Archive for Columbia University – Page 55

SIPA Media Notes

It is not uncommon for SIPA faculty to be featured in the media.  Here is a recent compilation of some appearances.

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Steven Cohen asks “Can Obama Get His Sputnik Moment?”
CNN, January 26, 2011
“By recalling the challenge of Sputnik, the president is trying to summon America to a national effort to retool and revitalize our economy. America brings great resources and great difficulties to this newly competitive environment.”

Jeffrey Sachs gives State of the Union address a “thumbs down”
Wall Street Journal, January 26, 2011
“Professor Sachs … says the numbers won’t add up. That’s because [education, infrastructure and basic research] already take up a large chunk of the more than $600 billion of nondefense discretionary spending undertaken by the government.”

Dorian Warren provides commentary on State of the Union address
NY1, January 25, 2011 (Windows Media Player)

“I think it was a very good speech. I think he was drawing from the Tucson speech where he came across as post-partisan, as willing to reach across the aisle as unifier, that he defined the ‘we’ as a nation.”

Helios Herrera discusses the State of the Union address

Rede TV, January 26, 2011 (Portuguese)

“Obama’s proposed budget cuts will not be enough to cut the whole budget deficit and the Republicans might repeal them for that reason. The climate of bipartisanship at the speech will not change overall the political game. The republicans will do what is possible to make sure Obama does not get reelected in 2012.”

William Eimicke previews State of the Union address
WNYC, January 25, 2011
“Professor Eimicke said the president needs to get more specific. He’d especially like to hear more about the president’s plans for improving the nation’s infrastructure to help boost the economy and create jobs.”

Anya Schiffrin examines “Davos and the Gender Quota”
The Guardian, January 25, 2011
“The air is thin in Davos, and every January it gets saturated with testosterone as economic and business leaders swoop in for the annual meeting, momentarily replacing the resort town’s sea of ski parkas with a cloud of black suits. But we didn’t know how bad things were until it was reported that sponsors of the meeting have been told to make sure they bring one woman for every four men in their delegation.”

David Dinkins discusses his legacy as the first black NYC mayor
NY1
, January 24, 2011
“Sometimes you will feel criticism is inaccurate and unfair. And sometimes you might feel, you know, you’ve got a point.”

William Eimicke presents the Picker Center’s police consolidation report to the City of Schenectady, NY
Albany Times-Union, January 25, 2011
WNYT-TV, WTEN-TV, WXXA-TV, YNN
“You’re spending less on rent, you’re spending less on technology, you’re spending less on equipment.”

Joseph Stiglitz comments from the World Economic Forum in Davos
Washington Post, January 24, 2011
“’If you work in emerging markets, you feel the energy. If you are in the U.S. or Europe, you see the numbers and it’s hard not to feel depressed.’”

Scott Barrett comments on Bill Gates’ donation to polio eradication
Associated Press, January 24, 2011
“Professor Barrett said if the World’s Health Organization’s next polio deadline is missed, it may be time to abandon the efforts  ‘Eradication cannot continue indefinitely. The situation is very fragile and at some point the alternative needs to be examined more carefully.’”

Diane Vaughan addresses NASA and the Challenger disaster, 25 years later
Orlando Sentinel, January 23, 2011
“Professor Vaughan, who researched NASA’s culture after Challenger and Columbia, says NASA has taken a different approach after Columbia: ‘Look at the recent attempts to launch Discovery and how long they’ve stood down for that. It doesn’t mean they [NASA engineers] are doing poorly. It means they identified a flaw and are taking safety seriously.’”

Gary Sick writes, “While You Were Reading About Ukrainian Nurses…”
Foreign Policy, January 19, 2011
“Real news was buried in WikiLeaks — like this revealing cable on Iran’s nuclear ambitions.”

Patricia Gorman Clifford discusses “What Do Business Schools Want?”
Washington Post, January 24, 2011
“The fact you are realistically evaluating your current skill set is a great place to begin. Some prospective students are so focused on gaining admission that they don’t think enough about managing the hard work and specific types of tasks that they’ll be expected to complete as a student.”

Jeffrey Sachs discusses the outlook for the European debt crisis
Bloomberg TV, January 18, 2011
Professor Sachs talks about the outlook for the European debt crisis, the economic growth outlook for Africa, the impact of globalization on U.S. society, and climate change.

Dorian Warren on Walmart and New York City
WNYC, January 18, 2011
“They waited until the political opportunity was much more advantageous for them in the sense of an economic recession. It’s muted some of the opponents’ claims about how Walmart will be bad for certain neighborhoods precisely because it’s hard to say we don’t want jobs Walmart would create.”

Joseph Stiglitz discusses “unsustainable imbalances” in emerging nations
El Mercurio de Valparaíso, January 16, 2011 (Spanish)
Professor Stiglitz visited Santiago, Chile to share his reflections on “unsustainable imbalances” in capital inflow with Columbia University graduates and former World Bank officials.

Arvind Panagariya comments on Indian growth and poverty
Times of India, January 14, 2011
In delivering the Raj Krishna Memorial lecture at the University of Rajasthan, Professor Panagariya said, “India’s economy is growing at over 12 percent in dollar terms. It’s $1.3 trillion economy can reach the size of China’s  $6 trillion in 15 years if it continues to grow at the current pace.”

Anya Schiffrin is blogging from the World Economic Forum at ReutersDavos Notebook. Read her latest “The Deepest Fear of the Davos Man.”

Howard Friedman blogs for The Huffington Post. Read his latest: “What Would Dr. King Think of Today’s Poverty?”

John Mutter was featured on TreeHugger in an article entitled, “Brooklyn’s Bamboo Bikes Hitting the Big Time in Ghana.”

Anne Nelson posted “Vietnam Fighting a Losing Battle Against Free Speech Online” at PBS’s  MediaShift blog.

Rodolfo de la Garza blogs for WNYC. Read his latest post, “The Case for Nonpartisan Redistricting.”

Gary Sick blogs at http://garysick.tumblr.com. Read his comments on “And Life Goes On: An Iran Snapshot.”

Steven Cohen blogs regularly for The Huffington Post. Read his latest post: “Civility is More Than Symbolism.”

Stuart Gottlieb comments regularly on The Arena, Politico’s daily debate with policymakers and opinion shapers.

Social Entrepreneurship at SIPA

The following post was written by Kevin Hong.  Kevin is a second-year student concentrating in Economic and Political Development with a specialization in Management.

Kevin graduated from Cornell University in 2005 and focused on Computational and Systems Biology.  Prior to joining SIPA Kevin was Study Coordinator at the Francis I. Proctor Foundation based at the University of California in San Francisco.

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Whether it is corporate social responsibility, sustainability, or social entrepreneurship, there has been increasing interest in the intersection of the private and public sectors expressed by SIPA students. As I served as the Social Entrepreneurship Chair for SIPA Net Impact, I met more and more students at SIPA who are interested in how to encourage more business to promote social causes or how to use entrepreneurial approaches in social sectors.

Net Impact is a national organization with chapters around the world to bring together students and professionals who are interested in these issues (netimpact.org).  The chapter at SIPA has been particularly active in the past year putting together a variety of events to raises awareness about social entrepreneurship (Face Book page here). Here are some of events we hosted:

  • AfroReggae- Social Entrepreneurship and Arts Education in Brazil’s Favelas
  • KOPERNIK ~ Entrepreneuring Breakthrough Technologies
  • Food in the Sky: Vertical Farming for Sustainable Food Supply with Dr. Dickson Despommier
  • Conversation with Paul Polak, Author of Out of Poverty and Founder of International Development Enterprises (IDE)
  • The Power of Social Entrepreneurship – The Mae Fah Luang Foundation
  • Social Entrepreneurship: Insights from Practitioners

In partnership with Wagner School of Public Services at NYU, SIPA Net Impact also organized the Social Enterprise Boot Camp which offered skill-building workshops, an elevator pitch competition, and speed networking for aspiring social entrepreneurs (www.socialenterprisebootcamp.org). This event was a huge success with over dozen speakers and over 100 participants and SIPA Net Impact is working to offer the Boot Camp again this year with more workshops.

Social Enterprise Boot Camp

Now with two full courses dedicated on social entrepreneurship taught by professors Sarah Holloway and Sara Minard and exciting extracurricular activities on the topic, SIPA provides unique opportunities for students who are interested in public policy and development to explore social entrepreneurship as an innovative tool to promote social causes in which they are interested.  So join us and find out how you can make the world a better place with social entrepreneurship at SIPA!

Tunisia Brown Bag Panel

It is not uncommon for discussions and events to take shape at SIPA in response to very current events.  The following is an example of a brown bag panel that took place this past week based on the recent happenings in Tunisia.  This is yet another benefit of the numerous student groups, institutes, and centers at SIPA.

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THURSDAY 1/27: Tunisia Before & After Ben Ali
Brownbag Panel and Q&A with Columbia University Professors Taoufiq Ben Amor and Rym Bettaieb, and SIPA alumnus (PEPM’07) from Tunisia, Rim Nour

Time: 1:00-2:30pm
Location: 1501 International Affairs Building, 420 West 118th Street

Presented by ASA, MEI and IAS. Columbia University Professors Taoufiq Ben Amor and Rym Bettaieb, and SIPA alumnus (PEPM’07) from Tunisia, Rim Nour, share their viewpoints and updates on the recent events in Tunisia exploring topics ranging from the role that young people have played, to the use of social media, to the mechanisms of grassroots mobilization, as well as the stereotypes that the revolution broke.  A Q&A session will follow the panel.

Extracurricular Events

One of the cool things about living in New York City is that there is always something going on.  Yes, it’s true, it is the city that never sleeps.  I can attest to this because I live on an avenue and the noise never ceases outside my window.  For those of you not familiar with New York City, for the most part avenues are larger and run north/south while streets are smaller and run east/west.  This applies to most of the Island above Canal Street – below Canal all bets are off.  So if you are looking for a place to live, I would recommend street addresses because you are likely to deal with less noise, but there are always exceptions to the rule.  But I digress . . .

In terms activities, SIPA and Columbia are much like New York City – there always seems to be something going on for our students to take advantage of.  I thought I would take an entry to provide a glimpse into some of the extracurricular programming going on in the coming weeks.

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Tuesday, January 25, 2011

The Net Delusion: A Brownbag with Author Evgeny Morozov
12:30 pm – 2:00 pm
International Affairs Building, Room 1302
International Media and Communications
Brownbag with blogger and social commentator Evgeny Morozov, a rising star in Internet politics.

Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Information Effects and Human Rights Data: Is the Good News about Increased Human Rights Information Bad News for Human Rights Measures?
12:00 pm – 1:45 pm
International Affairs Building, Room 1302
Institute for the Study of Human Rights
Talk with Ann Marie Clark and Kathryn Sikkink, in which they will discuss changes in the quality and availability of human rights information over time and the implications for scholarly use of comparative data based on contemporaneous sources, including the widely used data sets based on annual Amnesty International and U.S. State Department reports.

Center for Korean Research Colloquium Series
4:30 pm – 6:00 pm
International Affairs Building, Room 907
Weatherhead East Asian Institute
Center for Korean Research Colloquium with Joel Wit, former State Department official.

Faith Misplaced
6:00 pm – 8:00 pm
International Affairs Building, 1512
Middle East Institute
Lecture with Ussama Makdisi, Professor of History and the first holder of the Arab-American Educational Foundation Chair of Arab Studies at Rice University, speaking on his new book Faith Misplaced: The Broken Promises of U.S.-Arab Relations: 1820-2001.
Register

Thursday, January 27, 2011

QMSS Seminar: Gary Langer
6:10 pm – 8:30 pm
International Affairs Building, Room 403
Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy
Lecture with Gary Langer, Langer Research Associates.

Urban Aging from New York to Beijing
12:00 pm – 1:30 pm
International Affairs Building, Room 918
Weatherhead East Asian Institute
WEAI Brown Bag Lecture with Michael Gusmano, Assistant Professor of Health Policy and Management, Mailman School of Public Health and Ada C. Mui, Professor of Social Work, School of Social Work.

eHealth – A Paradigm Shift in Delivery of Healthcare
12:30 pm – 2:00 pm
International Affairs Building, Room 1512
Economic and Political Development Concentration
Brown Bag with Dr. Zakiuddin Ahmed, President and CEO of Healthcare Paradigm. Discussant: Dr. Patricia Mechael, Director of Strategic Application of Mobile Technology for Public Health and Development at the Center for Global Health and Economic Development at the Earth Institute, Columbia University. Pizza will be provided.

HOME: A Film Screening and Panel Discussion
2:00 pm – 5:00 pm
Alfred Lerner Hall, Roone Arledge Cinema
Earth Institute
Lecture with David Berreby, journalist and author (moderator); Sabine Marx, Managing Director, Columbia Center for Research on Environmental Decisions (CRED); Shama Perveen, Associate Research Scientist, Columbia Water Center; Gavin A. Schmidt, climatologist and climate modeler, NASA/Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS); Peter Seligmann, Chairman & CEO, Conservation International; Maria Uriarte, Assistant Professor, Department of Ecology, Evolution & Environmental Biology (E3B), Columbia University.

Tuesday, February 1, 2011

Japanese Youth in Transition: Work, Marriage, and Inequality in Contemporary Japan
12:00 pm – 1:30 pm
International Affairs Building, Room 918
Weatherhead East Asian Institute
WEAI Brown Bag Lecture with Hiroshi Ishida, Professor of Sociology, Institute of Social Sciences, University of Tokyo; Visiting Fellow, Center for Research on Inequalities and the Life Course, Yale University.

Taiwan in Imperial China
2:00 pm – 4:00 pm
Schermerhorn Hall, Room 963
Weatherhead East Asian Institute
WEAI Lecture with Douglas Fix, Professor of History and Humanities Modern China and Japan, Reed College.

SAI Distinguished Lecture Series: A Talk by 2009 Nobel Laureate Elinor Ostrom
4:00 pm – 5:30 pm
International Affairs Building, Room 1501
South Asian Institute and The Earth Institute
Talk by 2009 Nobel Laureate Elinor Ostrom, Arthur F. Bentley Professor of Political Science, Indiana University in Bloomington
Register

“Racially Inferior”: Roma, Sinti and Other Holocaust victims
5:30 pm – 7:30 pm
The Italian Academy at Columbia University
The Italian Academy
Lecture exploring issues of discrimination and crimes against humanity.

Wednesday, February 2, 2011

Grzegorz W. Kolodko on Truth, Errors, and Lies: Politics and Economics in a Volatile World
6:15 pm – 7:45 pm
Faculty House, Presidential Room 1
Committee on Global Thought
Talk with Grzegorz W. Kolodko, one of the world’s leading authorities on economics and development policy and former Minister of Finance of Poland. He will discuss his new book, Truth, Errors, and Lies: Politics and Economics in a Volatile World, to be released on February 8th, 2011. Registration for this event is required.
Register

Thursday, February 3, 2011

The Real Wealth of Nations: Pathways to Human Development (Human Development Report 2010 – 20th Anniversary Edition)
6:00 pm – 8:00 pm
International Affairs Building, Room 1501
Economic and Political Development
Talk with Francisco Rodriguez, Head of the Research Team, UNDP Human Development Report. Moderated by Jose Antonio Ocampo. Discussants, Eugenia McGill and Eric Verhoogen. Reception to follow.

Film Screening and Discussion: Promised Land
6:00 pm – 8:00 pm
W&J Warren Hall, Room 209 Morningside Campus
Committee on Global Thought
Film Screening and Discussion featuring “Promised Land,” a film that gives viewers an inside look at the critical story of land reform and racial reconciliation in the new South Africa.
Register

QMSS Seminar
6:10 pm – 9:00 pm
International Affairs Building, Room 403
Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy
Lecture with Sandra Garcia, Universidad de los Andes.

Monday, February 7, 2011

Popular Culture and Nationalism in Lebanon: The Fairouz and Rahbani Nation
6:00 pm – 8:00 pm
International Affairs Building, Room 1501
Middle East Institute
Film Screening/Lecture/Book Talk with Professor Christopher Stone, speaking on his newest book Popular Culture and Nationalism in Lebanon: The Fairouz and Rahbani Nation, in conjunction with a screening of “We Loved Each Other So Much.”
Register

The Shah with Abbas Milani
7:00 pm – 9:00 pm
International Affairs Building, Room 1512
Middle East Institute
Book Talk with Abbas MilaniHamid and Christina Moghadam, Director of Iranian Studies at Stanford University, speaking on his new book, The Shah, a biography which offers in-depth understanding of one of the most significant actors in the creation of the modern Islamic republic.
Register

Friday, February 11, 2011

Columbia Water Center/Earth and Environmental Engineering Seminar: Hydrological Applications of NASA’s GRACE Satellite Mission
3:00 pm – 4:00 pm
Seeley W. Mudd Building, Room 833
Earth Institute
Lecture with Matt Rodell, Hydrologist, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.
Register

Newsmakers

It is not uncommon to see SIPA faculty, students, and alumni in the news.  Below are a few recent examples.

Helping TANF Help Children


Professor Swati Desai has been appointed as a senior advisor to the Urban Institute, on a project to improve state performance measures for TANF – Temporary Assistance for Needy Families.

TANF is a federal program, providing cash assistance to indigent families with dependent children. The program is funded by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, providing block grants to states, which administer their individual programs.

Desai, an expert in performance management, will spend much of 2011 advising the Urban Institute in choosing and analyzing the data for states that have implemented state-level TANF performance measurement systems that includes both outcome and process indicators and have been identified as having promising practices.

“As planning for TANF reauthorization approaches, there is a focus on improving the program’s accountability structure,” said Desai. “The program was created to help needy families reach self-sufficiency by providing cash assistance, work opportunities, and other services. But under the current accountability structure, it is difficult to know whether the program is actually meeting this goal.  The Urban Institute study will help inform the policy debate by conducting in-depth case studies of a few states.”

Desai is an associate professor at SIPA, teaching public and nonprofit management, and performance management. She previously served in a variety of positions with the City of New York’s Human Resources Administration, most recently as Executive Deputy Commissioner for the Office of Evaluation and Research, which provides cash assistance, food stamps, and Medicaid to residents.

Wikileaks

Stephen Sestanovich writes “America’s Facile, Self-Congratulatory Response to Wikileaks,” in The New Republic.

Here is short excerpt from the article:

The case for confidentiality in diplomatic communications doesn’t make exceptions. Most negotiations can’t be successful if every move—every embarrassing concession in which you compromise a point today that you declared sacrosanct yesterday—is made in public. By and large, because the United States is so powerful, we actually gain the most from confidentiality. Secrecy can shield the concessions that others make to us. Without it, they are more stubborn, more fearful, less able to act.

On the Front Lines of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”

On December 18, Congress voted to repeal “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” Veteran and SIPA alumnus Justin Johnson (MIA ’10) writes in the NY Daily News:

“Our battalion faced fierce combat as the 1,000 or so Marines conducted stability and security operations in a city of over 300,000. The bonds we formed in combat inspire and drive me to this day.

“The difficulty of this combat tour … forced me to confront my own mortality and make sense of what I experienced and what it meant for my life. I made the incredibly difficult decision to come out to my family and to leave active duty when my period of required service expired in June of 2005. I wanted to stay in the Marines, but did not want to serve in an environment where my entire life and career could be upended because of who I am – regardless of my performance in the position.” More

"The most global public policy school, where an international community of students and faculty address world challenges."

—Merit E. Janow, Dean, SIPA, Professor of Practice, International and Economic Law and International Affairs

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