New faculty member Justin Beaudoin is coming to PPPA from Colgate University, where he spent the 2015-16 academic year as a visiting faculty member after completing his PhD at the University of California, Davis in 2015. Justin obtained his bachelor’s and master’s degrees at the University of British Columbia. Prior to beginning his doctoral studies at UC Davis, he worked for two years as an economic consultant in Toronto, Canada, with an emphasis on projects relating to transportation issues for the Canadian Federal and Provincial governments.

Justin’s research primarily focuses on regional economic issues related to transportation and the environment. His dissertation focused on evaluating the effect of public transit investments on traffic congestion and air quality. One theme of this line of research is how public infrastructure investment decisions are affected by other related government policies and regulations that are in place. In the future, Justin plans to continue researching transportation and the associated environmental aspects, while also integrating other urban economic issues such as housing markets and land-use effects. Justin is particularly excited about UWT’s role as an urban-serving university and the potential for integrating his research with questions of interest to local residents and policymakers.

By David Morris (Emeritus Professor)

I’m sure that legions of students hold Rob Crawford in the highest regard as a teacher whose dedication to their learning was truly remarkable. Rob put an enormous amount of time and energy into making his classes work. He did not shy away from assigning difficult reading and holding students accountable for making a good faith effort to confront tough political, philosophical and moral questions. As a scholar, Rob produced innovative and influential work on the politics and philosophy of health care delivery. He helped show that the definition of “health” is a contested one, often grounded not in simple biological measures but in the arena of conflicting and changing cultural values.

In addition to being one of 13 faculty members who started UWT in 1990, here are some
less well-known facts about Rob. As a track star in high school he was a member of mile-relay team which for a time held the national record. When he graduated from college he rode a motorcycle from California to Illinois to attend graduate school at the University of Chicago. He taught for a while at Chicago State University, a school located in the heart of the South Side with a predominantly African-American student body. As an avid backpacker Rob has made several excursions into the Grand Canyon and has multiple times camped solo in off-trail sites on Mt. Rainier. For the last fifteen years, Rob has pursued his love of jazz by taking piano lessons from a well-known musician in Seattle. (I can attest to the fact that Rob’s pretty darn good.)

I recently completed my doctorate from Johns Hopkins University in Political Science and International Relations. Broadly speaking, my research focuses on armed conflict, humanitarian intervention, and mass atrocities. My current work investigates the historical development of the concept of genocide as part of international law and explores how the word ‘genocide’ gets used in contemporary humanitarian politics. Beyond international relations, I am also interested in political theory, philosophy and complexity theory. I believe strongly in the importance of learning about political problems from a variety of different sources, methods and resources. In my classes, I encourage my students to experiment with ideas and to think about issues from a number of angles. During the coming year, I will be teaching Introduction to International Politics, Theories of Violence, Human Rights and the Use of Force among other courses.  I am very excited to join the UW-T community.