Maxwell School News and Commentary

Omnia Shedid ’24 J.D./M.P.A. was born in a small, rural village in Egypt. As a child running through her grandparents’ corn fields, she never imagined she would one day walk the halls of the U.S. Capitol, the U.S. Department of State and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit while supporting work that would impact the lives of many Americans.

"It's a pipe dream, in a way. What they're doing is partly performative, for ideological purposes," says Ryan Griffiths, professor of political science. "A lot of time, secessionist movements are really just bargaining efforts."

“State COVID-19 Policies and Drug Overdose Mortality Among Working-Age Adults in the United States, 2020,” co-authored by Maxwell faculty members Douglas Wolf, Shannon Monnat, Emily Weimers and Jennifer Karas Montez, was published in the American Journal of Public Health.

“We are really dealing with two interrelated issues here. The first being the crisis of affordability, but the other one being the crisis of habitability. So changing the zoning isn't going to address some of the most pressing issues that tenants face in our community and so I think we really need to have a multipronged approach to address the housing crisis,” says Gretchen Purser, associate professor of sociology.

“Taking advantage of the delay in aid and the fact that the Ukrainians could not respond adequately, the Russians intensified their shelling of our power plants, and today Ukraine is forced to resort to blackouts to preserve electricity,” says Tetiana Hranchak, visiting assistant teaching professor in the Moynihan Institute of Global Affairs.

“Human-animal relations is a new lens to help us examine important historical moments and trends. The same theoretical lens that I use to examine a premodern society can be applied to modern history of this region [Korea and Northeast Asia],” says George Kallander, professor of history.

“There are 1.4 million Palestinians now who have been displaced for the second or third time in seven months. ...They're living in camps, disease is rampant, we have famine spreading throughout Gaza, and the reality is unless the international community, led by the United States, steps in and brings a halt to this, we could be looking at a major disaster,” says Osamah Khalil, professor of history.

Jacob Grindstaff-Espinal selected Syracuse University because it has one of the top study abroad programs in the country—plus access to expansive educational offerings where students can explore their interests from all sides. 

Funded by gifts from hundreds of individual donors, including a lead gift from long-time Maxwell supporters Gerry and Daphna Cramer, the project has since awarded funds for dozens of faculty-led projects that have explored topics related to citizenship—from labor policy to free speech jurisprudence to climate change.

Devashish Mitra, professor of economics, says that some wealth distribution “might not be a bad idea.” But, he adds, “it is a politically contentious issue, and there might be political problems in enacting any kind of means to redistribute wealth.’’