Close Collaboration with Policymakers

The challenge:

How to help students formulate possible policy responses to undermine Fidesz’s authoritarian  grip on power in Hungary (with lessons for other authoritarian contexts).

Background and policy setting:

In offering the course to 24 graduate students at Korbel, I had two main partners: József Péter Martin, executive director of Transparency International, Hungary, and Dóra Piroska, professor at Central European

... Read More

Type of engagement

This reflection is relevant to people engaging with government officials, policymakers, practitioners, educators, and those who experienced atrocities.

The Challenge

• How to advocate for policy recommendations that, at face value, cause discomfort.

Background

Dr. Nyseth Nzitatira (aka Hollie Nyseth Brehm) obtained her Ph.D. in Sociology at the University of Minnesota in 2014. She is

... Read More

Introductory Note: Jesse Driscoll is an associate professor of political science at the University of California San Diego (UCSD). He is an area specialist in Central Asia, the Causcasus, and the Russian-speaking world. In 2022, he took a year's leave from UCSD to serve in the Plans division of the Joint Staff (J5, Europe/NATO/Russia Division). The following narrative includes his

... Read More

The challenges:

• Present recommendations on the U.S. role in Afghanistan along with empirically informed enumeration of various potential decisions and outcomes
• Bring a different range of voices and perspectives into the U.S. foreign policy debate on Afghanistan
• Grapple with what to do with knowledge production that is unused in policy creation

The background and policy setting:

Dipali

... Read More

The challenges:

• Balancing the desire to collaborate with / provide analytical support to a government agency on a matter of crucial national and human security importance, with the need to maintain institutional and analytical autonomy in our own academic-practitioner interactions.
• Managing expectations by practitioners / policymakers about what type of analysis could be reasonably and ethically produced under

... Read More

The challenges:

• Moving beyond academic critique and arm’s length critiques of defense policy from a “just war” perspective to discussions within military circles based on a more interdisciplinary perspective
• Engaging with future peace and security policymakers to update the “moral vocabulary” around the use of force to take into account the new dilemmas of force short of war,

... Read More

The challenges:

• How to decide when to remove oneself from a research project due to ethical concerns
• How to informally report on policy processes and retain policy relevance even while disengaging from a specific project

The background and policy setting:

Parkinson earned her Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Chicago in 2013. She researches organizational

... Read More

The challenges:

• Determining in which stages of development or deployment of technology to engage with machine learning, using a just war logic
• Choosing to closely engage with a military project as a critical scholar, given that the use of the project may result in the loss of human life

The background and policy setting:

John R. Emery

... Read More

The Challenge:

Responding to requests for substantive revisions to consultancy work that go against one’s findings, analysis, or professional opinion

The Background and Policy Setting:

King is a political scientist committed to conducting policy-relevant research related to war, peace, development, and education. Over the past 15 years, alongside her university-based work, she has partnered with a number of governments, non-governmental

... Read More

The challenges:

• How to collaborate with business representatives in ways that generate fruitful conversations while maintaining your own integrity and reputation
• How to recommend partnerships with business to solve global problems without damaging the partners' reputation and legitimacy or providing business with a shield against legitimate criticism

Background:

Virginia Haufler is a scholar whose research explores the

... Read More