Alumni Newsletter Autumn 2010
| Alumni & Students | Department News | Faculty News | Faculty Publications |
Alumni & Students
Alumna Profile: Sibyl Kirkpatrick-McKee, IRIC, 2009
Since graduating in September 2009, my life has been replete with job market challenges. At first, the reams of resumes, revised cover letters and cheerful emails (always professionally succinct but brimming with idealism and eagerness) brought me great satisfaction. Just like expecting a fair grade to reflect the amount of effort and accuracy put in to various papers during graduate school, I expected finding a great job would follow the same logic. Not quite. The cards were stacked against me and the rest of the American workforce, especially those of us with advanced degrees and limited experience. It became a struggle to maintain what was once unshakable confidence in my own qualifications and motivations.
Finally, this past May, I received an invitation to return for the second round of interviews for a seemingly unreachable position. Two rounds later, I got the job. After so many months of struggling to pay the bills, of losing my optimism, of questioning my life decisions, I’m happy to say that my stars did eventually align. At Diploma Plus, Inc. I serve as the Assistant Data and Communications Manager, and am a member of our national team headquartered in downtown Boston. Our work in non-profit education development utilizes avenues of policy, community outreach, teacher training and support, as well grant and private funding for alternative high schools around the country. While not international in scope, Diploma Plus, like the IR department before it, is preparing me for a career that is global in its impact. Not only am I grateful for this new opportunity, I’m constantly reminded of the virtues my arduous job search newly defined: patience and persistence.
Department News
Master of Arts in Latin American Studies
After several years in gestation, Boston University gave final approval for a Master of Arts in Latin American Studies in May 2010. Drawing on a strong and diverse faculty across the social sciences and humanities, this new MA has several distinctive features.
One feature is an issue-oriented focus of study. During their first two semesters, students will select courses that best match their interests across five issue areas: Globalization and Development; Politics and Civil Society; U.S. Policy and Inter-American Relations; History and Archeology; and Literature, Art, and Culture.
A second feature is a current events course. During their first semester, students will take a two-credit course on Contemporary Latin American Issues, intended to familiarize new students with the major developments and controversies in the region.
A third distinctive element is study and an internship in a Latin American country. Arrangements have been made with the Graduate School of the University of Belgrano, in Buenos Aires, Argentina for students to spend their third semester taking courses there and also to have an internship with an Argentine institution that relates well with their career goals. However, as student interests dictate, the study abroad requirement may be fulfilled elsewhere in Latin America.
Students will complete their work with an MA research or policy paper during their fourth and final semester, in residence, in the field, or some combination of both. Given that this is now the only MA in Latin American Studies in the Boston area, we anticipate that there will be a great deal of interest in the program. The first group of students to be admitted to the program will begin in the fall of 2011.
For more information about Latin American Studies at BU, visit www.bu.edu/las.
Faculty News
William Grimes
Professor William W. Grimes has been appointed Chair of the IR Department.
Grimes has taught in the IR Department at BU since 1996 and is the founding director of the BU Center for the Study of Asia, which was established in 2008. He spent 1995-96 as an Advanced Research Fellow at Harvard University’s Program on US-Japan Relations, and 1999-2000 as a Reischauer Visiting Assistant Professor at Harvard’s Department of Government.
Commenting on the approach that our department takes to international affairs, Grimes said, “We think of international relations education as a toolbox for understanding the many challenges and opportunities of international affairs. Rather than focusing solely on one or two analytical approaches or methods, we encourage our students to choose the most appropriate methods for analyzing specific issues based on the issues themselves rather than the perspective of any single academic discipline. Accordingly, our faculty come from a variety of backgrounds and our curriculum draws on the insights of Political Science, History, Economics, Environmental Studies, Anthropology, Sociology, and Religion. Our approach is not merely multidisciplinary in the sense of taking courses from a variety of departments; rather, both the graduate and undergraduate programs build upon coherent sets of core classes that bring together key analytical approaches and knowledge bases.”
Joseph Wippl
Professor 
Joseph Wippl has been appointed Director of Graduate Studies for the IR Department.
Commenting on the responsibilities of his new role, Wippl said, “The IR graduate program’s objective is to prepare to our utmost ability our students at BU for later career development in both the public and private sectors.
Wippl is a former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officer. He spent a 30 year career as an operations officer in the National Clandestine Service (NCS). Wippl has served overseas as an operations officer and operations manager in Bonn, West Germany; Guatemala City; Luxembourg; Madrid, Spain; Mexico City; Vienna, Austria; and Berlin, Germany. On assignments in CIA headquarters, he served as the Deputy Chief of Human Resources, as the Senior NCS representative to the Aldrich Ames Damage Assessment Team, as Chief of Europe Division and as the CIA’s Director of Congressional Affairs. Wippl has coordinated extensively with other members of the U.S. intelligence community. Prior to his arrival at Boston University, he occupied the Richard Helms Chair for Intelligence Collection in the NCS training program. Wippl has taught at BU since 2006.
Kaija Schilde
Professor Kaija Schilde joined the faculty of the IR Department in the Fall 2010 semester.
Schilde’s teaching and research interests include the politics of the European Union, particularly the emerging foreign and security policies of the EU, the political economy of defense and security industries, the linkages between public and private actors in Brussels, the historical and comparative dynamics of federalism, and European public opinion on EU politics. She has a government policy background in defense acquisition reform and transatlantic defense policies.
Her dissertation examines how the performance and quality of EU institutions is enhanced through public-private interactions between bureaucrats and organized interest groups. In studying the dynamics of everyday politics in Brussels, she focuses on the cases of European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP) and immigration and border security policy.
Manjari Miller
The IR department also welcomed Professor Manjari Chatterjee Miller as a new member of the faculty. She will begin teaching classes in the Spring 2011 semester.
Miller works on foreign policy and security issues in international relations with a focus on South and East Asia. She specializes in the politics and foreign policy of rising power India, with an additional focus on China. Her doctoral work examined the influence of the different experiences of colonialism in India and China on their contemporary foreign policy decisions. She is interested in ideational influences on foreign policy and conceptions of state security. She is currently working on the concept of loyalty in military units.
Ann Helwege
Professor Ann Helwege, who has occasionally taught courses for the IR Department in the past, has joined us for a full-time multi-year stint as a visiting professor.
Helwege teaches courses in environmental policy and economic development, with a focus on Latin America. Her aim is to help students identify equitable, sustainable and reasonably efficient policies appropriate to developing countries. Often, this involves exploring incentives embedded in trade, macroeconomic, and social policies.
Helwege taught Economics for 18 years (1983-2001) at Tufts University, primarily in the graduate Department of Urban and Environmental Policy. She has also taught at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Emmanuel College and Wellesley College. She is the co-author of Latin America’s Economy, as well as co-editor of Latin America’s Economic Future and Modernization and Stagnation: Latin American Agriculture. Her work on poverty in Latin America has been presented at the World Bank, the Federal Reserve and the International Labor Organization. She is presently a Senior Research Fellow at the Global Development and Environment Institute, where her research focuses on poverty and environment in Latin America.
Stephen Kinzer
Professor Stephen Kinzer, who taught several courses for the IR Department in the past, has joined us for a multi-year appointment as a full-time visiting professor.
Kinzer is an award-winning foreign correspondent who has covered more than 50 countries on five continents. His articles and books have led the Washington Post to call him “among the best in popular foreign policy storytelling.”
Kinzer spent more than 20 years working for the New York Times, most of it as a foreign correspondent. His foreign postings placed him at the center of historic events and, at times, in the line of fire. While covering world events, he has been shot at, jailed, beaten by police, tear-gassed and bombed from the air.
In 2006 Kinzer published Overthrow: America’s Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq. It recounts the 14 times the United States has overthrown foreign governments. Kinzer seeks to explain why these interventions were carried out and what their long-term effects have been. He is also the author of All the Shah’s Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror.
Faculty Publications
Washington Rules: America’s Path to Permanent War
By Andrew Bacevich
For the last half century, as administrations have come and gone, the fundamental assumptions about America’s military policy have remained unchanged: American security requires the United States (and us alone) to maintain a permanent armed presence around the globe, and to be ready to intervene anywhere at any time. In the Obama era, just as in the Bush years, these beliefs remain unquestioned. In this vivid analysis, Andrew J. Bacevich presents the origins of this consensus, forged at a moment when American power was at its height. He exposes the preconceptions, biases, and habits that underlie our pervasive faith in military might, especially the notion that overwhelming superiority will oblige others to accommodate America’s needs and desires–whether for cheap oil, cheap credit, or cheap consumer goods. He challenges the usefulness of our militarism as it has become both unaffordable and increasingly dangerous. (From the publisher.)
China Today, China Tomorrow: Domestic Politics, Economy, and Society
Edited by Joseph Fewsmith
In this timely book, a group of leading scholars provides a comprehensive assessment of China’s polity, economy, and society. Taking the thirtieth anniversary of Beijing’s adoption of reform and opening as an occasion to reflect on the course of development over the past three decades, the contributors consider where the country may be going in the future. Just as China has had enormous success in developing its economy, it continues to face equally enormous challenges across a wide variety of issues, including inequality, social protest, energy, the environment, and a resurgence of religion. As a polity, China has tried to build a modern legal system while balancing center-local relations, sustaining a viable ideological framework, and maintaining stable politics at the elite level. At the same time, the current global economic crisis poses a major obstacle to China’s model of development. Authoritative, accessible, and current, this book will be an invaluable resource for all readers interested in the fate of a rising global power. (From the publisher.)
The Dragon in the Room: China and the Future of Latin American Industrialization
By Kevin Gallagher
In the eyes of many, China’s unprecedented economic rise has brought nothing but good news to the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean. Indeed, China’s growing appetite for primary products, and the ability of Latin America to supply that demand, has played a role in restoring growth in Latin America, both in the run-up to the global financial crisis and in its aftermath.
The dragon in the room that few are talking about is the fact that China is simultaneously out-competing Latin American manufacturers in world markets—so much so that it may threaten the ability of the region to generate long-term economic growth. One of the authors’ key claims is that China is rapidly building the technological capabilities necessary for industrial development, whereas Latin American tech innovation and sophistication lags considerably. At a deeper level, the findings in this volume imply that China’s road to globalization, one that emphasizes gradualism and coordinated macro-economic and industrial policies, is far superior to the “Washington Consensus” route taken by most Latin American nations, particularly Mexico. (From the Publisher.)
Persian Literature and Judeo-Persian Literature
Edited by Houchang Chehabi
This Volume contains the collected articles of Sorour Soroudi (1938-2002), lecturer in modern Persian literature and history at the Hebrew University for over three decades. I saw Soroudi only once, at a conference of the Societas Iranologica Europaea in Cambridge, England, in 1995. We hit it off immediately and stayed in touch. In 2002 ,news of her sudden death made the rounds in cyberspace; only ten days earlier I had received an upbeat e-mail message from her in which she wrote excitedly about her future projects. I felt that outside Israel she had not received the recognition and exposure that she deserved. One reason was that her seminal dissertation on the Persian poetry of the constitutional era had never been published as a book, another that her articles had appeared in hard-to-find journals and edited volumes. It was then that I decided to collect her articles and publish them as a book. (From Houchang Chehabi)
Iran’s Constitutional Revolution: Popular Politics, Cultural Transformations and Transnational Connections
By Houchang Chehabi
In the summer of 2006, I was a co-convenor of an international conference organized at the University of Oxford to commemorate the centenary of Iran’s Constitutional Revolution. My most important contribution to the meeting was the inclusion of a number of papers that examined the transnational ramifications of the event. These were felt not only in Iran’s neighboring countries but as far as Egypt and China, while Irish nationalists took a great interest in developments and supported the constitutionalists against the forces of reaction. The volume’s 23 articles examine a wide range of hitherto neglected issues in political, social, intellectual, cultural, and international history of the constitutional era (1905-1911). (From Houchang Chehabi)