Policy Task Forces

Tuesday 1:30pm-4:20pm Amb. Philippe Etienne

This Policy Task Force will focus on European Defense and Security Policy. Starting with post-WWII European integration, our discussion will include the EU’s relationship to NATO, the US, and its place in the global milieu. We will discuss European treaties of foreign and security policy and of the goal of a defense policy. Natural touch points will be the concepts of strategic autonomy, European sovereignty, and positions taken by different stakeholders and member states accounting for the rapidly changing strategic environment (e.g. hybrid warfare, the rise of Chinese power, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, US disputes over Greenland, technology). Accordingly, with such a high degree of structural dependence, we will also touch on the evolution of American national security strategy and priorities.   

Philippe Etienne, a graduate of France's prestigious École Normale Supérieure (ENS rue d'Ulm) in mathematics, became a diplomat upon completing his civil service training at ENA in 1980. He has served in the former Yugoslavia (1981/83), in I"1oscow (at a time of important changes, 1991/1994, in charge of cultural, scientific and technical cooperation) and was ambassador in Romania (2002/2005) at the end of the accession negotiations of this country to the EU. He was posted twice in Germany before and after the reunification (in Bonn 1984/1986 and as ambassador to Germany in Berlin 2014/2017) as well as on three occasions at the Permanent Representation of France to the European Union (1988/1991 in charge of the Internal I"1arket, 1997/2002 as deputy Perm Rep as he chaired Coreper I in 2000, and 2009/2014 as Ambassador, Permanent Representative during the Eurozone crisis).

Thursday 1:30pm-4:20pm - Mihir Kshirsagar

Democratic governance depends on spaces where people can think together — town meetings, courtrooms, public comment periods, legislative hearings. But new technologies increasingly penetrate and reshape these environments. How do we extend protections for spaces that promote collective deliberation?

Working directly with state legislators this taskforce will develop a legislative framework for safeguarding deliberative environments from technological manipulation.

Taskforce activities include:

• Mapping how emerging technologies currently shape spaces for collective reasoning and public participation.
• Analyzing the existing doctrinal landscape — First Amendment, administrative law, consumer protection, AI governance — to identify potential gaps and opportunities.
• Distilling technical and academic research into concrete legislative provisions.
• Presenting findings and draft legislation to policymakers and stakeholders.

This taskforce offers a rare opportunity to work at the frontier of technology governance — where democratic theory meets legislative drafting — and to make a tangible contribution to an emerging area of law.

Mihir Kshirsagar directs the technology policy clinic at Princeton's Center for Information Technology Policy (CITP). Drawing on his background as an antitrust and consumer protection litigator, his research examines the consumer impact of digital markets and explores how digital public infrastructure can be designed for public benefit.

Tuesday 1:30pm-4:20pm - Akash Kapur

As AI becomes increasingly embedded in our lives, we face consequential choices about the kind of ecosystem we are building. The current trajectory points toward concentration: powerful AI systems controlled by a handful of companies and states, optimized primarily for commercial or strategic advantage. Yet we are early enough in the lifecycle of this technology that another possibility remains open, one in which the levers of policy and institutional design could shape AI to advance broader public and societal interests.

This course examines the idea of “public AI”—an emerging field that conceives of AI not merely as private technology, but as infrastructure aligned with democratic governance, economic development, and social welfare. We will analyze the laws and market structures that shape AI, and we will examine some technical options (e.g., open source) that could determine its impact. Topics include AI safety and evaluation, frugal and edge AI, and lessons from previous waves of technical innovation, such as the Internet. The course takes a global perspective, comparing AI in the USA with approaches in the EU and the Global South. India’s experience with digital public infrastructure (DPI) will be a particular area of focus. Students will engage with foundational ethical and governance questions at the start of the term and then translate those concepts into concrete policy proposals and recommendations.

Akash Kapur is a Visiting Research Scholar at Princeton’s Chadha Center for Global India, where he co-leads a project on digital public infrastructure (DPI) and AI. He is also a Senior Fellow at The GovLab and at New America, where his work focuses on global AI governance. He has advised policymakers and organizations in India and Rwanda, as well as institutions such as UNDP and the Digital Public Goods Alliance (DPGA). He writes frequently about technology in the media, including in the New Yorker, the Wall Street Journal, Foreign Policy, and the New York Times (where he is a former columnist).

Wednesday 1:30-4:20 PM - Phillip Connor

After decades without immigration reform addressing undocumented immigrants, the undocumented population has remained in the millions, with most having no long-term pathway for permanent residency or legal work authorization. Broad policy solutions include legalization, mass deportation, or keeping the status quo that combines a mix of deportation efforts and keeping millions in undocumented status. The current administration’s efforts have been focused on mass deportation whereas legalization, of varying levels and for different groups, remains a bipartisan concern for many in Congress. After years of a status-quo approach, mostly based on executive actions, what politically-viable policies can obtain bipartisan support while remaining true to voter concerns? This Policy Task Force will understand how the undocumented immigrant population came to exist, past policy efforts to address the issue, the political challenges beyond the status quo approach, and potential policy solutions legislators could take in the next Congress and beyond.

Phillip Connor is a Canadian-American researcher who conducts timely research with critical policy impacts. He earned his Ph.D. in sociology from Princeton University and spent nearly a decade at Pew Research Center, producing influential research on global migration and immigrant integration. From 2020 to 2025, Phillip was Senior Demographer at FWD.us, driving data strategy on immigration reform, working alongside a team of scholars from universities across the nation. He is currently a Research Fellow at Princeton University’s Center for Migration and Development. 

Wednesday 1:30pm-4:20pm - Doug Mercado

For 2026, the United Nations estimates that 239 million people around the world will be in need of humanitarian assistance due to conflict, climate shocks, and natural disasters.  However, the international system designed to deliver critical aid during crises is at a breaking point. Sweeping cuts by donor governments that began in 2024 and accelerated through 2025 and into 2026 forced aid agencies to shutter, suspend, and stop services for communities in crisis. International funding for disaster relief and humanitarian response has fallen to its lowest level in a decade, leaving tens of millions of people without life-saving assistance, even as two famines unfolded simultaneously for the first time in recorded history. Political support for humanitarian aid has dropped alongside funding, while respect for the safety and security of aid workers has declined sharply. Over 380 aid workers were killed in 2025, the highest on record, and this has made it increasingly difficult to reach the world's most vulnerable populations.

At the same time, the system is navigating a contested reinvention. The United Nations has launched a "Humanitarian Reset," a concerted effort to shrink, streamline, and refocus the humanitarian system amid severe funding shortfalls, prioritizing life-saving operations, reducing overhead, and pushing agencies to work more efficiently. Whether this Reset represents a genuine path forward or a retreat from the system's core mission of saving lives and serving populations in crisis is the defining question of the moment.

This task force will examine the historical foundations and current state of the international humanitarian system and assess how it must adapt to survive. Students will explore the legal, institutional, and financial frameworks that underpin humanitarian action and evaluate proposals for reform. Drawing on historical case studies, current crises, and guest practitioners from the field, the task force will develop policy recommendations for strengthening the effectiveness of humanitarian action in the years ahead.

Doug Mercado is a senior humanitarian leader with more than 30 years of experience directing emergency operations, post-conflict recovery, and stabilization programs across Africa, the Americas, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, with the UN, USAID, and international NGOs.

His career spans some of the world's most complex crises, including leading the U.S. government's Disaster Assistance Response Team during the West Africa Ebola outbreak, serving as USAID Team Leader at the outset of the Tigray crisis, directing WFP emergency responses to the Venezuelan migration crisis in Colombia, and leading programs in Moldova and Romania to support refugees while channeling food aid into Ukraine for conflict-affected populations. He is currently a Strategic Advisor to Movement in Refuge, an organization that uses sports to support conflict-displaced refugee youth. He also teaches graduate-level humanitarian policy at Indiana University. Mercado holds a Master in Public Policy from Princeton's School of Public and International Affairs, a Master of Arts in Latin American Studies from the University of Texas at Austin, and a Bachelor of Arts from William & Mary.

Monday 1:30-4:20pm - Andrew Buher

The United States faces a severe youth mental health crisis. Two years ago, the U.S. Surgeon General took the unusual step of issuing a public advisory on the state of youth mental health. The advisory documented how the Covid-19 pandemic has worsened student mental health challenges, leading to higher rates of youth depression, anxiety, self-harm and suicide.  

This task force will consider this fundamental question: What is the responsibility and ability of America's schools to address the youth mental health crisis? The task force will examine strategies, policies and interventions that lead schools and districts to successfully support student mental health. Specific topics include: the purpose of schools and schooling; how public schools work (and don't); the state of student mental health; and barriers and opportunities to support youth mental health in schools.  

The task force will consist of a series of discussions with each other, the instructor, and with prominent education, government and healthcare leaders. Additionally, throughout the course, students will develop and refine practical skills, including giving and receiving feedback, facilitation, oral and written communication, and teamwork and collaboration.

Andrew Buher is Founder and Managing Director of Opportunity Labs, a national nonprofit organization that exists to build and champion meaningful opportunities for children. Previously, he was appointed by President Obama to serve as a White House Fellow at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development where he was Special Assistant to Secretary Julian Castro. Prior to his work at HUD, Andrew was the Chief Operating Officer of the New York City Department of Education and before that Chief of Staff to the Department's Chancellor, Dennis Walcott. Andrew has served as a lecturer at Georgetown University's McCourt School of Public Policy and is a Senior Fellow at FutureEd, a nonpartisan think tank at Georgetown.  His writing and commentary has been featured in The Hill, CNN, Politico, EdWeek, and the NY Daily News.

TBD Martin Flaherty

The People’s Republic of China [PRC] and Chinese Communist Party [CCP] presents among the greatest and most complex challenges to the realization of the rule of law and fundamental human rights.  No other society has realized so many economic and social rights so quickly and on such a vast scale.  Yet the PRC remains among the greatest and most persistent offenders of civil and political rights.  Assaults on human rights and the rule of law have increased dramatically under Xi Jinping. Domestically, the Party-State has engaged in often brutal crackdowns on ethnic and religious minorities, civil society groups, lawyers, human rights advocates, and academics, including Xinjiang, Tibet, and Hong Kong.  Further afield, the PRC continues to take steps to assert control over Taiwan.  Beyond its own borders the Xin Jinping regime has also sought to persecute critics beyond its borders through transnational repression, export disinformation, and undermine democratic elections.  Finally, the Party-State has also sought to undermine international human rights law at the UN and in other fora.

This Task Force will focus on the PRC’s ongoing assault the rule of law beyond its borders, especially in Taiwan and the United States, and consider what possible steps that the US government under the Trump Administration should respond.  In particular, it will consider the experience of Taiwan, as a case study of a polity especially susceptible to PRC influence, but likewise creative in its responses.  The Task Force will make recommendations to relevant organizations in New York and Washington D.C., including the Council on Foreign Relations, Congress, major human rights organization, and representatives from Taiwan.

Martin S. Flaherty is Leitner Family Professor of International Law and Founding Co-Director of the Leitner Center for International Law and Justice at Fordham Law School and Visiting Professor at Columbia Law School.  He is also a founder of the Committee to Support Chinese Lawyers, and President of the American Association of the International Commission of Jurists.

TBD Susan Marquis

Spurred by the disruptions of COVID-19 and AI, an ever-shifting labor market, accelerating income inequality, or simply the realization that minimum wage is not a living wage, recent headlines have declared a new energy in fighting for fair pay and safe working conditions, even while uncertainty is the rule in anticipating opportunities for work and what’s next for the U.S. economy. This policy task force will build on the history of workers’ rights and labor organizing to understand labor and the workforce today, in industries and professions ranging from garment workers to autoworkers, Starbuck’s baristas to farmworkers, and cleaning crews to the tech world. We’ll dive deep into labor unions and new models for defining and claiming workers’ rights and labor’s role in civil society. Finally, we’ll take these lessons and extend them to the principles, strategies, and new models for organizing more broadly as we see the world around us organize online or take to the streets.

Susan L. Marquis is Charles and Marie Robertson Visiting Professor in Princeton’s School of Public and International Affairs, former Frank and Marcia Carlucci Dean of the RAND Graduate School and Vice President for Innovation at the RAND Corporation, and has served in senior federal government positions, including as an Assistant Deputy Chief of Naval Operations.  She’s the author of I Am Not a Tractor! How Florida Farmworkers Took on the Fast-Food Giants and Won (Cornell) and Unconventional Warfare: Rebuilding U.S. Special Operations Forces (Brookings). Marquis has published articles and commentaries on workers’ rights, human rights, and groundbreaking women in national security and STEM and spoken on new approaches to public policy and leveraging technology in the public interest in forums ranging from the USC Institute for Body Computing to the AMP Music Summit to the Aspen Institute. 

TBD Ethan Kapstein

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, coupled with the re-election of Donald Trump as U.S. president, are causing the member-states of the European Union to invest heavily in rearmament and to reconsider their national security requirements and strategies. For decades, Western Europe was a zone of relative peace, and to the extent it faced major threats, most of these countries were also members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO); as such, Europeans were confident that they could live safely under the nuclear umbrella provided mainly by the United States. 

Many responsible parties in Europe are now doubting the American commitment to the continent’s security, seeking “strategic autonomy” as one guidepost to defense planning. Others remain confident in the underlying strength of transatlantic bonds, seeking ways to reinforce them through defense-industrial cooperation and stronger military-to-military ties. Still others, while hopeful that the NATO alliance will remain robust, believe the European Union (EU) needs to duplicate at least some of the capabilities now being provided by the United States, while investing more in the defense technologies that will shape the future of war. These are among the possible futures that deserve intensive study and analysis.

The purpose of this PTF is to examine ongoing European debates over defense policy, with the objective of developing an empirically-grounded understanding of the direction it is likely to take given the spending and acquisition priorities of the EU and its member-states. Indeed, one of the major ongoing debates concerns the role of the EU versus that of its members. Should the EU try to replicate NATO with respect to military policy? Should the EU become the central node through which defense-related funding is mobilized and allocated? Or should defense remain primarily the realm of individual member-states, which continue to have independent strategic interests and priorities?

Ethan B. Kapstein is Executive Director of the Empirical Studies of Conflict project (esoc.princeton.edu) at Princeton’s School of Public and International Affairs, where he is also lecturer with rank of professor. Kapstein’s research focuses on the intersection of economics and national security, and he is currently studying economic relations among military allies. A retired naval reserve officer, Kapstein has also served in the U.S. government and as a Principal Administrator at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in Paris. He previously held academic appointments at Arizona State, Harvard, and the University of Texas, and for many years taught at INSEAD, an international business school with campuses in France and Singapore.

TBD Jessica Metcalf and Bryan Grenfell

Vaccination against a wide range of infectious diseases is one of the most powerful tools to improve public health.  As well as the basic requirements of developing and disseminating vaccines, a rich blend of disciplines (epidemiology, informatics and modeling, regulation and licensure, behavioral dynamics etc.) is required to shape optimal vaccine policy.

Historically much of the drive and coordination of these efforts in the US were provided by Federal Agencies (CDC, NIH, FDA etc.).  However, since January 2025, the Federal Agencies’ grip on vaccination policy and guidance has arguably been loosened.   This has led to an increasing role for the States in shaping vaccine policy and preservation of vaccine availability for their inhabitants.  The resulting fragmentation of decision-making risks significant gaps in vaccine policy research, which this Task Force addresses.

We begin with a broad introduction to the biology, population dynamics, social history and analysis of pathogens, vaccines and vaccination policy.  Vaccine hesitancy and recently-altered federal and State policy on vaccines will be a particular focus of these sessions. This exercise will allow students to identify potential gaps in analyses of vaccine policy which they will address in their individual projects.  Sessions will include lectures, student presentations and talks by visiting experts.  We aim for the projects and final synthetic report to provide useful analyses for vaccine policy efforts at the level of States and State groupings.

Jessica Metcalf is a professor in SPIA and EEB.  Her research has a strong focus on the intersection between demography and vaccination policy, particular in low resource settings. She acted as a Technical Advisor to the World Health Organization on the topic of rubella vaccination. 

Bryan Grenfell is a professor in SPIA and EEB.  He has researched the population dynamics of infectious disease for 40 years, with a particular focus on control of vaccine preventable disease.  Grenfell has given vaccination policy advice at local, national and international levels.

TBD Wendy McWeeny and Raquel Mazon Jeffers

Long-standing inequities in maternal health outcomes remain a pressing challenge for policymakers. Across the United States, where a person lives, works, and raises a family profoundly shapes their health and well-being. Factors such as access to safe housing, nutritious food, reliable transportation, quality education, and economic opportunity play a critical role in shaping maternal and infant outcomes.

This class will examine how state policymakers can address maternal health challenges through direct, flexible financial support to families. While maternal health is shaped by a wide range of social and economic conditions, this course will focus specifically on the role of unconditional cash transfer programs as a policy tool to improve outcomes. Using New Jersey as a case study, students will explore how these programs can be designed, funded, and implemented at the state level to better support pregnant individuals and families. The course will also consider key policy design choices, delivery mechanisms, and opportunities to align cash-based approaches with existing health and social service systems.

Raquel Mazon Jeffers is co-director of The Community Health Acceleration Partnership (CHAP), where she is focused on creating more integrated and community-based care systems at the state and national level. Ms. Mazon Jeffers brings over 30 years of experience leading transformative public health initiatives. She’s impacted health and behavioral health systems on behalf of Government agencies, foundations and non-profits. Much of her work has focused on delivery system reform for vulnerable populations. Together with her CHAP colleagues and partners, Raquel is working to change the role of philanthropy, carving out new spaces for donors to listen, putting the decision-making power in the hands of community members, and ensuring that investments facilitate sustainable, positive community health change. Before joining CHAP, Ms. Mazon Jeffers was a Senior Program Officer at The Nicholson Foundation, where she led grantmaking on population health, telehealth, and maternal and child health. Prior to Nicholson, Ms. Mazon Jeffers served as Deputy Director of the Division of Mental Health and Addiction Services for the New Jersey Department of Human Services. In this role, she modernized New Jersey’s addition system of care increasing access and integrating behavioral health and primary care services. Ms. Mazon Jeffers holds two Master’s degrees, one in Public Health and the other in International Affairs.

Wendy McWeeny is co-director of The Community Health Acceleration Partnership, where she leads the team in building high-impact community health programs through collaboration, capacity-building and mobilization of private and public resources. Throughout her career, Wendy has worked to advance birth equity, strengthen community-based workforce programs and policies, and build philanthropic alliances to better coordinate and leverage public dollars. Wendy has worked in philanthropy for over two decades, primarily as a senior advisor at the MCJ Amelior Foundation, the family foundation of Ray Chambers, U.N. and WHO Special Envoy and founder of Wesray Capital. Wendy staffed projects in Newark, NJ prior to heading the Foundation’s global portfolio, where she helped to establish two non-profits, Millennium Promise and Malaria No More. While at the MCJ Amelior Foundation Wendy also supported the establishment of the first Office of the UN Special Envoy for Malaria, which had an instrumental role in increasing financing for malaria interventions and decreasing malaria deaths by 50%. Her work with this office expanded to supporting Community Health Worker programs in sub-Saharan Africa, leading to an interest in growing and financially sustaining community-based workforces in Africa and subsequently the U.S. Wendy received her BA from Princeton University, where she also received a Master’s in Public Administration from the School for Public and International Affairs. 

TBD Nicky Sheets\

This task force will begin by providing background on the grassroots environmental justice (EJ) movement in the United States, including information on the organizations and coalitions that are part of the movement. Other topics explored as part of the background will be the relationships between the EJ movement and the environmental movement, government, and academia, as well as the history of the EJ movement. The disproportionate siting of unwanted land uses in EJ communities and the possible reasons for this disproportionate siting will also be examined. With this grounding, the task force will focus on EJ issues and policies connected to data centers. It will explore detrimental impacts that data centers could impose on EJ communities, i.e., communities Of Color and communities with low-income, and efforts by the EJ grassroots movement to develop data center public policy from an EJ perspective. The New Jersey Environmental Justice Alliance (NJEJA) will most likely play an important role in developing the task force and efforts will be made to ensure that written work produced by task force students will be directly relevant to the work of NJEJA.

Dr. Nicky Sheats, Esq., is the director of the Center for the Urban Environment of the John S. Watson Institute for Urban Policy and Research at Kean University and has defined the primary mission of the Center as providing support for the environmental justice (EJ) community.  Among the issues he works on are air pollution, climate change, cumulative impacts, developing EJ legal strategies and increasing the working capacity of the EJ community. Sheats was a founding member of the NJ EJ Alliance, EJ Leadership Forum, EJ and Science Initiative, the Equitable and Just National Climate Platform and an informal NE EJ Attorneys Group. He has been appointed to the NJ Clean Air Council, EPA’s Clean Air Act Advisory Committee and National EJ Advisory Council and was a co-author of the human health chapter of the 2014 national climate assessment. He is currently serving on the newly created White House EJ Advisory Council. Early in his career Sheats practiced law as a public interest attorney. He holds a B.A. from Princeton University and earned a Ph.D. in Earth and Planetary Sciences, J.D. and M.P.P. from Harvard University. 

TBD Miguel Lago

This task force course examines how a complex democracy can improve social policy under conditions of inequality and institutional fragmentation. Engaging students in the design of actionable proposals for national and subnational governments, the course treats Brazil as a uniquely rich policy environment: the only country in the world with more than 200 million people to offer universal health coverage to its entire population, alongside one of the largest cash transfer programs globally. It is also a data-rich context, with extensive information available to inform policy design.

Marked by deep social and regional inequalities, Brazil is an ideal setting to study both policy success and failure. Students will work in teams to develop targeted reform agendas across domains such as health, urban policy, and others, while remaining attentive to cross-cutting challenges.

The course culminates in a final report with concrete, evidence-informed recommendations aimed at improving effectiveness, equity, and long-term sustainability.

Miguel Lago is a political scientist whose research and teaching focus on the intersections of health policy, technology, and democracy. He has designed and taught graduate courses on Technology and Democracy at Sciences Po (Paris) and Columbia University (New York), on Social Participation and Health Policies at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. He is the co-author of The Language of Destruction (with Heloisa Starling and Newton Bignotto), What We Talk About When We Talk About Populism (with Thomás Zicman de Barros), and Building a State for the Twenty-First Century (with Francisco Gaetani). His research spans populism, social media, democratic innovation, and health systems.

Miguel serves as Executive Director of the Institute for Health Policy Studies (IEPS), a leading Brazil-based research institute on health systems. He previously co-founded and directed NOSSAS, one of the largest civic-tech organizations in Latin America. His writing and views have appeared in The New York Times, The Economist, The Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, Le Monde, and other major international outlets. In 2019, he was named one of the 100 most influential people in digital government by Apolitical.

TBD Jeremy Seekings

TBD Udi Ofer

TBD Laura Thornton