Current Seminars
November 3, 2023
Bobby Maxwell, PhD student, University of Washington
“Bringing Information Back in: Russia and the Pursuit of Limited Aims”
Discussant: Kayla Morton, PhD student, Political Science
Location: The Olson Room, Gowen Hall 1A, 3:30-5:00pm
December 1, 2023
Wendy He, PhD student, Nanyang Technological University, University of Washington
“In the Chief’s Confidence: Leaders, Advisors and the Making of (in)Accurate Judgments in War”
Discussant: Megan Erickson, PhD candidate, Political Science
Location: The Olson Room, Gowen Hall 1A, 3:30-5:00pm
January 26, 2024
Genevieve Bates, Assistant Professor, University of Wisconsin-Madison
“Commitments and Follow-Through: Implementing Justice Provisions in Peace Agreements”
Discussant: Ian Callison, PhD candidate, Political Science
Location: The Olson Room, Gowen Hall 1A, 1:30-3:00pm
Genevieve Bates is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a Julia Cooper Research Associate. Previously, she was an Assistant Professor at the University of British-Columbia and a postdoctoral fellow with the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University. Her research interests include political violence and post-conflict politics, transitional justice, and human rights. She is also interested in combining formal theory with a variety of qualitative and quantitative empirical approaches.
February 16, 2024
Kelly Greenhill, Professor, Tufts University
“Better than the Truth: Extra-factual Sources of Threat Conception and Proliferation”
Discussant: Jessica Sciarone, PhD candidate, Political Science
Kelly Greenhill holds joint positions as a professor of political science and international relations at Tufts University and a Resident Senior Research Fellow and visiting professor at MIT, where she also serves as Director of the MIT-Seminar XXI Program. She is currently revising for publication a new book, a cross-national mixed methods study that explores the influence of rumors, conspiracy theories, propaganda, so-called “fake news” and other forms of extra-factual information (EFI) on international politics.
Location: The Olson Room, Gowen Hall 1A, 1:30-3:00pm
March 8, 2024
Rochelle Terman, Assistant Professor, University of Chicago
“Auditing Localized Google Search Results for Human Rights”
Discussant: Bobby Maxwell, PhD Student, Political Science
Rochelle Terman is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Chicago. She specializes in international relations, with an emphasis on international norms, human rights and the Muslim World. In her first book, “The Geopolitics of Shaming: When Human Rights Pressure Works – and when it Backfires” she develops a relational theory of human rights enforcement in which the strategic interaction between shamer and target generates incentives to comply with or defy International pressure.
Location: The Olson Room, Gowen Hall 1A, 1:30-3:00pm
April 5, 2024
Sheena Chestnut Greitens, Associate Professor, UT Austin
“Internal Security and Chinese Grand Strategy”
Discussant: Brian Leung, PhD candidate, Political Science
Sheena Chestnut Greitens is Associate Professor at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at UT-Austin, where she directs UT’s Asia Policy Program. In the Academic year 2023-2024, she is visiting Associate Research Professor of Indo-Pacific Security at the United States Army War College. Her research focuses on security, East Asia, and authoritarian politics and foreign policy. Her forthcoming book (2023) “Politics of the North Korean Diaspora” addresses how authoritarian perceptions of security shape diaspora politics. She is currently finishing her third book manuscript, which examines the effect of internal security concerns on Chinese grand Strategy.
Location: The Olson Room, Gowen Hall 1A, 1:30-3:00pm
April 26, 2024
Rob Blair, Associate Professor, Brown University
“Does it Matter if Peacekeepers Follow their Mandates?”
Discussant: Jana Foxe, PhD student, Political Science
Rob Blair is the Arkadij Eisler Goldman Sachs Associate Professor of Political Science and International and Public Affairs at Brown University. His research focuses on international intervention and the consolidation of state authority after civil warm with an emphasis on the rule of law and security institutions. He is also the co-founder and co-director of the Democratic Erosion Consortium, which spans more than 60 universities in the US, UK, Ireland, Italy, Germany, Israel, Turkey, Romania, South Korea, Australia and the Philippines.
Location: The Olson Room, Gowen Hall 1A, 1:30-3:00pm
April 29, 2024
Thomas Christensen, James T. Shotwell Professor of International Relations, Columbia University
“Thomas Shelling, the United States, and China’s Rise”
Thomas Schelling’s theoretical work on coercive diplomacy carries important lessons for U.S. security policy toward a rising China. This talk will address the challenges in combining credible threats and credible assurances in deterring a PRC military attack on Taiwan and the need to differentiate clearly between unconditional restrictions on the transfer of militarily relevant technology to China and conditional threats to punish China economically if Beijing adopts certain proscribed policies.
Note: Thomas Christensen serves as a Senior Advisor to the Office of China Coordination at the U.S. Department of State. All opinions expressed in this talk and in the discussion that follows are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of the U.S. Government. This talk is under Chatham House Rules.
This talk is co-sponsored with the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies and the China Studies Program.
Location: Thomson Hall, Room 317, 3:30-4:50pm.
May 24, 2024
Jessica Sciarone, PhD Candidate, University of Washington
“Dark Visions for Society: The Spread of Extremist Ideas”
Discussant: Jihyeon Bae, PhD student, Political Science
Location: The Olson Room, Gowen Hall 1A, 1:30-3:00pm