Archive for News – Page 8

Students will report on Private Sector Forum on Migration and Refugees tomorrow

Posted by Columbia SIPA 
· Monday, September 19th, 2016 
· No Comments

More than 200 UN leaders, government officials, and business and philanthropic executives will gather on September 20

Student rapporteurs including seven current SIPA enrollees will take part in this week’s Private Sector Forum on Migration and Refugees, a gathering of more than 200 UN leaders, government officials, and business and philanthropic executives who will discuss the private sector’s role and responsibility in helping to address global migration and refugee challenges.

Participating students will use SIPA’s Twitter and Facebook pages to extend the conversation to the larger SIPA community and beyond.

The September 20 program is a project of the Columbia Global Policy Initiative (CGPI) in partnership with the nonprofit organization Concordia, the International Organization for Migration, and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, among others. It’s part of the 2016 Concordia Summit, an annual gathering of public, private, and nonprofit leaders in New York City.

It also complements the landmark UN Summit for Refugees and Migrants, which will have convened more than 150 world leaders the previous day for consideration of related issues.

Participants in the private sector forum will discuss new approaches to private investment in refugee hosting areas as well as education initiatives, connectivity for refugees, the role of local governments in addressing migration, and other areas for fertile public-private partnerships that can make a difference in the lives of millions of forced migrants around the world. The discussions will culminate in new initiatives and commitments and will create a call to action for leadership across sectors.

Later this fall, CGPI will publish a report on the forum that draws on the student-authored reports.

Members of the student-run SIPA Migration Working Group are also planning a follow-up symposium to discuss the forum as well as the importance of engaging multiple stakeholders to address ongoing challenges. To be held on October 5, that symposium will also receive support from the CGPI.

Follow the student rapporteurs on Twitter at @ColumbiaSIPA

No Comments
Categories : Academics, News, SIPA, Student Life
Tags : , , , ,

Learn why SIPA appeared on the NASDAQ Tower in Times Square this week

Posted by Columbia SIPA 
· Friday, September 16th, 2016 
· No Comments

NASDAQ EDUCATIONAL FOUNDATION GRANT SUPPORTS SIPA INITIATIVES IN ENTREPRENEURSHIP AND PUBLIC POLICY

Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) will enhance its position as a hub for the study of entrepreneurship, innovation, digital technology, and public policy thanks to a multi-year grant from the Nasdaq Educational Foundation.

SIPA will draw on the foundation’s support to engage scholars, entrepreneurs, and leaders from the public and private sectors to advance understanding of the conditions and means to promote innovation and entrepreneurship, including social entrepreneurship.

The series of initiatives funded by the grant will emphasize entrepreneurship and innovation stemming from both information and communications technology (ICT) and digital technology, along with their intersection with public policy globally. Programming will begin this fall and last for three years through spring 2019.

The grant will support a variety of programs and initiatives. Most significantly, SIPA will:

  • Create a global ideas forum including a University-wide seminar on entrepreneurship.
    • In partnership with Columbia Entrepreneurship, SIPA will examine the conditions that give rise to entrepreneurship and the special relationship worldwide among entrepreneurship, digital technologies, and data.
    • SIPA and Columbia Entrepreneurship will host a series of public seminars and events each year and commission papers from faculty and U.S. and international experts to anchor discussion.
  • Foster thought leadership through global fellows in residence.
    • SIPA will recruit short term visiting global entrepreneurs, social entrepreneurs, and innovators in residence to bring the latest lessons from the field.
    • SIPA will also recruit a postgraduate fellow in residence to pursue policy research and provide organizational support for the entrepreneurship program.
  • Promote innovative approaches for educating the next generation of entrepreneurs through experiential learning and case study-based teaching, including
    • a new course designed to prepare students to launch a new enterprise, including social enterprise
    • enhancement of the existing Dean’s Public Policy Challenge Grant to include mentorship by global entrepreneurs and innovators in residence
    • commissioning of case studies to help students explore contemporary issues in entrepreneurship, digital technology, and public policy.

“SIPA occupies an increasingly  interesting place at the intersection of digital technology, innovation, and public policy,” said Dean Merit E. Janow of SIPA. “By adding this invaluable support from the Nasdaq Educational Foundation to the extensive resources of Columbia University, we will enhance the School’s ability to collaborate with scholars across the University and other experts to produce important new research, thought leadership, and curricular innovation on the study of entrepreneurship and the policy that supports it.”

“As a global provider of capital markets services, it is our responsibility to educate future leaders,” said Joan Conley, senior vice president and corporate secretary at Nasdaq and managing director of the Nasdaq Educational Foundation. “We are proud to support Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs as they continue to grow and enhance their programs across public policy, technology, innovation and entrepreneurship.”

As it develops and pursues activities with the grant’s support, SIPA will engage other units at Columbia University and work in consultation with distinguished colleagues including Professor Eli Noam and Richard Witten. Noam is the Paul Garrett Professor of Public Policy and Business Responsibility at Columbia Business School and the director of the Columbia Institute for Tele-Information. Witten is a special advisor to Columbia University President Lee Bollinger and director of Columbia Entrepreneurship, a Presidential initiative and umbrella group that supports entrepreneurship University-wide.

No Comments
Categories : Academics, Columbia University, News, SIPA
Tags : , , ,

Columbia Magazine: Leave Them Laughing

Posted by Columbia SIPA 
· Tuesday, September 6th, 2016 
· No Comments

They say a spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down,” says comedian Negin Farsad ’02GSAS, ’04SIPA. “For me, the medicine is challenging stereotypes. And the sugar is a really sophisticated poop joke.”

Farsad admits that scatological humor is the last thing that people expect from her — a relentlessly cheerful, Iranian-American, Muslim comedian with two master’s degrees. But she thinks that means she’s doing something right.

“There’s always an assumption that I’m going to be clean or safe, because I’m an ethnic woman,” she says. “So there’s a particular moment in every show when people realize that I’m different. That’s what I’m after.”

Farsad is what she likes to call a “social-justice comedian,” which means that she wants to start a larger conversation about social issues, but in a way that “doesn’t feel like an afterschool special.” This dialogue takes many forms: in addition to performing stand-up, she is a filmmaker, a TED fellow, and, most recently, the author of a memoir, How to Make White People Laugh.

“If you’re trying to take on the dominant culture about how they treat outsiders, you have to speak to that culture directly,” Farsad says. “I’m not interested in preaching to the choir. I’m interested in changing minds.”

Farsad is intimately familiar with being treated differently. Growing up, she felt like the only Muslim kid in Palm Springs, California (“one of the top five gay cities and one of the top five retirement communities — so it’s basically people listening to Lady Gaga while adjusting their catheters”). After studying theater at Cornell, she wanted to explore the sense of otherness that she experienced as an ethnic minority, so she enrolled at Columbia for a master’s in African-American studies. “I knew that the Black struggle wasn’t my struggle, but I wanted to fight it anyway. It felt Iranian-adjacent,” she says.

“I’m not interested in preaching to the choir. I’m interested in changing minds.”

But in the post-9/11 world, the rhetoric around Muslims in America was changing, dangerously. “I thought, how could people associate this kind of violence with a whole religion and an entire region — that’s just crazy. That’s like stereotyping 1.6 billion people. Who does that? Americans.”

Farsad was particularly frustrated with the lack of Muslims in pop culture. The less visible Muslims were, she felt, the more feared and misunderstood they became. After leaving a public-policy job in 2008, she organized a group of fellow Muslim comics to tour the country. (Film from the tour became Farsad’s 2013 documentary The Muslims Are Coming!)

Now, Farsad also hosts a podcast called Fake the Nation, a political roundtable with a rotating cast of comedians. And she stars in the new movie 3rd Street Blackout, a romantic comedy that takes place in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy. “That one isn’t so political,” Farsad says. “Though when you’re Iranian, people seem to think everything is political.”

Some of the reactions to Farsad’s work have been heartbreaking: “I’ve heard every racist, sexist, hate-filled slur you can imagine.” She’s also had pushback from some fellow Muslims, who have objected to her unorthodox methods. But she says that there are certainly enough positive reactions to keep propelling her forward.

“I always think about the ex-Marine who had been stationed in Afghanistan,” she says. “He came in angry and left laughing.”

[Photo by Ryan Lash]

This article originally appeared in Columbia Magazine.

No Comments
Categories : Columbia University, Meet Seeples, News, SIPA
Tags : ,

5 Brexit questions with Economist Jan Svejnar

Posted by Columbia SIPA 
· Monday, July 25th, 2016 
· No Comments

From Columbia News, June 24, 2016:

The fallout from Brexit, the British exit from the European Union, was nearly immediate. Every global market sank. British Prime Minister David Cameron resigned. A large U.S. investment bank announced it would move 2,000 jobs out of London to either Dublin or Frankfurt, the credit agency Standard & Poor’s said that the Britain would lose its AAA rating while Moody’s lowered its rating to negative from stable.

More shoes are still to drop, according to Jan Svejnar, the James T. Shotwell Professor of Global Political Economy at the School of International and Public Affairs. While he knew the vote would be close, he believed that Britons would ultimately stay. He was surprised the leave vote was as strong as it was, 52 percent to 48 percent.

The repercussions will be significant. “I think we are seeing the unraveling of Great Britain,” he said. Scotland, which two years ago voted no on an independence referendum, will probably opt for a new one. Northern Ireland could do the same. “We may be going from Great Britain to small England.”

Here, Svejnar answers five questions about what will happen now that Britain is withdrawing from the EU.

Q. What happens next?

A. We are already seeing the first impacts, the gyrations in the stock markets and foreign exchange markets. I think that may continue for a while. Next will come a first round of tough political decisions. German chancellor Angela Merkel will be getting together with Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi and French president Francois Hollande to prepare a statement and stake out their approach to the British decision.

Q. What kind of approach might that be?

A. They have to negotiate a separation, which won’t be easy. If it is done too fast and too vigorously, it could alienate other EU nations, who may insist the rest of the 25 members should have been consulted rather than having a particular solution designed by the leaders of only those three countries shoved down their throats. There are free trade policies and immigration pacts and a swath of EU regulations that must be unraveled or replaced. The EU won’t want to make it easy for Britain to leave, they don’t want this to set a precedent for other countries.

Q. What kind of economic fallout do you foresee?

A. There are two years to negotiate the exit, unless markets destabilize to such an extent that they can’t afford to take that long. All the agreements between the EU and Britain must be renegotiated. There may be a substantial relocation of capital from Britain. London could lose its status as a global hub of finance, and I’ve already heard that some banks are looking to move their headquarters.

Q. How does this affect the rest of Europe, or the world?

A. Britain is now the second largest economy in the EU, and the most outward oriented. There is a chance that Europe itself gets destabilized, because now other governments may ask for exceptions and exemptions from EU regulations. If that happens, Europe may not look to be as friendly a place to invest in, and investors may look to other parts of the world. Also, other nations will be cautious about raising interest rates, to make sure there is no economic contagion.

Q. Is there any chance that this can be reversed?

A. In principle, yes. It takes a vote of Parliament for the decision to become final. Parliament could conceivably go against the referendum, but the vote was 51.9 percent to 48.1 percent. It would be hard for it to say this was just a joke. Given that David Cameron has already resigned, I don’t see that this can be stopped.

[Photo by Bruce Gilbert]
No Comments
Categories : Academics, Columbia University, Meet Seeples, News
Tags : , , , , , ,

David J. Rothkopf joins the ranks of SIPA faculty in foreign policy this fall

Posted by Columbia SIPA 
· Monday, June 27th, 2016 
· No Comments

The noted foreign-policy scholar and writer David J. Rothkopf will join SIPA’s faculty as a visiting professor of international and public affairs for the 2016-17 academic year, the School announced today. Rothkopf will teach courses on the United States’ role in world affairs in Fall 2016 and Spring 2017 and serve as visiting director of the International Fellows program over the same period, while program director Stephen Sestanovich is on leave.

Rothkopf is the CEO and editor of the FP Group, which publishes Foreign Policy magazine and its websites, and the president and CEO of Garten Rothkopf, a Washington-based international consulting firm that specializes in areas including energy and trade.

“SIPA will be fortunate to once again welcome David Rothkopf to our faculty in the coming academic year,” said Dean Merit E. Janow. “He will bring to our students and our community a distinct perspective forged by his engagement in a cross-section of contemporary foreign-policy debates, both as a government official and through his work in the private sector, and I know our International Fellows will benefit greatly from his deep experience and connections in Washington and abroad.”

“I look forward to again teaching at SIPA,” said Rothkopf. “It will be a special privilege to work with the 2017 class of international fellows, and to welcome all students who wish to consider how United States conducts foreign policy in today’s complex world.”

He is the author of numerous books including, most recently, National Insecurity: American Leadership in an Age of Fear (PublicAffairs, 2014). Rothkopf writes a weekly column for foreignpolicy.com and contributes frequently to publications including the New York Times, Washington Post, Financial Times, CNN,Newsweek, and Time. Rothkopf is also the host of “The Editor’s Roundtable,” a weekly audio program and podcast on current events, and has appeared as a TED Talk speaker.

Rothkopf is a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a current or former member of advisory boards of the Center for Global Development, the Center for the Study of the Presidency, the U.S. Institute of Peace, and the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University.

He previously worked as CEO of Intellibridge Corporation and as managing director of Kissinger Associates, and served in the Clinton presidential administration as deputy under secretary of commerce for international trade and acting under secretary. During his tenure in the Department of Commerce, Rothkopf directed the activities of the International Trade Administration and helped create the Big Emerging Markets Initiative, the U.S. government’s first inter-agency program devoted to emerging markets.

The appointment marks a return to SIPA and Columbia for Rothkopf, who between Fall 1996 and Spring 2003 regularly taught SIPA courses on emerging markets, and returned for a semester in 2006 to lead a course on U.S. national security. He has also been a faculty member at the Georgetown School of Foreign Service and lectured at many elite universities in the United States and abroad.

Rothkopf earned a BA from Columbia in 1977 and also studied at Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism.

No Comments
Categories : Academics, News, SIPA
Tags :
« Previous Page
Next Page »

"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

Boiler Image