Maxwell School News and Commentary

"Here’s the big lesson from Hurricane Harvey: The U.S. government’s flood zone designation, and the maps based on it, may not predict future flood risks accurately, particularly as climate change alters sea levels and weather patterns," writes Sarah Pralle, associate professor of political science. 

"While both the Confederacy and Nazi Germany waged wars to defend white supremacy, those two symbols were mostly kept apart for decades after World War II," says Steven White, incoming assistant professor of political science. "How those two symbols of white supremacy have come to overlap tells us a great deal about how white racist extremism developed— and where it might go."

Danielle Thomsen, associate professor of political science, says "both male and female [Republican] donors make ideology a priority and pay no attention to candidates’ gender. Thus, no group of Republican donors is particularly committed to electing women," as an explanation for the lack of Republican women in Congress.

"These [Confederate] symbols were not widely used after the Civil War, but were reintroduced in the middle of the 20th century by white Southerners to fight against civil rights for African Americans," writes Logan Strother '13 M.A. (PSc), a Ph.D. candidate in political science.

"The supreme leader [Ayatollah Ali Khamenei] might have the ultimate say on all major decisions," says Mehrzad Boroujerdi, professor of political science. "But he’s not a leviathan that everyone obeys without question."

"Despite being a single-party polity, public preferences in China correlate strongly with ideological orientation. Put simply, China’s liberals are more tolerant, support free markets and prefer a softer foreign policy. Conservatives support state intervention and promotion of traditional culture and remain suspicious of Western ideas and institutions," writes Dimitar Gueorguiev, assistant professor political science.

"The release of two pages from President Trump’s 2005 tax returns didn’t show much. But they did show just how much Trump—and other super-rich Americans—would benefit from his proposed tax plan," says Christopher Faricy, associate professor of political science.

"This ban leaves thousands of our wartime allies to fend for themselves against the very enemies we asked them to fight," writes Maxwell alumnus Matt Zeller, co-founder and CEO of No One Left Behind. "We are permanently harming the fabric of U.S. national security. Our credibility is forever tarnished if not eroded."

"The current environment of spiraling violence and economic and political uncertainty makes predicting the outcome difficult," writes Yüksel Sezgin, assistant professor of political science and director of the Middle Eastern Studies program, of the referendum to transition Turkey from parliamentary to presidential.