Archives for July 2017

Episode 162: Mark Kennedy Shriver

 

Mark Shriver is president of Save the Children Action Network, which is the advocacy arm of the global humanitarian organization. We kick off with a discussion of what advocacy for global development and humanitarian issues looks like in the age of Donald Trump, including the unique role that congress will play in maintaining American leadership on global health and humanitarian issues.

Mark is a member of the Kennedy family. His uncles were President Kennedy, Robert Kennedy and Teddy Kennedy. His mother, their sister, was Eunice Kennedy who founded the Special Olympics. His father was Sargent Shriver who was a key aid to his brother-in -law John Kennedy and is widely credited with establishing the Peace Corps. Mark wrote a best selling memoir about his father and we have a fairly extended conversation about the origins of the Peace Corps.

We also, of course, discuss Mark’s own career and the influences of his extremely unique upbringing on his life and career.  If you have 40 minutes and want to learn about global humanitarian advocacy in this new era, and also glean insights from his interesting career, have a listen to this conversation with Mark Kennedy Shriver.

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Everything You Know About Sweatshops is Wrong

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Gavin Houtheusen/DFID

Chris Blattman is a development economist who routinely conducts experiments to test ideas related to reducing poverty and improving the well being of people living in poorer countries. His latest experiment takes on the question of sweatshops–whether they are good for the poor, exploitative, or something else.

Along with his colleague Stefan Dercon, Chris went to Ethiopia and performed the first randomized trial of industrial employment on workers. They went to five factories and followed 947 applicants for over a year, surveying them multiple times. They found that most people who got a job ended up quitting within a few months — and they did so for very good reasons.

As Chris and Stefan wrote in an New York Times op-ed about their research, everything they thought they knew about sweatshops turned out to be wrong.

Decent employment is embedded in the Sustainable Development Goals — Goal 8 sets targets to achieve “inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and decent work for all” by 2030. Factory work in rapidly industrializing economies like Ethiopia are an important way to reach these goals. Getting industrialization right, therefore, is key to reaching the SDGs. This new study offers some insights into how policy makers can do industrialization better.

If you have 30 minutes and want to up-end your understanding of sweatshops, have a listen.

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Have questions about a career in international affairs? Join our panel discussion!

Podcast listeners email me all the time asking career advice. It’s flattering, and I love to try to help. But I wanted to do better by you and get some real experts on the line to answer your questions about pursuing a career.  I’ve asked two people with interesting careers in international affairs (and experience dispensing career advice) to join me for a conference call to answer your questions.

The discussion will take place at NOON eastern time on Wednesday the 26th of July. We will be using a VOIP program to record and host the call. All you need to do to join the call is click on the link below from a desktop–using chrome or firefox.

https://zencastr.com/marklgoldberg/careerpanel

If you cannot make the call, please email me your question and I’ll ask it of the panel on your behalf.

My guests will be Alanna Shaikh and Paul Stronski, two individuals with interesting and varied careers in international affairs. They will be on hand to answer your questions about careers in world affairs, foreign policy, school, or anything else on your mind.

See you there!

 

Mark

Episode 161: Graham Allison

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It’s called “Thucydides’s Trap” — and the US and China are caught in it.

Graham Allison is a legend of international relations. He’s the founding dean of the Harvard Kennedy School and former director of Harvard’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.

His latest book, published in May, is called Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides’s Trap? This book combines insights from the ancient greeks with his own historical research and analysis to posit that war between China and the United States is more likely than we think. We kick off with a discussion of the scenarios that might lead to war between China and the USA — and how the UN can put a break to conflict.

After a discussion of his book, we learn a bit about Graham Allison’s upbringing and early life in North Carolina and how he ended up a lifer at Harvard University.

If you are listening to this and you have ever taken an International Relations 101 class then you have most certainly read from Graham Allison’s first book called Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis. The book, which was originally published in 1971, shattered several conventions of international relations and political science. Up to that point, the field of international relations was dominated by game theorists and by people who more generally posited that states make rational decisions —  that is they are “rational actors.”  His analysis of the Cuban Missile Crisis suggested something different. He introduced new analytic lenses to show how bureaucracies, and even personalities, can drive national security decision-making and lead to outcomes that are seemingly irrational and dangerous.

It was a game changing book and study of international relations theory which launched his career. And we have an extended conversation about how he came to write this extremely influential book, including its personal and intellectual roots. Towards the middle of the interview, Graham describes how a glint of eye from Bobby Kennedy during an interview lead Allison to a breakthrough insight for this book.

If you have 40 minutes and want to learn some key insights from an international relations luminary, have a listen.

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How Peace Broke Out in Colombia

 

On June 27th, FARC rebels turned over the last of their weapons to the United Nations in a ceremony attended by both the leader of FARC and President Juan Manuel Santos. This officially marked the end of a over 50 year civil war that killed hundreds of thousands and displaced millions more.

So how did we get to this point? And what are some of the big challenges that lay ahead for Colombia as peace takes hold? I put these questions and more to Kyle Johnson of the International Crisis Group. I reached him in Colombia a couple weeks after the laying-of-arms ceremony, which he attended. And we have an interesting conversation about this peace process and the conflict that lead to it.

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Episode 160: Wendy Pearlman is an academic who studies the Middle East in an unusual way

 

Wendy Pearlman is an academic who studies the Middle East, but also writes popularly focused narratives that examines everyday life of people caught in the chaos of the region. Her latest book, We Crossed a Bridge and it Trembled: Voices from Syria, is a collection of interviews of Syrians displaced by the war. That book was published by Harper Collins in June, but she used some of the research in that book for peer reviewed academic papers, including research examining the role of fear in revolutionary protests. And in this conversation we alternate–much like Wendy– between her social science work and her narrative storytelling.

We get wonky, but also personal. Wendy describes how she got interested in the Middle East and how her fascination with Morocco morphed to a passion for researching and studying the Palestinian-Israeli conflict and, of course, the Arab Spring.

Episode 159: Eric Schwartz, former top State Department official who ran US refugee programs

 

Eric Schwartz served as the top refugee policy official in the Obama administration, as the Assistant Secretary of State for Population, Refugees and Migration between 2009 and 2011. He was recently appointed the president of Refugees International, an advocacy organization in Washington, DC. We kick off this conversation discussing US refugee policy in the wake of President Trump’s attempts to sharply curb the number or refugees allowed into the United States.

Eric has had a fascinating career. He worked in the NGO sector helping to establish Human Rights Watch’s Asia branch; and also for both the United States government– including in Bill Clinton’s National Security Council. He also worked for the United Nations, under both the High Commissioner for Human Rights and under the special envoy for Tsunami recovery to help countries affected by the massive 2004 indian ocean Tsunami. (That special envoy was Bill Clinton.)

We also discuss at length about Eric’s relationship with Sergio Vieira de Mello. He was a well known figure around the United Nations who served as the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights before working for a stint as the top UN official in Iraq immediately following the US invasion and occupation of the country. de Mello was killed in a bombing of the UN headquarters in Baghdad, along with 21 others, and Eric discusses how that impacted him personally and professionally.

This Could Be Africa’s Next Big Conflict

FIB Tanzanian special forces during training, Sake, the 17th of July 2013. © MONUSCO/Sylvain Liechti

Conflict is escalating in one region of the Democratic Republic of Congo and this conflict  has the potential to become one of Africa’s next big crises.

At issue is a brewing situation in a region of DRC called Kasai. This was not a region that had experienced much violence or conflict that caught international attention. Rather, it is the far away eastern part of the country that has experienced the bulk of violence in the last several years. When conflict began to erupt and rumors of rampant human rights abuses swirled, two UN investigators visited the region. They were later found murdered.

On the line with me to discuss the situation in the Kasai region is Ida Sawyer, the Central Africa director of Human Rights Watch. She does a very good job of explaining how the conflict started, how it is changing and also the broader political context in which this conflict has erupted.

If you have 20 minutes and want to learn why this local conflict could metastasize into something bigger, have a listen.

You can EMAIL Mark by clicking here. 

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Bonus episodes for premium subscribers include:

#1: International Relations Theory, explained.

#2: A Brief History of Nuclear Non-proliferation

#3: A Brief History of NATO

#4: The Syrian Civil War, explained.

#5: Meet the Kim family of North Korea.

#6: Better Know Vladimir Putin

#7: How to Get a Job at the United Nations

#8: How to Pick the Right International Relations Graduate School