The MacMillan Report

Prof. Priya Natarajan

Wed, 16 May 2012 12:00:30 -0400

Professor Natarajan is a theoretical astrophysicist interested in cosmology, gravitational lensing and black hole physics. Her research involves mapping the detailed distribution of dark matter in the universe exploiting the bending of light en-route to us from distant galaxies. However, we are not going to talk to Professor Natarajan about astronomy and physics. We are going to talk with her about gender parity issues. Professor Natarajan is the current chair of the Women Faculty Forum at Yale, and she recently co-organized, along with Judith Resnik and Reva Siegel at the Yale Law School, the first Gruber conference titled Parity as Practice: The Politics of Equality.

Prof. Alan Mikhail

Wed, 09 May 2012 12:00:09 -0400

Professor Mikhail a historian of the early modern Muslim world, the Ottoman Empire, and Egypt whose research and teaching focus mostly on the nature of early modern imperial rule, peasant histories, environmental resource management, and science andmedicine. In one of the first environmental histories of the Ottoman Empire, he examines relations between the empire and its most lucrative province of Egypt. We talk with Professor Mikhail about his award-winning new book, Nature and Empire in Ottoman Egypt: An Environmental History.

Prof. Robert Bailis

Wed, 25 Apr 2012 10:29:53 -0400

Professor Bailis’s research interests focus on sustainability, resource use, and environmental change in the developing world. He explores these issues principally, though not exclusively, in the context of energy. Professor Bailis became interested in the intersection of energy, society, and environment while working as a teacher in the U.S. Peace Corps in a remote community in northwestern Kenya. He uses an interdisciplinary approach that places equal emphasis on qualitative and quantitative methods across a range of scales, from local to regional and global. Past research efforts explored the social ecology of Kenya’s charcoal commodity chain and examined the health and welfare implications of household energy choices in the developing world. He continues to be involved in household energy research. We talk with Professor Bailis about the governance of the emerging biofuel economy.

Prof. Jennifer Ruger

Wed, 18 Apr 2012 12:00:31 -0400

Professor Ruger has authored numerous theoretical and empirical studies on the equity and efficiency of health system access, financing, resource allocation, policy reform, and social determinants of health. These contributions are unified by an overarching interest in equity and disparities in health and health care, focusing on vulnerable and impoverished populations nationally and globally. We talk with Professor Ruger about her new book, "Health and Social Justice."

Prof. Robert Shiller

Wed, 04 Apr 2012 11:47:43 -0400

"The New York Times" best-selling economist Robert Shiller is probably the only person to have predicted both the stock market bubble of 2000 and the real estate bubble that led up to the subprime mortgage meltdown. Yet he is no apologist for the sins of finance. We talk with Professor Shiller about his new and timely book, "Finance and the Good Society," where he argues that rather than condemning finance, we need to reclaim it for the common good.

Pablo Kalmanovitz

Wed, 28 Mar 2012 12:00:00 -0400

Pablo Kalmanovitz specializes in the political theory of human rights and humanitarianism. Professor Kalmanovitz has written articles and edited volumes on transitional justice, post-war reconstruction, and the regulation of warfare, and is currently working on a book project on the history of the idea of post-war justice. We talk with Professor Kalmanovitz about the research he’s done on reparations for war damages.

Prof. Andrew Hill

Wed, 14 Mar 2012 12:00:00 -0400

Professor Hill is interested in the whole range of human evolution, particularly in the environmental and ecological context in which it occurred. Since 1968 he has carried out fieldwork in eastern Africa, in Pakistan, and in the United Arab Emirates. For many years he has directed the Baringo Paleontological Research Project, a multidisciplinary research program operating in the Tugen Hills in Kenya. This ongoing work was the topic of a special double issue of the Journal of Human Evolution in 2002, and in 1999, he co-edited Fossil Vertebrates of Arabia. We talk with him about the climate’s influence on human evolution.

Alexander Evans

Wed, 07 Mar 2012 10:10:13 -0500

Mr. Evans recently was the Henry A. Kissinger Chair in Foreign Policy and International Relations at the Library of Congress, and previously worked at the Department of State as a senior advisor, first to Ambassador Richard Holbrooke and then to Ambassador Marc Grossman, the U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan. He previously served as a British diplomat in Islamabad and New Delhi and as a member of the Policy Planning Staff in London. We talk with him in a personal capacity about the relationship between the U.S. and South Asia.

Prof. Richard Bribiescas

Wed, 29 Feb 2012 12:00:38 -0500

Professor Bribiescas’ most notable research involves the evolutionary biology and endocrinology of human and comparative life histories, reproduction, aging, and metabolism. He is the author of "Men: Evolutionary and Life History." We talk with Professor Bribiescas about the male species from a life history and evolutionary perspective and what affect it can have on our future.

Domingo Cavallo

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 09:33:12 -0500

Currently the Chairman and CEO of DFC Associates, a consultancy firm, Mr. Cavallo was Argentina’s Minister of Economy from 1991 to 1996 and in 2001, and Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1989 to 1991. He was elected National Congressman on two occasions, and also served as Chairman of the Central Bank of Argentina in 1982. We talk with him about Argentina’s economy.

Prof. Thania Sanchez

Wed, 15 Feb 2012 11:03:49 -0500

Professor Sanchez's teaching and research focuses on international cooperation and international law. In particular, she studies how international law and organizations shape international security and human rights policy. She is currently working on a book on the domestic political factors that affect treaty compliance. We talk with Professor Sanchez about her supply side theory of treaty implementation and compliance.

Prof. Joseph Errington

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 09:13:47 -0500

Professor Errington is interested in the linguistic dimensions of social life, ranging from the social implications of patterns of verbal, to forms and uses of sociolinguistic hierarchies, to the linguistic effects of large scale dynamics. His research and writing have focused on linguistic dimensions of modernization and identity in Java and Indonesia, reflecting his broader interests in semiotics and the politics of language. We talk with Professor Errington about his book, Linguistics in a Colonial World: A Story of Language, Meaning, and Power.

Prof. Paulina Ochoa Espejo

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 12:00:56 -0500

Professor Ochoa specializes in contemporary political theory and thehistory of political thought. We talk with her about her new book, The Time of Popular Sovereignty: Process and the Democratic State. In it, she offers a new theory of democratic peoplehood, laying the foundations for a new theory of democratic legitimacy.

Prof. Rakesh Mohan

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 12:00:49 -0500

Rakesh Mohan is one of India’s senior-most economic policymakers and an expert on central banking, monetary policy, infrastructure and urban affairs. He is a former Deputy Governor of the Reserve Bank of India. As Deputy Governor he was in charge of monetary policy, financial markets, economic research and statistics. In addition to serving in various posts for the Indian government, including representing India in a variety of international forums such as Basel and G20, he has worked for the World Bank and headed prestigious research institutes. Mohan has written extensively on urban economics, urban development, and Indian economic policy reforms. We talk with him about his book, Growth with Financial Stability: Central Banking in an Emerging Market, which provides a rare insider view into the development and workings of central banking and the financial sector in India.

Prof. William Kelly

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 12:00:50 -0500

Professor Kelly is a noted authority on the social and historical anthropology of Japan. He has focused much of his research in the last two decades on regional agrarian societies in Japan. Since 1996, however, Professor Kelly has been conducting field research on the history and present patterns of professional baseball in the cities of Osaka and Kobe. We talk with him about sports in contemporary Japan.

Prof. Cheryl Doss

Wed, 11 Jan 2012 14:11:54 -0500

Professor Doss’ research interests center around household decision-making in rural households, especially in Africa. In particular, she is interested in how social and economic changes affect the dynamics of decision-making within households. Much of Professor Doss’ current work focuses on issues around women’s access to assets, including land. This includes developing methodologies for collecting individual level asset data and empirical work analyzing how women acquire assets, which assets they own and control, and how this affects their well-being. We talk with her about land ownership and land tenure reform as it affects women in Africa.

Prof. Narges Erami

Wed, 07 Dec 2011 10:22:40 -0500

Professor Erami primarily works on the relationship between economy and religion and how it is played out in rituals of everyday life. Her research is centered in the Holy City of Qum in Iran. Professor Erami’s work includes a historical and ethnographic study of carpet merchants, and she is currently researching the cultural production of authority and knowledge through publications of Islamic texts and their global circulation. We talk with her about her forthcoming book on the Persian rug bazaar.

Mark Turin

Wed, 30 Nov 2011 10:42:15 -0500

Professor Turin is an anthropologist and a linguist. His scholarly focus is on the Himalayan region, in particular Nepal, northern India, Bhutan and cultural Tibet. His research interests include the documentation of endangered languages and mapping global cultural diversity; language policy and the role of native tongue instruction in education; and issues relating to the electronic access and ownership of anthropological materials from ethnographic museums. We talk with Professor Turin about his involvement in the World Oral Literature Project.

Prof. David Cameron

Wed, 16 Nov 2011 12:00:05 -0500

Professor Cameron teaches courses on European politics and the European Union. Over the past year and a half, the members of the European Union that have adopted the euro have been immersed in a seemingly never-ending debt crisis. First Greece, then Ireland and Portugal, and now Greece again, along with growing concerns about Italy. Why did the crisis happen? Where is it now? And what can the EU do to prevent a similar crisis in the future? We talk with Professor Cameron about the eurozone debt crisis.

Prof. Kaveh Khoshnood

Wed, 09 Nov 2011 09:24:11 -0500

Professor Khoshnood is an infectious disease epidemiologist and his primary research interests are the epidemiology, prevention and control of HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis among drug users, prisoners and other at risk populations in United States and in resource-poor countries. He also mentors researchers from around the world and teaches courses on HIV/AIDS, global health and research methods and ethics. We talk with Professor Khoshnood about global health education and how to conduct research in resource-poor settings.

Prof. Timothy Snyder

Tue, 01 Nov 2011 14:08:46 -0400

Professor Snyder teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in modern East European political history. He is the author of Nationalism, Marxism, and Modern Central Europe: A Biography of Kazimierz Kelles-Krauz; The Reconstruction of Nations: Poland, Ukraine, Lithuania, Belarus, 1569 - 1999; Sketches from a Secret War: A Polish Artist's Mission to Liberate Soviet Ukraine; The Red Prince: The Secret Lives of A Habsburg Archduke. He is also the co-editor of Wall Around the West: State Power and Immigration Controls in Europe and North America. We talk with Professor Snyder about his most recent book, a critically acclaimed New York Times bestseller entitled Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin.

Prof. Deborah Davis

Tue, 18 Oct 2011 14:10:12 -0400

Professor Davis's primary teaching and research interests are historical and comparative sociology, inequality and stratification, and contemporary Chinese society. She is a member of the national Committee on U.S. China relations and has just completed a six year term chairing of the social science and humanities panel of the Hong Kong government Research Committee. This past July Professor Davis organized a workshop at Hong Kong University as part of a larger project on post-socialist marriage and sexuality. We talk with her about the changing trends of marriage and divorce in China.

Prof. Fabian Drixler

Wed, 26 Oct 2011 10:16:32 -0400

Professor Drixler teaches Japanese history. We talk with him about his forthcoming book, Infanticide and Fertility in Japan, 1650-1950.

Lieutenant General Sir Graeme Lamb (Ret.)

Tue, 04 Oct 2011 09:55:34 -0400

Lieutenant General Sir Graeme Lamb is a retired British Army officer with 38 years experience and a former Commander of the Field Army. Currently he is spending a semester at Yale as a Jackson Institute Senior Fellow teaching the Middle East and Central Asia module of its Gateway to Global Affairs course.

In 2009, Lamb stepped down as Commander of the Field Army and returned to Afghanistan at the request of General David Petraeus and General Stanley McCrystal of the U.S. Army to play a key role in the counter-insurgency efforts there, attempting to reproduce his success in Iraq by persuading Afghan insurgents to abandon their arms. Today we talk with Lamb about his military experience and how it translates to the classroom.

Prof. Tariq Thachil

Wed, 30 Mar 2011 12:00:00 -0400

Professor Thachil’s research focuses on political parties and party-voter linkages, social movements, ethnic politics, and South Asian politics. His work has appeared in "Comparative Politics and Contemporary South Asia." We talk with him about how religious nationalists in India use social services to expand their electoral base among the poor.

Prof. Pia Rebello Britto

Wed, 23 Mar 2011 12:00:00 -0400

Professor Britto is known nationally for her work on young children's literacy, and social and identity development of Muslim Arab children, as well as internationally for her scientific commitment to cross-cultural issues, evidence-based national policy development, and early learning standards for young children. Her primary expertise is in the role of sociocultural factors in child development, and early childhood policies and programs in the developing world. We talk with her about early childhood development and policy in a global context.

Prof. Peter Perdue

Wed, 02 Mar 2011 12:00:00 -0500

Professor Perdue is the author of two widely-acclaimed books: "Exhausting the Earth: State and Peasant in Hunan 1500-1850 A.D." and "China Marches West: The Qing Conquest of Central Eurasia." He has also written on grain markets in China, agricultural development, and environmental history. Professor Perdue’s research interests lie in modern Chinese and Japanese social and economic history, history of frontiers, and world history. We talk with him about Chinese cultural and economic associations with tea, examined in historical perspective.

Prof. Mike McGovern

Wed, 23 Feb 2011 12:00:00 -0500

Professor McGovern is a political anthropologist who works in West Africa and uses a variety of sources from kinship idioms to the aesthetics of state-sponsored folklore to try to understand postcolonial states within the arc of longer historical trajectories. We talk with him about his first book, entitled "Making War in Côte d'Ivoire."

Prof. John Darnell

Wed, 16 Feb 2011 12:00:00 -0500

Professor Darnell’s interests include Egyptian religion, cryptography, the scripts and texts of Graeco-Roman Egypt, and the archaeological and epigraphic remains of ancient activity in the Egyptian Western Desert. He has considerable field experience in Egypt and his discoveries -- including the Scorpion tableau, perhaps the earliest historical record of ancient Egypt, and the earliest alphabetic inscriptions in the Wadi el-Hol -- have yielded new insight into ancient Egyptian civilization. We talk with him about his work in Egypt.

Prof. Ana De La O

Wed, 09 Feb 2011 12:00:00 -0500

Professor De La O's research interests include causes and consequences of redistribution, politics of public goods provision, effects of anti-poverty programs on the political behavior of recipients in developing countries, particularly Latin America, and the use of field experimental research methods. We talk with Professor De La O about her recent research on the politics of conditional cash transfers in Latin America.

Prof. Haun Saussy

Mon, 31 Jan 2011 15:21:04 -0500

Professor Saussy has a range of scholarly interests, including Chinese poetry, literature, aesthetics and culture. His published articles explore a wide variety of topics such as Chinese musicology, the history of the idea of oral literature, Haitian literature, health care for the poor and contemporary art. In his first book, "The Problem of a Chinese Aesthetic," he applied a new model of comparative literature. In his book, "Great Walls of Discourse and Other Adventures in Cultural China," he examines the ways that assumptions and consensus within a discipline affect collective thinking about the object of study. We talk with Professor Saussy about comparative literature – its current situation and theoretical perplexities.

Prof. Catherine Panter-Brick

Wed, 26 Jan 2011 12:00:00 -0500

Professor Panter-Brick's research consists of critical analyses of health and wellbeing across key stages of human development, giving special attention to the impact of poverty, disease, malnutrition, armed conflict, and social marginalization. Her focus on children in global adversity has included biocultural research with street children, refugees, and war-affected adolescents. She has published widely on child and adolescent health, including articles on violence and mental health in Afghanistan, household decision-making and infant survival in famine-stricken Niger, the social ecology of growth retardation in Nepali slums, biomarkers of stress in contexts of violence and homelessness, the effectiveness of public health interventions, and human rights and public health approaches as applied to international work with street children. We talk with Professor Panter-Brick about research she’s done in Afghanistan focusing on the mental health of children.

Prof. Adria Lawrence

Wed, 19 Jan 2011 10:55:03 -0500

Professor Lawrence is a scholar of the Middle East, with particular expertise in North African politics. She studies conflict and collective action, investigating how people come to mobilize in favor of ideologies such as ethnicity, nationalism, religion, and democracy. We talk with Professor Lawrence about her new manuscript, "Imperial Rule and the Politics of Nationalism." It provides an account of how and why nationalist mobilization against colonial rule erupted in the 20th century French Empire.

Prof. Christopher Udry

Wed, 19 Jan 2011 10:54:04 -0500

Professor Udry is a development economist whose research focuses on rural economic activity in sub-Saharan Africa. He has conducted extensive field research in West Africa on technological change in agriculture, the use of financial markets, asset accumulation and gift exchange to cope with risk, gender relations and the structure of household economies, property rights and a variety of other aspects of rural economic organization. We talk with Professor Udry about land rights and agricultural investment in Ghana.

Hillary Mann Leverett

Wed, 08 Dec 2010 12:00:00 -0500

Hillary Mann Leverett has more than 20 years of academic, legal, business, diplomatic, and policy experience working on Middle Eastern issues. In the Bush Administration, Ms. Leverett worked as the Director for Iran, Afghanistan and Persian Gulf Affairs at the National Security Council, Middle East specialist on the Secretary of State's Policy Planning Staff, and as Political Advisor for Middle East and Central Asian issues for the U.S. Mission to the United Nations. From 2001-2003, she was one of a small number of U.S. diplomats authorized to negotiate with the Iranians over Afghanistan, al-Qa’ida, and Iraq. In September 2009, Ms. Leverett, with her husband Flynt Leverett, launched the web site RaceForIran.com that offers perspectives on Iran and its geopolitics. We talk with Ms. Leverett about Iran and the future of American power.

Prof. Julia Adams

Wed, 01 Dec 2010 12:00:00 -0500

Professor Adams teaches and conducts research in the areas of state formation; gender and family; social theory; early modern European politics; and colonialism and empire. She is currently studying large-scale forms of patriarchal politics and the historical sociology of agency relations. We talk with her about her earlier research on "The Familial State" and her newer work on "Contradictions of Agency in Contemporary America."

Marwan Muasher

Wed, 17 Nov 2010 12:00:01 -0500

A Jordanian diplomat and politician, Ambassador Muasher opened Jordan’s first embassy in Israel in 1995. From 1997 to 2002, he served in Washington as Ambassador, negotiating the first free trade agreement between the United States and an Arab nation. He then returned to Jordan to serve as Foreign Minister and then Deputy Prime Minister. Ambassador Muasher was at the Jordanian Senate until March 2007 when he joined the World Bank as Senior Vice President for External Affairs. Most recently, he wrote a book called "The Arab Center." We talk with Ambassador Muasher about the Palestinian-Israeli peace talks and his case for taking a regional approach.

Flynt Leverett

Wed, 10 Nov 2010 11:33:25 -0500

From 1992 to 2003, Mr. Leverett served as Senior Director for Middle East Affairs at the National Security Council, on the Secretary of State’s Policy Planning Staff, and as a CIA Senior Analyst. Mr. Leverett’s articles and Op Eds on Iran, other Middle East issues, and global energy affairs have been published in numerous media outlets. We talk with Mr. Leverett about American grand strategy in the Middle East and his judgment that we are on the road to failure in this critical region.

Prof. James Scott

Wed, 03 Nov 2010 12:00:00 -0400

The author of several books including "Seeing Like a State," Professor Scott’s research concerns political economy, comparative agrarian societies, theories of hegemony and resistance, peasant politics, revolution, Southeast Asia, theories of class relations and anarchism. We talk with Professor Scott about his newest book, "The Art of Not Being Governed." It is the first-ever examination of the volumes of literature on state-making that evaluates why people would deliberately remain stateless.

Prof. Robert Shiller

Wed, 27 Oct 2010 11:20:41 -0400

Professor Shiller has written numerous articles and books about financial markets, behavioral economics, macroeconomics, real estate, statistical methods, and public attitudes, opinions and moral judgments regarding markets. He is the former vice president of the American Economic Association and former president of the Eastern Economic Association. Professor Shiller's column, "Economic View," appears in The New York Times. We talk with him about The Squam Lake Report – his latest book collaboration with 14 of the world’s leading economists that offers a plan on how to fix our financial system.

Prof. James Levinsohn

Wed, 20 Oct 2010 12:00:00 -0400

As the Jackson Institute’s first director, Professor Levinsohn brings a wealth of international experience to that post. His fields of interest include international economics, industrial organization, economic development and applied econometrics. Recently, he has studied the impact of HIV/AIDS on unemployment and school attendance in South Africa. Professor Levinsohn has lived and worked in Senegal, Botswana, and South Africa. One of his projects, now in its 11th year, trains government officials, university faculty and students, and NGO staff from over a dozen countries in southern Africa on how to use data to inform policymaking. We talk with Professor Levinsohn about the new Jackson Institute for Global Affairs.

Stephen Roach

Wed, 13 Oct 2010 12:00:00 -0400

Mr. Roach has spent twenty-eight years in senior positions at Morgan Stanley — the bulk of that time as Chief Economist and more recently as Chairman of the firm’s Asian businesses. In addition to his position at Yale, he remains the Non-Executive Chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia. Mr. Roach has long been one of Wall Street’s most influential economists. His most recent book, "The Next Asia: Opportunities and Challenges for a New Globalization" analyzes Asia's economic imbalances and the dangers of the region’s dependence on Western consumers. We talk with Mr. Roach about the future of China and what it means for the global economy.

Prof. Jonathan Wyrtzen

Wed, 28 Apr 2010 12:00:00-0400

Professor Wyrtzen is a comparative-historical sociologist with teaching and research interests in North African society and politics. He works on the areas of state formation; colonialism and empire; ethnicity and nationalism; urban and rural contentious politics; and Islamic social movements. We talk with Professor Wyrtzen about his new book "Constructing Morocco: Colonial State-Building and the Struggle to Define the Nation."

Prof. Stuart Schwartz

Wed, 21 Apr 2010 12:00:00 -0400

Professor Schwartz specializes in the history of colonial Latin America, especially Brazil and on the history of Early Modern expansion. Among his books are "Sovereignty and Society in Colonial Brazil"; "Early Latin America"; "Sugar Plantations in the Formation of Brazilian Society"; "Slaves, Peasants, and Rebels"; "Cambridge History Of Native Peoples Of The Americas"; and "South America." He is presently working on several projects: a history of independence of Portugal and the crisis of the Iberian Atlantic, 1620-1670; and a social history of Caribbean hurricanes. We talk with him about his newest, groundbreaking book, "All Can Be Saved: Religious Tolerance and Salvation in the Iberian Atlantic World."

Prof. Frank Griffel

Wed, 14 Apr 2010 11:50:16 -0400

Professor Griffel teaches courses on the intellectual history of Islam, its theology, and the way Islamic thinkers react to Western modernity. He has published widely in the fields of Islamic theology, Arab and Islamic philosophy, Islamic law, and Muslim intellectual history. We talk with Professor Griffel about his new book "Al-Ghazali’s Philosophical Theology".

Jason Lyall

Wed, 31 Mar 2010 11:51:22 -0400

Jason Lyall’s research focuses on the dynamics of violence in both conventional and guerrilla warfare, with special emphasis on Afghanistan and Russia’s Northern Caucasus—particularly Chechnya. His work draws on diverse methods, ranging from historical and cross-national comparisons to field and quasi-experiments at the subnational and local level. His research has been published in the "American Political Science Review," "International Organization," "Journal of Conflict Resolution," and "World Politics." We talk with him about his article that's forthcoming in the "American Political Science Review" on ethnicity and violence in Chechnya.

Prof. David Cameron

Wed, 24 Mar 2010 12:00:00 -0400

Professor Cameron teaches courses on European politics and the European Union. Over the past several weeks, the European Union has been caught up in a crisis over the size of the budget deficit in Greece. Some think the crisis could spread to other countries in southern Europe - Spain, Portugal, Italy - that, like Greece, participate in the eurozone but have large budget deficits and high levels of debt. Professor Cameron discusses the current eurozone crisis - why it has arisen and what's likely to happen in the near future and the longer-term.

Prof. Jessica Weiss

Wed, 03 Mar 2010 12:00:17 -0500

Professor Weiss’ research interests include Chinese politics and international relations, nationalism, and social protest. Before joining the Yale faculty, she founded FACES, the Forum for American/Chinese Exchange at Stanford University. She teaches courses on anti-Americanism in world politics, Chinese foreign policy, and state-society relations in post-Mao China. We talk with her about her recent paper on anti-foreign protests in China.

Prof. Steven Wilkinson

Thu, 18 Feb 2010 13:34:56 -0500

Much of Professor Wilkinson’s work focuses on India and ethnic violence. His book, "Votes and Violence: Electoral Competition and Ethnic Riots in India" was co-winner of the American Political Science Association’s 2005 Woodrow Wilson prize for the best book published in government, politics and international affairs. We talk with Professor Wilkinson about his current book project on "Colonization, Democracy and Conflict."

Prof. Nuno Monteiro

Wed, 10 Feb 2010 15:55:27 -0500

Professor Monteiro’s main research interests are in International Relations theory and security studies. We talk with him about his forthcoming book that addresses three questions related to the topic of unipolarity: Is it peaceful? Is it durable? And, how does it impact deterrence?

Judge Richard Goldstone

Tue, 02 Feb 2010 15:29:15 -0500

Judge Richard Goldstone is a native of South Africa and well known for investigating atrocities committed by white security forces during apartheid. He also is the former chief prosecutor for war-crime tribunals on Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia. More recently, Judge Goldstone was asked to head the United Nations Fact-Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict that investigated allegations of war crimes between Israelis and Palestinians. We talk with Judge Goldstone about accountability for war crimes.

Prof. Alexandre Debs

Wed, 27 Jan 2010 12:00:34 -0500

Professor Debs’ research interests include the political economy of dictatorship, development and war. His work has appeared in the "Journal of the History of Economic Thought." We talk with Professor Debs about his newest paper, "Living by the Sword and Dying by the Sword? Leadership Transitions In and Out of Dictatorships."

Prof. Rolena Adorno

Wed, 20 Jan 2010 12:00:36 -0500

Professor Adorno has done groundbreaking work in Latin American literary studies and has won several awards for it. Her scholarly work focuses on the field of literary cultural production in colonial Latin America. She became most well known for her 1986 book, "Waman Puma: Writing and Resistance in Colonial Peru," which centered on the analysis of the pictorial and prose text that a native Andean wrote to the king of Spain. Her book offered a vivid look at the confrontation of a writer from an indigenous American culture with its colonial conquerors and revealed the survival of a vital native legacy. More recently, she has explored the Spanish writings about the New World that includes both a prize-winning, three-volume book on early Spanish exploration of the area now part of the U.S. Southwest, and one that takes up the role that the historical, theoretical, and polemical works written during the colonial period in Latin America have played in the history of Latin American literature and thought. In November, she was appointed to the National Council on the Humanities.

Prof. Jun Saito

Wed, 13 Jan 2010 12:00:26 -0500

Professor Saito's research focuses on the institutional determinants of representation and redistribution, in particular how choices of constitutional structures and electoral institutions translate into redistributive consequences. He teaches courses on Japanese politics, international relations in East Asia, and comparative political institutions. From 2002 to 2003, Professor Saito was a member of the Japanese House of Representatives. We talk with him about the end of the Liberal Democratic Party in Japan.

Prof. Jeremy Seekings

Wed, 16 Dec 2009 12:00:00 -0500

Professor Seekings is based at the University of Cape Town in South Africa where he has a joint appointment as Professor of Political Studies and Sociology. Professor Seekings leads a variety of research projects encompassing both quantitative and qualitative research. These include studies of adolescence, race and class, violence, AIDS and poverty, social policy, and politics. Most of his research concerns South Africa, but he also conducts research in Brazil, the Caribbean, and other parts of Africa. Today we will talk with Professor Seekings about his recent article titled “Deserving individuals and groups: the post-apartheid state’s justification of the shape of South Africa’s system of social assistance.”

Prof. Nicoli Nattrass

Wed, 24 Feb 2010 09:51:13 -0500

Professor Nattrass is based at the University of Cape Town in South Africa, where she a Professor of Economics and the Director of the AIDS and Society Research Unit. Her research interests include unemployment and economic policy in South Africa, the political economy of anti-retroviral treatment, AIDS policy and AIDS denialism in South Africa. She has written numerous scholarly articles and several books, including The Moral Economy of AIDS in South Africa and Mortal Combat: AIDS Denialism and the Struggle for Anti-retrovirals in South Africa. We talk with her about her AIDS research.

Prof. Tina Lu

Wed, 09 Dec 2009 11:42:03 -0500

Professor Lu’s research interests include Chinese fiction and drama during the period between 1550 and 1750. We talk with her about her book, Accidental Incest, Filial Cannibalism, and Other Peculiar Encounters in Late Imperial Chinese Literature.

Prof. David Jackson

Wed, 11 Nov 2009 12:00:00 -0500

Professor Jackson’s research interests focus on Portuguese and Brazilian Literatures; modernist and inter-arts literature; Portuguese culture in Asia; and ethnomusicology. He has written and edited several books and other publications. We talk with Professor Jackson about his forthcoming book, Adverse Genres in Fernando Pessoa.

Prof. Susan Hyde

Wed, 04 Nov 2009 11:14:05 -0500

Professor Hyde’s research interests include international influences on domestic politics, elections in developing countries, international norm creation, and the use of natural and field experimental research methods. Her current research explores the effects of international democracy promotion efforts, with a particular focus on international election observation. She has served as an international observer with The Carter Center and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe for elections in Albania, Indonesia, Nicaragua, and Venezuela, and has worked for the Democracy Program at The Carter Center. We talk with her about her book, The Pseudo-Democrats Dilemma: Why Election Monitoring Became an International Norm.”

Prof. Thad Dunning

Wed, 28 Oct 2009 12:00:52 -0400

Professor Dunning studies comparative politics, political economy, and methodology. His book, Crude Democracy: Natural Resource Wealth and Political Regimes contrasts the democratic and authoritarian effects of natural resource wealth. His current work on ethnic and other cleavages draws on field and natural experiments and qualitative fieldwork in Latin America, India, and Africa. Dunning has written on a range of methodological topics, including econometric corrections for selection effects and the use of natural experiments in the social sciences. We talk with Professor Dunning about a study he recently completed on voting in Mali.

Prof. Kamari Clarke

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 12:00:00 -0400

Professor Clarke’s areas of research explore issues related to religious nationalism, legal institutions, international law, the interface between culture and power and its relationship to the modernity of race and late capitalist globalization. Her recent articles and books have focused on religious and legal movements and the related production of knowledge and power, including the 2004 publication of Mapping Yoruba Networks: Power and Agency in the Making of Transnational Communities. We talk with Professor Clarke about her newest book, Fictions of Justice: The International Criminal Court and the Challenge of Legal Pluralism in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Prof. Robert Harms

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 12:00:00 -0400
Professor Harms is the author of The Diligent: A Voyage through the Worlds of the Slave Trade, which has won numerous prestigious awards. He has also written two books on the history of equatorial Africa: River of Wealth, River of Sorrow: The Central Zaire Basin in the Era of the Slave and Ivory Trade and Games Against Nature: An Eco-Cultural History of the Nunu of Equatorial Africa. We talk with Professor Harms about his newest research, a book called The Imperialists and the Slave Trader: Conflict, Collaboration, and the Making of Colonialism in Equatorial Africa, 1874-1905.

Prof. Elisabeth Wood

Tue, 06 Oct 2009 15:48:34 -0400
Professor Wood’s current research focuses on sexual violence during war. She is the author of Insurgent Collective Action and Civil War in El Salvador and Forging Democracy from Below: Insurgent Transitions in South Africa and El Salvador, as well as various scholarly articles. We talk with Professor Wood about two of her recently published works on sexual violence during war.

Prof. Frances Rosenbluth

Wed, 30 Sep 2009 12:29:35 -0400
Frances Rosenbluth, Deputy Provost for the Social Sciences and Faculty Development at Yale University, is a comparative political economist with research interests in war and constitutions, Japanese politics and political economy, and the political economy of gender. The author of numerous articles and book chapters, Professor Rosenbluth has written several books: "The Politics of Oligarchy: Institutional Choice in Imperial Japan, Japan's Political Marketplace and Financial Politics in Contemporary Japan;" and "Japan Transformed: Political Change and Economic Reform." We talk with her about her newest book, "Women, Work, and Power: The Political Economy of Gender Inequality."

Prof. Vivek Sharma

Wed, 23 Sep 2009 12:00:00 -0400
Vivek Sharma, Assistant Professor of Political Science at Yale, is broadly interested in the relationship between social institutions and political order including alliances, warfare, and violence. To this end he is working on several projects that examine property, kinship, military organization and political authority in the history of Europe. We talk with Professor Sharma about his social theory of war.

Prof. Iván Szelényi

Wed, 27 May 2009 12:00:00 -0400
The William Graham Sumner Professor of Sociology and Professor of Political Science, Professor Szelényi researches social inequalities from a comparative and historical perspective. His recent book, Patterns of Exclusion, examines how the social conditions of the Roma, or Gypsies, have changed over time and across countries in Central and Southern Europe.

Prof. Paul Sabin

Wed, 20 May 2009 12:00:00 -0400
An assistant professor of environmental history, Professor Sabin’s research and teaching focus on United States environmental history, energy politics, and political and economic history, including natural resource development in the American West and overseas. His book, Crude Politics, examines how politics and law shaped a growing dependence on petroleum in California and the nation. Professor Sabin talks about how history can prepare us for the climate crisis and energy transition.

Prof. John Roemer

Wed, 13 May 2009 12:00:00 -0400
The Elizabeth S. and A. Varick Stout Professor of Political Science and Economics, Professor John Roemer’s research concerns political economy and distributive justice. His books include Racism, Xenophobia, and Distribution; Democracy, Education, and Equality; Political Competition; Equality of Opportunity; and Theories of Distributive Justice. Professor Roemer talks about the future of capitalism.

Prof. Abbas Amanat

Wed, 06 May 2009 12:00:00 -0400
A Professor of History and International and Area Studies, and Director of the Iranian Studies Initiative at the MacMillan Center, Professor Amanat’s teaching and research interests include modern Iran and the Middle East, Shi'ism, and apocalypticism. His principal publications include Pivot of the Universe and Resurrection and Renewal. Professor Amanat talks about his newest book, Apocalyptic Islam and Iranian Shi'ism.

Prof. Erik Harms

Wed, 29 Apr 2009 12:00:00 -0400
Professor Erik Harms, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, is a socio-cultural anthropologist with research interests in the study of urban and peri-urban life, and rural-urban transitions. He specializes in the political, economic, and social transformations engulfing the post-colonial "megacities" of Southeast Asia and has carried out extensive fieldwork in and around Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Professor Harms talks about his newest book, Saigon’s Edge.

Linda Lorimer

Wed, 22 Apr 2009 12:00:00 -0400
Since 1993, Linda Lorimer, Vice President and Secretary of Yale, has served as the senior counselor to President Levin and is the leader of major strategic initiatives for Yale. In recent years, she has developed an ambitious strategy and numerous programs for internationalizing the University. We talk with her about those plans.

Prof. David Cameron

Wed, 22 Apr 2009 09:16:51 -0400
A Professor of Political Science at Yale and the Director of the Program in European Union Studies at the MacMillan Center, Professor David Cameron teaches courses on European politics and the European Union. He has written extensively about the impact of trade openness on government and, with respect to the EU, about the initiative to complete the internal market, the operation of the European Monetary System, and the enlargement of the EU. Professor Cameron talks about the EU and the European economics crisis.

Prof. Patrick Cohrs

Wed, 08 Apr 2009 12:00:00 -0400
An Assistant Professor of History at Yale, Professor Patrick Cohrs teaches courses in US international history and the history of European and international politics. He is the author of The Unfinished Peace after World War I: America, Britain and the Stabilisation of Europe, 1919-1932. Professor Cohrs is currently working on a history of the "Pax Americana," which re-appraises American pursuits of a "new world order" from their origins to the Cold War and explores how far they contributed to the emergence of a more legitimate international system.

Prof. Francesca Trivellato

Tue, 07 Apr 2009 15:51:49 -0400
A Professor of History at Yale, Professor Francesca Trivellato specializes in the social and economic history of Italy, continental Europe and the Mediterranean in the early modern period. She is the author of a book on Venetian glass manufacturing and she has also published several essays on craft guilds, women's work, and merchant networks. We talk with her about her newest book The Familiarity of Strangers: The Sephardic Diaspora, Livorno, and Cross-Cultural Trade in the Early Modern Period.

Prof. Gustav Ranis

Wed, 25 Mar 2009 12:00:00 -0400
Professor Gustav Ranis, Frank Altschul Professor Emeritus of International Economics at Yale, and former Director of the MacMillan Center from 1996 to 2004, has more than 20 books and 300 articles on theoretical and policy-related issues of economic and human development to his credit. He served as Assistant Administrator for Policy and Planning in AID/Department of State during the Johnson administration. Professor Ranis talks about his research on the priority of human development.

Prof. Mridu Rai

Wed, 18 Mar 2009 11:22:33 -0400
An Associate Professor in the History Department at Yale, Professor Mridu Rai’s doctoral research focused on the problem of religion, politics and protest in modern Kashmir. It culminated in her book, "Hindu Rulers, Muslim Subjects: Islam, Rights and the History of Kashmir." She talks with us today about her new research in the region of Bihar, India, that explores the relationships between caste, territory, region, and nation as they evolved from the period of British colonial rule into the postcolonial era.

Prof. Steven Pincus

Wed, 11 Mar 2009 12:00:00 -0400
A Professor of History, Professor Steven Pincus teaches early modern British and European history. He is the author of Protestantism and Patriotism: Ideologies and the Making of English Foreign Policy, 1650-1668 and England's Glorious Revolution 1688-89. He has also published numerous essays on the cultural, political and intellectual history of early modern Britain. Professor Pincus talks about his newest book called 1688: The First Modern Revolution.

Prof. Susan Sokes

Wed, 04 Mar 2009 12:00:00 -0500
Professor Susan Stokes, John S. Saden Professor of Political Science and director of the Yale Program on Democracy, researches democratic theory and how democracy functions in developing societies, with a focus on Latin America. Her most recent book is Democracy and the Culture of Skepticism: Political Trust in Argentina and Mexico. Professor Stokes talks about why leftist parties in Latin American countries have recently won so much electoral support.

Prof. David Skelly

Wed, 11 Feb 2009 12:00:00 -0500
A Professor of Ecology at Yale’s Environment School, David Skelly is interested in animal ecology, conservation and management. His studies of amphibians are directed at determining the causes of patterns such as evolution, and the extinction and establishment of populations. Professor Skelly talks about rapid evolution – the idea that evolution can keep pace with environmental change.

Prof. Aleh Tsyvinski

Wed, 04 Feb 2009 12:00:00 -0500
A Professor of Economics, and the Co-Director of the Macroeconomic Research Program at the Cowles Foundation at Yale University, Professor Tsyvinski talks about his new research with Sergei Guriev and Maxim Trudolubov on Russian values and their attitudes toward the West.

Prof. Jennifer Ruger

Wed, 28 Jan 2009 12:00:22 -0500
An Associate Professor at the Yale School of Public Health, and co-director of the Yale/World Health Organization Centre for Health Promotion, Policy, and Research, Professor Ruger is working to promote the creation of public health programs that make more efficient use of scarce resources while improving current healthcare practices. The Institute of Medicine (IOM) recently invited her to testify about how the management of global health institutions and governance might be improved. Professor Ruger talks about the IOM report on Global Health.

Prof. David Blight

Wed, 10 Dec 2008 10:33:46 -0500
Professor Blight, the Class of 1954 Professor of History at Yale University, is the director of the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition at the MacMillan Center. He has written numerous books on race and American history, and lectures widely on Frederick Douglass, W.E.B. Du Bois, and problems in public history and American historical memory. Today we talk with Professor Blight about his newest book, A Slave No More: Two Men Who Escaped to Freedom, Including Their Own Narratives of Emancipation.

Prof. Ben Kiernan

Wed, 03 Dec 2008 12:00:00 -0500
Professor Ben Kiernan is the Whitney Griswold Professor of History at Yale University, and the founding Director of Yale’s Genocide Studies Program. For more than thirty years, Professor Kiernan has studied and written about genocide and crimes against humanity. He founded the Cambodian Genocide Program at the MacMillan Center in 1994 to document the crimes of Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge regime and pursue justice for its victims. His recent book -- Blood and Soil, a World History of Genocide and Extermination from Sparta to Darfur is another important achievement. It is the first global history of genocide, and in it Professor Kiernan examines outbreaks of mass violence from the classical era to the present.

Prof. Dean Karlan

Tue, 25 Nov 2008 16:42:08 -0500
Professor of Economics at Yale, and President and Founder of Innovations for Poverty Action, Professor Dean Karlan research interests include poverty issues in developing countries and, in particular, financial innovations and microfinance programs aimed at the poor. He uses field experiments to learn what social policies work, what do not, and why. Professor Karlan also does research on fundraising, voting, education, and behavioral economics. In this episode, he talks about Innovations for Poverty Action and commitment contracts at www.stickK.com.

Prof. Philip Gorski

Wed, 19 Nov 2008 12:00:00 -0500
Professor Philip Gorski is Professor of Sociology, and Co-Director of the Center for Comparative Research at Yale. He is a comparative-historical sociologist and his research focuses on topics such as state-formation, nationalism, revolution, economic development and secularization with particular attention to the interaction of religion and politics. Professor Gorski talks about Civil Religion and his new theory.

Prof. Kalyanakrishnan Sivaramakrishnan

Wed, 12 Nov 2008 09:49:21 -0500
A Professor in both the Anthropology and Forestry & Environmental Studies departments at Yale, as well as Chair of the South Asian Studies Council, Professor Sivaramakrishnan’s research interests span environmental history, political anthropology, cultural geography, development and science studies. He has published widely in all these fields, with a regional focus on South Asia. Professor Sivaramakrishnan talks about his new work on environmental conflicts in India.

Prof. Alec Stone Sweet

Wed, 05 Nov 2008 12:00:00 -0500
The Leitner Professor of Law, Politics, and International Studies, Professor Stone Sweet’s interests are comparative and international politics and law, and European integration. His research focuses on how rule systems emerge and evolve over time, and with what consequences for society. Most of his published work approaches this question by looking at how new legal systems develop, including his newest book, A Europe of Rights: The Impact of the European Convention on Human Rights on National Legal Systems.

Prof. Marcia Inhorn

Wed, 29 Oct 2008 12:00:00 -0400
Marcia Inhorn is the William K. Lanman Jr. Professor of Anthropology and International Affairs, Chair of the Council on Middle East Studies at the MacMillan Center, and a specialist on Middle Eastern gender and health issues. She has conducted research on the social impact of infertility and assisted reproductive technologies in Egypt, Lebanon, the United Arab Emirates, and Arab America over the past 20 years. Professor Inhorn is considered to be a pioneer in studying the role of technology in reproductive issues, especially in Muslim settings.

Prof. Thomas Pogge

Wed, 22 Oct 2008 21:38:08 -0400
Professor Thomas Pogge talks about a non-profit organization he leads called Incentives for Global Health and its new flagship proposal – the Health Impact Fund (HIF). The HIF offers an innovative way of stimulating research and development of new medicines in order to provide them to patients -- especially those in the developing world -- at low prices.