Schar School News February 2022

Schar School Welcomes ‘Exiled’ Ukrainian Media Professor

Andrew J Schappert — Wed, 23 Feb 2022 18:41:38 +0000

Schar School Welcomes ‘Exiled’ Ukrainian Media Professor Andrew J Schappert Wed, 02/23/2022 - 13:41

In This Story

Anton Liagusha: ‘I have a really great opportunity to think in another world with different approaches to life.’ Photo by Shelby Burgess/Creative Services

The conflict in Ukraine the world is observing now is nothing new to Anton Liagusha.

When gun-brandishing, Russia-backed separatists took over the Donetsk National University in Donetsk, Ukraine, in 2014, the country’s prime minister hastily relocated the school to a new campus in Vinnytsia, 20 hours away by train. Now the disused former diamond-cutting factory is the site of a university that is, technically, in exile.

“It was a very difficult time,” Liagusha said. Liagusha, an associate professor at the Schar School of Policy and Government, was one of 600 teachers at the university—his alma mater—who were forced to relocate. Some 150 professors did so, but only about 5,000 of the 18,000 students followed. With few students and a diminishing source of funding, Liagusha had one more relocation in his future.

Liagusha was selected to come to the Schar School for a year under the New University in Exile Consortium program, which assists endangered and persecuted scholars and provides them means to continue their teaching and research.

He is continuing his studies on media’s influence on politics and culture and how the public consumes information. A media studies scholar and a former radio journalist, Liagusha focuses on “fake news,” disinformation, and propaganda―topics for him that are far more than academic.

“It is an honor to have a world-class scholar such as Anton to serve on our faculty,” said Janine Wedel, a Schar School University Professor who studies corruption and was instrumental in bringing him to Mason.

“At a time of increased threats globally against academic and journalistic freedom, the consortium plays a critical role in providing threatened scholars and reporters a position from which they can do their critically important work,” said Schar School Dean Mark J. Rozell. “The Schar School’s academic programs benefit from the many contributions that the visiting scholars and journalists make to our community during their affiliation with us.”

At the Schar School, where he teaches the course Media and Policy in the Era of Fake News, Liagusha can continue his studies, which are more important now than ever.

“I have a really great opportunity to do my research and to think in another world with different approaches to life,” he said.

“My special interest is not only public policy, but a wider field of public history, how contemporary media, social media, and mass culture use different contexts—heroes, antiheroes, narratives from the past—to support political decision-makers in Europe and especially Eastern Europe. And now I would like to see how it works at the United States.”

Topics

Ukraine

Education

Schar School News February 2022

Schar School

Media Research

Russia

University in Exile Consortium

What Were We Thinking? Selected Schar School Op-Eds (February 2022)

Andrew J Schappert — Wed, 23 Feb 2022 16:45:04 +0000

What Were We Thinking? Selected Schar School Op-Eds (February 2022) Andrew J Schappert Wed, 02/23/2022 - 11:45

In This Story

From CNN:

Why Latinos Are Turning to the Republican Party

Far more ominously, it is possible that the recent shift of some Latinos is not the twilight of America's racialization, but in fact the path by which it might endure.

—Justin Gest

From the Conversation:

Have Hybrid Coronaviruses Already Been Made? We Simply Don’t Know for Sure, and That’s a Problem

We say it is “possible” that chimeric coronaviruses have been made because we simply do not know for sure. US labs are not obliged to publicly report, explain, or justify such experiments. And this highlights a larger issue.

—Greg Koblentz and Filippa Lentzos

From the Kansas City Star:

Black Missouri Schools Once Set the Highest Academic Standards. Here’s What Changed.

Compounding the problem, the field of education acquired a stigma for African Americans. There is now a major shortage of Black teachers. Opening up the remarkable achievements of past Black educators offers other important insights for discussions of education policy today.

—Frank T. Manheim

From the Wall Street Journal:

The U.S. Needs More Nuclear Weapons

The administration is under intense pressure from the Democratic Party’s far left wing to deliver “progress” through cuts to the U.S. nuclear arsenal. Instead, the Biden administration should consider expanding the stockpile and altering its approach to deterrence more broadly.

—Matthew R. Costlow (PhD student and senior analyst at the National Institute for Public Policy)

From Homeland Security Today:

ISIS Expansion with Affiliate in Mozambique Increases Terrorist Group’s Threat

SIS-Mozambique is highly capable of carrying out attacks on strategic targets in Mozambique and typically targets infrastructure (including power supplies), state institutions, and government buildings.

— Mahmut Cengiz and Emma Sameth

From Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists:

Giving AI Control of Nuclear Weapons: What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

If artificial intelligences controlled nuclear weapons, all of us could be dead.

—Zak Kallenborn

From World Politics Review:

Biden Is Rightsizing U.S. Ambitions in the Middle East

Should the benchmark be a comparison to the turbulent Trump years, or to earlier times when U.S. diplomacy was defining the regional agenda and, on occasion, making a meaningful contribution to achieving peace?

—Ellen Laipson

From the Washington Post:

Remember When Republicans Voted for Local Authority and Autonomy?

The GOP’s trust in local officials to do the best thing for their own people appears to have taken a back seat to its current compulsion for imposing party doctrine statewide.

—Mark J. Rozell

From the Hill:

The Allure of ‘Strong and Wrong’

A leader with either excessive strength or excessive weakness can be a danger to democracy. Right now, many Americans are troubled by President Biden’s perceived weakness.

—Bill Schneider

From La República:

Sexual Violence as a Weapon of War

The struggle of Achí, Q'eqchí, and Quechua women shows that it is possible for survivors of sexual violence, whether in times of war or peace, to break the silence and access justice.

—Jo-Marie Burt

From Homeland Security Today:

Activity Shows Terror Groups and Domestic Extremists Were Undeterred by COVID-19 Pandemic

To conclude, the 2020 Annex of Statistical Information shows that COVID-19 did not reduce the number of terrorist attacks; instead, such attacks increased 13 percent worldwide. Terrorist organizations continued to maintain their operational capacity and responded to the virus based on the pillars of their ideologies.

—Mahmut Cengiz

From Taiwan Insight:

Taiwan and China: What Way Forward? Looking at Taiwan in Its Own Light and Its Own Right

We have failed to consider the new reality that Taiwan is now a free democracy and no longer claims sovereignty over China.

—Gerrit van der Wees

From Elfaro:

Imperfect Justice Is Still Justice for Wartime Rape Survivors in Guatemala

Still, it is a justice to be celebrated. Rarely have women survivors of wartime rape succeeded in charging and convicting their tormentors.

—Jo-Marie Burt, et al.

From American City & County:

Assessing Cyber Readiness—Where to Begin?

Cities and counties are about to partake in the nation’s first and largest cybersecurity funding program to help local governments…As we all wait for the final rules, it has become rather clear that there are many public managers and IT leaders still trying to strategize and figure out just where to begin?

—Alan R. Shark

From the Hill:

Biden’s ‘New Political Order’

In the New Political Order, maybe President Biden could toughen up and use the “how dare they?” trope.

—Bill Schneider

From the Sun-Gazette:

Commentary: Va. Needs to Invest in Facilities for Business Expansion

In recent years, Virginia has lost out on an estimated $55 billion in capital-investment projects, more than $235 million in potential state revenue and nearly 40,000 direct jobs because we lacked shovel-ready sites or existing buildings.

—John Milliken and Stuart Malawer

From Ripon Forum:

Preventing the Next Ukraine

If anything, the unfolding crisis in Ukraine should serve as wake-up call that we are running out of time to deter aggression against an even more vulnerable partner: Taiwan. Washington should act with urgency.

—Michael A. Hunzeker

Topics

Schar School News February 2022

Teaching Climate Change as a National Security Threat

Andrew J Schappert — Thu, 17 Feb 2022 14:47:22 +0000

Teaching Climate Change as a National Security Threat Andrew J Schappert Thu, 02/17/2022 - 09:47

In This Story

Ellen Laipson

Louise I. Shelley

(This story is adapted from the Fall/Winter Schar School Pulse Magazine in advance of the Risk of Climate Change to International Security talk in conjunction with an open house for prospective students. The event is Wednesday, February 23 at 5:30 p.m. ET.

It was something that no foreign adversary has been able to do: Not one but two domestic U.S. military bases were evacuated after coming under heavy fire.

The fire was all too literal: The summer 2021 California wildfires posed threats to Camp Pendleton and Beale Air Force Base, causing hundreds of service personnel and their families to abandon their posts and flee for their lives.

What is left unsaid is the vulnerability—temporary as it may have been—in the U.S. national security strategy.

The wildfires are thought to be the result of the culmination of climate and environmental challenges. In other words, climate change and its unavoidable outcomes is not just a quality-of-life problem, but a national security question.

Last October, the New York Times published a major story describing how Washington, the White House, and the U.S. military are confronting climate change as a global conflict. Little of this is news to the professors and policy experts at the Schar School. In the last few years, climate change has been addressed as an increasingly grave national security issue on multiple fronts, in the classroom and through informed exploration at several research centers.

‘A Gradual Process’

“Within the academic community that focuses on international security, it's been a gradual process of adaptation to embrace the notion that climate needs to be integrated into the field of security studies,” said Ellen Laipson, director of the Schar School’s Master’s in International Security program.

She observes that questions of war and peace, where nuclear weapons were long considered the only truly existential threat to states and societies, “are slowly ceding some space to this profound global challenge that does not fit neatly into geopolitical categories. ‘Climate and National Security’ is now an elective course, but we are likely to see more attention and more resources devoted to it in the near future.”

Adjunct professor Erin Sikorsky has been studying the relationship between climate and national security for years. As deputy director of the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Climate and Security, Sikorsky has mapped climate’s attack on the military.

“The climate hazards we're facing, as they become more frequent and more intense, will put our military infrastructure under risk, but also our civilian infrastructure,” Sikorsky said. “Our electric grid, our distribution of water systems, all of these things were not designed for the climate changes that we're seeing—and will see in the future.

“So, they're going to be increasingly stressed, and potentially fail. And that poses real risks for the U.S.”

Climate as a Transnational Crime

Climate change and its impact on national security starts at what causes the damage to the environment. Louise Shelley, director of the Terrorism, Transnational Crime and Corruption Center (TraCCC) at the Schar School, identifies transnational crime on a massive scale as a significant culprit.

“The most important form of illicit trade contributing to climate change is illegal logging,” she said. “It’s estimated to be a $50 billion to over $150 billion business annually.”

Transnational criminal syndicates compromise climate security while also disrupting local and national economies, encouraging political and corporate corruption, and damaging entire cultures.

“Presently, 60 percent to 80 percent of the trees in the Amazon are being cut illegally, contributing to the destruction of a rainforest that is needed to absorb carbon from the air,” Shelley said. “The fate of the Amazon is repeated throughout the world as trees in rainforests and hardwood forests are cut illegally at a rapid rate to supply timber for consumer markets and provide land for food production.”

Climate hazards intersect with other strains on national security, said Sikorsky. “When you layer climate shocks on top of that, how does that pose risks in terms of creating further instability and insecurity within communities and creating pressures on government to deliver more to local communities, particularly when they’re already strained quite a bit?”

Those are the questions Sikorsky poses to her students as she prepares the next generation to address these challenges.

“The class itself is designed to bring a climate lens to international relations and national security issues,” she said. “A key way in which the students will be prepared to enter the workforce and understand these issues is if they can bring what I called ‘climate competence’ to whatever career they pursue. Because climate change is an issue that's going to crop up no matter what your career path is.

“Even if climate is not your main focus for your job, it will be something you need to understand and be able to bring to bear in your work. And if you can do that, I think you'll have a leg up in in this job market, frankly, because it is so important.”

Additional reporting by Buzz McClain.

Topics

Climate Change

National Security

Schar School News February 2022

Policy and Prisons: What Happens After Incarceration?

Andrew J Schappert — Tue, 08 Feb 2022 15:36:59 +0000

Policy and Prisons: What Happens After Incarceration? Andrew J Schappert Tue, 02/08/2022 - 10:36

In This Story

Michael K. Fauntroy

Public funds that might be spent on education, infrastructure, and health care, among other programs, are diverted into an increasingly voracious criminal justice system that, ultimately, creates a negative impact on the lives of the incarcerated, their families, and their communities, particularly for those reentering society after incarceration.

That issue and others regarding the state of the prison system in the U.S. are the topics of a conversation called “Convicted and Condemned: The Politics and Policies of Prisoner Reentry,” hosted by the Schar School’s Race, Politics, and Policy Center (RPPC) and featuring Howard University Associate Professor Keesha M. Middlemass, who published a 2017 book of the same title.

Schar School Associate Professor and RRPC Director Michael K. Fauntroy will moderate. The virtual discussion takes place Wednesday, February 23 at 7:30 p.m. ET. It’s free and open to the public but registration is required.

Studies show that two factors serve as big deterrents to crime for those formerly incarcerated. “Thousands of people reenter society every year in the state of Virginia, and to improve public safety and reduce the potential for new criminal activity, the reentering population needs to have the opportunity to access housing and employment. The negative impact when people are not provided a chance to [successfully] reenter includes increased homelessness.”

Not surprisingly, “racial disparities in who is incarcerated and who reenters disproportionately impacts Black communities,” she added. “When individuals fail to reenter, there are other costs, including re-incarceration and the negative impact on children, families, and communities.”

As for job opportunities, obstacles abound.

“Employment restrictions are numerous and are across all employment sectors,” she said. “Adults with a felony conviction are denied the right to work in the public sector, such as in public education, and licensing boards add administrative hurdles to get a professional or occupational license, which increases the likelihood of denial.”

This discussion, she said, is important to have amid a political climate in which “little is being done about the policies embedded in statutes outside of the criminal and sentencing statutes.

“In other words, the collateral consequences are not being changed. There is little to no appetite to reform the hidden and collateral consequences of a felony conviction, so they will continue and be added to by state legislators.”

Topics

Schar School News February 2022

From Classroom to Real World: Schar School Students Engage at Global Climate Conference

Andrew J Schappert — Fri, 04 Feb 2022 15:46:29 +0000

From Classroom to Real World: Schar School Students Engage at Global Climate Conference Andrew J Schappert Fri, 02/04/2022 - 10:46

For four days in November 2021, eight students from the Schar School of Policy and Government attended COP26, the world’s largest global climate conference, in Glasgow, Scotland.*

The trip, part of the Schar School summer course, Climate Policy: A Global Transdisciplinary Approach for the Future, allowed students the opportunity to meet with delegates, negotiators, youth activists, and indigenous groups at the conference. While there, Schar students received a crash course in the complexities of climate change policy and negotiations.

“It was a really great experience getting to see the general process of COP, but also various types of stakeholders that come to the table and how they interact,” said Mason senior Conner Cuevo.

The quick jaunt packed a lot of punch, inspiring in Cuevo a passion for how government and international institutions like the U.N. work and how they can solve global issues.

“It has given me a wealth of experiences to draw from and an endless source of materials that I continue to reference and apply to my classes, and even outside of class,” he said.

His network also expanded: “When you’re in a small group like that, you make a lot of friends.”

Schar School and other ��AV students enrolled in the 3-credit virtual study abroad “Climate Policy” course figuratively “travel” the planet, studying global challenges with experiential learning opportunities and collaboration on a group project with students from the University of Rwanda.

The class features TED-style talks from 20 guest speakers from 18 different countries, including Ma Jun, the top Chinese environmental activist and is one of TIME magazine’s most influential 100 people, and Erik Solheim, a former head of the UN Environmental Program.

“The level, the number, and backgrounds of all speakers that came to class really gave a well-rounded viewpoint,” said Schar School senior Jake Mazzoccoli, who took the class and the trip to Scotland.

For Mazzaccoli, the most interesting event at COP26 was a private session hosted by the Norwegian Africa Business Association (NABA) that featured top negotiators and policy makers from Africa, as well as experts from KPMG. Through a collaboration with NABA, the students helped craft a white paper that resulted from the session, which was moderated by Carol Pineau, a journalist and senior fellow at the Schar School.

Attending COP26 really opened his eyes, Mazzoccoli said, and showed him why things don’t move as quickly as he and others hoped.

“COP is the center of the issue, but it’s frustrating because it’s often just words on paper. It really lit a fire under me,” he said. “I didn’t really understand the complexity and sensitive nature. The problems aren’t simple. You can’t just go over there and fix it.”

But the class offered him a way forward, as he heard about issues directly from their sources and made contacts with high-level officials.

“Climate Policy: A Global Transdisciplinary Approach for the Future” will be taught again in fall 2022, with an in-person visit planned to COP, held this year in Egypt. For more information on the Schar School’s study abroad classes, visit abroad.gmu.edu.

*Students followed numerous COVID-19 protocols, including vaccinations, boosters, and testing before and after travel.

Topics

Schar School News February 2022

Study: Do George Soros and Open Society Foundations Really Make a Difference?

Andrew J Schappert — Thu, 03 Feb 2022 17:10:36 +0000

Study: Do George Soros and Open Society Foundations Really Make a Difference? Andrew J Schappert Thu, 02/03/2022 - 12:10

Just how influential is billionaire philanthropist George Soros?

Vilified by some, praised by others, the Hungarian-born investor and his Open Society Foundations (OSF)—he’s donated $32 billion since 1979—works to support liberal democratic intuitions in 37 countries around the world.

But exactly how much influence has OSF had on those countries?

A new study by Schar School researchers evaluated the global investments by the nonprofit to understand the role of private philanthropy in a range of public policy areas, including education, criminal justice reform, health care, development, civil liberties and civil rights, and democratization. Published in Global Studies Quarterly, the conclusion might surprise some. (Read it here.)

The report was written by Associate Professor Guadalupe Correa-Cabrera, Assistant Professor Lucas Núñez, who led the qualitative study, and Schar School Master’s in Public Policy graduate Hayden R. Ludwig, who studies nonprofit policies at Capital Research Center, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank. Research assistance was provided by Schar School Master’s in Public Policy student Hadiyyah Aida Abdul-Jalaal and Master’s in Public Administration student Lea Mann.

The self-funded study began “after a friendly and informal conversation waiting for the elevator” with Núñez, said Correa-Cabrera, an immigration and border policy expert who had been curious about OSF while researching migrant caravans and mass migrations in the Americas.

And the findings? Well…meh.

“We find that OSF funding does not have much of an impact at the country level in a select number of outcomes that we can measure,” said Núñez. “This does not mean that this funding does not do anything, but that it is at least not detectable at the country level.”

“We have found that whatever Soros’s foundations are doing, they are not having a clear significant impact; actually, they do not seem to have any impact at the macro-level at all, at least amongst the data available for this study,” Correa-Cabrera concluded. “In other words, there is no proof that OSF funding has a substantial contribution at the macro-level in the development of open societies, nor that it is having the negative impacts that some of its critics ascribe to it.”

The report has received attention in the media, including a two-part dissection by the public radio program, The World. Part 1. Part 2.

Topics

Nonprofits

Democracy

Schar School News February 2022