Maxwell School News and Commentary

"The headline events of 2016—Brexit, the election of Donald Trump in the United States, a struggling Chinese economy—do not represent the start of a process of 'deglobalization.' Rather, they themselves are a product of a slow unraveling of global economic interconnectedness that has been unfolding for nearly a decade now," writes Daniel McDowell, associate professor of political science.

Next week, Professor of Political Science Mehrzad Boroujerdi said, the University planned to host a scholar who has been imprisoned in Iran. Now, he is unsure if the scholar will be able to come to SU at all. “It’s a serious infringement on our academic rights,” he said.

According to University Professor James Steinberg, Steve Bannon's formal inclusion in the U.S. national security policymaking process "is such an explicit rejection of the well-entrenched principle that when it comes to matters of national security that politics doesn’t have any place in the room.”

“She has no expertise or experience in the educational world,” Kristi Andersen, professor emerita of political science, says. “She has not been a teacher, she has not been an administrator, she has not been a policymaker, she has not worked for an educational think tank and she has not written about education.”

"This ban leaves thousands of our wartime allies to fend for themselves against the very enemies we asked them to fight," writes Maxwell alumnus Matt Zeller, co-founder and CEO of No One Left Behind. "We are permanently harming the fabric of U.S. national security. Our credibility is forever tarnished if not eroded."

William Banks, professor emeritus of public administration and international affairs, says "since 9/11, no one has been killed in this country in a terrorist attack by anyone who emigrated from any of the seven countries," on President Trump's travel ban.

"Universities are not taking a collaborative role" in helping vets find the most efficient path to a degree, says Corri Zoli, director of research at the Institute for National Security and Counterterrorism.

“Morally you don’t have the right to torture people. Inhumane treatment is not a good thing,” says Bill Smullen, director of Maxwell's National Security Studies program.

“When I talk about the consequences of not acting on climate change, I talk about freedom, liberty and property," Robert Wilson, associate professor of geography, says. "I tell them, ‘The greatest threat to property in the coming decades is climate change.'"