Maxwell School News and Commentary

Maxwell alumnus Ben Walsh '05 M.P.A. was elected mayor of the City of Syracuse. Walsh is Syracuse's first independent mayor in more than 100 years and the city’s second mayor-elect to ever be unaffiliated with any major political party.

The Public Policy and International Affairs Program is a seven week summer fellowship that promotes the inclusion of underrepresented groups in public service and advances their leadership roles throughout civic institutions. “This experience reaffirmed my intention to pursue a graduate degree in public affairs. More importantly, I learned how I could combine my passion for public policy and science in graduate school,” says Chizobam Nwagwu ’18, who recently completed the fellowship.

The Maxwell School has appointed new chairs for the departments of anthropology, economics, history, international relations (undergraduate), political science and sociology, as well as an interim chair of social science. 

The Maxwell School's Citizenship and Civic Engagement program was selected by the Association of American Colleges and Universities as one of twenty-two departments from institutions across the country that are providing models for how to make civic learning and democratic engagement an expectation for all students who major in a given discipline.

Glor joined CBS News in 2007 as a correspondent, and has traveled extensively to report on some of the biggest domestic and international stories of the past 15 years. He won an Emmy Award in 2011 for a “CBS Sunday Morning” story.

Shannon Monnat, associate professor of sociology and Lerner Chair for Public Health Promotion, and her team secured a grant from the National Institute of Justice to conduct a study that will provide recommendations to law enforcement agencies on how to maximize the efficiency of disrupting the supply of opiates into communities and develop a model for use in other jurisdictions.

Joseph Kaifala '10 M.A. (IR), founder of the Jeneba Project in Sierra Leone, received World Food Program USA's Fall 2017 Catherine Bertini Trust Fund for Girls’ Education award, which improves access to training and education for girls by supporting innovative efforts to reach and empower girls.

“The purpose of gaining knowledge is not to get a nice job or a fancy house or season tickets for basketball. Academic research in the social sciences should be motivated by a desire to change things for the better,” says Alexei Abrahams ’08 B.A. (Econ). He credits Syracuse University's Coronat Scholars Program for allowing him to take his time in finding his career path as an economist researching the Israel-Palestine conflict.