International Relations
Graduate Alumni Newsletter
Autumn 2008

In This Issue ...

Chairman's Message, Alumni Profiles, Student Research, Department News, Faculty Publications

Dear members of the Boston University Department of International Relations Graduate Program community:

Our department is now entering our 20th year and there is much exciting news to share. We began the Alumni Newsletter in the Autumn of 2005 in order to bring you up to date on departmental news and to provide alumni with opportunities for staying in contact with each other and with the Department. It is with great pleasure that we present you with the Spring 2008 issue of this semiannual newsletter.

In addition to letting you know about developments in the department, we would like to hear from you, learn what you are doing, and provide you with opportunities for networking with fellow graduates and current faculty.

Thus, in addition to notes regarding new faculty, events on campus, and recent publications by the faculty, we ask that you would email us and let us know what you are doing. In each issue, we will feature an “Alumni Profiles” section spotlighting two of our alumni.

In this issue we report on some exciting student research as well as faculty news and publications from the department. We also feature two alumni, one an International Relations graduate and the other an International Relations and International Communication graduate, with exciting careers in the field. I hope you enjoy it.

I sincerely look forward to future contact with each and every one of you.

Best Regards,
Erik Goldstein
Chair, Department of International Relations

Alumni Profiles

William Quinones, IREL, 2007

William Quinones graduated from Boston University with an MA in International Relations in May 2007. After completing his military service with the United States Army in the summer of 2007, he accepted a position with the Raytheon Company in Andover, Massachusetts. At Raytheon, Will works with cutting edge technology and state-of-the-art electronics as a manufacturing manager in a work center at the company’s Integrated Defense Systems. This facility manufactures electronic components that are integrated into large military systems. He has worked on several programs in defense of the United States and its allies and is currently the lead on a major missile defense program for an international customer.

Will serves as the Deputy to his work center's Senior Manager and manages more than 100 employees and support staff from several disciplines in a Cross Business Team. He also acts as the work center’s spokesperson, leading tours and giving presentations to visiting officials. With Raytheon, Will has completed several courses in Lean Manufacturing and Continuous Improvement, completed the Raytheon Six Sigma Specialist certification, and is a recent graduate of the company's Front Line Leadership Program. In his first year with the company he has also completed several requirements for graduation from the Integrated Defense System's Program Management College . Raytheon, at its Andover facility, is a leader in implementing Lean Manufacturing in order to improve process and drive affordability. Will’s work cell was a major contributor to the evaluation that led to the facility receiving a national award for Manufacturing Excellence.

Will continues to stay connected with the university and its students by frequenting alumni events and lectures and by maintaining contact with professors, current students, and alumni.

Ana Escudero, IRIC, 2007

In September 2007, Ana Lucia Escudero completed her Master of Arts at Boston University in International Relations and International Communication. Shortly after, she moved to her childhood city of Washington, D.C. and joined the global communications firm Burson-Marsteller.

As a bilingual Peruvian-American with international work experience, Ana Lucia was quickly placed on key international client projects at Burson-Marsteller. The largest – and most rewarding – is the U.S. Treasury’s award-winning “New Color of Money” program. For this global public education campaign, Ana Lucia works with over 50 markets worldwide – from Beijing to Lagos to Bogota – to help raise awareness for newly redesigned U.S. currency. The most recent rollout was the $5 bill issued last March.

Prior to Burson-Marsteller and Boston University, Ana Lucia spent four years working in Lima, Peru on democracy and development projects. She worked first at International IDEA, an intergovernmental organization headquartered in Stockholm, and later at the Government of Peru’s National Council for Decentralization. She also did a stint at Peru’s leading political magazine, Caretas.

While Ana Lucia has not ruled out returning to Peru, for now D.C. is home. On a personal note, she and her husband Jorge Gastelumendi are expecting their first child in February.

Alumni Mentors

Are you interested in helping current IR students to get started on careers in the IR field? The IR Department is looking for alumni to volunteer to provide career advice to new graduates. If interested, please contact the Graduate Programs Administrator, Michael Williams, via email at irgrad@bu.edu. Please provide your full name and career field, as well as an email address that can be supplied to current graduate students who wish to contact you. Your name and other information will be kept in a database and provided to current students with an interest in a similar career field. Current students would love to learn from your experience and expertise!

Student Research (Joseph Mroszczyk)

The grant from the International Relations Department helped to make possible a two week trip to London to examine radical Islam in Britain. My MA Paper examines broadly the religious/demographic changes in Britain, and, more particularly, the causes or sources of radicalization among certain segments of Britain’s Muslim community.

Since I had worked at the House of Commons with the Rt. Hon David Davis MP, the Shadow Home Secretary, while I studied in London as an undergraduate, I was able to gain access to a number of MPs on the Home Affairs Select Committee, including the terrorism advisor for the Conservative Party. I also spoke with the Baroness Neville-Jones, the national security advisor for the leader of the Conservative Party, and with a member of the Intelligence and Security Committee.

In addition, I spoke with a number of local religious leaders in the East End of London, the region that has the highest percentage of Muslims in Britain. I spoke with two Christian clergymen who were viciously attacked by Asian Muslim youths in their own churchyards. I also spoke with an Anglican priest who chairs an interfaith dialogue committee in the East End and with a representative of the East London Mosque in Whitechapel, which has been at the center of much discussion about Islamic radicalization. Because Islamic societies at British universities have been singled out as a possible breeding ground for radicalization, I spoke with the president of the Federation of Student Islamic Societies and with an active member of the London School of Economics Islamic Society.

I spent two Sundays at Speaker’s Corner in Hyde Park talking with “radical” Muslims. I also met and spoke with an American man, a trained Christian missionary, who debates radical Islamists at the Corner each week and leads a weekly training seminar for other Christians to learn about radical Islam, which I observed one week.

Perhaps the most fascinating conversation I had was with Rashad Ali, a former member of the radical group Hizb ut-Tahrir who now works at the Qulliam Foundation, a group of former radicals who now seek to combat radical Islam. He offered keen insight into the process by which he and others became radicalized, and what it takes to “de-radicalize.” After our lunch together he was kind enough to email me a document that was circulated within Hizb ut-Tahrir that discusses at length what type of person the radicals look to recruit and how to “brainwash” the new recruit. This was invaluable information that I would not have discovered had I not gone to London.

The funding provided by the IR department allowed me to witness, examine, and explore the complicated issues surrounding radical Islam in Britain beyond the literature and news articles. The experience was more fruitful than I had imagined, and provided me with great research that contributed enormously to my MA Paper.

Department News

Husain Haqqani

International Relations faculty member Husain Haqqani has become the new Pakistani ambassador to the United States. Haqqani, a trusted advisor of the late Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, was appointed to his role as ambassador on April 3, 2008 by the Prime Minister of Pakistan, Yousaf Raza Gillani.

Haqqani began his career in journalism, as East Asian correspondent for Arabia -- The Islamic World Review during the turbulent years following the Iranian revolution. During this period he wrote extensively on Muslims in China and East Asia and Islamic political movements. Later, as Pakistan and Afghanistan correspondent for the Far Eastern Economic Review, he covered the war in Afghanistan and acquired a deep understanding of militant Islamist Jihadi groups.

Haqqani also has a distinguished career in government. He served as an advisor to Pakistani Prime Ministers Ghulam Mustafa Jatoi, Nawaz Sharif, and Benazir Bhutto. From 1992 to 1993 he was Pakistan's ambassador to Sri Lanka. His new appointment as Ambassador to the United States returns him to an important governmental role for his home country.

Ambassador Haqqani will take a leave of absence from Boston University in order to fulfill his new role.

Vivien Schmidt

The International Relations Department is pleased to announce that Professor Vivien A. Schmidt will become the new Director of the Center for International Relations, beginning with the 2008 - 2009 Academic Year.

Vivien Schmidt is Jean Monnet Chair of European Integration and Professor of International Relations at Boston University. She received her B.A. from Bryn Mawr College and her M.A. and Ph.D from the University of Chicago. She is also Visiting Professor at Sciences Po, Paris. Professor Schmidt has published widely in the areas of European political economy, institutions, and democracy. Her most recent book, published in 2006, is Democracy in Europe: The EU and National Polities.

Faculty Publications

Currency and Contest in East Asia: The Great Power Politics of Financial Regionalsim
By William Grimes

Since the Asian Financial Crisis of 1997-98, East Asian economies have sought to make themselves less vulnerable to global financial markets by transforming the regional financial architecture. With Japan as a leading actor, they have introduced initiatives to provide emergency financing to crisis economies, support the development of local-currency bond markets, and better coordinate currency policies. In Currency and Contest, William W. Grimes builds on years of primary research and scores of interviews with participants and policy analysts to provide the most accurate, complete, and detailed description available of attempts to build financial cooperation among East Asian countries.

Adapting realist political economy theory to the realities of contemporary global finance, Grimes places regional issues firmly in the wider context of great-power rivalries. He argues that financial regionalism can best be understood as one arena for competition among Japan, the United States, and China. Despite their mutual desire for regional prosperity and economic stability, these three powers have conflicting political interests. Their struggles for regional leadership raise questions about the long-term feasibility of regional financial cooperation, the possible effects of Sino-Japanese rivalry on regional financial stability, and the potential for East Asian financial regionalism to undermine the long-established-albeit waning-global and regional dominance of the United States and the dollar. (From the publisher)

Hezbollah: A Short History
By A. R. Norton

Professor A. R. Norton's most recent book, Hezbollah: A Short History, will be released in paperback in January 2009. The hardcover edition, which came out in 2007, has been critically acclaimed and is now in its fifth printing.

Thinking Through Faith: New Perspectives From Orthodox Christian Scholars
Edited by: Aristotle Papanikolaou and Elizabeth H. Prodromou.

Within these pages a younger generation of Orthodox scholars in America takes up the perennial task of transmitting the meaning of Christianity to a particular time and culture. This collection of twelve essays, as the title Thinking Through Faith implies, is the result of six years of reflective conversation and collaboration regarding core beliefs of the Orthodox faith, tenets that the authors present from fresh perspectives that appeal to reason and spiritual sensibilities alike.

Subjects covered include: The Kingdom of God, The Foundations of Noetic Prayer, The Discipline of Theology, Understanding Pastoral Care in the Early Church, Orthodox Theologies of Women and Ordained Ministry, Reading the Lives of the Saints, The Meaning and Place of Death in an Orthodox Ethical Framework, Confession, Desire and Emotions, International Religious Freedom and the Challenge of Proselytism, “Typologies” of Orthopraxy, Byzantine Liturgy as God's Family at Prayer, and the Orthodox Church in the Twentieth-Century. (From the publisher)

China's Opening Society: The Non-State Sector and Governance
Edited by Joseph Fewsmith and Zheng Yongnian

Despite its recent rapid economic growth, China’s political system has remained resolutely authoritarian. However, an increasingly open economy is creating the infrastructure for an open society, with the rise of a non-state sector in which a private economy, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and different forms of social forces are playing an increasingly powerful role in facilitating political change and promoting good governance. This book examines the development of the non-state sector and NGOs in China since the onset of reform in the late 1970s. It explores the major issues facing the non-state sector in China today, assesses the institutional barriers that are faced by its developing civil society, and compares China’s example with wider international experience. It shows how the ‘get-rich-quick’ ethos of the Deng Xiaoping and Jiang Zemin years, which prioritised rapid GDP growth above all else, has given way under the Jiantao Hu regime to a renewed concern with social reforms, in areas such as welfare, medical care, education, and public transportation. It demonstrates how this change has led to encouragement by the Hu government of the development of the non-state sector as a means to perform regulatory functions and to achieve effective provision of public and social services. It explores the tension between the government’s desire to keep the NGOs as "helping hands’ rather than as autonomous, independent organizations, and their ability to perform these roles successfully. (From the publisher)

A Centripetal Theory of Democratic Governance
By John Gerring and Strom Thacker

This book sets forth a relatively novel theory of democratic governance, applicable to all political settings in which multi-party competition obtains. Against the prevailing decentralist theory (deriving from Madison and Montesquieu), the authors argue that good governance arises when political energies are focused toward the center. Two elements must be reconciled in order for this process of gathering together to occur. Institutions must be inclusive and they must be authoritative. We refer to this combination of attributes as “centripetal.” While the theory has many potential applications, in this book we are concerned primarily with national-level political institutions. Among these, we argue that three are of fundamental importance in securing a centripetal style of democratic governance: unitary (rather than federal) sovereignty, a parliamentary (rather than presidential) executive, and a closed-list proportional representation electoral system (rather than a single-member district or preferential-vote system). The authors test the impact of these institutions across a wide range of governance outcomes. (From the publisher)