June 9, 2022

May Faculty Updates

Professor Mary Beth Altier was invited to join the Editorial Board of the journal Terrorism and Political Violence. She also serves on the Editorial Boards of Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, Behavioral Sciences of Terrorism and Political Aggression, Journal for Deradicalization, and ICCT-TheHague Journal.

Adjunct Assistant Professor Josh Krasna published "A Tale of Two Normalizations: Israeli Normalization with the United Arab Emirates (UAE) – Part I" for the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies. He will publish the second part of the series, on Bahrain, in June. The two papers are based partially on a recent two-week visit Dr. Krasna made to Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Bahrain, with assistance from NYU/SPS.

On May 12-13, Professor Jennifer Trahan was in Graz, Austria, speaking at a meeting of the Use of Force Committee of the International Law Association. The topic they are working on is military assistance upon request, and she presented on her paper "Initiation to Atrocities: When Intervention on Request Violates the ius contra bellum and the ensuing consequences," which she is co-authoring with Professor Anne Peters. On May 20, Professor Trahan was a panelist on the panel "The War in Ukraine and the Role of the United Nations," sponsored by the Public International Law and Policy Group. The panel also featured Ukraine's Acing Deputy Permanent Representative to the United Nations as well as former head of the Office of Global Criminal Justice, U.S. Department of State, Ambassador, Todd Buchwald.

Professor Anne Marie Goetz took part in a peer review process to assess the outcome of a significant research project managed by the Overseas Development Institute (London , UK): ‘Women, Peace and Security: Breaking Down the Silos’, led by Pilar Domingo and Clare Castillejo. The focus was on transitional justice, land reform and constitutional reform. Three country experiences reviewed included Colombia, Kenya and South Sudan. The overall aims of the project included:

  • To provide recommendations on how international actors can integrate Women, Peace and Security (WPS) work more strategically with wider peacebuilding and conflict related interventions to enhance women’s influence and leadership across different reform processes.

  • To address current critiques in academic and grey literature that the WPS agenda has remained unnecessarily narrow and siloed, limiting the capacity for more sustainable impact over time in support of its key objectives

  • To review the evidence regarding how women have experienced and shaped a range of different change/reform processes related to peacebuilding that are often overlooked within the WPS agenda; how the nature of these processes and the actors involved in them hinder or enable women’s access and influence; and how international actors can best support women’s access and influence within these processes.

An extract from Professor Goetz’s comments: “The other special component of the WPS agenda is the focus on relief and recovery – the post-conflict movement. This too could have been drawn out a little more explicitly in the paper. It IS mentioned, yes, but is there MORE that can move in the post-conflict moment of possibility and change, in order to make progress on women’s rights and welfare? Could and should donors be ready with much more focused aid to support the development of markets and industry in areas of female employment? Since this paper values cross-sectoral linkages, could any reparations programs be linked to land reform to ensure women war victims obtain new property rights as a form of reparation?"

On April 19th Professor Goetz spoke on an online panel ‘Amping up strategic partnerships with groups, networks and movements for gender equality’, organized by the NGO ‘Gender at Work’ as part of on-going training for UNDP Resident Representatives. Other speakers were: Hakima Abbas, Co-Executive Director of the Association of Women’s Rights in Development and Co-founder of the Black Feminist Fund, Zola Kondur, a Roma women’s rights activist who represents Roma issues in the Council of Europe and is the UNDP’s Tolerance Ambassador in Ukraine, and Nyaradzayi Gumbonzvanda is the Founder and Chief Executive of the Rozaria Memorial Trust and former World YWCA General Secretary.On Friday April 8, Professor Goetz took part (virtually)in a panel discussion on “Parliaments in the Global Governance System, with Special Reference to the United Nations”. This was part of a large annual conference held in Argentina at the government’s training college for public servants in Villa La Angostura, Neuquen: the ‘International Workshop of Scholars and Parliamentarians’. The theme this year was on ‘Parliaments of the Future’ – how parliaments have to adapt and change in response to threats to democracy as well as to the need to work transnationally to resolve shared threats such as climate change or terrorism and organized crime.

On Friday April 8, Professor Goetz took part (virtually)in a panel discussion on “Parliaments in the Global Governance System, with Special Reference to the United Nations”. This was part of a large annual conference held in Argentina at the government’s training college for public servants in Villa La Angostura, Neuquen: the ‘International Workshop of Scholars and Parliamentarians’. The theme this year was on ‘Parliaments of the Future’ – how parliaments have to adapt and change in response to threats to democracy as well as to the need to work transnationally to resolve shared threats such as climate change or terrorism and organized crime. On March 29, 2022, Professor Goetz joined a panel of co-authors to launch the book: Untapped Power: Leveraging Diversity and Inclusion for Conflict and Development, edited by Carla Koppel of the Georgetown University Institute of Women, Peace and Security (Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service). This was a virtual launch at the 2022 meeting of the International Studies Association. This book contributes to building diverse voices in the Global Affairs field, with a specific mission to help to decolonize the curriculum for international relations students and future policy-makers.

Related Articles