...nd a well-respected Kenyan activist, says there is evidence linking both the government officials accused of stealing the election and members of the opposing party, the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM), to the killings. At a SIPA panel in February, Kiai described the situation as “a political crisis with ethnic expression,” noting that politics in Kenya and many other African countries sometimes happen to be organized around ethnic lines. Other...
SIPA hosted a hat-trick of superstar economists this past Monday night for a panel discussion on sustainable consumption. Cambridge development economist Sir Partha Dasgupta joined Nobel Laureates Robert “Uncle Bob” Solow and our own Joseph “Brother Joe” Stiglitz for an hour that promised a “multidisciplinary perspective” on all the stuff we buy and eat. Dasgupta did not refer to himself by the street name al...
...t Deputy Representative of India to the United Nations; and Ambassador Luis Alfonso de Alba Gongora, Permanent Representative of Mexico to the United Nations. Dirk Salomons, the Director of the Humanitarian Affairs Program at SIPA, served as moderator. Though the discussion’s main focus was on the function of the European Union in the UN, it encompassed many other aspects of the decision-making processes within the UN. Ambassador Emiliou of Cypru...
photo from Wikimedia Commons The Alliance Program in cooperation with SIPA and the Middle East Institute hosted the French Ambassador to the U.N., Gérard Araud, who discussed the crisis in Syria along with Rashid Khalidi, Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies History & MESAAS. As a member of the Security Council, Araud provided a technical lens on the current impasse. Considering the conflicting state interests of the P5, the U.N. wi...
...olitics of patronage and influence peddling at both the local and the federal levels. Indeed, just punishment does not necessarily impede these forms of corruption from reappearing in Brazilian politics. Paulo Uebel, Columbia SIPA’13, who is currently writing his thesis on Brazilian corruption, points to the source of the problem: “The Brazilian government has a series of legal, administrative, fiscal, and financial instruments at its disposal to...
In the 2012 election, an overwhelming majority of first-generation Americans voted in favor of Democratic candidates over Republican ones, bringing the issue of immigration reform to the forefront of governance. With 71 percent of Latinos having voted for President Barack Obama, many Republican politicians, including Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush, both from Florida, have voiced concerns that their party needs to change its stance on immigration po...
On Wednesday, March 21, a panel discussed the formation of the Occupy Wall Street and Tea Party movements and their predicted effect on the upcoming 2012 presidential election. Mary Marshall Clark, the head of the Columbia Center for Oral History, moderated the event, the second of three spring panels held by the Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy (ISERP). The panel included political science and SIPA professor Dorian Warren;...
The South Asian Association (SAA) at SIPA— a group dedicated to promoting, analyzing, and sharing South Asian traditions, culture, and issues—hosted an interactive Q&A session with the Permanent Representative of India to the United Nations, Hardeep Singh Puri, alongside the Engineering Graduate Student Council (EGSC), Columbia International Relations Council and Association (CIRCA), Club Zamana, and the South Asian Law Students Association...
...backgrounds choose the Arabic program at Columbia University, but Ben Amor notes a few consistent types among students. The ones who appear in his classes, he says, “are generally students who speak Hebrew, heritage students, SIPA students, graduate students.” He also mentions, of course, those who are interested in politics. Students who take Arabic seem to consistently do so for reasons other than filling a language requirement. The marriage be...
...” CHANGE AS A TESTING PERIOD “What’s the first thing that pops up in your mind,” I asked undergraduates and graduate students at Columbia who participated in the Japanese elections, “when you hear Seiken Koutai?” Students at SIPA who have experience working for the Japanese government split into two groups, one uncertain about the DPJ’s ability to govern and the other hopeful and excited about change. Those in the latter group, along with Mizogu...
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