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Afghan girls at school in Herat, Afghanistan, 2019. Photo by Solmaz Daryani/Shutterstock
News January 09, 2023
SPIA Reacts: Implications of the Taliban's Decision to Ban Women and Girls From Attending School in Afghanistan
Late last December, the Taliban announced plans to ban women from attending universities and girls from attending schools in Afghanistan, one of the most dramatic rollbacks of civil liberties since the militant group seized power in Afghanistan following the U.S.’s withdrawal in 2021. Clearly, this decision will have an immense impact on Afghan citizens, particularly women and girls. But the swift condemnation from Western democracies means this decision could also have major implications on relations between the Taliban and the rest of the international community as the group strives to have its government in Afghanistan formally recognized. We…
During the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918-19, face masks were required on public transit in Seattle, Washington. Ian Dagnall Computing/Alamy
News January 06, 2023
Class Close-up: Looking to Pandemics Past to Plan the Future
When the COVID-19 pandemic began to rattle the globe, Professor Keith Wailoo, a historian of medicine, disease, and health care, felt as if we were “living inside our history books,” as one of his colleagues put it. Media outlets and the public suddenly became very interested in finding out what pandemics of the past could teach us. Wailoo said he was peppered with questions like, “What are we going through right now? How does it compare to what’s happened in the past? And are there lessons from the past that we can apply to thinking about and navigating the uncertainties of COVID?” Wailoo, who served as president of the American Association for the…
The Fox Point Hurricane Barrier
News December 21, 2022
Two Rhode Island Coastal Flood Defense Projects Provide Lessons for Making Future Infrastructure Projects More Successful
More than ten years have passed since Hurricane Sandy exposed New York City to devastating coastal flooding. Several cost-effective flood megaprojects, including levees and storm surge barriers, have been presented to the NY-NJ region to prevent future billion-dollar disasters, but none have been selected to be built. Researchers studying climate adaptation have put forward theories about why so many cities have not moved forward on cost-effective flood protection megaprojects, but few have analyzed real-world cases that could uncover actionable insights. A recent study published in the Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management thoroughly…
Photo by Aude Guerrucci
News December 17, 2022
Bridging the Divide: Two Newly Hired Professors Bring Expertise in Development Economics to Solving Global Challenges
Pascaline Dupas’ first job in research was, in her words, “at the very bottom of the pecking order.” She’d traveled to Kenya to work for a year as a field research assistant to Michael Kremer, a pioneer in development economics. Her first task was to help measure parasite levels in Kenyan children, in part by examining their stool samples. It fell to Dupas to label those samples. “I put their poop in a plastic jar,” she said. “We needed to know whose poop was whose. I learned so much from this.” For Dupas, the experience proved inspiring. Her year in Kenya bolstered her desire to alleviate poverty globally, and she returned home convinced that…
2023 SINSI intern cohorts
News December 16, 2022
Princeton Students Named Scholars in the Nation’s Service
Sixteen students at Princeton University have been selected to join the Scholars in the Nation’s Service Initiative (SINSI), which funds graduate fellowships and undergraduate summer internships within federal government agencies. Open to all, the 2023 cohort has representatives from seven Princeton majors and joins a community of 130 SINSI fellows. Established in 2006, SINSI encourages, supports, and prepares high-achieving students to pursue careers in the federal government, in both international and domestic agencies. The initiative aims to provide the professional skills and direct experience needed to succeed in the public policy arena. SINSIs…
People walk through a tunnel between the Reichstag building and a parliament office building in Berlin. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)
News December 13, 2022
Germany Foiled a Far-Right Coup Attempt. It Still Has a Right-Wing Problem.
The German government hasn’t taken its increasing right-wing extremism as seriously as left-wing extremism. That’s been true for decades, our research finds. Last week, German police arrested dozens associated with the far-right Reichsbürger movement on suspicion of plotting a coup. The large-scale raids were a muscular response in a country that has been accused of being slow to root out right-wing extremism. But that doesn’t solve Germany’s problem with right-wing extremism, our new data on intelligence agencies and political parties reveals. People walk through a tunnel between the Reichstag building and a parliament office building in Berlin…
Abdelhamid Arbab
News December 12, 2022
Princeton Senior Abdelhamid Arbab Wins Marshall Scholarship for Graduate Study in UK
Princeton senior Abdelhamid (Hamid) Arbab has been named a 2023 Marshall Scholar to pursue two years of graduate study in the United Kingdom. The Marshall Scholarship offers intellectually distinguished young Americans the opportunity to develop their abilities as future leaders by studying at a UK university of the recipient’s choice. Arbab, of North Arlington, New Jersey, is majoring in the School of Public and International Affairs. He is among the 40 winners of the 2023 Marshall Scholarship, selected from over 950 applicants from public and private colleges and universities across the United States. Photo courtesy of the Office of International…
Susan Haejin Lee for The Washington Post
News December 12, 2022
Opinion: Does Diversity Training Work? We Don’t Know — and Here is Why
In early June 2020, as Black Lives Matter protests flowered across the United States following the murder of George Floyd, businesses and other institutions rushed to enhance their diversity efforts. Chief diversity officer hires tripled among the largest publicly traded companies, enhancing diversity, equity and inclusion offerings for which U.S. companies paid an estimated $3.4 billion to outside firms that year. What have we achieved with all this effort? In 2022, this question has special significance, as measures to increase diversity and racial equity have come under political attack, often by people who believe those shouldn’t be goals in the…
Prymachenko
News December 07, 2022
'It’s About Surviving. It’s About Continuing Our Work.'
Huddled with her mother beneath old blankets and broken furniture in a basement in Chernihiv in northern Ukraine, under siege by Russian troops and with bombs exploding on the residential streets outside, Yana Prymachenko felt the eerie resonance of her World War II scholarship. Prymachenko is a Ukrainian historian of Eastern Europe, World War II and the Holocaust. “I have read a lot about this,” she said. “Now I also have this real experience. I’ve read the diaries of people who survived the war in World War II, and I knew exactly what was going on.” After 10 days in Chernihiv — which was taken by Russian troops almost immediately after Russia’s…
Aerial drone view of large soybean farms in the Amazon rainforest, Brazil. Photo credit: Frontpage / Shutterstock
News November 30, 2022
Europe’s Proposed Climate Plan Will Outsource Deforestation and Harm Biodiversity
Europe’s “Fit for 55” climate plan, through its bioenergy rules, outsources deforestation and sacrifices Europe’s opportunity for a beneficial land future. In July 2021, the European Union proposed a policy package that aimed to reduce EU greenhouse gas emissions by fifty-five percent by 2030. The series of laws known as “Fit for 55” are the subject of final negotiations between the European Parliament and the European Council, which represent EU country governments. However, a new analysis by Princeton University and scientists from several European institutions finds that the current Fit for 55 laws will sacrifice carbon storage and biodiversity in…
Sophie Meunier
News November 29, 2022
The End of Naivety: Assertiveness and New Instruments in EU Trade and Investment Policy
For decades the European Union (EU) was a pillar of free trade liberalisation in the world. It pursued a liberal free trade agenda predicated on achieving true freedom of movement within its internal market and using access to its market as both carrot and stick for the rest of the world. EU commercial policy was guided by a liberal ideology rooted in a strong belief that the opening of markets around the world was essential for prosperity, democracy and peace – in addition to being a goal in itself. As one of the world’s three largest traders, the EU has long been a central player in the World Trade Organization (WTO) regime and one of its most…
COP27 flag
News November 23, 2022
SPIA Students Explore the World’s Climate Challenges at COP27
Recognizing the importance of introducing the next generation to some of the world’s most important policy conversations, the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs (SPIA) sent a group of students to the 27th Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP27) in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt in November for a first-hand opportunity to observe the proceedings of the largest global gathering on climate change. Since the first UNFCCC conference was held in Berlin in 1995, governments have met annually to discuss policies to address climate change and the rise in global temperatures. As countries such…
Susan Baek
News November 15, 2022
‘It’s almost impossible to perceive me as what I fully constitute.’ Our Year of the Tiger Series Continues.
The Year of the Tiger that launched with this Lunar New Year is a moment of pride and reflection for Princeton’s vibrant Asian and Asian American community. Throughout the year, we are elevating the voices of faculty, staff, students and researchers in a series of thoughtful interviews exploring questions of identity, pride, hope, the lived experience of anti-Asian racism, and meaningful steps that allies can take. We continue the series with Susan Baek, Class of 2023, who is majoring in the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs and pursuing minors in cognitive science and Asian American studies. Baek, a member of Mathey College,…
A crowd of people walking with coats
News November 15, 2022
Princeton Researchers Tackle Infectious Disease, Climate, and the Link Between the Two
As experienced in the recent COVID pandemic, the outbreak and rapid spread of infectious disease has potential to dramatically impact human morality, public health systems, and economies worldwide. Society’s ability to control and prevent infectious disease hinges on our understanding of the many factors influencing transmission. There are numerous unanswered questions about how disease spread is being impacted by changes in extreme weather, temperature shifts, climate migration, and population density. Researchers affiliated with Princeton’s Climate and Infectious Disease Group are working across disciplinary lines to explore how climate induced…
book cover
News November 11, 2022
Michael Oppenheimer Writes Chapter in Greta Thunberg’s New Book
Princeton climate scientist Michael Oppenheimer first came to the attention of climate activist Greta Thunberg in 2019, the year of the children’s strike that made the Swedish teenager a household name across the globe. Thunberg’s team reached out to him after the release of an influential report on the world’s oceans that Oppenheimer coauthored for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and they stayed in touch. This year, Oppenheimer is one of 100 expert contributors to Thunberg’s new anthology, “The Climate Book: The Facts and the Solutions” (Penguin Random House), which was published in the U.K. Oct. 27 and is slated for U.S. release in…