Maxwell School News and Commentary

University Professor James Steinberg says that Secretary of State Rex Tillersor "needs to be able to convey to the world that the administration is going to pursue an orderly process in which there is a deliberate thoughtful development of policy that takes various points of view into account." 

"Muscular tweets and orations will not intimidate an Iranian leadership that has dealt with five other American Presidents over the last 38 years," says Mehrzad Boroujerdi, professor of political science.

According to Professor of Political Science Grant Reeher, President Donald Trump "is doubling down, and I think the reaction on the part of those who are not favorably oriented toward him is going to harden.”

Judge Neil Gorsuch will be vetted and reviewed by the Senate, and needs the votes of at least 60 senators to be confirmed. "That requirement is not in the Constitution, but it's one that Congress itself, the Senate has chosen to impose. It's been that way for a long, long time,"  says William C. Banks, professor of public administration and international affairs.

Mehrzad Boroujerdi, professor of political science, has been working to get an Iranian scholar to teach Iranian politics at Maxwell for the last ten months and now the whole process has been called into question because of the ban.

Jack Manno G’03, professor of environmental studies at SUNY ESF and a faculty affiliate in Syracuse's Native American Studies program contends that, as a new political regime gets underway in the United States, the need for an effective governance system—one in step with climate change and the environment—is imperative.

Peter Castro, associate professor of anthropology, received the Unsung Hero Award at Sunday's Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration at the Carrier Dome. His nominator writes, "Receiving an MLK Unsung Hero Award acknowledges his long-time service to African development as an applied anthropologist, particularly with regard to the management of and access to natural resources, and efforts to alleviate hunger and poverty.”

"Since the 1940s we've been not only recruiting nurses from other countries but actually in some cases getting people into training abroad and then bringing them to America," says Elizabeth Cohen, associate professor of political science. "This H-1B shift could really reduce the population of highly skilled doctors and nurses."