Maxwell School News and Commentary

Derek Slap ’95 B.A. (IR) was recently sworn in as a Democratic state senator for the 5th State Senate District of Connecticut. Slap is also the vice president of marketing and communications at the UConn Foundation and a lecturer in political science at Yale University.

"No economist providing policy prescriptions can ignore the political constraint of the inevitability of redistribution to the bottom 20-30 percent," writes Devashish Mitra, Gerald B. and Daphna Cramer Professor of Global Affairs. "Therefore, an important task before any policy economist is to suggest the most efficient form of this redistribution—one that hurts the rest of the society the least. Of course, it also has to be fiscally viable and responsible."

Chance Briggs '97 M.P.A., country director for Save The Children in Mozambique, says "the Southern hemisphere has never seen anything like this in a natural disaster." He assesses that "right now, funding is the urgent need...If we don't get people quickly back on their feet now, they will have trouble reconstructing their houses, reconstructing their livelihoods."

Jean Mercier ’82 Ph.D. (PA), adjunct professor of political science at the l’Université Laval, has co-authored a book which explores the governance patterns of three cities in the Americas: Seattle, Montreal, and Curritiba, Brazil. Utilizing theories such as path dependency, institutional culture, and transaction costs, the authors explore how each of these cities responds differently to common challenges in sustainable urban transport.

Steve Lux, director of Executive Education, and Maxwell alumnus Nick Armstrong '08 M.P.A./'14 Ph.D. (SSc), IVMF senior director of research and policy, claim the new program will help veterans and military family members who aspire to public office or another form of a political career.

"The longer the Democrats stay on this [Julian Assange's extradition], the more it’s helping the president [Donald Trump]," says Grant Reeher, professor of political science and director of the Campbell Public Affairs Institute.

Dina Eldawy, Crystal Letona, Danielle Schaf and Nathan Shearn were among the twelve seniors named as the 2019 Syracuse University Scholars, the highest undergraduate honor that the University bestows.