Close collaboration with policymakers Archives

Teaching Ethical Engagement: Media, Corruption, and Waning Accountability in Hungary

The challenge: How to help students formulate possible policy responses to undermine Fidesz’s authoritarian grip on power in Hungary (with lessons for other authoritarian contexts). Background and policy setting: In offering the course to 24 graduate students at Korbel, I had two main partners: József Péter Martin, executive director of Transparency International, Hungary, and Dóra […]

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Addressing Uncomfortable Recommendations: Perpetrators and Person-First Language

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Type of engagement This reflection is relevant to people engaging with government officials, policymakers, practitioners, educators, and those who experienced atrocities. The Challenge Background Dr. Nyseth Nzitatira (aka Hollie Nyseth Brehm) obtained her Ph.D. in Sociology at the University of Minnesota in 2014. She is an Associate Professor of Sociology at The Ohio State University.

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The U.S. Role In and Foreign Policy Debate On Afghanistan

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The challenges: The background and policy setting: Dipali Mukhopadhyay has been a policy-oriented scholar since early in the Afghan war and has worked on the war throughout its duration and her entire career. Her work has centered in peace and security issues, while being embedded in policy engagement, working directly on policy issues, writing for

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Navigating Ethical Complexity and Contracting in Multi-Stakeholder Projects

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The challenges: Balancing the desire to collaborate with / provide analytical support to a government agency on a matter of crucial national and human security importance, with the need to maintain institutional and analytical autonomy in our own academic-practitioner interactions. – Managing expectations by practitioners / policymakers about what type of analysis could be reasonably and ethically produced under time and resource constraints …

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Ethical Concerns on a Research Project

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The challenges: The background and policy setting: Parkinson earned her Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Chicago in 2013. She researches organizational behavior and social change during and after war, with a regional focus on the Middle East and North Africa. Of note for this reflection is her research on humanitarian organizations and

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AI and Machine Learning in the U.S. Military Context

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The challenges: The background and policy setting: John R. Emery is a scholar who works on the intersection of technology, international security, and the ethics of war. His recent work focuses on issues of how emotion, abstraction, and human-machine interaction effect ethical decision-making in war. His work in Critical Military Studies analyzed the utilization of

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Requests for Revisions That Go Against One’s Findings

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The Challenge: Responding to requests for substantive revisions to consultancy work that go against one’s findings, analysis, or professional opinion The Background and Policy Setting: King is a political scientist committed to conducting policy-relevant research related to war, peace, development, and education. Over the past 15 years, alongside her university-based work, she has partnered with

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Political Economy Analysis with an International Organization

I have been invited by an international organization to engage in a political economy / institutional analysis. I have limited specific expertise on the country in question — but considerable experience with such work in other countries in the region that could be helpful for comparative purposes. I think I could contribute important analytical perspective

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Engaging with Business to Encourage Responsible Behavior

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The challenges: Background: Virginia Haufler is a scholar whose research explores the governance of global corporations. She has engaged with business representatives and policymakers on a variety of corporate accountability issues as both a scholar and as a participant in policy discussions. She is a professor at the University of Maryland in the Department of

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Engaging with identity politics during times of heightened polarization

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The challenges: The background and policy setting: Brown is an expert on race, gender, and identity politics, and is one of the founders of Women Also Know Stuff.1 After George Floyd’s murder in 2020 she was approached to help people understand how talk about the Black Lives Matter movement and identity politics more broadly in schools and communities. This

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