Featured Faculty News from our 2015 department newsletter, Homo Politicus. Access the newsletter archive here.

Professor Susan Buck-Morss (Political Theory) was part of a panel discussion with Kandice Chuh, Eric Lott, and Lisa Lowe to discuss Lowe’s book The Intimacies of Four Continents, at the Graduate Center, Oct. 15, 2015. 

Professor Peter Beinart (Writing Politics) led “Conversations in the Commons with Peter Beinart: Understanding Election 2016” on Oct 20, 2015 featuring Joy-Ann Reid, national correspondent for MSNBC, and Reihan Salam, executive editor of the National Review.

Professor Michael Fortner‘s (Public Policy) book Black Silent Majority: The Rockefeller Drug Laws and the Politics of Punishment was released by Harvard University Press on September 28, 2015 [http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674743991]. It was selected as an “Editors’ Choice” by the New York Times Book Review. The book has been covered by the Atlantic, the New York Times, the New Yorker, New York Magazine, the Daily Beast, Time, and WNYC. In the spring, Fortner will be teaching a new course, “Race, Class, and the Politics of Crime,” which will explore how racial and economic inequalities have shaped crime policy development in the United States.

During the past academic year, Distinguished Professor Frances Fox Piven (American Politics) has written a series of articles with Lorraine Minnite, an alum of the program, on recent developments in the welfare state, both internationally and in the United States. She is now embarking on a book that will focus on the interplay of space, collective action and electoral politics in the development of black politics in the U.S. She was awarded the Bronislaw Malinowski prize by the Society for the Study of Applied Anthropology, the Puffin Award for Creative Citizenship by the Nation Institute, and an honorary doctorate from Rutgers University.

Professor Emerita Joyce Gelb wrote the chapter “Gender Equality Policy in Japan” in the Sage Handbook of Modern Japanese Studies, London, 2015 [https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/the-sage-handbook-of-modern-japanese-studies/book233757]. On September 10th, 2015, she was quoted in a New York Times article on Women in Taiwanese politics. Also, on September 22nd, she was quoted in a Chicago Tribune article on Pope Francis’ impact on diversity in leadership.

Professor John Goering (Public Policy) will be presenting his latest research on “Austerity Politics and Housing Policy Outcomes” at the November 27th meetings of the European Network on Social Housing in Dublin.  His co-author is Prof. Christine Whitehead of the London School of Economics.  This research will lead to a book on these topics comparing the United States and the United Kingdom.

Professor Stephanie Golob (International Relations/Comparative Politics) has been appointed the Associate Director of the Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies here at the Graduate Center, as of fall 2015.  In July, she presented a paper on mass grave exhumation within international, regional and domestic legal contexts at an international conference in Madrid entitled “Bodies, Science, Memory and Politics in Contemporary Exhumations:” http://www.politicasdelamemoria.org/2015/09/videos-del-congreso-cuerpo-ciencia-memoria-y-politica-en-las-exhumaciones-contemporaneas

Professor Janet Gornick (Public Policy) co-authored a book chapter, titled “Gender and Poverty” which will be published this fall in The Oxford Handbook of Poverty and Society. On Oct. 1, 2015, she moderated a conversation with Paul Krugman about inequality in NYC, at a conference sponsored by the CUNY Institute for State and Local Governance, the Center for Urban Research, and the Luxembourg Income Study Center (LIS). On Oct. 13, she and her colleagues from the LIS Center – Paul Krugman and Branko Milanovic – were interviewed about LIS’ work and related issues on the Bloomberg Radio show “Taking Stock with Michael McKee and Kathleen Hays.”

Distinguished Professor Carol Gould (Political Theory) is currently a Member of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, NJ, in the School of Social Science, where she is participating in the theme seminar on “Borders and Boundaries.” Her book Interactive Democracy: The Social Roots of Global Justice (Cambridge University Press, 2014) was awarded the 2015 Joseph B. Gittler Prize from the American Philosophical Association, which recognizes “an outstanding scholarly contribution in the field of the philosophy and of one or more of the social sciences.”

Professor David Jones (American Politics) recently published the article “Partisan Polarization and the Effect of Congressional Performance Evaluations on Party Brands and American Elections” in the latest issue of the journal Political Research Quarterly.

Professor Peter Liberman (International Relations) joined a group of four dozen security studies scholars who published a defense of the Iran nuclear deal in the New York Times on Sept. 8, 2015. The group included all the living signatories of a similar ad, published in September 2002, opposing war with Iraq. The 2002 and 2015 statements can be found at http://irscholars.weebly.com[irscholars.weebly.com] and IRScholars2015.weebly.com[irscholars2015.weebly.com]. Right after the publication of the Iran ad, enough senators announced their support the deal to block a vote on a resolution against it.

Distinguished Professor Uday Singh Mehta (Political Theory) presented the lecture Putting Courage at the Center: Reflections on Gandhi at the Sixth Annual Carol Breckenridge Memorial Lecture in South Asian History at the New School for Social Research on Oct. 21, 2015. 

Distinguished Professor John Mollenkopf was quoted in the Gotham Gazette on voter participation and campaign finance reform on Jul 23, 2015.  

Professor Jillian Schwedler (Comparative Politics) just received a Travel-Research-Engagement (TRE) Grant from the Project on Middle East Political Science (POMEPS) to travel to Jordan this winter to complete the research for her current book project on political protests and neoliberalism in Jordan. Recently, she published a short online piece on drones in Yemen: https://www.lawfareblog.com/us-drone-program-yemen-working.

Professor Mark Ungar (Comparative Politics) received a grant from the Gerta Henkel Foundation of Germany to write a report on organized crime in Central America; and a grant from the government of Canada for the Human Rights in Iran Unit of CUNY, which he is the Principal Investigator.

In mid-October in New York, Professor Thomas Weiss (International Relations) presented to the Utstein Donor Group the findings of the report from the FUNDS Project (Future UN Development System) called Peacebuilding Challenges for the UN Development System. Later in the month at SOAS, University of London, he will be part of a public debate chaired by Sir Jeremy Greenstock (former UK ambassador to the UN) with participation by Lady Valerie Amos (former UN Emergency Relief Coordinator) and Winnie Byanyima (executive director of Oxfam) on “The Global South, 1945 and 2015.” In mid-November, he will lecture at the Royal Academy on the “United Nations—Before, During, and After 1945” (which will appear in the next issue of International Affairs) and at the Geneva Peacebuilding Platform “Building Peace 2030: Facing a New Strategic Landscape of Conflict.” His co-edited book with Dan Plesch We Are Strong: wartime Origins and the Future United Nations was published by Routledge last April.

Professor Susan Woodward (International Relations/Comparative Politics) was in Belgrade, Serbia, in late September and early October. She made a keynote address to Partnership for Peace Consortium, Study Group on Regional Security in Southeast Europe, on the theme “Countering Violent Extremism.” She also made an inaugural address for the new Regional Masters’ Program in Peace Studies, Faculty of Political Science, University of Belgrade.

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