Close Collaboration with Policymakers

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

The challenges:

• Moving beyond academic critique and arm’s length critiques of defense policy from a “just war” perspective to discussions within military circles based on a more interdisciplinary perspective
• Engaging with future peace and security policymakers to update the “moral vocabulary” around the use of force to take into account the new dilemmas of force short of war, such

The challenges:

• How to decide when to remove oneself from a research project due to ethical concerns
• How to informally report on policy processes and retain policy relevance even while disengaging from a specific project

The background and policy setting:

Parkinson earned her Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Chicago in 2013. She researches organizational behavior

The challenges:

• Determining in which stages of development or deployment of technology to engage with machine learning, using a just war logic
• Choosing to closely engage with a military project as a critical scholar, given that the use of the project may result in the loss of human life

The background and policy setting:

John R. Emery is

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 a number of governments, non-governmental

The challenges:

• How to collaborate with business representatives in ways that generate fruitful conversations while maintaining your own integrity and reputation
• How to recommend partnerships with business to solve global problems without damaging the partners' reputation and legitimacy or providing business with a shield against legitimate criticism

Background:

Virginia Haufler is a scholar whose research explores the governance

The challenge:

• Navigating whether and how to engage with authoritarian regimes in academic spaces
• Lending support to voices situated in authoritarian regimes, without jeopardizing their work and safety

The background and policy setting:

Miles Kahler is a distinguished professor at American University in the fields of international politics and international political economy and Senior Fellow for global governance

The challenges:

• Identifying and understanding the limits and failures of policy expertise, as well as the role and nature of policy ignorance when engaging with policymakers, while acknowledging that policymakers who work in the field of economics are often under a great deal of pressure to get things right
• Approaching issues as a political economist and a social theorist,

The challenges:

• How to show the value of diversity and intersectionality for policymaking in an era of heightened polarization.
• How to effectively contribute to the policy arena as a black feminist when your expertise is in question from the gate given who you are.
• How to push against situations where your identity brings diversity, but you are expected

The challenges:

• Navigating positionality in academic work and community engagement on racial profiling by police
• Improving the ethical issues surrounding expert witnesses, public speaking, and training

The background and policy setting:

This reflection was completed by a professor who studies the economics of stratification, considering such topics as equitable growth, gender, and macroeconomic tools. Their primary research focus