Maxwell School News and Commentary

"The amended Entry Law shouldn’t make it difficult for the vast majority of people who criticize Israel to get tourist visas," writes Miriam Elman, associate professor of political science. "To meet the criteria, you have to hold a senior-level position in certain targeted organizations, be key activists in the boycott movement, be an establishment figure who openly supports the boycott, or operate on behalf of the targeted organizations."

"The Justice Department could certainly apply pressure on Mueller's team to hasten the investigation, make it difficult to obtain the funds beyond certain periods to continue to investigate; more likely that those kinds of informal pressures would be applied rather than removal itself," said William Banks, professor of public administration and international affairs and director of the Institute for National Security and Counterterrorism.

“The Russian ambassador has probably been under surveillance since before you and I were born,” says William C. Banks, professor of public administration and international affairs.

"If the government is serious about exports and jobs, a bolder approach needs to be taken on labor reforms," says Devashish Mitra, professor of economics and the Gerald B. and Daphna Cramer Professor of Global Affairs, about the Indian government.

According to Shana Kushner Gadarian, associate professor of political science, "Images matter. The emotions that you evoke really do have implications for how the public feels about whether or not they are safe, what kinds of beliefs they want to support, and their feelings about fellow citizens and whether or not they want to take liberties away from fellow citizens."

“The two parties are very close in number—it’s a very even split—and they are polarized,” says Grant Reeher, professor of political science and director of the Campbell Public Affairs Institute. “Those things tend to reinforce each other, make it harder to work across the aisle, which makes it harder to pass any big bill.” 

"If we want citizen agency and activism to be strengthened through digital means, then we cannot complain that it works in both political directions: that is the nature of democracy," says Tosca Bruno-Van Vijfeijken, adjunct faculty member at the Maxwell School.

According to Andrew Wender Cohen, professor of history, the current system of training and acclimating young people to the work world has its antecedents in the Middle Ages. “Families couldn’t necessarily afford to feed all the members of the household, so this was a way of getting rid of children who had gotten too old to live in the house and not work,” he says.

Miriam Elman, associate professor of political science, commented on the Israeli academic ethics code and how it compares to that of the American Association of University Professors.