligence (AI) ethics and in future governance—at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland. He began producing for NBC News as an intern in college and is currently an associate White House producer for NBC News in Washington, D.C. In his position, he has a firsthand perspective on the role that AI is playing in journalism today.

“I think the effects right now are pretty wide-ranging and pose some great opportunities and challenges,” Fobes says. “For example, we’ve been using artificial intelligence tools at NBC News to make transcription more efficient and effective. We also use them to help verify the provenance of social media content. As for challenges, I think anybody using social media has seen a flood in content created with generative AI. That presents significant obstacles to journalists’ ability to quickly determine the veracity��of content.”

Building upon his Marshall experience, Fobes hopes to return to NBC News ready to lead an innovation office embedded in the network’s newsgathering operation. “My goal is to develop ethical workflows that enhance our ability to gather and present news, focusing specifically on expanding efforts to combat digital misinformation,” he says.

As an undergraduate, Fobes majored in broadcast and digital journalism in the Newhouse School and minored in political science in the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs and the College of Arts and Sciences. He was a ���ϲ����� Scholar and Commencement class speaker in 2022, and says he continues to carry his ���ϲ����� experience with him.

“My coursework and the faculty at Newhouse and Maxwell deepened my technical knowledge of broadcasting, sharpened my storytelling skills, and broadened my understanding of domestic and international politics,” he says.��“While a lot��of the learning behind my broadcast degree allowed me to hone my use of a camera, what was truly enriching was learning from Professor Les Rose about the subtleties��of interviewing and story development. It is not just about what catches someone’s eye, but is also about finding ways of introducing your audience to new people, places and perspectives.”

Fobes says his academic experience prepared him for working at NBC News. “It gives me a great foundation for approaching my Marshall Scholarship proposal for developing ethical newsgathering workflows with AI,” he says.

“I am especially grateful to ���ϲ����� for its focus on preparing students with professional development and networking opportunities, and for its satellite campuses in New York City and Washington, D.C,” he says. “Specifically, I’m thankful for Professor Cheryl Brody Franklin’s mentorship through the Newhouse NYC program and Professor Charlotte Grimes, who led the Robin Toner Program in Political Reporting, which I was a part of for four years. They opened the door that allowed me to intern at NBC News throughout my time at SU.”

Fobes��also worked for the Daily Orange. He led the newspaper’s audio department, expanding its footprint as the founder, editor and host of “The Daily Orange” podcast.��“I am grateful to the Daily Orange for giving me the creative space and resources to launch our weekly podcast. Leading the podcast taught me how to pitch and integrate new technologies into the operations of a storied newspaper,” he says.

Fobes worked with the University’s Center for Fellowship and Scholarship Advising (CFSA) on his Marshall application.

“Ghael’s extraordinary record of service and leadership in his field—and his preparation for and commitment to graduate study in artificial intelligence ethics—made him an outstanding candidate for the Marshall Scholarship,” says Jolynn Parker, director of the CFSA.��“We are thrilled this award will help him achieve his goals.”

Fobes is grateful to Parker and CFSA. “I would not have known about, pursued or completed the application, much less gotten the award, without Jolynn’s encouragement and guidance,” he says. “I am also grateful for the professors who took the time to conduct mock interviews with me.”

Students interested in applying for national scholarships that require University endorsement, such as the Marshall Scholarship, should complete an “intent to apply” form with Center for Fellowship and Scholarship Advising by the end of June 2025 and plan to work with��.

The fellowship will support three months of field research in 2025 for a multi-year research project, “Civil Society Thrives in the Kafana: Locally Led Development and Grassroots Civic Engagement in Serbia.”

Catherine Herrold

Herrold will explore how Serbian civil society actors understand, implement and measure the effectiveness of initiatives such as sustainable agriculture, cultural festivals and community development programs by grassroots groups and philanthropic entities outside of professional non-governmental organizations.

The project builds on past research and collaborations with scholars at the University of Belgrade and contacts in Serbian civil society and international aid agencies. Herrold intends to produce a book, academic journal articles and policy briefs and hopes to build public engagement through opinion pieces and podcasts as well as course content.

“Professor Herrold’s research can help better explain how to build and maintain a dynamic society through the participation of everyday people at the grassroots,” says , associate dean for research and Merle Goldberg Fabian Professor of Excellence in Citizenship and Critical Thinking. “She epitomizes Maxwell’s commitment to engaging on pressing issues of democracy around the world and bringing those lessons back to campus.”

The Fulbright-Hays Program awards grants to U.S. teachers, administrators, pre-doctoral students and postdoctoral faculty as well as to institutions and organizations for overseas research and training that focus on non-Western foreign languages and area studies. The program is funded by a congressional appropriation to the U.S. Department of Education.

Maxwell School Associate Professor Catherine Herrold will spend three months in Serbia as she continues her research on civil society and grassroots development initiatives.

Herrold received a U.S. State Department Fulbright Scholar award for her 2023 research on citizen-led development initiatives in Serbia as well as the 2023 University of Maryland Do Good Institute and Association for Research on Nonprofit Organizations and Voluntary Action (ARNOVA) Global Philanthropy and Nonprofit Leadership Award.

She spent five years doing similar research in Egypt and Palestine for her book, “Delta Democracy: Pathways to Incremental Civic Revolution in Egypt and Beyond” (Oxford University Press, 2020), which was awarded ARNOVA’s Virginia A. Hodgkinson Research Book Prize.

Herrold is a senior research associate for the Middle Eastern Studies Program and the Program for the Advancement of Research on Conflict and Collaboration and an associate professor by courtesy appointment in the political science department. Her research focuses on global civil society, international development, democracy promotion, nonprofit management, and collaborative and participatory governance.

Story by Michael Kelly

The East Side Gallery, one of the last remaining pieces of the original Berlin Wall, stretches for 1.3 km along Muhlenstrasse.

Although the wall’s physical presence is diminished, the “fall” of the Berlin Wall on Nov. 9, 1989, remains a significant moment in history.

Lauren Woodard, assistant professor of anthropology in the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, says the event was just one of several across communist Eastern Europe that showed how solidarity among people could foster resistance and bring change.

“After growing resistance across the region, especially in neighboring Poland, East Germans had mobilized throughout the summer and fall of 1989 to visit West Germany,” says Woodard, who is also a senior research associate in the Center for European Studies within the Moynihan Institute of Global Affairs. “There was a lot of confusion about crossing the border in this moment, amid growing protest and political transformations in the region (Solidarity’s successful movement in neighboring Poland and amid Mikhail Gorbachev’s perestroika in the Soviet Union).”

On Nov. 9, 1989, during a press conference, an East German official inadvertently said that a new policy allowing travel outside of East Germany could happen immediately without restrictions, when in fact the policy was going to be implemented the following day with prerequisites. Tens of thousands of people went to the wall, to various checkpoints, and eventually one opened, where West Germans and East Germans celebrated together.

Lauren Woodard

While the wall didn’t actually “fall” that day, the figurative collapse was symbolic of that period when the populations of Eastern Europe struggled out from the grip of communism.

“This is a starting point in my class [Transformations of Eastern Europe] to understand this moment as one of euphoria and celebration, the idea of the end of the Cold War, and the success of collective action, but one that was also deeply destabilizing for many people, as their economies crashed and they navigated profound social, economic and political transformations throughout the 1990s,” Woodard says.

In the following Q&A, Woodard shares her insights on the fall of the Berlin Wall. For any media who wish to schedule an interview with Woodard, please reach out to Vanessa Marquette, media relations specialist, at vrmarque@syr.edu.

Why was that moment when the Berlin Wall was breached such a visceral moment for people all over the world?

People responded to the “fall” of the Berlin Wall as a moment of victory, that demonstrated how resistance could be achieved through cooperation, as demonstrated earlier that year by the Solidarity Movement in Poland, demonstrations in Hungary and the Singing Revolution, in which nearly two million people held hands across Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, calling for their independence from the Soviet Union. The “fall” of the Berlin Wall symbolized how people could work together and form coalitions to resist, providing hope to everyone for change.

How did the lives of citizens in those countries behind the Iron Curtain change once the wall came down?

The answer to this question varies based on location. I will speak from my own experiences conducting research in Russia and Kazakhstan, two former Soviet countries. While many people experienced the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union as euphoric—this sense of resistance and political collaboration across Cold War boundaries, experienced at the same time as romantic ideas of globalization and the decline of nation-states—the 1990s were a period of profound political, economic and social transformations that were deeply destabilizing. “Shock” therapy, meant to transition former communist countries to democracy and a global market economy, led to profound disenfranchisement and inequality.

As an American college student in 2010, studying abroad in Russia for the first time, I did not expect my host family and my friends to speak nostalgically of the Soviet Union and to genuinely support Vladimir Putin. They described great hardship of the 1990s—long lines, financial and political uncertainty, which factored into parents’ decisions whether to start a family.

A marker of the remains of Berlin Wall

They were also deeply disappointed with the West. They had believed that with the end of the Cold War, there would no longer be a divide between East and West, that there would be no need for NATO, and that the European Union’s (EU) expansion might include them too, since they were Russian and, therefore, European.

When NATO and the EU expanded to include Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, but not Russia, Ukraine or Georgia, for example, they felt isolated and othered. Meanwhile, they associated stability with Vladimir Putin’s presidency, even if it came at the cost of challenges to free speech.

Although the Cold War may have ended in 1989 and 1991, divisions reemerged in new ways in the 1990s that crystallized in the 2000s, leading to today’s present situation, in which Russia has isolated itself globally once again, while attacking its neighbor, Ukraine, as part of a larger project of Russian imperialism, that is markedly different from the Soviet project of communism. This is the subject of my book project—how people navigate these profound changes on an everyday level.

What have been the long-lasting impacts for Eastern Europe and all of Europe?

I think what gets lost is the impact of the end of communism for Western Europe and the United States. Without the Soviet Union as the U.S.’s foil, the U.S. floundered throughout the 1990s to identify who we were as a country and what we stood for. I think this is partially why we latched onto the idea of “global terrorism,” as an alternative to construct ourselves against, with serious implications.

With the Iraq War, we lost serious credibility as a global leader that will take decades to recover from. It is here that we see the reemergence of Russia as an illiberal alternative, aligned with China, Iran and other actors to challenge American hegemony.

What was the Battle of the Bulge?
‘The Battle of the Bulge’ is the name given in the English-speaking world to the last great German offensive in western Europe in World War II, which took place from December 16, 1944 to January 28, 1945. The Germans launched a surprise attack on the American front line in the forested Ardennes region of Belgium. Their aim was to break through the line, reach the English Channel coast at the important port of Antwerp, and split the Americans from the British and Canadian forces to their north. Hitler hoped that such a devastating blow would cause friction between the western Allies and persuade them to make peace on terms favorable to the Third Reich (allowing him to then concentrate his remaining military forces against the Soviets in the east).

Thanks to total strategic surprise, bad weather which kept the Allied air forces grounded, and the use of Germany’s last heavy tank units, the offensive was initially very successful and caused the ‘bulge’ in the front line which gives the battle its name. But unexpectedly stubborn resistance in key locations like the crossroads town of Bastogne, and a fast and effective Allied response once the initial shock had worn off, prevented the Germans from breaking through as they had hoped. By Christmas Day, the advance had halted, the skies had cleared, and the American ground forces, aided by devastating Allied air power, were pushing back against Hitler’s tanks, which had anyway mostly run short of gasoline. The German gamble had failed, and they were never again in a position to launch a major attack in the west. The war ended five months later with Hitler’s suicide and Germany’s total defeat.

Why is the Battle of the Bulge important?
‘The Bulge’ was one of the biggest battles of the war and the largest and bloodiest single engagement fought by the United States between Pearl Harbor and V-J Day. The Germans employed 410,000 troops and over 1,400 tanks, including the infamous 70-ton ‘King Tiger’ with its massive 88-mm gun and almost impenetrably thick armor. Almost 700,000 Allied troops took part in the battle, most of them American, and over 8,600 soldiers and airmen were killed in action. It was the last occasion in the war in which the western Allies could have suffered a major defeat at the hands of the Germans, and if this had happened it might have forced Roosevelt and Churchill to consider negotiating with Hitler to end the fighting with less than unconditional German surrender. As it was, the German Army and Air Force was so badly mauled in the Battle of the Bulge that it probably ended up hastening the war’s end, because they were in no position to defend their homeland once the Allies began advancing again in 1945.

How did the battle influence Allied strategy and relationships?
Hitler’s intention was, among other things, to cause friction between the western Allies, and it’s true that the crisis in the Ardennes did at least temporarily intensify disagreements between the British and American high commands which had existed for months. It was an open secret by December 1944 that the supreme Allied commander-in-chief, US general Dwight D. Eisenhower, did not get along well with the senior British commander in Europe, Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery. ‘Monty’ did not have a high opinion of ‘Ike,’ nor any of the other American generals he was serving alongside, and after his own Anglo-Canadian forces advanced to support the Americans in Belgium, he gave a press conference which tactlessly suggested that he had rescued ‘the Yanks’ from their own ineptitude. Eisenhower was tempted to sack Montgomery for this tactless insubordination, and it was only thanks to the intervention of cooler heads that a major breakdown in the Allied high command was avoided. Eventually, Monty himself realized he had overstepped the line, and he personally apologized to Eisenhower.

What leadership lessons remain relevant today?
The Battle of the Bulge was ultimately a victory for the Allies, but it also represented a major intelligence failure. The Germans had been able to achieve total strategic surprise despite the ability of the British and Americans to read many of their top-secret communications. The evidence was there for those who wanted to see it that the Germans might be planning something. But a combination of hubris and bad luck (the poor weather preventing proper aerial reconnaissance of the enemy front line) meant the Allies had no idea a crisis was imminent in December 1944. The Bulge reminds us that even the best intelligence sources are useless if the people receiving them have built up a false impression in their minds about what is occurring.

The Bulge also shows how important it is to respond to a crisis with a cool head, flexibility, and creativity. In the first few days following the German attack all was chaos and panic on the Allied side, and it appeared as though Hitler’s troops would be able to break through the Allied line completely. But in fact, the confusion was temporary and once the American commanders had a better appreciation of what was happening, they could see that the advantage still lay with their own side – the bad weather grounding the Allied air forces would not last forever, and the Germans were critically short of the gasoline their tanks would need to get to Antwerp. By remaining calm in the midst of seeming defeat they were able to reestablish control of the battlefield and ultimately deliver a critical blow to the enemy.

Another little-remembered detail about the Bulge is the key role played by African American soldiers in the racially segregated US Army. Black GIs were normally forbidden to serve in front-line combat units in 1944 and relegated to unglamorous support tasks. But African American drivers in the ‘Red Ball Express’ truck convoy system kept Allied forces supplied with the ammunition and food they needed to fight; and Eisenhower even decided to temporarily suspend segregation and allow Black soldiers to fight alongside their white comrades. Over 2,000 African American GIs volunteered to go to the front and 708 of them were killed in action. This incident helped to establish the groundwork for the complete desegregation of the US military after the war.

The report finds President Joe Biden’s and Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaigns together outspent now President-elect Donald Trump on Facebook and Instagram by about 6-to-1 ($140 million to $24 million) between Sept. 1, 2023, and the Nov. 5, 2024, election. Meta owns the social media platforms Facebook and Instagram.����

The fourth quarterly report from ���ϲ�����’s  (IDJC) also identifies more than $6 million in negative ads from groups backed by Elon Musk that accept unlimited sums from anonymous donors, a source of financing known as “dark money.” The ads, which undercut Harris, aired during the closing weeks of the campaign.����

The world’s richest man, Musk is CEO of Tesla and owns social media platform X. He has emerged as a close advisor to Trump.����

• The report looks at spending on Meta Platforms related to Musk-backed Progress 2028, Building America’s Future PAC, Future Coalition and FC PACs, Duty to America, Fair��Election Fund, RBG PAC and America PAC.��

• In addition to messaging about the economy and illegal immigration, the ads aim to erode support for Democrats among Black Americans who smoke menthol cigarettes;, and send conflicting, targeted messages about the Israel-Hamas war. For instance, in Michigan, ads played up Harris’ support for Israel to erode Arab and Muslim voters’ support for the vice president; while in Pennsylvania, ads emphasized Harris’ sympathy for Palestinians to turn off Jewish voters.��

��The ElectionGraph report provides a powerful—though only partial—measure of the volume of election-related messaging on social media, whether ads originated from the candidates’ own campaigns or the vast web of outside groups that range from truthful and transparent, to murky and conspiracy-minded, and everything in between.����

This is the final installment in a yearlong research project that seeks to identify misinformation trends in the U.S. presidential election. The project is supported by a grant and the use of analytics software from , the world’s leading graph database and analytics company.��

The ElectionGraph team’s efforts include pinpointing origins of messages and tracing misinformation by collecting and algorithmically classifying ads run on Facebook and Instagram. ElectionGraph also has developed a publicly accessible dashboard to explore its findings.��

“In the closing days of the election, shady groups with unclear motives ran duplicitous ads meant to manipulate the public’s understanding of candidate Harris’ policies,” says Jennifer Stromer-Galley, a professor in the School of Information Studies at ���ϲ����� and ElectionGraph’s lead researcher. “The fragmented information environment combined with weak regulation around campaign finance and disclosures on digital ads leaves the public vulnerable to actors who will say anything to try and win elections.”��

While Meta allows approved organizations to access ad data, such data is not required to be made available—and is not similarly trackable—on TikTok, Google, YouTube or Snapchat. The findings nevertheless provide a framework to visualize the fire hose of information and misinformation targeting voters from groups with a jumble of motives, ties and trustworthiness ahead of the 2024 election.��

Graph databases have emerged as a formidable ally in unmasking coordinated misinformation campaigns this election cycle, says Jim Webber, chief scientist at Neo4j. ��

“Using Neo4j, IDJC ElectionGraph researchers have illuminated vast networks of accounts acting in unison to amplify false narratives, even when those accounts tried to maintain a veneer of independence,” Webber says. “They were able to quickly see the forest through the trees and map out an intricate structure of this problematic content, which had the potential to deceive voters.”��

The Institute for Democracy, Journalism and Citizenship is a joint University initiative of the  and the .��

“Election ads on social media in the closing weeks of the campaign can be particularly influential, but also difficult in terms of voters’ ability to see whose money and influence is behind them, given lag times in reporting requirements,”says IDJC Kramer Director , a journalist and professor of practice at the Newhouse School.  ��

From Schumer’s official remarks, “I come to the floor today to congratulate ���ϲ�����’s Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs on its 100th anniversary. One hundred years. A remarkable milestone. A remarkable legacy. A remarkable school.”

Sen. Charles Schumer, right, presents Maxwell Dean David M. Van Slyke with a copy of the remarks from the official congressional record commemorating Maxwell’s centennial.

Founded in 1924 by George Holmes Maxwell, the Maxwell School today is the top-ranked school for public affairs, according to U.S. News & World Report’s rankings, offering graduate and professional programs in public administration and international affairs, and undergraduate and graduate degrees across the social sciences, including signature interdisciplinary undergraduate programs in citizenship and civic engagement; environment, sustainability and policy; and law, society and policy. It is also home to 15 interdisciplinary research centers focused on topical areas within public affairs.

Schumer continued in his remarks, “The school’s more than 38,500 graduates are living and working across the globe, helping to inform public policy—including key legislation that has come before us here, helping to forge compromise amid divide, bringing aid to those in need and defending democracy.”

Schumer also shared that Maxwell alumni have gone on to become ambassadors, legislators, journalists and economists, with many notable names including former U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Donna Shalala G’70, H’87; New York State Gov. Kathy Hochul ’80; ���ϲ����� Mayor Ben Walsh G’05; and former Detroit Mayor Dave Bing ’66, H’06.

“Though it is based in ���ϲ�����, it has a strong presence here in the nation’s capital, offering programs, internship opportunities and world class instruction through a partnership with the Center for Strategic and International Studies,” Schumer continued. “The Maxwell School’s work supports the foundations and institutions of democracy itself, here and across the globe. This is vital at this time in our world’s history.”

As a guest of Schumer, Van Slyke also toured the Capitol and was able to sit in the gallery as the Senate voted on other matters.

“It was an honor to meet with the senator, and we are thankful that he recognized the Maxwell School’s contribution to our great nation over the past 100 years,” Van Slyke said. “That tribute will be in the official Congressional Record for the next 100 years and beyond. We are delighted to have such a strong supporter of the Maxwell School and ���ϲ����� in Senator Schumer.”

Schumer’s official floor remarks concluded, “I congratulate ���ϲ�����, the Maxwell School, Chancellor Kent Syverud, Maxwell Dean David Van Slyke, and the school’s faculty, students, staff and alumni for everything they do to leave the world better than they found it.”

Born and raised in Argentina, Olivier came to the U.S. for the first time in 2012, when he entered graduate school at the University of Arizona in Tucson. He began the process of applying for U.S. citizenship in 2020.

New U.S. citizens take the pledge of allegiance in the Paul and Natalie Strasser Legacy Room.

At the close of his USCIS interview and exam, Olivier learned that his application for citizenship was approved—and that his naturalization ceremony would be held at the Maxwell School,�� just a couple floors away from his office in Eggers Hall.

The news that the ceremony would be at his workplace came as a surprise, Olivier says, adding, “But it also means a lot, because even though I’ve been here only for a year and a half, I have a deep appreciation for the school and the department. And, it feels right to have my citizenship ceremony at a school of citizenship.”

The recent event marked the first time in Maxwell’s 100-year history that a naturalization ceremony has taken place at the school. Most such proceedings take place in court, but occasionally USCIS sets up events at other locations in the community, and in late summer the ���ϲ����� office reached out to the Maxwell School about hosting the ceremony.

Tomás Olivier, assistant professor of public administration and international affairs, came to the U.S. for the first time in 2012, when he entered graduate school.

Gladys McCormick, associate dean for diversity, equity and inclusion, was one of the event’s coordinators. A native of Costa Rica who became a U.S. citizen 20 years ago, McCormick immediately felt the appropriateness of this occasion—especially in the Maxwell School’s centennial year, which through its Tenth Decade Project has seen a wave of new initiatives relating to citizenship. In the last few years McCormick has also spearheaded the project “A Conversation with George Washington,” which exhibits portraits of citizen activists in the foyer of Maxwell Hall, beside the Washington statue and the inscription of the Athenian Oath.

“For me, the naturalization ceremony ties back into the Athenian Oath,” McCormick says. “There’s a sense of, we have made the U.S. our home, and we are committed to making this country better than it was. That element of choice really underscores the importance of having a ceremony like this.”

On the morning of the ceremony, sunlight streamed into the Paul and Natalie Strasser Legacy Room as it filled with 41 new citizens who’d come from 26 countries and six continents, along with an array of their family members and friends. Olivier was joined by his wife, Claire Perrott, their four-month-old daughter, Sofía, and several of his Maxwell students who came to celebrate the milestone.

The Maxwell connections ran deep throughout the ceremony. The presiding judge, Patrick Radel, commented on the school’s legacy of citizenship education and shared that he has two sons currently at ���ϲ�����, one of whom, Luke Radel ’26, is a Maxwell political science major. Christina Cleason, an administrator in the history department, sang the national anthem and “America the Beautiful.” Adol Mayen, appointed by ���ϲ����� Mayor Ben Walsh ’05 M.P.A. as the city’s immigrant and refugee affairs coordinator, spoke movingly of how her mother’s job with ���ϲ�����’s cleaning staff opened the door for Mayen to attend college and ultimately serve ���ϲ�����’s immigrant communities.

Tomás Olivier, assistant professor of public administration and international affairs, is shown with his daughter, Sofía, and presiding judge Patrick Radel.

The event’s guest speaker was political scientist Baobao Zhang, who is originally from China and became a naturalized citizen in February. “We want to recognize the incredible journey that you and your loved ones have been on to get here today,” Zhang said. “You are not alone on this journey. You are here among many—as you can see from the many naturalized citizens among the Maxwell faculty and staff.”

With those words, numerous members of the audience who’d been through the process themselves rose from their seats.

Along with Judge Radel, Maxwell School Dean David M. Van Slyke congratulated the 41 new citizens as they came to the podium to receive their certificates. “At the Maxwell School, we take the notion of citizenship very seriously,” Van Slyke said in his comments. “It’s in our name and is the core focus of teaching, research and public impact mission.”

Van Slyke said that citizenship can become something of an abstract concept amid such dissection.

“We should never forget how real it is,” he said. “Citizenship is more than a concept; it is a very real, legal status that confers privileges and responsibilities. It is a license to be a full and participating member of the community in which you live and of our great nation. And it is a goal that is well earned.”

In this new role, Toenniessen, who is currently the vice president for strategic initiatives and innovation, will assume operational responsibility for the IVMF, which serves more than 22,000 servicemembers, veterans and families each year.

Ray Toenniessen

“Ray has been with the IVMF since its inception. For more than a decade, he’s played a central role in almost every facet of the IVMF’s strategy, programming and growth,” Haynie says. “There is no one more committed to our mission or more qualified to drive future growth and innovation than Ray Toenniessen.”

As Deputy Executive Director, Toenniessen will lead the efforts of the IVMF’s more than 100 employees, both on campus and within military communities across the U.S.

“I am honored to assume this new responsibility, and greatly appreciate the trust Vice Chancellor Haynie has in me to lead the IVMF into the future,” Toenniessen says. “As a team we have accomplished a great deal over the last thirteen years, working to enhance the lives of veterans and their families. That said, there is much more to do. I look forward to the work ahead, leveraging our best-in-class programs, services, research, and evaluation initiatives to create positive change for the military-connected community.”

Vice Chancellor Haynie will continue to serve as the IVMF’s Executive Director and Toenniessen will collaborate closely with Maureen Casey, the IVMF’s chief operating officer, and Barb Carson, managing director of programs and services.

Toenniessen graduated from ���ϲ����� in 2006 with an international relations degree from the and was commissioned from its ROTC program as a second lieutenant. He served four years on active duty, including a combat deployment to Iraq in 2008 in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Upon his transition from active duty in 2010, Toenniessen returned to the University as the first National Program Manager of the Entrepreneurship Bootcamp for Veterans, expanding the program across the country thanks to a partnership with ten world-class business schools while launching additional small business programs for veterans and their families out of the .

In 2011, Toenniessen assisted Vice Chancellor Haynie in launching the D’Aniello Institute, initially serving as director of programs and operations. As Vice President of Strategic Initiatives, Toenniessen has been responsible for launching numerous innovative programs over the last ten years, including the IVMF’s partnerships with private sector firms, foundations and donors to the IVMF’s programs that have impacted the lives of more than 210,000 service members, veterans and military family members since 2011.

Egyptologist Mark Lehner presented the Phanstiel Lecture, “The People Who Built the Pyramids—How We Know,” earlier this month in Maxwell Auditorium. (Photos by Chuck Wainwright)

For Egyptologist Mark Lehner, who has researched the monuments and environs of the Giza Plateau for decades, his question for most of his career has not been about how they were built but rather who crafted these enduring wonders.

“I was simply asking where are all the people? Where’s the settlement? What would it tell us about their lives if we could dig into it with scientific archaeology?” said Lehner, who presented the Phanstiel Lecture, “The People Who Built the Pyramids—How We Know,”��earlier this month in Maxwell Auditorium.

To get to those answers, “I realized that I had to turn my back to the pyramids and look beyond them, around them, to understand the pyramids themselves,” Lehner said. “Because if you don’t understand the elementary structures of everyday life of a people, of a culture, you don’t understand their monuments.”

A distinguished archeologist and founder and president of Ancient Egypt Research Associates (AERA), Lehner has over 40 years of experience studying Egypt’s ancient history. Founded in 1985, the AERA team expanded research on the infrastructure of the pyramid builders, revealing insights into the lives of the ancient workers.

Lehner’s work includes such groundbreaking projects as mapping the Great Sphinx and leading the Giza Plateau Mapping Project, an initiative that unearths and studies Old Kingdom settlements.

Sponsored by the , Lehner’s visit was one of the ’ centennial events.

“It’s a particular honor to be here celebrating 100 years of the Maxwell School, and I realize that we’re way deep into time here compared to a lot of studies here at the Maxwell School, and I’m just wondering if this deep dive into early civilization history might serve as some kind of notice about what is citizenship, what is public affairs, what was it 4,500 years ago?” Lehner said. “What does citizenship mean in these very early periods? And for that matter, was there even such a thing as public versus private?”

Lost City of the Pyramids

Presenting photos and diagrams of the Giza Plateau and its famous sites, Lehner spoke about his discoveries in the Lost City of the Pyramids, a site south of the Sphinx where the AERA team began excavating in 1988. The site stretches south from a colossal ancient stone wall known as Heit el-Ghurab (or “Wall of the Crow”). Here, AERA excavations are revealing an urban settlement that served those building the great pyramids 4,500 years ago.

Below the sands, AERA archeologists exposed the architectural footprint of their labor organization, Lehner said. They found small houses, streets, bakeries, a royal administrative building and a complex of galleries that would have housed the workers.

Egyptologist Mark Lehner presented the Phanstiel Lecture, “The People Who Built the Pyramids—How We Know,”��earlier this month in Maxwell Auditorium.

Animal bones, ancient plants and chips of stone tools—these tiny fragments, which they found through a meticulous sieving process—revealed everyday life.

“We had evidence from the ancient bone that up to several thousand people were eating meat every day, prime beef,” said Lehner, who also noted they found dozens of bakeries. “So we came up with the barracks hypothesis. The idea that people in the provinces were pulsed through the gallery complex during periods of obligatory labor.”

They also discovered wares and remnants of materials that would have been brought in from other parts of Africa and the Middle East.

Their findings and hypotheses have been substantiated by an important discovery in the desert caves at Wadi al-Jarf near the Red Sea. Fellow archeologist Pierre Tallet and his colleagues found the world’s oldest inscribed papyri, written accounts by the people who built the pyramids.

Lehner and Tallet collaborated to connect the writings with the physical remnants. “This is just one example of the evidence we used to reconstruct the pyramid builders’ floodplain and waterways,” Lehner said. “We think they actually dredged these harbors and waterways to the depths of the main trunk channel of the Nile, to a Western Nile branch, to bring water as close as possible to the foot of the Giza Plateau.”

Training the Next Generation of Archeologists

Lehner discussed another important aspect of AERA: training Egyptian archeologists to continue this important work. With funding from private sources and the U.S. Agency for International Development, AERA has trained 350 scholars over 19 years.

“We became one of the largest deployments in Egyptian archeology, and these students have gone on to become major officials and directors within the Ministry Tourism and of Antiquities,” Lehner said.

Following Lehner’s lecture, Maxwell School Dean David M. Van Slyke recognized the archeologist’s work and how his research “shines a light” on those who contributed to these monumental achievements but are often overlooked.

“Dr. Lehner uncovers not only the physical infrastructure that sustained these great undertakings but also the values, daily lives and ingenuity of the ancient workforce that powered them,” Van Slyke said. “The builder city stands as a tribute to these individuals and reminds us that behind every monumental structure are stories of human resilience and creativity.”

Egyptologist Mark Lehner presented the Phanstiel Lecture, “The People Who Built the Pyramids—How We Know,”��earlier this month in Maxwell Auditorium.

The competition will take place on April 3, 2025, and offers a unique platform for students and teams to propose their ideas for combating the spread of inaccurate or misleading health information among college students. Participants will have the opportunity to showcase their strategies in front of a distinguished panel of judges, including experts in public health, media and business innovation.

“We are living in an era where misinformation can have serious, even life-threatening consequences,” says Alexandra Punch, director of the Lerner Center. “This competition is not just about raising awareness but driving real, actionable ideas and solutions that can be implemented on a community or even national scale.”

Submissions for the upcoming competition will be judged based on four key criteria: creativity, feasibility, impact potential and scalability. The top team will be awarded cash prizes, mentorship opportunities and access to valuable resources to further refine and implement their project. Finalists will also gain the opportunity to connect with influential stakeholders in the fields of public health and entrepreneurship, opening doors for potential partnerships and ongoing support.

The Lerner Center and Blackstone LaunchPad are hosting information sessions for prospective participants. The next session will be , and will provide detailed guidance on the competition, offering tips on crafting an effective pitch and outlining the submission process.

The Social Impact Pitch Competition, which aims to attract both students and professionals, will focus this year on combating misinformation—an issue that has gained prominence in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, as misleading health narratives have proliferated on social media and other platforms. The competition seeks to inspire innovative solutions to the growing public health challenge.

For those interested in more information or to sign up for updates, visit the Lerner Center’s or attend one of the upcoming information sessions.

Then he shared that when he poses that question in his classes, hardly anyone raises their hand. When he calls on students, they inevitably describe the feeling they have when around family or when doing something they like, he said.

Brooks tells them: “‘That’s beautiful. That’s lovely. That’s wrong!’”

New York Times bestselling author and former Maxwell professor Arthur C. Brooks discussed the secrets of happiness at an event held on Oct. 30 in the National Veterans Resource Center.

“And it’s good news that it’s wrong,” he explained. “Because if you’re looking for a feeling to get your happiness, you’re going after a vapor. You’re consigning your happiness to forces out of your control. You’re going to go to bed at night saying, boy I sure hope I feel happy tomorrow. And point of fact, that’s how a lot of people live.”

Brooks’ talk, “How to Get Happier in an Unhappy World,” was held in the K.G. Tan Auditorium in the National Veterans Resource Center on Oct. 30. It was hosted by the Maxwell School and sponsored by the D’Aniello Family Foundation, the Louis A. Bantle Chair in Business-Government Policy and the Howard G. and S. Louise Phanstiel Chair in Leadership.

Brooks taught at Maxwell from 2001 to 2009. In addition to serving on the faculty at Harvard, he writes the popular weekly “How to Build a Life” column for The Atlantic and he is the No. 1 New York Times bestselling author of 13 books, including “Build the Life You Want: The Art and Science of Getting Happier” (Penguin Random House, 2023), co-authored with Oprah Winfrey.

Brooks’ focus on the scientific study of happiness began as he ended his time as the president of the American Enterprise Institute, a think tank in Washington, D.C. His Harvard class on the subject typically has a waiting list of several hundred students.

“It’s the most oversubscribed elective at the business school,” Brooks told the ���ϲ����� audience, “which is weird, when you think about it. I mean, it’s a business curriculum and I’m teaching about happiness.”

But Brooks contends it’s popular because he is teaching students the business of their lives.

“I reinforce the idea that their lives are an entrepreneurial endeavor and they’re the founders,” said Brooks. “They’re the people who are building this incredible enterprise. The fortune they’re trying to accumulate is in love and happiness, and that’s what I want to help them get better at.”

So, what are the secrets to happiness?

“What we know in this field, based on both behavioral science and neuroscience, is that the happiest people have in both balance and abundance three things,” Brooks said. “They are enjoyment, satisfaction and meaning. Those are the three parts to happiness. You want to be a happier person? Those are things to pursue.”

Brooks spoke in depth about each of the three and how individuals can work to improve the ingredients of happiness in their own lives. He also shared his four pillars for happiness: Faith, family, friendship and work. Faith, he explained, doesn’t require religion, but can also come from something as simple as taking in a beautiful moment in nature.

Brooks’ lecture ended a daylong visit that included lunch with Maxwell and Arts and Sciences leadership scholars, as well as meetings with faculty, staff and University leaders.

“It was such a pleasure to have Arthur back on campus, to not only speak to this audience, but to interact with our students and see many old friends,” said Maxwell Dean David M. Van Slyke. “His insights into achieving happiness are helping people around the globe, and I am hopeful everyone who heard his remarks and spent time with him learned something about this important subject and about themselves.”

Brooks’ work on happiness can be found at .

Colleen Heflin

Colleen Heflin, professor of public administration and international affairs, has been appointed to a three-year term on the Committee on National Statistics at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

The committee’s mission is to provide advice to the federal government and advance the quality of statistical information for public and private sector decision-making. It conducts studies on data and methods for topics related to the economy, public health, education, immigration, poverty and other public policy issues. Established in 1972, it provides an independent review of federal statistical activities and has created over 300 publications.

Heflin is a senior research associate at the Center for Policy Research, a research affiliate at the Center for Aging and Policy Studies and the Lerner Center for Public Health Promotion and Population Health, and a faculty affiliate at the Aging Studies Institute.

Her areas of expertise include food insecurity, nutrition, welfare policy and the well-being of vulnerable populations. She received a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in 2002 and has over 20 years of experience working with state and local administrative data. She founded the University of Missouri Federal Statistical Research Data Center and the Missouri Population, Education and Health Center. She has engaged with federal policymakers, recently providing testimony to Congress on veteran food security, and has provided technical assistance to states working to improve access to nutrition assistance programs. She has also worked with county agencies to redesign Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) application processes.

Heflin’s research has helped document the causes and consequences of food insecurity, identify the barriers and consequences of participation in nutrition programs, and understand the changing role of the public safety net in the lives of low-income Americans. It has been funded by the National Institutes of Health, U.S. Department of Agriculture, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Russell Sage Foundation. She has received numerous honors, including the American Sociological Association’s W. Richard Scott Award for Distinguished Scholarship.

Story by Michael Kelly

“From the beginning of this process, my priority has been developing and implementing a plan that repositions and strengthens the human dynamics academic programs, research and communitywide impact,” says Lois Agnew, interim vice chancellor, provost and chief academic officer. “This repositioning elevates our human dynamics programs, fosters stronger collaborations across colleges, advances faculty scholarship and better serves our students and the communities we serve.”

In June, task force members began assessing the current state of the human dynamics disciplines, both on campus and at peer institutions, aggregating feedback from key stakeholders and compiling recommendations for how these programs can be positioned for success and growth in the future. As part of the go-forward plan:

• Marriage and family therapy will merge with human development and family science and become one department within the College of Arts and Sciences.
• Public health will join the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs.
• Social work will be housed in the School of Education.

These changes, informed in large part by task force recommendations, are designed to enhance the academic and community impact of these programs, grow enrollment, drive research excellence and strengthen the University’s long-standing commitment to preparing professionals to thrive in human, health and social services. They will go into effect July 1, 2025.

“I am grateful to the members of the task force for their thorough, thoughtful and strategic recommendations. I also extend my appreciation to the many students, faculty and staff who provided feedback along the way—through surveys, engagement sessions and other opportunities for submitting input. Their participation in this process and candid feedback were invaluable,” says Provost Agnew.

Today’s news follows an April announcement that the Falk College of Sport and Human Dynamics will become the Falk College of Sport, the first standalone college on an R1 campus that specifically focuses on sport through a holistic academic lens. As part of the Falk transformation, the University convened the Human Dynamics Task Force, co-chaired by Rachel Razza, associate dean for human dynamics, and Peter Vanable, associate provost and dean of the Graduate School. The task force, which consisted of human dynamics faculty representatives elected from each department, staff and community partners, delivered a final report to the provost last month.

“This work required a commitment to collaboration, a willingness to engage in challenging but necessary dialogue and a shared focus on the immediate and long-term future of the human dynamics academic disciplines,” says Vanable. “Associate Dean Razza and I are grateful to our fellow task force members for their time, dedication and outstanding work. We also appreciate the provost’s commitment to upholding the spirit of our recommendations and look forward to seeing these programs thrive in the future.”

Razza says, “���ϲ����� has long been a leader in interdisciplinary education. The task force agreed that taking a reimagined approach to the human dynamics programs furthers our mission to provide students with a robust, future-focused education that emphasizes both theory and practice. I believe all members of the human dynamics community—students, faculty, staff and Central New York partners—benefit from this important realignment.”

Students currently enrolled in these programs will transition to their new schools and colleges effective July 1, 2025. Students enrolling in these programs in fall 2025 will matriculate into the school or college housing their academic program.

She is a member of the Student Association’s Sustainability Forum, and she has spent time in the greater ���ϲ����� community as a volunteer youth language instructor and as a researcher to understand residents’ civic engagement preferences. Her many pursuits also include work with the Maxwell-based Lerner Center for Public Health Promotion and Population Health to publish a brief on a topic she is deeply interested in—environmental racism and injustice.

Zepeda is one of nine Maxwell students who were honored with Centennial Scholar Awards at the school’s Centennial Celebration held Friday, Oct. 18, in the University’s Goldstein Auditorium. The celebration and awards were supported with generous sponsorships from the family of Sean O’Keefe ’78 M.P.A., University Professor and Phanstiel Chair in Leadership, and Maxwell Advisory Board members Cathy Daicoff ’79 M.P.A. and Stephen Hagerty ’93 M.P.A. Hagerty is also a ���ϲ����� trustee.

Five undergraduates and four graduate students were selected from hundreds of applicants. Each was required to submit a statement describing how their aspirations align with the Maxwell School’s ideals of engaged citizenship and public service.

“To me, public service represents an opportunity to put the public good at the forefront. It entails putting citizens first and actively listening. It means ensuring that every citizen has the same rights and access to feel seen and heard. It means delivering on the needs of the people in my home country as well as abroad,” wrote Zepeda, who is from Honduras.

Before coming to Maxwell, she interned with the United Nations in Honduras, an experience that provided a unique front-row seat to issues central to her interests and career aspirations, including the environment and Indigenous rights.

“I really wanted to gain the skills necessary to tackle the problems affecting vulnerable populations,” she says. “I miss home a lot, and I care about the people and the circumstances. I feel responsible to make a difference.”

In addition to Zepeda, Centennial Scholars are as follows:

Undergraduate Students

Adam Baltaxe of Arlington, Virginia, is pursuing a dual degree in international relations and Spanish language, literature and culture. The senior is currently an advisory board member for Search for Common Ground’s national “Blueprint for Belonging” project which seeks to bring students from diverse perspectives together in colleges across the country. He is also the fundraising chair for Save a Child’s Heart SU, the Jewish representative for Student Assembly of Interfaith Leaders and a volunteer for Global Medical Brigades, the Refugee Assistance Program and WCNY’s new Spanish radio station. Baltaxe is a Remembrance Scholar and is a recipient of several honors, including the Coronat Scholarship, IR Distinction and Jewish-Muslim Fellowship. He is a member of Phi Beta Kappa, Sigma Iota Rho, Phi Kappa Alpha and Muslim Students’ Association, as well as the multicultural/faith chair for Hillel. He aspires to work internationally, bringing people together through dialogue and resolving conflict.

Undergraduate honorees with Dean David M. Van Slyke are, from left to right, Adam Baltaxe, Jorge Morales, Anna Rupert, Nathan Torabi and Mariana Zepeda.

Jorge Morales of East Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, is a junior studying history and anthropology. A Success Scholar, Morales is a member of the editorial board for CHRONOS, the ���ϲ����� undergraduate history journal. He is also the vice president of the ���ϲ����� chapter of Brighten A Day, a nonprofit dedicated to fighting isolation through letters, care packages and video messages. Morales has supported the work of Tessa Murphy, associate professor of history, to transcribe the 1813 Registry of Enslaved Persons in Trinidad. Through his research, he hopes to gain insights into the impacts of slavery and share the personal experiences of enslaved peoples. He plans to use the skills he gains at Maxwell to collaborate with museums and historical sites to better recognize and address issues of intolerance and systemic inequity.

Anna Rupert of Arlington, Virginia, is pursuing degrees in economics and philosophy. The junior is a forward for the women’s soccer team and has received several academic recognitions, including having been named to the All-ACC Academic Team, All-ACC Honor Roll and College Sports Communicators Academic All-District Team. She is a member of the Renée Crown honors program and serves on the Student-Athlete Advisory Committee, focusing on community outreach and providing support to other student athletes. Rupert is a research assistant for the economics department and is a discussion leader for the Fellowship of Christian Athletes. In the summer of 2024, she plans to intern in the treasury department at Ford Motor Company in Detroit. After graduating, Rupert hopes to play soccer professionally in Europe before transitioning to a career in finance.

Nathan Torabi of Visalia, California, is majoring in political science; citizenship and civic engagement; and law, society and policy. A junior, he is an inaugural member of the Next Generation Leadership Corps, as well as a student ambassador for the Maxwell School and the College of Arts and Sciences and OttoTHON, a dance fundraiser that raises funds for Children’s Miracle Network hospitals. A Coronat Scholar, he has received several other awards, including the Maxwell Philanthropic Ambassador, Paul A. Volcker Government Internship Award, the Maxwell Exemplary Student Paper Award and Michael D. Schneider Award. Currently a legislative intern for U.S. Senator Charles Schumer in Washington, D.C., he has also worked within the ���ϲ����� Admissions Office and for an attorney’s office. Formerly a project intern with CNY Pride, Torabi aspires to attend law school and become a civil litigator to champion LGBTQ+ rights within the education system.

Graduate Students

Ferdinand Eimler of Berlin, Germany, is pursuing a master’s degree in international relations at Maxwell while also pursuing a master’s degree in public policy from the Hertie School in Berlin as part of the Atlantis Dual Degree Master’s Program. He earned a bachelor’s degree in politics and public administration from the University of Konstanz in Germany. Eimler gained professional experience in international relations at the German Federal Foreign Office, co-organizing diplomacy and foreign policy workshops across Europe for the Global Diplomacy Lab and advancing German foreign policy at the United Nations. He currently works for the Aspen Institute Germany, where he ​​​​fosters relations between state and provincial legislators from the United States, Germany and Canada. As an alumnus of the Congress Bundestag Youth Exchange (CBYX) Scholarship, Eimler aspires to a career focused on strengthening transatlantic relations, particularly between Germany and the United States.

Shown with Dean David M. Van Slyke, the four graduate students honored with Centennial Scholar Awards are, from left to right, Julia Liebell-McLean, Ferdinand Eimler, Benjamin Katz and Kaythari Maw.

Benjamin Katz of New York City is a second-year political science Ph.D. student studying international relations and public policy and administration. His research interests include secession and sovereignty, conflict and violence, and international organizations. He is particularly interested in the politics of the United Kingdom and the European Union. Katz is a research associate in the Moynihan Institute of Global Affairs and the Program for the Advancement of Research on Conflict and Collaboration. He is also a research assistant for a National Science Foundation project on intra- and interstate conflict. Outside of Maxwell, he is a Ph.D. research fellow at the Foreign Military Studies Office, a component of the United States Army Training and Doctrine Command. Katz earned an A.B. in government and history from Hamilton College in 2020 and worked in the financial services industry before he began his Maxwell studies.

Julia Liebell-McLean of central New Jersey is pursuing a dual master’s degree in public administration and international relations. She studied in France during high school, and later, as a Fulbright Scholar and English teaching assistant, spent nine months living in Senegal, inspiring her passion for global affairs. She received a bachelor’s degree from the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University and has interned with the Senate Office of Cory A. Booker, the French Institute in New York City and the U.S. Department of State. Earlier this year, Liebell-McLean was also named a 2024 Robertson Fellow, one of the most prestigious awards for graduate students at Maxwell. She hopes to pursue a career with the State Department furthering diplomacy with African countries.

Kaythari Maw of Staten Island, New York, is pursuing a Ph.D. in economics, and says she is the first female Burmese American to do so. Maw earned a master’s degree in regional science from Cornell University, where she was awarded the Southeast Asia Foreign Language Area Studies Fellowship to study Burmese. Prior to that she earned a bachelor’s degree in economics at Columbia University’s Barnard College. At Cornell and Columbia, she helped to re-establish the Myanmar Students associations; she is currently working on creating a similar organization at ���ϲ�����. With her research, Maw hopes to reduce the gap in literature about the economic circumstances of Burmese diaspora.

Story by Mikayla Melo

Osamah F. Khalil

Khalil writes: “Even before the dramatic pictures of Germans taking down the Berlin Wall thirty five years ago, there were significant movements toward ending the Cold War. Almost a year earlier, Mikhail Gorbachev, General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, addressed the United Nations in December 1988 about finding a way ‘towards a new world order.’ This was part of a broader effort by Gorbachev to reduce Cold War tensions and eliminate nuclear weapons. However, he encountered skepticism in the Reagan administration that was also mirrored in the U.S. press. Gorbachev’s attempts to reach an international audience was matched by his efforts to institute reforms within the Soviet Union and Soviet-bloc states.

Gorbachev’s economic reforms had intended and unintended consequences. Within the Soviet Union, they were accompanied by calls for greater political reforms and liberalization. Gorbachev also worked to install reformers within the leadership of the Soviet-bloc states. This included forcing East Germany’s hard-line Erich Honecker to step down. In addition, Gorbachev was adamant that unlike previous Soviet leaders, he would not attempt to suppress protests by force or deploy the Soviet military to secure the rule of communist governments in the Warsaw Pact nations. This was brought into stark relief by the Tiananmen Square protests in China in May 1989. Gorbachev was on a state visit to China when the protests occurred, and the harsh crackdown on the protests was only launched after he left. Gorbachev vowed that he would not repeat these actions.

Gorbachev’s determination was tested throughout the summer and fall by protests and a migration crisis in East Germany. In October, Soviet Foreign Minister Edward Shevardnadze declared that Warsaw Pact countries would be allowed to determine their own domestic affairs and ‘go their own way,’ which he referred to as the ‘Sinatra Doctrine.’ By early November, an unfolding economic and political crisis in East Germany as well as Gorbachev’s unwillingness to intervene, helped set the stage for the remarkable events at the Berlin Wall.

The building and the deconstruction of the Berlin Wall represented two symbols. In constructing the wall in August 1961, the Soviet Union and East Germany hoped to stem the ‘brain drain’ to West Germany and beyond while deescalating tensions with the United States. Instead, it became a symbol of repressive authoritarian rule to be challenged and dismantled. Even if the wall’s destruction wasn’t inevitable – or the way that it occurred – it provided indelible images of the desire for freedom globally that remain more than three decades later.

The end of the Cold War provided an impetus for German unification and European integration. There was movement towards this since the end of the Second World War, including the creation of the Council of Europe (1949) and the European Economic Community (1957). In addition, there were economic ties between East and West Germany that predated the end of the Cold War and unification. Although the establishment of the European Union in 1993 appeared to offer a more hopeful future, the past decade has witnessed tensions within the EU that threaten economic and political stability in Europe. With the election of Donald Trump in the United States and the rising popularity of right-wing parties in Germany and France, those trends may become more pronounced over the next four years. Indeed, the fortieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall may see a different Europe and increasingly strained Euro-American relations.”

Dwayne Murray, deputy director of the Office of Veteran and Military Affairs (OVMA), discusses its impact on campus and around the world, explores what sets ���ϲ����� apart as a best place for veterans and shares his love for working with veterans and military-connected students.

���ϲ����� has a long, proud history of serving our veterans and military-connected students that dates back to World War I and the post-World War II era when thousands of veterans embarked on their journey to a college degree through the G.I. Bill.

One of the central organizations on campus that helps the University accomplish this mission is the (OVMA), which, for the last 10 years has played a critical role in helping veterans, military-connected students and their family members pursue their higher education dreams.

Dwayne Murray ’97 is living out his dream job as the OVMA’s deputy director, and he’s proud of the work the organization does through its programs and initiatives while serving as the University’s central hub for veteran and military-connected students.

Dwayne Murray

“The OVMA sets our veteran and military-connected students with an opportunity to go through the entire life cycle of being connected to ���ϲ�����, from being recruited to when they graduate with their degrees,” Murray says. “We provide student success opportunities, immersion trips, job readiness activities and an outstanding 100% job placement rate thanks to our career services office.”

Murray was a track and field student-athlete on campus and earned degrees in sociology ( and ) and information management and technology () before enlisting in the U.S. Army immediately after graduating.

Following a decorated 25-year active-duty career in the Army, both as an enlisted soldier and an officer, Murray returned to his alma mater in June 2022 to take on this latest career challenge, which blends his passion for his country with his drive to help veteran and military-connected students achieve their goals.

“To be at the intersection of where I’ve had some of the most formidable experiences of my life as a student, and then to combine that with the purpose, direction and motivation that comes from being in the Army, I had to take advantage of this opportunity,” Murray says. “It’s the only calling for me that was bigger than continuing to serve in the military because I could pay back my institution, I could pay back the students that walk these halls and I could share those lessons I’ve learned and experiences I’ve had with our campus community.”

On this “’Cuse Conversation,” Murray discusses the impact the OVMA has had on campus and around the world, explores what sets ���ϲ����� apart as a best place for veterans and shares his love for working with veterans and military-connected students.

Check out . A transcript [PDF] is also available.

Global Impact as a Best Place for Veterans

Murray says the commitment to our veterans and military-connected students is “baked into our DNA as a University,” including the advent of the Student Army Training Corps, which was the forerunner to the Army ROTC. ���ϲ����� was also home to one of the first Air Force ROTC programs on a college campus in the nation.

Dwayne Murray (second from left) poses with attendees at the OVMA’s Stars & Stripes tailgate.

Among the many ways the OVMA and the University help facilitate the transition from active duty to student, Murray points to:

• a simplified, streamlined admissions process, including waiving application fees, which has led to a 300% increase in enrollment over the last 10 years;
• customized support services;
• innovative and creative programming under the leadership of Director of Veteran Career Services Jennifer Pluta G’15 that has yielded a 100% job placement rate for student veterans;
• a welcoming and inclusive environment, featuring various affinity groups;
• strong cross-campus relationships that lead to expanded opportunities for students; and
• significant scholarship opportunities that eliminate financial barriers to a degree.

Dwayne Murray enjoyed a decorated 25-year active-duty career in the U.S. Army, both as an enlisted soldier and an officer, before returning to ���ϲ����� in June 2022.

Add it all up and Murray says it’s easy to see why Military Times consistently ranks ���ϲ����� among the “best place for veterans” among private universities.

“We are fully committed to enhancing the opportunities for our students, and these efforts have led to a global impact,” Murray says. “We have close to 60 veterans enrolled in the fully interactive hybrid online juris doctorate program [known as JDinteractive], which gives our veterans and military-connected students the opportunity to earn their law degree completely online. We have students in the Defense Comptrollership program, that earn an MBA from the and a master’s degree in public administration through the Maxwell School. They go on to serve as leaders in their civilian agencies or their military branch of service.”

National Veterans and Military Families Month

While Murray has always seen ���ϲ����� as part of his identity—when he was 7 years old, his grandmother bought him a ���ϲ����� sweatshirt from the Salvation Army that became a cherished possession—the University is also ingrained in his family.

Dwayne’s wife, Alison Murray ’01, currently serves as the assistant dean for student assistance with Hendricks Chapel, where she is responsible for religious and spiritual outreach programs and services that assist students seeking holistic support. Alison, who earned a nursing degree on campus, served in the Army for more than 20 years.

With November being National Veterans and Military Families Month, the Murrays are an outstanding example of service to country and passion for giving back to students.

“Alison is a nurse by trade, and Hendricks Chapel is like a hospital in that she can diagnose folks and provide them with the type of support and assistance they need to grow, thrive and be successful,” Dwayne says. “It’s an amazing feeling knowing we share this strong connection with our alma mater.”

Alison and Dwayne Murray.

The Salzberg Program is made possible by the support of the Whitman School’s H.H. Franklin Center for Supply Chain Management, co-directed by Assistant Professor of Supply Chain Practice Gary La Point and Associate Professor of Supply Chain Management Julie Niederhoff.

“We are honored to have some of the best industry leaders join us for the Salzberg Memorial Lecture Program to speak to our students and faculty about topics that are a timely intersection of supply chain management, continuous improvement, globalization, sustainability and well-being,” says Whitman School Interim Dean Alex McKelvie. “In addition, we are privileged to present the Salzberg Medallion, which has come to be one of the most esteemed awards in the field of supply chain management since 1949. It is with great pride that the Whitman School, which has the oldest supply chain program in the country, dating back to 1919, showcases some of our top industry leaders, innovative scholars and talented students, who will surely help to inspire the next generation of supply chain leaders—many of whom I’m certain will be products of our own Whitman program.”

Award Recipients

This year’s recipients of the Salzberg Industry Medallion was Toyota Motor Corporation. From left are Whitman School Interim Dean Alex McKelvie; Steve Brown, vice president of parts and logistics and operations at Toyota Motor North America; and J. Michael Haynie, vice chancellor for strategic initiatives and innovation and executive dean of the Whitman School.

This year’s recipients of the Salzberg Industry Medallion was Toyota Motor Corporation, which has built a reputation as a global pioneer for the Toyota Production System (TPS), its manufacturing practices that set the standard for optimizing processes, reducing waste and creating a culture of continuous improvement that has essentially redefined manufacturing standards globally across multiple industries. Steve Brown, vice president of parts and logistics and operations at Toyota Motor North America, accepted the award on behalf of the company.

The Salzberg Academic Medallion was presented to Charles Corbett, Ph.D. Corbett is the IBM Chair in Management and professor of operation and management and sustainability at UCLA. He also holds a joint appointment at the UCLA Institute of Environment and Sustainability. His current research focuses on sustainable operations, time management and well-being, and his work has been featured in the media and through keynote lectures around the world.

The Salzberg Medallion award winners were selected from nominations received from past recipients and other highly regarded practitioners in the transportation and supply chain fields.

Five awards were also given to Whitman undergraduate students. Those students pursuing a supply chain management major were given the opportunity to submit a paper and video about their ideas for consideration by the members of the H.H. Franklin Supply Chain Advisory Board. This year’s recipients were the following:

• Taylor Nicole Feiden ’25, marketing management, real estate and supply chain management, who received the $10,000 Brethen Scholarship.
• Gabrielle Goldman ’25 (Whitman/School of Information Studies) ’25, supply chain management and information management and technology, who received the $10,000 Brethen Scholarship.
• Amelia K. Thorn ’25 (Whitman/Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs), finance and supply chain management, who received the $1,000 Zinsmeister Award.
• Connor McHugh ’25, business analytics and supply chain management, who received a $5,000 Recognition Award.
• Odette A. Sherk ’26 (Whitman/Maxwell School), supply chain management, marketing and environmental and sustainability policy, who received the Empowering Women in Supply Chain Award, presented on behalf of the Didier Family, who received a $1,000 award.

Industry Presentations

A number of speakers rounded out the event, sharing their perspectives on topics relevant to supply chain management.

Toyota’s Brown and Jeff Cawyer, group manager, Toyota Motor North America, outlined the history and methods of TPS, which has become the standard for the auto manufacturing industry through an organizational culture of highly engaged people solving problems or innovating to merge with the latest technology. TPS is focused on the idea that the customer comes first and that people are the company’s most important resource. The company follows the Japanese philosophy of Kaizen, where problems are solved by going right to the shop floor or at the individual dealerships, and the role of managers is to motivate and develop people by building a greater organizational culture where employees feel empowered, supported and recognized.

Toyota is also strongly committed to one of today’s top supply chain challenges: carbon neutrality, which the company is aggressively targeting to reach by 2050. Cawyer also explained how his division handles planning and parts logistics with the Just in Time mindset of “building what people need right now only in the right quantity,” while also making sure that estimated delivery times are met at the dealership level.

The Salzberg Academic Medallion was presented to Charles Corbett, Ph.D. Corbett is the IBM Chair in Management and professor of operation and management and sustainability at UCLA. From left are Whitman School Interim Dean Alex McKelvie; Mike Haynie, vice chancellor for strategic initiatives and innovation and executive dean of the Whitman School; Corbett; and Julie Neiderhoff, associate professor of supply chain management.

Corbett presented “The Operations of Well-Being,” which outlined his research on how processes interact with happiness, equity and sustainability. He talked about “stimulating the best effort of all” and “helping individuals make the most of themselves,” while also addressing how individuals can waste valuable time or make “lazy decisions” that can impact safety and operations, as well as seemingly trivial decisions that can collectively impact whether a person is happy or unhappy.

Corbett emphasized that those who truly use lean manufacturing practices well and give their employees the tools they need to thrive, while those who don’t implement lean well often wind up in chaos. Corbett also addressed the impact of the “new” supply chain created by gig work, as well as the growing impact of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) on operations.

Adam B. Cunha, head of global key client sales-North America, for A.P. Moller-Maersk, addressed global logistic challenges due to political conflicts and environmental activities surrounding key shipping areas, such as safety concerns in the Suez Canal due to tensions in the Red Sea, fluctuating water levels in the Panama Canal, recent hurricanes in the southeastern U.S. and accidents like the bridge collapse blocking much of the Port of Baltimore. Not only limited to shipping, the company moves almost 20% of the world’s food, materials and goods every day to reach people across the globe. Today, it is creating “the network of the future” to find alternate ways to overcome delays and work around unexpected obstacles. He expressed his hope that Whitman students will remember Maersk not only for shipping “but as a company that is connecting and simplifying global supply chains.”

Sarah Day Kalloch, co-founder and executive director for the Good Jobs Institute, presented “Help Companies Thrive by Creating Good Jobs” based on 20 years of research from “The Good Job Strategy.”�� One topic she spoke about was how critical pay is for low-income, frontline workers—like those working in call centers, warehouses, retail or service.

The Good Jobs Institute has worked successfully with companies, like Costco and Trader Joe’s, to invest in their workers by offering wages greater than their competitors and creating great teams with stable schedules, pay that can support a family, benefits, clear career paths, security and safety. This, in turn, has minimized stress on employees and typically results in much lower turnover, which in itself is a huge cost saver. In addition to improving employee turnover, these employees offer better customer service, better store experiences, and overall higher performance with sales and other metrics, therefore giving a strong return on the investment.

 
Wilson writes: “Pets are a cultural category not a biological one. We single them out from other types of animals for special care, we give them individual names, and we allow them to live in our homes. We consider them to be friends or nonhuman members of our families.

So it’s not surprising many Americans were outraged when the New York Department of Conservation confiscated and killed “P’Nut” the squirrel. In the years since his owner, Mark Longo, adopted the squirrel, P’Nut had become a social media sensation, garnering thousands of followers on Instagram and TikTok. The confiscation and death even become an issue in the presidential campaign, with Republican vice-presidential candidate J. D. Vance criticized the government’s actions.

Given their personal and cultural importance, politicians and others can also use the specter of pet abuse as a way to antagonize voters. Earlier this year, Vance and former president Donald Trump spread baseless claims about Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, claiming they were killing and eating dogs and cats. There’s no evidence that Haitian residents were eating these animals. But Vance and Trump knew the mere suggestion of Haitians eating people’s beloved pets would foster animosity against immigrants and bolster their view that they did not belong in the country.”

U.S. Army Lt. Col. (Ret.) Theresa Cross ’99

Retired U.S. Army Lt. Col. Theresa Cross ’99, who graduated from the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs and College of Arts and Sciences with a bachelor’s degree in international relations, will be the guest speaker at the University’s official observance of Veterans Day this year. Cross says that to her, Veterans Day is as “American as apple pie.”

One thing that makes it personally important for her to observe the day is the low percentage of citizens who do choose to serve, “The total number of people who have served in military service to our nation is around 6%. To me, that’s a very small amount of people, and I think it’s a small amount to pay for the many sacrifices that those people have made for our country,” Cross says.

Cross came to ���ϲ����� in 1997 on the U.S. Army’s Green to Gold program, meaning she already had military service prior to coming to campus in pursuit of becoming a commissioned officer. Having obtained the rank of staff sergeant in the U.S. Army, Cross had considerable experience under her belt, including several deployments and having just come off a peacekeeping tour in Bosnia.

“At the time I was married, I had two children, and I had done my time in the Army. I knew I needed help with the kids to go to school full time, and ���ϲ����� was a family school,” says Cross.

Theresa Cross ’99, center, with her family

When Cross calls ���ϲ����� a “family school,” she means the school runs through her family’s veins through multiple generations of ���ϲ����� alumni, including most recently her own daughter, who graduated from the College of Visual and Performing Arts and the School of Education in 2014.

Cross grew up in ���ϲ�����; her mother graduated from the university in 1974, her brother in 1985 and sister in 1994. Cross knew her Orange family was ready to step in and support her in her academic goals. To this day, she’s grateful for that support and the experiences that it allowed her to have during her studies.

Cross went on to be an intelligence officer and a strategist officer; the latter meaning she helped translate national priorities into military strategies and plans as well as developed solutions for complex problems, encompassing a total of 28 years of service. One of the greatest lessons she carried with her back into military service after graduation was learning just how different things would be as an officer compared to her years of experience as an enlisted soldier.

Theresa Cross, second from left, with her Veteran sorority sisters at a Veterans Day event in Florida in 2023.

“I had just come off a tour after being a staff sergeant for two years and deploying with the 18^th Airborne Corps to Bosnia, so to make that move into the officer corps–it was different,” Cross recalls. While non-commissioned officers are the experienced enlisted troops who take on a mid-level management and leadership role, commissioned officers (NCOs) are generally the primary decision makers in a unit and responsible overall for the success of that unit’s mission.

“The ROTC program helped me make that transition a lot better. We had other NCOs on campus that worked with us through the program, and I think it was just one of the best preparations for my time as an officer; learning those things that I, as an enlisted person, didn’t know about,” says Cross.

The University’s celebration of Veterans Day will begin early in the morning on Nov. 11 this year. At 6:30 a.m., the Office of Veteran and Military Affairs (OVMA) will host the annual Veterans Day 5K Fun Run and Walk. Those interested in participating should and plan on arriving a little early to meet fellow runners and warm up for the run.

Afterwards, the doors to the K.G. Tan Auditorium at the National Veterans Resource Center will open for the 2024 Veterans Day Celebration which will start at 11 a.m. Those wishing to attend are encouraged to by the close of business on Friday, Nov. 1.

Five students will soon begin a two-year research project examining the potential social justice and public health impacts of living in neighborhoods that have experienced the historical discriminatory practice of redlining. That is a practice where, for decades, financial institutions designated certain neighborhoods—primarily Black ones—as poor credit risks, making it difficult for residents there to own homes or improve their properties.

The students, recently named 2024-26 Lender Center for Social Justice student fellows, will work with Miriam Mutambudzi, assistant professor of public health in the , who is .

They are:

• Tomiwa (“Tommy”) DaSilva ’26, dual major in public health in the Falk College��and policy studies and citizenship and civic engagement in the
• Adara (“Darla”) Hobbs ’22 G ‘26, a graduate student in Pan African studies in the (A&S)
• Jamea Johnson ’25, a psychology major in A&S
• Sabrina Lussier ’26, a triple major in geography, citizenship and civic engagement, and environmental sustainability and policy in the Maxwell School
• Shreya Potluri ’27, an architecture major in the

DaSilva, from Newark, Delaware, is interested in promoting health equity through health promotion policies and community-based practices. On campus, he has been involved in the Student Association of Public Health Education and Connect 315. In the community, DaSilva has interned with the YWCA of ���ϲ����� and Onondaga County, ACR Health and the City of ���ϲ����� Department of Neighborhood and Business Development.

Hobbs, of ���ϲ�����, earned a bachelor’s degree in��communication and rhetorical studies from the . She has worked for more than a decade with the ���ϲ����� City School District as a teaching assistant, art teacher and as a diversity, equity and belonging building lead.��Hobbs is currently researching the historical and contemporary impacts of redlining on ���ϲ�����’s Black and Latino communities.

Her project, “The Past, Present and Future: An Overview of Redlining in the City of ���ϲ�����,” examines the legacy of residential redlining and resident displacement from the 15th Ward and the ongoing I-81 viaduct project. She also contributed to the development of themes and aesthetic elements for the Barner-McDuffie house, the University’s first Black student center.

Johnson, from Grand Prairie, Texas, has extensive experience in public service, entrepreneurship and community engagement. She is a Congressional intern for New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, working on legislative research, policy development and constituent service. She’s also founder and chief executive officer of Black Girls Garden, an organization that teaches young Black girls and women in low-income living situations to grow their own food to combat food insecurity and poor nutrition.

She took first place in the 2023 Blackstone LaunchPad Small Business Pitch Contest for that startup and also received the 2023 Black Honor Society’s Community Service Leadership Award. On campus, she is Residence Hall Association president and a member of the Black Celestial Choral Ensemble.

Lussier, from the Washington, D.C., area, is an honors student and Maxwell Leadership Scholar. She is a STOP Bias peer educator, a resident advisor for the MORE in Leadership Living Learning Community and has spent the past year working for the ���ϲ����� Neighborhood and Business Development Office.

Her research and academic interests focus on how urban planning intersects with community engagement, social justice and sustainability. Her citizenship capstone and honors thesis looks at the effect of freeway demolition on marginalized communities, focusing on ���ϲ�����’s East Adams neighborhood near I-81 in the historic 15th ward.

Potluri, of Frisco, Texas, is interested in research pertaining to social justice, urban planning and housing. She has researched student learning environments, minority students’ experiences and accessibility to community spaces and facilities in the ���ϲ����� community, along with how architecture is connected to social justice.

Potluri says she wants to determine how architecture can be used to provide people with opportunities and the agency to combat the consequences of redlining.

Miriam Mutambudzi

Mutambudzi’s project examines how Black adults who reside in what have been historically redlined neighborhoods can experience a disadvantaged occupational life course and subsequent health consequences. She says that while redlining began in the 1930s, it has resulted in decades of urban decay and poverty for those neighborhoods that has left a legacy of social and economic disadvantage that continues today.

In addition to Mutambudzi’s role as an assistant professor of public health, she is also a faculty affiliate of the , and at the Maxwell School.

All week:

• Sign your graduating class’s first-generation banner at the Intercultural Collective in the Schine Student Center. The banner will be displayed during graduation season. Participants can also get free first-generation stickers.
• A poster display, “Exploring the First-Generation ���ϲ����� Experience,” featuring campus community members, will be on exhibit on the first floor of Bird Library. Learn about the history of the first-generation identity in higher education, the diverse definitions of “first-generation” and inspiring profiles of current first-generation campus members. A library research guide will offer a wide array of books and resources by and for first-generation individuals, covering themes such as cultural education, memoirs, celebrations and wellness.

Monday, Nov. 4

• • A workshop on “Crafting Your Pitch” will be offered by Career Services and the Kessler Scholars Program from 1:30 to 3 p.m. in Room 104 of the Tolley Humanities Building. The workshop is tailored to the needs of first-generation students, with a special emphasis on undergraduate students. Participants will discover, practice and leave with branding and elevator pitch techniques to support their career journeys.
  • “,” will be held from 4-6 p.m. in the Peter Graham Scholarly Commons, 114 Bird Library. A diverse panel of faculty, staff, students and alumni will share their unique experiences, challenges and advice in navigating college and the professional environments. The discussion and Q&A session will include how to gather support and resources,

Tuesday, Nov. 5

• The Center for Learning and Student Success (CLASS), located on the lower level of Bird Library, will hold an open house from 3:30-5:30 p.m. for first-generation students to explore the variety of individual and group academic support services available.

Wednesday, Nov. 6

• Affinity and networking pop-up space for first-generation students, faculty and staff will be available from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the Intercultural Collective office in the Schine Student Center. Meet fellow first-generation peers, share your experiences, sign your class banner and enjoy some light refreshments while building a supportive community.
• “Thriving as a First-Generation Professional: Navigating the Workforce with Confidence,” a trauma-informed workshop designed to empower first-generation college students as they prepare to enter the professional workforce, will be held from 1:30-3 p.m. in 103 Huntington Hall. Participants will explore practical strategies for overcoming challenges unique to first-generation professionals, such as navigating workplace dynamics, developing self-advocacy and managing financial independence.

• A on “Building Your Professional Network” will be held from 4 to 5 p.m. Learn how to unlock life-changing conversations, mentorships, internships and jobs. Connect with members of the vast Orange community. Open to all undergraduate students, regardless of school/college affiliation.

Thursday, Nov. 7

• An open house will be held in 208 Bowne Hall from 11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. for participants to learn about research, fellowship and other resources and opportunities available for first-generation students with the Center for Fellowship and Scholarship Advising (CFSA), ���ϲ����� Office of Undergraduate Research and Creative Engagement (SOURCE), Women in Science and Engineering (WiSE) and the Lender Center for Social Justice.

Friday, Nov. 8

• A First-Generation Resource Fair will be held from 10:30 to 11:30 a.m. in the Jacquet Commons in Huntington Hall. The fair will feature information from�� SOURCE, ���ϲ����� Abroad, Blackstone Launchpad, the McNair Scholars Program, the Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation and more.
• A First-Generation Celebration featuring “Living Between Two Worlds” with Tianna Faye Soto will be held from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. in the��Jacquet Commons in Huntington Hall. Soto will focus on empowering first-generation students to explore their identities, celebrate intersectionality and highlight the unique strength each person holds.

The National First-Generation College Celebration is celebrated annually on Nov. 8 to mark the anniversary of the signing of the Higher Education Act of 1965. The act provides equal opportunity for those from low-income and minority backgrounds. The legislation created grants and loan programs, invested in higher education institutions and started the Federal TRIO Programs (TRIO) to facilitate the academic success of first-generation college students.

First-Generation College Celebration Week events are made possible by the collaboration and generous contributions of multiple individuals, offices and units on campus that believe in elevating and celebrating our first-generation community of students, faculty and staff.

New Student Programs maintains the for those who self-identify as first-generation college students. The list serves a visual representation of faculty and staff dedication to helping current first-generation college students build their personal success networks and their eagerness to help grow a campus of support. Students are encouraged to connect with faculty and staff members who can share their personal journeys, insight and support throughout this unique student experience.

James-Christian Blockwood

Blockwood has taught Maxwell students in the nation’s capital since 2022 and served as executive vice president at the Partnership for Public Service. He also previously served in the U.S. Government Accountability Office and the departments of Defense, Homeland Security and Veterans Affairs.

Blockwood will succeed Terry Gerton, the Academy’s longest-serving leader.

“In our search for our next president and CEO, the board of the Academy was looking for a combination of broad and deep experience in public administration, outstanding leadership skills, and a demonstrated commitment to the Academy’s unique role and mission,” says Janet A. Weiss, Academy board chair. “Terry Gerton has been an extraordinary leader for the Academy and in James-Christian Blockwood we have identified a leader we believe will build on Terry’s legacy, the reputation of the Academy and our capacities for the future.”

As one of only two congressionally chartered institutions of its kind, the Academy has a mandate to advance the field of public administration and provide nonpartisan expertise to Congress and the next presidential administration.

The Academy has 1,000 fellows from all levels of government, academia and the private sector. Fellows include public managers and scholars, business executives, current and former cabinet officers, members of Congress, governors, state legislators and diplomats. Among them is .

Van Slyke said Blockwood advances the field of public administration through his work with the University. “He helps students and executive professionals hone critical skills and prepares the next generation to be the future leaders our country needs,” Van Slyke says, adding that his course on strategic foresight is a valuable experiential learning opportunity for students and builds on his strong reputation in strategy, management and public affairs. “He is very well-equipped to lead an organization focused on advancing the practice of public administration.”

Blockwood says it is a “privilege to have the confidence of the board of directors to lead the Academy into its next era—especially with the Academy’s 60th and our nation’s 250th anniversaries as milestones ahead.”

Ian Glazman-Schillinger

Glazman-Schillinger, in the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, is one of 11 doctoral candidates who received the award, which comes with $25,000. The funding supports researchers investigating the origins of serious violence as well as responses to it across historical and contemporary contexts in the U.S. and other countries. Recipients this year are studying a range of topics, including political extremism, gender violence and the use of political rhetoric to undercut democratic movements.

Glazman-Schillinger’s dissertation is titled “White Supremacy Goes Online: The Early Digital History of White Power Activists and how they Shaped the Internet, 1984-1999.” His research examines how far-right white power groups used digital technologies and computer networks in the 1980s and 1990s to recruit, communicate and evade government surveillance and infiltration. He traces white power groups’ transition from the traditional hierarchical organizations of the early-to-mid-20th century to current, more diffuse digital formations. His work builds on scholarship in the fields of information studies, computer mediated communication and the digital humanities, and utilizes methodologies that acknowledge the unique qualities of born-digital materials.

A fifth-year doctoral candidate in the history department, Glazman-Schillinger is a graduate research associate in the Campbell Public Affairs Institute (CPAI). He has taught courses on American history to 1865, early modern European history and modern European history. His advisor, Margaret Susan Thompson, is associate professor of history and political science, and senior research associate for CPAI and for the Program for the Advancement of Research on Conflict and Collaboration.

“His dissertation project, focusing on born-digital primary materials from the earliest years of online communication, will profoundly illuminate our understanding of hate groups and the radical right in the United States as both historical phenomena and ongoing foci of intellectual, political and even moral concern,” says Thompson. “Ian’s work is not only original but undeniably crucial in 21st century political and scholarly contexts that acknowledge the salience and danger of extremism—although it is considerably less aware than it might be of how extremists organize, communicate and operate.”

Glazman-Schillinger was previously awarded ���ϲ�����’s Hotchkiss-Ketcham Fellowship as part of a multi-year fellowship package and previously held a nominated position as a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland. He has published work about online and internet hate crimes, the digital origins of the alt-right and far-right movements in the late 20th century. He has presented conference papers at the 2023 Organization of American Historians’ Annual Conference and the UK-based Historians of the Twentieth Century United States’ 2022 annual meeting.

Glazman-Schillinger received a master’s degree from the University of Aberdeen in 2017 and an M.Sc. in contemporary history from the University of Edinburgh in 2018.

Story by Mike Kelly

Margarita Estevez-Abe

She writes: “Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) has suffered its worst electoral losses since its defeat in 2009. While much of the news coverage has focused on the LDP’s unpopularity in the face of corruption and the inflation and now will focus on whether Prime Minister Ishiba will be able to hold onto his power, Sunday’s election marks a fundamental change in Japanese society. For much of the postwar period, Japan has been ruled by a small class of male conservative politicians. This ‘Old Japan’ has prevented a ‘New Japan’ from emerging.

The LDP’s defeat brought hopeful news to those who had been wishing for greater political representation of women.�� The record number of female candidates were fielded (342) and elected (73) mostly thanks to the progressive opposition party, the Constitutional Democratic Party (CDP), which emerged as a formidable opposition force winning 148 seats relative to the LDP’s 191. The CDP has been promoting female candidates in local elections and has been playing a critical role in making more conservative parties like the LDP field more women in response.

The CDP is one of the successor parties of the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), the only opposition party every to unseat the LDP in a general election since its founding in 1955. The breakup of the DPJ in 2017 had paved the way for the LDP’s electoral dominance. Most Lower House seats are allocated by a winner-takes-all rule, which has benefitted the LDP, the only large party, facing a fragmented opposition

There was, however, a silver lining.�� Since the breakup, CDP has shared the support from the organized labor with another successor party to DPJ, the Democratic Party for the People (DPP). CDP has pursued a strategy to cultivate women’s talent becoming much more women-friendly party than its predecessor, DPJ. In this process, it has morphed into a party that resembles European center-left parties—a kind of party that did not exist in Japan before. The CDP has been fielding women in local elections and recruiting competitive female local politicians. It represents the values of a ‘New Japan’ that the long rule by the LDP stifled. In urban Japan, many Japanese voters and politicians are eager to legalize same sex marriage, to let women retain their maiden names after marriage, and to allow Princess Aiko to succeed her father. The local councils in Tokyo reveal the character of this New Japan: women, transgender, and naturalized citizens all serve as elected representatives. The LDP has been like a heavy chain wrapped around the neck of this New Japan not letting it assert itself. The CDP still does not have a majority in the 465-person Lower House, which has the prerogative to elect the next Prime Minister. However, a New Japan finally has a chance to challenge the Old Japan.”

Tetiana Hranchak, Ph.D. is a visiting assistant teaching professor in the Moynihan Institute of Global Affairs at ���ϲ�����’s Maxwell School of Citizenship & Public Affairs. Hranchak’s research interests include issues related to political and cultural communication, libraries’ participation in the implementation of the politics of memory, preservation and transmission of historical memory, formation of critical media literacy and countering information manipulation and propaganda. She writes: “North Korean troops in Ukraine would be another confirmation that the Russian war in Ukraine is not a local or regional conflict. Along with the intensification of military operations in the Middle East using the terrorist group Hamas, this is an additional confirmation of the anti-Western axis formed by Russia, which includes China and Iran in addition to North Korea. For now. The rhetoric of the heads of government of Slovakia Robert Fico and of Hungary Viktor Orban, the strengthening of pro-Russian right-wing radical sentiments in a number of European countries and the visit of the UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres to Russia do not add confidence in the impossibility of extending this axis to the European space in the future. This is an evidence of the ineffectiveness of the chosen by the West strategy to delay the solution of the ‘Russian problem,’ which increasingly opens up space for the corrosion of the entire security system established after the Second World War. In the current conditions, the acceptance of Ukraine into NATO and thus the strict limitation of Russian expectations regarding Ukraine could become a safeguard against the further destruction of the world order.”

, political science professor at Syacuse University’s Maxwell School of Citizenship & Public Affairs, studies Russia politics. Much of his research has focused on the development of the Russian state, with particular attention to state coercive organizations, such as the military and the police. He is the author of the book The Code of Putinism. He did an interview with about this topic.

, adjunct professor at ���ϲ�����’s Maxwell School of Citizenship & Public Affairs, is an expert on 21st century war and changing international relations. McFate is one of the world’s leading expert on mercenaries.��He wrote the book The New Rules of War: How America Can Win—Against Russia, China, and Other Threats. Yesterday, McFate talked about and said “This is a worrisome development, if true, because it would internationalize the Korean conflict and lower the threshold for direct conflict between the two Koreans in Ukraine, which could go nuclear. A problem of war is unintended consequences. This seems like an unnecessary risk by South Korea.”

, retired Vice Admiral and currently a professor of practice at ���ϲ�����’s Maxwell School of Citizenship & Public Affairs, has expertise in national security, international relations, and military and defense strategy. He is also the deputy director of the Institute for Security Policy and Law at ���ϲ�����. Murrett was a guest on and about this story.

Mark Lehner

Whether it’s the ancient remains of plant life or a pyramid passageway or the city where the pyramid builders lived, the hidden remnants of an ancient empire continue to be unearthed. But it’s a greater understanding of the people that created the civilization that fascinates Lehner even more so.

“I realized I had to turn my back to the pyramids to truly understand them,” says Lehner, founder and president of Ancient Egypt Research Associates (AERA), who spent much of his time in recent decades studying other structures at the Giza Plateau, in the shadow of the pyramids. “Because if you don’t understand the people, their civilization, you don’t really understand the monuments themselves.”

Lehner will discuss his discoveries of ancient Egypt during the on Friday, Nov. 1, at 5 p.m. Sponsored by the Howard G. and S. Louise Phanstiel Chair in Leadership, the event will be held in the K.G. Tan Auditorium in the National Veterans Resource Center at the Daniel and Gayle D’Aniello Building. Those attending are asked to . A livestream will be available.

“Mark Lehner is a world-renowned Egyptologist whose work reveals new insights into the past,” says Christopher R. DeCorse, Distinguished Professor and chair of anthropology in the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs. “Drawing on decades of research, Lehner takes us beyond the pyramids and monuments of ancient Egypt to reveal the everyday lives of the pyramid builders.”

Lehner’s archeological research has included mapping the Great Sphinx and discovering a major part of the Lost City of the Pyramids at Giza. Lehner directs the Giza Plateau Mapping Project, which conducts annual excavations of Old Kingdom settlements near the Sphinx and pyramids with a team of archaeologists, geochronologists, botanists and faunal specialists.

Lehner has appeared on National Geographic’s “Explorer” program, and on the “NOVA” programs’ “Riddles of the Sphinx” and “Secrets of Lost Empires” series. He is author of “The Complete Pyramids,” “The Red Sea Scrolls: How Ancient Papyri Reveal the Secrets of the Pyramids,” with Egyptologist Pierre Tallet, and “Giza and the Pyramids: The Definitive History,” with Egyptologist Zahi Hawass. His work has appeared in articles in National Geographic, Smithsonian and Archaeology.

Fragments of a Civilization

Lehner describes his work as piecing together the culture and people through the fragments that remain after thousands of years.

“We’re not doing the kind of archeology where we look for gold bowls and mummies. We’re actually doing the anthropology of pyramid building,” Lehner says. “We want to know: what were they eating? How did they live? It’s like the ’57 Chevy principle. You don’t need the whole Chevy to know that there was a ’57 Chevy. If you’re a car aficionado, all you need is a fender or a part.”

In the Lost City of the Pyramids, they carefully save these ancient remnants and reconstruct the lives of the people who lived 45 centuries ago, in the architectural footprint of a vast urban settlement. They have uncovered what scholars believe was the base of operations for crafting the pyramids and home to laborers, craftsmen and administrators.

These excavations provide unique insight into the beginnings of urbanism, bureaucracy and state formation in the Nile Valley.

Mark Lehner will discuss his discoveries of ancient Egypt during the Phanstiel Lecture, “The People Who Built the Pyramids—How We Know,” on Friday, Nov. 1, at 5 p.m.

“It’s really one of the world’s first institutional buildings along the line of our universities, schools, hospitals, hotels—places for circulating people,” Lehner says.

Along with the architectural remains, the proof is in what Lehner calls “probably the most important archaeological discovery during my 50 years here at Giza.” In 2013, in the desert caves at Wadi el-Jarf near the Red Sea, Pierre Tallet and his colleagues found the world’s oldest inscribed papyri, written accounts by the people who built the pyramids.

The find was at a port of Khufu (the Egyptian king who built the Great Pyramid), where archeologists discovered a massive harbor for ships, work camps and barracks.

With the papyrus discovery and Lehner’s excavations, Lehner and Tallet combined their efforts to match archeology with text. Their work further advanced understanding of the people and the monuments they constructed—and how the work of pyramid building developed a prosperous civilization.

AERA’s archaeology has provided information of crucial importance for the history of urbanism, institutions, labor organization, state formation, bureaucracy, agriculture, animal husbandry and geoarchaeolgy, nautical archaeology, landscape architecture and more.

Field School for Egyptian Archeologists

Another important aspect of AERA has been its development of a comprehensive field school to teach young Egyptian archeologists to research and publish on discoveries in their homeland, training 391 archaeologists throughout the country.

“We call it archaeology as diplomacy because it just generated enormous goodwill,” Lehner says.

Lehner’s own professional path began with his college education in North Dakota, taking him to Cairo in 1973 as a study abroad student at the American University in Cairo where he received a B.A. in anthropology. He went on to work with various archeological projects in Egypt. He was later the field director and then director of the Sphinx Project sponsored by the American Research Center in Egypt (ARCE). In 1984, he began the Giza Plateau Mapping Project, sponsored by ARCE and Yale University where Lehner received a Ph.D. in Egyptology in 1990. In 1985, he founded AERA with Matthew McCauley.

During his early years in Egypt, Lehner became fascinated with the work of social psychologist Leon Festinger, tied to his curiosity about the real story behind the pyramids, which led to his lifelong interest in belief systems and why people believe things.

“We’re interested in how Egyptians build the pyramids. But my main interest is, how did the pyramids build Egypt?” Lehner says. “To build these early gigantic pyramids, they created a vast infrastructure that didn’t exist before.”

New farms and ranches and supply trade routes all the way up to Lebanon were developed. Much like the U.S. freeway system or the internet, “the infrastructure became more important in its own right than building a giant pyramid,” Lehner says. “You don’t arrive at that kind of an understanding unless you do the kind of archaeology that we’re doing, anthropological archaeology, where you dig into the settlements where pyramid builders lived.”

From an early age, Mark Radel ’28 always demonstrated compassion for his peers. As a precocious 9-year-old, Mark would rush onto the basketball court (accompanied by the coaches) whenever someone got hurt to check in and offer a helping hand.

Luke Radel ’26 says empathy is his brother’s superpower. “Mark is overflowing with empathy, and he has a great ability to know if somebody is having a bad day, and what he can do to help them through it,” Luke says, with a proud smile—and that trait will serve Mark well as he strives for a career in sports and exercise science as an athletic trainer.

Mark’s career ambition is being supported by , an initiative from the�� that sets a high standard among inclusive higher education programs, making higher education more accessible for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities through individualized and inclusive coursework, student-centered planning, internships, and social and extracurricular activities.

“I want to help people. I’m loving learning about the body, and how what we eat helps make us strong, and when I graduate, I want to work with my football team, the Buffalo Bills, as a trainer,” says Mark, a sports and exercise science major at the University who was born with Down syndrome.

When Luke (left) attended ���ϲ����� and study both political science and broadcast and digital journalism, Mark decided to follow in his brother’s footsteps. (Photo by Chuck Wainwright)

An Unbreakable Bond

Mark’s benevolent spirit helped Luke during his darkest days. While visiting colleges with his family in Boston, Massachusetts, Luke, an aspiring broadcast journalist, was out to dinner when he discovered his voice had left him. Realizing there was a potential health problem, Luke checked into Massachusetts General Hospital for observation.

Within a few hours, the doctors gave Luke their diagnosis: Stage 4 Hodgkin lymphoma. With his head spinning, Luke began undergoing chemotherapy sessions twice a month for six months, oftentimes for five or more hours per visit. What got him through those trying times?

“Mark was by my side, and his compassion was so helpful. Plus, he gives the best hugs. Whenever I was having a bad day, those hugs were just amazing and turned my day around,” says Luke, whose cancer is in remission. “Mark’s had his fair share of health struggles, and in that moment, I realized what Mark overcomes every day just to keep going, all the work he does to go to school and live his life. If he’s taking on that daunting situation every single day, I can take care of my chemotherapy.”

When Luke decided to attend ���ϲ����� and study both political science in the and broadcast and digital journalism in the , Mark decided to follow in his brother’s footsteps, applying to and being granted admission into InclusiveU’s highly competitive program.

Their unbreakable bond was further strengthened as roommates on campus. Luke helps Mark with his homework and with prepping his meals, and configured Mark’s Google Maps app on his phone with the relevant directions needed for Mark to traverse campus on a daily basis.

Luke and Mark Radel during their shared class in the Falk College. (Photo by Chuck Wainwright)

“Mark is Mr. Independent on campus. He doesn’t want to rely on someone else to help him get across campus. He’s done an amazing job of navigating everything it takes to be a student,” Luke says. “I’m really grateful to be at an institution like ���ϲ����� that is always striving to ensure everybody has access to the opportunities they need to succeed and feel welcome in these spaces.”

Life-Changing Opportunities

From the moment Mark came into his life, Luke has embraced advocating on behalf of his brother, fighting to ensure he was given access to every possible opportunity. It’s part of the Radel family’s genetic makeup. Their father, Patrick, was an attorney who helped people with mental and developmental disabilities be included in their elementary and high school’s educational programs, and their mother, Mary, created a support group, , that raises awareness and educates and connects parents of children born with Down syndrome to resources.

October is Down Syndrome Awareness Month, which, Luke says, is the perfect time for members of the University to learn how people with Down syndrome are valuable contributors to the University community.

“People with Down syndrome are more alike than they are different from us. Mark needs to be in environments that will push him outside of his comfort zone and push the limits of what a person with Down syndrome can accomplish,” Luke says. “You’ll be helping Mark by interacting with him, but you’re also helping yourself gain a better understanding of how people with Down syndrome see and interact with the world around them.

Inspired to become a broadcast journalist from his efforts advocating on Mark’s behalf, Luke has amassed an impressive portfolio as a broadcast journalist, recently covering both the Republican and Democratic national conventions and serving as a in Utica, New York.

Luke hopes to use his dual degrees to continue telling impactful stories that make a difference, including his brother’s inspirational journey to ���ϲ�����.

When Mark got his acceptance letter into InclusiveU I cried tears of joy. I was so excited for him, and I have loved being able to share in the ���ϲ����� journey with Mark, Luke says.

“I always wanted to go to college, and being here with my brother has been amazing. This experience has changed my life,” Mark says.

Sports as a Unifying Force

A lifelong fan of playing sports, Mark Radel enjoys participating in the Special Olympics Unified Sports club basketball team on campus. (Photo by Chuck Wainwright)

The table tennis area in the lounge of Luke’s off-campus apartment complex is getting quite the workout on a Tuesday morning before they both have class in the Falk College of Sport and Human Dynamics. Good-natured comments fly back and forth whenever a point is scored. Their friendly matches, typically a best two-out-of-three affair, offer insights into their dynamic.

“It’s fun to play sports and I like learning new things while I am playing,” Mark says. “And I like to beat Luke. We always have fun when we play.”

“Oh yeah, this is always fun whenever we play [table tennis]. Mark loves watching and playing sports because it’s exciting and fun for him, and it’s a great way to stay active and also be part of a team and a community. Mark just loves being around people,” Luke adds.

Outside of their sibling showdowns in table tennis, Mark also participates in the Special Olympics Unified Sports club basketball team on campus, practicing every Sunday in the Women’s Building.

Surrounded by friends, Mark takes great pride in his basketball abilities. “It’s fun to shoot, dribble the ball and then pass it to my teammates, but what I’m really good at is shooting and scoring,” Mark says with a smile—but more than his performance, he enjoys the camaraderie and friendships that form with his peers.

“It’s the best. We cheer each other on, cheer for big shots and we all want everyone to play well and have fun,” Mark says. “I play better when my teammates are cheering me on, yelling ‘Mark, Mark, Mark!’ It makes me happy and motivates me.”

Brothers Mark (left) and Luke Radel share an unbreakable bond, one that has only strengthened during their time at ���ϲ�����.

An avid fan of the ���ϲ����� football team, Luke and Mark eagerly await each home game. Mark can often be found yelling and cheering on the team while wearing his No. 6 ���ϲ����� jersey, originally purchased to honor former starting quarterback Garrett Shrader ’23, but this year, the jersey is a nod to current starting quarterback Kyle McCord ’25.

From his seats in the 300 section inside the JMA Wireless Dome, fans flock to Mark’s infectious attitude, exchanging fist bumps and high-fives every time ���ϲ����� comes up with a big play.

“It’s really cool and it makes me feel great to know I’m making new friends while we’re cheering on ���ϲ�����,” Mark says.

“Mark has such a big smile on his face when he’s interacting with our fans, and it makes me so happy to see his joy,” Luke adds.

A former faculty member who is regarded as one of the world’s leading experts on the science of human happiness will return to ���ϲ����� later this month to outline a pathway by which individuals, communities and the governance of our nation can improve by learning how to live happier lives and committing to the greater well-being of others.

Arthur C. Brooks, a Harvard University professor and co-author of the New York Times bestseller ‘Build the Life You Want’ with Oprah Winfrey, will deliver remarks during an on-campus event on Oct. 30.

Arthur C. Brooks, a professor at Harvard University and best-selling author, will present “How to Get Happier in an Unhappy World” on Wednesday, Oct. 30 from 5 to 6:30 p.m. in the K.G. Tan Auditorium in the National Veterans Resource Center at The Daniel and Gayle D’Aniello Building.��The event is free and open to the University community and the general public. Advanced .

Brooks is the Parker Gilbert Montgomery Professor of the Practice of Public Leadership at Harvard Kennedy School and professor of management practice at Harvard Business School, where he teaches courses on leadership and happiness. He writes the popular weekly “How to Build a Life” column for The Atlantic, and he is the No. 1 New York Times bestselling author of 13 books, including “Build the Life You Want: The Art and Science of Getting Happier,” co-authored with Oprah Winfrey.

No stranger to ���ϲ�����, Brooks taught courses at Maxwell in policy analysis, microeconomics, public and nonprofit management and social entrepreneurship from 2001 to 2009, and he was the Louis A. Bantle Professor of Business and Government Policy starting in 2007. His work in the classroom earned him the school’s Daniel Patrick Moynihan Award for outstanding teaching, research, and service and the Birkhead-Burkhead Teaching Excellence Award.

“We are delighted to host our friend and former colleague Arthur Brooks for what is sure to be an insightful talk about an important subject for each of us,” says Maxwell Dean David M. Van Slyke. “There are so many ways that we measure success in our society, yet one of the most elusive and hardest to obtain is this notion of happiness. I look forward to hearing Arthur’s thoughts on this, and how to strengthen our lives and the resilience and opportunities of our communities. The effectiveness of our democracy depends on healthy and happy individuals that can work together for the common good. I encourage everyone who can to attend.”

Brooks left Maxwell in 2009 to become the eleventh president of the American Enterprise Institute, a private, nonpartisan, nonprofit think tank in Washington, D.C. He joined the faculty of Harvard in July of 2019.

Prior to joining academia, Brooks spent 12 years as a professional musician, holding positions with the Barcelona Symphony and other ensembles. He earned a master of arts degree in economics from Florida Atlantic University in 1994 and a Ph.D. and M.Phil. in public policy analysis from the RAND Graduate School of Policy Studies in 1998.

Brooks’ talk is sponsored by the D’Aniello Family Foundation, the Louis A. Bantle Chair in Business-Government Policy and the Howard G. and S. Louise Phanstiel Chair in Leadership.

Tina Nabatchi

The annual conference connects scholars and practitioners from all over the world to discuss pressing topics and share insights and strategies for building partnerships. This year’s theme focused on collaboration as well as accountability, transparency and trust in cross-sector partnerships.

In her keynote speech, Nabatchi distinguished between “clock problems”—those that are regular, well-defined and solvable with disciplinary knowledge—and “cloud problems,” which are complex, ever-changing and involving different expertise and ideologies. Tackling cloud problems, she argued, requires participatory, collaborative, dynamic and creative approaches beyond traditional, managerial and expert-driven ones.

“Collaboration is no longer optional, it is obligatory,” she said. “We must work across our boundaries, whether those are organizational, jurisdictional, sectoral or otherwise, to produce outcomes that make the world a better place.”

In her speech, she outlined 10 principles for pursuing collaboration, including embracing diverse knowledge and participation and input from multiple actors. “I have seen these principles not only build accountability, trust and transparency,” she said. “I’ve seen them help us improve our social outcomes and, frankly, make the world a better place.”

Nabatchi is the Joseph A. Strasser Endowed Professor in Public Administration and director of the Program for the Advancement of Research on Conflict and Collaboration. Her research focuses on citizen participation, collaborative governance, conflict resolution and challenges in public administration. She is an elected fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration and recipient of the Laura J. and L. Douglas Meredith Professorship of Teaching Excellence (2021-24).

This story was written by Michael Kelly

The iconic statue of the first president in Maxwell’s first-floor foyer is flanked by a new collection of portraits from Robert Shetterly’s “Americans Who Tell the Truth” series. It is part of the the school’s wide-ranging effort to make its physical space more representative of its diverse community.

For nearly a century, in the north entrance to the , a lone statue of President George Washington greeted all who entered the school. A former farmer, land surveyor, American Revolutionary War hero and first president who presided over the Constitutional Convention, his presence stood as an important reminder of the duties and responsibilities of Maxwell students as citizens.

Two years ago, other voices and individuals joined the first president in the building foyer with the installment of a collection of portraits from Robert Shetterly’s “Americans Who Tell the Truth” series, part of the Maxwell School’s wide-ranging effort to make its physical space more representative of its diverse community. Now in its second installment, the exhibition of portraits flanking the famous founder—titled “A Conversation with George Washington”— is designed to further contemplation and discussion around the topic of citizenship.

A portrait of Emma Tenayuca is among those included in the latest installation of Robert Shetterly’s series. At age 16, Tenayuca became a vocal advocate for Mexican American and other workers in her home state of Texas.

Some might be surprised to see contrasting figures like gold-medal Olympian and world heavyweight boxing champion Muhammad Ali, who was stripped of his titles and sentenced to five years in prison for refusing to serve in the Vietnam War, amid his fight for civil rights for Black Americans. “We wanted to get viewers to want to learn more about how and why someone like Muhammad Ali has something to say about citizenship,” says historian , who spearheads the effort as the school’s associate dean for diversity, equity and inclusion.

The surprise is intentional, but not intended to be confrontational. According to the artist’s website, “The portraits are the opposite of hot takes or quick opinions. They invite you to ponder a person, their words, the issues that inspire their life’s journey, work, activism and imagination. And then they welcome you into that vital conversation—across time and space—about what it means to be an American citizen.”

The update also includes portraits of famous and lesser-known activists working in the areas of disability rights, environmental sustainability, rural issues and voting rights, among others.

“The latest batch of portraits emerged out of ones the school considered from the first iteration of the collection,” says , who works alongside McCormick as the school’s strategic initiatives specialist for diversity, equity and inclusion. “We wanted to include folks who represented issues we felt were important to members of our community.”

“We also always have two portraits that put accountability on the table, in this case from the military for veterans and from an investigative journalist,” adds McCormick, referring to Paul Chappell and Ida Tarbell, respectively.

McCormick and Williams are in discussions with Maxwell colleagues to organize a series of events that relate to the new installation. On Oct. 8, Professor , director of the Program for the Advancement of Research on Conflict and Collaboration, led a workshop on Civic Skills for Civic Life that modeled the objectives of the conversation with Washington. In the spring they will host additional workshops guiding conversations around challenging topics like equity and responsibility.

In addition to , the second collection includes:

• 
  Diagnosed with ALS in 2016, Barkan shifted his activism from economic and labor reform to America’s health care system; he spent the last seven years of his life advocating for Medicare for all.
• 
  A prolific writer, Berry raises awareness of the destructive effects of large factory farming on rural communities, among other issues. A fifth generation Kentucky farmer, he cultivates his land with horses and organic methods of fertilization.
• 
  After leaving active duty, the former Army captain became focused on the idea that society should train individuals to wage peace like they train soldiers for war. He has authored six books and is founder of the Peace Literacy Institute.
• 
  As the first Black woman in Congress, “Fighting Shirley” introduced more than 50 pieces of legislation and fought for racial, gender and economic equality. She was the first Black woman to seek the Democratic nomination for president, winning 28 delegates despite being barred from televised debates.
• 
  A biologist and member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, Kimmerer blends science and Indigenous wisdom to advocate for a deeper relationship to the land and legal recognition of��Rights of Nature. A Distinguished Teaching Professor at the State University of New York’s College of Environmental Science and Forestry, she works with the Haudenosaunee people of Central New York on land rights actions and restoration.
• 
  A chief strategist of the campaign for the 19th Amendment granting women the right to vote, Paul employed “deeds not words,” like pickets and hunger strikes, to promote Federal reform. Subjected to arrests, beatings and forced feedings, she and other members of the National Women’s Party continued to fight until its passage.
• 
  Stanton helped organize the first U.S. women’s rights convention in Seneca Falls, New York, drafted the women’s bill of rights and championed women’s suffrage. She also worked to reform laws governing marriage and property, as well as education and religious issues.
• 
  Among many influential works, Tarbell’s 19-part series for McClure’s “The History of the Standard Oil Company,” an expose on how the business monopoly exploited the public, is known as one of the 20th century’s most important works of journalism.
• 
  Tenayuca became a vocal advocate for Mexican American and other workers in her home state of Texas at age 16. Blacklisted following the largest riot in San Antonio’s history, Tenayuca left the state, returning 20 years later as a teacher for migrants.

Researchers also found continued patterns of “coordinated inauthentic behavior” among some outside organizations, including a large network of Facebook pages running ads aimed at scamming the public. The analysis found an estimated $5 million spent on ads that are potential scams, or roughly 4% of the overall ad spending by outside organizations. This translates into about 234 million impressions.

The ElectionGraph project seeks to identify misinformation trends in the U.S. presidential election and other top 2024 contests.

These are among the findings in the third quarterly report from the at the University’s����(IDJC). The report examines ads on Meta platforms, which include Facebook and Instagram, mentioning primary and general election presidential candidates between Sept. 1, 2023, and Aug. 31, 2024.

The latest report found the Democratic ticket (Biden-Harris, then Harris-Walz) outspending the Trump campaign 10-to-1—or roughly $50 million to $5 million—on Facebook and Instagram between September 2023 and August 2024. That gap expanded to 12-to-1 in the crucial swing state of Pennsylvania. But Trump outpaced Biden’s and Harris’ campaigns combined by about 5-to-1 in ads categorized as “uncivil.”

The data shows a 4-to-1 difference in impressions on the social media platforms, or about 1 billion impressions for the Democratic ticket compared with 250 million impressions for the GOP. This gap doesn’t take into account Trump-related spending on messaging on social platform X, Trump’s Truth Social network or other media platforms.

In addition to campaigns’ spending, nearly 3,500 Facebook pages from outside organizations have spent $55 million over the past year in an effort to influence the public this election season.

ElectionGraph seeks to identify misinformation trends in the U.S. presidential election and other top 2024 contests. The project is supported by a grant and use of analytics software from , the world’s leading graph database and analytics company.

The ElectionGraph team’s efforts include pinpointing origins of messages and tracing misinformation by collecting and algorithmically classifying ads run on Facebook and Instagram. ElectionGraph also has developed a publicly accessible dashboard to explore its findings.

While Meta allows approved organizations to access ad data, such data is not required to be made available—and is not similarly trackable—on TikTok, Google, YouTube or Snapchat. The findings nevertheless provide a framework to visualize the fire hose of information and misinformation targeting voters from groups with a jumble of motives, ties and trustworthiness ahead of the 2024 elections.

The Institute for Democracy, Journalism and Citizenship is a joint University initiative of the and the .

“My concern with the ongoing scams running on Facebook and Instagram is that they look like legitimate advertisements, but they are full of falsehoods and even deepfakes, further polluting the information environment and deceiving voters,”��says , a professor in the School of Information Studies and ElectionGraph’s lead researcher.

Social media scams that exploit heightened sentiments during important moments like elections have become widespread, says Jim Webber, chief scientist at Neo4j.

“This important research, enabled by Neo4j, can help voters and policymakers to distinguish legitimate actors from malicious ones hidden within complex networks,” Webber says. “Without this technology, achieving such insights would be almost impossible.”

Adds IDJC Kramer Director : “Real, bipartisan concerns about election-related violence—accentuated by assassination attempts against former President Trump—have proved no match for the magnetic pull of negative, uncivil and attack-ad campaigning that Trump himself and his rivals consider too useful to set aside.” Talev is a journalist and professor of practice in the Newhouse School.

Lamis Abdelaaty

Lamis Abdelaaty, associate professor of political science and director of undergraduate studies, has received this year’s award from the Ralph E. Montonna Endowed Fund for the Teaching and Education of Undergraduates.

Awarded by the Maxwell School, the Ralph E. Montonna Endowed Fund is intended to support a professor with notable engagement in undergraduate education. Abdelaaty is the recipient of the fund award for the 2024-25 academic year. She succeeds Maria Zhu, assistant professor of economics.

“Professor Abdelaaty is a wonderful teacher and mentor, both in and outside the classroom,” says Carol Faulkner, senior associate dean for academic affairs. “She is deeply invested in the success of our students, and I’m thrilled to see her receive this recognition.”

Abdelaaty specializes in international refugee politics. She has taught several upper-level courses, including Humanitarian Action in World Politics, Human Rights and Global Affairs, and Refugees in International Politics. She is a senior research associate at the Campbell Public Affairs Institute and the Program for the Advancement of Research on Conflict and Collaboration.

In 2023 she was named a residential fellow for the journal Migration Politics; she spent a week as a fellow-in-residence at the University of Amsterdam. Also last year, Abdelaaty received a $70,000 grant from the Gerda Henkel Foundation to support the research for her second book, “Refugees in Crisis.” The book will analyze what constitutes a refugee crisis and the factors influencing international responses to crises. Research for the book was also supported with grant funding from the ���ϲ����� Office of Undergraduate Research and Creative Engagement (SOURCE).

In 2020, Abdelaaty received the Laura J. and L. Douglas Meredith Teaching Recognition Award for Early Career Performance from ���ϲ�����. In addition, she has received several awards for her first book, “Discrimination and Delegation: Explaining State Responses to Refugees” (Oxford University Press, 2021), including the Distinguished Book Award from the International Studies Association Ethnicity, Nationalism, & Migration Studies (ENMISA) section. and Best Book Award from the American Political Science Association Migration and Citizenship section. The book examined why countries open their borders to some refugees while blocking others, and why countries give the United Nations control of asylum procedures and refugee camps.

Story by Mikayla Melo

A memorandum of understanding (MOU) detailing the agreement signed this past May was celebrated at a ceremony during the ICMA’s annual conference held in Pittsburgh from Sept. 21-25. ICMA President Lon Pluckhahn, past President Jeff Towery and past Executive Director Bob O’Neill were in attendance, along with Maxwell School Dean David M. Van Slyke.

Dean Van Slyke receives a proclamation from ICMA’s Lynn Phillips honoring the school’s commitment to training local government public servants.

At the conference, Van Slyke was also presented with a resolution from ICMA recognizing the school’s longstanding commitment to investing in the next generation of local government public servants and strengthening democratic governance, with a special focus on supporting veterans transitioning into public service and on global engagement activities.

“It was an honor to receive this recognition and to formally announce and celebrate our expanded partnership,” said Van Slyke. “We have long found a strong partner in ICMA, and we are proud of the many Maxwell alumni who served as members and leaders of this important organization. This memorandum of understanding further strengthens that relationship and sets the school on a course for continued collaboration, in the name of good governance.”

Under the MOU, the school and ICMA will explore expanded opportunities for workshops and other training activities to support local governments throughout the world. The partnership will also support veteran and military personnel interested in local government by offering an opportunity to connect ICMA’s Veterans Local Government Management Fellowship with courses at Maxwell.

“ICMA’s core mission is to support the growth and development of public servants who are committed to local government administration,” said Ray Baray, acting CEO/executive director. “We are proud to partner with ���ϲ�����’s Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs in our shared interest to increase access and participation in the profession of local government management and administration—especially for our U.S. veteran service population, and local government professionals globally.”

Daniel Nelson, director of accelerated learning and global engagement, will serve as a point of contact between the University and ICMA. Nelson received a master of public administration (M.P.A.) from the Maxwell School in 2004 and leads the state and local initiative, frequently collaborating with ICMA for programming and mentorship opportunities for students and alumni.

Originally founded in 1914, ICMA is the world’s leading association of professional city and county managers and other employees who serve local governments. With over 13,000 members, ICMA offers professional development programs, education, data and information, technical assistance, networking opportunities and training to thousands of city, town and county chief administrative officers, their staffs and other organizations around the world. ICMA is based in Washington, D.C., and hosts an annual conference in a different city each year.

The Maxwell School has enjoyed a longtime partnership with ICMA; including the sponsorship of students to attend annual ICMA conferences, where students network with many working in the state and local government sector. Since 2012, M.P.A. students have run the Maxwell ICMA student chapter, which provides programming, information, fundraising and activities on campus and in the local community, and attends the ICMA conference every year.

Story by Michael Kelly

Elizabeth Carter

, assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering at ���ϲ�����’s College of Engineering and Computer Science, and her research team have received a water resource grant from the U.S. Geological Survey to develop a sensor network that measures flooding. This sensor network will help predict different types of flooding caused by natural disasters, particularly flooding in areas where people live, which is referred to as urban flooding. This project is known as the Urban Flood Observing Network, and you can learn more about it here.

Related to Hurricane Milton specifically, she writes: “We design flood control infrastructure, like storm sewers, reservoirs, floodwalls, and levees, to handle a storm that we think has a 1% chance of happening every year. The primary physical driver of these 1% flood events in the eastern and central United States are tropical cyclones (tropical depressions, storms, and hurricanes). More hurricanes directly translates to more frequent infrastructure failure. More intense hurricanes means more catastrophic infrastructure failure. In 1970, the most intense storm we’d see in an average year was a category 3. In 2010, it was a category 4. If these trends continue into 2050, we could expect at least one category 5 storm annually. We are not prepared.��Flood control infrastructure upgrades in the eastern United States are urgently required, and a critical public health and equity issue.”

Sarah Pralle

, associate professor of political science at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at ���ϲ�����, specializes in environmental politics and policy, climate change and energy, flood mapping, flood insurance, and more. Pralle also serves as a senior research associate for the Campbell Public Affairs Institute. She was recently quoted in The Atlantic story ““:

“Many people assume that they face little risk if they aren’t living in an area included in high-risk zones on FEMA’s flood maps, Sarah Pralle, a political-science professor at the Maxwell School at ���ϲ�����, told me. But FEMA’s maps don’t capture the full picture of flood risk. They are drawn ‘based on the assumption that the past will help us predict the future. In a rapidly changing climate, that’s not the case.’ The maps can quickly become outdated as climate risks evolve, she noted, and don’t take into account pluvial flooding, or flooding from heavy-rain events, which is what North Carolina saw last week. Even people who have personally experienced flooding sometimes drop their policies, Pralle said, adding that ‘if people have lived in a place where it hasn’t flooded in decades, they lose that memory of what can happen and what kind of losses they might suffer. Those who do buy flood insurance usually live in areas prone to flooding. The result is a system in which the risk is not evenly spread out, making flood-insurance premiums hugely pricey—Pralle likened it to a health-insurance system in which only the sick buy coverage.'”

And then: “So much of the response following disasters can feel piecemeal and reactive, Pralle said. Insurance is important—but not the full story. ‘Every dollar we put into prevention is going to be a lot more efficiently spent,’ she explained. In a world reshaped by climate change, ‘this idea that there’s safe places you can go hide is unrealistic.’”

Robert Wilson

, associate professor at ���ϲ�����’s Maxwell School, studies animals and society, climate change, geography, and more. He can speak to human-pet relationships and the need to prepare for your pets ahead of natural disasters.

Wilson writes: “As Hurricane Milton barrels ashore in Florida, we’re reminded of how owning pets can complicate evacuations during natural disasters. When asked, most pet owners say they consider their cats and dogs to be like family. This affection for pets can complicate evacuation decisions during emergencies.

Pet owners often face a difficult choice. They can evacuate to a hotel or shelter that doesn’t accept pets, potentially leaving their animals behind. Or they can remain in place, facing the worst of a hurricane to stay with their pets. This dilemma underscores the need for emergency planning that considers the needs of pets as well as people.

In areas prone to hurricanes, wildfires, or other natural disasters, pet owners should develop evacuation plans that include their animals. This could involve plans that identify hotels and shelters that accept pets, preparing an emergency kit with supplies for people and animals, and making sure pets have proper identification. Being prepared can help save the lives of people and the pets they love.”

Patrick Penfield

, professor of supply chain practice at ���ϲ����� Univeristy’s Whitman School of Management, can speak to supply chain issues related to Hurricane Helene and Hurricane Milton.

Penfield writes: “Hurricane Helene and Milton will adversely impact US supply chains. Unfortunately, we have a high concentration of critical manufacturing facilities in the South such as IV plants (North Carolina and Florida) and quartz factories (used in the electronics industry) which could be shut down for several months because of the hurricanes. In addition to southern manufacturing plant and distribution centers being closed, we will see a significant loss of vegetable and fruits which will impact availability and drive-up prices. Penfield further stated that significant infrastructure will need to also be rebuilt such as roads, bridges and ports which could further impact the ability of other companies in the South to function.”

Derek Seward

is an associate professor at ���ϲ�����’s School of Education. Dr. Seward’s scholarly interests focus primarily on the multicultural and social justice development of mental health professionals, with a particular interest in professionals of color.

Seward writes: “Repeated exposure to hurricane disasters can be devasting as the opportunity for hurricane survivors to have sustained psychological recovery time is disrupted. Hurricane survivors can experience a range of short-term psychological struggles including immense anxiety as their lives are threatened, intense feelings of helplessness as they deal with uncertainty regarding potential loss of life (i.e., family, friends, pets) and belongings, and increased stress from physical displacement. The impact on families can be particularly profound as children may lack psychological preparedness and resilience to handle acute unexpected adversities. Physical clinginess, refusal to be separated from parents or guardians, and nightmares or other sleep disruptions are behavioral responses children may display. During disasters, children struggle with experiencing that their world is not stable, secure, and safe. To protect their children, parents may withhold expressing their fears and anxieties which can be problematic as they are not attending to their own mental health needs. Parents and guardians should reassure their children they are being protected. Limiting children’s exposure to media coverage of hurricanes can help to avoid elevating their anxiety. Parents should consider seeking mental health support to deal with any symptoms of stress and anxiety they experience. Longer-term psychological struggles for hurricane survivors include increased substance use and post-traumatic stress symptoms such as having intrusive and distressing thoughts that interfere with concentration mood, irritability, avoidant behavior, and depression.”

Jennifer Genovese

is an assistant teaching professor in the School of Social Work at ���ϲ�����’s Falk College. She can speak to mental health and trauma related to natural disasters; and, specifically in this case, back-to-back hurricanes. She was recently interviewed for the ABC News story “

Phloat co-founders Nathan Thor Brekke ’26 (left) and Malak Aljerari ’27 (right) with LaunchPad program manager J Wess (middle)

���ϲ����� Libraries’ Blackstone LaunchPad (LaunchPad) hosted its annual ’Cuse Tank entrepreneurial competition on Friday, Sept. 27, during Family Weekend in Bird Library. More than 35 student entrepreneur teams from various schools and colleges across campus participated in a “Shark-Tank” style business pitch to win $20,000 in cash prizes. The panel of judges consisted of University parents and affiliated family members. The judges selected two first-place teams, which each won $10,000 and two honorable mention runners-up:

• Iconnic.Cloud, founded by Waqar Hussain, ��’25 (Martin J. Whitman School of Management), won first place for the second year in a row. Iconnic.Cloud is a fully managed cloud hosting platform, engineered with proprietary software, that crafts tailored hosting solutions.
  

  Iconnic.Cloud founder by Waqar Hussain ��’25 (left) with LaunchPad program manager J Wess

• Phloat, founded by College of Engineering and Computer Science (ECS) students who participated in the 2024 Invent@SU program, Elijah Alexander ’27, Joshua John Varkey ’26, Malak Aljerari ’27 and Nathan Thor Brekke ’26, also tied for first place. Phloat is a phone case that has a super compact, deployable flotation feature that triggers in the event of a phone falling and sinking into deep water.
• Gym-In, another startup from Invent@SU and founded by ECS students Alexander Hamza ’26, Antonio Goncalves ’27, Jack Friedman ’27 and Armani Isonguyo ’25 tied for runner-up. Their invention provides gym users with an app to determine how full a gym is and what machines are being used in live time.
• Papa Box, co-founded by Aleks Djordjevic ��’25 (Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs) and Amos Kiplimo Bungei ��’25 (College of Engineering and Computer Science) was also tied for runner-up. The company aims to provide and scale a battery-charging infrastructure through its interoperable PAPA Boxes swapping stations in transportation hot zones in Kenya.

This year’s group of “family” judges included:

• Todd Arky, executive vice president, Sharebite and co-founder/CEO of TipOff Sports
• Anthony Campagiorni ’91, vice president, Central Hudson Gas & Electric Company
• Melinda Dermody, associate dean of academic success, ���ϲ����� Libraries
• Melissa Gwilt ’15, G’22, director of budget and administration, ���ϲ����� Libraries
• Corey Lieblein ’93 , CEO of CP8 Capital
• Ajay Nagpal, president and COO Millenium
• Alice Villafana, retired
• Tonya Villafana, global franchise head, research and development, for Astra-Zeneca
• Mark Wassersug, former COO Intercontinental Exchange

The Maxwell School Centennial Celebration will be held in the Schine Student Center’s Goldstein Auditorium from 4 to 7 p.m. on Friday, Oct. 18. The event will begin with a hors d’oeuvres reception, followed by the presentation of Centennial Scholar Awards to students, Dean’s Centennial Citations of Excellence to faculty and staff, and Changemaker Awards to four alumni.

“As we gather on campus to celebrate a century of service and shared commitment to making the world a better place, it’s my privilege to recognize these stand-out individuals,” says Dean David M. Van Slyke. “Whether through their government, nonprofit or business leadership, or their scholarship, teaching and administrative support, each embodies the spirit of 100 years of Maxwell dedication to engaged citizenship.”

Students to be recognized with scholar awards are:

• Adam Baltaxe ’25, a senior majoring in international relations and Spanish language, literature and culture;
• Jorge Morales ’26, a junior majoring in history and anthropology;
• Anna Rupert ’26, a junior majoring in economics;
• Nathan Torabi ’26, a junior majoring in political science; citizenship and civic engagement; and law, society and policy;
• Mariana Zepeda ’26, a junior majoring in policy studies and environment, sustainability and policy;
• Ferdinand Eimler, who is pursuing a master’s degree in international relations as part of the Atlantis Dual Degree Master’s Program;
• Benjamin Katz, who is pursuing a Ph.D. in political science;
• Julia Liebell-McLean, who is pursuing a dual master of public administration and international relations degree; and
• Kaythari Maw, who is pursuing a Ph.D. in economics.

The following staff will receive Dean’s Citations:

• Sarah McLaughlin ’04 (Arts & Sciences), assistant director of advancement operations;
• Dan Nelson ’04, director of accelerated learning and global engagement;
• Amy Schmidt ’14, assistant director of the Citizenship and Civic Engagement Undergraduate Program; and
• Deborah Toole ’12, administrative specialist for the Geography and the Environment Department. Faculty recipients are:
• Devashish Mitra, professor and chair of the Economics Department and Gerald B. and Daphna Cramer Professor of Global Affairs;
• Jennifer Karaz Montez, University Professor and Gerald B. Cramer Faculty Scholar in Aging Studies;
• Chie Sakakibara, associate professor of geography and the environment; and
• Baobao Zhang, assistant professor of political science.

The four alumni Centennial Changemaker Awards will go to:

• John Mandyck ’89, ’92, chief executive officer of the nonprofit Urban Green Council; City of ���ϲ����� Deputy Mayor
• Sharon Owens ’85;
• H. Lewis “Lew” Rapaport ’59, founder and CEO of the firm Component Assembly Systems; and
• Kathryn Ruscitto ’92, former president and CEO of St. Josephs Health.

The Centennial Celebration caps a year of festivities and events celebrating the school’s founding by ���ϲ����� alumnus, trustee and entrepreneur George H. Maxwell. Then called the School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, it opened in Slocum Hall on Oct. 3, 1924, and offered an undergraduate citizenship course, a weekly seminar in political science and a one-year graduate program in public administration—the first of its kind in the nation.

In the 100 years since its founding, Maxwell has greatly expanded its footprint: it boasts over 38,000 alumni around the world and is home to more than 3,000 students, 200 faculty and nearly 100 staff who learn and work in 12 departments and 15 research centers and institutes. It offers a range of highly regarded undergraduate, graduate and midcareer degrees and professional programs across the social sciences and public and international affairs—including the nation’s top-ranked public affairs graduate program, according to the latest U.S. News & World Report.

Maxwell has marked its milestone with an array of festivities and initiatives. Several accomplished alumni were honored in May 2024 during a celebration at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C. Throughout the year, the school has invited alumni to reconnect and share what motivates their work on an created to celebrate the centennial and show Maxwell’s global impact. Those who participate in the map are asked to share what they “ever strive” for—a nod to the opening of the Oath of the Athenian City-State that is inscribed on the wall in the school’s first-floor foyer; it calls for individuals to “transmit this city not only not less but greater, better and more beautiful than it was transmitted to us.”

The ever strive theme resonates in another centennial endeavor—a professionally edited that tells the story of the school’s founding with archival photos and videos and narration by alumnus Ronald Taylor ’15.

In addition to the Oct. 18 Centennial Celebration, other upcoming events include:

• An Otey Scruggs Memorial Lecture Featuring historian Maeve E. Kane from 3:30 to 5 p.m. on Friday, Oct. 4, in room 220, Eggers Hall. Kane will share how Haudenosaunee women used clothing to define and protect their nations’ sovereignty.
• Birthday cake with Otto and the dean from 2 to 3 p.m. on Thursday, Oct. 10, in the Eggers Hall Commons.
• State of Democracy Lecture: Election 2024 from noon to 1:30 p.m. on Friday, Oct. 11, in room 220, Eggers Hall.
• Talk by Arthur C. Brooks: “How to Get Happier in an Unhappy World,” 5 to 6:30 p.m., Wednesday, Oct. 30, in the National Veterans Resource Center, K.G. Tan Auditorium. Brooks is a Harvard professor, New York Times bestselling author and one of the world’s leading experts on the science of human happiness.
• Phanstiel Lecture: “The People Who Built the Pyramids—How We Know,” 5 to 6:30 p.m., Friday, Nov. 1, National Veterans Resource Center, K.G. Tan Auditorium. Mark Lehner, director and president of Ancient Egypt Research, will lead the discussion.

For more information, visit the .

The University has launched a new initiative, “,” to enhance civic engagement and civil dialogue during the 2024-25 academic year. The initiative, led by Gretchen Ritter, vice president for civic engagement and education; Margaret Talev, Kramer Director of the ; and Tina Nabatchi, director of the Maxwell School’s , will focus on developing essential skills such as active listening, communication across differences, critical thinking and advancing mutual understanding.

The inaugural event, “,” will take place on Tuesday, Oct. 22, from 6 to 8:30 p.m. in Goldstein Auditorium in the Schine Student Center. University community members, representing diverse backgrounds and perspectives, will engage in facilitated dialogue on important issues related to democracy, civic engagement, economic opportunity and the political climate. The event will feature a moderated discussion among experts, followed by small group conversations led by trained facilitators. This approach will help inform students about important election issues, encourage civic engagement and build confidence in civil dialogue.

If you are a student interested in attending and participating in the event, please . The doors will open at 5:45 p.m., and a light dinner will be provided.

To support these small dialogue groups, the����is also seeking facilitators. Faculty, staff and graduate students are invited to serve as facilitators for these small-group discussions, ensuring that all voices are heard and that conversations are respectful and productive. Those who have not facilitated group conversations before will be asked to participate in a three-hour training and all volunteer facilitators will be asked to participate in preparation meeting. Complete this to become a facilitator.

For more information, visit the .

Murrett

If you need an expert to discuss U.S. military presence in the Middle East, you may want to consider retired Vice Admiral . Murrett is currently a professor of practice at ���ϲ�����’s Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs and deputy director of ���ϲ�����’s Institute for Security Policy and Law. He’s recently been interviewed by , , , and others on the news.

McFate

Additionally, , adjunct professor at ���ϲ�����’s Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs in D.C., is also available for interviews. McFate is an expert in international relations, military warfare, national security, and more. He was recently interviewed by () on the subject.

Below, five students share their experiences; what they did and what they learned.

Fulbright Canada-Mitacs Globalink Research Internship

Five ���ϲ����� students were selected as Fulbright Canada-Mitacs Globalink Research Internship recipients this year. They were Sofia DaCruz ’25, a women’s and gender studies and citizenship and civic engagement major in the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs and the College of Arts and Sciences; (McGill University); Abi Greenfield ’25, a history and political philosophy major in the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs and College of Arts and Sciences (University of Victoria); Chloe Britton Naime ’25, a mechanical engineering and neuroscience major in the College of Engineering and Computer Science (University of British Columbia); Kerrin O’Grady ’25, a biomedical engineering and neuroscience major in the College of Engineering and Computer Science (University of Victoria); and Kanya Shah ’25, an aerospace engineering major in the College of Engineering and Computer Science (University of Quebec at Chicoutimi).

Abi Greenfield

Greenfield worked with Penny Bryden, professor of history at the University of Victoria. Greenfield was first research assistant on Bryden’s Canadian constitutional culture project; she created a dataset of political cartoons about the Canadian Constitution from five periods in Canadian history.

Abi Greenfield

She mined the databases of past editions of four major Canadian newspapers and developed a dataset of approximately 500 cartoons. “I then analyzed the cartoons from the 1980-82 period to understand what major themes appeared in relation to the Constitution reform debates during this period and what these themes and metaphors demonstrated about public thought around these topics,” Greenfield says. She produced a report for Bryden analyzing four major themes she identified, along with any regional or temporal variations. Greenfield’s research will form part of a forthcoming collaborative article on editorial cartoons and Canadian constitutional culture.

Greenfield says this work strengthened her skills in research design, dataset creation and analysis, and analysis of images as historical documents, as well as deepened her knowledge of Canadian political and legal history.

“This experience has been invaluable in informing the topic and goals of my undergraduate thesis for the Honors program and the Distinction program in History, as well as how I have gone about designing my project,” Greenfield says. “The chance to connect with established scholars in my field helped me to understand the breadth of research areas available to me and led me to change my thesis topic from what I had originally planned.��My improved knowledge of Canadian legal history will also help inform my work as a research assistant on the Global Free Speech Repository Project in the Campbell Institute in the Maxwell School, where I work with Canadian free expression decisions, among others.”

After graduation, Greenfield hopes to return to the University of Victoria to pursue a master’s degree in history under Bryden’s direction.

Kanya Shah

Kanya Shah

Shah interned at the University of Quebec at Chicoutimi (UQAC)’s Anti-Icing Materials Laboratory (LIMA-AMIL), where she worked on the “Evaluating Passive Protection Systems for Solar Panels Against Snow and Ice Accumulations” project. Under the supervision of Research Professor Derek Harvey and with LIMA-AMIL faculty support, she conducted extensive literature review to aid the team in designing a test bench to evaluate the effectiveness of superhydrophobic and icephobic coatings against snow and ice accretion on a solar panel placed in a cold climate chamber.

The freezing rain and snowstorm tests performed honed her laboratory techniques for testing and developing coating application methods to address snow and ice adhesion on solar panels in cold climates.

“This program provided invaluable international research exposure, solidifying my commitment to advancing sustainable solutions in mechanical and aerospace engineering,” Shah says. “As I look ahead, I’m excited to pursue this passion further, either through a master’s program or an industry-related career.”

Science Undergraduate Laboratory Internship (SULI)

Corinne Motl ’25, a physics major in the College of Arts and Sciences, engaged in an internship at Argonne National Laboratory this summer through a Science Undergraduate Laboratory Internship (SULI) awarded by the U.S. Department of Energy.

Corrine Motl

Quantum networks are of significant interest within the commercial and scientific communities as they hold potential for complete information security, as well as connecting dispersed quantum technologies. Quantum memories are a key part of realizing these networks.

Motl worked on simulations to test parameters when designing a nanophotonic cavity to optimize the quality factor of the cavity. “What this means on a larger scale is that we aim to develop quantum memories that are able to get an input, preserve that single then reemit it. This is a critical part in creating technologies such as quantum repeater,” she says.

“This research involved my simulation work, as well as creating a data analysis software for X-ray detraction (XRD) data. I also worked on creating optical set up as well as alignment and matinee of a separate optical set up,” she says.

Motl says her work at Argonne gave her new skills and helped her develop her problem-solving abilities. “The more problems you solve the better you get at solving new ones. I learned to try to find the simplest solution,” she says.

Motl is currently helping to organize a branch of the 2025 conference, which will be held at ���ϲ����� in January.

Public Policy and International Affairs Junior Summer Institute (PPIA)

Four students were selected as PPIA JSI Fellows this year. They were Linda Baguma ’25, an international relations and political science major in the Maxwell School and College of Arts and Sciences (Carnegie Mellon); Victoria Knight ’25, a policy studies and economics major (pre-law track) in the Maxwell School (UC-Berkeley); Caroline Ridge ’25 a political science and policy studies major in the Maxwell School (Carnegie Mellon) and Evelina Torres ’25, a political science and citizenship and civic engagement major in the Maxwell School (Carnegie Mellon).

Linda Baguma

As part of her PPIA experience, Baguma completed rigorous coursework on quantitative methods, economic analysis and policy research, all aimed at addressing real-world public policy challenges. The program also emphasized diversity in public service and leadership development.

Linda Baguma

Baguma worked on a project analyzing the impact of social policies on low-income communities, using data to evaluate the effectiveness of various poverty reduction programs. “This experience directly complements my studies at ���ϲ�����, especially my concentration in international security and diplomacy within the international relations major,” she says. “I plan to apply the quantitative analysis skills I gained to my coursework, particularly in areas related to policy design and evaluation, and to further explore how international policies impact African development, which is my regional focus.”

She says her experience was made even more meaningful by the opportunity to move beyond the classroom and apply what she learned to real-world challenges. Baguma contributed to an additional project focused on abandoned mine lands (AMLs) in the Pittsburgh area. “Our goal was to analyze the impact of AMLs on surrounding communities, using a variety of data sources to uncover the relationships and effects these sites have on public health, environmental justice and economic outcomes. I even learned how to run regressions to better understand the correlations between AMLs and the well-being of nearby communities,” she says.

Baguma says the PPIA experience gave her a broader understanding of public service. “I’m eager to incorporate this perspective into my academic and professional trajectory, and I look forward to continuing this work as I prepare for a career in public policy, particularly in U.S.-Africa relations,” she says.

Victoria Knight

The UC-Berkeley PPIA program offered a law track that gave Knight valuable insights into succeeding at top law schools. She took four courses: Law and Public Policy, Economics for Public Policy, Policy Analysis and Quantitative Methods for Public Policy.

Victoria Knight

Beyond the classroom, the program provided numerous opportunities to connect with notable alumni and guest speakers, including Dean David Wilson, Robert Reich (former U.S. secretary of labor) and Janet Napolitano (former secretary of Homeland Security and president of the University of California).

“These experiences not only prepared me for law school and a master’s in public policy, but also for my final year at ���ϲ�����. I’m working on my honors thesis, which examines the economic impact of varying abortion laws. The skills I gained through PPIA are invaluable in helping me write a more substantial thesis and better analyze questions at the intersection of law, policy and economics.”

At ���ϲ�����, Knight serves as a task force coordinator for the Skills Win! Coaching Program in the ���ϲ����� City School District, teaching students critical skills like budgeting, typing and public speaking. “Thanks to PPIA, I now have the skills to understand better the impact of New York State education laws, enabling me to analyze the data we collect and recommend meaningful program improvements.”

“The PPIA experience was incredibly eye-opening and rewarding. I’m grateful for the connections I made with the guest speakers and other participants and for everything I learned during the program,” Knight says. “I highly encourage anyone who gets the chance to apply—it was easily one of the most memorable and impactful parts of my college experience.”

Selina Gallo-Cruz

Selina Gallo-Cruz, associate professor of sociology, is the latest Maxwell School faculty member to be named an O’Hanley Faculty Scholar. She was selected in recognition of her outstanding teaching and scholarship.

Gallo-Cruz will hold the title for three years and will receive financial support for her research and teaching.

The designation is made possible through the O’Hanley Endowed Fund, which was established by Maxwell Advisory Board Chairman and University Trustee Ronald O’Hanley III, chairman and chief executive officer of State Street Global Advisors and a 1980 graduate of the Maxwell School with a B.A. in political science.

Gallo-Cruz is a senior research associate in the Program for the Advancement of Research on Conflict and Collaboration, where she co-directs the advocacy and activism research team. She is also a research affiliate for the Program on Latin America and the Caribbean.

Gallo-Cruz’s scholarly work has focused on gender, violence, non-violence and social movements in a comparative context. She recently edited “Feminism, Violence and Nonviolence” (Edinburgh University Press, 2024) and authored “Political Invisibility and Mobilization: Women Against State Violence in Argentina, Yugoslavia, and Liberia” (Routledge, 2021), which won the American Sociological Association’s Peace, War and Social Conflict section’s Outstanding Book Award. In 2021, she was honored as a Democracy Visiting Fellow with the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation at the Harvard Kennedy School and was awarded the Fulbright-Tampere University Scholar Award. Her current research focuses on comparative policy and legislative conflicts over climate change and human trafficking.

Carol Faulkner, senior associate dean for academic affairs, says Gallo-Cruz enhances the Maxwell School’s emphasis on research with a public impact. Faulkner praises Gallo-Cruz as an “outstanding and internationally recognized scholar of social movements and policy change, who engages students around challenging issues facing the U.S. and the world.”

Prior to joining Maxwell, Gallo-Cruz taught at the College of the Holy Cross and Emory University.

Story by Mikayla Melo

The event was organized by the (CACI) in the Maxwell-based . The event was among several held by the Maxwell School leading up to its 100th anniversary in October 2024.

“We were delighted to host a truly global group of scholars and experts for the CESS fall conference as we continue to celebrate the Maxwell School’s centennial,” says , professor of geography and the environment and director of CACI. “The conversations at this conference, and the ongoing research of the attendees, are vital to understanding this complex and rapidly changing part of the world.”

A conference participant speaks with Maxwell alumna Bhavna Davé ’96 Ph.D.

The theme of the conference, “Citizenship Unbound: Central Eurasia in a Changing World,” focused discussions on the past and present challenges of citizenship in Central Eurasia. Sessions covered an array of subjects from regional economics and green investment to cultural identity and women’s rights. Presenters and panelists represented a spectrum of relevant disciplines, with many scholars making the trip to Maxwell from Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and Azerbaijan, among many other locations. Additional cultural events enriched the conference experience for attendees, including an exhibition of cultural artifacts from the region and a movie night featuring an Uzbek contemporary film.

Alumna Bhavna Davé ’96 Ph.D., a senior lecturer at the University of London, delivered the conference’s keynote address, “Eurasia Unbound? Reflections on Empire, Geopolitics and Citizenship.” Koch facilitated a discussion following the remarks.

CESS is a North America-based organization of scholars interested in the study of Central Eurasia, including its history, languages, cultures, people and modern states. As an organization promoting an interdisciplinary approach to studying and understanding the region, Maxwell was well-suited to host the conference.

The gathering was co-sponsored by the Middle Eastern Studies Program, the Departments of Political Science and Geography and the Environment, as well as ���ϲ����� Libraries and Hendricks Chapel.

Chancellor Syverud speaks at the opening of the University’s new center in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 24. (Photo by Shannon Finney)

The opening of a new ���ϲ����� center in Washington, D.C., was celebrated by members of the University community at a special event Sept. 24.

“This city is a place our students want to be. It’s a place they want to live. And it’s a place they want to build their futures and careers after they graduate,” said Chancellor Kent Syverud. “Our students studying away here benefit from ���ϲ�����’s academic strength and deep connections in policy, government, media and law.”

The center, located at 1333 New Hampshire Ave. in the Dupont Circle area of Washington, will serve students, faculty, staff and alumni. Building on an already thriving presence in the nation’s capital, the center will enhance the University’s global influence and impact.

Mike Tirico ’88, host and play-by-play commentator with NBC Sports, hosted the event. Speakers included Chancellor Syverud, Interim Vice Chancellor, Provost and Chief Academic Officer Lois Agnew, and Vice Chancellor for Strategic Initiatives and Innovation J. Michael Haynie.

The centerpiece of the event was a panel discussion examining the changing landscape of collegiate sports and public policy. Margaret Talev, Kramer Director of the ���ϲ����� Institute for Democracy, Journalism and Citizenship, moderated the discussion. Panelists were James Phillips, commissioner of the Atlantic Coast Conference, Felisha Legette-Jack ’89, ���ϲ����� women’s basketball coach, and Tirico.

From left: Mike Tirico, Felisha Legette-Jack, James Phillips and Margaret Talev participate in a panel discussion on the changing landscape of collegiate sports and public policy on Sept. 24. (Photo by Shannon Finney)

Expanded Opportunities

The Washington, D.C., center houses the and serves as a home base for study away programs offered by the , and , through which hundreds of students live, learn and work in the city every year. Washington is home to more than 15,000 alumni, many of whom connect with students as teachers, mentors and internship supervisors.

The center will support the continued growth of study away programming across the University’s schools and colleges, as envisioned in the academic strategic plan, “.”

“We now begin a new chapter in that already successful story,” Provost Agnew said. “This space is more than just a building. It is ���ϲ�����’s academic home in one of the most important cities in the world. It will serve as a hub for students, faculty and staff, positioning them as change makers and thought leaders on some of the most important issues of our time.”

Students joined alumnus broadcaster Mike Tirico (sixth from left, front) and Newhouse School Director of Washington Programs Beverly Kirk (fourth from right) to celebrate the opening of 1333 New Hampshire Ave., the University’s new dedicated space in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Shannon Finney)

The center will also enhance the work of the (IVMF), which has a satellite office in the building. Haynie noted that IVMF has contributed more than 1,750 research publications, engagements and products for public benefit, with much of that work focused on the federal level.

“I am confident that with a permanent presence in Washington, the institute’s impact will grow considerably and accrue to the benefit of those who have worn the nation’s cloth and their families,” he said.

The center includes classrooms, student lounges, conference and interview rooms and a multipurpose space, as well as satellite offices for the and the Division of Advancement and External Affairs. It features the Greenberg Welcome Center, named for alumnus and Life Trustee Paul Greenberg ’65, whose philanthropy supported the 1990 opening of Greenberg House, the University’s first outpost in Washington.

The OVMA created this award to remove barriers that often prevent student veterans from accessing internships, one of the most effective pathways to post-graduation employment. The award, which is needs-based, covers the cost of one internship credit hour, travel and living expenses, or both, with a maximum award of $5,000 per student. It’s part of the ongoing efforts by ���ϲ����� to support student veterans and ensure their success in the job market.

“Student veterans often face the difficult choice between pursuing full-time summer studies or finding seasonal work to meet their financial needs,” says Jennifer Pluta, director of Veterans Career Services with the OVMA. “It’s challenging to focus on securing internships when financial concerns are pressing. Since its launch, the Internship Award has successfully helped 24 of our student veterans gain valuable job experience, giving them a significant advantage in the job market.”

According to the University’s , more than 650,000 veterans nationwide are currently pursuing higher education, often with one primary goal in mind: finding employment afterward. While veterans highlight finding employment after their military transition as a top priority, connecting with employers can sometimes be challenging. Initiatives like the OVMA’s Internship Award are crucial in bridging this gap, providing student veterans with opportunities to gain practical experience and build networks that will support their career goals.

At ���ϲ�����, students across all schools, colleges and degree levels have access to resources that help them find and secure internships in their chosen fields. However, student veterans, who often juggle complex schedules, family commitments and financial responsibilities, can find it particularly challenging to participate in internships. The OVMA’s Internship Award helps alleviate these challenges by providing financial support, enabling student veterans to focus on gaining valuable professional experience without the added burden of financial strain.

“Since its start, the internship award program has grown tremendously, providing invaluable opportunities for our student veterans to gain real-world experience and advance their careers,” says Ron Novack, OVMA’s executive director. “We are committed to expanding this program even further, reaching more student veterans and building strong partnerships with organizations that recognize and value the exceptional skills and dedication that veterans bring to the workforce.”

This year, military-connected students secured internships across a diverse range of industries, with many gaining experience in government agencies and tech companies. From working on policy initiatives and supporting service members through government roles to contributing to innovative projects in the tech sector, these students gained invaluable experience that will serve them well in their future careers.

Read more about three of the recipients and their unique experiences below.

Laurie N. Coffey ��’25, U.S. Navy Veteran

Laurie Coffey

Laurie N. Coffey, a U.S. Navy veteran with over 20 years of service, is now a second-year law student in the . This summer, she interned with the Onondaga County District Attorney’s Office, where she gained valuable experience in public service law. Unlike the previous summer, when financial demands led her to take a highly paid corporate internship, this year was different.

“Receiving the scholarship allowed me to take a position that was unpaid and in public service,” Coffey says. “Having a family, mortgage, and going to school has financial demands that pushed me into a highly paid corporate internship last summer. The scholarship allowed me to pursue something more aligned with my passions and hopes to work in the advocacy arena.”

Curtis Cline ’25, U.S. Army Veteran

Curtis Cline

Curtis Cline, a senior majoring in aerospace engineering at the , is a U.S. Army veteran who completed three combat tours. During his service, he held such roles as crew chief, overhaul maintenance technician and downed aircraft recovery program manager. This summer, he interned at the Griffiss Institute, where he immersed himself in collaborative aerospace research.

“A lesson I gained during my internship is the importance of interdisciplinary collaboration. Working alongside experts in various fields, I learned how to effectively communicate complex ideas, integrate diverse perspectives and contribute to a collaborative research environment,” Cline says. “This experience has equipped me with enhanced problem-solving skills and a deeper understanding of how different disciplines converge in aerospace research.”

Marriler Wilson ��’25, U.S. Air Force Veteran

Marriler Wilson

Marriler Wilson is a graduate student in the , pursuing a master’s in public administration and international relations.�� Willson served in the Air Force National Guard, focusing on security forces and base defense, while also serving as a traffic enforcer with the New York Police Department. This summer, Wilson interned at the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) in the Office of Congressional Public Affairs.

“One particularly memorable experience occurred on the second day of my internship when I had the unique opportunity to visit Capitol Hill. I observed a general counsel from my congressional and public affairs unit articulate the significance of MCC’s work,” says Wilson. “The counsel eloquently explained how MCC’s mission aligns with the interests of both political parties and how the corporation’s initiatives serve as a vital conduit for international cooperation and development.”

The OVMA Internship Award application period is open from September to May 31. For more details and to apply, visit . For more details about the award, reach out to Jennifer Pluta at jrpluta@syr.edu.

Story by Lissette Caceres

Britt Tevis

To help scholars delve deeper into a greater understanding of antisemitism, from its history to its implications for the U.S. today, the (A&S) and announced the appointment of as an assistant professor in the in the Maxwell School and as the Phyllis Backer Professor of Jewish Studies in the in A&S. The Backer professorship was established in A&S in 2020 through a $1.5 million gift from the Phyllis Backer Foundation, which supports education and medical research organizations with an emphasis on Jewish-related causes.

Bringing vast knowledge as a modern Jewish historian with a focus on American Jewish history and antisemitism in the U.S.,��Tevis has had various academic appointments in her career, most recently as the Rene Plessner Postdoctoral Fellow in Antisemitism and Holocaust Studies at the Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies at Columbia University. She has a Ph.D. and a master’s degree in history from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a law degree from the University of Wisconsin School of Law, as well as a bachelor’s degree in Jewish studies and political science from the University of Florida.

“Our program is absolutely delighted to have Dr. Tevis’s appointment as the Backer Chair of Jewish Studies,” says , who served as director of the Jewish studies program when she was hired. “She brings invaluable expertise in the history of law and civil rights as reflected in the American Jewish experience, and she will contribute new and rich dimensions to the program.”

Tevis is eager to introduce modern Jewish history to students through coursework that will include such topics as the history of antisemitism in the U.S., Jews and American popular culture, Jews’ efforts to secure legal rights, the challenges of integrating into non-Jewish citizenries, changes to religious practices and traditions, and the array of Jewish American culture.

According to Tevis, studying American Jewish history and antisemitism as part of larger U.S. history sheds light on critical aspects, as the gap between the American ideal of equality, per the Declaration of Independence, and the country’s persistent denial of political and civil rights for certain segments of the population remain a fundamental tension in U.S. history. The interaction between degrees of discrimination and prosperity continues to describe the American Jewish experience from when Jews first arrived in North America in the 17th century through the present.

“Many people struggle to define the boundaries of antisemitism,” Tevis says. “Like most topics, understanding antisemitism requires studying the past so as to be able to understand its origin, particular characteristics and varied dimensions.”

Tevis intends to add to the intellectual vibrancy of the history department and the Jewish studies program through her teaching, research and publications. She is awaiting her forthcoming anthology, “Sanctioned Bigotry: A Documented History of Antisemitism in the United States,” in 2025. And, she is currently completing a book about Jewish emancipation lawyers who worked to secure rights for American Jews in areas like immigration, labor and civil rights but were overlooked by historians who painted them as political radicals. Tevis also has a long list of research interests examining Jews and U.S. law as she begins this next chapter of her career.

“To my mind it is impossible to overstate the importance of historical knowledge. History teaches us why our world functions as it does, illuminating how people made given choices and shaped later developments,” she says. “I am overjoyed to join the incredible faculty here as the Backer Professor of Jewish Studies and embrace the opportunity to uncover underdeveloped and undertheorized dimensions of American Jewish history.”

Nomar Diaz ��’25 combined a months-long internship as a systems analyst for ML Systems Integrator Pte Ltd. in Singapore with ���ϲ����� Abroad’s 18-day program. In addition to his time in Singapore, he visited tech innovation firms in seven countries and business and cultural centers in 10 cities.

Diaz, who is pursuing concurrent master’s degree programs in information systems and applied data science at the , is open to a career in another country. He’d like to do sales engineering or be a solutions engineer at a computing solutions or information consulting firm in the United Kingdom, Singapore or Spain. As a former global ambassador for ���ϲ����� Abroad, Diaz tells students not to second-guess their interest in studying abroad. “If you feel the hunch, just go for it,” he says. “You won’t regret it.”

While studying abroad, Nomar Diaz (front left, in the black shirt) and a group of fellow graduate students visited a landmark on the waterfront at Palau Uben, a small island in Singapore. (Photo courtesy of Nomar Diaz)

Bennie Guzman ��’25 is a master’s student studying art therapy in the , and he works full-time at La Casita Cultural Center. His goal is to be a licensed creative arts therapist. “My dream would be to connect what I’m doing here with international places that do similar work and expand our outreach beyond ���ϲ�����,” Guzman says.

Guzman says the short-term Mexico’s History, Culture and Security program was exactly the right program for him. “Mexico is the place for Latin American art and indigenous studies. I wanted to see how international communities think about art, culture and community health and tie those things together,” says Guzman, whose experience helped him formulate his thesis on how Latino/Latin American communities use art and culture for community well-being.

M.B.A. student Jude Azai ��’25 used a summer abroad program to fine-tune his leadership capabilities in the pharmaceutical and healthcare industries. That interest developed during his bachelor’s degree program in pharmacy at the University of Jos in Nigeria and has continued throughout his work in business and healthcare.

The Business in East Asia program, which is offered by the Whitman School of Management, helped Azai with valuable insights into healthcare and broader leadership structure in countries such as Singapore. He wanted to understand how such nations become global powerhouses and learn how innovation and effective governance can drive economic growth. He also discovered that leadership is not overly complex. “Leadership is about creating the right vision, following through with openness and honesty and bringing people along. When leaders do this, miracles in nation-building can happen,” Azai says.

Whitman School of Management Students, including Jude Azai (far left), pose at the waterfall garden at Changi Airport in Singapore. (Photo courtesy of Jude Azai)

Krister Samuelson ��’25 is pursuing a master’s degree in information systems in the iSchool and sees a future as an analyst or security engineer in information security. His EuroTech experience provided quality time with like-minded people, he says. He attended the short-term program along with recent iSchool graduate Emmy Naw G’24. She says the program allowed her to engage with professionals in the field while seeing firsthand how business operations integrate technology. “I learned in real-world settings, broadened my understanding of global business strategies and enhanced my ability to think critically about how to apply technological solutions to complex business challenges,” Naw says.

This group of students, which includes graduate students Krister Samuelson and Emmy Naw, began the three-credit EuroTech course in Norway. They visited a number of tech companies located in 10 cities across seven countries in the two-and-a-half-week tour. (Photo at the Royal Palace in Oslo courtesy of Krister Samuelson)

public administration graduate student Troy Patrick ��’25 interned with the Council of Europe in Strasbourg and participated in the Religion, Law and Human Rights in a Comparative Perspective program. He has studied peacebuilding and human rights and wants to work in the humanitarian field, perhaps one day at the United Nations secretariat, he says.

Patrick used the summer term to maximize his work experience. For his Council of Europe internship in the Department of Political Affairs and External Relations, he was assigned high-level tasks such as running meetings with international leaders and creating talking points for leader visits. The work provided real-world training and helped him better understand how religion, religiously affiliated states and religious groups impact how advocacy actions are formulated to deal with human rights and legal issues.

Learn More

Students can learn more about the University’s wide range of study abroad programs during ���ϲ����� Abroad Week, which started Monday and runs through Sept. 20. They can also visit the ���ϲ����� Abroad website at suabroad.syr.edu.