Maxwell School News and Commentary

On presidential candidate John Delaney's suggestion that if elected, he would debate Congress four times a year, Professor Grant Reeher opines: "I can see that this is an effort to change the political culture by requiring direct engagement, but the participants have to agree to take the exercise at face value, in front of TV cameras, and the political disincentives against doing that right now are strong."

Gladys McCormick, the Jay and Debe Moskowitz Endowed Chair in Mexico-U.S. Relations at the Maxwell School, was published in The Hill. She writes about the interpolation by the Trump administration of southern border refugees as Mexican, whereas these immigrants are also fleeing Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador as well.

According to Emily Thorson, assistant professor of political science, negative misinformation about a politician of an opposing party is hard to shake, even after people learn that the original story was false.

Catherine Gerard, director of the Program for the Advancement of Research on Conflict and Collaboration, discusses the importance of peacebuilding, dialogue and local efforts in combatting violence against women across the globe. She appeared on a documentary featuring a local women's group, Women Transcending Boundaries, which is a group that fosters a community of women from many faith and cultural traditions seeking to nurture mutual respect and understanding.

According to Mary Lovely, professor of economics, China's leadership is "looking for friends everywhere." And with France being an important player in Europe, "they're also looking to continue to diversify their portfolio in terms of where they do business and how they do business," she says.

 "When you put out things that people can get behind, you also put out things that people can criticize," says Grant Reeher, professor of political science and director of the Campbell Public Affairs Institute, about Senator Warren's campaign strategy to release detailed policy positions early on in the primary cycle.

"The size of the court is not specified in the constitution and it's changed multiple times…in the first 100 years it was a regular occurrence for Congress to change the size of the Supreme Court," says Thomas Keck, professor of political science and Michael O. Sawyer Chair of Constitutional Law and Politics.

 According to Tina Nabatchi, Joseph A. Strasser Endowed Professor in Public Administration, the ratio between workforce and number of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests appears difficult to manage.