Reflections & Public Posts

Rachel A. Epstein

Josef Korbel School of International Studies, University of Denver

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

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 »

Dr. Hollie Nyseth Nzitatira

Associate Professor of Sociology

Ohio State

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

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

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

Read More »

Jesse Driscoll

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 »

Dipali Mukhopadhyay

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 »

Charli Carpenter

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 »

Daniel Brunstetter

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 »

Sarah Parkinson

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 »

John R. Emery

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 »

Elisabeth King

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 »

Virginia Haufler

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 »

Miles Kahler

The challenge:

• Navigating whether and how to engage with authoritarian regimes in academic spaces
• Lending support to voices situated in authoritarian regimes, without jeopardizing their work and safety

The background and policy setting:

Miles Kahler is a distinguished professor at American University in the fields of international politics and international political economy and Senior Fellow for global

Read More »

Jacqueline Best

The challenges:

• Identifying and understanding the limits and failures of policy expertise, as well as the role and nature of policy ignorance when engaging with policymakers, while acknowledging that policymakers who work in the field of economics are often under a great deal of pressure to get things right
• Approaching issues as a political economist and a social

Read More »

Nadia Brown

The challenges:

• How to show the value of diversity and intersectionality for policymaking in an era of heightened polarization.
• How to effectively contribute to the policy arena as a black feminist when your expertise is in question from the gate given who you are.
• How to push against situations where your identity brings diversity, but you are

Read More »

The challenges:

• Navigating positionality in academic work and community engagement on racial profiling by police
• Improving the ethical issues surrounding expert witnesses, public speaking, and training

The background and policy setting:

This reflection was completed by a professor who studies the economics of stratification, considering such topics as equitable growth, gender, and macroeconomic tools. Their primary research

Read More »

Tanisha M. Fazal

The challenges:

• How to fund policy relevant research without compromising ethics.
• The complexities of managing government funding.
• The dilemmas of private foundation funding.
• The positionality of funding dilemmas.

The background and policy setting:

All scholars need funding for research. Sometimes we need to pay for field research, sometimes for surveys. Sometimes – indeed, often – what we

Read More »

Shareen Hertel

The challenge:

• Providing policy advice on corporate engagement to one’s university from a human rights perspective, while being far removed from corporate decision-making.
• Providing advice to the university as a professor but in a context that operates according to different norms from her teaching and research responsibilities.

The background and policy setting:

Hertel became an academic after

Read More »

Catherine Herrold

Background and Policy Setting

Catherine Herrold studies how local civic actors—including nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), grassroots groups, and philanthropic foundations—promote economic development and democratic political reform. Her first book project examined how leaders of Egyptian NGOs and foundations understood the concept of “democracy” and promoted it in the wake of the 2011 Arab Spring uprisings. In 2020, Herrold published the

Read More »

Martha Finnemore

The challenge: How to advise on complex phenomena (creating cybersecurity norms) when the narrative surrounding them is oversimplified.

• In particular, it is difficult to explain to policymakers the intersubjectivity of norms and their sociological basis in a way that is immediately policy relevant.
• The “problem” in question often involves many dimensions not related to norms at all.

Read More »

James Goldgeier

• How to present novel, controversial ideas without damaging one’s credibility in the policy circles in which one travels
• How to present views that may be considered extreme, with the goal of reframing the policy space on a particular issue

James Goldgeier has worked for many years on NATO. In

Read More »